More Slinky ICC-sabotaging Hijinks From The Bushies
I've been sort of following this for a while now. The Bush adminstration, as everyone knows, has been consistent in its opposition to the International Criminal Court, which is exactly what it appears to be, a body that prosecutes international criminals -- especially war criminals, who for too long have been offered exile or even active duties after their crimes against humanity came to light and the regimes in which they had behaved criminally, fell. This is the body that should be trying Idi Amin and
Henry Kissinger just as it is currently doing a good job of trying and sentencing Serbian War Criminals from the Balkan Conflict.
Of course, since we are American, it's congenitally impossible for US to breed war criminals, Lieutenant Calleys (whose frying pan, all those years ago, was taken out of the fire by one Colin Powell) to one side. And,
so the "logic" goes, the ICC would only be a means with which those myriads throughout the world might persecute or otherwise politically try United Statesmen as well as the humble American Soldier. Since these people hate and envy US only because we enjoy the accoutrements of McDonalds' and Spam and Coffeemate and dishwashing liquid and our wonderful medical system, supremely heroic American Bastards like
Henry Kissinger must be protected from such justice. (Here is Amnesty International's take on the
ICC.)
So lately, very much under the press's radar, the Bushies have been twisting the arms, bribing, and otherwise cajoling good and bad governments, mostly of smaller countries, into non-extradition treaties, which basically nullify the already binding International codes of the ICC. Amnesty issued
this press release on the matter last fall. Countries then signed up to the American sabotage of the court were Israel (surprise, surprise), East Timor (who, in doing so, effectively forgave the bastard, Henry Kissinger, who gave the green light for its genocide at the hands of Suharto), Tajikstan, and Romania.
In the last few weeks the Seychelles, Senegal and Botswana have been added. An
attempt is underway with Georgia. Then the U.S. tried with Namibia who said, thanks but no thanks. Here's
THAT story, and how very juicy it is. Not surprisingly, it says that Nelson Mandela's South Africa has also told the U.S. to fuck off and keep the bribe we offered.
Ex-Porn Star: "I'm Addicted To Sex"
Germany's most famous porn queen, Gina Wild, is apparently working a bit on the side in a brothel because she just can't get enough sex, at least according to the
Sydney Morning Herald.
Yes, this is just a cheap way for me to get hits.
Still, it's cool that she can do it if she wants : it's Germany and so they don't have nutbar Christians -- who are so like the Taleban in these matters -- forbidding such behaviour. Of course, former Playboy Playmate Teri Weigel went this route and, alas, is now quite haggard-looking for it. But then since Teri had the misfortune of being a nymphomaniac in late 80s-early 90s America, she had to go the Vegas/drugs/sleazeballs route.
Too bad, because if she'd waited a few years, she could have gotten into the high level excort service business that these porn stars (and you will recognise them: don't lie, everyone's watched porn) have:
Nici's Girls (Browser Safe, I think).
At least the reactionaries and the Ashcrofts are losing
this culture war.
John The Puritan just can't afford to be an Ed Meese right at the moment.
By now it's quite banal to say that porn is mainstream. But then it's still nice be able to say it truthfully. Next is prostitution and then -- dare to dream -- drugs and thus the Vice Squad, that scourge of civilisation and epitome of corruption, will go the way of the dodo even in backwards America.
--
Ahem, in "researching" this story I was pleased to discover that one of the best selling new DVD releases is "Weapons Of Ass Destruction 2", meaning among many other things that porn stars have done what Bush and Blix could not do, find one DVD worth of weapons already.
Announcement
I'll be gone for several days away from a computer so, as far as I know, today's entries will be the last for a short while.
More on the Death of a Great Man
The degradation of Christopher Hitchens continues unabatedly. Through Peter Kilander, who is apparently Hitchens's online amanuensis, one can see the sad decline in explicit and implicit ways; and as time goes on one begins -- or, at least I begin -- to lose almost all hope that there will be any rehabilitation or sudden moment of clarity with which Hitchens not so much as redeems but rediscovers who he was.
Peter Kilander's
site is something of an index of all Hitchens-related material on the web. Lately, or should I say since Hitchens's turn to the dark side, the articles posted have naturally been representative of Hitchens's mutated politics. But there is something more, I believe: the presentation. What one really wishes to know is how much influence Hitchens himself gives to the posting of the articles, for I don't think I'm being paranoid in noticing that pieces on Hitchens from awful rightwing media like Fox News,
The New York Post,
The American Spectator, and
National Review are seemingly posted immediately while important if perhaps generally critical pieces by Hitchens's former colleages are in turn posted with hesitance if at all. While one might think this is an entirely normal practice, I'd add that articles from neutral or rather what is deemed "centrist" media, in which Hitchens has an increasing presence, are also, it seems, rather hesitantly and belatedly posted in comparison to the right-wing articles, which I need to emphasise are not by any means completely fawning.
For instance, this smug
piece of html poop from the Ayn Rander online rag
Reason appeared almost immediately as did
this "even-handed" review from the awful Limbaughites at
The American Spectator. While
this article, which to be fair probably hurt Hitchens's feelings but is nonetheless a legitimate viewpoint and one that comes from an especial knowledge
of Hitchens, took its own sweet time in showing up. Meanwhile,
this reference from the vile David Frum's webdiary at NRO showed up ever so quickly, but
this piece (via
The Hamster) by another of Hitchens's former comrades and
Perrin's follow-up (and excellent demonstration of Hitch's new-found -- because of its inherently right-wing nature -- misogyny) have yet to make an appearance.
Incidentally, Hitchens also appears in
this forum with Frum among others, which makes for a nice venting on Islamo-Fascism; nicely oblivious, as well -- and as per his current pattern -- to the more local but less-bombastic (no pun) menaces of Judeo- and Christian-Fascism.
Years ago, Hitchens, to his enduring honour an athiest to the core, would have attacked all forms of religious-tribalist fanaticism. Indeed, his beautiful skewerings of Moral Majoritians as well as Judeo-Fascists like Norman Podhoretz are easily the wittiest in his oeuvre. But here he schmoozes and smaltzes with Frum who is every bit Podoretz's intellectual heir as that criminal menace Eliot Abrams is Poddy's heir-in-clan. I wonder if Hitchens, who Roz Kaveney's article outs as a bisexual, patted Frum on the back for the praise
he gave (Poddy's wife) Midge Dector's infamous fag-bashing-via-faux-incredulity
"classic" essay, "The Boys on the Beach"? After all, hatred of homosexuals is one of the few remaining
visible manifestations of our American brand of Monotheist-Fascism. But no, Iraq and anti-wahabbi paranoia are all that matter.
(Hitchens also, in this conference, takes great care to slander one of our (his and mine) common heros,
Julius Nyerere, by favourably comparing him to the imperialist Neo-Kissinger hacks of the Adminstration.)
Here I confess an ever so slight interest, at least as far as Hitchens's site goes (and I only mention this to repeat the argument but also pre-empt charges that I possibly suffer from bitter bitchiness -- please, I know I am a nobody). I wrote to Hitchens via Kilander's website, asking how he could on the one hand righteously attack master war criminal Henry Kissinger while at the same time make blanket apologies on the aims and means of Neo-Kissingers and, indeed, former Kissinger Co-conspirators who make up the current adminstration; moreover, how could Hitchens sneer at the anti-war protestors (in the same way he sneered at the Seattle crowd : plainly no protest is as honourable as those Hitchens took part in as young man, even when they are for the same principles) with such invective and such schadenfreude when these people (of whom I am one) make at least part of their case on the fact that this adminstration has done everything it can to destroy the International Criminal Court which was set up to nail otherwise free war criminals like .. Henry Kissinger. I didn't ask this with a sneer (I phrased it differently), nor did I wish to make an attack -- in good faith, I wanted him to address this glaring contradiction. No matter: roughly 15 minutes after I sent the message, it had been deleted.
One hopes Hitchens felt a prick of conscience in at least this regard if no other, for Kissingerism currently rules Iraq in the form of Viceroy Paul Bremer, former
Prince (Managing Director) of Kissinger Associates, Inc. New York, New York.
Some months later I wrote to Hitchens again, albeit in atrocious prose, asking if he knew of any dirt regarding possible quid pro quos between Henry Kissinger and Idi Amin's regime (this was in light of recent MI6 declassifications which damned Western, specifically English, interests in aiding Amin's rule). I thanked him profusely for the work he had done on the subject, and said, quite in a fanboyish embarassing way, that I read him practically daily -- which I did, and still do. Though this post "stuck", I have no idea if Hitchens read it.
I read and re-read Hitchens's essay collections over and over. Indeed, it is he and Gore Vidal who have taught me politics in a way in which no professor, no course, and no media outlet could ever hold a candle to. They illuminate; and if I could hug them and thank them somehow for the intensely rich experience they have given me in reading, and the education they have given me with their dense-with-fact essays and rich in meaningful anecdote speeches, I would. And speaking of Vidal, for years Hitchens thought of him in the same way I still do, but now he darkly hints that he is going to attack the grand old man. Well, that's that.
But Hitchens's right turn is far from being confined to slashing old comrades: despite not exactly being pinned down on the question, he refutes the materialist interpretation of history ("a tautology" is how he labels the eminently obvious materialist reasons for the invasion of Iraq: Petroleum), which had formerly grounded his philosophy and as such
provided a neutral setting from which he could then follow his moral compass. He has also pleaded ignorant of American patterns of Imperialism : "The days of Banana Republics are over," he says of Venezuela in particular and Bush Adminstration policy in general. Add to this his coming slags on his old master, Vidal, and the conclusion can only be that Hitchens has turned to the dark side, no matter the few glimmers of hope we may see (like
this in an interview with Bill Moyers), and no matter the few protests, some from Hitchens himself, that his new ideology is somehow of the left.
Hitchens is quite right to mostly ignore the
nasty attacks Alexander Cockburn and
Media Whores Online have sent his way. All Cockburn has done is make himself look like a spurned lover, though I certainly sympathise with the political justifications Cockburn uses. Still, equally as nasty was Hitchens's invective against another of his old comrades, Noam Chomsky, and so I feel that Cockburn's ad hominems and slurs are thus nearly cancelled out. Also, regarding the breached David and Jonathan relationship of Christopher and Alexander, let's just say, who knows what was said in private.
Hitchens is Darth Vader rising, to use a cliched but absolutely perfect because so parallel metaphor, in service of a group of Neo-Kissinger Republicans who in aggregate can be only be called Imperial. On Darth Hitchens plunges, but not without stealth, sucking up to his old enemies by appearing on Imperial Star Destroyers like
Fox News and focusing his lasers via Tie Fighters like
The Weekly Standard. (Can a photo-op and a kiss-and-make-up session with Conrad Black or Martin Peretz be too far in the future?) Onward and upward Darth Hitchens slashes with abandon, with an older sloppier style (his
recent WMD weasel-wording is shameful and unworthy of his pen), dispatching his old Jedi Brethren of the Left here and there: Chomsky, Cockburn, Sontag, Ali, Herman -- only Edward Said has so far escaped Hitch's sabre. Now for Vidal, the Obi-Wan Kenobi of the American Left. Hitch will slash, and also be slashed; it will be bloody, and the Imperium will enjoy their popcorn moment. Darth Hitchens could afford to be kind to
frail old Yoda, Eric Hobsbawm, at Hay-On-Wye; but with Vidal, it will be a legitimate slugfest. I also have no doubt that soon we'll see Hitchens in kissy moments with the most vile and obvious of the Imperium's enforcers, bounty hunters like Ann Coulter and David Horowitz (the latter has indeed already happened).
And all because Clinton made him angry? So much so that the glee with which Clinton executed people, which Hitchens was so right to abhor, is now excuseable when George W. Palpatine, ruler of Iraq, does it with even more pleasure? That Hitchens now takes great pains to slag anyone who points to Grand Moff Ashcroft's shredding of the Bill of Rights as evidence of the corruptedness of this Administration and the emptiness of its professed aims of "freedom"? That he pushes false dichotomies which demand one either prefers Saddam Hussein OR Halliburton, when one can surely hate both? Such a blunt instrument he is, this shade of the Imperium who was formerly such a nuanced cutlasser as well as a luminous being.
He's more machine now than man, which is how I too can say, yes, then,
so long fellow-traveller. Even though it stings, which is odd, I suppose, considering he is someone I have never met. But there is always faint hope that he will be redeemed, hopefully before he destroys too too much.
Cannibals!
From tasty
Soylent Green wafers to simply biting your girlfriend's ass (bite: not through, and do not chew nor swallow), who doesn't like the taste of a little human flesh now and then?
There is spiritual cannibalism like communion, and there is literal near-cannibalism, like oral sex (which is much tastier than a communion wafer, and if done with the right person, far more spiritual), but folks just don't tolerate the gourmands of New Guinean cuisine anymore. Damn you, Jeffrey Dahmer, you've ruined it for everyone. Well, that and the fact that one can get Kruetzfeld-Jakob Disease from eating brains, that
Return of the Living Dead delicacy. No one wants that, except maybe these guys :
The Church of Euthanasia. Alas, there is little market anymore for the "other white meat". That's right, contrary to the catch-all description of most odd meats, we don't "taste just like chicken"; rather we more closely resemble that other omnivore, the pig. I do wonder, though, if vegetarians have a lighter taste.
And don't think that cannibalism is a taboo throughout civilisation, it's not: be warned, Militant Vegans, due to the dearth of domesticatible animals in Central America, Aztec Civilisation's protein requirements were filled by the carcasses of those prisoners-of-war who were so gruesomely sacrificed on top of pyramids. The lesson is then plain; if you succeed in completely banning my hamburgers and fried chicken, I'll just instead eat you for dinner.
Angry Man Threatens To Eat Neighbour
German Cannibal Charged With Murder
Germany Seeks New Cannibal Victims
Man Held For German Cannibal Killing
Four Ukrainians Held For Cannibalism
Pot Gives Up Cannibalism Secret
Three Arrested For Cannibalism In Kazakhstan
The Real Hannibal Lectors
Fijians Find Chutney In Bad Taste
Neanderthals Were Cannibals
Cannibal Victim Wrote Will Before Slaughter
Brain Legacy Of Ancient Cannibals
News & Olds
Paul Wolfowitz, after a few days ago coming across quite candidly, is now back to bullshitting, and rather in spades :
"The lesson of 9-11 is that, if you're not prepared to act on the basis of murky intelligence, then you're going to have to act after the fact," he told the Fox News' Sunday programme."
Ah okay then.
So this is the new way of justifying Iraq. Gotcha.
Speaking of casuistry, I found
this old link of Francis Fukuyama's rather bald imperialism apology. It deserves a nice rebuttal which I will do when I get time. From the same site, here's an
older interview with Wolfowitz, and notice especially where he loses all sensibility on the Sharon issue.
Idi Amin, near death, has been in the news lately. some in Uganda want him to come home,
some are preparing for his funeral, and some demand
that he be forgiven.
Here's an
article about it on the BBC.
Idi Amin deserves a whole essay here, and I mean to do it soon. Until I can, here's a
huge debate I had on the subject, with a fascist pig (there's at least one on every site) at Quoteland. Ample info about Amin and his U.S. support in the links therein provided.
Elsewhere,
apparently the Republicans are trying to gut, in committee, the new FCC amendment that stopped Michael Powell's meretricious plan that would have helped further consolidate the media.
The Grand Old Men
Gore Vidal was recently profiled on PBS's
American Masters series, some outtakes of which are
here (and they are quite good for the most part).
At the bottom of the page is a clip of
Vidal,
Norman Mailer, and
Kurt Vonnegut at a
Vanity Fair photo shoot commemorating the three greatest living American novelists' objections to the War of Iraq. The clip isn't terribly interesting per se, but it is nice to show the three old men together who have argued, separately, very interestingly indeed against an impractical war fought with secret immoral aims.
It's a pity that the feature the photo shoot was for is not availiable to read because Conde Nast still stupidly insists on keeping
Vanity Fair off the internet.
All three men were on the right side (which is to say the anti-war side) of the Vietnam War, whereas, pointedly, our Neocon moralists and ruling Oil Junta were not.
All three are veterans of World War 2, whereas our war-lovers are typically draft-dodgers, AWOLers, or were too young or unfit to have served.
All three have made a contribution to literature in a way the so-called literate conservatives -- people like Buckley and Podhoretz -- have not.
---
Aside the many televised talks they have done, there are a few essays and interviews on the net that showcase, respectively, their dissent:
Mailer 1
Mailer 2
Mailer 3
Vidal 1
Vidal 2
Vidal 3
Vonnegut 1
Vonnegut 2
------
There is another of Mailer, which is damn good, but the blasted
Sunday Times has hidden it in their pay archives. If I find it elsewhere I will post it.
WTF?
I see that a few people -- well, at least one -- got to my site via a search of my title, elementropy. Alright, so I decided to search it too, really to see if anyone has linked to me.
I find this:
Publications links at Political Theory.
Notice there is an "elementropy"; cool, I'm thinking, they are returning the favour and linking to me. But nooo. They actually link to a blog of what seems like an otherwise decent commune of academics
Publius Minor .
Observe that Publius Minor's startup date is AFTER my blog's. Also note that I bought the domain to "elementropy.com" back in the winter. The name is mine, mine, mine. To add to the creepy factor, notice how they have an entry on Habermas 10 hours after I posted my first on the same subject.
I think I'm gonna ask these folks a few questions. Maybe the mistake is all Political Theory's; but maybe not.
Dammit
Now both my trackers are screwed up, so I don't know how much traffic I'm getting. I know I was robbed of a bunch of hits last night and this morning. I saw them. Then they disappeared.
Update
Alfredo Perez, a real nice guy, corrected the link at Political Theory. Just an honest mistake; and Publius Minor had nothing to do with it. So thanks to Mr. Perez. He has an excellent news site, let me say again; and every thinking person who follows politics should visit it.
Added Links
I still add links to both columns here, as I find them in my "archives". Over the last few days, it's been mostly for the music and interesting cultures sections.
Also, though,
Angela Carter.
I have never read her fiction, but three or so years ago RaeRae gave me Carter's collected essays as a gift, which was not only very nice of her but also as it turns out
perfectly suited to my tastes: Carter is witty, socialist, feminist (but of the theoretical and political, "casual wear" school, rather than the vapid and reactionary school of the militant "utility-belt" crowd) and had a remarkable bullshit detector.
I recommend this book:
Happy Birfday, To Thee
Teagan, dear Teagan, celebrates today, provided that she isn't too hung over. Happy Birthday, darlin.
Gotcha
Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, visited 4th Infantry commanders in Tikrit on Sunday and later told reporters in Baghdad that Saddam "was too busy trying to save his own skin" to lead the insurgency against American forces.
"He is so busy surviving he is having no impact on the security situation here," Myers said. "It's a big country, but we'll find him."
(my emphasis)
That
should nicely shut the flapping pie-holes of all the folks who say that the guerrilla movement in Iraq is Saddam-led.
Source.
I want, I want
Ahh.
GT-40 Concept
Ford GT Home
Ahh.
Wolfowitz : A Standard Issue Lie and Then A Remarkable Truth & More Iraq News
"It was difficult to imagine before the war that the criminal gang of sadists and gangsters who have run Iraq for 35 years would continue fighting, fighting what has been sometimes called a guerrilla war"
Well, of course he'll say that. It's not like he'll admit that normal, non-Baath, everyday Iraqis are the majority of the guerrillas.
But then he, as is so ever often the case, lets down his guard and speaks the truth:
"Some conditions were worse than we anticipated, particularly in the security area."
No Iraqi military units "of significant size" defected to the American side.
"Second, the police turned out to require a massive overhaul"
"Third, and worst of all," he said, was the underestimation of resistance. "
Then, after some verbal strutting:
""And the fact is — you know it — we often just make mistakes. We do stupid things."
Yes, we do Mr. Wolfowitz, yes we do.
Read it at the
Seattle Times .
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We've shut down our first Iraqi newspaper. Though the reasons aren't, well, unreasonable, it's still a suspicious thing to do, possibly a start to an unsavoury habit, and it also happens to be for rhetoric which only gets Western Journalists fired (Ann Coulter, you bitch, I'm pointing in your direction), rather than their entire newspaper shut down : the call to kill a nation's enemies as a religious duty. Story from the
Christian Science Monitor.
---
The Ozzies are coming around : 67 percent believe that the Howard Government misled them on the justifications for the war while 37 percent think that the misleading was done knowingly. Ozzies, the Danes, the Brits and now even we stupid Americans are starting to see what a sham this was. That leaves the Poles -- whose government didn't sell the war in quite the same way -- as pretty much the only "coalition" government not under considerable fire.
Resource Wars and Funny Polemics at Murdoch's Expense
I'll start with the latter: though it is over-written in what the author takes to be the style of H.L. Mencken, this
piece in
Charlotte's Creative Loafing is dead-on and pretty damn funny.
For the former,
this article in Rosbalt News is excellent (and, to tie the two together, a bit of materialist analysis you're not about to get on Faux News). In essence, the article demonstrates how we have divided up the Caucasus Oil Reserves like (my analogy) we divided up China in the 1900s. Except this Open Door is only for Anglo-American oil companies -- the Asians need not apply.
Now They Are Fighting Dirty
Paul Krugman wrote a
good editorial piece in Tuesday's
The New York Times swatting the nutbars of the rightwing punditry who accuse people who've been asking questions about Iraq, WMDs, Security Issues, etc. of "aiding the enemy". Now Krugman's ostensible purpose in the piece is all well and good, and at the expense of deserving targets, but what was especially interesting (and legitimate news, at least to me) was his parting shot :
"Well, if we're going to talk about aiding the enemy: By cooking intelligence to promote a war that wasn't urgent, the administration has squandered our military strength. This provides a lot of aid and comfort to Osama bin Laden — who really did attack America — and Kim Jong Il — who really is building nukes.
And while we're on the subject of patriotism, let's talk about the affair of Joseph Wilson's wife. Mr. Wilson is the former ambassador who was sent to Niger by the C.I.A. to investigate reports of attempted Iraqi uranium purchases and who recently went public with his findings. Since then administration allies have sought to discredit him — it's unpleasant stuff. But here's the kicker: both the columnist Robert Novak and Time magazine say that administration officials told them that they believed that Mr. Wilson had been chosen through the influence of his wife, whom they identified as a C.I.A. operative.
Think about that: if their characterization of Mr. Wilson's wife is true (he refuses to confirm or deny it), Bush administration officials have exposed the identity of a covert operative. That happens to be a criminal act; it's also definitely unpatriotic.
So why would they do such a thing? Partly, perhaps, to punish Mr. Wilson, but also to send a message.
And that should alarm us.
Damn right it should alarm us. As far as I know, outing spooks (aside double agents), as an act of political vindictiveness, is an altogether new low for
any Presidential Adminstration. It's also stupid -- this earns the enmity of every CIA agent, retired or active. Do they really want to make enemies of people who presumably have ample inflammable information which could then be handed to the press? Blowing the cover of agents gets agents killed. It's also damaging to National Security, something the Bush Administration is supposedly a great supporter of, though apparently only when such issues may thoroughly trample the Bill of Rights.
This thing reminded me of an old interview I read of Watergate felon G. Gordon Liddy. Liddy conspired to kill journalist Jack Anderson, after one of Anderson's scoops supposedly "outed" an agent. Of course Anderson also exposed the massive crimes, American and International, of Liddy's boss, Richard Milhous Nixon, and so one may presume a bit of a conflicted interest other than the professed patriotism and comradery. Liddy also said that he would gladly take the job of assassinating author and former CIA agent Philip Agee, who exposed an agent working with the Greek Junta. The agent was killed due to Agee's whistle-blowing. So when is "outing" an agent "good"? I'd say when the agent is a criminal. Doing business in the School Of Americas-style with fascist Greek Juntas deserves an outing; being the wife of a former Ambassador who merely fact-checked cooked intelligence does not. Outing an agent is dead serious business; this is dirty pool indeed.
Downtown Memphis is Trashed
Very intense storm this morning, by far the worst this year. Trees, everywhere, are shredded . The Utility Company's building is beat up, while the Gibson Guitar Factory may be a total loss. I didn't walk around much farther than that, but I can only imagine what the rest of the city looks like. Roomie is supposed to take pics with his digital cam -- if so I'll put them up when I can. More later.
----
Well, the roomie never went out to take pics, but
The Commercial Appeal has some good coverage of the local carnage. Articles
here and incredible slideshow
here.
photo credit - A.J. Wolfe, The Commercial Appeal
I have been nearly beaten to death by hail, missed driving through an airport-destroying tornado by five minutes, and lived through a funnel cloud going directly over my old farmhouse, but yesterday was by far the worst
looking storm I've ever weathered. There was the "train" sound you always hear about; there was not the sickly yellow-green colour of hail storms but an awesome blackness to this front. It was freakish. As far as I know, only one window in my building was blown out, but I reckon if not for the cover of the building arcoss the street, it would have been much worse. I myself felt the wind
through my windows, and was a bit nervous as the lights flickered. Still, I had no idea the storm was that bad -- the sirens never went off, which is amazing because they have gone off probably twenty times already this year -- until I went outside later in the morning. Insulation and tree limbs were laying everywhere. Traffic was more insane than usual. Everyone was chattering excitedly.
I'm really freakin sick of tornados. Living through the day of 100 of the damn things was bad enough, back in Arkansas. When I went to Delaware last year, the damn things seemed to have followed me; the day after I arrived Maryland and Delaware were trashed by a rare flurry of tornados. Where can I move that this crap doesn't happen? Still, I'm affected for life -- where as a child I had nightmares of living dead and snakes and spiders, as an adult most of my nightmares, in the classical sense, are of the world being destroyed by myriads of marching funnel clouds, the brushing fingers of a capricious god.
Interdicting the Hijackers of History
Historian Mary Beth Norton, in
The New York Times, nicely and methodically bitchslaps Donald Rumsfeld's moronic analogy of today's Iraq to "America in 1783". Link
here.
"Thus even if one ignores Mr. Rumsfeld's factual errors, his analogy with today's Iraq seems to hold little water.
[...]The United States won its war. Iraq lost. Iraqis must now create a new polity under the supervision of an occupying power. There was no British Paul Bremer sitting in Philadelphia and telling us what to do in the 1780's.
[...]As part of his education package, President Bush has proposed an initiative to improve the teaching of American history in the public schools. I wonder if his secretary of defense might benefit from a refresher on the revolutionary era."
Nice, Ms. Norton. Is this evidence of Christopher Hitchens's lauded adminstration of "high wattage [intelligence]"? Seriously, I'm sure that Rummy does read certain "historians" -- probably the same "great scholars" read by neocon string-puller Michael Ledeen,
"who have studied American character [and] have come to the conclusion that we are a warlike people and that we love war."
"Suicide" Solution
A judge is set to lay out the parameters of the inquiry into the death -- an apparent suicide -- of WMD-scandal's "Deep Throat", David Kelly. Story and background are
here.
The Mirror debates the potential fallout over the scandal
here .
Relatedly, on the WMD scandal, for once a Murdoch rag has some useful news : That there is a growing rift between Blair and Bush on the faulty intelligence used to justify the war. Apparently, MI6 is a bit peeved that they are being slagged by their American counterparts in the CIA and, by extention, the Bush Adminstration. All I can say is, good. Divide and conquer and maybe expose all of them to a withering discreditation they all so richly deserve. Thomas Oliphant
is optimistic about the findings of a potential probe into the scandal, but I'm skeptical. Considering how awful these people are in general, and their track record in
defying such investigations in particular, I have little hope of a potential Church Committee (which, it must be noted, Bush hack and former Secretary Of State James Baker was quick to slag -- and indeed blame -- after the September 11th attacks).
"THE row over the justification for war with Iraq deepened yesterday as a transatlantic split emerged between the world’s two leading spy agencies.
The CIA said it did not believe British secret service claims of an alleged plot by Iraq to buy uranium for nuclear weapons in Niger, west Africa.
MI6 stood by its story but refused to provide evidence to its ally, saying protocol did not permit it.
The war of words is one of the most serious between the two agencies, which normally co-operate closely and share intelligence under an agreement known as Ukusa."
Uh-huh.
"The row blew up after George Tenet, the head of the CIA, issued a statement on Friday night saying the uranium claim was 'highly dubious'.
Jack Straw, the foreign secretary, was forced to defend the British government’s position, saying the uranium story 'was based on reliable intelligence which we had not shared with the US for good reasons'".
Right. Yet Bush blames the bad info on the CIA.
"In a letter to the chairman of the Commons foreign affairs committee released yesterday, Straw confirmed that the CIA had asked Britain to remove the uranium claim from its dossier.
But he said: “UK officials were confident that the dossier’s statement was based on reliable intelligence which we had not shared with the US (for good reasons, which I have given your committee in private session). A judgment was therefore made to retain it.”
He went on to point out that evidence given by the former US ambassador to Gabon, Joseph Wilson, who investigated the uranium story for the CIA, was not shared with the British. Officials read Wilson’s findings, that the Niger authorities had denied any link, only in the press."
Ah yes, but Wilson did brief the State Department. So they knew the intelligence was crap, as did Cheney and Rice, at the least. This may not get Blair and Straw off the hook in England, but it does pretty much get the CIA off the hook here in America. Ambassador Wilson's testimony implicitly damns not the CIA, but Bush and the State Department, since it was they who sent him on the errand to check the validity of the intelligence in the first place. So we are left to assume that the Bush Adminstration ignored the briefing of their own oversight-envoy either out of indigence and incompetence or out of calculated mendacity. I incline to the latter as explanation.
"Privately, MI6 is furious with the Americans for what one insider described as “incompetent handling” of delicate issues that had embarrassingly become public."
Mmmhmmm.
Rest of the story here :
Sunday Times Online
The Nag, The Hague: It's Only For Other People
Since we can't have our homegrown psychopaths like Henry Kissinger or our psychopathic allies like Ariel Sharon tried for War Crimes, great effort is required to circumvent the aims and scope of the
International Criminal Court .
Apparently we have now
b(r)ought Botswana over to our thinking and the
Seychelles, too. Little countries, under the radar. Good job, George. Justice is only to be applied to everyone else, after all.
---
Georgia's ICC ratification issues, and US influence on its stance, can be found
here on
Civil Georgia online magazine.
Rep. Howard Berman, "Hollywood Sock Puppet"
By now you know that Senator Orrin Hatch wants to
destroy your computer. But now Representative Berman wants to make it legal to
hack you if you trade mp3s, and, if that's not sweet enough,
jail you for loading so much as one mp3 on your KaZaA.
Links courtesy of
Martin.
From My Late Reading
I'm going to try to start posting interesting passages from whatever books I'm reading at the moment.
This is from William Appleman Williams's
"The Tragedy of American Diplomacy".
"The crucial point, however, is this: the idea that other people ought to copy America contradicts the humanitarian urge to help them and the idea that they have the right to make such key decisions for themselves. In some cases, the American way of doing things simply does not work for other people. In another instance it may be satisfactory, but the other society may prefer to do it in a different way that produces equally good results. But even if the American way is the *only* effective approach, the fact remains that the act of forcing it upon the other society -- and economic and political pressure are forms of force -- violates the idea of self-determination. It also angers the other society and makes it even less apt to accept the American Way on its own merits. Hence it is neither very effective nor very idealistic to try to help other people by insisting that they become carbon copies of the United States."
Ahh, so much for the "moral" argument of the globalistas' forcible exportation of ideology. Indeed, Appleman wrote this in 1959 but its point is similar to Jurgen Habermas's
recent admonition that "[i]t is precisely the universalistic core of democracy and human rights that forbids their unilateral realisation at gunpoint." The gist is the same, though Williams reasons in the classic American "gosh, you know" plain-spoken tone, whereas Habermas's humanitarian lecture is in the tone of structured continental gravitas. Both together should be considered not as a left-right combination punch but rather as an uppercut-straight jab attack; the Marquess of Queensbury school
with a dose of impromptu streetfighting, and such a pugilism of moral argument makes for a TKO of not only doctrinaire Trotskyite Internationalists, but also, and most importantly, American Ethnocentrists and Imperialists whose cynical use of moral argument ably demonstrates their actual ethical decrepitude.
Also notice how Williams demonstrates that American meddling overseas by nature INSPIRES the forces of reaction. This simple observation of human nature, so true, is carefully denied or perverted by the Imperialists who should know that in any situation an individual or a group comes to resent what is forcibly pushed upon them, merits or demerits of what's being pushed only having an incidental bearing on this factor at best. Independent conversion always results in an honest adherent whereas a coerced conversion does not.
"[...] Most Americans would reply that the answer is trade. But trade is defined as the exchange of goods and services between independent producers dealing with each other in as open a market as it is possible to create. Here is the source of America's troubles in its economic relations with the rest of the world. For in expanding its own economic system throughout much of the world, America has made it very difficult for other nations to retain any economic independence. This is especially true in connection with raw materials."
Put that in your bong and smoke it, IMF-WTO Globalistas. Your "free market" isn't, in fact, free because freedom implies consent, something you've never deigned to consider. And no, consent is not given via coups in Venezuela or bribes in Africa. But globalism IS centralisation; it therefore means for any second or third way to be necessarily destroyed as all centrifugal reactions to unholy centripedal forces MUST be crushed. Globalisation is by nature intolerant of what it cannot assimilate and by nature a devouring maw.
LOFL
Someone is very clever. These are samples of the "American Crusade" Trading Cards from the Infinite Jest site. The pop culture references here are priceless; and the creator must be a baseball fan, as the design is borrowed from the 1983 Topps baseball card series.
Here's the link to the whole collection
Infinite Jest Trading Cards
Before I lose the link, the forged WMD documents are online:
Forged Iraq Documents Were Full Of Flaws. Mmmhmm.
Also, someone finally uttered the "G" word :
U.S. Forces in Iraq Facing Guerillas. Now watch everyone from Hitchens to Horowitz say that these people are ALL Saddam's partisans.
What I'm Reading
I usually read several books at a time; now that I'm an Amazon Associate, I'll start putting up periodic links to what I'm reading.
Started on this yesterday :
I've been reading and re-reading this for months now :
which goes for these two prescient geopolitical classics as well :
New Empire
Starring Rex Hamilton As Abraham Lincoln!
Overload. Pleasure Overload. I added the link to the "Too Funny" section a few days ago, but I'm still drying my eyes after finding a few sites devoted to one of the funniest TV series of all time,
Police Squad!
For good measure, here are two more :
Police Squad! In Color
Episode Guide -- Police Squad!
Then there is the section at
Jump The Shark, with all the commentary, larded with anecdotes, from their inimitable peanut gallery.
Those pukefaces at Paramount ought to put the
series out on DVD (hell, they bothered to put it on freaking laserdisc), and while they're at it, NOT cut it up like they did
Airplane!.
This site is also worthwhile :
ZAZ fansite
Check out the
Top Secret! section too, from which I ganked these pics:
B.T.s "phone home"
Dinging the Pinto's Bumper
Don't Park Your SUV In Front Of My Igloo
Oh this is for dear
Teagan, my canuckistani friend who helped me warm my igloo a few months ago.
Canadia : Hippie Nation?
Naomi Klein extols the virtue of Canuckistani social liberalism, but warns that it will probably be short-lived. Nooo! BE hippies, brave Canuckistanis! You got de ganja, you got the sthweet gay marriage -- you gotta keep it now. Tell the U.S. to kiss your tundric ass (and to heighten the metaphor, think of frozen lips permanently stuck to it, like the kid's tongue to the lamp pole in
A Christmas Story) in regard to our economic bullying and our recent efforts at exporting Ashcroftism. It's aboot freedom, it's aboot democracy, it's aboot..
You gotta resist our filthy habits. For instance -- and I know it's an annoyance but -- you gotta keep the bilingualism because rancid globalista centralisation aims for the tongue as well as the ass, the waistline and the pocketbook. Keep taxing the rich. Keep your healthcare -- or else you'll slide further down the
Human Development Report. Don't listen to what our leaders say, nor should you make a habit of signing anything that they ask. Be independent : the fascists hate that. And though we make fun of Rush and the MacKenzies and Shania Twain, you're pretty cool. Despite your igloos and moose-love, you've gone further at making a civilised society than we have, so kudos to you, Canuckistanis.
Blarg
I can't sleep again, even though I got only four hours worth this morning; and I don't want to watch TV but I'm too tired to properly concentrate on the book I'm reading. So, blog time.
I did a search of my net handle a bit ago, out of boredom and to see if my stalker has put up anymore tribute pages. Turns out that, if he has, they're not on google. But I did find this site :
Datbrew
Argh. I have been using "Retardo Montalban" for, like, 4 years now. And while it's true that I later found out the name was used by a reviewer at MoviesThatSuck.com, I had no idea at the time. In Arthur C. Clarke's nice phrase, I was only guilty of "precognitive plagiarism". But now karma has repaid me. Still, I wish this kid luck with the name; he seems alright. You go, New Retardo!
As it stands, I have plenty of other names and net-alter-egos to play with. My latest is as a heavy-metal guitar god/militant muslim (Cat Stevens meets Spinal Tap), Mullet al-Mullah.
(15:50:16) Mullet al-Mullah shouts to Neighbour: western infidel! listen to my electric guitar! allah turns my amp to 11, you raper of dogs!
(15:52:55) Mullet al-Mullah shouts to Neighbour: Filthy western imperialist! I defy your easy listening genre! It is Salman Rushdie in minor chords! I and my band declare jihad on your sacrelige!
(15:54:39) Mullet al-Mullah shouts to M*****: you listen to your britney spears, degraded american infidel! do not tell me when it is time for my drummer to explode for Allah! Allah alone sets times for such things! Blessed is his name, filthy heathen!
(15:57:16) Mullet al-Mullah shouts to M*****: Oh yes, you canuckistani pigdog! With godless muchmusic and Shania Twain! Allah shall impale you with Rush cds in the afterlife; blasphemous camel-fuckers, all of you!
(16:00:47) Mullet al-Mullah shouts to M*****: I shall crank my amp to 11, with Allah's will, and with my groupies and my hashishins, we will rock holy jihad on you all! die die die!
(16:03:59) Mullet al-Mullah shouts to Everyone: Buy my albums "In One Ear And Out Your Medina" "Jihad At Budokan", "Medina Oblongatta", and "The Ululating Remains The Same" in a store near you!
Alright, Alright, so it may not be good enough to be a Saturday Night Live character, but it's better than my last invention, that fake-bot chatter "programme" that I told everybody Palmer created with his superconducter-powered, liquid nitrogen-cooled UNIX MECHA-computer in his basement. I mean, come on, a bot's name isn't going to be "Digital Crap" even if I wrote it in schlocky Westminster
FONT. Still, I hit the right note with my fake "glitches" and intentionally-mangled syntax as to fool a few people. Good times, good times.
By the way, if some fucktard sketch comedian steals this, I'm gonna sue.
Oh, lookie :
Iran finds Giant New Oil Field
Well, I see a need for regime change. Those young Iranians aren't democratising quickly enough. Surely the altrusitic neoconmen and the Halliburton Junta should like to "help" Iran's people privatise their newly-found resource. Yes yes.
