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Objective Observer
Weekly newsletter from the Objective Observatory offers a pithy insight into the inner workings of Anguillian Society.
All content is (c) 1993-2006 by RK Publications and reflects the views of the author.
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We continue last week's report on the state of Anguilla for two good reasons. First, our years of pointing out the incompetencies of Rummy and friends have borne fruit, the horrid mess in Iraq is evident to all, and now many noted supporters are flaking off and suggesting it is time for Rummy to go. So, we'll give it a rest for a week. Also, last week's column was welcomed by some Readers who like quieter news, and don't want to find out why there are differing spellings of Hezbollah/Hizbullah. So, we bow to our public, and deal with changes – if any – in the behavior of Anguillians.
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Faithful Readers, our promise to discuss changes on Anguilla has at long last come to fruit. We have heard from many a Reader that our keen analyses of the fiasco in Iraq are dead right, and a smaller but quite vocal (if e-mail can be called "vocal") group that our hatred of W is tiresome and who needs smarts to run a government? So, no politics today, but here are the changes noted after a bit more than one AXA Time Unit, which is 13 years. The first and most striking change is still in progress – – and it is a big Mall, with a big movie theater and (gasp!) a promised Drug Store. Wow! Anguilla, bride of quietness, is going suburban. That means, of course, that despite the fact that the longest drive on the island, East to West (or, yes, vice-versa) is some 13 miles, we have a flood of new cars, and fellows driving them too fast, as everywhere. Again, suburbia. The roads are being re-surfaced, which is fine, but they are no wider, so congestion builds. We need more traffic lights, or else the House Steward here will be trapped in the Post Office lot and will be found on some weekend, desiccated, under a pile of old Time magazines.
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Ever-patient Readers, we call your attention to an old saying: "My enemy's enemy is my friend." While the White House is certainly not a center of study of old folk wisdom (or any other wisdom), perhaps a short, sharp lecture will help steer them toward good sense. Look you, Readers, the Founding Fathers of the U.S. had a lively distrust of government by the daily whims of the mob. That is why the U.S. is a Republic, not an Athenian democracy. It is also not a Monarchy, despite the claims of the Bush Attorney General, who seems to want to abolish the courts and the Congress. [Note: the voting public, smartening up, seems to want to toss out the incumbents in Congress, but that is not the same as abolishing the institution.] Now that the Iraq Fiasco is drawing to a bloody and dismal close in a sectarian war, let us reason together and consider just why the Iraq invasion was such a mistake. The password for our journey is "Yugoslavia". If you can spell it, you will remember and understand.
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Important international matters cause us to postpone, yet one more time, our report on Changes in Anguilla (there are many). Our Staff was sitting around the big conference table, discussing why the bad guys – specifically Hamas, Hezbollah, Chavez and that childish unshaven Iranian fellow, seem to have better policy planning, better public appeal, and, yes, better PR than our side. We are talking about Iraq, of course, and Lebanon, and also South America and the stage at the United Nations. Of course, everybody realizes that the bad fellows appeal to the worst human emotions, like envy, racial hatred, religious bigotry, and all the rest. But, the current Administration talk about the beauties of democracy (small d), do not ring true when Hamas is elected in Palestine and Hezbollah is elected to Government in Lebanon, and that unshaven Iranian seems wildly popular. So, while it is clear than Rummy and friends are doing nothing right, just what should we be doing?
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Cherished and Loyal Readers, we apologize again. For several weeks we have promised you a soothing report on the changes and non-changes on Anguilla. Yet, world events have cast our Staff into deep gloom, and has them wandering around muttering. A new book has the crisp title "Fiasco" -- it's ordered but hasn't arrived. Of course it is about the Bush/Cheney/Rummy mess. [We like Fiasco instead of what we have called the Iraq Big Botch, or mess – or morass]. The recent blood flowing in Lebanon and Israel adds to our despair. We ask questions to which there are no answers. How can any religion or sub-sect thereof approve the blowing up of a hundred innocents of another sub-sect whose crime is shopping in a Baghdad market? What blindness convinces the hapless and impotent Gaza dwellers that their salvation lies in lobbing homemade bombs into Israel? What careful calculation convinces Israel that blowing up the oil storage at the Beirut airport will bring down Hezbollah (or Hisbollah – why can't it even learn to spell its name)? What incites that unshaven Iranian teenager to say there was no Holocaust? Did the head of the Iraqi parliament really just say that the Jews were the ones who beheaded the captured innocents in Iraq? Is he crazy?
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Last week we suggested forming a Bipartisan Smart Party in the U.S., but the name of the BS Party was already registered. Just the same, we persist with a call for using brains, and the best brains, in the U.S. and elsewhere in the world. The oldest member of our Staff (name withheld by request) remembers that in World War II the United States went to its Universities and sought the aid of scientists and Professors of all kinds in developing weapons, devices, and policies. In the current Administration smart is as unpopular as competent, but one can hope. So, we send a clarion call for drafting the best brains available to deal with the current world crises. We start small, with the U.S. Penny.
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Publishing this column has its rewards, and also its irritations. The rewards are you Readers who write in and discuss, amplify, emend and yes, even correct us. The irritations are those who disagree, but instead of discussing facts (always acceptable), or analyzing (also always acceptable) or debating (as welcome as praise), instead call us names. One of the popular names to be called is "Liberal". This is the favorite adjective of death of those who, like the Hezbollah, are warriors of a strange faith, in their case belief in the incompetent Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld management. As an example, a fellow with poor manners writes in and asks to be added to the OO E-mail distribution list, and in the course of asking for this free service said, referring to the OO's last column [EthicalAction, OO # 653]: "... you liberals always make things sound so easy. Thank goodness your [sic] not running the ‘free world'. Fighting barbaric behavior with a little unethical behavior is OK by me." Now, Readers, aside from this fellow's grammatical mistake, he makes the mistake of thinking that calling somebody "Liberal" is reasoned argument. It is not. In the column, for example, the OO said terrorists, IF (but only if) convicted, should be shot at dawn, and that assassination of Saddam was a desirable ethical alternative : "offing him was correct". This is not soft-headed Liberalism, and the rude applicant hasn't explained how keeping bin Laden's taxi driver forever in Guantanamo Hell moves us morally or practically forward.
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Once more, events require an alternate subject for this week's sermon. We turn the podium over to our Staff Ethicist, who, as usual these days, is sad. He is depressed by the worldwide decline in the ethical standing of the United States. Begin with the inexcusable example of Guantanamo. There are prisoners held, and destined to be held, forever, without charges, trial and conviction. An example is a hapless lout who seems to have been bin Laden's driver. Gosh! What a criminal! What a threat to the civilized world! The Bush Administration says it can't just set these dangerous terrorists free. Well, sure, but who says this particular fellow is a terrorist? If you know he is, try him, convict him, and shoot him at dawn. But if you can't do that because you don't know what he did, then you are making a grave logical and ethical error – that of assuming guilt before trial. So, before the bar of world opinion, the U.S. is guilty of unethical behavior.
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Some time back, we revealed to you that the standard unit of time on Anguilla -- one AXA Unit -- is 13 years, say the time from promise of a new road and construction of same. The OO has lived on Smiling Anguilla 13 years, plus, by now, and has just completed one AXA Unit's service as the United States Consular Warden for Anguilla. This is an unpaid post with supposed duties of keeping track of all U.S. citizens on island, and taking care of them in times of invasion or disaster. Anguilla has not been invaded recently, and since most USCits will not register, the job has mostly devolved to keeping and handing out forms for, say, adult passport renewal, nagging the Consul in Barbados to send a Vice-Consul around every six months to register new children as USCits because they were born in St. Thomas or San Juan or elsewhere under the flag, and holding meets to renew the kids' passports. We also do a brisk telephone biz, telling callers who should be bothered in Barbados for Visas and such. The work load is growing: we receive up to 75 passport applicants every six months. Anyway, to get to the point, the OO is resigning as Warden, but will serve as Deputy, while a fine couple, now Deputies, will assume the mantles of office. They are tough, trained, and handled with distinction a real recent crisis.
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Warning! This column has nothing to do with Marzipan, and never was scheduled to discuss this outdated confection of ground almonds, egg whites and sugar. The name was just a placeholder. What the OO wants to talk about is the concept of mathematical elegance, and the related low level of public discourse and argument in the United States, and indeed in Anguilla, as well as the rest of the world. Let us start with elegance. An elegant proof is one which is short, convincing and sparse to the point of beauty: "Scientific exactness and precision" says a dictionary. That is what is lacking in the recent U.S. Congressional so-called debates about any subject whatsoever, and also lacking in the e-mails sent to the OO by the faithful supporters of the Bush-Cheney foreign adventures and attacks on the Constitution. It is also, we regret to say, lacking in some communications from Faithful Readers who don't read what we say. May we continue?
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We explain to our much-tried Readers that the announced titles of these columns are issued in good faith. But, the announcement is a week ahead of the act of creation (as it were). So, other fragments force their way to attention. For example, last night there was a hockey play-off game. The winning team had a big tough player named Pronger. What a name! That led to thinking about the Anguillian talent for names. All girl babies receive a totally original name that you living elsewhere have never heard. While older established stores use the names of the founders (Lake’s, Ashley’s), all newly retail ventures carry names of utmost grandeur, along the line of Great Universal Flip-Flops and Nail Ornamentarium. [We made that up, so as not to offend.] Ah, well, moving on, we shall turn the microphone over to our Revered Investment Guru, the R.I.G., to talk about the ridiculous American politics of Estate Taxation. [There is, or are, no Anguillian politics of Estate taxation; there is no Estate tax.]
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After the ritual check of the drosometer*, the morning Staff meeting at the Objective Observatory opens by consulting the curious Forgotten Words calendar. A recent entry described an ancient Whit Monday celebration: "... the rest of the day is spent in dancing, mirth and merry glee." Readers, that was then. Now, as we look around the world just after Whit Monday, there isn't a whit of merry glee to speak of. The world is polluted and getting hotter; icebergs are melting and oceans rising; there isn't enough oil; religious crazies abound everywhere, ready to blow you up for fun. In the United States, the Administration is hyper-incompetent and subverting the Constitution, while the Congress is corrupt and childish; and, as frosting, the stock markets are panicking. Even Smiling Anguilla is suffering from over-construction, secrecy, and the first signs of community distrust. The list of subjects to worry about is full; take your pick. Bird Flu? Deficits? The horrid mess of Iraq? The new crazy in Iran? Terrorists in Toronto of all places? Let us see today if we can sort the real threats, and their real causes, from the silly claims so popular with pols.
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We want to begin by explaining why this column is not, as was promised last week, called “WildlyExciting”. The proposed title came from a modestly priced bottle of hair soap (shampoo) called Herbal Essences® Normal”. Normal is the sort of stuff the House Steward here buys to wash hair. This bottle of Normal has a label which can be read standing in the shower. This begins: “Wildly Exciting Is Our Normal. Enter a world of botanical bliss and unleash the power of your naturally beautiful hair.” The OO says it washes the hair, but nothing much else has been released. Your experience may vary.
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Tuesday is Anguilla Day here, but Monday is Memorial Day in the States, and a sad one. Some of our Staff are old enough to remember the Vietnam War, and the awful massacre at My Lai. Today, the TV news is reporting that there was a mass civilian slaughter by U.S. troops at Haditha, in Iraq. Those who remember the aftermath of My Lai recall the rather stupid and confused officer blamed. It is not hard to understand how such things happen. You are a soldier on duty; your buddy is killed, and killed from afar without provocation. You go to the house that may have sheltered the terrorist killer, and, in a fury, you shoot everybody, young and old. It can be understood, but it is awful. And alas, it follows what even President Bush now says was a huge mistake, and that is the all but incredible shame at Abu Ghraib prison. Is this America, the hope of civilization? Sad, sad.
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As we often point out to you hapless Readers, one of the curious and (so far) untaxed benefits of living in Anguilla is the ability to see the curious reflections of events up North in the bright mirror of Anguilla. And, of course, the reflection works both ways. In the States, despite big deficits, the Congress has just pushed through more tax cuts, but not without criticism. In Anguilla, where taxes are even more disdained than at a Republican convention, a big new tax bill has arrived, to a chorus of cries of pain from the affected. The Anguillian move has an aspect worth noting by those up North worried about re-election. You see, while the benefits of the Bush tax cuts (as they are usually called) accrue largely to the extensively rich, the Anguillian tax increase does not fall on Anguillians. There can't be a voter rebellion!
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Our learnéd colleague, The Revered Investment Guru [The R.I.G.], has provided both the word of the week and the kernel of today’s reflections. The word is “Coulrophobia” and means “An extreme fear of clowns.” The R.I.G. says the stock market is afraid of the clowns in Washington. The American public also has this fear, with the Bush Approval rating sunk to 30%, and the Congress (both parties) even worse. So, we need not talk today about Stateside trashings of the budget or Constitution or norms of civilized behavior. Instead, we consider living on the small island of Anguilla, and ask whether life here is truly less complex than up North. The answer, in the best U.S. Senatorial manner, is both Yes and No. [Please do not ask The OO to run for U.S. President, although he is more qualified than some we could name.]
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The title is a real word, and means flour or such that has many bits of husks in it. Also a real word, and a fine old verb at that, is "Sned" or "Snathe", meaning to chop, to mow, to lop. These are appropriate to what is happening to that much-respected document the American Constitution these days at the hands of the Washington Snedders. Since we speak of laws, we turn the microphone over to our Senior Counsel. This fellow is a bit of a strict constructionist, and thinks that when a law says do not do something, you ought not do it. For example, the Constitution says that a warrant is required for police to enter and rummage around. That is about as clear a command as you could imagine. Yet, the Bush Administration has some mealy – call them chaddy – excuses for spying without warrants. Shame! Meanwhile, the Vice President, who seems to be looking for a future career as a villain in the next James Bond series, actually goes to Congress to defend torture (by the CIA). While lecturing the world about the glories of Governments of Law, who is it who breaks the rules by lawless "Renditions", and kisses up to dictators? A great government should not be like preachers who condemn everybody else's sexual practices, and then patronize the red light district.
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To begin, you Readers need two conversion factors. First, courtesy of our Pocket Ref, a British Imperial Gallon is 1.2009 U.S. Gallons. Second, an EC Dollar is 2.6882 U.S. Dollars. So, at the moment and for quite a while, an Imperial Gallon of gasoline ("petrol") bought on Anguilla costs EC$10.69. Before fainting, divide by 2.6882 and then by 1.2009 and get US$3.31 a U.S. Gallon. That's not so startling, and what's more, you really can't drive more than about 12 miles from end to end of Anguilla. We don't have long commutes. In the States, these days, the population is having fits because gas prices are up over $3 a gallon, and sometimes way over. This week, we say to the whiners: "It's your own fault" – so there. As we all know in our genes and in our hearts, humans are greedy, and love to over eat, over fish, over reproduce, over spend, over waste, and then blame somebody else, anybody else, for high prices, scarcity, carbon emissions, and general ecological destruction. While we hold no portfolio as apologist for the shabby behavior of U.S. Congresspeople, it isn't all the Dems and the Repubs, it is really you voters (or non-voters as the case may be). If they are panderers, you are the panderees.
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Readers who still adhere to the printed word may know of Daedalus Books, which sells overstocked books, sometimes quite curious ones. The latest catalogue offers "The Pocket Encyclopedia of Aggravation", originally priced at $12.95, now just $3.98. Our copies (the Staff needs several) are on order, but for Readers in need we list some aggravations absolutely free. Please do not write in to say we are crotchety. This is a public service. We start with the non-word "Incentivize", used by a paid apologist explaining why various corporate executives were getting retirement packages of, say, six million a year for life. The claim is that giving outsize sums to CEOs is necessary to "incentivize" them, regardless of their success or failure. We rant not at the derelictions of the corporate directors shoveling out such loot, nor the corruption of mutual fund managers who vote for such directors. Forget about that. The point is, after swiping stockholders' money, you should not hire an apologist who thinks "incentivize" is a word.
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We make a sharp distinction among: (1) intelligence; (2) education; (3) ability to learn, and (4) wisdom. This week, with quite a few retired generals criticizing Rumsfeld as incompetent, these distinctions became most vital. No one can listen to Rummy and not be impressed with his fluency; he is, in a sense, intelligent, and he seems adequately educated to use the language. He is also, quite plainly, incompetent in his job, and has failed repeatedly to recognize his mistakes or to learn from them. Arrogance is high among his faults, but perhaps more important is his unwisdom: wisdom is knowing what you do not know, but he simply does not know what he does not know. Worse, he doesn’t know what his tight little managerial group does not know. The President, of course, is famous for never admitting a mistake (or learning from one), and at the end of the week he pronounced an Eastertime blessing on Rummy, no matter what the generals in the field – or the American public – think. According to the polls, this may not be good for the ruling party in the coming elections. That’s the fair reward of failure.
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