An act of war

In case you missed it, please take a look at this great reporting from Gazette-Mail journalist Eric Eyre about WV's opioid epidemic. It's really hard to get your head around. Or my head, anyway.

Teaser: a handful of drug companies poured 780 MILLION pain pills into WV over a few years, even while our overdose rate increased. They specifically targeted a handful of rural communities in the coalfields.

It reminds me of Great Britain's shameful behavior towards China (or is that Jina?) during the opium wars, when that empire forced addictive drugs on the Chinese people.

If another country did this to us, we'd go to war. Unless it was Russia, which apparently gets a pass from the president elect.

Of reproaches to chastity and such matters

Speaking of reading jags, a year or so ago, some friends inspired me to read the unabridged version of Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Don't ask me why since my only recourse would be to say "Because it's there."

Rather than a direct assault, I only try to read enough to turn the pages twice most days and then take a break when I finish a volume. At this point in my progress, the Western Empire has fallen into barbarian hands whilst the Emperor Justinian is trying to win it back.

One reason for reading is that there is something cool about 18th century English prose, not to mention that fact that his vast amount of research holds up pretty well. The real payoff, however, is to be found in the little zingers in which he treats of scandalous matters.

Here's a passage describing the marriage of the great general Belisarius and his amorously adventurous wife Antonina:

The birth of Antonina was ignoble; she descended from a family of charioteers; and her chastity has been stained with the foulest reproach. Yet she reigned with long and absolute power over the mind of her illustrious husband; and if Antonina disdained the merit of conjugal fidelity, she expressed a manly friendship to Belisarius, whom she accompanied with undaunted resolution in all the hardships and dangers of a military life.

Nobody, chaste or otherwise, writes like that any more.

TALKING SENSE. Here's an interview with a progressive deficit hawk.

UNEMPLOYMENT. Here's a good article from the Charleston Gazette about what extending unemployment insurance means to West Virginia (and other places too). And here's more on the subject from the WV News Service. And here's a call for the same from the White House Council of Economic Advisers. It may be part of an eventual deal on Bush-era tax cuts before it's all over with. Or not.

THE SPINE THING. Paul Krugman is not amused.

CHINA AND COAL. Here's an interesting look from The World.

SOME GOOD WV NEWS. West Virginia revenues are $121 million in the black while many other states are facing major shortfalls.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

"This is mine"

I've been blogging off and on lately about the connections between evolution and our social and political life. It seems that recent research has pretty much busted the bubble of those who thought that people are blank slates on which society writes whatever it will.

If that idea was true, then it might follow that all our nasty traits are due to the corrupting influence of society and could be removed given a different environment. If, on the other hand, we carry a lot of evolutionary baggage from our pre-human ancestors, this might not be so easily done.

In a classic passage, the 18th century philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau finds the source of human corruption in the primal sin of private property:

The first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, bethought himself of saying 'This is mine,' and found people simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of civil society. From how many crimes, wars, and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not any one have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows: 'Beware of listening to this impostor; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody.'

Rousseau and others in this tradition believed that with a reorganized society, we might be free of this corruption and spare ourselves any number or crimes, wars and murders.

It can't be denied that greed for private wealth has caused all kinds of carnage. And it shouldn't be forgotten that people like Rousseau played an important role in opposing arbitrary tyranny and absolutism and making real social gains. But the utopian vision has run aground these days, and part of the problem might be the raw materials with which the reformer has to work.

DEATH OF A THOUSAND CUTS. Republicans plan to kill or weaken health care reform bit by bit if victorious in November.

HAIR OF THE DOG. This sampling from a new book looks at how right wing "philanthropy" helped pave the way for the Great Recession.

COLD COMFORT. Speaking of the Great Recession, the National Bureau of Economic Research said it officially ended in June 2009. Just not so's anyone could tell.

STEPPING UP. In this op-ed, a wealthy entrepreneur argues for ending Bush era tax cuts for wealthy Americans.

INDULGE ME. Longtime readers of Goat Rope will remember El Cabrero's fondness for the martial arts. Here's an interesting item from the Washington Post about how China's newly wealthy are hiring martial arts experts as bodyguards.

SOME BIRD. Imagine one with teeth and a 17 foot wingspan.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

The short end of the historical stick

These pictures were taken at the Okinawa Peace Memorial Park at the southern end of the island. This was the site of some of the heaviest fighting during the Battle of Okinawa in WWII.

Some places have been dealt unlucky hands by history. That's one thing El Cabrero's beloved state of West Virginia has in common with Okinawa. In different ways, both places got the short end of the stick.




Okinawa's bad luck jag began in 1609, when the Satsuma clan of Japan invaded and established hegemony, imposing a tributary relationship. Okinawa was already paying tribute to China. The Japanese didn't eliminate the Sho monarchy but they limited its autonomy. The Japanese also banned weapons and attempted to suppress martial arts, which pushed karate further underground.



In 1872, shortly after the Meiji Restoration of imperial power in Japan, Okinawa was annexed to that country and the monarchy was abolished. Efforts were made to suppress indigenous culture and "Japanize" the residents.



The next decades would be a time of increasing Japanese militarism and imperialism, and Okinawans were conscripted into these projects, up to and including the Second World War. Residents suffered horribly during the Battle of Okinawa--known locally as "the typhoon of steel"-- near the end of the war.



Civilian casualties were probably well over 100,000. I saw estimates of 200,000 while there. The Japanese army committed atrocities against Okinawans, using them as human shields, forcing them to commit suicide, engaging in massacres, etc. Many also were "collateral damage" to the US bombardment and invasion.



Even though the war wasn't exactly their idea, Okinawans bore the heaviest post-war burden of any Japanese territory. The US directly administered it from 1945 to 1972 and built massive military bases, displacing local landowners. Crimes such as rapes committed against Okinawan civilians by some military personnel continue to be a sore spot.



Given all that it's a wonder to me 1. that Okinawans are so nice; and 2. that they are probably the longest lived people on earth, with quite a few alive and well and active up to 100 years of age and sometimes beyond. This is particularly surprising given all that people from that age group there had to live through.



I've been interweaving Okinawan history with that of karate this week, and here's another thread. One Okinawan who was not thrilled with being conscripted into the Japanese army was the young Kabun Uechi, 1877-1948, who went to China in 1897 where he studied a kung fu style called Pangai Noon. He excelled as a student and even taught in China before returning to Okinawa around 13 years later. His style came to be known as Uechi Ryu karate. One reason I wanted to go to Okinawa was to see this style first hand and learn its most basic katas, Sanchin and Kanshiwa.

This is an extremely effective and fierce style (though fortunately practiced by nice people as far as I could tell). The level of physical conditioning--including the ability to absorb punishment--was amazing. Sanchin kata practice routinely includes "testing" in which a partner punches and kicks all over the body student to see if they maintained proper tension. These aren't love taps either. They also practice kote kitae or forearm condition, in which practioners basically pound on each others forearms to toughen them.

The hands and forearms of advanced practitioners look exactly like the weapons they are. It is also characterized by strikes that use the knuckle of the thumb, the extended knuckle of the forefinger, and the fingers as well as kicks that use the toes as points of impact. Uechi ryu stylists in action remind me of big tigers pouncing on their prey.

FROM COAL TATTOO, Ken Ward's uber-blog, three items caught my eye yesterday. First, there's coverage of the latest from Massey Energy and the board's defense of CEO Don Blankenship. Second, whatever you think about carbon capture and storage (and whether it will work), a report suggests it could create a lot of jobs in the next 20 years.

TALE OF TWO MINES. Here's one from the NY Times comparing the culture of Massey Energy to another mine with similar gas issues when it comes to mine safety and rule violations.

AND WHILE WE'RE AT IT, here's another one on the "culture of fear" and intimidation.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

A walk through the garden

Fukushuen Garden in Naha celebrates the ties between Okinawa and southern China. I'll drink to that.

Today I'm passing on some Okinawa pictures and background this week, along with the usual links and comments below. As I mentioned yesterday, Okinawa, now a prefecture of Japan, was once an independent monarchy. It's political center was the palace at Shuri, also featured yesterday. Nearby was the port city of Naha, which has since absorbed Shuri.



Port cities have the reputation of being wild and woolly and Naha was no exception. Okinawa enjoyed wide trade and diplomatic contacts and all kinds of interesting people and rough characters passed through.




Ties were especially close to southern China, which had an Okinawan community as well as extensive travel back and forth. Those ties are celebrated at the Fukushuen Garden in central Naha.




Those ties also influenced the karate traditions that developed in Naha as distinct from the Shuri te or Shorin ryu styles associated with the palace culture discussed yesterday. A leading example of Naha te is the Goju ryu or hard/soft style. Higashionna Kanryo, circa 1853-1916, is regarded as one of its forerunners. Higashionna traveled to Fuzhou in the Fukien Province of China and studied several styles of Chinese martial arts. He is pictured below.



One of his most prominent students was Miyagi Chojun, 1888-1953, who also went to Fukien Province in 1915 to study Chinese styles. Miyagi gave Goju its name and established the system. If the Shuri/Shorin karate tradition is rapid and whiplike, Naha/Goju karate training emphasizes strength development, dynamic tension, breathing and develops the ability to absorb as well as dish out powerful techniques. In practice, the style lives up to its name with its combination of "soft" and hard techniques.



The real Miyagi, pictured above, probably inspired the naming of the teacher in the Karate Kid movies. Some Goju techniques actually look like tasks Mr. Miyagi assigned Daniel-San in the film (wax on/wax off, paint the fence, etc.)


TWO FROM THE TIMES. These items caught my eye this morning. First, Japan is starting to admit that it has a poverty problem. Second, here's a look at how local food is starting to replace tobacco in a North Carolina town.

GETTING SERIOUS ABOUT MINE SAFETY. Here's an op-ed on the subject by a friend of mine.

EARTH DAY. Here's one person's list of things to do about it.

GET UP, STAND UP. There's a connection between body motion and memory. Upward movement seems to be related to happy memories.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

DREAM ON

A good dream can help you get out of--or into--the woods.

The theme at Goat Rope this week has been dreams. If this is your first visit, please click on the earlier posts. There's also stuff on current events.

To wrap up, I'm going to lay out El Cabrero's theory of dreams. Here goes...

First, I have no idea what dreams really are or even whether they are things we experience in sleep or construct when we wake up. However, I do think they provide a viewpoint from another part of ourselves. Our minds and brains are bigger, wiser and weirder than we often think they are. They work even when we're not aware of it. Sometimes a dream teach you a lot about what's doing on inside or even outside.

Second, not all dreams are created equal. Some just seem to be random static. Others evaporate like dew. Some are obvious examples of wishes, like dreaming you've already gotten up so you can sleep a little longer. But some dreams are strong and may be worth attention.

When I have a strong dream, I try hard to remember it before it disappears. Sometimes I write them down. Then I ponder the story. As Freud and others suggested, sometimes it's good to break them down into component parts and see what thoughts or feelings are associated with them to try to find the latent dream thoughts.

Some of the best advice I've ever got came to me in dreams. Here are some examples.

*At a low point in my life, I had a real sense of being treated unjustly. In a dream, I dug up an old casket full of bones that proved my point. I carried the casket with me wherever I went. At some point in the dream, it occured to me that I had lots of things to do and places to go in life and I couldn't do it carrying around a box of dead bones. Message: let go!

I'm not saying God speaks in dreams, but if that were the case, it might just be a message like that.

*At another stressful point in life, I dreamed that Cheng Man-ch'ing, a legendary master of the martial art of tai chi chuan, came to the town I was living in and was giving lessons. In real life, he had been dead for more than 20 years. I woke up determined to learn tai chi, which has a lot of health and stress benefits. It helped get me over the hump and I've practiced it most days for the last 10 years.

*Another time, I dreamed that an older person I was close to had died. I felt really bad that I had not been very attentive to this person lately while they lived. I woke up determined to be more attentive to this person while I could.

So here's my advice: dream on--and pay attention! You just might learn something.

TURNING THE WHEEL. Buddhism is growing in popularity among China's middle class.

RECESSING. Business Week asks about how real the prosperity bubble was. Some may ask "What prosperity bubble?" Also from Business Week, here's an item on fixes for the economy which suggests infrastructure investments and questions the wisdom of a corporate tax break as a stimulus measure.

NEW NOTES. Here's the latest version of Jim Lewis' Notes from Under the Fig Tree, complete with crosses, Civil War talk, color, and hanging chads.

ALL THINGS IN MODERATION--including happiness, according to new research.

JUDGE MASSEY BLANKENSHIP BENJAMIN made the Wall Street Journal's law blog.

MAN BITES DOG. The notoriously anti-union NLRB is petitioning a federal judge to issue an injunction which would make Benjamin--I mean Massey Energy rehire union workers and recognized the UMWA as bargaining agent. Will wonders never cease?

HOW PHILANTHROPIC. Big bank BB&T has been giving away millions to promote the "philosophy" of Ayn Rand. Marshall is the latest mark.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

KANT STOP IT, AND LOTS MORE

Caption: Cats have very few social problems (as long as there's a feather to play with.

Welcome to Immanual Kant Week at Goat Rope. All posts this week are devoted to the ideas of that very influential 18th century Prussian philosopher.

In particular, the focus is on Kant's philosophy of history and on the question of whether there's any hope of humanity getting its act together before it's too late. As mentioned previously, this was the subject of his essay Idea For A Universal History With A Cosmopolitan Purpose.

As mentioned yesterday, Kant believed that humanity's nasty and antagonistic traits were necessary for us to develop our potentialities:

The greatest problem for the human race, to the solution of which Nature drives man, is the achievement of a free universal civic society which administers law fairly for all.

The highest purpose of Nature, which is the development of all the capacities which can be achieved by mankind, is attainable only in society, and more specifically in the society with the greatest freedom. Such a society is one in which there is mutual opposition among the members, together with the most exact definition of freedom and fixing of its limits so that it may be consistent with the freedom of others. Nature demands that humankind should itself achieve this goal like all its other destined goals.

That is to say, over time, we are driven by our "unsocial sociability" to develop a social order based on both freedom and rule of law. It's our homework assignment from Mother Nature:

Thus a society in which freedom under external laws is associated in the highest degree with irresistible power, i.e., a perfectly just civic constitution, is the highest problem Nature assigns to the human race; for Nature can achieve her other purposes for mankind only upon the solution and completion of this assignment. Need forces men, so enamored otherwise of their boundless freedom, into this state of constraint. They are forced to it by the greatest of all needs, a need they themselves occasion inasmuch as their passions keep them from living long together in wild freedom. Once in such a preserve as a civic union, these same passions subsequently do the most good.

And we owe it all to our nastiness:

All culture, art which adorns mankind, and the finest social order are fruits of unsociableness, which forces itself to discipline itself and so, by a contrived art, to develop the natural seeds to perfection.

The major remaining problem is that once people in a given country arrive at a rational social order that balances freedom and justice, the law of the jungle prevails between countries.

SPEAKING OF LAW AND JUSTICE, Massey Energy took another hit yesterday:

CHARLESTON, W.Va. - Failing to perform a pre-shift examination at a West Virginia coal mine is going to cost a Massey Energy Co. subsidiary $50,000.

U.S. District Judge John T. Copenhaver Jr. fined Richmond, Va.-based Massey's White Buck Coal Co. that amount Wednesday for a misdemeanor charge of willfully violating a mandatory safety standard. White Buck had pleaded guilty to the charge, which involved failing to perform a pre-shift examination at the Grassy Creek No. 1 mine in Nicholas County five years ago.

According to the report, two employees who agreed to testify were fined for misdemeanors.

The company also faces a shareholder lawsuit, potentially $2.4 billion in fines for alleged violations of the Clean Water Act, and an ongoing criminal probe of a fatal fire at a Logan County mine in January 2006.

CRIMES AGAINST NATURE? On a related note, here's a Gazette item by Ken Ward about Robert Kennedy Jr.'s visit to WV, where he discussed mountaintop removal mining as a "crime against nature."

GROWING PAINS. Those who think economic growth is all you need should check out Business Week's special report on China, which for years has been the fastest growing economy in the world. The article cites the growing ecological crisis, product safety problems, and other social stresses and recommends, among other things, more and better regulation and investments in the social safety net.

SHAME ON GOOGLE. El Cabrero is a big fan/addict of Google products so it was really disappointing to see that this hugely successful company take advantage of an Appalachian part of North Carolina with high unemployment by sucking up subsidies. Business Week reports that the town of Lenoir, Caldwell County, and the state of North Carolina coughed up $211.7 million to land a computer center. This low road approach has highly profitable companies pitting different locations against each other in a bidding war to see which will pay the most to impoverish the public at private expense.

Uhhh...whatever happened to the market? This is another case of socialism for the rich and free enterprise for the poor. And, for the record, this is one area where El Cabrero is with the Unleashing Capitalism crew.

One group that has done a great job at exposing the subsidies racket is GoodJobsFirst.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

SPECIAL BRUCE LEE EDITION

Caption: This great blue heron practices the crane style.

In his first epistle to the Corinthians, in the famous 13th chapter, St. Paul says "When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things."

Speak for yourself, dude. I mean, how much stock can you put in a saying by someone who said "It is better to marry than burn"?

(Note: that was a joke--especially in the event La Cabra reads this.)

I thought of those lines about putting away childish things when I came across this Google video featuring a "lost interview" with Bruce Lee, the idol of my youth and icon of my declining years.

He had just died when I began formally studying martial arts in the summer of 1973, a hobby I've continued off and on ever since. In fact, I remember reading his philosophical articles on the subject in magazines as a kid before he became a superstar.

I still like Bruce and quote him frequently even though I don't kick as high, hard or fast as I used to. Come to think of it I still like the other idols of my youth like Tolkien and Alice Cooper (not necessarily in that order).

Bruce was not just a pretty spinning back kick. He studied philosophy at the University of Washington and throughout his life and his theories of the martial arts and other subjects are still studied. Perhaps not surprisingly, he was particularly influenced by the Taoist tradition.

His ideas of strategy can be applied to areas far removed from martial arts (although they do work pretty well there too).

Here is my favorite quotation from Chairman Bruce, one that has served me well in several difficult situations when I remembered to act on it:

Be like water making its way through cracks. Do not be assertive, but adjust to the object, and you shall find a way round or through it. If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose themselves. Empty your mind, be formless. Shapeless, like water…If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle and it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot it becomes the teapot. Now, water can flow or it can crash. Be water my friend.

CHINESE LABOR LAW REFORM. This could be interesting, particularly if it is seriously enforced. From the Washington Post:

BEIJING, June 29 -- The Chinese legislature passed a law Friday to provide more protection to the millions of farm youths who leave home and become cheap labor in the factories and construction sites that have mushroomed in China's booming economy.

The Standing Committee of the China People's Congress, in approving the law, presented it as a bulwark against widespread abuses of the often-uneducated migrant workers, such as forced labor, withholding of pay and unwarranted dismissal. The country was alarmed two weeks ago, for example, by the discovery that hundreds of Chinese were forced to work in conditions resembling slavery at dozens of brick kilns in Shanxi province while local Communist Party officials did nothing to stop it.

In reaction, lawmakers at the last minute added a provision to the long-discussed labor code to mandate punishment for officials who are shown to be negligent or corrupt in allowing entrepreneurs to abuse workers. This and the unusual public rollout of the new law seemed designed to show the Chinese public that the central government of President Hu Jintao is determined to crack down on corrupt officials and protect those left behind by the swift economic growth of the past 25 years.

RADIO GA GA. A recent book titled Unleashing Capitalism has been getting lots of attention in El Cabrero's beloved state of West Virginia. The book, which claims to be totally objective and scientific, opposes minimum wage and prevailing wage; supports right to work for less; calls for "tort reform;" wants to cuts public funding for education, infrastructure, and services to pay for business tax cuts; opposes workplace safety and other business regulations; wants to undercut public education with a voucher system; etc.

Again, this is all "science" and anyone who disagrees--say by wanting good coal mine safety legislation--is a "Marxist."

WV Public Broadcasting reporter Scott Finn interviewed WVU's Russell Sobel about the book. Dr. Sobel got a little defensive when questioned about the book's factual and "scientific" claims. Yours truly was also interviewed and expressed a different point of view. Here's what another WV blogger, Raging Red, had to say about the story.

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