Mathematics: “Out There” in Nature, or a Human Construct?

This is an enduring conundrum. “Math,” of the 1+1=2 sort, is straightforward and obviously reflects how reality works. However, “mathematics” builds upon that to spin constructs of vast complexity.

Jim Holt’s 2018 book, When Einstein Walked With Gödel — Excursions to the Edge of Thought, frames the question: “Do the truths discovered by mathematics describe an eternal and other worldly realm of objects . . . that exist quite independently of the mathematicians who contemplate them? Or are mathematical objects actually human constructions, existing only in our minds? Or, more radically still, could it be that pure mathematics doesn’t really describe any objects at all, that it is just an elaborate game of formal symbols, played with pencil and paper?”

That might juxtapose mathematics against physics — our scientific effort to learn how reality works. And while quantum mechanics (part of physics) defies commonsense notions (and Bohr, as Holt notes, considered it merely a tool for predicting observations), most physicists do think it describes an underlying physical reality. That’s why it’s called physics! Different from mathematics.

Returning to math, start with the simple counting numbers: 1,2,3,4,5, et cetera. They readily map onto real world quantities. But add zero to the picture — which actually wasn’t done until quite late in history — and things get dicey. For example, any quantity can be divided by any other, the result reflecting something about reality. But that blows up if you try to divide by zero.

Now take the concept of prime numbers. A prime is a whole number, greater than 1, not divisible by any two other whole numbers. Thus 2,3,5,7,11,13 are primes, and so on. Though for big numbers, primeness is not so easy to discern. And primes give rise to great conceptual problems still bedeviling mathematics. For example, Riemann’s “zeta conjecture,” positing a “hidden harmony” governing where and when primes pop up in the sequence of all numbers.

But again the question — does this have any resonance in nature? Is mathematics (beyond simple counting numbers and operations) a reality that’s “out there” that we have discovered (analogous to, say, Newton’s laws of motion) or is it just a human construct, playing with numbers?

Now, it’s not as though “higher” mathematics is divorced from reality. To the contrary, we have often found that the former yields insights into the latter. Calculus, for example, is pretty advanced mathematics, and while we don’t find any of its equations per se in nature, it does help us get answers to real world problems.

Thus Holt quotes Einstein — “How can it be that mathematics, being after all a product of human thought independent of experience, is so admirably appropriate to the objects of reality?” And Holt paraphrases mathematician Edward Frankel that mathematical structures are themselves objects of reality — not mere products of human thought but, rather, existing timelessly in a platonic realm of their own, waiting to be discovered by mathematicians.

Thus, Holt suggests, mathematics has a reality transcending the human mind. The “strange patterns and correspondences” emerging from it hint “at something hidden and mysterious. Who put those patterns there? They certainly don’t seem to be of our making.”

And he similarly quotes French mathematician Alain Connes that “there exists, independently of the human mind, a raw and immutable mathematical reality” that is “far more permanent than the physical reality that surrounds us.”

This evokes Plato’s concept of “forms” existing, well, somewhere, embodying perfect realities (like perfect circles, impossible on Earth), whose mere imperfect shadows are what we encounter in our everyday existence. Connes is an extreme Platonist. And people like him actually seem to think they have some sort of intuitional access to that ethereal realm. Yet Holt sees no way our physical brains “could interact with nonphysical reality.” I would take issue with even his use of the word “reality” there.

However, Holt does also suggest no need to go as far as Connes (or Plato). We have plenty of purchase on the concept of a perfect circle, even without access to the reality of one, and we can use our logical reasoning powers to do all that’s needed. (In fact, we can make circles damn close to “perfect,” and how much does the discrepancy matter?)

Granted that mathematical truths — like, say, the Pythagorean theorem — are necessarily true regardless of anything in the actual cosmos — even if, indeed, there were no cosmos. But that kind of reality is nothing like what we mean when we speak of reality in the way physics does. A Higgs Boson is an actual physical object (even if too small for us to see).

Once more, a law of physics, like Newton’s third, describes how reality operates. Pythagoras’s describes how mathematics operates. And while the starting premises of mathematics, the counting numbers, and some facts about how they work, do similarly describe reality, human thought has gone way beyond that in constructing ginormous cathedrals of mathematical concepts that have no counterparts in physical reality.

Calling them human constructions might imply we could just as readily have constructed different ones. But off course that’s not so. They are unavoidable, given their ultimate grounding in the basic building blocks, carried to logical conclusions. So in a sense we did discover them. Yet still, such truisms exist apart from the physical reality of the universe — which is again the domain of physics.

The distinction is manifested in how our understandings of physics have led to practical real world applications — like the atom bomb. Whereas it’s hard to see how that can be so for the abstruse theorems of higher mathematics, like Riemann’s zeta conjecture. Thus the latter are ultimately “mind games.” I leave it to the reader whether to say just mind games.

The Debt Ceiling: This Time Looks Different

We’ve been there, done that: Republicans try to hold hostage the Congressional vote to raise the U.S. debt ceiling, with maybe too a government shut-down, to extract some concessions. It always gets resolved in the end.

This is an unnecessarily crazy system, predictably producing these periodic crises. We could change that — if our whole governmental schema were not so dysfunctionally gridlocked by political polarization.

The next crisis looms soon. And this time looks different.

Of course Republicans only discover fiscal rectitude when Democrats are in power. During Trump’s presidency they spent like drunken sailors, piling on debt, always raising the ceiling when needed, with no whisper of concern. Indeed, they compounded deficits by passing a massive tax cut, mainly benefiting the rich and corporations. A big reason why the federal budget is so out of balance — yet Republicans now pose as warriors against profligacy.

Furthermore, if they were truly worried about deficits, here’s one simple remedy: fund the IRS adequately so it can collect the taxes actually owed (even after Trump’s tax cuts). Currently the IRS lacks the needed resources, so most high-income tax returns aren’t even audited. But Republicans demonize the IRS and try to starve it. The resulting tax collection gap has been estimated to equal around three-fourths of the annual deficit. So collecting that money would go far toward rendering unnecessary the spending cuts Republicans advocate (or pretend to advocate).

By the way, we’ve learned that the IRS, unable to audit many complex tax returns of rich folks, which is costly and hard, instead does what’s easy: targeting lower income taxpayers. Nice.

Meantime, note that for all the righteous rhetoric about government spending, a vote to raise the debt ceiling has nothing to do with future spending. Rather, it’s paying the bills for past spending. Nevertheless, Republican extortionists are yet again making demands about spending in exchange for their needed votes to increase the debt limit, so the government can pay its bills and not default. The Biden administration, standing on principle, insists it won’t play that game.

It’s a game of chicken. And it seems both sides have thrown their steering wheels out the window.

Economist Paul Krugman has said a U.S. debt default would “blow up the world economy.” What that would really mean, we don’t know. It’s uncharted territory — but certainly very dangerous territory.

One thing it would surely mean is financial markets downgrading U.S. government bonds, triggering higher interest costs on all our trillions of debt. That itself would hugely bust our budget. Republicans’ apparent willingness to let this happen makes all the more preposterous their professed concern about future deficits.

In past episodes, default was avoided because a certain modicum of sanity still prevailed among Republicans. We can no longer count on that. Speaker McCarthy, to win the gavel, made himself hostage to the GOP’s bomb-throwing crazy caucus. They may now be willing to bring the house down — imagining that its happening on President Biden’s watch will mean he gets the blame, and hence the catastrophe will politically benefit Republicans.

And these people have the chutzpah to call themselves “patriots.”

The Economist recently presented a full-throated counter to notions of American declinism, enumerating all the ways in which we’re actually doing extremely well compared to other advanced nations. But it’s threatened by that misconceived declinism itself, because it drives our self-harming retreat from globalization and free trade — so important to our economic health. And one sphere where a declinist narrative has much truth is the political one. Now seriously threatening a debt default which, The Economist fears, would do huge damage to our economy and international standing.

The Color of Law: Racial Segregation

Richard Rothstein’s 2017 book, The Color of Law, concerns U.S. residential segregation. He says we have a myth that it’s de facto segregation, meaning mainly a result of people’s individual choices and behaviors. Whereas instead the bigger factor is de jure segregation, a product of law and government policy. Not just in the Jim Crow South, but throughout America. And not just on the local level, but federal too, which lasted longer than you might think.

We all know about “redlining,” with banks drawing maps delineating no-go areas for mortgage loans. But this wasn’t just on the banks — their policies were responsive to those of the Federal Housing Authority, making it almost impossible for Blacks to participate in government mortgage insurance programs. Likewise programs aimed at helping veterans after WWII.

Illustrating government action hand-in-hand with individual hostility toward integration, Rothstein relates how in 1954, a Black family, the Wades, sought a home in Louisville, Kentucky. A white friend, Carl Braden, bought one in a white area and sold it to Wade. Klan violence ensued, culminating in the house being bombed. Through it all, the police just looked on, arresting no one — except for Mr. Wade and a friend, for “breach of the peace” in failing to provide notice that the friend would be visiting. Then Braden was charged with “sedition,” and sentenced to 15 years, for selling the house to Wade.

Affordability has of course been an issue for Blacks seeking homes in white middle class neighborhoods. But here too, Rothstein catalogs how government policies have penalized them, when it comes to earning and accumulating wealth. While Blacks do earn, on average, somewhat less than white Americans, their family wealth averages only around a tenth.

It’s actually expensive being poor in America — especially if also Black. One example in the book is how property tax assessments tend to be at higher percentages of market value in Black areas. Rothstein drily notes that higher assessed valuations don’t translate into actually higher home values. Yet he oddly fails to note that the opposite is true — higher property taxes on a house reduce its salability.

And while housing affordability is again an undoubted issue, the book shows that it’s often costlier to live in slums than in nice neighborhoods! Because Blacks can be very unwelcome in the latter, their housing options are effectively limited to African-American communities (ghettoes). Where the housing supply is often constricted, making for greater competition among would-be buyers and renters. In turn enabling property owners to charge more. Yet a further factor handicapping Black wealth accumulation.

Education is another, hardly mentioned in the book. Schools could be a great equalizer to offset all the disadvantages burdening Black kids in poor families in poor neighborhoods. But instead our schools tend to compound that disadvantage, often giving Blacks substandard education. Certainly that too is within the purview of government policy.

Then there’s over-incarceration of Black males. Combined with lesser educational attainment and job prospects — plus some white women marrying Black men — causing a husband shortage for Black women, and resulting prevalence of single motherhood. Which in turn deprives kids of the undoubted benefits of dual parenting, further handicapping their later lives.

And why have government policies been so discriminatory? Rothstein doesn’t really explore this question, with racism taken for granted, as a given. But what in fact explains that? Why do so many whites have this mentality?

Differentness is a starting factor. Humans evolved in tribes where a neighboring tribe was likely to be (or feared as) a potential competitor or enemy. Thus an innate animus toward “The Other.” Yet, especially in advanced countries like America, we’ve gone far toward overcoming that; and many immigrant groups that once were viewed with distaste and hostility have come to be thoroughly assimilated and accepted.

Blacks’ visible differentness, however, is harder to ignore. And that combines with a crucial cultural legacy — of slavery.

Slaveowners could justify it only by convincing themselves Blacks were not fully human — degraded creatures, for whom a degraded existence was appropriate. Even decreed by God. And there was a huge industry striving for scientific proof, with skull measurements and all that. (All bunk.) And of course making Blacks live in degrading conditions served to reinforce the idea of them as degraded by nature.

This idea became powerfully pervasive.

Yet despite that, the post-Civil War amendments gave ex-slaves citizenship, equal protection of the law, and even voting rights. Black service as Union troops helped there. Still, this was a breathtakingly broad-minded humanism, which must have reflected the prevailing viewpoint — in the North at least, where exposure to slavery, with all its nasty social ramifications, was fairly limited.

But that didn’t last. The 20th Century’s “Great Migration” of Southern Blacks northward seeded more racial anxiety there. And a recent article in The Economist discusses a study of white migration out of the South, widely spreading the poison of its political and cultural attitudes. The idea that Black people are fundamentally different and lesser creatures. To be shunned, even reviled, not pitied. Indeed, it’s almost surprising how little pity was actually in the stew of feelings toward Blacks.

I’m old enough to remember how this was a vague but real presence in the cultural background. No one ever actually articulated it to me, yet it somehow seeped into my own youthful brain. There was the notion that Blacks are “dirty” — polluting — so any contact with whites should be avoided. That they were louche, immoral, more crime-prone; coarser, cruder, vulgar. With the dysfunctionality one could expect in poverty-afflicted ghettoes seen as proving they have only themselves to blame for their degradation, with consequent antipathy toward any government efforts to help them at the expense of their (white) “betters.”

But even leaving aside all such particulars — they really didn’t have to stated — there was a basic notion that separation of the races was appropriate — it was the way things ought to be. Maybe even God-decreed.

This explains the blatantly racist policies of even a government agency like the FHA in the FDR administration. The bureaucrats were simply reflecting the ethos of the culture they inhabited. It was a given, taken for granted, proper and appropriate, that Blacks should be kept away from nice white neighborhoods. You didn’t even have to think about it.

As Rothstein argues, the lasting effects are so deeply embedded into societal structures that even after half a century of amelioration efforts, they still plague us. It’s very hard to undo. He observes that whereas discriminatory barriers have been reduced, and Black incomes have risen, the window of opportunity for residential integration has effectively been lost because those Black gains have been more than offset by soaring suburban home prices. And integration is not a simple matter of getting Black families into previously all-white enclaves. When more than just a few do get in, whites get out, and the neighborhood winds up segregated again. Maintaining a stable integrated community is tricky.

Meantime, while many of us had optimistically imagined racism confined just to some dark corners of American life, the last few years have revised that picture, showing us how Southernized the country actually became; how widespread those attitudes are, all over. Yet still, a more enlightened mentality does prevail for a majority of Americans today. And we can expect that majority to expand as the cohort of degraded older whites inexorably dies off. Progress funeral by funeral.

Rebraining: Introducing Virtual Reality’s Quantum Leap Forward

First there was Pac-man.

Anyone remember Pac-man? A computer game where you guided a little nothing to swallow other little nothings. Big whoop. Then came Oregon Trail, where you faced pioneer challenges that could kill you (but not really, of course, you always remained in your comfy suburban bedroom). And Sims, where you could manipulate virtual people in their virtual world — though not in the actual world. And then virtual reality, making it seem like you’re in another place. And of course all those video games where you’re some fearsome warrior slaughtering foes.

Except that you know you’re still actually Wally Wussman, a weenie who works at Walmart.

But now Realityplus, Inc., has taken it to the next level.

Where all those earlier paradigms were deficient was in that Wally problem. However thrilling and immersive their created world was, your brain still knew it was just a game. Not real. Playing at killing monsters is not the same as actually killing them. A thrill of a whole different order.

Realityplus’s breakthrough has solved this. It’s not mere “gaming.” Not mere “virtual reality.” A new term is required: Rebraining.

Because it works not just by simulating the sights and sounds, etc., of the desired experience, but the actual brain events. Our brains, our minds, work by gathering incoming sensory signals and composing them into a model of reality, conformed to all our pre-existing understandings. So when you play a conventional video game, or engage with virtual reality, you do get the suite of sensory inputs, but when your brain makes sense of them, it does so, again, in the context of all your foundational background knowledge and experience. Including, of course, always remembering the fact that you’re still actually Wally who works at Walmart.

Realityplus’s new rebraining technology overrides that. It (temporarily) disables the pre-existing contents of your brain and replaces them with new ones that mesh with the different reality you’ll now experience. Note importantly that this has no “hardware” ramifications. It reprograms your neurons, rather like reprogramming a computer. And of course, when you’re ready to return to being Walmart Wally, you just reverse that reprogramming. Like “return to factory settings.”

But in the meantime you won’t be Wally anymore. You will be Thor the Giant Slayer, will be Wonder Woman, or whoever or whatever it is. The experience of being that other entity will be total. Talk about “out-of-body” experiences — this goes way beyond, it’s an out-of-self experience.

Neuroscientists, pondering how consciousness arises from material brain functioning, call that the “hard problem.” And philosophers too, long wrestling with how a sense of self actually works, may query whether your rebrained other-identity jaunts are in fact experienced by you at all. Since, after all, your own self has been sidelined — so who or what is doing the experiencing?

This issue has been field-tested with volunteer subjects. Who, debriefed after their rebrainings, universally reported the effect was as advertised: they were that other identity, experienced being it. And the experience of actually being someone else was, you might say, mind-blowing. (Concededly, this may actually have been an illusion, but some thinkers postulate that “the self” is itself an illusion.)

Warning: Users should be sure to press the “return to self” button within a reasonable time. Your actual body will still require actual food, etc.

Meantime, stand by for the coming X-rated version!

Afghanistan, Biden, and Trump: Is Biden Just as Bad?

The Biden administration has released a report blaming the 2021 Afghanistan disaster on its predecessor.

Well, sure. Trump, the great deal maker, had negotiated to give the Taliban the store, getting nothing in exchange. The pact required our withdrawal from Afghanistan, which President Biden proceeded to order.

But c’mon, man. Take responsibility for your own shit. We elected Biden to be different. Some disappointment there.

Like with refugees and immigrants. Despite a personal promise to me, to “immediately, immediately” reverse Trump’s policies, Biden’s actually are more similar than different. Because, it seems, he’s spooked by a Trumpist minority’s irrational fear of migrants. Likewise needlessly intimidated into continuing a misguided trade war with China and self-harming protectionist policies more broadly. Even continuing Trump’s preventing the World Trade Organization from functioning.

As for Afghanistan, Biden should have just repudiated Trump’s lousy deal. It would have been the right thing to do, instead of handing the country over to the Taliban. Biden miscalculated how fast that would happen. And we could have prevented it at very little cost, by maintaining a small presence there — avoiding what’s turned out to be human suffering on a colossal scale. And there’s no question that our rushed exit was botched, aggravating that suffering. Furthermore, those Afghan friends who did make it out, despite our misfeasance, are still being treated with callous irresponsibility.

That’s not on Trump. My heart sank when I heard about the report blaming him. What were they thinking? The catalog of Trump’s misdeeds is long enough. But this is a shameful dodging of responsibility. Indeed, very Trumpian.

So — is Biden just as bad?

I recall P.J. O’Rourke, the conservative gadfly, saying in 2016 that Hillary Clinton was wrong on everything — “but wrong within normal parameters.”

The same applies to Biden. He embodies many of the reasons why, for decades, I was a Republican, not a Democrat. But that was normal politics. To draw some equivalence between Biden and Trump is what philosophers call a category mistake. That’s what O’Rourke was getting at. Trump blows up the parameters of what used to be normal politics. And O’Rourke didn’t even live to see January 6, with an American president attempting a coup, based on lies, to overthrow an election and retain office illegitimately.

This should have made Americans’ heads explode, consigning Trump to permanent outer darkness of Benedict Arnoldhood. And the record has gotten even more damning since. There’s much hand-wringing over the merits of the NY indictment. But the bigger picture is that he’s so obviously something we should scrape off the bottom of our shoes. Yet too many voters are eager to re-elect him!

It’s only explainable as being not even “politics” any more. Not mere politics, but a religious fanaticism. Where no rationality comes in. No facts can penetrate; they’re all spun away as fitting somehow into the nutty narrative of an alternate reality.

So Trump will be the 2024 GOP presidential nominee. Enough Republicans have thrown themselves down this rabbit hole that no other outcome seems possible. The insane folly must play itself out to the bitter end.

The Arrogance of Power: India and Tennessee

Long called “the world’s largest democracy,” India is becoming a DINO — democracy in name only. Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party, elected in 2014, are following the familiar authoritarian playbook of giving democracy the death of a thousand cuts, to emasculate opposition and cement their own power. This includes stifling criticism by a no-longer-free press, suborning the judicial system to harass and intimidate political rivals, and so forth.

Now we see just how far down this dark road India has gone.

Rahul Gandhi is the latest in his family dynasty to head the opposition Congress Party. He’s been sentenced to two years in prison — just long enough to forfeit his parliamentary seat and thus any role in the next national elections. His offense? Defaming Modi. With a critical campaign speech which in any free country would be routine advocacy. But it included a joke mentioning some unrelated criminal also named Modi. For that lame joke he’s sentenced to prison and barred from parliament.

But what’s so telling here is that Gandhi’s once-powerful Congress Party was already a spent force in Indian politics, barely even clinging to relevance, with Gandhi himself widely deemed useless. Thus no threat at all the the Modi-BJP political leviathan.

Squashing Gandhi like a bug shows just how intolerant that regime is toward any dissent. Sending a powerful message to anyone not with their program: you’re vulnerable too.

Moreover, it’s not just politicians the Modi-BJP regime sees as enemies. Theirs is a Hindu religious chauvinist movement, anathematizing India’s whole Muslim population. There are even moves afoot to yank Muslims’ citizenship.

A religion like Hinduism might seem silly. No problem if merely an individual peccadillo. But as we know too well, religions can often be hostile and violent toward one other — long exemplified by India, with repeated bouts of inter-communal bloodshed. Mahatma Gandhi battled for tolerance and peace — for which he wound up assassinated. He’s whirling in his grave to see the insanity of today’s Indian regime deliberately stoking Hindu animosity toward the nation’s Muslims —numbering around two hundred million.

The Rahul Gandhi affair has an uncanny parallel in Tennessee’s Republican-controlled legislature recently unseating some Democratic members for their political advocacy. In this case, joining protesters calling for gun regulation in the wake of a local school shooting.

What could be more anti-democratic than denying legislative seats to people elected by their constituents? Yet these Republicans rail against “cancel culture!” And, as in India’s case, there was nothing to gain politically, they already held overwhelming control. This was just the arrogance of power.

The insanity of India’s regime fomenting Hindu-Muslim violence also has a parallel in America’s Republican party. These self-styled “pro-life” and crime-hating “law-and-order” Republicans block all common-sense gun regulation — which could prevent much gun crime and thousands of shooting deaths annually. Like Modi, Republicans have blood on their hands.

Well, at least the Tennessee Republicans didn’t try to jail the expelled legislators. And one has already been sent back to the state house by his local government. America is still a democracy.

Fingers crossed.

China and the New Cold War: Detente?

What makes nations enemies?

The Soviet Union aimed for Communism’s ultimate global triumph. The free world, led by the U.S., strove for containment. That was the Cold War.

But despite proxy hot wars, there never was much prospect of America and the USSR coming directly to blows. Far too dangerous, with both being nuclear-armed. Mutual recognition of this reality came to be labeled “detente.” Never an explicit agreement; rather a tacit understanding that whatever the conflicts, in the bigger picture the two sides could coexist more or less peaceably. A modus vivendi.

Today’s Russian aggression is a different situation. There’s no pretense of a universalist ideology, like Communism was. Instead it’s an ideology of brazen nationalism, the imagined greatness and moral superiority of Russian culture (belied of course by its abominable behavior).

China’s ideology is more like Russia’s today than in the Cold War. Invoking no universalist values, but a nationalistic Chinese self-assertion, here too claiming some sort of ethno-cultural virtue or even superiority —and its place in the sun. “Communism” a mere detail. China doesn’t actually seek to rule the world.

Yet this is a new cold war because Chinese view the West as an enemy conspiring to keep them down. A new containment paradigm. China does want other nations to kowtow, and hates criticism over its human rights abuses and suchlike, which it sees as just a weapon wielded against it. Belligerently accusing us of belligerence. China’s rhetorical ferocity is astonishing.

Actually, we were not trying to hold China down, and were okay with its economic rise (which could benefit us through trade*) until lately that’s gotten lost amid all the confrontational recriminations. Which have become a vicious feedback loop.

One we should try to break. By reprising the kind of detente we had with the Soviets. Not a friendship, but a mutual understanding to coexist and avoid needless confrontation. We can both benefit from trade with each other while also being economic competitors, but not necessarily geopolitical enemies. (Note that our trade with China vastly dwarfs anything we had with the USSR.)

The key obstacle is the prospect of China invading Taiwan. That would really make for a different, darker, nastier world; a poorer one too, especially given Taiwan being the world’s premier semiconductor source. China considers Taiwan a “renegade province” and has whipped itself into such a nationalist irredentist hysteria that it’s hard to see them backing off. Yet rather than subjugating and thereby devastating Taiwan, China would be better off leaving it prospering as a trading partner — together with the rest of the free world.

That would be the detente deal: China accepting the Taiwan status quo in return for a relaxation of hostility and resumption of global economic integration. That wouldn’t mean we stop criticizing China over human rights and other misbehavior. It wouldn’t mean we’re friends. Just recognition that trade war, decoupling our economies, and severing global supply chains, hurts everyone. As would military conflict of course.

Unfortunately, all the “soft on China” rhetoric Republicans lob at President Biden may make any such accommodation seem politically toxic. And on the Chinese side, an explicit renunciation of force vis-a-vis Taiwan is surely off the table. Nevertheless, a detente could be something that obtains so long as China refrains from invading (or “grey zone” actions like blockading or cyberwar). On that basis we can have peaceable and mutually advantageous economic relations.

Is that a naive, airy-fairy dream? No, totally pragmatic.

And, who knows, someday China might rise into wisdom. After all, we never expected how the Cold War with the Soviets turned out.

* Trump’s saying China was “raping” us on trade was idiotic. It’s a simple principle: if another nation can produce something cheaper than we can ourselves, we’re better off buying it from them and pocketing the gain, and shifting our own production to something else.

A Government Witch Hunt — Masood Haque’s Film “Witness”

Loud protestations allege government prosecutorial abuse, and FBI misconduct, improperly targeting a former president, a political hit job; a “witch hunt.” In fact, it’s those protestations that are a disgraceful politicized assault against rule of law.

But Masood Haque’s documentary Witness, shown at the New York State Writers Institute’s Albany Film Festival, details a true perversion of justice perpetrated by the U.S. government and FBI. A real witch hunt. Right in my home town.

President George W. Bush, in the wake of 9/11, discouraged any reprisals against innocent Muslims. But his government didn’t seem to get the memo, mounting a crazily indiscriminate witch hunt for imagined “terrorists.” (The Albany case was, alas, far from unique.)

Muhammad Hossain, Bangladeshi-born, had managed to get to America as a “dream country” for him. Worked hard, and eventually had his own business, a pizza parlor. He also joined in founding a mosque, on Albany’s Central Avenue.

Hired as imam there was Yassin Aref, an Iraqi Kurd, a prominent participant in their battle against the dictator (and U.S. enemy) Saddam Hussein. Aref had eventually arrived in America too, as a UN-sponsored refugee.

Hossain and Aref were arrested in 2004, charged with a terrorist plot to launder money and buy a stinger missile to kill the Pakistani ambassador. You see, the FBI had paid a criminal fraudster and all-around scumbag named Shahed (“Malik”) Hussein to approach Hossain and entrap him in that nonexistent plot, by getting him to accept a seemingly innocent loan. Aref was brought in merely to witness the loan.

No particle of evidence ever suggested the pair had nefarious intent. They never agreed to anything with Malik involving any missile. (Malik was an FBI “asset” in several further “sting” operations. He also owned the dodgy limo involved in the infamous 2018 Schoharie crash, killing 20. There are calls for an investigation of whether the FBI has been wrongfully protecting him.)

So what, then, was the “terrorist” case against Aref and Hossain? They were bearded Muslims with accents, looking the part. And the government claimed to have reasons to target them. That claim became central to the trial. But it was, they said, based on sensitive classified information that couldn’t be made public.

However, the defense attorneys had to be given access. So (at great expense) the government built a special locked room, an annex to the Court House, wherein those lawyers found a file cabinet. Containing a single sheet of paper. Saying nothing of substance.

So why, after all, were Aref and Hossain singled out for entrapment in the first place? It all boiled down to a notebook, supposedly found in some Iraqi corpse’s pocket, showing Aref’s contact information, calling him a “commander.” But that was a mistranslation, the prosecution ultimately admitted. (And recall that Aref had started out in Iraq fighting against Saddam.) The government also egregiously mistranslated taped conversations, and Aref’s diary entries, to make innocent remarks seem criminal.

The notebook may have been the pretext for targeting Aref. But why did they even seek for a pretext? These witch hunters just wanted to prosecute somebody as a “terrorist.” Anybody. The reality didn’t matter. The notebook simply provided a name.

And what about Hossain? In order to charge Aref with conspiracy, they’d need a co-conspirator. So they just picked Hossain, out of nowhere.

Nevertheless, the judge instructed the jury that they could assume the government had valid reasons for suspecting both men of terrorist links.

The jury convicted them. The verdicts were upheld on appeal. Both served long prison terms. After release, Aref was deported to Iraq in 2019, where he seems to be a well-respected pillar of the community. Hossain returned to Albany and to business. But the film heart-rendingly showed how this travesty of justice was life-shattering for the two innocent victims and their whole families.

The federal prosecutor, William Perichak (father to my daughter’s classmate), unrepentant, was quoted saying all those criticizing the trial are delusional. How often people thusly apply against others judgments more applicable to themselves. This case — and reactions to the Trump prosecutions — are sad reminders how otherwise rational human beings can go off the rails, convincing themselves of absurdities.

But the 9/11 terrorists got one thing right: they’d provoke America to self-harming deeds. Like these shameful Albany prosecutions, blackening our country’s name.

Speaking on camera throughout the film, Muhammad Hossain came across as a sincerely devout man of god. But the final scene was a shocker. Hossain called religion a bad influence in human affairs, saying enough already with all this religion stuff.