No WorriesArthur Silber frets that too many are giving too much credit to, and are taking much too seriously, Andrew Sullivan's recent blogging.
He shouldn't worry. Pretty much everyone knows better than to believe that Andrew Sullivan has really reformed. Sure, if some newbie -- ignorant of the context of Sullivan's history and the awesome badness of his oeuvre -- comes across a recent Sullivan anti-torture post, he's likely to be moderately impressed. But that newbie will soon learn that Sully has been at best a useful idiot for the Bushies, and is even more appropriately considered as being complicit in the whole fucking mess that Republicanism has wrought over the last 10 years: Iraq, the culture war, fiscal stupidity, rampant corruption, all of it.
Not that Silber doesn't make some good points, especially the one of relativity: that Sullivan may now seem decent to innocent eyes is not a testament to any recent self-reinvention much less reformation on his part, but is, rather, merely an indication of the amount of fanaticism in rest of the rightwing.
Yeah, that's good stuff.
However, a nice irony is that in Silber's making of this point, it is partly at his expense.
Well-meaning anti-Bush people should take Sullivan, no matter his latest stance, with a certain grain of salt. And I think most do exactly that. But then well-meaning anti-Bush folks should take a similar attitude to the moral pronouncements of a nominally deactivated Randroid like ...Arthur Silber. I can't speak for others, but that's exactly my habit.
The Rot Starts From The TopI liked
this whole editorial, but one part struck me as especially nice:
When we became cadets, we were taught that the academy's honor code was what separated West Point from a mere college. This was a little hard to believe at first, because the code seemed so simple; you pledged that you would not lie, cheat or steal, and that you would not tolerate those who did. We were taught that in combat, lies could kill.
But the honor code was not just a way to fight a better war. In the Army, soldiers are given few rights, grave responsibilities, and lots and lots of power. The honor code serves as the Bill of Rights of the Army, protecting soldiers from betraying one another and the rest of us from their terrifying power to destroy. It is all that stands between an army and tyranny.
However, the honor code broke down before our eyes as staff and faculty jobs at West Point began filling with officers returning from Vietnam. Some had covered their uniforms with bogus medals and made their careers with lies - inflating body counts, ignoring drug abuse, turning a blind eye to racial discrimination, and worst of all, telling everyone above them in the chain of command that we were winning a war they knew we were losing. The lies became embedded in the curriculum of the academy, and finally in its moral DNA.
By the time we were seniors, honor court verdicts could be fixed, and there was organized cheating in some units. A few years later, nearly an entire West Point class was implicated in cheating on an engineering exam; the breakdown was complete.
The mistake the Army made then is the same mistake it is making now: how can you educate a group of handpicked students at one of the best universities in the world and then treat them as if they are too stupid to know when they have been told a lie?
The West Point Honor Code as "The Bill of Rights of the Army", as not just an ideal but a necessary checks-and-balance system, is a very good way of looking at it.
Anyway, his larger point is also spot-on. This is what our side means by "demoralisation". An injust war, a war built on lies, demoralises and degrades not only the vanquished but also the victor. True, one can't corrupt the already corrupted, and so the rule doesn't apply to the civilian leadership that told the lies and started the war, but it certainly does apply to the troops that have to fight it. As matters of moral consequence, Abu Ghraib and Gitmo were probably inevitabilities.
A Yellow Elephant In The RoomMy own little contribution to
Jesus' General's crusade, which had merits and movement even before gaining steam with recent
dispatches that
detail the astounding cowardice of the rightwing's war cheerleaders:
Following Dear Leader's latest speech, even such ordinarily congenitally, spontaneously vile hacks such as the NRO crowd are acknowledging that too few of their fellow wingnuts are putting their money, as it were, where their mouth is. Here's
John Derbyshire:
"There is no higher calling than service in our armed forces." That would ring a little less hollow if this country's ruling classes were better represented in the military. In fact the military is a lower-middle-class and working-class occupation, which U.S. elites avoid like the plague.
True. Derbyshire's commentary had to have made his colleague Jonah Goldberg more than a little fidgetty.
Goldberg is the most
infamous chickenhawk of the chattering classes, the perfect counterpart to Bush's supreme infamy among the
ruling class chickenhawks. Apart from his own
uniquely pathetic excuse-making for not signing-up for military service, Goldberg also
leans on the self-revising
defense of "Armchair Generals" served-up by Christopher Hitchens. (Hitchens has recently typed a
similar defense of older war-lovers who carefully shield their own children from military service while constantly calling on other people's children to fight and die in their stead.)
Well I, too, can lean on
a Hitchens essay, but in this instance for making a case against Goldberg and his fellow chickenhawks:
...On television and in their syndicated columns, leading conservatives like George "Triumph of the" Will excoriate liberals for their reluctance to use force and for their generally bleeding-heart attitude. Meanwhile, the glistening pectorals of Sylvester Stallone have become inescapable as Rambo stalks the land, growling out of the side of his mouth about the stab in the back that "our boys" received from unnamed pointy-heads.
But, as Kipling showed long ago, patriotism and jingoism are not by any means the same thing. Jane Mayer in The Wall Street Journal, and the less surprising Jack Newfield in The Village Voice, decided to take a look... What they found was what social scientists might call an inverse correlation. The louder a man shouts for bombing and strafing, the less likely he is to have felt the weight of a pack. There are pitiful examples of this, like the former Reaganite Congressman Bruce Caputo, who actually fabricated a Vietnam War record, deceived even his own staff, and was finally given the breeze by the electorate he had hoodwinked. And there are grandiose examples, like the President himself, who convinced Yitzhak Shamir that he had personally taken part in the liberation of the concentration camps, and who repeated the story to other auditors until his handlers and speechwriters admitted that he had never left Hollywood between Pearl Harbor and Potsdam. Mostly, though, the proponents of militarism are simply inglorious.
Congressman [Bob] Dornan, for example, turned out to have been rather a cautious reservist throughout the Vietnam War. Congressman [Dan] Lundgren, he of the Contras and the tae kwon do, was eligible for the draft between 1964 and 1970, but now says: "I had a knee injury from football." Newt Gingrich, who last year told Congress, "I am the very tough-minded son of a career soldier," was eligible from 1961 to 1969 but took the prudent course of a student deferment and told The Wall Street Journal: "What difference would I have made? There was a bigger battle in Congress than in Vietnam." Arguably true, but since he took part in neither... Best of all, from the aesthetic point of view, is Sylvester Stallone himself. He dodged the draft in the most agreeable possible way, hiding in Switzerland as coach to a private school for girls...
..And there's nothing wrong in wishing that you had had a good war, but something, well, rum about pretending that you did. Something rummer still about defaming those who opposed the last war or who are unenthusiastic about the next.
The green-eyed monster must be at work somewhere. As it happens, the leading "doves" (ludicrous term) have rather more to show on their chests and sleeves. The new Senator from Massachusetts, for example, John Kerry, was a renowned officer in Vietnam but also helped found Vietnam Veterans Against the War. George McGovern was a decorated bomber pilot in World War II. Congressman Andrew Jacobs, who originated the idea of calling the rightist bluffers "war wimps," was a marine in Korea.
And the coincidences are extraordinary. Look into the past of any rabid patriot of the moment -- and you will find that they wrangled a job at the base. There never was such a collection of bad knees, weak lungs, urgent academic priorities, or, as in the case of Stallone, sheer bloody gall...
...The open secret about the American Armed Forces is that, by rank and file, they are composed of poor blacks, Hispanics, and rural whites... Both sides wage class war on the point: the Right by suggesting that the liberals are out of touch with "grass-roots America" and the liberals by alleging that the Right only fancies the plebians as cannon fodder.
...[E]verybody agrees, somewhere in his heart, that there ought to be some connection between what you believe and how you behave, what you advocate for others and how you live yourself. At the moment, the gap is more conspicuous in the case of the summer soldiers and sunshine patriots...
This was published in late summer 1985 by the
Spectator (U.K.).
I should pause to note that in one important aspect, Hitchens has not revised himself. In parts that I excised, he firmly states his opposition to the word he admits is superficially amusing (enough so, it seems, that he used it as the essays's title) but, on reflection, decides is too vulgar and philistine to be used decently: "chickenhawks". All the same, the arguments above against rightwing hypocrisy and cowardice hold up nicely -- which, of course, cannot be said of Hitchens himself.
Still, though, without saying the word, he can continue to call spades spades provided the chickenhawks in question are not the Republican fuckwits who are his new allies.
Here's Hitchens reporting on Iran:
But Iran's problem is not a surplus of orphans. It is, rather, that the country is afflicted with a vast population of grieving parents and relatives, whose sons and daughters and nephews and nieces were thrown away in the ghastly eight-year war with Saddam Hussein, and who were forced to applaud the evil "human wave" tactics of shady clergymen who promised heaven to the credulous but never cared to risk martyrdom themselves. [My Emphasis.]
He still knows a chickenhawk when he sees one, and can make the essential point, if loathe to use the actual word. He's just not about to deploy the argument against his own newly sacred cows (to mix zoological metaphors) in Washington.
But then Hitchens himself is not the point. Rather, the point is that the 101st Keyboard Kowards lean on his self-revisionist defences of their current armchair cowardice and boffo hypocrisy without knowing or caring to know that his better arguments condemn them (via their immediate political ancestors) for the same reasons.
It's one thing that wingnuts are such
jock-sniffers as well as so bitterly envious of those among their political enemies who have served bravely and with distinction (Kerry, Clark); it's another thing altogether that they affect such martial attitudes from the safety of their parents' basements for the purpose of enabling policies and actions which get other people, and other people's children, killed. Practice what you preach, wingnuts, or shut the fuck up.
***
Update: See
Crooked Timber and
Roger Ailes.
I'm Not Done YetJust to clarify:
Raich and
Kelo aren't that bad. The Commerce Clause
should be "big" and eminent domain must be in the government's power. The principles are fine.
The specifics suck, of course. But it only means that we need to fight this stuff on the legislative front, which is exactly where it belongs.
With regard to the specifics of
Kelo, we now have a poster child for the affect of Big Business on local politics.
Through principles that relate to
Kelo, we can fight this via a counterattack, or, otherwise, simply by grassroots campaigns for good goverment (which we should be doing anyway).
With regard to the specifics of
Raich, parodoxically, we now have a "means" by which to address the medical marajuana/drug decriminalisation issue nationally. This has to be done at the federal level, and with the coming post-Watergate-esque reaction to the
Police Torture State, our chances will be better than they have been since the original post-Watergate era.
Right now, the political culture is very much authoritarian. But, with Iraq and with all the Bush corruption and depravity coming out, the pendulum will swing the other way. The late 00s will be very much like the late 70s: culturally "permissive", fascists forced underground, political and governmental dirty tricks at relative minimum. Unfortunately, the economy, thanks to Bush's insanity, will also resemble that era's. I'll take it, though.
Primary SourcesI've blogged
a bit lately on the wingnuts' "stab in the back" rhetoric, how it's a throwback to the post-Vietnam era, and how that, in turn, shows just what the situation in Iraq has become.
By now you've heard of Karl Rove's recent commentary, which aims to be the biggest, baddest bit of scapegoating yet.
Rove and the Repugs didn't invent "The Stab in The Back" schtick from whole cloth, but then neither did the neocons of the late 70s and early 80s who made it such an important part of their anti-60s platform.
This is their source.
Stars In His CoursesShelby Foote passes away:
MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) -- Novelist and historian Shelby Foote, whose Southern storyteller's touch inspired millions to read his multivolume work on the Civil War, has died. He was 88.
Foote died Monday night, his widow, Gwyn, said Tuesday.
Foote, a Mississippi native and longtime Memphis resident, wrote six novels but is best remembered for his three-volume, 3,000-page history of the Civil War and his appearance on the PBS series "The Civil War."
He worked on the book for 20 years, using a flowing, narrative style that enabled readers to enjoy it like a historical novel.
[...]
Though hardly a recluse, Foote had long been known around Memphis as having little interest in parties and public gatherings. And he was often outspoken about his likes and dislikes.
"Most people, if the truth be told, are gigantic bores," he once said. "There's no need to subject yourself to that kind of thing."
It is said that the losing side produces the best histories, and the Mississippian Foote would seem to buttress that claim.
As far as I know, Foote's number was always in the phone book, and I want to say he lived in Northtown, but now that I think about it, that may not be right (Chickasaw Gardens area, rather?) At any rate, he was old-fashioned and private; he shunned callers. These are high virtues, which most people respected -- and that is really saying something for an almost pathologically history-conscious town like Memphis.
It was nice knowing that such a grand old man of Southern literature and historiography lived in town. So long, Mr. Foote.
Kelo's Froot LoopsWhile I can find no one who really likes the
Supreme Court's recent Kelo decision, there are a few, mostly on the left, who come down with a "it's not
that bad" verdict, while the majority -- mostly on the right, but with a few leftists several populists and many centrists thrown in -- seem to view it as a sign of the apocalypse.
Count me in the former group. I don't like
Kelo, but it's not the worst thing that could happen.
Atrios has the same attitude, and for the same reasons (which I'll get to shortly). Tim, the
Answer Guy, at first denounces the verdict, then seems to moderate his take on it at his post's conclusion.
When Liberals like
Brad R. worry that this decision aids the Rich in using the government "like an ATM machine", I take them at their word. Yes, that is the worry; it's something to take very seriously.
Atrios was right to call his post "semi-contrarian". Brad's post, and the sentiments behind it, are about par for the course for the decent side of the blogosphere.
I was helped greatly in fleshing out my own sentiments by participating in a
Primer thread that became devoted to the subject. Since it was Primer, many lawyers joined in.
On the other hand, reading the reactions of the rightwing has been a real pleasure; one comes across posts of disappointment, incredulity, and (as is typical) hypocrisy. Starting with the last first,
TBOGG catches Jonah Goldberg helpfully advising Bush to push the Ownership Society argument in opposing
Kelo. What's funny, and what Goldberg knows full-well but hopes everyone else will forget is that George W. Bush owes his own fortune to greasing a local government into abusing its eminent domain powers:
In 1993, while walking through the stadium, Bush told the Houston Chronicle, "When all those people in Austin say, 'He ain't never done anything,' well, this is it." But Bush would have never gotten the stadium deal off the ground if the city of Arlington had not agreed to use its power of eminent domain to seize the property that belonged to the Mathes family. And evidence presented in the Mathes lawsuit suggests that the Rangers' owners -- remember that Bush was the managing general partner -- were conspiring to use the city's condemnation powers to obtain the thirteen-acre tract a full six months before the ASFDA was even created.
Hindsocket, meanwhile,
says:
There is a sense in which it is perfectly logical to say that the democratically elected branches of government are in the best position to decide what is a legitimate "public use," and the courts shouldn't second-guess those decisions. And in many contexts, we conservatives do argue that the courts should defer to legislatures and local governments. The problem here is that accepting that principle would read the relevant language out of the Fifth Amendment. If anything that a state legislature or city government calls a "public use" is, ipso facto, a public use, then the constitutional protection is gone.
Actually, it's not gone: the government still has to pay fair compensation. But I do enjoy Hindsocket's grasping for states' rights exceptionalism here. His fear is palpable. Hindsocket, and most of the rest of the wingnuts and objectively pro-wingnut libertarians, don't give a shit about these people's houses -- or, indeed, any person's houses but their own and the mansions of the plutocrats they serve. What he does care about is that eminent domain could also be used to seize, condemn, or forcibly move
business property -- the holiest of holies. What Wal-Mart can bribe a local government to give, a concerned and energised electorate could in theory take away. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
Instayokel reports that, aside from a few who echo Jonah's sentiments, most (of Reynolds's fellow) wingnuts are mopey over the decision.
One is already panicking about the poor vulnerable churches that sit on primo real estate. Yeah, well,
fuck them.
The real delight is found in reading the reactions of the libertarians.
My favorite, whose devotion to property rights is so great that he
prefers the Chinese Constitution to America's, is
so despondent that I fear his delusions of being the
Kira Argounova of America may be pushed to the breaking point, whereby it's possible that he may try to swim the Pacific, away from liberals and the Federal Guv'ment, to freedom in sweet totalitarian-but-property-protecting China. Don't do it, man! Though I doubt he has much to fear from sharks (they can recognise one of their own), even a self-regarding ubermensch should find that swim daunting, and besides, while salt water may do wonders in unsticking the pages of the masturbatory fodder (
Atlas Shrugged,
Free To Choose, pictures of dead Palestinians, Nozick, Old JDL and Kach Party propaganda) that serves as his library, it can't be good for its bindings.
Anyway, depressed:
Mark Twain was right
No man's life, liberty or property is safe while the legislature is in session.
This is an auspicious beginning from a "libertarian" who continually sneers at anti-imperialists who are very much in the
tradition of Twain. More to the point, Twain's comment was directed to the Gilded Age Robber Barons, and their whores in Congress; it takes some chutzpah for Nieporent to quote a man who was attacking the surrogates of Nieporent's beloved Gilded Age ubermensches -- who was, indeed, attacking the very system and epoch that libertarians consider Eden.
Quoting Justice Stevens' majority opinion: "Promoting economic development is a traditional and long accepted function of government." He just left out the word "Soviet" before government. Wasn't it liberals who used to find the statement, "What's good for General Motors is good for America" to be odious? Now they've enshrined it as official Constitutional policy.
Yes, we did and yes, we do. However, the attitude in that statement represented the de facto status quo, which conservatives and libertarians always considered a
good thing. What, now that it's "official", you shy away from it?
I love the "Soviet" slag, so redolent of that other self-described ubermensch, Gordon Liddy, in
Dick when he warned the heroines that when they grew up, they'd "be living in the Soviet Union of America!"
But speaking of commies, there is something to be said of the old Marxist wish for events that "heighten the contradictions", hopefully to bring about revolution more quickly. (I would substitute "reform" for revolution, however.) Now that "What's Good For General Motors Is What's Good For America" is official, is out in the open, it can't be denied by those robber baron fuckwits that so many libertarians identify with and, shamelessly, enable. As the saying goes, sunlight is the best disinfectant. What
Kelo can give,
Kelo can end up taking away.
Anyway, as I said, I'm depressed right now. With the exception of the confirmation of Janice Rogers Brown to the federal bench, this has not been a good year for libertarians. Social Security privatization is stalled, federalism is deader than Terri Schiavo, the drug war remains in full effect, and private property exists only at the sufferance of local government, bought and paid for by real estate developers and other big businesses.
I'm not above stooping to
schadenfreude. Therefore I point and laugh that such counter-revolutionists are having so difficult a time. But niether am I without sympathy: this is a new experience for them, after all. Since the 80s, they have been steadily at war not just with the New Deal and with the Progressive Era reforms, but with original "big government" concepts of the Founders. If people like Nieporent had their way, there would be no commerce clause, no power of public domain. It's not just that these idiots see Stalinism in, say, the Food Stamp program and that they long for the days of no Child Labor Laws and no Pure Food and Drug Act, they also want to repeal
all government power of property. On the other hand, with regard to government power over life and liberty... well in a time of war (wink, nudge) they're ever ready to compromise.
What is it about libertarians and most conservatives that makes them so different from us? Another libertarian,
digamma, channeling a
Right-Thinking post, gives the game away. Though his post is a joke (his penultimate punchline was lame, I thought, but his throwaway line at the end was rather funny and redeems the whole), the philosophical bias behind it is deadly serious. He regards as equivalent the anti-flag burning law with the Court's decision in
Kelo. At a deeper level, what is equivalent to a libertarian is the right to property to the right of political expression. We are different, then, in that we regard the latter as a human right and the former as an important right but a comparatively lesser one. Some of us regard the equasion of
any lesser right with a human right to be a de facto cheapening of the more important right. And as a result this cheapening, we believe, certain inevitablities come to pass.
I posit that
Kelo officially expresses what was long unofficial;
Kelo is the inevitable product of the longterm beneficiaries of the libertarian "property uber alles" attitude's coalescence of power. In such a system as ours, political power inevitably accrues to those with the most property. Big Business has been wedded to the state since the Gilded Age;
Kelo merely acknowledges the fact.
Look, I
do think it should be exceedingly difficult for the state to appropriate homes. But I
don't think the state should be denied power of eminent domain. The first thing that makes me different from a libertarian is that I believe that not only are property rights subordinate to human rights (life, liberty, privacy), but that there is a heirarchy of property rights. I think my friend Backlasher laid it out well:
I... believe property has a hierarchy: Principal residence, real, miscellaneous chattel, and wealth.
I... imagine each of those categories have a scale.
I think these rights of the individual should be preserved by the state. I just don't go as far as the libs and believe they should be preserved at all costs.
To infringe on those individual rights, the state must have a need, and as you move up the scale, the need has to become larger and larger.
There is nothing unique or novel about this position. I'd opine it is the basis of most of western law. Its just on this one decision, I think we had the wrong endpoint.
He's right; this is how it should be and, in fact, was
meant to be. I think most lefties would agree. On the other hand, to libertarians and most conservatives, all these property rights are equal in theory to each other and to the rights of life, liberty, privacy (human rights), but when push comes to shove, it's the human rights that are abandoned.
Moreover, there is a heirarchy of
ownership status. I believe the state has less of a duty and less of an interest in respecting the property rights of corporations than it does of flesh and blood individuals. Jefferson thought this, though he saw the danger too late; Marshall probably held the reverse opinion, yet the anti-Jeffersonian protections did not truly extend until ...the libertarian paradise of the Gilded Age. Libertarians and conservatives, agreeing with a corrupt Gilded Age Supreme Court decision, believe that corporations and humans have an equal basis for ownership; in this, too, they cheapen humanity.
I've said that most on the right don't care about the people named in
Kelo losing their homes, and I think that's true in most cases. Again, I believe their real aim is protecting Big Business, which had a better time of it moseying along under cover pre-
Kelo, getting pretty much what it wanted. This may seem counterintuitive because the obvious beneficiary of
Kelo are Rich developers, but then again, most of the complaints are by people smart enough to see that the
Kelo that gives can end up being the
Kelo that takes away. They would have prefered the old way where Wal-Mart, say, used its $hadow influence over the local polity to get everything it wants. Again, their problem with
Kelo lies in its "officialness". But for the odd wingnut who doesn't operate in bad faith,
Kelo is still what you deserve.
The problem here is not
Kelo, nor is it with the people of Connecticut who elected the corrupt politicians who wish to perfrom the land-grab, which conservatives/libertarians are quick to blame, as is their wont (they do have the greatest contempt for democracy: euphemised as "the State" to make it sound as if they are righteous communist dissidents). The problem actually has more to do with the inevitable products of their philosophy: a political system they themselves have poisoned and continue to defend the poisoning of.
If one is outraged that the Rich can manipulate elected politicians into seizing desirable property, it is not democracy's fault nor is it the fault of the righteous state power of eminent domain: rather, it is the fault of the Rich and the politicians. Destroy this symbiosis, by which I mean, make them hostile to each other as entities, and our problem will be lessened. Why do politicians elected by the public do favors for the Rich? Because they are bribed, legally, a practice that every awful libertarian and conservative will defend with his dying breath. Well, fukkos, this is what
you get. The relevant politicians of Connecticut's corruption is simply the result of the stupid, crass, and cynical libertarian/conservative corruption of the concept of free political speech and expression. Thus, more "speech", more influence, accrues to those with the most money. That the servants in this process, the politicians, deliver quid to this quo in the form of land-grabs, is entirely the fault of the very libertarians/conservatives now decrying
Kelo.
In the current context,
Kelo just means that the biggest businesses that can purchase the biggest politicians can, through the state, swallow smaller businesses' and individuals' property. Well, again, that's what you get with such a system. The nasty symbiosis between business and government inevitably tends to bigness, and conservatives and nutjob libertarians have only themselves to blame for it.
There is no longer a 4th Amendment in the age of Gonzales; why shouldn't the hesitation traditionally read in the 5th be too flushed down the toilet? What's good for the goose is good for the gander, right? Some of us warned that authoritarianism was ascendant, but conservatives and far too many libertarians didn't listen; they just wanted to get rich, get a tax cut and kill sum a-rahbs. Sorry, wingnuts, but you helped change the zeitgeist by accelerating the processes by which you had already soiled this political system; this is your just dessert.
Obama Slamma JammaBarack Obama
wants the Senate to do what
Bernie Sanders led the House in doing: stop that part of the PATRIOT Act that allows spooks to raid library and bookstore records.
Libraries should be "sanctuaries of learning where we are free to read and consider what we please without the fear that 'Big Brother' may be peering over our shoulder," Obama said in the keynote address at the American Library Association's annual conference.
Well, yeah. Bonus points for the Big Brother reference, which is exactly what this is about.
The
ALA, and their supporters such as Arthur Fonzarelli, are pleased and hopeful.
David Gelertner, however, whose attitude and visage are so similar to
Muqtada al-Sadr's (though without, of course, Mr. Sadr's aspect of physical and moral bravery)*, thinks that the efforts of the Librarians, Sanders, Obama, and civil libertarians
are misguided and dangerous. For good measure, he adds the accusation that the civil libertarians are cynical and partisan: if they really were concerned about Big Brother, says Gelertner, they'd focus on the IRS. Uh-huh.
*By which I mean, both are corpulent troglodyte reactionaries, but at least Sadr will put himself in harm's way for his beliefs.
Better Late Than Never?Okay, so I didn't come back. Damned if that ebay crap doesn't take a lot of time. But, also, I've just been lazy: dog days aren't supposed to be until August but it feels like them already, 90+ degrees every day here for over a week.
I want to take this opportunity to thank those few who read my rants here: Michael Humphreys, Cap'n Redneck, Meds, Dayn, digamma, Tim, Aunt Jenna, The Sadlys, mithras, Tom. I also should thank those who are nice enough to read my blog because they know me in real life: Tgun and poly.
Mucho grassyass!
Me! I Disconnect From You!Sorry for the absence. Probably no more blogging for one more day, then I should be back at it. I'm listing a bunch of crap on ebay (I need some spendin' muhney fer July 4) and that, friends, takes all my attention. Like most men, I can't multitask for shit.
See ya tomorrow, for sure.
Al-Qaeda? Pssh, The FBI Has Bigger Fish To FryLike animal rights and environmental groups:
Violence by environmental and animal rights extremists against U.S. drug makers has increased so much in recent years that it's currently the
FBI's top domestic terrorism issue, a top agency official says
Well, if the unthinkable happens, it won't
be Leftists' fault after all.
The mind reels at "what if?" analogies.
It would be.. as if the CIA had said that the biggest communist threat was from Albania. Or, like the US Marshals saying that the biggest threat to law & order is the removal of mattress labels. Like the DOE saying that the biggest hinderance to education is the chewing gum stuck under school desks. Like Ann Coulter saying that "her" top concern is pastry-chucking liberals and not the syphilis spirochete that swims through "her" own brainstem. Oh, wait...
Anyway, a few comments:
-- This is the Bush creeps' message to Big Pharma: we're with you all the way.
-- I hate PETA types, and regard them as a considerable annoyance, but they aren't fucking terrorists. The FBI's domestic terrorism concerns should be over the abortion clinic-bombing American Taleban, or over the White Supremacist fucktards out west. Naturally, these folks are
too close to Important Republican Constituencies, so that ain't gonna happen.
-- As these "terrorists" have attacked property and not people (admitedly, there is a "so far" element to that statement, but then their attacking people is not the inevitability that wingnuts claim), the philosophy therefore exhibited by the "reformed" post 9-11 Bushie FBI is one of militant Friedmanism -- by which I mean that it radically (via a bastardisation of Locke) asserts that property rights are not just equal to civil rights but are indivisible from them. Pushed to its logical extreme, it means that attacking the neighbour's shrubbery, say, is morally equivalent to attacking their person. Of course, that such people equate humanity with human possessions just shows what crass and depraved fuckwads they are, but then we are talking about the libertarian strain of Republicanism, here, so it's very fitting. Yes, the old socialist adage is true: the ruling class really does care more about property than people.
-- It might as well be said: al-qaeda and Osama bin Laden are the ultimate, in both the
political and literal sense, cash cows for the spooks and Republicans. Would it be too tacky for me to mention that a certain interest is served by Porter Goss's
laughable foot-dragging and fretting over Pakistan's sovereignty, and by the FBi's choosing to emphasise the environmentalist and animal rights groups over all others?
It Makes Me All Melty InsideIs it possible to write a blog post that bitchslaps Roger L. Simon, the libertarian fucktards at
Reason, Jonah Goldberg, and that faux-liberal Kevin Drum all at once?
Yes.
As you might have guessed, I quite like it.
He's Pre-emptive!Local blogger
autoegocrat shares a juicy Limbaugh quote:
Let me tell you something, folks, if we are hit again [with a terrorist attack - R.], if we are hit again, we need to hold these people in our country who are undermining our efforts responsible. It ain't going to be the FBI's fault next time. It isn't going to be the CIA's fault next time. It isn't going to be some bureaucracy's fault next time. It's going to be the fault of politicians, left-wing groups and the like who have names and identities and spend their every waking moment trying to obstruct our ability to secure intelligence information for our own national security.
You want some names: [Sen. Patrick] Leahy [D-VT], [Sen. Joseph R.] Biden [D-DE], [Sen. Richard J.] Durbin [D-IL], [Sen. Barbara] Boxer [D-CA], [Sen. Edward] Kennedy [D-MA], [Senate Majority Leader Harry] Reid [D-NV], Newsweek, Time, The New York Times, Amnesty International. If we get hit again, these are the names of the people and organizations we need to look at when we're trying to find out why and how it happened.
That must be the best "
stab in the back" bit of scapegoating since Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell laid the blame for 9-11 on homosexuality and abortion, yet Limbaugh is beyond even these louts in that such a second attack hasn't even happened. Like his Dear Leader, then, Rush is pre-emptive.
autoegocrat makes all the right points; read his post.
Relatedly,
Wolcott has found a wingnut "stab in the back" argument that gives Limbaugh's, Robertson's and Falwell's some genuine competition.
Overload, Pleasure OverloadI've wasted a bit of time playing the greatest video game ever, GTA-Vice City, over the last couple of years, but I still haven't played its sequel, GTA-San Andreas.
The exuberant violence of these games is a great stress-reliever.
Roomie, however, being a much bigger gamer than I, has had it a while now and is, of course, addicted. By his account the music and layout isn't as good as Vice City. But the vehicles are better. Oh, yeah, I say, how?
Well, he told me, one can steal a combine, run over pedestrians and cops with it, scoop them up in the header, and spew chunks of their bodies out the back (through the straw chopper).
OMG. I must play this game!
Growing up on a farm, with such heavy and imposing machinery around, one's imagination as a child ran wild -- with fear and awe, mostly.
Later, as a teenager and young adult, since I was scrawny and limber, I was most often designated as "monkey", the guy who climbed onto and into the frame and guts of these steel beasts to fix what I was told to fix. I'm fairly claustrophobic, so this was definitely a creepy experience. What if some nutter started this thing up while I'm in here?
Farming's incredibly dangerous -- a cousin's cousin was nearly killed a few years ago whilst working on a planter's marker arm. Most accidents on the farm, I'd guess, are caused by open driveshafts: we were all shown this gruesome scenario in an FFA film. I know a guy who lost a leg from a cabless tractor accident. An in-law's brother was killed by a cabless Massey flipping over on him. I know a local old man whose John Deere MT model flipped on top of him, pinning him for a long while and tearing his guts up real good. While riding on the fender of a JD 4020, my own leg was grabbed by the tire and pulled underneath the fender; thankfully, the tractor wasn't going too fast, and I grabbed hold on the seat tight and screamed for the driver to stop before the tire could pull me off. Danger, danger. (Fortunately, we didn't have the sorts of silos that are common on most farms, so the scary scenes in
Witness and
Dark Night of the Scarecrow weren't so nightmare-inducing as they might have been.)
Therefore it's with a certain bravado that I want to play that game. To sort of sneer at the fear that is ground into one who has grown up on the farm. I was about 7 or 8 when I first did something stupid but liberating in response to this fear. While my grandfather was working the field around the house, I ran out and grabbed a plow on the last row of the implement, letting it drag me on my belly through the soft earth. It was such a rush. I got in trouble, of course, but now I can tell that it was hard for him to really get on my case since he saw what a blast I was having. I was just forbidden to do it again. Sure, GTA-San Andreas is just a game, but the psychological purpose remains.
Here's a screenshot of the combine; it looks like a 6600 with a 30ft header somehow stuck on it -- the better, presumably, for scooping up baddies.
Surprise! They Are Stalinists!Via
Atrios, who's really been on fire lately, comes this
excellent little expose' on
Washington Times owner Rev. Sun Myung Moon's connection to North Korea's Kim Jong-Il:
An American Prospect investigation reveals that The Washington Times offices, housed in an imposing building on a northeast Washington strip otherwise known for tire shops and fast-food joints, serve as the base of operations for Moon’s diplomatic missions to his homeland. Moreover, the paper itself has served as an instrument of Moon’s partnership with the communist regime. Throughout the 1990s, as Western observers predicted that the Kim dynasty that rules North Korea would collapse for lack of hard currency reserves, the Moon organization invested tens of millions of dollars, which apparently included payments made before U.S. sanctions eased in 1999.
The Japanese press has accused Moon of involvement in an arms deal that appears to have enhanced North Korean missile-tube research -- a serious charge, considering recent fears about the advancement of North Korea’s missile-range capabilities. Indeed, Moon’s connections with the Kim regime have long been a matter of active concern for the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA).
Yet Moon remains a Washington political powerhouse in his own right, a generous friend of the Bush family, and a patron of religious-right and other conservative causes. Now 85 years old, he oversees a secretive international empire of media, religious, real-estate, commercial, and industrial entities, as well as a shifting maze of front groups with far more names than leaders.
Yes, read the whole thing; it's great.
Now, I seem to remember, during the run-up to the war, arguing with a certain rightwing jackass (
ahem) who tried his very best to smear the whole protest movement as "objectively pro-Saddam", "America-hating", "useful idiots" and "Stalinist" because of its occasional and tenuous association with Ramsey Clark's ANSWER, which takes a perversely cheery line with Pyongyang. Yet this new revelation of Moon having legitmately friendly tie$ with Kim (which, I think, most on the left had intuited already) provides a nice opportunity, with much more of a factual basis, for me to turn the argument around, with a nice "fuck you" added for good measure.
There is linkage here. Moon, a propagandist for the Republican Party and G. W. Bush in particular, has financial dealings with the last
Stalinist country on earth.
***
The first cult people I ever saw, or learned about, were Moonies. I never saw Hari Krishnas in Memphis, but Moonies used to sell roses on many intersections around town. "Mom, who are those people?" "Moonies. They are brainwashed, Josh." After that explanation, I couldn't stop staring whenever I'd see them, looking for the vacant eyes of the zombie. Amazing how one can learn truths at such a young age.
Jeb's JabsDear Leader's brother (and heir-apparent), continues his cynical meddling in the
Schiavo affair:
LARGO - Refusing to give up on the Terri Schiavo case, Gov. Jeb Bush has asked Pinellas prosecutors to sort out time discrepancies Michael Schiavo has provided regarding the hour he found his wife unconscious 15 years ago.
State Attorney Bernie McCabe has agreed to review the time elements in the case, his chief assistant, Bruce Bartlett, said Thursday.
Of course.
Jefferson famously said that "the earth belongs to the living"; Jeb obviously subscribes to the contrary philosophy. Though the concept of a necrocracy is not unfamiliar to those of us who have grown weary of the brain-dead politics of the Bush klan, Jeb, as envious younger-brother, perhaps has more ambition in this regard than even Dear Leader or Dear Leader's Father.
Jeb's sympathy may have been elicited when the plug was pulled on Ms Schiavo's Bush-like intellect, but the younger Bush's actions and rhetoric over the Schiavo affair outdid even the most cynical among congressional Repugs -- save Dr Frist and Tom DeLay, who cannot be outdone.
Maybe Jeb is a cynical idealist -- an oxymoronic description, but also true -- a fairly common type among politicians.
One thing's for sure, he doesn't care about
the living:
Last month, we reported here about Jeb Bush's courtroom efforts to crush the life of an abused, poverty-stricken 6-year-old girl in his gubernatorial satrapy of Florida. Later, against all odds, a jury of ordinary citizens thwarted the dynast's brutal will. But as befits a scion of the ruling family, Bush is now brushing aside this interference from the rabble and pressing ahead with his plans to strip the little girl of all public assistance.
Bush's minions went to court earlier this year in a bid to cut off medical aid to Marissa Amora, who, at the age of 2, had been abandoned by Jeb's "Department of Children and Families" despite overwhelming evidence of horrific past abuse -- and the imminent danger of more to come. More came. Within weeks, she was beaten almost to death; then Jeb's agents tried to stop her medical treatment and let her die. She survived their malign intervention and is now thriving with a new family -- but still suffers from permanent, catastrophic damage caused by the entirely predictable beating she received after the DCF cast her aside.
Read the whole thing. It's marvelously wrathful. Fuck Jeb Bush.
**Added: Read
Aunt Jenna.
There Be Prudes At This JunctureMount Sterling prepares for "Testicle Festival", but some people are shocked, shocked by such a reference to zoological anatomy:
The festival, which will feature beef, pork, lamb and turkey testicles, even has a motto: "Come one, come all, let's have a ball." The festival gets under way at 1 p.m. and runs until about midnight. Besides the feature food, there is a motorcycle show at 2:30 p.m., a drag queen contest at 5 p.m., kids' games and live music. Proceeds will go to several charitable causes.
Other similar festivals exist. For example, Byron, Ill., located near Rockford, has its annual turkey testicle festival in October.
Huston purchased the Sportsman's Club last year and decided to expand the festival into the street outside. A banner was hung across U.S. Highway 24 proclaiming the "Sportsman's Club Testicle Festival."
The banner split the town into two camps. Several churches started petition drives. Eventually the banner was taken down. Of course, the controversy brought with it plenty of snickers and quite a bit of media coverage.
The Rev. Matt Martin, pastor of Cornerstone Christian Church in Mount Sterling, said his church didn't object to the festival itself.
"We just didn't feel like we wanted a word like that floating along Main Street," he says.
Oh,
do STFU. You know, it's only natural that Bush and the Repugs want us to go back to the 1870s, government and economic policy wise, because their idiot consitutency is equally atavistic with cultural matters. This sort of priggish bullshit died with the Victorians; trust the fundamentalist Christians to keep the flame alive.
Where's PETA When You Need Them?Because George Bush has been abusing his poodle, Mr Blair.
He's forcing a
watered down version of the upcoming G8 summit proclamation on climate change, Tony Blair's baby with which he hopes to win back some political capital with his constituency:
A June 14th draft of the proposed G8 statement provided to The Associated Press has brackets around disputed language, including assertions that the impact of global warming already is being felt in Africa, small islands, the Arctic and other regions.
Bracketed portions include statements that the world is warming, human activity is mostly to blame and developed economies must lead the fight against the problem.
"While there will always be some uncertainty, inertia in the climate system means we cannot afford to postpone action if we are to manage the risk of irreversible change," reads one sentence in contention.
The political pressure to delete that language comes directly from Bush administration officials, say environmental advocates who have talked with G8 leaders' negotiators.
"All of the changes in the June 14 draft are the result of the White House refusing to be part of any statement that says that action on climate change is urgent, that impacts are already being felt, and that the science is strong," said Philip Clapp, president of National Environmental Trust.
"The president refuses still to acknowledge that reducing global warming pollution is urgent, and that the developed nations have a responsibility to take the lead in reducing it," he said Friday.
Blair needs a strong statement at G8, but Bush ain't about to let him have it.
Poor Brits, what saps! But then why should Bush be honest with them? They too are pawns in the
Great Straussian Game of Vietnam Redux:
American officials lied to British ministers over the use of "internationally reviled" napalm-type firebombs in Iraq.
Yesterday's disclosure led to calls by MPs for a full statement to the Commons and opened ministers to allegations that they held back the facts until after the general election.
Despite persistent rumours of injuries among Iraqis consistent with the use of incendiary weapons such as napalm, Adam Ingram, the Defence minister, assured Labour MPs in January that US forces had not used a new generation of incendiary weapons, codenamed MK77, in Iraq.
But Mr Ingram admitted to the Labour MP Harry Cohen in a private letter obtained by The Independent that he had inadvertently misled Parliament because he had been misinformed by the US. "The US confirmed to my officials that they had not used MK77s in Iraq at any time and this was the basis of my response to you," he told Mr Cohen. "I regret to say that I have since discovered that this is not the case and must now correct the position."
Ooops, huh.
Napalm. I suppose we should be thankful that Iraq is a desert and so unnecessary to defoliate with Agent Orange.
Anyway, Lies, Lies, Lies. And it's obvious that Bush, if he had a plan for reconstruction,
didn't share it with the Brits:
On March 25 Straw wrote a memo to Blair, saying he would have a tough time convincing the governing Labour Party that a pre-emptive strike against Iraq was legal under international law.
"If 11 September had not happened, it is doubtful that the U.S. would now be considering military action against Iraq," Straw wrote. "In addition, there has been no credible evidence to link Iraq with OBL (Osama bin Laden) and al-Qaida."
He also questioned stability in a post-Saddam Iraq: "We have also to answer the big question what will this action achieve? There seems to be a larger hole in this than on anything."
So much for the "we wanted democracy all along" argument. But then I'm pretty sure that Bush wished to install Chalabi from the start. Small wonder Wolfy & Crew didn't share post-war plans with their faithful servants in Albion.
The Virgin Ben Strikes BackUpset, perhaps even crying, from his bunker of chastity amply stocked with kleenex and Vaseline, Ben Shapiro
lets the meanies who have made fun of him know that he's not gonna take it anymore:
Those with values are under attack in a culture that treasures "tolerance" above morality. It's no wonder that because of my outspoken advocacy of traditional morality in general and of virginity in particular, I've become a favorite target of Internet leftists, who often refer to me as "The Virgin Ben."
The Internet is riddled with writing like this: "In [Ben's] case, it is helpful to remember that some people choose celibacy, while others have it thrust upon them. Poor Ben. He no more chose abstinence than Clarence Thomas chose to be black." "The Virgin Ben also apparently has never had a really great Saturday night …" "The Virgin Ben, indeed. This guy's 'interview' so completely reeks of repression that I almost feel violated having read it. Like I stepped into someone else's wet dream. It's freakin' eerie, man." "You know I'm starting to feel sorry for this kid. I look into his future and I can see that not once is he ever going to get to have really good hot sweaty sex with Miss Scarlet in the parlor with a bottle of lube. That kind of sex may not approach godliness, but for a few brief moments and a lifetime of memories, it sure feels like it."
Such heated, inarticulate and unreasoned hatred for moral standards should not be shocking. Social liberalism seeks to promote a "live and let live" society wherein all types of deviant behavior is tolerated and accepted.
And he had to shave his palms to type all that out.
The Worst Of The WorstStupid:
Ms. Chang is very, very hard on Mao, whom she draws as a monster. Well, he was a monster. The only really interesting question about his monstrousness is where it ranks in the 20th-century scale, among Hitler, Stalin, and the rest.
Personally I'd rank him rather low. China being such a populous nation, he had a lot more material to work with than most dictators. Macias Nguema of Equatorial Guinea murdered around a quarter of his country's population (and likely ate several of them); but it didn't notice, since that's a small country. Similarly with Pol Pot. Mao was trying out crackpot social experiments on 800 million people, so when the eggs turned into a mess instead of an omelet, the mess was tremendous. Just the famines following the Great Leap Forward of the 1950s saw off 25-30 million souls... but that was only around 3 percent of China's population. You need to decide on some scaling considerations when making these comparisons.
That aside, I have never though Mao was as malicious as, say, Stalin. I am sure he didn't care about the people his policies killed; but I doubt he took actual pleasure in reflecting on their deaths, as I feel sure Stalin did, and probably Hitler, too. Mao's inward reflection on the famine mega-deaths was probably something like: "Darn it, the cadres didn't carry out my instructions properly!" I doubt there was much of an element of: "Well, those people who died were only useless mouths, anyway," which, with Stalin, I feel sure there was. Stalin really seemed to hate peasants. Mao's affection for them was abstract and cold, but I don't think he hated them.
[..]
In any case, the great villain of the age that has gone by was surely Lenin. Perfectly cold-blooded, urging the use of terror as a peacetime political instrument, gleefully contemplating the suffering of "class enemies," teaching Hitler and Mao all their techniques. The whole thing comes back to Lenin. Leszek Kolakowski, in _Main Currents of Marxism_, scoffs at Mao's intellectual attainments as (I am working from memory) "a few regurgitated Leninist cliches."
Derbyshire implies that Kolakowski was making the same judgement in moral degree as he himself is. I don't think so. But, anyway, the point is that Derbyshire wants to blame every 20th Century monster on Lenin. By extention, he wants to make equivalent the ideologies of all these monsters.
Smart:
Till now, to put it straightforwardly, Stalinism hasn’t been rejected in the same way as Nazism. We are fully aware of its monstrous aspects, but still find Ostalgie acceptable: you can make Goodbye Lenin!, but Goodbye Hitler! is unthinkable. Why? To take another example: in Germany, many CDs featuring old East German Revolutionary and Party songs, from ‘Stalin, Freund, Genosse’ to ‘Die Partei hat immer Recht’, are easy to find. You would have to look rather harder for a collection of Nazi songs. Even at this anecdotal level, the difference between the Nazi and Stalinist universes is clear, just as it is when we recall that in the Stalinist show trials, the accused had publicly to confess his crimes and give an account of how he came to commit them, whereas the Nazis would never have required a Jew to confess that he was involved in a Jewish plot against the German nation. The reason is clear. Stalinism conceived itself as part of the Enlightenment tradition, according to which, truth being accessible to any rational man, no matter how depraved, everyone must be regarded as responsible for his crimes. But for the Nazis the guilt of the Jews was a fact of their biological constitution: there was no need to prove they were guilty, since they were guilty by virtue of being Jews.
In the Stalinist ideological imaginary, universal reason is objectivised in the guise of the inexorable laws of historical progress, and we are all its servants, the leader included.
[..]
We do not find in Nazism any equivalent to the dissident Communists who risked their lives fighting what they perceived as the ‘bureaucratic deformation’ of socialism in the USSR and its empire: there was no one in Nazi Germany who advocated ‘Nazism with a human face’. Herein lies the flaw (and the bias) of all attempts, such as that of the conservative historian Ernst Nolte, to adopt a neutral position – i.e. to ask why we don’t apply the same standards to the Communists as we apply to the Nazis. If Heidegger cannot be pardoned for his flirtation with Nazism, why can Lukács and Brecht and others be pardoned for their much longer engagement with Stalinism? This position reduces Nazism to a reaction to, and repetition of, practices already found in Bolshevism – terror, concentration camps, the struggle to the death against political enemies – so that the ‘original sin’ is that of Communism.
[..]
It is here that one has to make a choice. The ‘pure’ liberal attitude towards Leftist and Rightist ‘totalitarianism’ – that they are both bad, based on the intolerance of political and other differences, the rejection of democratic and humanist values etc – is a priori false. It is necessary to take sides and proclaim Fascism fundamentally ‘worse’ than Communism. The alternative, the notion that it is even possible to compare rationally the two totalitarianisms, tends to produce the conclusion – explicit or implicit – that Fascism was the lesser evil, an understandable reaction to the Communist threat.
Read it in its entirety: anything by Zizek is pure gold. Hitchens made a similar, if less devastating, argument against Martin Amis. It's correct, of course, to judge both forms of totalitarianism as wrong, but one is demonstrably more horrible than the other and the distinction cannot be fudged.
No one ever claimed that Hitler betrayed the ideals of Fascism; many claimed that Stalin had betrayed the ideals of the revolution. And so he did.
Now as far as acts go, which is more in tune with Derbyshire's post, there is a distinction between genocides on the grounds of intent. Callous disregard or incompetence or stupidity which killed millions, as in the case of the Great Leap Forward or, more arguably, with the Ukrainian Famine, aren't on a level plane with planned mass murder, much less the planned and intended extermination of a whole ethnic group.
Don't get me wrong, all were horrible and deserve scorn. They all permanently and rightly discredited their ideologies. But Zizek is correct to point out that Naziism was a singular evil, and that communism at least had some good in it at one time. One can't corrupt the already corrupted. Fascism was never good and could never produce decency even in theory.
One thing Zizek doesn't argue that Hitchens did, which is a great buh-buh-buh inspirer when thrown on a wingnut (it is especially good to smack a Randroid with) is that were it not for the Russian Revolution, it is likely that Nazism would have been born in Czarist Russia before it was actually born Germany: under the Czars, Russia was the most anti-semitic society on earth (which is really saying something); the
Protocols of the Elders of Zion was, after all, a White Russian invention and distributed by the Czar's secret police, and during the civil war the White areas were notoriously pogramish. There's a lot on the rightwing who would have preferred this outcome. I'm very glad there was a communist revolution, myself.
Electric EyeShe's right, this
site is cool. Check out the combines.
Nixon, Anti-Semitism, And Watergate (Deeply Throttled Part III)Yeah, I know I'm late but...
Here are Parts
I and
II of the series.
First, let me get a few loose ends out of the way before I smack around Ben Stein.
Here is the best joke out of the whole ordeal (the one attributed to "Tad Hauer").
There is
another side to Mark Felt. Most everyone was aware of it, but I'm not sure many liberals knew just how
how dark and creepy he was. Of course, people are capable of doing good
and bad things, and Felt's crucial role in Watergate was a very good thing. But, just for the record, COINTELPRO was bad stuff, though absolutely typical of the spook mindset at the time, and Felt was into it up to his eyeballs. (Parenthetically, I might add that everyone's whipping boy, Ward Churchill, did some of the first valuable research on the FBI's COINTELPRO activities.)
More information has come out on how Felt pulled off the Deep Throat act: he was, apparently, his own boss -- so to speak.
Okay, and now on to business. Richard Nixon was an anti-semite, no question at all. The most virulent sort, too, the paranoid variety. On the
Hardball program I linked to in my first post, Andrea Mitchell, who is
vile for other reasons but here perfectly righteous,
says:
Let me just show you a bit of a transcript, or read you a bit of a transcript, of an October taping in 1972 between Halderman and Richard Nixon. And the subject was Mark Felt, because Halderman suggested that the leaks that were coming out might have been from Felt.
And at this point, Nixon says, “What can we do about it?” And Halderman says, “If we move on him, he‘ll go out and unload everything. He knows everything that‘s to be known in the FBI. He has access to absolutely everything.”
Nixon, “What would do you with Felt?” Halderman, “Well, I‘d ask Dean.” Nixon, “What the hell would he do?” Halderman, “He says you can‘t prosecute him, that he hasn‘t committed any crime. Dean‘s concerned if you let him know, he‘ll go out and go on network television.”
I wish he had. Nixon then says, “Is he a Catholic?” Halderman says, “Jewish.” Nixon, “Christ, put a Jew in there?” Halderman, “Well, that could explain it, too.” Does that give you a sense of how ugly things were in the Oval Office back then when they did not remember that they were being recorded, Chris? [misspellings in original]
To which Chris Matthews responds:
MATTHEWS: Yes, I know. And by the way, if you really study the tapes
I‘ve spent a lot of time with them—the worst possible influence in Richard Nixon, when it came to that ethnic stuff, was Bob Halderman. He always seemed to lead him into the ugly stuff, all the time when you go into those transcripts.
Is there or not an element of excuse-making in this explanation? Actually, Nixon needed no "help" in being an anti-semite, and though Haldeman was indeed a jackass, the person most likely to
share with Nixon bigotted commentary in this regard was the
Reverend Billy Graham, icon of the Religious Right. There's much more evidence at
Rense, but there's a particular quote from it that I want to share...
Nixon then broaches a subject about which "we can't talk about it publicly," namely Jewish influence in Hollywood and the media. He cites Paul Keyes, a political conservative who is executive producer of the NBC hit, "Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In," as telling him that "11 of the 12 writers are Jewish."
"That right?" says Graham, prompting Nixon to claim that Life magazine, Newsweek, The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and others, are "totally dominated by the Jews." He calls network TV anchors Howard K. Smith, David Brinkley and Walter Cronkite "front men who may not be of that persuasion," but that their writers are "95 percent Jewish."
Nixon demurs that this does not mean "that all the Jews are bad" but that most are left-wing radicals who want "peace at any price except where support for Israel is concerned. The best Jews are actually the Israeli Jews."
"That's right," agrees Graham [My emphasis]
It's Nixon's attitude to Israel that makes several rightwing Jews, who should know better, defend him and his genuine anti-semitism. This attitude was carried over in policy, and of course the Billy Graham, Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson types, and their "constituents" who commonly hold similar feelings on Jews-in-general, are all fiercely pro-Israel.
Now Ben Stein had already
soiled himself in vilifying Mark Felt and defending Richard Nixon (particularly citing Nixon's act of "saving Eretz Israel") before his latest
atrocity. We had already "won Ben Stein's baloney", and speaking for myself, it didn't feel like a Publisher's Clearing House moment. Well, the latest was so bad that
even Andrew Sullivan was horrified. It's worse. Far Worse:
Now, we read that Mark Felt's family and Mark Felt put out their story solely to make money off it. So, this makes the family's karma even more unnerving. The father, patriarch, Mark, took out his anger and frustration for being passed over at the FBI, by ruining the career of the peacemaker, Richard Nixon. So, he condemned a whole subcontinent to genocide and slavery and poverty to please his own wounded vanity. (Maybe his nickname should be "sour grapes" and not "deep throat" because he has as much in common with that fox as with a porn star.) And, blood will tell, as the old saying goes: his posterity is now dragging out his old body and putting it on display to make money. (Have you noticed how Mark Felt looks like one of those old Nazi war criminals they find in Bolivia or Paraguay? That same, haunted, hunted look combined with a glee at what he has managed to get away with so far?)
And it gets worse: it's been reported that Mark Felt is at least part Jewish. The reason this is worse is that at the same time that Mark Felt was betraying Richard Nixon, Nixon was saving Eretz Israel. It is a terrifying chapter in betrayal and ingratitude. If he even knows what shame is, I wonder if he felt a moment's shame as he tortured the man who brought security and salvation to the land of so many of his and my fellow Jews. Somehow, as I look at his demented face, I doubt it.
Stein, accusing Felt of betrayal of the tribe and in the most toxic way with the Nazi war criminal reference, actually here exhibits the apotheosis of a particular right-wing brand of betrayal. If I remember correctly, the Jewish analogue to the black "Uncle Tom" is an "Uncle Sal". Stein, covering up for Nixon's anti-semitism far beyond even his
own father's lame apologies for Dick, is the Ultimate Uncle Sal. Ben Stein has
displayed his copious idiocy on other matters before, and Nixon hacks making strained and hypocritical
appeals to ethnicity is not a new phenomenon. But why the nastiness and vehemence? Hypocrisy is one thing, but why hypocrisy squared or cubed? Or, as
Atrios asks it:
You'd think the faux philo-semitism which has become a part of the religion of the Right would lead to at least a few Righties being disturbed by [Nixon's taped anti-semitic comments]
I'll tell you why they're not, because long ago Stein, and fuckwits on the right like Norman Podhoretz, decided that genuine anti-semitism is no big deal so long as Israel is supported without qualification. Because Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger
encouraged Israel to violate the cease fire of the October War, the United States, reacting to the Soviet reaction to this dirty trick, was put on Defcon III. And this action wasn't done to save plucky little Israel, it was done to preserve/enlarge the Occupied Territories (a.k.a Eretz Israel, the West Bank and Gaza Strip). This is what makes the likes of Stein go silent when Richard Nixon's anti-semitism is mentioned.
Okay, that takes care of Stein, but is it so widespread on the right? Yes. Since Norman Podhoretz essentially invented the formulation that re-defined anti-semitism to mean "absence of unqualified support of Israel", the whole of the rightwing picked it up. Don't believe me? Well, I'd think that the
opinions of AEI "scholars" are pretty representative of wingnuttery, Jew and Goy divisions:
We wanted to know: is it the power of their ideas, or is it their power?
After spending a day at AEI, we suspect it's the latter.
In the morning, we caught a session titled: Europe: Anti-Semitism Resurgent?
Looked around the audience. There was Bork. There was Kirkpatrick.
They were there to listen to what was supposed to be a debate between two right-wingers, Ruth Wisse of Harvard University and John O'Sullivan, of United Press International.
But there was little debate.
Everyone agreed that the issue wasn't anti-semitism, as traditionally defined, but anti-Israel views.
In fact, Wisse and O'Sullivan had now effectively redefined the term anti-semitism to mean anti-Israel.
We had suspected this, but didn't get a confirmation until a questioner in the audience asked Wisse about Billy Graham's 1972 conversation with Richard Nixon, memorialized on the White House tapes, and made public earlier this year by the National Archives.
In the conversation, Graham says to Nixon that "a lot of Jews are great friends of mine."
"They swarm around me and are friendly to me," Graham says. "Because they know I am friendly to Israel and so forth. They don't know how I really feel about what they're doing to this country."
And how does he feel?
Graham tells Nixon that the Jews have a "stranglehold" on the country, and "this stranglehold has got to be broken or the country's going down the drain."
"You believe that?" Nixon says.
"Yes, sir," Graham replies.
"Oh boy," Nixon says. "So do I. I can't ever say that but I believe it."
So, the questioner wanted to know whether Professor Wisse considered these sentiments, as expressed by Graham, and widely publicized earlier this year, to be anti-semitic.
No, they are not anti-semitic, Professor Wisse says.
Not anti-semitic?
No, anti-semitism exists today in the form of "political organization" against Israel.
Inference: the religious right in this country, as long as they organize politically to support Israel, can say and think whatever they want about Jews.
Not anti-semitism.
Right. Exactly right. I've had my own encounters with it, courtesy of
this fucking asshole. It's been there more or less since the mid-70s (though it wasn't really "official" until after '82), it is a horrible formulation that trivialises or excuses real anti-semitism, but Stein's Nixon-defenses are the worst examples of it that I've ever seen.
***
I'll probably do a few more Watergate posts eventually, especially on the Greek connection I mentioned in my second post. With regard to this subject, I have something in mind relating to Kissinger and the Hersh piece that I linked to above, but it'll be a while before I can find it.
This Digby post on Stein is also a good read.
Hello, Hooray!I must give
Bill at Kos big props for linking to
the Paul Lynde section of the classic squares site.
It's been a long while since I've read it, and in the meantime it's grown by an extra page -- almost all of the additions being "zingers".
Read them. Laugh. They hold up beautifully. This is what you could get away with in the 70s, and not just on TV, but on
daytime TV. Lynde's jokes were filthy, his innuendos atrocious. He was very un-PC. He was also
"as gay as christmas". I mean to say that these are all good things.
This is how it was before the Moral Majority took hold. True, Anita Bryant was basically a Falwell-Santorum type back then, but the puritans had yet to coagulate into the mass movement that they became in the 80s. It was also before the Left overreacted whereby every joke had to be closely inspected for possible misogyny, homophobia, racism, etc. This was the era of Richard Pryor and George Carlin records.
Look,
Alice Fucking Cooper was on Hollywood Squares, for God's sake. Yeah, he's a wrinkled old golf-playing fart now, but in his day he was pure Satan (in the, uh, best sense of the term), Marilyn Manson to the thousandth power (though unlike Manson, Alice had real musical talent: even Bob Dylan said that Alice was an overlooked songwriter). You had Billy Crystal playing a gay guy on
Soap. The average
Charlie's Angels episode was far more.. well, titilating than our era's infamous "wardrobe malfunctions". Aside the great Jonathan Winters, all the great comics of that day worked "blue": Pryor, Foxx, Carlin, the incomparable Buddy Hackett. You had real music on
In Concert and Don Kirschner's ABC stuff.
Hee Haw had real country music every week; Johnny Cash even had a TV show -- this was before Garth Brooks killed the genre.
SNL was never fresher nor more subversive. Talking heads then, too, were of infinitely better quality. You had Gore Vidal and Norman Mailer on TV all the time; from the right you had Buckley on
Firing Line and John Simon occasionally on the
Tonight Show.
I know the 70s were bad in a lot of ways, and I admit I see the decade through the filter of my early childhood. I must admit that I'm not old enough to remember anything but the last three or so years of the decade. But post-Watergate, we were on the right track; it was a great time to be a child in rural America. Earl Butz's "Farming Is Now Big Business!" policies hadn't yet fully congealed into the system; every farm family had money in the 70s. Unlike my parents' generation, I didn't fear being incinerated at any moment by a nuclear exchange -- I didn't know that fear until the 80s, thank you, Ronald Reagan, may you burn in hell -- because detente was a sane policy even though it was perfected by a sociopath. I understand why Mike Watt and Eddie Vedder sang to Generation Y that "Kids Today Should Defend Themselves Against The 70s", and I admit their point, but also must dissent on other grounds.
Girlfriends see my childhood pictures and love the clothes I was dressed in, my haircut (or, rather, my lack thereof), the period ephemera in the background. It wasn't always this way. There was great shame in the 80s and early 90s of 70s fashion, though I never shared it. It's true, though, that it comes across much better re-interpreted in the oughts.
But 70s pop culture, despite its many flaws, deserves some respect and, as well, some study other than of the kitchy/nostalgic variety. It was a deeply cynical post-Watergate culture, it did have its moments of pure hedonism, and though perhaps reacted against by Nixon's "Silent Majority", it inspired no reaction, no counter-revolution, quite like what what we saw in the 80s which continues to this day. The cultural commissars and anti-Hollywood anti-modernist cretins of the right had yet to really set up shop, and so the 70s deserves a special place in the hearts of the Left if only for that.
No, You Don't Say...Ms. Pickler belatedly learns that we are governed by plutocrats:
They're on the government payroll, but some of President Bush's top aides have millions of dollars in stocks, real estate and other investments, according to financial disclosure forms released Wednesday.
Read it all, it's a nice list.
Pickler's the worst of the AP (google her name through Atrios or Media Matters), so who knows what this is all about, but regardless this story was nice to see on the Yahoo's front page.
Yeah, of course it's a "coincidence" that they are all rich, or, at most, an "accident" of the system's structure and don't you know that these are all great men with the highest standards of rectitude and there's just no way that the biases of their class would influence government policy: that's just an outrageous thought. Yadda yadda yadda.
The Right Honorable Gentleman Is A Totalitarian FucktardI've been procrastinating about ..something, so I watched a little C-SPAN.
Rep. Bernie Sanders (I - VT) introduced an amendment to stop the funding of that part of the PATRIOT Act by which the FBI, without probable cause, can demand that libraries and bookstores turn over their records to the government. The Bushies quite like that power, of course. Most Orwellianly, "oversight" is provided by a secret court. This is the current status quo, and I suppose it was naive to think that such fascists would let go of such power without a fight. The prospect of keeping tabs on dissidence is too great a temptation to let go of -- wouldn't it be great if the government kept tabs on anyone checking, say, Gramsci's books out of the library? Collect a lot of anti-war anti-Bush people's names that way. What? We wouldn't do that! How dare you imply...
Rep. Frank Wolf (R - Politburo) led the counter-attack, and every Congressperson who spoke with Wolf against Sanders's amendment was, as you might guess, a Republican. Wolf waved the bloody shirt of 9-11 shamelessly, even by Republican standards: he explicitly said that if the FBI had had this power pre-9-11, the attack would have been thwarted. (This would be news to the 9-11 Commission.) His comrades followed suit but I should mention that Rep. Christopher Shays of Connecticut was especially hysterical and offensive.
On the side of Constitution and what Jefferson called "the decent opinion of mankind" the speakers were Sanders, several of the ladies from California including Ms Pelosi, Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida (I am at your disposal, ma'am) and many others including, tellingly, two Congressmen who are extremely conservative yet are not Republican party hacks. Indeed, their conservatism seems to consist, at least in this instance, of the desire to conserve the Fourth Amendment. Rep. Butch Otter of Idaho and Rep. Ron Paul of Texas both gave good (and blessedly brief) speeches in favor of Sanders's amendment, Otter deserving special credit for using an earthy farm metaphor.
The amendment lost the voice vote. But decency won when the "real voting" began.
Here are the totals. Sanders's Amendment passed 238 to 187. 38 Republicans broke ranks to side with Sanders; only
one Democrat sided with authoritarianism and the "Secret Government Mentality" of the Bushies, something to remember next primary.
Here's the AP's version.
* I wrote this post yesterday but it was eaten by Firefox. Following the resultant tirade.. well, I was in no mood to try to blog anymore, thus my absence. Sorry.
Read ThisBusy, Busy, Busy's takedown of Fred Hiatt is awesome.
Several euphemisms and cliches are destroyed or, put better, exposed for what they really mean. Great post.
A Wolfowitz In Creep's ClothingHis reputation was already soiled, but Paul Wolfowitz looks more and more like a jackass as the days go by.
Consider the
latest ("Another") Downing Street Memo, which is too meaty to quote appropriately, but is short enough to read on its own. Even the Brits could tell that Wolfowitz was a hack for Chalabi. Wolfy was pushing the Saddam/Atta/Czech connection, which we know was crap. Even through the memo's diplomatese one can discern Wolfowitz's blaming other elements in the administration for emphasising the WMD claim (honestly? or as Kissinger put it in a rare moment of candor, "to deflect the guilt from [his] own person?") instead of the Human Rights claim, and he then blew off a "coup" scenario, presumably broached by the Brits, laughably claiming that the Ba'athists that would have to be employed in such an operation had too much blood on their hands -- as if the first
caretaker puppet government we installed wasn't full of former collaborators anyway!
Then there's
this, which Catch -- rather appropriately, I thought -- caught. Wolfy the dissembler and revisionist, who did not, repeat,
not, emphasise the WMD argument. Except that he did. Yeah.
Juan Cole reminds us that Wolfowitz, even in his new project at the World Bank, still pushes versions of the "My Opponents Are Objectively Pro-Saddam" argument that serves the 101st Keyboarders so well.
You know, there
is something about Wolfowitz that set him apart from all the other hacks in Bush's cabinet: he seemed almost human, maybe even a decent person, or at least he roused those suspicions. He does seem to have a charm. I read
Eric Alterman's account of a cocktail party meeting with Wolfowitz, and was relatively impressed. Hitchens, of course, is a rabid Wolfowitz partisan, and his
description of the man emphasised an alleged bleeding-heart philosophy; the implication being that Wolfy isn't the liberal's stereotype of a ruthless rightwing hack. Alterman and Hitchens both cite as evidence an episode occuring early in Wolfowitz's tenure as deputy DoD Secretary where he told a crowd of Likudistas to bear in mind Palestinian suffering, something that clique isn't, to say the least, used to hearing in Washington. This is indeed evidence of even-handedness and sobriety.
But in the end, it's not enough, and I decide that Alterman was simply charmed while Hitchens is gullible and, frankly, such a fanatic now that his judgement is worse than useless. I think Wolfowitz told these guys exactly what they wanted to hear; Alterman had low expectations, Hitchens was told the Palestinian anecdote and apparently snowjobed on a little of Wolfowitz's Cold War history, and that was that. Sure, all politicians do this, but the trick is to not be fooled by them.
Paul Wolfowitz's biography at the DoD is in typically bland bureaucratese: nothing to be learned there.
Now, what I have always wondered is what Wolfowitz did in the 70s. Like so many Bushies, he was close to the Ford Adminstration. Later, Wolfowitz worked for Reagan in Indonesia. Hitchens calls him a moderate -- i.e., not a Kirkpatrick-esque supporter of dictators. I think Hitchens is optimistic. Now, for background reference, I'll mention that Henry Kissinger, while serving the Ford Administration, gave Indonesian dictator Suharto the greenlight to commit genocide in the then-breakaway province of East Timor. The Indonesian army used our weapons in the operation; indeed those arms deals were done with it well-known to both parties what they would be used for. At Kissinger's urging, most of the murders were done quickly in 1975, yet the United States continued to prop-up Suharto until the 90s -- in other words, all through Wolfowitz's term there under Reagan.
Tim Shorrock is instructive on Wolfowitz's history:
If that sounds like hyperbole, consider Wolfowitz's recent public comments on Indonesia. As late as May 1997, he was telling Congress that "any balanced judgment of the situation in Indonesia today, including the very important and sensitive issue of human rights, needs to take account of the significant progress that Indonesia has already made and needs to acknowledge that much of this progress has to be credited to the strong and remarkable leadership of president Suharto".
Uh-huh. Now Wolfowitz, as an ambassador, might have had to issue this sort of shit for consumption while he was in Indonesia, to the Indonesian press (such that it was), but for him to say it here and at that late date is inexcusable. He knows full well that this is the same Suharto who murdered 500,000 "communists" (actually, merely his political opponents of all ideologies) some of whom came from lists helpfully furnished by Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon. Then, of course, the mass murders in Timor, which were blessed by Kissinger (and, by extention, Ford) with a "do it and do it quick" slap on the ass.
Now let us consider Wolfy's revisionism with regard to other Asian trouble spots he dealt with as a Reagan hack:
In his Heritage speech, Wolfowitz also took credit for the downfall of Marcos. The "private and public pressure on Marcos to reform", he asserted, "contributed in no small measure to emboldening the Philippine people to take their fate in their own hands and to produce what eventually became the first great democratic transformation in Asia in the 1980s". Once again, Wolfowitz was rewriting history, implying that the Filipino people, like the South Koreans, ignored two decades of massive US military and financial support for Marcos. In both countries, US policy toward these dictators (which in Korea would include Park Chung-hee, Chun's assassinated predecessor) only began to weaken when US officials decided that their continued hold on power would lead to further instability, thus threatening US "interests".
"Bleeding heart"? Hitchens, you fool, Wolfowitz is plainly the most craven sort of
realpolitiko. Marcos was propped-up as long as possible by Reagan, which Wolfowitz knew full well. Marcos wasn't allowed to "retire" because the US suddenly embraced ethical foreign policy, no, it was because he could no longer hold back the reaction against him. The reaction of the Filipino people stopped Marcos, but Wolfowitz wants himself and Ronald Reagan to take credit for it.
Fred Kaplan asks the right question: How does Wolfowitz keep a straight face? But not just "these days", how did he ever?
I don't really care, aside a generic objection to Republican hypocrisy, about
Wolfowitz's alleged marital infidelities, but in reading about that story, I came across this funny
article in the Sunday Times:
The US, Wolfowitz prescribed, should be sure of “deterring potential competitors from even aspiring to a larger regional or global role”, including Japan and Germany. He envisaged the use of nuclear, biological and chemical weaponry pre-emptively, “even in conflicts that do not directly engage US interests”.
In 1997 Wolfowitz and colleagues including Cheney, now vice-president, and Richard Perle, dubbed “the Prince of Darkness” when he was Ronald Reagan’s assistant secretary of defence, founded a think tank called Project for a New American Century. In a 2000 document, the group speculated that “some catastrophic and catalysing event, like a new Pearl Harbor” was needed to assure US global power.
Uh, the sentiments expressed in that are a little stronger than even PNAC, which is of course bad enough on every level. But there's more:
after gaining a maths degree from Cornell University, he decided he preferred the world of international affairs and pursed a PhD in political science at the University of Chicago.
There he fell under the spell of Albert Wohlstetter, a military thinker who instilled in Wolfowitz the belief that sophisticated arms technology was the key to American supremacy. Wohlstetter and his nuclear theories became the supposed model for Dr Strangelove in Stanley Kubrick’s film, while Wolfowitz himself inspired a character in Saul Bellow’s novel Ravelstein.
Wohlstetter, huh? Hmm. Wohlstetter. Oh, you mean Wohlstetter, the
Father of Team B? Yes, I think that's the guy:
How did the Team B notion come about? In 1974, Albert Wohlstetter, a professor at the University of Chicago, accused the CIA of systematically underestimating Soviet missile deployment, and conservatives began a concerted attack on the CIA's annual assessment of the Soviet threat. This assessment--the NIE--was an obvious target.
Team B was the original Straussian fraud that destroyed detente. It was useless as research, a real tissue of lies. But it gave a "factual basis" by which Ronald Reagan could call Gerald Ford "a communist", an appeaser, Scoop Jackson could procure even more contracts for Boeing, and the world could enjoy the fruits of a renewed nuclear nightmare. But Team B's "research" got rid of the doctrine of coexistence for the sake of averting nuclear annihilation -- the object of the exercise. By the time it was found out to be worthless propaganda, it was too late. And Wolfy? Well, like teacher, like
pupil:
"Team B members, all approved by the CIA, were hardly outsiders to the national security establishment. They included political scientist Richard Pipes, General Daniel Graham, who had headed the Defense Intelligence Agency, Paul Nitze, a former Deputy Secretary of Defense, General John Vogt, the former Air Force Chief of Staff, Thomas Wolfe, a top Rand Corporation executive, General Jasper Welsh, the head of the Air Force's system analysis and Paul Wolfowitz, who was at the Arms Control Agency.
It was there all the time, people. Wolfowitz was Machiavellian, a menace to peace, an apologist for tinpot dictators, and a manufacturer of propaganda way back then. A leopard does not, as the saying goes, change its spots.
About Wolfowitz's recent move,
Kaplan is hopeful:
Some who know Wolfowitz tell me that he wanted to fill the impending vacancy at the bank. He may be, in this sense, a latter-day Robert McNamara—a war-weary Pentagon master seeking refuge to wring the blood from his hands. McNamara suffered something close to a public breakdown when he moved from secretary of defense to president of the World Bank in 1967, as the Vietnam War spiraled out of control. Lyndon Johnson had been complaining to aides for months that McNamara had "gone dovish" on him. It's unlikely that Wolfowitz has exactly turned tail on George W. Bush or Donald Rumsfeld. Still, Wolfowitz is a smart guy, smart enough to know that Iraq has not gone at all as he thought it would, and perhaps he sees McNamara's personal exit strategy as a model to emulate.
Well, that'd be nice, but, well.. I doubt it. I think that Bush moved Wolfowitz mostly because the Satan of Texas has something nasty planned for the Third World (or, had -- that may be put on the backburner now because of Blair, G8, Live 8, etc.). I can easily see Wolfowitz cackling as he dispenses "Argentina remedies" to various and sundry among the global south.
For a parting shot, illustrative or not I don't know, I'll share this anecdote from
Al Franken's book:
Speaking of pissing off a neo-con: Later, at the after-party given by Bloomberg News, I went up to Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy secretary of Defense and the architect of the Bush preemption doctrine. "Hi, Dr. Wolfowitz. Hey, the Clinton military did a great job in Iraq, didn't it?"
He looked at me for a couple of seconds, then said, "Fuck You."
That Wolfy. At least he's funny. Told you he was different than the rest of 'em.
***
PS:
this Billmon post on Wolfowitz is a good one.
See also
Wolcott, who has as good a take as any on Wolfowitz.
*** Edit 6/16/05: Read
this essay on Wolfowitz, too. Yes, there is a certain cootie-factor given the source, and some of the conclusions therein can be charitably described as retarded (no, he's NOT an idealist, he's a realpolitik hegemon), but it's still worth reading.
"Marge, I Hate Ted Koppel"*"No, wait a minute.. I find him witty and
informative":
We need mandatory clarity and transparency; not just with regard to the services that these miracles of microchip and satellite technology offer but also the degree to which companies share and exchange their harvest of private data.
We cannot even begin to control the growing army of businesses and industries that monitor what we buy, what we watch on television, where we drive, the debts we pay or fail to pay, our marriages and divorces, our litigations, our health and tax records and all else that may or may not yet exist on some computer tape, if we don't fully understand everything we're signing up for when we avail ourselves of one of these services.
This after an introductory slap at the PATRIOT Act. You know, Ted, I don't really share Homer Simpson's retraction that I quoted in my intro -- I'm not really a fan of yours, on the grounds that you brownnose Henry Kissinger and you subjected me one too many times to the ravings of Cal Thomas -- but you make perfect sense here.
Even though "privacy" is a constitutionally implicit rather than explicit right, I have no doubt as to the attitude of even the conservative Founders to the various technological assaults on it which are so flagrant today. And, really, there used to be a time conservatives and libertarians actually gave a shit about this sort of thing. No more.
The conservatives and conservatarians of course toe the current party line on privacy; but there are always partisan hacks. What happened to the libertarians? Technophilia, I suspect, is a part of it as is so often the case. Also, the Chamber of Commerce mentality is hard to overcome. They do, indeed, worry about privacy and most consistent libertarians are against the PATRIOT Act, and they deserve credit for that. But when it comes to private snooping, they are ..yes, laissez-faire. They finesse the philosophical question by insisting that such information is given voluntarily. Yet it is not, often because the companies don't inform customers of their information gathering and sharing activities. This is Koppel's point, and it's a good one. But it should be taken further.
I posit that it is a bad thing for such information to be gathered under
any circumstances. It can be lost or stolen, as Koppel says. But more importantly, it can always in theory be seized by the government, a propect that becomes more likely when we have a fascist in office (to be fair, put in place by a man I suspect most small-L libertarians voted for) like Ashcroft and Gonzales.
The other argument against private information-gathering is that often, and increasingly, there is not a choice to whether accept it. Libertarians I argue with love to deny it, but there is a such thing as structural coercion. By the design of capital, we are becoming evermore a cashless economy. Hence, credit and debit cards and electronic records. Koppel mentions trackable tollbooth passes. He mentions that they are more convenient, which is true, but he doesn't mention that they are also cheaper, at least in my experience. What is a person to do who must commute? What if you have an emergency and must rent a car? Gotta have a credit card for that. At the bank downstairs, one cannot cash a check or open an account without a fingerprint. These are but examples.
The Shorter Peter WoodCorporations Never Die:
Corporations are a legal fiction -- a legal "person" that is accorded all the rights of a flesh and blood person. This is good; this is just. Unlike flesh and blood people, however, corporations can have lifespans of well over a hundred years. This, too, is good and just. But to hell with that segment of public opinion that wants a particular corporation to be responsible for actions it took so many years ago -- it's just not fair.
In the words of a wise man, a corporation cannot be a person as it has "no soul to condemn nor posterior to kick". But person it is, thanks to a corrupt Supreme Court decision in the Gilded Age -- the age that the rightwing thinks was heaven on earth, and so wishes us to return to. Corporate personhood is the single most egregious accepted truth in our society. Wood complains that the Wachovia Company is being unfairly maligned because of its slavery connection. Yet if a real person had managed to live as long as Wachovia has, and had a connection to slavery too... well, Wood would probably defend that, as well. But the public wouldn't tolerate it.
The basic point is corporations want all the protections real people enjoy under the law, but none of the responsibilities.
I Accept The ChallengeI don't care for the music memes passed around so often between blogs (I think they are cheap tool to fight writer's block with; they also are seized by people who wish to sound hip but probably aren't), but a "favorite books" meme.. well, I'll do that.
The proprietor of the excellent
Hobson's Choice didn't pass this to me, but I'll attempt it anyway.
Number of Books I Own:
1700 or so, which I hope to add to this weekend at the library sale. I stopped buying cds in, oh, 1998; the music industry will not get much more of my money. I don't buy many dvds, but that's mostly because that's my roommate's passion. I am a warfare-minded consumer, and so rarely buy new clothes; in fact, I try to buy "used" in nearly everything -- appliances, electronics, furniture. So, whatever extra money I have, which is never much, I spend on books. Sadly, I dont keep up with reading like I should (goddamn computer).
Last Book I Bought:
The Political Economy of Slavery by Eugene Genovese, on the advice of my friend JC in DC. I'm only a couple of chapters in, but so far it's a fine Marxist analysis.
Last Book Read:
As opposed to what I last plundered, which is a different thing, the last I read straight through was
The Pursuit of the Presidency 1980 by the Washington Post crew of, mostly, fucktards.
Seven Books That Meant A Lot To Me:
I couldn't do this justice with non-fiction criteria, so I'll stick with fiction minus poetry and plays. The following are not in order of importance.
1. The Count of Monte Cristo: I read this at exactly the right age, as an angry teen. It taught not so much a lesson in revenge so much as one in resolve. Plus, it was an awesome adventure. It's very much a novel for youth -- male youth. With intelligence, determination, and a very-attuned sense of justice, it is possible, at least in theory, to avenge yourself on those who have wronged you without it eating your soul up in the process. Character matters. I particularly like how Dantes did not take back Mercedes in the end.
2. Brave New World: My favorite dystopian novel, and the only one of the classics (We, Anthem, 1984, Animal Farm) whose target still exists and so whose point is still relevant. It is the ultimate indictment of consumerism, hedonism, and technophilia/technocracy. In a world that is losing all of its cultural diversity, its poetry-of-life, its ability to say "stop" in the face of what is marketed as technological "progress", the book, when read by the young, innoculates them against modern stupidity, yet it is not reactionary in the Archie Bunker/Republican sense of the term. It is a weapon to be used against globalists, social darwinists, and those who place a higher regard on "efficiency" rather than on humanity.
3. Candide: So very funny. From it, I learned that "crushing the infamous" is quite enough. The classic rap against Candide is that it offers no alternate recommendations to replace the ideologies and beliefs and value-systems it righteously trashes. This is first, wrong, and second, irrelevant. The character of Dr Pangloss, it's true, shows what fools eternal optimists are. But more than that, it shows what fools ideologues and fanatics are. Despite evidence upon evidence, Pangloss ignores or bends all to cling and conform to his retarded beliefs. Voltaire did not need to offer an opposing ideology which would account for the book's events. He did not need to replace what he destroyed: it was a service enough to destroy or expose what was stupid. But he went beyond that anyway. In the end, Candide settles down to "till his garden". This is not a throwaway line or an endorsement of ascetism or isolation, but rather a small recommendation to "work" at the local level, to do what you can with what you can muster, to be "involved" but not join the latest damn-fool mass movement.
4. Julian: Vidal's masterpiece, I always thought, and I was pleased but not surprised that Hitchens thought the same thing. For anyone who loves reading of the classical world (and I was a boy who stole my school library's copy of Plutarch's
Lives to read and re-read the character sketches/mini-biographies -- of Alcibiades and Alexander in particular), this novel is most affecting. At the end of Julian's reign, the classic world was snuffed out and superstition and sectarianism were re-born in the most ugly way; one sees the Dark Ages coming. The end's incredibly powerful; I shed tears at the blind old teacher Libanius's epiphany, when he realised that his world was dead, as he heard its epitaph spoken gleefully in his own student -- stolen by Christianity -- John Chrysostom's speech. This, after one had just read of the nature of Julian's demise, it's too much to bear. The novel's in the form of correspondence between Libanius and Priscus, two of the late Emperor's teachers. Priscus
is Vidal: cold wit, funny, gossipy, stoic. Libanius is sincere but a realist, not sappy. But he is hopeful. Until the almost the very end.
5. Foucault's Pendulum: Some people will go to any length to believe anything. I'm someone who believes in what I guess could be called "structural conspiracies". Also, I believe that Oswald didn't act alone, James Earl Ray probably was part of a conspiracy, and I even believe that Richard Nixon's goons may have had something to do with George Wallace's shooting. All that said, UFO conspiracies and secret society conspiracies are, to me, laughable propositions. Eco's novel shows how people, specifically people with too much time on their hands, cling to conspiracy theories to the point of homocide. Even conspiracies which are invented, on a lark, by other groups of people with too much time on their hands.
6. The Illiad and The Odyssey: Not novels, of course, but then they don't read in English like the poems that they are. For a red-blooded American boy who loved Harryhausen movies, the monsters in the Odyssey loom in the imagination. As an adolescent, I admired the ingenuity of the Acheans and of Odysseus. When I first read the Illiad, I thought Achilles was the hugest prick; all my sympathy was with Hektor. I still think Hektor is the most sympathetic character in most ways, but now I see Achilles as a victim of his passions and gifts, admire him for his reluctance to serve at the need of the state, but empathise with his wrath. I have a temper problem, exacerbated by a world that is totally without justice. Everything's wrong, therefore everything is outrageous. But moreover, I admire Achilles in that the
cause of his wrath was just. The interests of the powerful -- the state, the king, the tribe, the gods -- aren't enough to compell a man to fight. But the death of a friend or lover (in the case of Achilles and Patrolcus, both) is quite enough indeed. The lesson of the Odyssey is that hubris kills. That's useful to know.
7. The Sherlock Holmes Stories: Reason and Ethics can defeat the forces of amorality and superstition.
Passing this on:
digamma and
Answer Guy, if they want it. Actually, I might do digamma's for him if I'm later so inclined. Muahahahah
Oh, Wouldn't You Like To Beat Your Neighbour?Only Cash Will Save Old Tree:
The Rev. Johnnie B. Wilson II has an offer for the people of Centralia, Ill.: Come up with $75,000 and he'll spare a 200-year-old bur oak tree on his church's property.
"I want them to start spending their money if they want to save this tree," Wilson said Monday. "We're giving them time to show they want it. But in 30 days, baby, 30 days is up."
Unless the residents or city government of Centralia, a city of 14,000 about 60 miles east of St. Louis, meet the deadline, Wilson will have the tree axed and will build a church parking lot on the land where it sits, he says. If Wilson gets the $75,000, he says, he will use it to buy adjacent property and put the parking lot there.
But some residents of Centralia - which happens to have been designated a Tree City USA by the National Arbor Day Foundation - say they are outraged that Wilson would threaten to cut down a tree that's older than the city itself.
Can't they simply build the lot around the tree?
Look, as my few readers know, I've cut a few trees in my life. But I'd never cut down a tree that old and that massive, not even in the deep woods.
This story pisses me off for other reasons as well. One, of course, is the pastor's attitude. Another is that people like him remember the church & state bargain only when it's to their advantage.
When the great wall was erected by Thomas Jefferson, the bargain went like this: the US will not establish a religion officially, thus no sect will be favored or others marginalised by the state's power. The US will agree not to tax the property of the church, which in that day meant the church building proper, the grounds, the parsonage. The church agreed, quid pro quo, to stay the fuck out of politics.
But they, like the businessmen they essentially are, have welched on the deal as much as possible. Thus cities die as churches buy property to sit on, as investments, etc. The Roman Catholic Church has a bazillion-dollar stock portfolio. The LDS buy farmground everywhere as a tax-free investment. And everyone knows good and well they don't stay the fuck out of politics.
Okay, so if they can welch on the deal, why can't we? "Public domain" and "public interest" can be overdone, but this tree (and a Bur Oak is an especially nicely-formed species), I think, justifies a public interest.
I love how the preacher appeals to posterity:
Centralia City Manager Grant Kleinhenz says he's offered Wilson alternatives - including the possibility of leasing a strip of city-owned land for angled parking just outside the church. Kleinhenz has also suggested that Wilson talk to the state about using a state-owned lot two doors down from the church. The lot is not used on Sundays.
But Wilson says those options won't work: He says the state-owned lot is too far away, and the city's lease offer would present too many complications. Who, he wonders, would pay the tab if the city needs to dig up the asphalt to access water pipes under the leased land? And what happens when the 99-year lease the city is offering expires?
"Our children, and their children, shouldn't have to worry about this," Wilson said.
If that tree is saved, I promise it will give more pleasure to more people over the next 99 years than your church will. Sorry.
PS - Libertarian nutjobs, whose dreamworld's vistas include El Capitan turned into a billboard, the Sequoia forests turned into matchsticks, and Yellowstone sponsored by Wal-Mart, are disqualified from this argument, of course.
Set The Controls For The Heart Of The SunPink Floyd to reform for London Live 8 concert.
LONDON (Reuters) - Four members of seminal British rock band Pink Floyd will play together for the first time in 24 years at London's Live 8 charity concert for Africa on July 2, publicists for the event said on Sunday.
Guitarist David Gilmour, drummer Nick Mason and keyboard player Richard Wright will be on stage with bassist Roger Waters for their first public performance since they played at London's Earls Court in 1981.
The rock legends will join a star-studded line-up including Coldplay, Elton John and
Paul McCartney at the Live 8 concert in Hyde Park, organized by activist rocker
Bob Geldof to pressure rich nations to ease African poverty.
"Like most people I want to do everything I can to persuade the G8 leaders to make huge commitments to the relief of poverty and increased aid to the third world," said Gilmour.
"Any squabbles Roger and the band have had in the past are so petty in this context, and if reforming for this concert will help focus attention then it's got to be worthwhile."
I have a request. "Pigs (Three Different Ones)". Dedicate it to Dubya.
Big man, pig man, ha ha charade you are.
You well heeled big wheel, ha ha charade you are.
And when your hand is on your heart,
You're nearly a good laugh,
Almost a joker,
With your head down in the pig bin,
Saying "Keep on digging."
Pig stain on your fat chin.
What do you hope to find.
When you're down in the pig mine.
You're nearly a laugh,
You're nearly a laugh
But you're really a cry.
Digging In The DirtThis made my day. Awesome stuff.
Found: Europe's Oldest Civilisation:
How 7,000-year-old temples reveal the elaborate culture of Europe
Archaeologists have discovered Europe's oldest civilisation, a network of dozens of temples, 2,000 years older than Stonehenge and the Pyramids.
More than 150 gigantic monuments have been located beneath the fields and cities of modern-day Germany, Austria and Slovakia. They were built 7,000 years ago, between 4800BC and 4600BC. Their discovery, revealed today by The Independent, will revolutionise the study of prehistoric Europe, where an appetite for monumental architecture was thought to have developed later than in Mesopotamia and Egypt.
In all, more than 150 temples have been identified. Constructed of earth and wood, they had ramparts and palisades that stretched for up to half a mile. They were built by a religious people who lived in communal longhouses up to 50 metres long, grouped around substantial villages. Evidence suggests their economy was based on cattle, sheep, goat and pig farming.
Their civilisation seems to have died out after about 200 years and the recent archaeological discoveries are so new that the temple building culture does not even have a name yet.
More
here.
Where Did You Dig Up That Old Fossil?Well, I found it in one of Atrios's comment threads. I'd never seen it before. Check this
shit out:
Who Appeased Saddam Hitler?
The New Republic was one of the first magazines to call for war with Iraq over the invasion of Kuwait, and in the shrillest possible terms—it even retouched a cover photo to give Saddam Hussein a more Hitlerian moustache. But the magazine's antipathy to Saddam Hussein does not have deep roots: In 1987, following the Reagan administration's taking Iraq's side in the Iran-Iraq war, The New Republic (4/27/87) published an article calling for even stronger support: "Back Iraq: It's Time for a U.S. Tilt," by Daniel Pipes and Laurie Mylroie. Highlights of the article follow:
Ironically, helping Iraq militarily may offer the best way for Washington to regain its position in Tehran. The American weapons that Iraq could make good use of include remotely scatterable and anti-personnel mines, and counterartillery radar....
Many argue that a tilt to Iraq might drive the Iranians into the Soviet arms.... A more serious argument against a tilt toward Iraq is the danger that a victorious Baghdad would itself turn against pro-American states in the region—mainly Israel, but also Kuwait and other weak states in the Persian Gulf region.... But the Iranian revolution and seven years of bloody and inconclusive warfare have changed Iraq's view of its Arab neighbors, the United States, and even Israel. Iraq restored relations with the United States in November 1984. Its leaders no longer consider the Palestinian issue their problem. Iraq's allies since 1979 have been those states—Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Morocco—most threatened by revolutionary upheaval, most friendly to the United States, and most open to negotiations with Israel. These allies have forced a degree of moderation on Iraq.... Iraq is now the de facto protector of the regional status quo....
If our tilt toward Iraq is reciprocated, moreover, it could lay the basis for a fruitful relationship in the longer term.
Pipes, Mylroie, TNR and Saddam all in one lump sum. That's good to know.
Umm, NoI can't tell if if
digamma is more worried about marajuana legalisation, or the repeal of the New Deal.
Are the Drug Laws truly the fault of the New Deal, just because the court rationalises upholding these laws on commerce clause grounds?
I'm thinking that it's very convenient for digamma to lay the blame in that direction.
Personally, I think most Drug Laws spit at the spirit and letter of the 4th Amendment and should be repealed federally. Fuck states' rights. Most drug laws, I said -- I can't go the pure libertarian route of cocaine vending machines.
The WSJ, suddenly compassionate, blames liberals more explicitly. (Read the comments, they are good.)
Both ignore the massive sociological and historical evidence of what was truly behind the legislation of the Drug Laws. And who was the first modern President to get tough on drugs? After a relaxed period, who was the second? Hmm? Then which pseudo-liberal President had a druggie brother and therefore was a real authoritarian when it came to Drug Enforcement? Whose network shows that awful Lieutenant Banal hosting and relishing other cops chasing down shirtless minorities and white trash who are slandered as "evil" because they allegedly do drugs? Whose First Bag made a catch phrase of "Just Say No"? Which party is in deepest cahoots with the incarcerations industry? Which party most loves to legislate morality on a Protestant basis? Who gets the biggest kick out of punishing the sinner? What industries most benefit from the criminalisation of marajuana? Which party is historically closest to those industries? Which party and ideology made constant war on the psychedelic drug-fueled counterculture movement? What party opposed the repeal of Prohibition?
On the other hand, I agree wholeheartedly with
this, but then I suppose it's impossible to slough that one off on the New Deal.
Thanks A LotToo late to inform the public when it could have made a difference, the
Times posts a
profile of Judge Janice Rogers Brown:
"In the heyday of liberal democracy, all roads lead to slavery," she has warned in speeches.
...
her sweeping denunciations of New Deal legal precedents that enabled many federal regulations and social programs - developments she has called "the triumph of our socialist revolution."
...
Her friends describe Justice Brown as a voracious reader, amateur poet and serious intellectual, and her speeches are filled with allusions to writers including...Ayn Rand, Gertrude Himmelfarb, [and] Friedrich von Hayek
Libertarian nutjobs must love her. The Rollback To The 1880s counter-revolution lives! If they can land a couple like her on the SCOTUS, they'll have child labor laws repealed in no time. Laissez-faire uber alles.
Now That You Mention ItLance Mannion's description of James Lileks reminded me of something.
First, here's Mannion:
It's come to Roxanne's attention that Lileks is starting a second blog, one devoted to fear-mongering, hating, and paranoid raving.... I understand Lileks' decision. He's been doing the virtual equivalent of running into the kitchen to chat merrily on the phone with his mother while he stirs the soup on the stove and then in a sudden panic attack dropping everything and leaving the soup to burn while he flies to the bedroom, dives under the bed, and cowers there, jibbering, raving, cursing the fates, and praying to God to save his sorry, flat butt.
Readers find it distracting.
His more sensible fans, who enjoy, inexplicably, his maunderings on the joys of mall living get annoyed by the hiding under the bed stuff. His Right Wing fellow under the bed hiders can't fathom why he'd ever crawl out from under there with them.
Well, yes -- to all that. It reminds me of an account of another coward/chickenhawk/schizo type I've read lately, one from antiquity:
I am convinced that this brain-sickness accounted for his two contradictory vices -- overconfidence and extreme timorousness. Here was a man who despised the gods, yet shut his eyes and buried his head beneath the bedclothes at the most distant sound of thunder; and if the storm came closer, would jump out of bed and crawl underneath... Despite his fearful threats against the barbarians, he showed so little courage after he had crossed the _____ and gone riding.. through a defile, that when someone happened to remark: 'What a panic there would be if the enemy suddenly appeared!' he immediately leaped on a horse and galloped back to the bridges. These were crowded with camp servants and baggage, but he had himself passed from hand to hand over the men's heads, in his impatience at any delay.
Try to guess who it is. I'll leave the answers to subject and source in the comments.
Just What They WantedYou just think they hated International Human Rights Organisations. You ain't seen nothin yet. The wingnuts at
Crap 'n Quaaludes, as well as the knee-jerk torture-apologists at
redstate.org link to an Amnesty
USA report that, the wingnuts say, calls for the kidnapping of such saints as Bush, Rumsfeld, and Gonzales.
Actually, it calls for their arrest. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's observe redstate logic in chronological order.
First, they have great difficulty in substantiating the story. In the initial screed, though, the author quotes from
Common Dreams posting by Jim Lobe, which is, in turn, quoting an AI/USA spokesman as saying:
''If those investigations support prosecution, the governments should arrest any official who enters their territory and begin legal proceedings against them,'' he added. ''The apparent high-level architects of torture should think twice before planning their next vacation to places like Acapulco or the French Riviera because they may find themselves under arrest as (former Chilean dictator) Augusto Pinochet famously did in London in 1998.''
So? This is called detaining, in compliance with international treaties, suspected war criminals. I realise that they've hated this law since that Spanish judge tried it on their favorite former South American dictator, but that's too bad. Henry Kissinger has to watch what countries he flies to now for the exact same reason, and it's a very just thing indeed that the old bastard does -- though it's a pity he hasn't been hauled to The Hague already. You wanted AI to show some consistency, you've got it. Why should American suspects be given a free pass but every other suspected war criminal be fair game? Oh, wait, don't answer: it's because an American (especially the Republican version thereof) is
incapable of violating international law! We're above it! No American could possibly be a war criminal because Americans are good and the rest of the world is evil -- or, at least, they are the other team, which amounts to the same thing.
Then the wingnut commenters pile on, they are shocked, shocked! Instayokel and Concentration Camp-enthusiast Michelle Malkin link to the story, as you just knew they would. The redstaters finally find
a link to the report. My god, Crap N' Quaaludes was right, it mentions Dear Leader by name! This is not only an opportunity to be once again unapologetically pro-torture and possibly cripple AI in the process, but also respond with outrage that some do-gooder IO has taken Dear Leader's name in vain and thus has committed
blasphemy. Holes are punched in walls, spittle flies -- why, if they could torture those AI people...
absentee comments that, by God, even after he had started to rethink his position, it appears that AI is just a bunch of partisan hacks after all! Then he adds, almost as an afterthought, that he can't find the offending report on the main amnesty site.
Neither could I. Nor could I find it at Amnesty's Oz site, its British site, or its German site. I think it's logical to conclude that this report, then, was exclusively tailored for an American audience -- and, to be fair, an American President who had recently called AI "absurd".
But logic serves no purpose to wingnutia. The next comment, by Just Me,
asks:
has AI called for the kidnap and trial of Castro? Kim Jong Il? Mugabe? Hu Jintao? Iran's Ayattollah? Or Assad? I can name others that should make the list long before we reach President Bush, Rumsfeld or Rice.
He is given several sarcastic replies in the negative by fellow wingnuts convinced they have found yet another double standard.
But I looked up "annual report" on some of those other AI sites, and, well, here's what I got from just a summary of the
UK site's annual report:
* In Darfur, the Sudanese government generated a human rights catastrophe which the international community did too little too late to address
* In Haiti, individuals responsible for serious human rights violations were allowed to regain positions of power
* In the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo there was no effective response to the systematic rape of tens of thousands of women and children
* Despite the holding of elections, Afghanistan slipped into a downward spiral of lawlessness and instability which hampered efforts towards peace
* In Iraq there were gross human rights abuses by US-led forces, including unlawful killings and arbitrary detention, and by armed groups, who targeted civilians, took and killed hostages
* Russian soldiers reportedly tortured, raped and sexually abused Chechen women with impunity
* Zimbabwe's government manipulated food shortages for political reasons, continuing a campaign of repression aimed eliminating political opposition and silencing dissent
[snip]
"The USA, as the unrivalled political, military and economic hyper-power, sets the tone for governmental behaviour worldwide. When the most powerful country in the world thumbs its nose at the rule of law and human rights, it grants a licence to others to commit abuse with impunity," said Irene Khan.
Many governments showed a shocking contempt for the rule of law. Nigeria granted Charles Taylor, former President of Liberia, refugee status despite his indictment for killings, mutilations and rape
That's pretty even handed, but it won't be enough for wingnuts because, of course, the "truth" to them is that their adminstration's policies are as pure as the driven snow -- the American government is never guilty of anything in the international arena. To claim that it is, is to be "biased". Yes, they are that insane.
I'm still looking. I've found the Irish site's
introduction to the 2005 AI Report. I've found the whole 2005 report online
through the AI Canadian site. The
intro to the Canadian site's 2005 report is a bit more complete than the Brit version. I'm pretty certain now that each country, if it's big enough or has a special issue (like IE with regard to the IRA and McCartney murders), has specialised messages from AI tailored to its natives.
Anyway, I want to go back, now, to the quote the wingnuts left out from Lobe's piece:
'If the U.S. government continues to shirk its responsibility, Amnesty International calls on foreign governments to uphold their obligations under international law by investigating all senior U.S. officials involved in the torture scandal,'' said Schulz, who added that violations of the torture convention, which has been ratified by the United States and some 138 other countries, can be prosecuted in any jurisdiction.
Then it goes on to cite various groups and officials in America who are not unhinged batshit wingnuts and therefore have called for bipartisan investigations into torture. "If the US continues to shirk" plus an endorsement of those who call for the US to properly investigate itself. If it does not, then it would be right for foreign countries to give American torturers the Pinochet treatment -- and by citing that Spanish precedent they are demonstrating that it's not just a thing to be aimed at Americans. Christ, wingnuts are paranoid.
You can probably expect what's next from the wingnuts. Yep, it's the
treason charge, a perennial wingnut favorite but in cases like these quintessential:
act of treason or domestic terrorism? Since AIUSA is based out of New York, is calling for the arrest of US government officials and subjecting them to a court that is not recognized (ICC) an act of treason based on it being a call to overthrow the US government? If such an event were to occur, would the US government be justified in designating AIUSA a domestic terrorist organization? Assets frozen, building raided & shut down, and arrest of AIUSA directors would be a start.
As if this molotov cocktail of McCarthyist stupidity wasn't enough, for good measure he lobs this little dud of a firecracker:
To me this boils down to them being impotent and them trying to let everyone know that they are important (and money, isn't it always about the money).
Why yes, AI is just in it for the money. Note, however, the typical wingnut preference for perceived force, if it is only here expressed in the negative. Pussies! If AI had guns and some sojers and some cajones like Dubya...
Inevitably, a following fucktard approvingly cites this
piece of shit article written by the genocide-enthusiast and master war criminal Henry Kissinger without mentioning Kissinger's own personal interest in fighting the concept of universal jurisdiction. Remember, these wingnuts are against dictators! They are for democracy! Yet to defend their current, younger criminals they will cite the odious arguments of their elder criminal whose
crimes against humanity are myriad and massive and were executed exclusively in the service of thwarting democracies and aiding dictators.
A leftist busts these nutjobs on their "kidnapping" charge with a good analogy. Naturally, this goes over like a lead balloon and he's apparently banned.
What remains is an echo-chamber of idiocy and moral degeneracy. Wingnuts
want to endorse the torture that the policies of head of their Cult makes possible. Demonising AI is the best way to do that right now.
*Edit: See also
TBOGG, who catches Hindsocket confessing love for General Pinochet.
The Living Text: Translations From The Wingnutese: David Frum Version
I'm bored with doing the "shorter" technique on these idiotic douchebags, so I'll try a different game. I'll revise their texts more broadly; translate them, as it were.
Yeah, that's it. I was thinking of pomo equivalencies, but they won't do. Then I thought, I'll be like one of those CIA creeps preparing an incriminating document for release through the FOIA. But then all they do is redact. Their object is concealment, mine is the opposite.
So, I'll think of myself as a translator, deciphering windy and insane texts from the original wingnutese into plain English through which the original stupidity and fanaticism is more readily apparent.
Here I go:
David Frum is so proud of his June 7th
diarrhea diary entry that he posted it twice. Now I'm excited; this should be fun. Don't disappoint me, Frummy.
"Readers of British newspapers might be forgiven for thinking that Tony Blair flew to Washington last night solely in order to discuss with President Bush the issue of Bob Geldof.
"The forthcoming G8 summit at Gleneagles has been billed as the moment when world leaders come face to face with world opinion, represented by Geldof, Midge Ure and Joss Stone, and are commanded by them to Make Poverty History.
"Mr Blair's trip to the United States to prepare for this Scottish showdown has been carefully spun by Number 10 to present him as on the side of the rock stars, and against the hard-hearted Americans."
The Telegraph goes on to joke that Blair might have had a few other things on his mind during this visit than acting as advance man for a retired rocker. It's a useful reality check. Here's another.
Tony Blair, being our Greatest Ally Against Evil, is not so silly or frivolous as to be
truly influenced by liberal rock stars.
Arguments over foreign aid are exercises in symbolic politics, not real assistance. Remember the tsunami? Bush early on made the mistake of suggesting a tentative figure for the US contribution. He was savagely criticized for alleged stinginess - even though at the time nobody had any real idea of the extent of the damage and the cost of repair. In the end, the US and other countries were stampeded into pledging much more, perhaps vastly more, than the economic damage done by the tsunami.
Stupid rock stars, with their hand-wringing, emotions-over-substance rhetoric, obviously are attempting to scam the G8 leaders. In fact, all these relief crusades are scams of one sort or another. Those pesky Asians basically got a welfare cheque by using the tsunami as an excuse. If Bush had held firm, these ultimately wasted funds could have gone on to better uses, like killing A-rabs, or a tax rebate for the filthy rich.
African aid relief is the same. Jeffrey Sachs may imagine that he knows how much it will cost to pull Africa from poverty, but almost nobody outside the UN apparatus and the world of pop culture believes him. (See my review of his book in Commentary.) The numbers tossed around as desired figures for aid are to a really disturbing degree plucked from thin air.
Liberals pull these numbers out of their asses. Obviously, if the need is greater than zero dollars, it's not a number that conservatives can agree with.
Meanwhile, there is something practical that can immediately be done to fight poverty right on America's doorstep: Pass the embattled Central American Free Trade Initiative through Congress. But because CAFTA is premised on the unglamorous idea that poverty will be defeated by work and trade, not guilt-induced donations, none of its advocates have ever picked up a guitar in their life.
I really detest musicians and artists: their chosen purpose in life is to try to make people feel guilty. Real heros are the generous rightwingers who have no "artistic talent" but are so giving that they'll pass sweatshop-creating legislation. But trust Liberals and artists, the bleeding-heart fucks, to not appreciate it. It's a thankless job, everybody is against us -- why, we only have all of Corporate America on our side, as well as control of all three branches of government -- but somehow we tough-minded conservatives will keep our resolve in the face of sneers and guilt-trips, and give unto the dusky and wretched of the earth the sweatshops and environmental destruction that will lift them out of poverty, which is no less than they, or we, deserve.
Frum's June 9th entry is a bit more jaunty:
The GOP a "Christian" party? Wait a minute - I thought it was run by, ahem, "neocons."
Don't you get the joke? "Neo-con" is a euphemism for "Jew". Leftists who claimed that neo-cons highjacked Republican foriegn policy were obviously exhibiting prima facie evidence of anti-semitism. In fact, anyone who ever said "neo-con" in reference to Republicans is more or less an anti-semite. Anyway, now they're being inconsistent! They used to
mean that Jews ran the Republican Party, now Howard Dean is
saying that white christians run it! They should keep their conspiracy theories straight!
Anyway, aren't American parties supposed to "look like America"? And last time I checked, wasn't America full of Christians? Like 95%?
Obviously, Dean meant fundamentalists, but we Republicans don't recognise a distinction, though even if we did, my bad faith is so massive that I'd throw out this meaningless statistic that 95 percent of American is Christian, anyway. Come on, Liberals, I can use statistics to prove anything I want: 13 percent of all people know that.
And is the insinuation here that there's something wrong with being white or Christian? That whites and Christians are a rather unattractive and robotically single-minded bunch? (If true, by the way, that would sure have spared Europe a lot of wars over the past 2500+ years ...) Isn't that an unwise thing to say for a Dem chairman who has promised to reach out to red state America?
Yes,
now is the time to argue that Christian Whites are a heterodox group. See? Am I not clever? I can also imply that Howard Dean is a self-loathing honkey, a racist; try to get your NASCAR votes now, no-neck.
I'm trying to think of what would be a Republican equivalent of a remark as omindirectionally bone-headed as Dean's. Here's my invention: It is the equivalent of a Republican party chairman sneering at the Dems, "Look at these people! It looks as if none of them ever cashed a dividend check in their lives! Why they have no stake in the country at all....."
How long would such a moron as that last at the head of the RNC? About a minute and a half, right? I don't wish the Democratic party well, but just from a point of view of sporting interest, I do wonder: Can't anybody over there play this game?
Since Dean unfairly tarred the trust-fund babies, idle-class filthy rich, rich men's whores, and fundamentalist christians who control the Republican Party, I'll pay him back in funny money not, perhaps, noticing that the joke's on me. Hah, you Dems are all poor laborers! Or petite bourgeoisie at best! See? Top-down class warfare rhetoric is certainly no worse than the bottom-up class warfare rhetoric Dean is spouting. Is it? I mean, after all, there is no such thing as a class structure in America, anyway. Wait, come back...
Science Must Conform To The Views Of The PolitburoThe Republican
Lysenkoists are at it
again:
A White House official who once led the oil industry's fight against limits on greenhouse gases has repeatedly edited government climate reports in ways that play down links between such emissions and global warming, according to internal documents.
In handwritten notes on drafts of several reports issued in 2002 and 2003, the official, Philip A. Cooney, removed or adjusted descriptions of climate research that government scientists and their supervisors, including some senior Bush administration officials, had already approved. In many cases, the changes appeared in the final reports.
The dozens of changes, while sometimes as subtle as the insertion of the phrase "significant and fundamental" before the word "uncertainties," tend to produce an air of doubt about findings that most climate experts say are robust.
Mr. Cooney is chief of staff for the White House Council on Environmental Quality, the office that helps devise and promote administration policies on environmental issues.
Before going to the White House in 2001, he was the "climate team leader" and a lobbyist at the American Petroleum Institute, the largest trade group representing the interests of the oil industry. A lawyer with a bachelor's degree in economics, he has no scientific training.
Now with due respect to Mssrs.
Dunlop and
Dionne, Delong is right (though Winston Smith, whom DeLong cites, seems to conflate the issue to an extent) about this phenomenon. It is far more inspired from or similar to Soviet Russian examples than to Pomo French theories.
Science is no different than art when it is considered by such apparatchiks: everything is subordinate to the interests and consistency of the Party Line. Just as for most Republican jackasses,
art criticism entails nothing more than subjecting the latest Hollywood offering to a crude ideological litmus test, so too does scientific inquiry only exist --
should only exist -- to discover information useful to the party's interests. Obviously, much of it does not. Hence the need for revisionism, for judicious selections and redactions. Sadly, neither science nor art are immovable objects, yet for rightwingers, the party line
is, most definitely, an irresistible force.
Sorry, but this is not postmodernist. It is Stalinist. And they are not one in the same. The give-away is the premium rightwingers put on motive. Writes Dionne,
Today's conservative activists have become the new postmodernists. They shift attention away from the truth or falsity of specific facts and allegations -- and move the discussion to the motives of the journalists and media organizations putting them forward.
Why does Comrade So-and-So speak such counter-revolutionary rhetoric? "Treason" and "enemy of the revolution" then form at the tips of so many commissars' tongues. There is no postmodern equivalent here; it is pure Stalinism. The Bushies denounce ideologically-impure art and inconvenient scientific fact-finding, as well as policy objections and embarrassing news items, as partisan, anti-American, even treasonous.
Look, motives are important, and it's perfectly natural to suspect one's enemy of bad faith. An irony is that many of us suspected Bush of bad faith in going to war: we questioned his motives, and we were factually right. But the difference that is we always wanted to argue by accounting for the facts. We wanted, indeed, to gather more factual evidence before we agreed to give support to any actions, and
our doubts were based on a solid historical/factual foundation. The Bushies, on the other hand, in whatever the latest inconvenient factual issue is, want to ignore the merits of it immediately, they wish to end the conversation instantaneously by questioning the motives of the accuser. The hoped-for result, of course, is that it's a percieved partisan stalemate, and everyone stops paying attention.
(If I need to show why this is not postmodernism except on the most initial and superficial level, I will attempt to if challenged; as it is, I merely hope to show that it is so identical to Stalinism that I don't have to, as it were, prove the other negative.)
Trofim Lysenko was the Soviet Union's prefered biologist. His research and theories were wholly endorsed by the Politburo, not because of their scientific merits, but because they seemed to nicely dovetail with communist beliefs. Of course, scientifically they were worthless. He also used his prefered position to attack genuine scientists as "pseudoscientists": deftly Orwellian, that. As such he is the poster child for party hacks who masquerade as genuine men of science. The term "Lysenkoism", then, is still used, in
wikipedia's phrase, as "a metaphor for other beliefs challenged by empirical evidence but preferred for ideological reasons."
As the
Times link above shows, Lysenkoism is alive and well in the Bush adminstration. I should think, moreover, that it's ingrained in the Republican character since Reagan; it abets, pretty much equally, the diverse attitudes in the Republican Party with regard to environmental issues, from the nasty form of vaguely libertarian populism of the "You ain't gonna tell me what ta do with muh land" folks, to the unhinged greed of the
WSJ plutocrat crowd whose general attitude is best phrased as "pollute that river as much as you like if it adds even just a penny to my dividend check", and everything in between. Letting an oil industry hack doctor official climate-issue texts is just the latest Orwellian offense. We've come to expect so many
foxes weasels to be the ultimate authors of the latest henhouse legislation. Bushies do not disappoint.
But Republicans can't all be self-deluded, can they? I mean to say, though most evidently do think that climate change is a myth, they can't all think that way, so how do the relatively more reality-based reconcile the facts to their policies? Several influences are at play here. One is religion: there is a strain of
"Rapturist" Christianity which holds that the world can't be trashed, it's just not in the Biblical cards. So, for them, "pollute at will" is very much the theme; after all, Jesus will eventually clean it up. Obviously, these folks, then, aren't so reality-based after all.
The other influence is more obvious: the pollyannish belief in technology, which also has the virtue of reinforcing their belief in Anything Goes capitalism. Though the fact is that much-dreaded government spending actually accounts for most tech discoveries and innovations, this inconvenience is easily finessed. Anyhow, the result is magnificently conservative: wait it out, they say, and wonderful glorious free enterprise, the envy of the world, will solve all our (possible, potential, alleged) problems through technological innovation, and no one will have to be taxed or suffer any inconvenience in the process. Of course after any amount of thought such a claim explodes into smouldering stupidity-debris, but for people who love that myth, and they are myriad, it holds together. Thus we see in their rationalisations a web of delusions, some substituting for others, some reinforcing others. Never are things seen as they are.
Tony Blair has given up on persuading Bush to back Kyoto. He "accepts" that Bush will only persue the technological remedy to climate change. In return, apparently, he will get something of an admission that there is a problem (wingnuts, I'm sure will say that Bush only did it to get Europe off our backs: there still is no such thing as global warming). I suppose this is progress of sorts, but it's so little and so late. Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose. Though considered as a whole I see Tony Blair in marginally better light than I do Margaret Thatcher, when it comes to this subject, I catch myself wishing for the return of Iron Lady and her helmet-hair. Here is an excerpt from the late Carl Sagan's final book,
Billions & Billions:
In 1974, F. Sherwood Rowland and Mario Molina of the Irvine campus of the University of California first warned that CFCs -- some million tons per year were being injected into the stratosphere -- might seriously damage the ozone layer. subsequent experiments and calculations by scientists all over the world have supported their findings. At first certain confirmatory calculations suggested the effect was there, but would be less serious than Rowland and Molina proposed; other calculations suggested it would be more serious. This is a common circumstance for a new scientific finding, as other scientists try to find out how robust the new discovery is. But the calculations settled down more or less where Rowland and Molina said they would. (And in 1995 they would share a Nobel Prize in Chemistry for this work.)
DuPont, which sold CFCs to the tune of $600 million a year, took out ads in newspapers and scientific journals [to the delight, I'm sure, of libertarians and plutocrat-kleptocrat whores like Clarence Thomas who insist that such false advertisings are not obvious lies but are political speech and therefore protected -- Retardo], and testified before congressional committees that the danger of CFCs to the ozone layer was unproved, had been greatly exaggerated, or was based on faulty scientific reasoning. Its ads compared "theorists and some legislators," who were for banning CFCs in aerosols, with "researchers and the aerosol industry," who were for temporizing. It argued that "other chemicals...are primarily responsible" and warned about "business destroyed by premature legislative action." It claimed a "lack of evidence" on the issue and promised to begin three years of research, after which they might do something. A powerful and profitable corporation was not about to risk hundreds of millions of dollars a year on the mere say-so of a few photochemists. When the theory was proven within a shadow of a doubt, they in effect said, that would be soon enough to consider making changes [selective scepticism, another classic wingnut trick -- Retardo]. Sometimes they seemed to be arguing that CFC manufacture would be halted as soon as the ozone layer was irretrievably damaged. But by then there might be no customers.
[snip]
In September 1987, many of the nations that produce and use CFCs met in Montreal to consider a possible agreement to limit CFC use... Interior Secretary Donald Hodel, a conservative Reagan appointee averse to government controls, preportedly suggested that, instead of limiting CFC production, we all wear sunglasses and hats. This option is unavailable to the microorganisms at the base of the food chains that sustain life on Earth. The United States signed the Montreal Treaty despite this advice. That this occured during the antienvironmental spasm of the late Reagan Administration was truly unexpected... In the United States alone, 90 million vehicle air conditioners and 100 million refigerators would have to be replaced. This represented a considerable sacrifice to preserve the environment. Substantial credit must be given to Ambassador Richard Benedick, who led the U.S. delegation to Montreal, and to British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who, trained in chemistry, understood the issue.
Yes, Margaret Thatcher, capable of such loony Friedmanisms as her infamous utterance that "there is no such thing as society", still understood basic fucking chemistry, while morons and greedy scumbags and ideologue fuckwits like Bush, Reagan, and the legions of wingnuttia didn't know shit then and don't know it now, save that they know they don't like what genuine scientists discover. I'm certain that it was Mrs Thatcher's knowledge and sensibility which persuaded the US to accept Montreal; would that she were here to make Bush accept Kyoto.
The ozone-CFC reaction is a fairly simple equasion; I learned it in 10th grade chem. It is incontestable science. In this sense, yes, I concede that wingnuts can be more or less compared to the worst accolytes of postmodernism in that they believe scientific facts are merely opinions (while, conversely, wingnuts believe the opinions crafted by the social-science of economics are indisputable empirical facts: ironies abound). I should also note that, though he can be forgiven because of the time of his writing, Sagan was wrong when he tried to be evenhanded and charitable to the other side in mentioning that so many vehicles would have to be expensively retrofitted with air conditioners. It didn't work out that way, but the fear of it was a very effective thing for the chemical companies to encourage, and did they ever do so. Actually, the "cost" was a very inexpensive and minimally-laborious switch of expansion valves and rubber O-rings; neither compressors nor condensers required changing.
But still, Stalinism is the more useful analogy. Consider who will profit from Bush's "remedy" to the climate change he insists does not exist, or if it does, is not caused by man. If the "remedy" is innovation, it will only come from the federal subsidies to the energy companies who long ago bought George Bush. They will not admit there is a problem until they and they alone can profit from the solution. Then, of course, they will claim that their risk-taking and capitalist deering-do saved the day. Thus denials buy time. Republican government is socialism for the rich,
state capitalism. Its policies are dictated by the rich and powerful, and science is made to conform to their ideology. When it is suddenly profitable for the energy interests to be Green, all their currently funded pseudo-science and propaganda and all their revisionism will be shot down the memory hole. Facts don't matter, only ideology, loyalty and preservation of power are important. It's no surprise to me that even some of this government's
public art is stylised in a 1930s Soviet way: it merely reflects the ruling ideology. Hello from Mother Amerika, where facts are judged by their political convenience, gulags are established, traitors are dealt with firmly, and
the attempt is made by a cadre of self-pitying commissariat pukefaces to keep art ideologically pure. Da, comrades, da!
** Added: Al Gore is still making
speeches based on real science.
The Book Burning PileMein Kampf actually made the
"most harmful books" list at
Human Events Online. Though this a pleasant surprise (however, I suspect it's a little insincere), it's only second to the
Communist Manifesto. The rest are pretty predictable: Marx again, Keynes, Kinsey. But I'm really surprised poor John Dewey placed so highly (ahead of Foucault even!). But then the threats of secular humanism and educational reform are just slightly less menacing to wingnuts than are those of communism and homosexuality.
The also rans listed at bottom are hilarious: Rachel Carson, Darwin (twice), Margaret Mead... Too funny.
Here's their little blurb about Keynes's offending text:
The book is a recipe for ever-expanding government. When the business cycle threatens a contraction of industry, and thus of jobs, he argued, the government should run up deficits, borrowing and spending money to spur economic activity. FDR adopted the idea as U.S. policy, and the U.S. government now has a $2.6-trillion annual budget and an $8-trillion dollar debt.
No mention is made of who ran-up that debt and who forced that budget.
**Edit: I should have known somebody already gave this the attention that it deserved. My post is very half-assed.
Lance Mannion's is better.
The Shorter Tom FriedmanBangalore: Hotter and Hotter:
The current model of outsourcing along a piecemeal, ad hoc basis is a wonderful thing. But I have seen the future here in Bangalore, and it consists of the total outsourced development and production of goods merely "ideated" and marketed in America.
Friedman is tired of cupping his ear to catch the devilish tone of
"that great sucking sound": he knows a deafening roar will come soon, and he's ecstatic at the prospect.
The Shorter Mason Verger Charles KrauthammerGitmo Grovel: Enough Already:
Civil libertarians criticising Guantanamo should shut up until they condemn blasphemous art with equal fire as they muster against our Army's alleged desecration of the Koran.
Seriously. Read it. He doesn't understand the difference. Of course this part is just a jab at the critics. The real meat of the essay it devoted to denying abuse, doubting desecration, and lauding the humane treatment the United States has provided the prisoners.
Servility & FanaticismAs
this incredibly perceptive psychological profile of common wingnuttery attests, the root of their insanity and depravity is not something that the reality-based might normally suppose. It's not greed. It's not ignorance. It's not even bull-headedness, though the profile rightly emphasizes that aspect. All of these play into the overall pathology, but the real culprit is
the urge to obey.
It's true that fanatics can be manufactured without this urge: Randroids are an example. But fanatics cannot cohere into a mass movement without it. Subservience is the root of their insanity.
Force Their HandThis is all well and good and spot-on blah blah blah, but no one should expect any different. In the specific case of the Post, Katherine Graham immediately stepped back from the victory of Nixon's resignation: toppling the corrupt should not became a habit, another Watergate would topple more than a President, it might topple the system. The rest of the press -- no, it did not follow suit; it was not a conspiracy -- thought the same way.
I don't recall my source for this but I do remember reading somewhere that Graham laid down the law in private, which was revealed through
Post policy. Eventually it became so ingrained that.. that, well, we know what it's like now. I think the lack any of heads a' rolling from Iran-Contra proved it. It
was common talk then among newsies that Iran-Contra was "too soon" after Watergate.
Sure, in a huge way,
reticence and modesty disappeared since Nixon's political demise: everyone gossips. But I promise you gossip will not coagulate in the chattering classes as they currently exist if there is a real danger of reform coming. To get gossip to coagulate takes the concerted efforts of the press and the political opposition -- in the latter case, I mean actual politicians, not grass roots.
What about Clinton, you say? I have always believed that Clinton deserved investigation and possible impeachment for his campaign finance issues. But there is simply no way in hell Clinton's political opposition would have brought that charge, since they would have been guilty, too, and the filthy enterprise that passes for American elections might have been permanently cleansed by an outraged populace. Not gonna go that route. So his political opposition (aided greatly by the "liberal" media) leveled the sexual misconduct charge, which the public, of course, laughed off. The Repugs weren't gonna get impeachment, and they must have, at least on some level, known it. But they did create a diversion and political quagmire; Clinton was unable to pass any of the petty reforms that they feared (though they really shouldn't have worried).
The Attytood post linked in the first paragraph flat-out calls the Downing Street Memo an "impeachment-worthy story". Indeed it is. Of course the press has ignored it: they too, like the whole Republican party and most of the Dems, are controlled by Corporate America. An end to this war, an end to this administration, would be a rollback in profits; this administration was put in place for the precise purpose of corporate profit (hence Bush's instanteously huge war chest) and it has delivered. Yet we have a legal case (the moral case is self-evident). The forces arrayed against impeachment are myriad, and of course it cannot, actually, be done with the Republican majority in Congress.
But it might end the War in Iraq and might push Bush into his own quagmire if impeachment proceedings were mentioned by a Democrat in the House or Senate. Someone willing to be a martyr, to make the press report on the impeachment-worthy Memo, to make it flood the papers and airwaves with the story. Because if the story gets out, the time is ripe. Watergate and criminal Presidents are very much on everyone's mind. Billmon was right that there are plenty of former-Bushie whistleblowers come and gone already. But this British leaker is a real Mark Felt. The Downing Street Memo is a smoking gun. The press forced the issue with Watergate; the politicians eventually came around. The press will not do it this time, for the reasons I've given above, and also because they probably watched what happened to Mr. Gilligan of the BBC when he forced the issue with less evidence. So where are our John Andersons and Howard Bakers and Frank Churches? If the Memo is given the steady attention that the
Post gave Watergate, we still may not be able to take Bush out, but we at least ought to be able to take him down. But that attention won't come unless a prominent politician forces the issue.
(Eh, now that I've glanced through the comments at Attytood, I see that someone has made the same comment about Graham and Iran-Contra that I did.)
Out There, In The Distance...is the "stab in the back" whine, a longtime post-Vietnam favorite of batshit rightwingers that we'll hear again soon enough at full volume.
TBOGG:
So when we finally bow down to public opinion and admit defeat (only we won't admit defeat...we'll just call it a tie) and pull out of Iraq, and the power vacuum that ensues results in tribal warfare and more death and destruction, who do you think the rightwing echo chamber is going to blame? Not the neo-cons who sent us on this fools errand. Not the generals who were whistling past the graveyard when they should have been telling Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld to fuck off. Not the 101st Fighting Keyboarders who waved their little flags and their well-thumbed copies of Sun Tzu and pointed out that it looked a hell of a lot easier on the Risk board.
No. They're going to blame us because we didn't wear little flag lapel pins and slap yellow ribbon magnetic stickers on our SUV's and we subverted the cause of democracy in the Middle East and that's why 1600 and counting American soldiers are dead, and the blood of every Iraqi killed in the wake of our leaving will be on our hands.
And it's all because we didn't stop them before they killed again.
Shame on us.
Oh Hell YesProving that "they" can be serious as well as
hilarious, The Editors marshal an
argument which annihilates the moral degenerates at redstate.org.
Ted Barlow does the
same thing to the hacks at
The New Republic.
Meanwhile, Juan Cole
comes right out and says the obvious:
The main reason is that the Bush Administration established the prison at Guantanamo in hopes of gutting the Bill of Rights. They wanted the prisoners there to be beyond the law, outside the framework of judiciality. They would have no lawyers. They would be tried only if the administration wanted to try them. They would be held indefinitely. They would be outside the framework of US law and also of the Geneval Conventions-- though Rumsfeld keeps slipping and calling them prisoners of war.
Terrorists are dirty criminals who should be tried, and if found guilty, put away for life. Terrorists are criminals. They are not non-human, and any attempt to create a category of human beings to whom the protections of the law do not apply is an attempt to undermine the Republic. It is a return of the Bill of Attainder, a feature of absolute monarchy that the Founding Fathers stood against. It is something to which even Rehnquist is opposed.
[...]
Guantanamo Prison should be closed because it was conceived as the beginning of the end of the American Republic.
That is exactly right. Look, there's a reason why the supporters of this administration, and the enablers in it, admire, for instance, Israel's assassination policies: they envy the heavy hand and deeply wish that America would adopt the techniques of authoritarianism. This with the Cult of Dear Leader mindset that inevitably invokes the divine right of kings makes for a noxious if obvious (to normal people) agenda for a repeal of the Bill of Rights.
In Bush's Amuhrika, the
Star Chamber is already a fact of life; why shouldn't they endorse Bills of Attainder, too? It's a natural progression.
We were worried about Bush rolling back America to the 1880s. We were wrong. He wants to roll it back to 1775. Divine right of kings, with a democratic veneer for now, borrowing a bit from the nastiest democracies of recent times.
(RE: Israel's assassination policies, which are a flagrant example of Bills of Attainder, why do people keep saying that it is an enlightened democracy when it currently employs, to wingnuts'
glee, something explicitly forbidden by our Founders over 200 years ago? In other words, we knew even then that democracies shouldn't do such things. What's their excuse? Oh, yeah, same as ours under Bush and same as every degraded democracy's throughout history: "security". The reality, of course, is that Israel, though superior to neighbouring dictatorships, is still nasty considering democratic standards, ranking somewhere between 1980s South Africa and 1980s Turkey on the unsavory chart. The American rightwing found things to admire in those democracies, too.)
Buh Buh BuhSputtering excuses:
Wrote reporter Mark Memmott in the USA Today article's final paragraph: "USA Today chose not to publish anything about the memo before today for several reasons, says Jim Cox, the newspaper's senior assignment editor for foreign news. 'We could not obtain the memo or a copy of it from a reliable source,' Cox says. 'There was no explicit confirmation of its authenticity from (Blair's office). And it was disclosed four days before the British elections, raising concerns about the timing.'"
The memo has attracted a great deal of media attention in Britain, but it has gotten much less play in the United States.
Wrote Memmott: "The Sunday Times' May 1 memo story, which broke just four days before Britain's national elections, caused a sensation in Europe. American media reacted more cautiously. The New York Times wrote about the memo May 2, but didn't mention until its 15th paragraph that the memo stated U.S. officials had 'fixed' intelligence and facts.
"Knight Ridder Newspapers distributed a story May 6 that said the memo 'claims President Bush … was determined to ensure that U.S. intelligence data supported his policy.” The Los Angeles Times wrote about the memo May 12, The Washington Post followed on May 15 and The New York Times revisited the news on May 20.
"None of the stories appeared on the newspapers' front pages. Several other major media outlets, including the evening news programs on ABC, CBS and NBC, had not said a word about the document before Tuesday."
Ombudsmen at both The New York Times and The Washington Post have criticized their papers for not covering the story more aggressively, Memmott's story noted.
Uh-huh.
Here's the original.
The Shorter Gary Clyde Hufbauer & Paul L. E. GriecoThe Payoff From Globalization:
By attributing every single technological and social advance in the last 60 years to free trade, we can easily make the case that anyone opposed to CAFTA is a luddist fucktard.
Citing opposition to CAFTA from Sugar Barons while not mentioning the embargo of Cuba is a little disingenuous. But then the whole article is that way: the American citizen apparently owes everything he is and owns to the virtues of free trade! It's easy to cite computer models that say free trade has made the country more money than what the predictions say would have been made with protectionism. What the authors don't want to say is just who made that money, regardless of whether it was "extra" or not -- no, it's easier to say that free trade in this time period has "translated into gain in annual income of about $10,000 per household." Yeah, tell that to a family farmer or a texile worker or a steel miller. And be careful not to mention the environmental and labor issues with regard to the exported industries. One-sided essays are perfectly fine, but this is pathetic.
The Shorter World Net DailyJack Cashill:
Media Bias! Liberals love whistleblowers like Mark Felt who expose Republicans but ignore or persecute those who expose Democrats, such as Linda Tripp, Paula Jones, and people who think TWA 800 was blown-up by a missile.
Hahah. Yes, he also mentions "pathologists who pointed out" alleged inconsistencies in Vince Foster's wounds. What Cashill is peddling here is, ultimately, blame on Clinton for 9-11. Resurrecting the old missile theory is a means of doing that.
***
Mark Steyn:
I find it very satisfying to think that the conclusions to the two great sagas of the 1970s, Star Wars and Watergate's Deep Throat, are bound to be disappointing to liberals, if they'd only see them as I do.
Steyn makes efforts to paint both conclusions as banal. But he's trying too hard, and it gives his game away. Actually, if any disappointment can be discerned in his column, it's all Steyn's own: he sounds absolutely wistful as he relates his theory that Nixon Secretary Rose Marie Woods unintentionally did the adminstration in by writing transcriptions which read as calculated evil, though, really, when one looks at later transcripts made by professional researchers, Oval Office conversations read like regular conversation, and are therefore seen as relatively benevolent. See? According to Steyn it all came down to appearances and perception, not facts or Nixon's actions. A truly original Nixon defense from our Igloo Wingnut from Canuckistan. He also mourns the fact that if Hoover had lived only a year longer, or Nixon had been able to keep Felt in the fold, things would have turned out differently (in other words, Richard Nixon would have gotten away with it).
***
Frank J. Gafney, Jr.:
Remember the weapon the bad guys used in that Bond flick, Goldeneye? An EMP. Well, in theory, al-qaeda or Iran could fit a fishing trawler with Scud missile launchers, put an EMP weapon in the Scud, and fire it on us. Every Playstation in America would go kablooie. But we are not without hope: this threat can be countered by a Missile Defense Shield and a renewal of underground nuclear testing.
Save The
Children Computers!
***
Ron Strom:
Panic! Mayhem! Cats and dogs, living together! For instruction on how to survive if an EMP attack knocks out the nation's electricity, consult your Y2K manual.
Cultivating fear. They're good at that. Duck and cover, duct tape, bunkers, survival kits... be very afraid, and trust in Dear Leader.
***
David Limbaugh:
I have pillaged Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's work to prove that AI is lying: the rape, beatings, murders, and mutilations done by Americans during the recent wars in Iraq and on Terra don't compare to the rape, beatings, murders, and mutilations done in Stalin's gulag.
A note about moral equivalency arguments: often they exist only to split hairs. Yes, Stalin's gulag was far worse than ours in the sense that it lasted longer, and wasted more human beings. But then Stalinism only had to live up to Stalinism. We have to live up to something else.
But on the other hand, after some point, comparisons don't matter: if it's close, fuck it. Though it's not close here, if it
was close, Limbaugh and his kind would scream just as hard -- if it, say, was empirically proven that the US tortured and murdered 19,999 people where another country tortured and murdered 20,000. Really. Though that's a hyperbolic example, my point is that there is, well, a point at which it's irrelevant to say who's worse. Look at it another way, do those neo-Nazi bastards have a point when they say, "a-hah, but only 4.5 million were killed in the Holocaust!"? Of course not. Though the true number should be determined, it doesn't make it "nicer" if "only" 4.5 million were killed instead of 6 million: it's still fucking evil.
Shorter David Limbaugh in the time machine:
Sir David Limbaugh:
Hear ye, hear ye. Let those who speaketh of moral equivalencies from our civilised iron maidens, racks, wheels, stockades, and gallows to the savages' gauntlets, torture pyres, and cannibalism know that they maketh a grave mistayke.
David Limbaugh west of the Pecos:
Tarnation! You fancy city slickers keep sayin that jus' cause our boys shot old men, brained Indian babies, shot pregnant women in the stomach, and from live captives removed scrotums and wombs which were later made into mighty fine tobacco pouches, that it's the same or worse than when those heathens scalp settlers, murder missionaries, and forbid them a proper Christian burial! Well, damn yer hides for that!
Davidus Limbaughus
Let it not be said that the various techniques employed by the Emperor's men -- the death of a thousand cuts, the genital mutilation, the rapes, the poisonous concoctions -- are in any way equivalent to that which is commonly practiced in the land of Cathay, the water tortures and live-burials and so on.
***
Joseph Farah:
A PORN STAR AND A PORN PRODUCER ARE GOING TO ATTEND AN RNC BANQUET AND THEY WILL HAVE ACCESS TO DEAR LEADER AND I'M APOPLECTIC AND I'M BEGINNING TO SEE SPOTS BEFORE MY EYES HELP ME, I..... v--^-v--^-v^^--^\__________________
Paramedics are on the scene.
***
Donna Halper:
Can't we all just get along?
No.
***
Wing Nut Daily Readers:
John McCain is a traitor; Hillary Clinton is a communist. A potential McCain vs Hillary race in 2008 would be a fate worse than death.
Punctuated insanity, like reading the graffitti on boxcars as a slow-moving freight train chugs past. Space. Crazy. Space. Inane. Space. WTF? Space. Signature. Etc.
***
Mychal Massie:
The Democratic Party is the party of gaywads and abortionists, and if Howard Dean doesn't agree with my characterisation, he's on drugs.
It gets better: an attack on the New Deal, which was apparently racist as well as developed by Margaret Sanger.
***
Les Kinsolving:
The National Parent Teacher Association is nice to homo fagfags, but won't be nice to ex-sodomites who have been transubstantiated into wingnuts by Jesus!
How many times can he say "Sodomy Lobby"? He really likes to repeat it. It must be the near symmetry of those letters, so nicely shaped, bulbous on bottom, straight -- even rigid -- on top... coming together, slowly squeezing the less-manly letters out, now rubbing against each other, so masculine, oh, it makes him so hot.. yes.. Yes, now the Ys are capitalized.. it's a swordfight!.. the ds and bbs have grown swollen too.. oh yes.. oh, the humanity! Sodomy Lobby Sodomy Lobby Sodomy Lobby!
At least, I think that must be his reason.
*Edit -- I screwed this up the first time. Don't ask how.
***
Jim Rutz:
Theocracy is coming! Hallelujah! There was real freedom once, but the Catholics ruined it. Now the secular liberals are retarding it, but they can't hold out much longer. We'll overwhelm them!
Dispatches from the American Taliban, sure, but I'm disappointed. Not enough foaming at the mouth and fire and brimstone. And come on, I want a show for my money. Where are the snake handlers? And I don't think he mentioned witches or sodomy once. Hey, you're not gonna be the next Jerry Falwell if you keep that shit up, man. Get with the program.
***
As always, thanks to
Busy, Busy, Busy for the inspiration.
***
See also: Seb's
other unindicted co-conspirator, Brad,
desperately tries to keep up with my blogging apparently had the
same idea.
Could Be WorseThough we too live in an Empire and are governed by psychopaths, in re-reading some of my favorite (which is to say, most outrageous) passages of
Suetonius, I'm reminded that we still don't have it quite as bad as the Romans.
Here's Nero (Robert Graves's translation):
Not satisfied with seducing free-born boys and married women, Nero raped the Vestal Virgin Rubria... Having tried to turn the boy Sporus into a girl by castration, he went through a wedding ceremony with him -- dowry, bridal veil and all -- took him to his palace with a great crowd in attendance, and treated him as a wife. A rather amusing joke is still going the rounds: the world would have been a happier place had Nero's father Domitius married that sort of wife. He dressed Sporus in the fine clothes normally worn by an Empress and took him in his own litter not only to every Greek assize and fair, but actually through the Street of Sigillaria at Rome, kissing him amorously now and then.
The lecherous passion he felt for his mother, Agrippina, was notorious; but her enemies would not let him consummate it, fearing that, if he did, she would become even more powerful and ruthless than hitherto. So he found a new mistress who was said to be her spitting image; some say that he did, in fact, commit incest with Agrippina every time they rode in the same litter -- the stains on his clothes when he emerged proved it.
Nero practised every kind of obscenity, and after defiling almost every part of his body finally invented a novel game: he was released from a cage dressed in the skins of wild animals, and attacked the private parts of men and women who stood bound to stakes. After working up sufficient excitement by this means, he was dispatched -- shall we say? -- by his freedman Doryphorus. Doryphorus now married him -- just as he himself had married Sporus -- and on the wedding night he imitated the screams and moans of a girl being deflowered. According to my informants he was convinced that nobody could remain chaste or pure in any part of his body, but that most people concealed their secret vices; hence, if anyone confessed to obscene practices, Nero forgave him all his other crimes.
Who said reading the classics can't be fun?
Now before a Christian nutcase misconstrues this excerpt, let me say that the crimes here are, aside the incest issue, not about sexuality at all, but rather are about Nero's power: it was such that he could and did violate people for whatever purpose his imagination could concieve.
I suspect that incest comes "naturally" in such a situation precisely because it is a natural and cultural taboo: for one with absolute power, who casually breaks laws and can completely control other people, such barriers are about all that's left and therefore are irresistible.
The theme of Suetonius's book is that absolute power corrupts absolutely. Yeah, everyone knows that, it's very intuitive, but it's demonstrated here in a way that in a study of Stalin, say, is insufficient: Suetonius's chronicle shows a
pattern where a new Caesar is crowned, tries to be just, and inevitably degrades into madness. Of the twelve caesars covered, only Vespasian seems to have remained a decent human being from start to finish. In Suetonius is the study of human character in a specific context; what that context inevitably did to humans teaches us that as our leaders try to get more and more power, both for their person and for their office, we should resist no matter their motives, their ideals, their charms (though the last two aren't such a problem these days).
Vidal is good on this, as he always is when explaining human character in a historical context (the copy of the essay in the link is typo-ridden, however).
Ridiculous & Menacing (Deeply Throttled Part II)Part I of the series.
Why the hell is Gordon Liddy on national television at all? Why is his opinion valuable?
The objection is not just based on the fact that Liddy is a criminal: he's also a
fascist nutbag and a
mental case:
"Gordon Liddy had a very unbalanced and bizarre personality," Minnick said. "I watched him burn a hole in his forearm one day with his cigarette lighter at a birthday party for a secretary. No one could stay in the room because of the smell of scorched flesh."
And
ignorance of his insanity is not an excuse (notice that Scarborough went right ahead after this Deep Throat thing to
let Liddy spew the S.O.S.)
I've always thought that Kevin Kline's character, Otto, in
A Fish Called Wanda, was based on G. Gordon Liddy: macho, sociopathic, given to an ignorant and cornball interpretation of Nietzsche.
As this Felt thing came out, I had visions of octogenarian
E. Howard Hunt and Gordon Liddy (assuming they've made up: Liddy thought about killing Hunt, too) chatting on the phone, scheming of ways to whack their phantom menace: "Gordon, you could stab Felt with a penknife and blame it on Bob Woodward." "Good idea, Howie."
Is it really so much of a stretch? Were Nixon's goons so depraved? Yes, they were. Check out this
interview:
PLAYBOY: And yet your book abounds with plots to murder opponents of and defectors from the Nixon adminstration, ranging from Jack Anderson to E. Howard Hunt --
LIDDY: None of which came to fruition.
PLAYBOY: Do we detect an unspoken "alas" at the end of that statement?
LIDDY: If you're a mindreader, you tell me.
PLAYBOY: Why in God's name did you want to murder Jack Anderson in the first place?
LIDDY: I'd prefer to call it justifable homicide, since murder is a legal term for a specific type of homicide that by its very definition is unjustifiable...
[snip]
Anderson is one of those mutant strains of columnist who are half legitimate, because he passes off biased interpretations and selective information as straight reporting. At one point, Anderson's systematic leaking of top-secret information rendered the effective conduct of American foriegn policy virtually impossible...
[Liddy says Anderson blew a source of technical information gathering at the Kremlin, and wrote a column which "fatally compromised a vital U. S. human intelligence asset in the Middle East."]
PLAYBOY: Casting Anderson as a villain who caused the death of a U.S. Agent is an effective rationale for silencing him, but the fact remains that his removal would have spared Nixon considerable political embarrassment. Wasn't that the real motive?
LIDDY: No, it was not, though I recall George Bernard Shaw's observing that assassination is the extreme form of censorship. [Liddy goes on to deny a political motive, saying that if the Nixon cronies had tried to whack every journalist who had it in for Nixon, the National Press Club would be full of wall-to-wall memorial plaques. Hah fucking hah.]
PLAYBOY: Anderson strenuously denies having done such a thing.
LIDDY: No, he doesn't. What he does do is say over and over... that he never "revealed or identified a CIA officer." Anderson desperately sticks to that tortured formulation, because it's not a technical lie. Just like that other secular saint of the American liberal establishment, old Maximum John Sirica, he's scared of getting his halo tarnished.
Can I just stop here to ask what Liddy thinks of
Robert Novak?
[snip]
PLAYBOY: Nice of you not to carry a grudge, since you only tried to murder the man.
LIDDY: No, never actually tried. It never got to that.
PLAYBOY: Why not?
LIDDY: We worked out a plan, but it was ultimately never approved by our principals. Hunt and I started the ball rolling by meeting a physician from the CIA, who was introduced euphemistically as a specialist in "the unorthodox application of chemical and medical knowledge."
PLAYBOY: Meaning an expert in killing people.
LIDDY: Crude but not inexact. Anyway, we had lunch over at the Hay-Adams across from the White House and discussed various methods of killing Anderson, including coating the steering wheel of his car with an LSD solution sufficiently potent to cause a crash, which we rejected as too chancy, and "aspirin roulette", which we also turned down.
PLAYBOY: Dare we ask?
LIDDY: Aspirin roulette is intelligence jargon for a rather common assassination technique, which entails the substitution of an ordinary aspirin or other headache-remedy tablet in the target's medicine cabinet with a look-alike that is actually a deadly poison.
If I remember correctly, the attempted assassination of Castro was done in this manner. Castro only became ill. I suspect Mr. Hunt had something to do with that one. Also, it's worth noting that former CIA officer Miles Copeland claimed that Liddy and Donald Segretti had spiked Edmund Muskie's punch with LSD before the Senator's public crack-up which ruined his chances at the Presidency.
[snip]
PLAYBOY: ...What did you finally decide on?
LIDDY: A simple if un-James Bondish method... we merely decided to make it a lethal mugging.
PLAYBOY: Who would have done the job?
LIDDY: It was initially decided to assign it to some of our Cuban-exile assets, but then Hunt began to worry that our principals would deem it too sensitive a matter to be entrusted to them. So I volunteered to do it myself.
[snip]
LIDDY: ...We didn't want to make it look like anything more than another Washington street-crime statistic, remember, so no sophisticated weaponry could be employed.
PLAYBOY: How would you have killed him?
LIDDY: Oh, I would have knifed him or broken his neck, probably. One of us would have died, no doubt about it. But, as I say, we never received the final green light.
PLAYBOY: Were you relieved or disappointed?
LIDDY: I was neither. I was acting on the instructions of my principal, and I was prepared to follow those instructions either way they went.
PLAYBOY: You really see nothing anomalous, much less frightening, about two aides to the President of the United States cold-bloodedly plotting to assassinate one of the country's leading reporters?
LIDDY:I know it violates the sensibilities of the innocent and tender-minded, but in the real world, you sometimes have to employ extreme and extralegal methods to preserve the very system whose laws you're violating.
PLAYBOY: Including murder?
LIDDY: Drastic problems sometimes demand drastic solutions. Look, let me give you an example. Philip Agee, the CIA defector, has effectively exposed and compromised dozens of our intelligence agents around the world, and one of his revelations led directly to the assassination of the CIA station chief in Athens, Richard Welch. This one man has done untold damage to the worldwide security interests of the United States. And what have we done about it? Nothing. Fifty years ago, Harry Stimson scuttled an effective American intelligence effort on the grounds that gentlement don;t read other gentlemen's mail. The pendulum seems to have swung all the way back to that position, and the Russians couldn't be happier. They've tried to destroy American intelligence capability for thirty-five years, and in five years we've done the job for them, with the help of demagogues like Frank Church. I just wish someone would point out to the good senator that the world is not run by the League of Women Voters.
PLAYBOY: Returning to Philip Agee for a moment, how would you deal with him? Would you, in CIA parlance, "terminate him with extreme prejudice"?
LIDDY: You're damn right I would. If I were back serving in some capacity in the American intelligence community and I found Agee living comfortably abroad, outside the reach of our law and continuing his relevations, I would strongly recommend that he be assassinated. And were I given the task, I would undertake it, and feel completely justified in so doing. But let me stress that his killing would not be retributive but preventive... same rationale I employed in the case of Mr. Anderson.
PLAYBOY: You'd be willing to kill a man you've never met solely because he was on the opposite side of the political and ideological fence?
LIDDY: No, my friend, because he's on the opposite side of the trench, in a political-military war between the United States and the Soviet Union that is crucial to our survival as a free nation...
PLAYBOY: And you'd feel no qualms, much less remorse, about liquidating someone like Agee?
LIDDY: No more than swatting a fly...
PLAYBOY: You also planned to murder one of your old buddies and fellow Waterbugger, E. Howard Hunt. Surely, Hunt was no enemy of this country.
LIDDY: At the risk of belaboring this point once again, I would personally never charcterise it as murder... Hunt had become an informer, a betrayer of his friends and associates, and to me there is nothing lower on this earth. As Nietzsche put it, there is but one sin -- cowardice. Hunt deserved to die.
PLAYBOY: Nixon and the political fortunes of his adminstration are not exactly synonymous with the national interests of the United States, are they?
LIDDY: Well, under the circumstances, and in light of what's happened to this nation since -- and because -- Nixon was forced from office, I think you could make a very good case that the two were so inextricably linked that Hunt's betrayal constituted an act of at least of regicide, if not of outright treason.
That is the single most illuminating quote in the whole interview. Obviously, in Liddy's mind, disloyalty to Nixon equals disloyalty to the country. Spoken like a true Bushie. "If you're not with us, you're against us."
PLAYBOY: Do you feel the same way about [John] Dean?
LIDDY: Yes, but even more strongly. For all of Hunt's weaknesses and failings, it would still be manifestly unfair to place him in the same category as Dean or [Jeb] Magruder. Next to them, Hunt is a giant. I wouldn't even talk of him in the same breath, much as I condemn his betrayal. The difference between Hunt and Dean is the differecne between a POW who breaks under torture and aids the enemy and Judas Iscariot.
I'll pause here to remind everyone that, recently on Hardball, Liddy blamed the Watergate burglary on John Dean: Liddy claimed it was Dean's idea, not RMN's.
PLAYBOY: You've been alone with Dean only once since he testified against the White House, and you've said that you contemplated killing him then. How close did you actually come?
LIDDY: Oh, it was just a fleeting thought, now one of those sweet memories that one loves to treasure. God knows, he would have been no loss. [In 1974, Liddy was sent to a prosecutor's office, he was told to wait in an adjacent room].. I went in and shut the door behind me and, lo and behold, there was Dean sitting behind the desk. He looked up and I could have sworn he was about to wet himself. His eyes darted all around the room, but I was between him and the door and I could see that he was absolutely terror-stricken. My first thought was that here was the ideal opportunity to kill the bastard. I saw a pencil on the desk and all it would take was a quick thrust through the underside of the jaw, up through the soft palate and deep inside the brain. And simultaneously, I wondered if this were a setup, if someone had arranged for me to be there alone with Dean, anticipating exactly such a denouement. But then, on more somber reflection, I ruled that out. Nixon had been out of office for two months, I had recieved no instructions from my old superiors and, in any case, his killing could only damage the chances of Mitchell, Mardian and others in their forthcoming trials. No, revenge might be a dish best supped cold, but this was positively stale. The whole thing had been a weird, stupid error...
[snip]
PLAYBOY: It's precisely this sort of ruthlessness, which casually encompasses homicide as just another option, that has so alarmed your critics. For example, Herb Klein, who served as White House director of communications during the Nixon administration and who hardly fits the stereostype of bleeding-heart liberal, reviewed your book recently.. and charged that you had adopted "a Mafia-like attitude.." How would you answer him?
LIDDY: Well, we were fighting a war, a civic war, in those days, a far more serious one than the typical gangland squabble over who controls numbers and drugs in this or that section of town, or who had intruded on somebody else's turf. The stakes, as we saw it, were the security and very survival of this nation, and we were ready to take strong measures in its defense. If that's Mafialike, so be it.
[snip]
PLAYBOY: ...throughout your trial and imprisonment, you certainly conducted yourself as a POW trapped in enemy territory. If you were a soldier, were't your only enemies fellow Americans of differing political views?
LIDDY: That's easy enough to believe if you conveniently distort the facts of recent history. Everybody today knows that in the late Sixties and early Seventies, we were involved in an exterior war in Vietnam, but they tend to forget that we were also embroiled in an undeclared civil war at home. And unless you can understand the nature of that struggle and the issues it posed for the administration in Washington, you'll never be able to understand my motives or the motives of my associates in undertaking the actions and running the risks we did. We were up against a formidable constellation of forces in those days, an alliance of influential elements of the media with a so-called counterculture that represented a Weltanschauung and lifestyle that were utterly repugnant to me. It was as unthinkable to me to let the country succumb to those values as it would have been for a Japanese officer reared on the code of Bushido to contemplate surrender in 1945.
PLAYBOY: So you became a kamikaze, and ultimately self-destructed over Watergate?
LIDDY: No, I joined people who believed as I did in a well-justified counteroffensive against the forces of civil disorder that were sweeping the country in those days. And I have absolutely no regrets about my decision to do so. Ultimately, our side won out and crushed the revolutionaries, which is one salient reason why what's left of the left has never forgotten or forgiven Richard Nixon. But our very victory has to some extent obscured the gravity of the situation as it was seen in Washington in those days.
PLAYBOY: Aren't you drastically exaggerating the true dimensions of civil unrest in order to justify your own violations of the law? Sure, there were antiwar demonstrations and civil disobedience and some incidents of terrorism by crazies like the Weathermen; but can you seriously argue that the country was teetering on the brink of a revolutionary upheaval?
LIDDY: In my opinion, you are seriously underestimating the threat. We didn't have a crystal ball at our disposal in those days that would inform us that mass student opposition to the war would peter out after the end of the draft, or that the racial cauldron in the big cities would eventually simmer down. we had to act on our best intelligence assessment of the forces arrayed against us, and that assessment was far from encouraging, particularly when you consider the revolutionaries. Remember, we knew that the same forces had caused Lyndon Johnson to abdicate his office, and we were not prepared to see a similar scenario in the case of Richard Nixon. We drew the line and chose to fight back.
PLAYBOY: You never had any doubts that the antiwar movement posed a serious threat to this country and its institutions?
LIDDY: Never for a moment. They were the shock troops of a movement and value system I despised, and as far as I was concerned, if they were going to succeed, they would have had to march over my dead body. And I always felt justified in taking any action necessary to thwart them...
[snip]
PLAYBOY: The problem is that you, G. Gordon Liddy, are arrogating to yourself the right to decide what laws should and should not be broken. Isn't that in a very profound sense subversive of the constitutional principle that this is a government of laws and not of men, and no one, from the chief executive down to the humblest citizen, is above the law?
LIDDY: No. Ultimately, each of us must be accountable to his own conscience. One must consider the facts and make a prudent judgement. Remember that the Constitution is just what the Supreme Court -- a group of men -- says it is. And that court gave us, among other decisions, Dred Scott. I'll take my own conscience, thank you.
But, first, one must have a conscience.
I know that was long, but I went ahead with it because it shows what kind of nut Richard Nixon would employ. Liddy's thinking about loyalty, his ends-justify-the-means methods, his paranoia, his self-pity, his brazen conflations of political loyalty and ideological loyalty with loyalty to country: these are all useful to consider not just for comparison with the other mouthy Watergate apologists, but with the Bush Adminstration.
A few notes:
Again, what does Liddy think of Bob Novak, who outted agent Valerie Plame?
I don't know the identity of the asset whose cover Anderson allegedly blew, but for one thing, it was an asset, not a CIA agent or even an American citizen; for another, Nixon and his underlings detested Anderson for his reporting on the ITT affair, among other scoops. Frankly, I don't believe Liddy when he says that the discussed hit was not politically motivated.
With regard to Philip Agee, the man lived in Western Europe. So far as I remember, he was
not a defector to the Soviets or Warsaw Pact nations. But here's what's important (again, this is from memory, but I'll try to look some stuff up soon): Robert Welch, Philip Agee, and Senator Frank Church occupy close positions in Liddy's mind for a logical reason.
Why Liddy hated the late Senator Frank Church is because his post-Watergate committee (mirrored by Otis Pike's in the House) discovered massive skullduggeries perpetrated by the CIA worldwide. One place such nasty things took place was in Greece (though Church, at Henry Kissinger's special request, did not inquire about Greek activity), which at that time was ruled by a military junta that was, baroquely, fascist. The CIA helped to prop up that government; it trained the KYP, the junta's secret police.
If Philip Agee fatally compromised a CIA officer (Robert Welch), well, that officer was working with a fascist government, which was bad enough. Moreover, it is doubtful this agent or any of his comrades were present in Greece to further the national security interests of the United States.
...because the government of the Greek colonels had been since 1968 funneling Richard Nixon craploads of money through Nixon-Agnew pal Tom Pappas -- probably some of it originating from the CIA (i.e, taxpayers' money). The Watergate Burglars were mostly CIA. It was said by more than one that they broke in not to get information on the Democrats, but to find out what information the Democrats had on Nixon. A Greek exile had told Larry O'Brien about the Pappas-Nixon-junta connection several years prior. I think you can see where this is going, and I think you can sort of see why these figures are associated in Liddy's head.
You Have To Be Cruel To Be KindYay! A hearty thank you goes out to
attaturk who posted
that classic picture of a drunken, corpulent Jonah Goldberg. TBOGG made it famous, but then the wingnut blog that served it was taken down...
How can I do my part to equal such a public service?
Well, I can post this:
I try.
(Disclaimer: I am not responsible for scarred retinas or any mutated DNA which may result from viewing the above picture. This disclaimer is binding in perpetuity throughout the universe and you hereby agree to these terms by reading them.)
The Poor Man > ReasonThough they both are excellent parodies of the most
deserving target in the blogosphere,
The Cornhole, by the Poor Man, is greater than
The Corndog, by Tim Cavenaugh of
Reason.
Objectively pro-wingnut (I'm not a Republican, I'm a Libertarian! I'm a Whig!) Glenn Reynolds pronounced Cavenaugh's parody
"mean and lame". If he reads the Poor Man's, then, he'll burst into tears. Hopefully.
In Your Face, FuckosJane Hamsher takes a stroll down memory lane. Read the atrocities.
And it's all so
familiar.
Fire Dog Lake link via
TBOGG.
Another Brand Down The DrainFalstaff is discontinued:
Pabst Brewing Co. of San Antonio has discontinued selling Falstaff beer, which once was an icon in the St. Louis area's rich brewing history.
Production of Falstaff left St. Louis in 1977, when the flagship brewery was closed, but many local residents remember the 102-year-old beer and Falstaff Brewing Corp. before its demise.
Pabst, which owns the Falstaff brand, decided to stop selling the beer because of dwindling sales, said Allen Hwang, Pabst's marketing director.
Pabst only sold 1,468 barrels of Falstaff nationwide last year, and that figure was falling, he said.
"It's now at such a low rate that we couldn't sustain any type of minimum (production) run on the product," Hwang said.
Last month, Pabst shipped the last cases of Falstaff beer to wholesalers.
The brewer hasn't yet decided what to do with the brand, such as selling it to another company.
I never drank Falstaff but I've heard the old-timers talk about it: apparently, it was never really a great beer, only a common one; and I doubt that its quality had changed much for the better under Pabst's stewardship, considering that PBR, the flagship brand, is utter (if, lately, fashionable) crap, its "lower-rung" brand, Falstaff, must be spectacularly bad.
Nevertheless, it's sad that Falstaff has gone the way of the dodo. As consumers, we are poorer for its demise.
Falstaff, in its St. Louis heyday, was the flagship brand of the Griesedieck Bros. Brewery. I collect Griesedieck (the filthiest pronunciation is the correct one: Greasy Dick) breweriana, a brand nearly as common in its heyday as, say, Busch is now. But Falstaff soon came to surpass it.
When I was a high school- and college-age alcoholic, one could still buy most of the old Heileman brands locally, as well as PBR, though Falstaff was nowhere to be found. Some places sold the Stroh's, Schaeffer, and Schlitz brands, and some of the especially shitty Texas beers like Pearl and Lonestar could be had with a little effort. I tried to sample every brand I could.
As a kid, I remember the variety being even more pronounced. Locals drank such brands as Cook's, Jax, and Olympia, as well as the brands I tried as a teenager.
Now, when I go into the same liquor stores, variety has only held in the import section. In domestics, it's gone from a genuine variety to a huge selection of pseudo-varieties from the big three of Coors, Bud, and Miller.
The regional brands are dead; microbreweries are a city thing, and often temporary.
Falstaff didn't deserve to continue if it had severe quality issues (like, say, Schlitz did in the 70s). But on the other hand, just because it was cheap brew didn't mean it was inferior to Coors Light or whatever. No, Pabst just doesn't have the clout to ensure shelf space for Falstaff in the same way that Coors, say, has to ensure space for the Silver Bullet.
Why Falstaff and so many other regional brands have gone extinct is explained in
this collection of posts at the superb site
Oligopoly Watch. You can also read about the brewing industry's consolidation and centralisation (and endless, cannibalistic advertising wars) in Philip Van Munching's (of Heineken) memoir,
Beer Blast.
There's Logic To Their MadnessAre wingnuts crazy? Well, yes. Duh. But are working class Republicans insane in the same way? Not really, according to
Paul Parker, who guest-blogged at Rodger A. Payne's site to critique
this Slate article by Timothy Noah:
an adaptive response to a terrifying reality. And one of the ways we deal with that terror is to reinforce our cultural norms; an obvious way to do that is to punish transgressors.
(Read the whole thing, it's difficult to get a suitably snippy quote from it.)
So let me get this straight: because these people have been inspired by such fear, they have become reactionary, intolerant of ambiguity, and this is manifested not only with regard to pro-war sentiments, but with regard to social issues as well, which many obviously put above their own economic concerns -- therefore, they voted for Bush?
If the above is a reasonable interpretation of Parker's critique, then I think I buy what he's selling.
More to the point, I think Karl Rove believes it, too. Which is why he tries to keep
the fear going.
A Master Race?Was Andrew Sullivan one of the Bell Curve proponents? I don't remember, but I suspect the answer is "yes", judging by the
approval he gives to
this story:
Eventually, the empirical links between intelligence and genetics will be unable to be denied. But sit back and watch people try.
***
PS -- Though much of my own writing is admittedly atrocious, it won't prevent me from calling out a pro like Sully for being, in Mark Twain's words, "as slovenly a writer as Charles Francis Adams, using three words where one would do." What Sully's looking for is "undeniable".
Imagine All The Spittle...that the wingnuts will spackle their screens with when
this comes out:
Judge Alvin Hellerstein of the New York federal court granted a petition by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) to release the materials after viewing eight sample photos last week. It is not known exactly what the 144 photographs and videos depict, but they are from the same sources as the graphic images of prisoners being piled up on top of each other, threatened by attack dogs and forced into sexually compromising positions that triggered scandal and outrage just over a year ago.
"These images may be ugly and shocking, but they depict how the torture was more than the actions of a few rogue soldiers," said ACLU director Anthony Romero. "The American public deserves to know what is being done in our name. Perhaps after these and other photos are forced into the light of day, the government will at long last appoint an outside special counsel to investigate the torture and abuse of detainees."
Government lawyers argued that releasing the photographs would reveal the prisoners' identities, a violation of their rights under the Geneva Conventions. But the ACLU said that objection could be easily overcome by blocking out the prisoners' faces. The judge agreed, and gave the White House until the end of the month to hand over the material.
More pointedly, the ACLU also said the government's reasoning was absurd because the violation of the Geneva Conventions began with the abuse, not with attempts to uncover it.
But a Pentagon spokesman indicated yesterday that the administration would not give up the materials without a further fight.
President Bush has come under increasing scrutiny over his repeated claims to be interested in spreading freedom around the world, most recently in the damning Amnesty International report on conditions at Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere.
Sunlight is the best antiseptic, as someone said. Yet wingnuts have a terminally troglodyte mentality and so all evidence of acts which result from their Dear Leader's "the Geneva Conventions start and stop at my leisure" philosophy must be forever stored in a cave, away from prying eyes that might be unsympathetic, and away from the sunlight which would go a long way in cleansing their germy policies.
They'll be outraged of course. They'll spew shit like "judicial activism!", "treason!", etc. Then they'll begin the excuses: fraternity behavior, college pranks, a few bad apples, nothing to see here.
It's A Trap!
From
Rodger A. Payne's blog:
Another space program, nicknamed Rods From God, aims to hurl cylinders of tungsten, titanium or uranium from the edge of space to destroy targets on the ground, striking at speeds of about 7,200 miles an hour, or 11,500 kilometers an hour, with the force of a small nuclear weapon...No nation will "accept the U.S. developing something they see as the death star," Teresa Hitchens of the Center for Defense Information, a policy-analysis group in Washington, said at a meeting of the Council on Foreign Relations. "I don't think the United States would find it very comforting if China were to develop a death star, a 24/7 on-orbit weapon that could strike at targets on the ground anywhere in 90 minutes."
It's only natural that this adminstration would want to militarise space, and go about it so dementedly. Or, as Payne says:
After all, as other bloggers have noted, the neoconservative right openly admires Vader's empire. And Bush has selected a General named Lord to oversee a program dubbed Rods from God? Incredible.
I'm in Payne's debt for that
Weekly Standard link, which surpasses even the stupidity exhibited in the Episode III reviews by
Orson Scott Card,
Jim Geraghty, and elementropy reader (sorry, that doesn't get you off the hook)
absentee. When jingoism and imperial desires clash with Star Wars fanboyism, plainly Star Wars loses. Which is okay: they'd step over their own mothers to do it, too, so Star Wars loyalty can't be expected to hold much sway over them. Hell, if Jesus came back to act like the anti-imperialist hippie He was, they'd explicitly recast their interpretations of the Bible to favor Satan. Art, mythology, even belief -- it's only there to reinforce their (utterly depraved, concentrated evil) weltanschauung, and when it fails that utility, down the toilet it goes.
The Shorter National Review of June 6, 2005Victor Davis Hanson:
Fair warning, liberals: if we don't kill 'em all over there, we'll suffer another 9-11, and it'll be all your fault.
Hanson knows what sectarian buttons to push, and has a hard-on for conventional war. Cruise missile strikes and the "criminal justice" treatment is for pussies; Hanson wants genocide, and now, dammit.
Warren Bell:
My prudishness is so great that it overrides greed: TiVo away, good people, and I'll accept the economic consequences.
That was big of him.
Kathryn Jean Lopez:
An in-house wingnut won an award given by another wingnut organization for breaking the UN Oil-For-Food scandal, now watch me get in my jabs on the subject without once mentioning that Corporate America, for which I am ever-willing prostitute, profited hugely from that very scandal.
A Who's Who of wingnuts in this one, all heroes, of course, to K-Lo.
Myrna Blyth:
Kids these days...
The tirade of the old, a conservative classic.
Taylor & Van Doren:
Sorry, conservatives, but gas isn't expensive because of environmentalists or government regulation. Rather, it's expensive because global demand is high.
CATO says: inflation, what us worry? To be fair, for once their religious (market) explanation is probably correct.
William F. Buckley:
When I learned of some Nixon underlings planning nasty things, I acted, but my action didn't destroy a President, which is more than that snitch Mark Felt can say.
What
did Buckley do? He says he didn't believe there was a real danger -- could he mean he did nothing? The wicked old tease won't say. As for Buckley's claim that a Nixon underling was planning to kill journalist Jack Anderson: it was Gordon Liddy, it's true, and I'll blog about it soon.
Jonah Goldberg:
The EU referendum failed, and while I can and will gloat over it fatuously and facetiously, US politicians probably shouldn't.
The Pilsbury Pantload (TM, Norbizness) is in typical form here. For Goldberg, it's irrelevant whether a oui or non would have been a good choice for Europeans: what matters is that if the ouis won, America would have had competition on the superpower scene. He can't resist from closing with a stave of paternalism and all-around cheap shot, telling the Euros that he hopes their egos can take it when we have to save them from themselves again.
This is the sort of typical Goldberg shit-argument that, along with his whining chickenhawkery and pro-torture stance, makes it where any insult aimed toward him is fair and just.
Larry Kudlow:
Chris Cox being appointed to the SEC is a godsend for we kleptocrats who have been unfairly stiffled by post-Enron regulation
Shameless.
Rich Lowry:
Planned Parenthood, because it objects to the Indiana Attorney General's desire to determine whether girls under 14 have had abortions, is objectively pro-child molestation -- and, ultimately, this is all Britney Spears's fault.
Save the children! Anything, anywhere, anyhow to make abortions more difficult to get.
Jay Nordlinger:
Check this out for a clusterfuck of wingnuttery: Robert Byrd sucks, muslims hate us and can't wait to do another 9-11, pie-throwers have a lot of chutzpah, but are they lefties or paleocons, and is there a difference anyway? Jimmy Carter sucks, he messes up elections. Vietnam was a righteous crusade.
Fuck it, I can't do this conglomerate of shit justice.
Bonus Victor Davis Hanson:
Jared Diamond may have a point with an example like Easter Island, but his goofy determinism doesn't apply to the Western world -- for instance, he's completely insane about Australia, which because it embraces free trade and foreign investment, will never degrade its environment.
Oh, Jebus. Wingnut "historians" can never accept the facts about determinism. Hanson, in claiming that Diamond is fudging his arguments by using small, outlier cultures as examples, replies by citing the Aztecs and Egyptians as evidence to the contrary. Aztecs! Second to the Maya, the poster child civilisation for overintensification and resource-depletion which caused institutionalised violence and degradation (Aztecs dealt with their crises through war and human sacrifice; the Maya simply imploded.). And ancient Egyptians? "Overcentralization", which Hanson cites as the "true" reason for their demise was actually related to the very agricultural-intensification practices that determinism explains. Hanson doesn't understand "the hydraulic trap".
I Know What You're DoinIt's amusing to watch the Bushies deal with China and at the same time try to keep various parts of their own political base happy.
Among the (insane, depraved, fucktardious) rightwing exists various factions whose opinions on China are roughly encapsuled as:
1. The corporate wing, which loves China as it now exists. These are the globalists who delight in outsourcing American jobs to the de facto slave laborers in China. Since their dream world has always been a totalitarian society of docile consumers, they quite like the direction China's going. But there's drawback: China doesn't always pay attention to copyright law.
2. The "gratitude" wing, which counts its lucky stars that China's practice of buying T-bills funds our military spending.
3. The Jesus Freak wing, which loathes an officially athiestic country on grounds of principle. That this country is not made up so much of "practicing" athiests so much as "pagans" is another demerit: in other words, the Jesus Freaks know that even if the country wasn't officially atheist, the population would be (and currently is) composed of people who follow those heathen religions like they show in them there Kung Fu movies. But all that is slightly made-up for in the fact that China cracks down on its Muslims, something that always brings a sectarian smile to Christian nutjobs.
4. The paranoids, who believe that when any country, anywhere, spends on its military, it is a direct threat to the United States.
5. The opportunist wing, which would very much like a Cold War with China if it wouldn't harm precious multinational corporations that make money from China's countrywide sweatshop. But this concern may be trumped by the classic Cold War desire to enrich our own military-industrial complex, which an arms race with the Chinese would fulfill.
6. The
Penis Envy wing, the real law and order fascist types that admire authoritarian regimes and wish weenie libruhls would STFU about the Bill of Rights so good folks here in America could go back to the good old days of lynch mobs, instant executions, tar-and-feathering, etc. (This strain of wingnuttia is an old one, going back to the German American Bund, through James Burnham, and on to the early neo-conservatives; the fact that China is communist in name only means that it's now "okay" to openly admire its government's ruthlessness.)
Notice that none of these, in my opinion, have a concern with Human Rights in the HRW/AI (i.e. the genuine) sense of the term, in China. But like that's new: wingnuts care about human rights almost as much as I am interested in the art of quilting. Indeed the Henry Kissinger wing of the Republican Party was quick to denounce any criticism of the Tiananmen Square crackdown; Kissinger's company runs a lucrative business in China and with the Chinese government.
I think #5 had the most sway with the Bushies (remember the first Bush "act", on the foriegn policy front, was to huff and puff to China), but with 9-11, the need to manufacture an arms race (and blame Clinton for previous weapons-technology sales to China) with China was rendered moot, and of course the Bushies got their military build-up for "free", anyway. China was ignored to number 1's delight, though many still viewed it warily, especially as it secured various oil-producing regions under its sphere of influence.
Now Donald Rumsfeld
feels the need to complain about China's military spending, and the question is, really, which group of nutjobs is he pandering to in doing so. Well, it's number 5, of course, though he has to be careful not to alarm number 1. Being Rummy, he's got to be a comedian to make his point:
"Since no nation threatens China, one must wonder: Why this growing investment? Why these continuing large and expanding arms purchases?" Rumsfeld said at the conference organized by the International Institute of Strategic Studies, a private, London-based think tank.
Good question, Rummy. Some people asked the same thing in 1950 when
Order 66 N.S.C.-68 was signed, despite the fact that our putative enemy had just suffered 20 million casualties and was an economic and physical wreck.
But anyway, to answer Rummy: because they can, because they are nationalist and xenophobic in a way that a Republican can surely appreciate, because they are beefing up for the resource war whose first battle, Iraq, has already been fought.
The Shorter Christopher Hitchens (A Collection)The Brother Karimov:
It occurs to me that some involved in the war on terror may be opportunists. Nevertheless, the joke's on that fool Michael Kinsley if he thinks we pro-war people are a bunch of old school, Jeanne Kirkpatrick-style hairsplitters and hypocrites.
If Hitchens had been paying attention, he'd have known that the opportunists aren't just among dissident-boiling allies overseas. Right after 9-11, James Baker (I'm sure someone with Lexis-Nexis can find it) blamed the intelligence failure on post-Watergate congressional oversight. What he meant was the Church and Pike Committees, which uncovered the massive crimes -- including the installing or aiding of dictators similar to Karimov -- the United States secret agencies had wrought. It's no surprise, then, that Baker's party and the administration for whose interests he functioned as velvet hammer during that long November in Florida, is cheerfully doing business with "good" sociopaths like Karimov so as to battle the "bad" sociopaths like Saddam and the Taliban. Hitchens in this piece knows he echos the old hairsplitting distinctions Jeanne Kirkpatrick used to excuse US friendships with dictators during the Cold War. He insists that Karimov is not morally equivalent to Saddam. Yet he also knows that he is on record righteously trashing Kirkpatrick's similar arguments when they were fresh. His defense? "Irony",
as always.
***
Stop The Masochistic Insanity:
If Muslims can't deal with a little Koran-flushing, too bad for them.
Yet more evidence of what killed the deep thinker and generous human being that was Christopher Hitchens: unhinged hatred of religion. I have no doubt that he's consistent in his own mind; if "the forces of secularism" had flushed the Bible or the Talmud instead of the Koran down the toilet, inspiring riots and violence, he'd blame the reaction and absolve the instigator then, too. But then rightwing America, his new friends, are only "forces of secularism" in a fucking dream world inhabited by no one else except Christopher Hitchens. I guess that's "an irony", too, so carry on, Hitch.
I find it useful to compare Hitchens with Pat Buchanan. Where Hitchens could never be called an isolationist and Buchanan could never be termed an internationalist, their inconsistencies reveal their biases. Hitchens was against ideological war when that war degraded democracies under the auspices of battling a monolithic evil (The Communist World). Buchanan was for that particular ideological war. Hitchens is for an ideological war that degrades existing democracies when that war is fought on the grounds of battling a different monolithic evil (The Muslim World, "Terror"); Buchanan, feeling ecumenical, is against that particular ideological war.
***
History and Mystery:
Everyone in Iraq, since the invasion, fighting against the United States and its selected government there, is either a jihadist or a Ba'athist, therefore the New York Times is a propagandic organ in calling such fighters "insurgents"
One expects this sort of denial from Richard Perle, not Hitchens, because it directly relates to the delusion that we would be met with cheers and roses, greeted as liberators. To a degree, we were, but then we occupied Iraq and tried to set up a hard puppet at first, a soft one now. This sort of thing, compounded with Abu Ghraibs, pisses off any indigenous population: as even Dear Leader said, "no one likes to be occupied". Hitchens's claim has been explicitly refuted by General Myers, implicitly refuted by Paul Wolfowitz and Bush himself.
***
Labour Friends of Iraq Debate:
Okay, so we did arm Saddam Husssein and so are responsible for what he did. Doesn't that mean we should make up for it by removing him? How do you like that argument, lefties?
Well, yes, but it'd help if we could trust the people removing him, which is hard to do when it's the
same people who armed him. There's no credibility there. Also, we should only pay this debt if we can do it without injuring our own country. We know how that's turned out. Have those people who armed Saddam ever admitted that they were wrong for doing it? Why should we trust them? They aren't
trustworthy. As it was, Saddam had no WMD, was in poor health, and his sons would have killed each other upon the succession. Now, matters are worse. Hitchens's beloved Kurds were effectively independent already and enjoyed stability and success because of the no-fly zone, which worked
because it was only protection, not occupation.
***
Unmitigated Galloway:
I may be a "drink-soaked former Trotskyist popinjay", but George Galloway is a Stalinist and Ba'athist, corrupt, and linked to anti-semites; he may have "temporarily" won a libel suit in Britain against such charges, but let him try that shit here.
It's touching to see Hitchens defend the hacks of the Senate here, much less the supposed majesty of the chamber itself. Galloway gave the committee exactly what it deserved, his arguments against the war were accurate, and that's the real reason why Hitchens is livid. Incapable of believing that Oona King lost her seat to Galloway on the merits of positions, Hitchens lets fly the accusation that it was really because of racism and anti-semitism that King lost, the latter being a real gift to the Kristolmethodists, who delight in being fed their daily dose of tribalism.
For British readers, Hitchens still smears Galloway, but stops short of implicitly smearing the voters of Bethnal Green and Bow as racists. Let it not be said that Hitchens doesn't tailor to his audience.
The Shorter Tom FriedmanA Race To The Top:
Gallic laziness and addiction to entitlements explain why Old Europe rejects globalism. Europe should be more like India and China, whose citizens wish to be slaves for multinationals, and whose better governments forbid labor stikes.
Seeing the Forest has an alternative view to Friedman's.
As always, thanks to
Busy, Busy, Busy for the inspiration.
***Update 6/7/05: The
Times prints several letters nailing Friedman. It also prints an
anti-CAFTA letter by the best Senator currently serving, Russ Feingold.
Hello, SadlysGreetings to readers of
Sadly, No!This place is a dump, but make yourself at home, just don't steal those fancy milk crates I use for furniture.
Seb's unindicted co-conspirator, Gavin, who is obviously attracted to me, got my spiffy photo from
this post, which neatly explains why I resemble Jeffrey Lebowski, why I'm not a commie, and my exact relations to the forces of ganja.
Deeply Throttled (Part I)This week's revelation that Mark Felt was Deep Throat has provided, finally, the opportunity for every former Nixon crony to get some measure of revenge. The resulting atrocities on truth and decency, rife with hypocrisy, are worthy of documentation.
Deep Throat and Watergate are not just interesting because of historical value. We live under the most paranoid and corrupt adminstration since Nixon's, one that, like Dick's, is terribly concerned with loyalty not to the constitution or the democratic system, but to Dear Leader and the concept of "team". Wingnuts, therefore, have a considerable interest in demonizing Mark Felt -- a man who was, after all, one of their own, who did nasty and illegal things to the anti-war opposition -- and not just for the old Nixonite cause but for the current Bush agenda. What Felt of the FBI did then someone in the CIA or State Department could do now. Their dread is palpable. (Indeed, they have
done it recently, and hatred of such whistleblowers is, yes, palpable.)
First up is
Ben Stein, a Nixon speechwriter, former Game Show host, and generic Republican hack. He blames Felt for ..well, I can't begin to paraphrase it:
So, this is the great boast of the enemies of Richard Nixon, including Mark Felt: they made the conditions necessary for the Cambodian genocide. If there is such a thing as kharma, if there is such a thing as justice in this life of the next, Mark Felt has bought himself the worst future of any man on this earth. And Bob Woodward is right behind him, with Ben Bradlee bringing up the rear. Out of their smug arrogance and contempt, they hatched the worst nightmare imaginable: genocide. I hope they are happy now -- because their future looks pretty bleak to me.
Thus ascertaining Felt's moral condition, what does Stein think of Richard Nixon's?
Can anyone even remember now what Nixon did that was so terrible? He ended the war in Vietnam, brought home the POW's, ended the war in the Mideast, opened relations with China, started the first nuclear weapons reduction treaty, saved Eretz Israel's life, started the Environmental Protection Administration. Does anyone remember what he did that was bad?
Oh, now I remember. He lied. He was a politician who lied. How remarkable. He lied to protect his subordinates who were covering up a ridiculous burglary that no one to this date has any clue about its purpose. He lied so he could stay in office and keep his agenda of peace going. That was his crime. He was a peacemaker and he wanted to make a world where there was a generation of peace. And he succeeded.
That is his legacy. He was a peacemaker. He was a lying, conniving, covering up peacemaker. He was not a lying, conniving drug addict like JFK, a lying, conniving war starter like LBJ, a lying, conniving seducer like Clinton -- a lying, conniving peacemaker. That is Nixon's kharma.
Right. We've just won Ben Stein's baloney. Poor plucky Richard Nixon. The self-pity of the Nixon hacks will be a recurring theme in this post. But, anyway, where Felt, Woodward and Bradlee are, according to Stein, going to pay the piper in the afterlife, Richard Nixon is now apparently enjoying the sweet refrains of the heavenly choirs -- after all, he was only a liar. (And a liar for the right reasons! Wink nudge to Straussians!)
Next is
Patrick Buchanan:
I don‘t think Deep Throat is a hero. I think Deep Throat is a snake.
[...]
Yes, I think he‘s sneaky. And I think he‘s dishonorable in what he did.
[...]
Well, look, it brought down a president.
And I think that cost us Vietnam, frankly.
[...]
I mean, I‘m not defending the language in the Oval Office. What did felt do? He‘s sneaking around, moving flower pots, grabbing this material, leaking it to Bob Woodward.
He‘s ticked off at the president of the United States because he didn‘t get the job. He‘s buttering up “The Washington Post,” which is the most hostile institution to the president. He‘s undercutting the president in the middle of a campaign.
See also Buchannon's comments on
this video, where he puts in stronger language the blame for "losing Vietnam" on Mark Felt.
Then there's
this:
I have always been a believer that John Mitchell did not want to come to Washington. And Nixon convinced him. And I think he saw him in trouble. And so Nixon tries to help him. And mistakes were made, and dumb things were done, admittedly.
But let me say this. The people that went after Richard Nixon day in and day out to use anything to bring him down hated him long before Watergate. They were outraged over the victory Nixon won, 49 states. He had beaten the candidate of the establishment, McGovern. And they were doing anything to bring him down. And they didn‘t give a damn what would happen in Vietnam as a consequence of that.
In ‘73, we had every one of the POWs home and every provincial capital in allied hands. Two years later, the whole thing came down. And the people ought to ask them who brought him down, ought to ask themselves what their motivation was as well.
[...]
Well, one thing, let me tell you, is, look, people came to understand after this that the same media folks who had taken down Richard Nixon had covered up for presidents they liked and they admired who had done things far worse than Richard Nixon.
I don‘t defend what Nixon did. He made some terrible mistakes. But as I once wrote, you know, he rustled a pony and he was hanged by the biggest horse thieves in the county.
So let us compare and contrast. Buchanan doesn't blame the Cambodian genocide on Felt, but he definitely blames Vietnam on him. Of course Buchanan won't praise Richard Nixon for "saving" Israel -- either the country proper or the illegal and immoral "Eretz" version -- nor will he compliment Nixon for the creation of the EPA. Instead, Nixon is just a guy who was loyal to his friends, like the saintly John Mitchell, and if mistakes were made and dumb things done out of such noble intentions, who is "a snake" like Felt to throw a monkey wrench into such high-minded team loyalty? And whatever Richard Nixon did, it pales in comparion to unnamed other Chief Executives (Stein names names, and they are exactly who Buchanan has in mind). Brokaw does a good job of rebutting the bullshit. Also note the continuing theme of self-pity, Buchanan has it that resentful do-gooders had it in for plucky Dick Nixon because Nixon had beat the "establishment candidate" McGovern (surely the most hilarious characterisation in the whole diatribe) in 1972 -- they did it for spite!
Next we have
Alexander Haig who, I am stunned to say, is the most even-handed of former Nixon cronies:
I gave it to him some years ago, that I thought it was Mark Felt.
I don‘t know what his motivations were. I am not one that believes that, if you work for a president, if you disagree for moral purposes or any other with what he is doing, you have an obligation to tell him so, and if he doesn‘t listen, to resign and to do whatever else you think you can do to make the situation better for the country.
[...]
I don‘t think it was Deep Throat or the Woodward-Bernstein revelations that brought the president down. I don‘t think that at all.
They were certainly instrumental in keeping the issue alive in the press, and gave “The Washington Post” a great leverage bar to cast. But what brought him down were the tapes. And the really tragic part was, if those tapes had not been revealed, I think Richard Nixon would have finished his second term.
Who would have thought General Haig would be as close as there is to a voice of reason?
Not to worry,
Gordon Liddy will set it straight:
if Mark Felt was Deep Throat, he is no hero. He is someone who behaved unethically, in that he did not take his evidence to the grand jury and seek an indictment. That‘s what he should have done, instead of selectively leak to one news outlet some of the information that he had.
Here, Liddy attempts to do several things tangential to the Felt revelation, including putting the blame for Watergate on John Dean, and to imply that whatever the Nixon Plumbers did, the Dems did the same thing, or tried to, but the Republican's "defences were better".
Again, the aims of the Nixon apologists are plain:
1. Demonize Mark Felt
2. Insist that Nixon was at least no worse than Democratic Presidents with regard to dirty tricks.
3. Claim that Nixon was brought down not because he was bad, but because he was loyal to his friends and a great President, which caused envy and spite in others (Democrats).
4. Blame whistleblowers and the opposition for all subsequent failures in American Policy.
***
Fuck it -- I'm overwhelmed by all the shit out there. Pat Buchanan, on the 6/03/05 Washington Journal programme on C-SPAN, argued, outrageously, that until Nixon, the FBI had been the "black bag" operators for the Executive Branch. He mentioned FDR, JFK, Johnson. But they wouldn't do it for Nixon, hence his need for goons like "the Burlgars". Then Buchanan mentioned, astonishingly, that the FBI "had assassinated Dr. King in Washington before he ever got to Memphis" by revealing to the press the fruits of intelligence they had gathered on Dr King, and this was far worse than anything Richard Nixon had his hired goons to do. Christ.
Buchanan is absolutely devious. J. Edgar Hoover was in charge of the FBI until his death, which indeed created a "black bag" vaccuum, which Nixon hoped to fill any way he could. While it's true the FBI did "black bag" jobs for Presidents, it also did them against Presidents. Hoover absolutely served the conservative interest -- it was not Liberals who wished to have the FBI spy on Dr King -- and in doing so also kept files on the Kennedys. It's true that Hoover tried to blackmail Dr. King, tried to smear him as a commie, and even sent him letters encouraging him to commit suicide. But Buchanan would have you believe that this was a plot of liberals. The truth is that no one could control Hoover, but Hoover's interests and schemes benefited people like Richard Nixon. Yet at Hoover's death, Nixon, in his greed, wished to finally gain complete control of the FBI: it was already a goon squad and extremely right wing (it's especially delightful to hear Buchanan of all people term it "the secret police"), but it was not necessarily loyal to Nixon, just to his ideology. (For a somewhat alternative view, see
Jack Shafer's piece in Slate.)
***
I'll dig up some dirt soon on these hacks. Until then, see
TBOGG, and
BlondeSense .
Nixon
thought it was
Felt way back then.
I Endorse Your Endorsement!I'm pleased to see
someone famous in the blogosphere quote Immanuel Wallerstein -- he deserves the widest possible audience.
The last time I'd checked in at
Wallerstein's site, it was dead. Well, now it's back and I encourage everyone to read his essays. They are short, clear, and prescient.
