Here are a few links and thoughts on politics, history, scientific ethics:

• Marek Edelman's stunning account of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.
  And another short but incredibly moving account of the Warsaw Ghetto.
• Richard Feynmann on Cargo Cult Science: "... a kind of scientific integrity, a principle of scientific thought that corresponds to a kind of utter honesty--a kind of leaning over backwards...to show how you're maybe wrong, that you ought to have when acting as a scientist ..."
• [July 2011: The following references to the Bush administration are obviously old and getting older; alternatively, think "Fox News" or "Republicans". The main ideas below are ageless.]
  Just a gentle reminder that the problems we face in the age of Bush are as old as the hills. The struggle for what is good and decent in the face of these forces is a never-ending one, perhaps nothing less than the human condition:
  • "Woe to those who make unjust laws, to those who issue oppressive decrees, to deprive the poor of their rights and withhold justice from the oppressed of my people, making widows their prey and robbing the fatherless."
    Isaiah 10:1-2, The Bible, written around 700 B.C.
  • "To think of the future and wait was merely another way of saying one was a coward; any idea of moderation was just another attempt to disguise one's unmanly character; ability to understand the question from all sides meant that one was totally unfitted for action; fanatical enthusiasm was the mark of a real man... Anyone who held violent opinions could always be trusted, and anyone who objected to them became a suspect."
    -- Thucydides, the Father of History, writing about the Greek Civil Wars of 427 B.C. (full source)
  • "Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship ... the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country."
    -- Herman Goering, Nazi leader, while being held in Nuremberg jail during the war crimes trials. (full source)
  • "There was no point in seeking to convert the intellectuals. For intellectuals would never be converted and would anyway always yield to the stronger, and this will always be `the man in the street.' Arguments must therefore be crude, clear and forcible, and appeal to emotions and instincts, not the intellect. Truth was unimportant and entirely subordinate to tactics and psychology."
    -- Josef Goebbels, Nazi leader (quoted in this article on the process by which the US gov't made the decision to launch the war on Iraq and persuaded the country to follow; see also this excellent article on the same subject).
  • "`[Bush] was thinking about invading Iraq in 1999,' said author and journalist Mickey Herskowitz [KM: Herskowitz was working in 1999 as ghost-writer of Bush's autobiography and had around 20 meetings with him; he was later replaced]. `It was on his mind. He said to me: 'One of the keys to being seen as a great leader is to be seen as a commander-in-chief.' And he said, 'My father had all this political capital built up when he drove the Iraqis out of Kuwait and he wasted it.' He said, 'If I have a chance to invade....if I had that much capital, I'm not going to waste it. I'm going to get everything passed that I want to get passed and I'm going to have a successful presidency.''
    ...
    "Bush and his advisers were sold on the idea that it was difficult for a president to accomplish an electoral agenda without the record-high approval numbers that accompany successful if modest wars."
    (Source)
    "First, we simply do not defeat an incumbent president in wartime. After wars surely, but never in their midst. Republicans have been spinning this fact for months, and they are correct."
    -- Mark Mellman, Kerry pollster, in an analysis written two days before the Nov. 2004 election that accurately predicted Bush's vote to 0.1%.
    (KM adds: and of course it's not just the war in Iraq. The key part of the strategy is to preside over an eternal and never-ending "War on Terror".)

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