Freaks of nature department:
Archives for 2008
Wee Hours Thread
Not insomnia. An aggravating sore throat from the flu won’t let me rest for longer than a few minutes.
For night owls and transatlantic readers, here’s a cool bit of psychology/neuroscience to think about while murkans dream of electric sheep. It seems reasonable to think that memories don’t go away when the hypnotist tells you to forget or the subconscious swallows them up for emotional reasons. After all, tricks exist to bring them back in either case. In fact the memory is there just like other memories, the brain knows that it’s there, but when the mind tries to put it ‘on screen,’ so to speak, a brain region called the rostrolateral prefrontal cortex steps in like an internet filter blocks porn.
This makes sense because a memory isn’t like a DVD on a shelf, it is a learned experience. “Buried” memories often have a profound influence on the lives of people who bury them. In the same way that everything that we know about the world we know because at some point we saw ‘A’ and heard someone say “eih” or we pressed a pedal and the car went forward, psychologists proved a long time back that even if you can’t remember the time you touched a hot stove you will still avoid laying a hand on it.
Unfortunately the Psych field recently went through a cringe-worthy fad for bogus repressed memories. The phenomenon is hardly as pervasive as some hyperventilating therapists tried to claim, but there is no doubt that some have unrecallable memories that act like learned reflex arcs just the same. Say that you react to a friendly handshake like a hot stove and can’t explain why; it can be a major component of PTSD. Adam Sandler’s one good movie takes the point to a logical extreme, but the film is right to show that before you break the unhelpful reflex arc you need to bring its source into the light. Hypnosis and talk therapy can do that, but for a generalized therapy it will be great to know that the filter has an off switch.
Use the space to chat about things you just remembered, or whatever.
Big Story?
The case of Sibel Edmonds, the former FBI translator who has doggedly tried to blow the whistle on some security-related shenanigans for years now, finally lurched into the mainstream with a story in Murdoch’s Sunday Times. Based on the last we heard from Edmonds one would expect the story to expose law enforcement failures that missed the 9/11 plot.
No, Edmonds has much bigger fish to fry.
Edmonds described how foreign intelligence agents had enlisted the support of US officials to acquire a network of moles in sensitive military and nuclear institutions.
Among the hours of covert tape recordings, she says she heard evidence that one well-known senior official in the US State Department was being paid by Turkish agents in Washington who were selling the information on to black market buyers, including Pakistan.
Now, nuclear espionage is a pretty serious claim, and without corroborating evidence one can see why US papers felt reluctant to run with it. It also explains why the libel-shy UK press laundered out the names, although some Kossack researchers claim to have filled them back in here. It’s mostly neocons.
But Edmonds is just getting warmed up. When al Qaeda attacked us of September 11, America fairly quickly rounded up a number of people who we had varying reasons to think might have been involved in planning or supporting the attacks. The problem is, according to Edmonds, that some of these guys knew enough about the above nuclear espionage to potentially bring on what they call in Washington an “accountability moment”.
Edmonds said the State Department official once again proved useful. “A primary target would call the official and point to names on the list and say, ‘We need to get them out of the US because we can’t afford for them to spill the beans’,” she said. “The official said that he would ‘take care of it’.”
The four suspects on the list were released from interrogation and extradited.
It goes on from there. Fault me if you like for not being paranoid enough, but the magnitude of Edmond’s claims helps me to understand why American reporters let the story pass. For one thing, I missed the part where they independently verified her claims. If you accuse prominent people of murder (nuclear espionage is arguably worse) then it helps to back it up. There are no Pentagon Papers here, at least not yet. The Times can independently corroborate the general background (Turkish espionage passed on to Pakistan) but not the bombshell.
In researching this article, The Sunday Times has talked to two FBI officers (one serving, one former) and two former CIA sources who worked on nuclear proliferation. While none was aware of specific allegations against officials she names, they did provide overlapping corroboration of Edmonds’s story.
One of the CIA sources confirmed that the Turks had acquired nuclear secrets from the United States and shared the information with Pakistan and Israel. “We have no indication that Turkey has its own nuclear ambitions. But the Turks are traders. To my knowledge they became big players in the late 1990s,” the source said.
In the end I’m left puzzled. I suppose that a former federal agent willing to make claims like this is news in itself, but the Times seems eager (if not quite ready) to go a step further and report the claims themselves. Until something tangible comes up that warrants stopping the presses (paging TPM Muckraker…) they should resist the urge. Citing Edmonds by name is the one thing that, for me anyway, bumps the story a step up from a Judy Miller snow job.
Richardson’s Out
That’s unfortunate. I was an original supporter of Richardson, and I think he probably has more relevant experience than anyone in the Democratic race, foreign and domestic. I never understood why his campaign never took off.
Reading Assignment – Globalizing Labor: Lant Pritchett
You would think, by listening to just about any major political candidate, that “securing the borders” is the solution to, oh, just about everything? We all know that letting brown people into the country is downright dangerous and destroys our economy, right? The developed world compensates by giving the developing world $70 billion a year in economic aid and that helps ease our conscience. We’re giving them a hand up, not a hand out, right? Wrong. We’re making it worse. Read the February issue of Reason. And if you can’t get it (it’s not online yet), you can check out this NY Times article:
[Lant Pritchett] wants a giant guest-worker program that would put millions of the world’s poorest people to work in its richest economies. Never mind the goats; if you really want to help Gure Sarki, he says, let him cut your lawn. Pritchett’s nearly religious passion is reflected in the title of his migration manifesto: “Let Their People Come.” It was published last year to little acclaim — none at all, in fact — but that is Pritchett’s point. In a world in which rock stars fight for debt relief and students shun sweatshop apparel, he is vexed to find no placards raised for the cause of labor migration. If goods and money can travel, why can’t workers follow? What’s so special about borders?
Want to know more? Read this. It’s Lant Pritchett’s book, and you can download it for free or buy it. It’s 143 pages long and, since most of you are pretty literate, you’ll find it a very compelling read. I’m about halfway through and I’m going to read the rest later this month when I’m stranded in a hotel on a business trip. I am learning that border control is not necessarily the good thing just about everyone makes it out to be. Not even close. Again, you can read an interview with Lant Pritchett in the February issue of Reason Magazine.
Reading Assignment – Globalizing Labor: Lant PritchettPost + Comments (103)
Hugh Hewitt Suicide Watch
“Yes, my lord. If we count the votes from Eriador and Gondor, and add them together, it does look better.”
I was a little hesitant to read Hugh this morning, because I need to face facts, after a Romney loss in NH last night I might actually overdose from schadenfreude. However, I recognize my duty to you all, so I checked to see what the GOP establishment’s Grima Wormtongue was up to:
I will update the box above when the final results from New Hampshire are posted.
The first thing to note is that even with Iowa’s and New Hampshire’s Independents added in, Romney has won more votes in Iowa and New Hampshire combined than McCain, and almost certainly significantly more Republican votes.
Someone call Al Gore and let him know he is President.
Open Thread
Because we need one, and all my co-bloggers died.
By the way, maybe I should run for President. If all I need to do is promise change and I can get half of the liberal community falling on their knees praising me, I think I might have a shot. Believe me- as President, I will be a change.
/troll