Global

Back in the winter of 1982, Air Florida flight 90 took off from National Airport. The first officer noticed dangerous readings on some instruments and pointed them out to the captain. The captain told him he was wrong, and he accepted the captain's authority. He did nothing. Thirty seconds later the plane crashed into the 14th Street Bridge. Everyone on board died except for four passengers rescued out of the icy river.

During the latter decades of the 20th and first part of the 21st century, millions and millions of first officers on spaceship earth noticed that climate and nuclear dangers loomed. But every authoritative captain in sight, from elected officials to CEOs to media pundits, said "Don't be a fool. I've got this." And millions upon millions sat back and mumbled "Oh, all right, if you're sure."

The people pushing through the vote this week at the United Nations to create a treaty next year banning nuclear weapons are engaged in necessary disobedience to mainstream authority and acceptance. The people putting their bodies in the way of a pipeline in North Dakota are disobeying immoral orders.

Punishment is a popular pastime for humans. Parents punish children. Teachers punish students. Employers punish workers. Courts punish lawbreakers. People punish each other. Governments punish 'enemies'. And, according to some, God punishes evildoers.

What is 'punishment'? Punishment is the infliction of violence as revenge on a person who is judged to have behaved inappropriately. It is a key word we use when we want to obscure from ourselves that we are being violent.

The violence inflicted as punishment can take many forms, depending on the context. It might involve inflicting physical injury and/or pain, withdrawal of approval or love, confinement/imprisonment, a financial penalty, dismissal, withdrawal of rights/privileges, denial of promised rewards, an order to perform a service, banishment, torture or death, among others.

Given the human preoccupation with punishment, it is perhaps surprising that this behaviour is not subjected to more widespread scrutiny. Mind you, I can think of many human behaviours that get less scrutiny than would be useful.

For the first time a presidential candidate, admittedly from a fringe party, is calling for a reexamination of 9/11. Jill Stein of the Green Party has recognized that exercises in which the United States government examines its own behavior are certain to come up with a result that basically exonerates the politicians and the federal bureaucracy. This has been the case since the Warren Commission report on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, which, inter alia, failed to thoroughly investigate key players like Lee Harvey Oswald and Jack Ruby and came up with a single gunman scenario in spite of considerable evidence to the contrary.

I have only visited the White House once, in 1975, a year before America’s bicentennial. Of course it was much easier to get in then–pre 9/11–and the public rooms still retained most of the vision and gloss of Jacqueline Kennedy, the First Lady responsible for the restoration of the building in 1962.What I remember most is that the colors of the room are extraordinarily vivid–the Red Room is really, really red–and a sense of wonder that Americans can rubberneck around the home of the President of the United States. This can’t be said about the official homes of most other world leaders.

Radicalization: what is it good for? The song, “War? What is it good for?”, tells us that war is worth “absolutely nothing!” Is radicalization the same? Just something that turns everyday, ordinary people into gun-toting, bomb-throwing terrorists? The media give us that image after every new terror incident here in the U.S. or in Europe involving presumed Islamists. How did these people turn into suicide bombers, gunmen/women, decapitators, torturers, or whatever? Well, it must have been “radicalization.” So then we need to know how that happened. Where and when did their radicalization start? Was it from a web site? Or the influence of a religious leader or friends or family or even a spouse?

BANGKOK, Thailand -- Armed Palestinian "Black September" guerrillas
seized the Israeli Embassy in Bangkok, threatened to execute the six
Israelis inside and blow up the building, but suddenly surrendered
saying, "We love your king," when told that King Bhumibol Adulyadej
was appointing his son that day in 1972 as sole heir to the throne.
   Today, while Thailand mourns King Bhumibol's death on October 13,
his son Crown Prince Maha Vajiralongkorn is preparing to fulfill his
father's decision and become this country's next monarch.
   But on December 28, 1972, the king's royal appointment ceremony of
then-Prince Vajiralongkorn to be crown prince and heir, was almost
marred by bloodshed across town.
   Four Palestinian guerrillas wearing jackets in the sweltering heat
had arrived in a taxi at the Israeli Embassy on Soi Langsuan near the
British Embassy just before lunch on December 28.
   They climbed "over the wall, using the embassy insignia [placard]
as a step-ladder," the embassy's messenger Anek Bariman said hours
later.

Since the mid-90s, Nintendo has been an outlier in the video game industry. Despite a museum exhibit’s worth of attempts by everyone from Sega to Nokia to break into the portable console market, Nintendo’s iconic Game Boy and its later incarnations have been the only real success. Over the last decade, with competitors Sony and Microsoft fighting against each other for the most realistic graphics and the highest-numbered specs in their home consoles, Nintendo’s Wii and Wii U have focused on innovations in gameplay. And while many who think of themselves as “serious” gamers have scoffed at being experimental and family-friendly over pure graphical power, Nintendo has kept to its own path.

Maybe it’s the phrase — “commander in chief” — that best captures the transcendent absurdity and unaddressed horrors of the 2016 election season and the business as usual that will follow.

I don’t want to elect anyone commander in chief: not the xenophobic misogynist and egomaniac, not the Henry Kissinger acolyte and Libya hawk. The big hole in this democracy is not the candidates; it’s the bedrock, founding belief that the rest of the world is our potential enemy, that war with someone is always inevitable and only a strong military will keep us safe.

In a million ways, we’ve outgrown this concept, or been pushed beyond it by awareness of global human connectedness and the shared planetary risk of eco-collapse. So whenever I hear someone in the media bring “commander in chief” into the discussion — always superficially and without question — what I hear is boys playing war. Yes, we wage war in a real way as well, but when the public is invited to participate in the process by selecting its next commander in chief, this is pretend war at its most surreal: all glory and greatness and hammering ISIS in Mosul.