Showing posts with label Afghanistan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Afghanistan. Show all posts
The Long War
A new 'Costs of War' report published by Brown University's Watson Institute shows the actual costs incurred by the U.S. as part of its global 'war on terror' that widely contradicts the cost of war figures put together by the Pentagon in its report.
Some of the Costs of War Project’s main findings include:
370,000 people have died due to direct war violence, including armed forces on all sides of the conflicts, contractors, civilians, journalists, and humanitarian workers.
It is likely that many times more than 370,000 people have died indirectly in these wars, due to malnutrition, damaged infrastructure, and environmental degradation.
200,000 civilians have been killed in direct violence by all parties to these conflicts.
Over 6,800 US soldiers have died in the wars.
We do not know the full extent of how many US service members returning from these wars became injured or ill while deployed.
Many deaths and injuries among US contractors have not been reported as required by law, but it is likely that at least 6,900 have been killed.
10.1 million million Afghan, Iraqi, and Pakistani people are living as war refugees and internally displaced persons, in grossly inadequate conditions.*
The US has made an estimated 76 drone strikes in Yemen, making the US arguably at war in that country.
The wars have been accompanied by erosions in civil liberties and human rights at home and abroad.
The human and economic costs of these wars will continue for decades with some costs, such as the financial costs of US veterans’ care, not peaking until mid-century.
US government funding of reconstruction efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan has totaled over $170 billion. Most of those funds have gone towards arming security forces in both countries. Much of the money allocated to humanitarian relief and rebuilding civil society has been lost to fraud, waste, and abuse.
The cost for the Iraq and Afghanistan/Pakistan wars totals about $4.8 trillion. This does not include future interest costs on borrowing for the wars, which will add an estimated $8 trillion through 2054.
The ripple effects on the US economy have also been significant, including job loss and interest rate increases.
Both Iraq and Afghanistan continue to rank extremely low in global studies of political freedom.
Women in Iraq and Afghanistan are excluded from political power and experience high rates of unemployment and war widowhood.
Compelling alternatives to war were scarcely considered in the aftermath of 9/11 or in the discussion about war against Iraq. Some of those alternatives are still available to the US.
* Source: The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) (2015).
Some of the Costs of War Project’s main findings include:
370,000 people have died due to direct war violence, including armed forces on all sides of the conflicts, contractors, civilians, journalists, and humanitarian workers.
It is likely that many times more than 370,000 people have died indirectly in these wars, due to malnutrition, damaged infrastructure, and environmental degradation.
200,000 civilians have been killed in direct violence by all parties to these conflicts.
Over 6,800 US soldiers have died in the wars.
We do not know the full extent of how many US service members returning from these wars became injured or ill while deployed.
Many deaths and injuries among US contractors have not been reported as required by law, but it is likely that at least 6,900 have been killed.
10.1 million million Afghan, Iraqi, and Pakistani people are living as war refugees and internally displaced persons, in grossly inadequate conditions.*
The US has made an estimated 76 drone strikes in Yemen, making the US arguably at war in that country.
The wars have been accompanied by erosions in civil liberties and human rights at home and abroad.
The human and economic costs of these wars will continue for decades with some costs, such as the financial costs of US veterans’ care, not peaking until mid-century.
US government funding of reconstruction efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan has totaled over $170 billion. Most of those funds have gone towards arming security forces in both countries. Much of the money allocated to humanitarian relief and rebuilding civil society has been lost to fraud, waste, and abuse.
The cost for the Iraq and Afghanistan/Pakistan wars totals about $4.8 trillion. This does not include future interest costs on borrowing for the wars, which will add an estimated $8 trillion through 2054.
The ripple effects on the US economy have also been significant, including job loss and interest rate increases.
Both Iraq and Afghanistan continue to rank extremely low in global studies of political freedom.
Women in Iraq and Afghanistan are excluded from political power and experience high rates of unemployment and war widowhood.
Compelling alternatives to war were scarcely considered in the aftermath of 9/11 or in the discussion about war against Iraq. Some of those alternatives are still available to the US.
* Source: The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) (2015).
What he did.
It shouldn't be hard to head off Trump tonight before he escalates the war in Afghanistan.
Somebody tell him.
Obama already did it.
Somebody tell him.
Obama already did it.
You don't just get to break things
Since the Middle East refugee crisis is a consequence of America's militarized foreign policy, doesn't it follow that we have a moral responsibility to lend a hand to its victims?
Germany, with a population of about 80 million, is admitting between 200,000 and 300,000 displaced persons; since we are about four times bigger (and have a lot more room), in fairness, shouldn't we invite 800,000 and 1,200,000 souls to relocate here?
Alternatively, or additionally, shouldn't we mount a Marshall Plan-style program targeted on Greece, which not only is suffering the most from the influx of refugees but is also the victim of the predator banks that we unleashed?
The Long War is almost exclusively a U.S. project. Don't we have an obligation to take responsibility for what we've wrought?
From the Won't-Be-Fooled-Again Desk:
It's outrageous that America is the only developed country that doesn't provide paid family leave. If you agree join Hillary's campaign today! -- Daily KosReally? That's the criterion we're supposed to use to choose the next president?
How about out-of-control military spending? Is that outrageous? What's she going to do about that?Banks too big to fail? Pretty outrageous, you'd think. Will Goldman Sachs let her do anything about them?
Economic injustice? Outrageous. She's a big populist now; what's her plan?
Surveillance State abuses: Outrageous. If she has a solution, it's a secret.
Her actions at State that helped to create outrageous messes in Afghanistan, Honduras and Libya. What will she do about them?
The chaos in Syria and Iraq: Outrageous. Does she have a fix?
More outrageous, even, than that America is the only developed country that doesn't provide paid family leave, outrageous as that is.
Who's counting?
Here's a factoid for you: Accounting for inflation, we have spent nearly as much on Afghan reconstruction as we did on the Marshall Plan.
The Beat Goes On
“So today, Mosul fell. Mosul is the second largest city in Iraq. The Iraqi government we 'installed,' has now 'lost' Fallujah, Ramadi, Mosul and other large swaths of the country we invaded at the cost of thousands of American lives, tens of thousands of Iraqi lives and a couple trillion dollars. (What could your school district do with a trillion dollars?).
"One more maddening day in this 11-year illegal, immoral, greedy and stupid war. Today in Mosul, that Iraqi Army YOU pay for, freaked out, threw down their guns, and literally RAN away. I have friends and acquaintances who lost sons in all three of those cities. I can only imagine what they're feeling tonight. FOR WHAT? FOR WHAT! I am so sorry we couldn't do anything to stop this when it started. A few million of us tried. Last week, Richard Clarke, Bush's former head of counter-terrorism, said he now believes that his fellow members of the Bush administration committed 'war crimes.'
"I continue to await the perp walk.” -- Michael Moore
"One more maddening day in this 11-year illegal, immoral, greedy and stupid war. Today in Mosul, that Iraqi Army YOU pay for, freaked out, threw down their guns, and literally RAN away. I have friends and acquaintances who lost sons in all three of those cities. I can only imagine what they're feeling tonight. FOR WHAT? FOR WHAT! I am so sorry we couldn't do anything to stop this when it started. A few million of us tried. Last week, Richard Clarke, Bush's former head of counter-terrorism, said he now believes that his fellow members of the Bush administration committed 'war crimes.'
"I continue to await the perp walk.” -- Michael Moore
Militarism: Americans are tiring of The Long War
Even as they enmesh the U.S. in other senseless, costly military adventures in Yemen, Honduras, West Africa, and the Philippines, to name but a few, Obama administration warriors are taking time off this weekend to try to persuade their erstwhile NATO allies that the war in Afghanistan has been worth the effort. "I can't let this be a war without end," the president is alleged to have said, "and I can't lose the whole Democratic Party."
Too late. Not only has the invasion lost support of the whole Democratic Party, but, as Robert Naiman wrote yesterday on his HuffPost blog (On Afghanistan, the Pentagon Has Lost the American People 2012-05-18), "a substantial part of the Republican Party as well; the majority of Republican voters, for example." Luckily for the president, his domestic allies are the GOP leaders, so the AfPak debacle probably won't be much of a factor in the fall election. Still, Obama seems to be anxious to control the narrative in Chicago.
Whatever the outcomes in Chicago this weekend and in Kabul some weekend in the future, the enthusiasm of security staters for the Long War will not diminish, whether Barack Obama continues in office or Mitt Romney becomes commander in chief. With access to oil and other resources the motivation and the failed "War on Drugs" the excuse, and no matter the harm that is being done at home, America's political elite will continue to bog the nation down in unwinnable conflicts big and small.
America's Pacific Century: The future of politics will be decided in Asia, not Afghanistan or Iraq, and the United States will be right at the center of the action by Hillary Clinton (Foreign Policy 2011-10-11)
The National Security State Wins (Again): Why the Real Victor in Campaign 2012 Won’t Be Obama or Romney by William J. Astore (Tom Dispatch 2012-05-15)
Out of Africa: An expat witnesses the end of halcyon days in Mali by Jennifer Swift-Mogan (ForeignPolicy 2012-04-13)
Unmanned and Dangerous: Why NATO's expanding use of drones is a disturbing trend by Louis Arbour (Foreign Policy 2012-05-18)
The Long War: Year Ten Lost in the Desert with the GPS on the Fritz by Andrew J. Bacevich (Tom Dispatch 2010-10-01)
Fact Sheet: History of U.S. Military Involvement in Africa (AfriCom/Congressional Research Service 2008-06-12)
U.S. Africa Command (AfriCom) History, Background and Fact Sheets
Here are some articles analyzing and debunking the "War on Terror," from a reading list on New Democracy:
Too late. Not only has the invasion lost support of the whole Democratic Party, but, as Robert Naiman wrote yesterday on his HuffPost blog (On Afghanistan, the Pentagon Has Lost the American People 2012-05-18), "a substantial part of the Republican Party as well; the majority of Republican voters, for example." Luckily for the president, his domestic allies are the GOP leaders, so the AfPak debacle probably won't be much of a factor in the fall election. Still, Obama seems to be anxious to control the narrative in Chicago.
Whatever the outcomes in Chicago this weekend and in Kabul some weekend in the future, the enthusiasm of security staters for the Long War will not diminish, whether Barack Obama continues in office or Mitt Romney becomes commander in chief. With access to oil and other resources the motivation and the failed "War on Drugs" the excuse, and no matter the harm that is being done at home, America's political elite will continue to bog the nation down in unwinnable conflicts big and small.
America's Pacific Century: The future of politics will be decided in Asia, not Afghanistan or Iraq, and the United States will be right at the center of the action by Hillary Clinton (Foreign Policy 2011-10-11)
The National Security State Wins (Again): Why the Real Victor in Campaign 2012 Won’t Be Obama or Romney by William J. Astore (Tom Dispatch 2012-05-15)
Out of Africa: An expat witnesses the end of halcyon days in Mali by Jennifer Swift-Mogan (ForeignPolicy 2012-04-13)
Unmanned and Dangerous: Why NATO's expanding use of drones is a disturbing trend by Louis Arbour (Foreign Policy 2012-05-18)
The Long War: Year Ten Lost in the Desert with the GPS on the Fritz by Andrew J. Bacevich (Tom Dispatch 2010-10-01)
Fact Sheet: History of U.S. Military Involvement in Africa (AfriCom/Congressional Research Service 2008-06-12)
U.S. Africa Command (AfriCom) History, Background and Fact Sheets
Here are some articles analyzing and debunking the "War on Terror," from a reading list on New Democracy:
- The Lockerbie Fraud Again by Dave Stratman
- Did 9/11 justify the war in Afghanistan? by David Ray Griffin
- PTSD, infertility, and other consequences of war by Bob Nichols
- Assassination by Government: An Exchange by Dave Stratman
- Whom Should We Support in Iran? by John Spritzler
- Obama's Afghanistan War: Morally Wrong, or Incompetently Waged?, by John Spritzler
- No War But the Class War
- Unethical Media Coverage of UK Events, by Elias Davidsson
- Concealing the Real Goals of War by John Spritzler
- Bosses and Workers, a poem by Dennis Serdel
- My Country & The Railroad Tracks: two poems by Dennis Serdel, Vietnam '67-68 purple heart
- Important link: 911 Video, "Loose Change, 2nd edition, recut
- The true significance of Bush's no-warrant domestic eavesdropping by John Spritzler
- The Antiwar Movement Isn’t Where You Think It Is by Dave Stratman
- The London Bombings and the Class War by Dave Stratman
- "What Bush's 'Freedom & Democracy' Means for Iraqi Farmers" by John Spritzler (March 17, 2005)
- "The Witchhunts Continue: Columbia University and the New Anti-Semitism" by M. Junaid Alam
- "Collateral Damage" a poem by Gary Corseri (February 2005)
- "The Triumph of Liberalism" by Dave Stratman (November 12, 2004)
- "Circles" and "BREAKING THE LAW TO WIN" poems by Dennis Serdel (September 28, 2004)
- "This Land Is Our Land" by John Spritzler (August 31, 2004)
- "Talking to the Wrong People: Lessons of the DNC" by Dave Stratman (August 26, 2004)
- Interview of Dave Stratman (focusing on his article Inventing the Enemy) on WING TV (August 18, 2004)
- "Inventing the Enemy" by Dave Stratman (July 26, 2004)
- "The 'Good War' Myth of World War II" by John Spritzler (July 22, 2004)
- "Beware the Liberal War on Terror" by Dave Stratman (July 5, 2004)
- "Abu Ghraib: We Have Met the Enemy and He Is NOT Us" by John Spritzler (June 2, 2004)
- "Abu Ghraib Prison Torture: a Few Bad Apples or Long Standing Policy?" by John Spritzler (May 12, 2004).
- "The Antiwar Movement Is Not Progressive -- And That's A Good Thing"by Dave Stratman. (March 18, 2004).
- "George Bush, The Anti-Family President" by Bill Kauffman. (October 27, 2003).
- "BULLETDUCKERS" -- poetry by Dennis Serdel. (November, 2003).
- Book Review: "The War On Freedom" by John Spritzler (October 5, 2003)
- "Bush and the 'Good War'" by John Spritzler (September 30, 2003)
- "No To Politics, Yes To Mass Refusal" by Dave Stratman. (September 26, 2003).
- "Making Connections: the War, the Budget, and the Crisis in Social Values" -- remarks by David Stratman at the Community Church of Boston (April 6, 2003).
- "Conspiracy Theory" by Floyd Rudmin. (April, 2003).
- "Free Asan Akbar And Put The System On Trial?" by Steve Hesske (April, 2003).
- "Rethinking Anti-War Strategy" by Jim Luken (April, 2003).
- "They Dare Not Speak Its Name" by Steve Hesske (March 25, 2003).
- "The Death March" by Al McKinnis (March, 2003).
- The Call of Workers for Peace (January, 2003). Workers for Peace -- Chinese translation. Workers for Peace -- German translation.
- "Stop The Endless War: Boycott The Volunteer Army" by Doug Fuda. (January 23, 2003).
- "Elite Spokesman Alarmed by Magnitude of Opposition to Iraq War" by John Spritzler (January 9, 2003).
- "Palestine & Iraq: Any Signs of Hope? The lessons we have learned" by Henry Lowi (November 10, 2002).
- "What Is War With Iraq Really About?" -- A New Democracy Flyer. (Fall 2002).
- "A War To Make Iraq Democratic?" by John Spritzler. (Oct '02).
- "The U.S. As Fourth Reich" by David Stratman. (September 2, 2002).
- "Useful Enemies" by Dave Stratman. (NDN* Nov. '01-Feb. '02).
- "Is It Really A 'War Against Terrorism?'" (NDN* Nov. '01-Feb. '02).
- "What Else Could He Have Done?" (NDN* Nov. '01-Feb. '02).
- "Why Is The US Bombing Yugoslavia?" by Dave Stratman. (NDN* May-June 1999).
- * "NDN" indicates that the article is from the New Democracy Newsletter.
Resource: The Afghanistan Report the Pentagon Doesn't Want You to Read
"Senior ranking US military leaders have so distorted the truth when communicating with the US Congress and American people in regards to conditions on the ground in Afghanistan that the truth has become unrecognizable. This deception has damaged America’s credibility among both our allies and enemies, severely limiting our ability to reach a political solution to the war in Afghanistan. It has likely cost American taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars Congress might not otherwise have appropriated had it known the truth, and our senior leaders’ behavior has almost certainly extended the duration of this war. The single greatest penalty our Nation has suffered, however, has been that we have lost the blood, limbs and lives of tens of thousands of American Service Members with little to no gain to our country as a consequence of this deception." -- from Dereliction of Duty II: Senior Military Leaders’ Loss of Integrity Wounds Afghan War Effort, an unclassified summary of our failed military adventure in Afghanistan by Lt. Colonel Daniel Davis, posted by Rolling Stone.
For background, see The Afghanistan Report the Pentagon Doesn't Want You to Read by Michael Hastings (Rolling Stone 2012-02-10).
See, also: In Afghan War, Officer Becomes a Whistle-Blower by Scott Shane (New York Times 2012-02-05). Officer: U.S. paints false picture of Afghan war by Agence France-Presse (2012-02-06).
For background, see The Afghanistan Report the Pentagon Doesn't Want You to Read by Michael Hastings (Rolling Stone 2012-02-10).
See, also: In Afghan War, Officer Becomes a Whistle-Blower by Scott Shane (New York Times 2012-02-05). Officer: U.S. paints false picture of Afghan war by Agence France-Presse (2012-02-06).
The Long War: Just end it.
Bob Woodward reports that Pres. Obama made the political decision to announce a date certain for withdrawal from Afghanistan out of fear of angering the base if he left the impression that the adventure is open ended. This is being taken in some quarters as evidence of the left's influence on policy. But there is nothing to suggest that the pledge to withdraw is anything more than dressing up as Gandhi for Halloween: the loose costume leaves plenty of wiggle room.
If the left really wants to influence the Democratic Party, there are ways. 1. Contribute and work for members of Congress who have a record of opposing the war. And only them. Do not work for or contribute to any candidate who actively supports militarism. 2. Contribute to and work for -- and field -- primary challengers to Blue Dogs and other Democrats representing the Pentagon and the security state. 3. When no antiwar Democrat is available, support libertarians like Ron Paul who are willing take on military spending, no matter what party colors they sport. 4. Support -- and vote for -- third party candidates who make opposition to the war machine central to their campaign. In California, for example, the Peace & Freedom Party offers to disgruntled Democrats third party candidates for Congress who are not only antiwar, but as a bonus also favor policies promoting economic justice.
If the left really wants to influence the Democratic Party, there are ways. 1. Contribute and work for members of Congress who have a record of opposing the war. And only them. Do not work for or contribute to any candidate who actively supports militarism. 2. Contribute to and work for -- and field -- primary challengers to Blue Dogs and other Democrats representing the Pentagon and the security state. 3. When no antiwar Democrat is available, support libertarians like Ron Paul who are willing take on military spending, no matter what party colors they sport. 4. Support -- and vote for -- third party candidates who make opposition to the war machine central to their campaign. In California, for example, the Peace & Freedom Party offers to disgruntled Democrats third party candidates for Congress who are not only antiwar, but as a bonus also favor policies promoting economic justice.
Afghanistan on Life Support
I'll consider our occupation of Afghanistan a success if we avoid having to airlift the last Americans off the roof of the U.S. embassy.
"Almost 10 years of U.S. and allied occupation, development, mentoring, reconstruction aid, and assistance has taken the country from unbearably dismal to something markedly poorer. And yet even worse is still possible for the long-suffering men, women, and children of Afghanistan. As the U.S. war and occupation drags on without serious debate about withdrawal on the Washington agenda, questions need to be asked about the fate of Afghan civilians. Chief among them: How many more years of 'progress' can they endure, and if the U.S. stays, how much more 'success' can they stand?" -- How Much “Success” Can Afghans Stand?: The American War and Afghanistan’s Civilians by Nick Turse (Tom Dispatch 2010-09-12).
"Almost 10 years of U.S. and allied occupation, development, mentoring, reconstruction aid, and assistance has taken the country from unbearably dismal to something markedly poorer. And yet even worse is still possible for the long-suffering men, women, and children of Afghanistan. As the U.S. war and occupation drags on without serious debate about withdrawal on the Washington agenda, questions need to be asked about the fate of Afghan civilians. Chief among them: How many more years of 'progress' can they endure, and if the U.S. stays, how much more 'success' can they stand?" -- How Much “Success” Can Afghans Stand?: The American War and Afghanistan’s Civilians by Nick Turse (Tom Dispatch 2010-09-12).
The Long War: Rethinking U.S. Strategy in Afghanistan
Nine years in, the American war against Afghanistan is the longest in our history. With the surge, it is costing taxpayers nearly $100 billion per year, a sum roughly seven times larger than Afghanistan’s annual gross national product of $14 billion and well more than, for example, the total annual cost of the new U.S. health insurance program. Thousands of American and allied personnel and countless thousands of Afghanis have been killed or gravely wounded in the conflict.
The centralized government we have attempted to impose on the highly decentralized Afghan polity has failed to take: "President Karzai has had nearly six years to build a legitimate and minimally effective government, and he has manifestly failed to do so," says this report sponsored by the New America Foundation. "His re-election last year was marred by widespread fraud. Karzai has been unable or unwilling to crack down on corruption or rein in the warlords on whom his government still depends."
It's clear that the current occupation is a failure, amounting to not much more than a Kissingerish policy of destroying a society in order to save it. To avoid being thrown out, you might think we should end our involvement preemptively by leaving of our own volition, but that is not something the foreign policy establishment is willing to contemplate, so we have this attempt to come up with an alternative plan:
A New Way Forward | Re-Thinking US Strategy in Afghanistan is a report of the Afghanistan Study Group sponsored by the New America Foundation. Read the report on-line or download it (pdf) to find out what some of the more rational members of the foreign policy establishment are thinking about the war.
The centralized government we have attempted to impose on the highly decentralized Afghan polity has failed to take: "President Karzai has had nearly six years to build a legitimate and minimally effective government, and he has manifestly failed to do so," says this report sponsored by the New America Foundation. "His re-election last year was marred by widespread fraud. Karzai has been unable or unwilling to crack down on corruption or rein in the warlords on whom his government still depends."
It's clear that the current occupation is a failure, amounting to not much more than a Kissingerish policy of destroying a society in order to save it. To avoid being thrown out, you might think we should end our involvement preemptively by leaving of our own volition, but that is not something the foreign policy establishment is willing to contemplate, so we have this attempt to come up with an alternative plan:
The authors of the report, holding to conventional faith in western-style economic and security arrangements, believe the United States should not "abandon" Afghanistan even though "U.S. interests at stake in Afghanistan do not warrant this level of sacrifice;" instead they argue it's time to rethink the current strategy. Trying to pacify Afghanistan by force of arms has not and will not work, but even if you accept the premise that America’s vital security interests are engaged there, the costly military campaign is more likely to jeopardize than to protect them. Although the authors continue to find the invasion justified because the attack was initially targeted at al-Qaeda, they admit that "there are only some 400 hard-core al-Qaeda members remaining in the entire Af-Pak theater, most of them hiding in Pakistan's northwest provinces." Since we can't attack Pakistan for various reasons, Afghanistan will have to do, but at least the U.S. should ratchet down its goals to ones that are both more consistent with what the authors define as America’s true interests and that, being more modest, are more likely to succeed.The way forward: A five point approach
- Emphasize Power-Sharing and Political Reconciliation
- Scale Back and Eventually Suspend Combat Operations in the South and Reduce the U.S. Military Footprint
- Keep the Focus on Al Qaeda and Domestic Security
- Promote Economic Development
- Engage Global and Regional Stakeholders.
A New Way Forward | Re-Thinking US Strategy in Afghanistan is a report of the Afghanistan Study Group sponsored by the New America Foundation. Read the report on-line or download it (pdf) to find out what some of the more rational members of the foreign policy establishment are thinking about the war.
Peace Games: Part of the way with... oh, never mind.
"You all are combat troops not doing a combat mission, although it looks, smells and feels and hurts a lot like combat." -- Lt. Col. Andy Ulrich, Hawija, Iraq (August 31, 2010).You may remember a time when Barack Obama was widely admired for a speaking style that was compelling and forthright. Even when you disagreed with him, as I did during his late run for the White House, you admired the clarity, directness and emotional uplift of his addresses. So you had to be disappointed with his uninspiring performance last Tuesday, even as you sympathized with the spot he's in. The chasm between the American self-image as the defender of freedom and justice and its true role as the enforcer of class and property rights around the globe has become so vast that no U.S. politician can be clear and forthright about anything.
The president's immediate problem Tuesday was that he was trying to paint the lipstick of withdrawal on the pig of our continuing occupation of Iraq.
However you describe the actions of the 50,000 plus troops and many more thousands of "security contractors" who remain in Iraq, "it looks, smells and feels and hurts a lot like combat." A mission statement is a form of marketing: it is meaningless without action. The new mission statement for Iraq can't alter reality; as Matthew Yglesias wrote yesterday on American Prospect, "there's simply no redeeming an irredeemable mission." All Obama's version of "mission accomplished" really offered was another opportunity for George Orwell to roll over in his grave.
The most chilling aspect of the speech was its unequivocal embrace of American militarism (the expenditure of "vast resources abroad at a time of tight budgets at home," as he accurately put it). Even as he admitted that "our most urgent task is to restore our economy, and put the millions of Americans who have lost their jobs back to work," the president had no concrete proposals to take us from making war to creating jobs.
Somehow in the past two years the Iraq war has mutated in Obama's mind from something illegal and "dumb" to the penultimate stop in an unbroken line of heroic actions "that stretches from Lexington to Gettysburg; from Iwo Jima to Inchon; from Khe Sanh to Kandahar," an "unbroken line" that the president presumably knows includes a barbarous civil war and almost continuous episodes of territorial expansion, genocide, colonial brutality, war crimes and unprovoked aggression. Khe Sanh, for pete's sake (along with the Tet Offensive, it was Khe Sanh that turned the tide of public opinion against the war in Vietnam).
Ultimately the speech was less about the conclusion of military operations in Iraq than it was a billboard for American militarism in general ("the steel in our ship of state") and in particular this Democratic administration's embrace of permanent war in Afghanistan ("As we speak, al Qaeda continues to plot against us" -- all four or five dozen of them). The peace movement and the left in general have some tough decisions ahead. It is clear by now that taking sides reflexively with the Democrats in every fight ends with being taken for granted by the party's leaders on every front. There may be times when supporting a pro-military Democrat makes sense -- because he or she has been a reliable ally (in the fight for affordable, universal health care, say, or for equal rights under the law), but it is becoming increasingly difficult to take seriously on economic justice issues those Democrats that support aggressive militarism and runaway DOD spending.
The Democratic Party needs to learn that progressives are serious about change.
Are we?
Saturday Catchup 2010-08-28
Capitalism, Threat or Menace: "Now, anyone can look at China's rapid economic growth and react with wonderment and awe. They have surpassed Japan, and are outranked only by the U.S. -- for now. Plus, they are the largest owner of American debt at the better part of a trillion dollars. China shows what you can do with a little industrial planning, policy and guidance from the government. But then again, many things are possible when you don't have those annoyances, those minor nuisances like environmental regulations, workplace safety, worker's rights, and democratic government. Chinese-style capitalism seems to be a purer form than its U.S. counterpart, and therefore a Republican nirvana, minus the part about government planning. And for now, we wait for a nascent labor movement to kick into gear and transform a country that responds to massive public unrest with military crackdowns. While Chinese workers jump out of windows, Americans are dying as well. In the U.S., workers die on exploding oil rigs and in deathtrap coalmines because their regulation-hating employers want to maximize profits. And besides, they say, regulations are dumb. Consumers die from unsafe food because food companies want to cut corners. Just like the Great Depression days when people lacked a safety net, the unemployed, foreclosed and student debtor-prisoners of today are turning to suicide at an alarming rate, with an increase of calls to suicide prevention hotlines." -- Capitalism Is Killing Us by David A. Love (Huffington Post 2010-08-25).
Hey, Glenn Beck: Here's how Martin Luther King described Jesus at the end of an essay published eight months after the civil rights leader was assassinated: "A voice out of Bethlehem two thousand years ago said that all men are equal.... Jesus of Nazareth wrote no books; he owned no property to endow him with influence. He had no friends in the courts of the powerful. But he changed the course of mankind with only the poor and the despised." King concluded this final essay, titled "A Testament of Hope," with a strikingly radical claim, indicating his strong identification with society's most disadvantaged and outcast persons. "Naive and unsophisticated though we may be," King said, "the poor and despised of the twentieth century will revolutionize this era. In our 'arrogance, lawlessness, and ingratitude,' we will fight for human justice, brotherhood, secure peace, and abundance for all." -- Martin Luther King, Democratic Socialist by Paul Street (The Black Commentator 2006-02-02).
And btw, Beck, it's not like we haven't seen your likes before:
The Tea Party is no joke: "There’s nothing in the world more tired than a progressive blogger like me flipping out over the latest idiocies emanating from the Fox News crowd. But this summer’s media hate-fest is different than anything we’ve seen before. What we’re watching is a calculated campaign to demonize blacks, Mexicans, and gays and convince a plurality of economically-depressed white voters that they are under imminent legal and perhaps even physical attack by a conspiracy of leftist nonwhites. They’re telling these people that their government is illegitimate and criminal and unironically urging secession and revolution." -- Tea Party Rocks Primaries by Matt Taibbi (Rolling Stone 2010-08-26).
The legendary Budd Schulberg told the Glenn Beck Story more than half a century ago:
In the end, though, you reap what you sow.
A step back for the security state: The New York state law mandating the removal from NYPD computerized databases of personal information of many thousands of entirely innocent citizens stopped and frisked wholly without reasonable suspicion, is a clear refutation not only of the policies of mayor Mike Bloomberg and NYPD commissioner Ray Kelly, but also of the Bush-Cheney-Obama insistence that national security and public safety trump individual constitutional liberties. If any civics classes still remain in public schools, NY governor David Paterson's signing statement is especially worth hearing and discussing in the context of a 22-page July 29 ACLU report card: "Obama Administration in Danger of Establishing 'New Normal' With Worst Bush-Era Policies." In office, Barack Obama has not only continued but expanded the disabling of the Bill of Rights begun by George W. Bush. "In a democracy," Governor Paterson said, "there are times when safety and liberty find themselves in conflict. From the Alien and Sedition Acts [opposition to which gave Thomas Jefferson the presidency] to the Patriot Act, we have experienced moments where liberty took a back seat." As president, Barack Obama has not done anything to rein in the excesses of the USA PATRIOT Act ("Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001" -- got to admire the Right's knack for clever marketing of bad ideas) . Indeed, when Democrats on the Judiciary Committee tried, once Obama was in the Oval Office, to enact a few reforms, the president helped the Republicans block most of them. -- What Obama Could Learn From Paterson: Lame-duck governor's inspiring words in defense of liberty by Nat Hentoff (Village Voice 2010-08-25).
Some very mean bugs are looking for you: The era of antibiotics is coming to a close. In just a couple of generations, what once appeared to be miracle medicines have been beaten into ineffectiveness by the bacteria they were designed to knock out. Once, scientists hailed the end of infectious diseases. Now, the post-antibiotic apocalypse is within sight. -- Are you ready for a world without antibiotics? by Sarah Boseley (Guardian UK 2010-08-12).
All your PowerPoint are belong to us: "I have been assigned as a staff officer to a headquarters in Afghanistan for about two months. During that time, I have not done anything productive. Fortunately little of substance is really done here, but that is a task we do well. We are part of the operational arm of the International Security Assistance Force commanded by U.S. Army Gen. David Petraeus. It is composed of military representatives from all the NATO countries, several of which I cannot pronounce. Officially, IJC was founded in late 2009 to coordinate operations among all the regional commands in Afghanistan. More likely it was founded to provide some general a three-star command. Starting with a small group of dedicated and intelligent officers, IJC has successfully grown into a stove-piped and bloated organization, top-heavy in rank. Around here you can't swing a dead cat without hitting a colonel. For headquarters staff, war consists largely of the endless tinkering with PowerPoint slides to conform with the idiosyncrasies of cognitively challenged generals in order to spoon-feed them information. Even one tiny flaw in a slide can halt a general's thought processes as abruptly as a computer system's blue screen of death." -- PowerPoints 'R' Us by Col. Lawrence Sellin, U.S. Army Reserves (Breitbart/UPI "Outside View" 2010-08-24). See, also: Colonel Kicked Out of Afghanistan for Anti-PowerPoint Rant by Spencer Ackerman (Wired/Danger Room 2010-08-27).
Our adventure in Afghanistan, as seen by the other side in Kunar Province:
Aw, how can we leave now?: Gitmo, the next Galapagos? It's a mighty ill wind that blows absolutely no good. Guantánamo Bay may be best known for its U.S. military base on Cuban soil and its unconstitutional prison, but to scientists at New York Botanical Garden's Caribbean Biodiversity Program it's a prime spot for ecological research. -- Guantánamo Bay, Site of Important Ecological Research by Julie Schwietert Collazo (Discover 2010-08-06).
Bon voyage: Perhaps you've had a good laugh over seasteading, the scheme hatched by rich libertarians to escape the clutches of democracy by living on giant metal platforms in the middle of the ocean. But as it turns out, seasteading is something of a wet dry run for some libertarians’ ultimate escape plan of uploading their brains into robot bodies and blasting off into space. This is also known as “transhumanism,” which is (very) loosely defined as a movement of people/future androids who are promoting the adoption of technologies that will eventually help “humans transcend biology,” in the words of Objectivist futurist Ray Kurzweil. -- The Ultimate Escape: The Bizarre Libertarian Plan of Uploading Brains into Robots to Escape Society by Brad Reed (AlterNet 2010-08-27).
Hey, they're cartoons anyway: A roundup of GOP candidates in the midterm elections as animated by NMA World Edition in Taiwan:
Can't help it. Love these guys. 美國反伊斯蘭情緒太超過?
Norman Rockwell's America was real: During World War II, the women in the small town of North Platte, Nebraska touched the lives of thousands of young soldiers on their way to war. It's not a bad model to keep before us now, as so many Americans deal with economic anxiety by demonizing their fellow citizens. -- Simple Gestures, Lifelong Memories by Abigail R. Esman (Forbes 2010-08-09).
Milestones: "Elizabeth Sargent, a poet, answered an advertisement to 'live and work in Carnegie Hall' 46 years ago and moved in with a recommendation from the literary critic Malcolm Cowley. Half a lifetime later, on Thursday, she was the last resident to move out of the 116-year-old studio apartments in Carnegie Hall Towers, which once percolated with creativity and personality Mark Twain used to smoke his pipe in the author’s club across the hall from Ms. Sargent’s studio; Marlon Brando entertained guests in the apartment directly below; and Leonard Bernstein read scores on the same floor. Norman Mailer penned works in her apartment, and Isadora Duncan danced down the hallway. 'This was a magical place,' Ms. Sargent said. 'Artists really had a freedom here; they developed here.'” -- In Apartments Above Carnegie Hall, a Coda for Longtime Residents by Liz Robbins (New York Times 2010-08-27).
George David Weiss, composer of Elvis' "Can't Help Falling in Love," "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" by The Tokens and "What a Wonderful World," Louis Armstrong's greatest hit, has died.
Hey, Glenn Beck: Here's how Martin Luther King described Jesus at the end of an essay published eight months after the civil rights leader was assassinated: "A voice out of Bethlehem two thousand years ago said that all men are equal.... Jesus of Nazareth wrote no books; he owned no property to endow him with influence. He had no friends in the courts of the powerful. But he changed the course of mankind with only the poor and the despised." King concluded this final essay, titled "A Testament of Hope," with a strikingly radical claim, indicating his strong identification with society's most disadvantaged and outcast persons. "Naive and unsophisticated though we may be," King said, "the poor and despised of the twentieth century will revolutionize this era. In our 'arrogance, lawlessness, and ingratitude,' we will fight for human justice, brotherhood, secure peace, and abundance for all." -- Martin Luther King, Democratic Socialist by Paul Street (The Black Commentator 2006-02-02).
And btw, Beck, it's not like we haven't seen your likes before:
The Tea Party is no joke: "There’s nothing in the world more tired than a progressive blogger like me flipping out over the latest idiocies emanating from the Fox News crowd. But this summer’s media hate-fest is different than anything we’ve seen before. What we’re watching is a calculated campaign to demonize blacks, Mexicans, and gays and convince a plurality of economically-depressed white voters that they are under imminent legal and perhaps even physical attack by a conspiracy of leftist nonwhites. They’re telling these people that their government is illegitimate and criminal and unironically urging secession and revolution." -- Tea Party Rocks Primaries by Matt Taibbi (Rolling Stone 2010-08-26).
The legendary Budd Schulberg told the Glenn Beck Story more than half a century ago:
In the end, though, you reap what you sow.
A step back for the security state: The New York state law mandating the removal from NYPD computerized databases of personal information of many thousands of entirely innocent citizens stopped and frisked wholly without reasonable suspicion, is a clear refutation not only of the policies of mayor Mike Bloomberg and NYPD commissioner Ray Kelly, but also of the Bush-Cheney-Obama insistence that national security and public safety trump individual constitutional liberties. If any civics classes still remain in public schools, NY governor David Paterson's signing statement is especially worth hearing and discussing in the context of a 22-page July 29 ACLU report card: "Obama Administration in Danger of Establishing 'New Normal' With Worst Bush-Era Policies." In office, Barack Obama has not only continued but expanded the disabling of the Bill of Rights begun by George W. Bush. "In a democracy," Governor Paterson said, "there are times when safety and liberty find themselves in conflict. From the Alien and Sedition Acts [opposition to which gave Thomas Jefferson the presidency] to the Patriot Act, we have experienced moments where liberty took a back seat." As president, Barack Obama has not done anything to rein in the excesses of the USA PATRIOT Act ("Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001" -- got to admire the Right's knack for clever marketing of bad ideas) . Indeed, when Democrats on the Judiciary Committee tried, once Obama was in the Oval Office, to enact a few reforms, the president helped the Republicans block most of them. -- What Obama Could Learn From Paterson: Lame-duck governor's inspiring words in defense of liberty by Nat Hentoff (Village Voice 2010-08-25).
Some very mean bugs are looking for you: The era of antibiotics is coming to a close. In just a couple of generations, what once appeared to be miracle medicines have been beaten into ineffectiveness by the bacteria they were designed to knock out. Once, scientists hailed the end of infectious diseases. Now, the post-antibiotic apocalypse is within sight. -- Are you ready for a world without antibiotics? by Sarah Boseley (Guardian UK 2010-08-12).
All your PowerPoint are belong to us: "I have been assigned as a staff officer to a headquarters in Afghanistan for about two months. During that time, I have not done anything productive. Fortunately little of substance is really done here, but that is a task we do well. We are part of the operational arm of the International Security Assistance Force commanded by U.S. Army Gen. David Petraeus. It is composed of military representatives from all the NATO countries, several of which I cannot pronounce. Officially, IJC was founded in late 2009 to coordinate operations among all the regional commands in Afghanistan. More likely it was founded to provide some general a three-star command. Starting with a small group of dedicated and intelligent officers, IJC has successfully grown into a stove-piped and bloated organization, top-heavy in rank. Around here you can't swing a dead cat without hitting a colonel. For headquarters staff, war consists largely of the endless tinkering with PowerPoint slides to conform with the idiosyncrasies of cognitively challenged generals in order to spoon-feed them information. Even one tiny flaw in a slide can halt a general's thought processes as abruptly as a computer system's blue screen of death." -- PowerPoints 'R' Us by Col. Lawrence Sellin, U.S. Army Reserves (Breitbart/UPI "Outside View" 2010-08-24). See, also: Colonel Kicked Out of Afghanistan for Anti-PowerPoint Rant by Spencer Ackerman (Wired/Danger Room 2010-08-27).
Our adventure in Afghanistan, as seen by the other side in Kunar Province:
Aw, how can we leave now?: Gitmo, the next Galapagos? It's a mighty ill wind that blows absolutely no good. Guantánamo Bay may be best known for its U.S. military base on Cuban soil and its unconstitutional prison, but to scientists at New York Botanical Garden's Caribbean Biodiversity Program it's a prime spot for ecological research. -- Guantánamo Bay, Site of Important Ecological Research by Julie Schwietert Collazo (Discover 2010-08-06).
Bon voyage: Perhaps you've had a good laugh over seasteading, the scheme hatched by rich libertarians to escape the clutches of democracy by living on giant metal platforms in the middle of the ocean. But as it turns out, seasteading is something of a wet dry run for some libertarians’ ultimate escape plan of uploading their brains into robot bodies and blasting off into space. This is also known as “transhumanism,” which is (very) loosely defined as a movement of people/future androids who are promoting the adoption of technologies that will eventually help “humans transcend biology,” in the words of Objectivist futurist Ray Kurzweil. -- The Ultimate Escape: The Bizarre Libertarian Plan of Uploading Brains into Robots to Escape Society by Brad Reed (AlterNet 2010-08-27).
Hey, they're cartoons anyway: A roundup of GOP candidates in the midterm elections as animated by NMA World Edition in Taiwan:
Can't help it. Love these guys. 美國反伊斯蘭情緒太超過?
Norman Rockwell's America was real: During World War II, the women in the small town of North Platte, Nebraska touched the lives of thousands of young soldiers on their way to war. It's not a bad model to keep before us now, as so many Americans deal with economic anxiety by demonizing their fellow citizens. -- Simple Gestures, Lifelong Memories by Abigail R. Esman (Forbes 2010-08-09).
Milestones: "Elizabeth Sargent, a poet, answered an advertisement to 'live and work in Carnegie Hall' 46 years ago and moved in with a recommendation from the literary critic Malcolm Cowley. Half a lifetime later, on Thursday, she was the last resident to move out of the 116-year-old studio apartments in Carnegie Hall Towers, which once percolated with creativity and personality Mark Twain used to smoke his pipe in the author’s club across the hall from Ms. Sargent’s studio; Marlon Brando entertained guests in the apartment directly below; and Leonard Bernstein read scores on the same floor. Norman Mailer penned works in her apartment, and Isadora Duncan danced down the hallway. 'This was a magical place,' Ms. Sargent said. 'Artists really had a freedom here; they developed here.'” -- In Apartments Above Carnegie Hall, a Coda for Longtime Residents by Liz Robbins (New York Times 2010-08-27).
George David Weiss, composer of Elvis' "Can't Help Falling in Love," "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" by The Tokens and "What a Wonderful World," Louis Armstrong's greatest hit, has died.
Saturday Catchup 2010-08-14
One of the greats is gone:
Change Watch: "A friend whom I'll call David raised a ton of money for Democrats in 2008 and now tells me they can go to hell. He's furious about the no-strings bailout of Wall Street, the absence of a public option in health reform, financial reform that doesn't cap the size of banks or reinstate the Glass-Steagall wall between investment and commercial banking, and a stimulus that was too small to do much good but big enough to give Republicans a campaign issue. He's also upset about tens of thousands of additional troops being sent to Afghanistan, a watered-down cap-and-trade bill that's going nowhere, and no Employee Free Choice Act. David won't raise a penny this fall and doubts he'll even vote. 'I busted my chops getting them elected, and they caved,' he fumes. 'They're all lily-livered wimps, and Obama has the backbone of a worm.' Tea Partiers are getting all the press. But the anger on the left, including much of the Democratic base, is almost as intense. And it spells trouble for Democrats a few months from now." -- Fire on the Left: Tea Partiers are getting all the press, but it's the anger on the left that spells trouble for Dems in the midterms by Robert B. Reich (The American Prospect 2010-08-02).
Populism Schmopulism: "Since the 1960s, populism has succeeded on the right and has produced few if any left-wing counterparts. The tradition has moved from the segregationist George Wallace, who derided the federal government and pointy-headed intellectuals, to Richard Nixon's celebration of 'the silent majority' and Spiro Agnew's attack against journalists and elites. It has fed on an easy hatred of government and taxes, from the 'I'm Mad as Hell' chants of the California tax protesters in 1978 -- the spirit that helped get Ronald Reagan elected president -- to the Tea Party of today. There's no way to steer this boat back to left-wing shores....'The people' are no more virtuous or incorruptible than elites, and pandering to them won't advance liberal political goals." -- Forget Populism by Kevin Mattson (The American Prospect 2010-08-03).
Here's a ditty that will never go out of style:
But it's what a declining empire looks like: "The world leadership qualities of the United States, once so prevalent, are fading faster than the polar ice caps. We once set the standard for industrial might, for the advanced state of our physical infrastructure, and for the quality of our citizens’ lives. All are experiencing significant decline. The latest dismal news on the leadership front comes from the College Board, which tells us that the U.S., once the world’s leader in the percentage of young people with college degrees, has fallen to 12th among 36 developed nations. At a time when a college education is needed more than ever to establish and maintain a middle-class standard of living, America’s young people are moving in exactly the wrong direction. A well-educated population also is crucially important if the U.S. is to succeed in an increasingly competitive global environment. But instead of exercising the appropriate mental muscles, we’re allowing ourselves to become a nation of nitwits, obsessed with the comings and goings of Lindsay Lohan and increasingly oblivious to crucially important societal issues that are all but screaming for attention. What should we be doing about the legions of jobless Americans, the deteriorating public schools, the debilitating wars, the scandalous economic inequality, the corporate hold on governmental affairs, the commercialization of the arts, the deficits? Why is there not serious and widespread public engagement with these issues — and many others that could easily come to mind? That kind of engagement would lead to creative new ideas and would serve to enrich the lives of individual Americans and the nation as a whole. But it would require a heavy social and intellectual lift." -- Putting Our Brains on Hold by Bob Herbert (New York Times 2009-08-06).
What's in a name? that which we call socialism/By any other name would smell as sweet: "Virg Bernero, the mayor of Lansing, Michigan, just won the Democratic nomination for governor of his state, making a state-owned Bank of Michigan a real possibility. Bernero is one of at least a dozen candidates promoting that solution to the states' economic woes. It is an innovative idea, with little precedent in the United States. North Dakota, currently the only state owning its own bank, also happens to be the only state sporting a budget surplus, and it has the lowest unemployment rate in the country; but skeptics can write these achievements off to coincidence. More data is needed and, fortunately, other precedents are available from other countries." -- What a Government Can Do With Its Own Bank: The Remarkable Model of the Commonwealth Bank of Australia by Ellen Brown (Truthout 2010-08-05).
In the last half century, I've been lucky at being in the right place at the right time, but on few occasions as dramatic as when Bob Dylan went electric at Newport in the summer of 1965:
Who pays the piper, calls the tune: The GOP wants tax cuts for the rich, and only the rich. "...For the last few years, we haven't spent much time debating taxes. And to use a word conservatives like so much when it comes to this subject, it was a relief. However, since the Bush tax cuts will be expiring at the end of the year, we're in for another round of ridiculous arguments, disingenuous talking points, and maddening stupidity. We have already seen the return of the Tax Fairy, the absurd belief, depressingly widespread in Republican circles, that cutting taxes increases revenue. Even Greg Mankiw, chair of George W. Bush's Council of Economic Advisers, called those who believe this fiction 'charlatans and cranks.' But it has become almost doctrine within the GOP." -- The Return of the Tax Fairy: Conservatives gear up to defend the expiring Bush-era tax cuts by Paul Waldman (The American Prospect 2010-08-03).
A conservative stalwart looks at Republican fiscal "policy": "If there were such a thing as Chapter 11 for politicians, the Republican push to extend the unaffordable Bush tax cuts would amount to a bankruptcy filing. The nation’s public debt — if honestly reckoned to include municipal bonds and the $7 trillion of new deficits baked into the cake through 2015 — will soon reach $18 trillion. That’s a Greece-scale 120 percent of gross domestic product, and fairly screams out for austerity and sacrifice. It is therefore unseemly for the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, to insist that the nation’s wealthiest taxpayers be spared even a three-percentage-point rate increase. More fundamentally, Mr. McConnell’s stand puts the lie to the Republican pretense that its new monetarist and supply-side doctrines are rooted in its traditional financial philosophy. Republicans used to believe that prosperity depended upon the regular balancing of accounts — in government, in international trade, on the ledgers of central banks and in the financial affairs of private households and businesses, too. But the new catechism, as practiced by Republican policymakers for decades now, has amounted to little more than money printing and deficit finance — vulgar Keynesianism robed in the ideological vestments of the prosperous classes. This approach has not simply made a mockery of traditional party ideals. It has also led to the serial financial bubbles and Wall Street depredations that have crippled our economy. More specifically, the new policy doctrines have caused four great deformations of the national economy, and modern Republicans have turned a blind eye to each one." -- Four Deformations of the Apocalypse by David Stockman (New York Times 2010-08-01).
I Want Roosevelt Again*: "A video that made the rounds last summer summed up the problem nicely. Mike Stark of The Huffington Post hoisted a camera on his shoulder, hung out on the streets near the House office buildings in Washington, and asked passing Republican House members: Do you believe that Barack Obama is a rightful citizen of the United States? I don't know how many he asked (there were snippets of several ducking into cars or pretending to take calls), but he quoted 11 in the video he posted. Of the 11, only one, Trent Franks of Arizona, acknowledged straightforwardly that yes, his staff had intensively researched the question and was forced to conclude that a birth announcement in a 1961 issue of The Honolulu Advertiser likely couldn't have been forged. The other 10, mostly not well known, either ducked the question, marching forward in that West Wing, I've-got-important-business way, or gave too-clever-by-half responses, or just came out and said they weren't sure. 'I think there are questions, so we'll have to see,' quipped Charles Boustany of Louisiana -- spoken a touch ironically because he, unlike Obama, is in fact of Arab (Lebanese) lineage, an ethnicity frequently and incorrectly assigned to the president." -- The Right Way to Please the Base: What the left can learn from right-wing extremists by Michael Tomasky (The American Prospect 2010-08-02). *1944 campaign button
In a world of anarchy, the only currency that matters is power: "There are many sources of fear in world politics -- terrorist attacks, natural disasters, climate change, financial panic, nuclear proliferation, ethnic conflict, and so forth. Surveying the cultural zeitgeist, however, it is striking how an unnatural problem has become one of the fastest-growing concerns in international relations. I speak, of course, of zombies." -- Night of the Living Wonks: Toward an international relations theory of zombies by Daniel W. Drezner (Foreign Policy 2010-07/08).
"The first rule of fight club is one never mentions fight club":
Plus ca change...: "Southasian fiction has provided many insights into the persona and conflicts of the exploited-empowered dancing girl. It is not a coincidence that the earliest novels of the Subcontinent dealt with the intense and memorable characters of ‘nautch girls’. Essentially a colonial construct, a nautch girl referred to the popular entertainer, a belle beau who would sing, dance and, when required, also provide the services of a sex worker. The accounts on the marginalised women from the ‘dishonourable’ profession are nuanced, concurrently representing the duality of exploitation and empowerment." My candle burns at both ends by Raza Rumi (Himal 2010-08).
Oh, jeeze. Amid all the chatter about Lindsay's incarceration, Chelsea's nuptials, and the plot to install the Bin Laden Memorial Mosque at Ground Zero, almost forgot there's a war on. Think that's the plan. What about you?
"I'm going to be killing people. I'm actually joining the Marines and will be doing this in real life": Just because we haven't finished the war we have doesn't mean we can't have another one. "War springs eternal. Compare the words of the 18-year-old boy quoted above by Philadelphia radio station WRTI, as he was wielding a pretend machinegun at a video-game parlor/Army recruiting center at a Philly shopping mall, with those of two neocons, Charles Robb and Charles Wald (retired senator and general, respectively), writing last month in the Washington Post: 'We cannot afford to wait indefinitely to determine the effectiveness of diplomacy and sanctions. . . . Instead, the administration needs to expand its approach and make clear to the Iranian regime and the American people: If diplomatic and economic pressures do not compel Iran to terminate its nuclear program, the U.S. military has the capability and is prepared to launch an effective, targeted strike on Tehran's nuclear and supporting military facilities.' We're running out of time to act, they add, turning the fear crank, ratcheting up the pressure like good used car salesmen. Iran could have a nuclear bomb by the end of the year, they warn, citing no evidence for this assertion. Evidence? They all but cried: 'We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.'" -- The Next War by Common Dreams (Common Dreams 2010-08-05).
Does singing about being president make Wyclef Jean the Mike Huckabee of Haiti?
'Nuff said.
Change Watch: "A friend whom I'll call David raised a ton of money for Democrats in 2008 and now tells me they can go to hell. He's furious about the no-strings bailout of Wall Street, the absence of a public option in health reform, financial reform that doesn't cap the size of banks or reinstate the Glass-Steagall wall between investment and commercial banking, and a stimulus that was too small to do much good but big enough to give Republicans a campaign issue. He's also upset about tens of thousands of additional troops being sent to Afghanistan, a watered-down cap-and-trade bill that's going nowhere, and no Employee Free Choice Act. David won't raise a penny this fall and doubts he'll even vote. 'I busted my chops getting them elected, and they caved,' he fumes. 'They're all lily-livered wimps, and Obama has the backbone of a worm.' Tea Partiers are getting all the press. But the anger on the left, including much of the Democratic base, is almost as intense. And it spells trouble for Democrats a few months from now." -- Fire on the Left: Tea Partiers are getting all the press, but it's the anger on the left that spells trouble for Dems in the midterms by Robert B. Reich (The American Prospect 2010-08-02).
Populism Schmopulism: "Since the 1960s, populism has succeeded on the right and has produced few if any left-wing counterparts. The tradition has moved from the segregationist George Wallace, who derided the federal government and pointy-headed intellectuals, to Richard Nixon's celebration of 'the silent majority' and Spiro Agnew's attack against journalists and elites. It has fed on an easy hatred of government and taxes, from the 'I'm Mad as Hell' chants of the California tax protesters in 1978 -- the spirit that helped get Ronald Reagan elected president -- to the Tea Party of today. There's no way to steer this boat back to left-wing shores....'The people' are no more virtuous or incorruptible than elites, and pandering to them won't advance liberal political goals." -- Forget Populism by Kevin Mattson (The American Prospect 2010-08-03).
Here's a ditty that will never go out of style:
But it's what a declining empire looks like: "The world leadership qualities of the United States, once so prevalent, are fading faster than the polar ice caps. We once set the standard for industrial might, for the advanced state of our physical infrastructure, and for the quality of our citizens’ lives. All are experiencing significant decline. The latest dismal news on the leadership front comes from the College Board, which tells us that the U.S., once the world’s leader in the percentage of young people with college degrees, has fallen to 12th among 36 developed nations. At a time when a college education is needed more than ever to establish and maintain a middle-class standard of living, America’s young people are moving in exactly the wrong direction. A well-educated population also is crucially important if the U.S. is to succeed in an increasingly competitive global environment. But instead of exercising the appropriate mental muscles, we’re allowing ourselves to become a nation of nitwits, obsessed with the comings and goings of Lindsay Lohan and increasingly oblivious to crucially important societal issues that are all but screaming for attention. What should we be doing about the legions of jobless Americans, the deteriorating public schools, the debilitating wars, the scandalous economic inequality, the corporate hold on governmental affairs, the commercialization of the arts, the deficits? Why is there not serious and widespread public engagement with these issues — and many others that could easily come to mind? That kind of engagement would lead to creative new ideas and would serve to enrich the lives of individual Americans and the nation as a whole. But it would require a heavy social and intellectual lift." -- Putting Our Brains on Hold by Bob Herbert (New York Times 2009-08-06).
What's in a name? that which we call socialism/By any other name would smell as sweet: "Virg Bernero, the mayor of Lansing, Michigan, just won the Democratic nomination for governor of his state, making a state-owned Bank of Michigan a real possibility. Bernero is one of at least a dozen candidates promoting that solution to the states' economic woes. It is an innovative idea, with little precedent in the United States. North Dakota, currently the only state owning its own bank, also happens to be the only state sporting a budget surplus, and it has the lowest unemployment rate in the country; but skeptics can write these achievements off to coincidence. More data is needed and, fortunately, other precedents are available from other countries." -- What a Government Can Do With Its Own Bank: The Remarkable Model of the Commonwealth Bank of Australia by Ellen Brown (Truthout 2010-08-05).
In the last half century, I've been lucky at being in the right place at the right time, but on few occasions as dramatic as when Bob Dylan went electric at Newport in the summer of 1965:
Who pays the piper, calls the tune: The GOP wants tax cuts for the rich, and only the rich. "...For the last few years, we haven't spent much time debating taxes. And to use a word conservatives like so much when it comes to this subject, it was a relief. However, since the Bush tax cuts will be expiring at the end of the year, we're in for another round of ridiculous arguments, disingenuous talking points, and maddening stupidity. We have already seen the return of the Tax Fairy, the absurd belief, depressingly widespread in Republican circles, that cutting taxes increases revenue. Even Greg Mankiw, chair of George W. Bush's Council of Economic Advisers, called those who believe this fiction 'charlatans and cranks.' But it has become almost doctrine within the GOP." -- The Return of the Tax Fairy: Conservatives gear up to defend the expiring Bush-era tax cuts by Paul Waldman (The American Prospect 2010-08-03).
A conservative stalwart looks at Republican fiscal "policy": "If there were such a thing as Chapter 11 for politicians, the Republican push to extend the unaffordable Bush tax cuts would amount to a bankruptcy filing. The nation’s public debt — if honestly reckoned to include municipal bonds and the $7 trillion of new deficits baked into the cake through 2015 — will soon reach $18 trillion. That’s a Greece-scale 120 percent of gross domestic product, and fairly screams out for austerity and sacrifice. It is therefore unseemly for the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, to insist that the nation’s wealthiest taxpayers be spared even a three-percentage-point rate increase. More fundamentally, Mr. McConnell’s stand puts the lie to the Republican pretense that its new monetarist and supply-side doctrines are rooted in its traditional financial philosophy. Republicans used to believe that prosperity depended upon the regular balancing of accounts — in government, in international trade, on the ledgers of central banks and in the financial affairs of private households and businesses, too. But the new catechism, as practiced by Republican policymakers for decades now, has amounted to little more than money printing and deficit finance — vulgar Keynesianism robed in the ideological vestments of the prosperous classes. This approach has not simply made a mockery of traditional party ideals. It has also led to the serial financial bubbles and Wall Street depredations that have crippled our economy. More specifically, the new policy doctrines have caused four great deformations of the national economy, and modern Republicans have turned a blind eye to each one." -- Four Deformations of the Apocalypse by David Stockman (New York Times 2010-08-01).
I Want Roosevelt Again*: "A video that made the rounds last summer summed up the problem nicely. Mike Stark of The Huffington Post hoisted a camera on his shoulder, hung out on the streets near the House office buildings in Washington, and asked passing Republican House members: Do you believe that Barack Obama is a rightful citizen of the United States? I don't know how many he asked (there were snippets of several ducking into cars or pretending to take calls), but he quoted 11 in the video he posted. Of the 11, only one, Trent Franks of Arizona, acknowledged straightforwardly that yes, his staff had intensively researched the question and was forced to conclude that a birth announcement in a 1961 issue of The Honolulu Advertiser likely couldn't have been forged. The other 10, mostly not well known, either ducked the question, marching forward in that West Wing, I've-got-important-business way, or gave too-clever-by-half responses, or just came out and said they weren't sure. 'I think there are questions, so we'll have to see,' quipped Charles Boustany of Louisiana -- spoken a touch ironically because he, unlike Obama, is in fact of Arab (Lebanese) lineage, an ethnicity frequently and incorrectly assigned to the president." -- The Right Way to Please the Base: What the left can learn from right-wing extremists by Michael Tomasky (The American Prospect 2010-08-02). *1944 campaign button
In a world of anarchy, the only currency that matters is power: "There are many sources of fear in world politics -- terrorist attacks, natural disasters, climate change, financial panic, nuclear proliferation, ethnic conflict, and so forth. Surveying the cultural zeitgeist, however, it is striking how an unnatural problem has become one of the fastest-growing concerns in international relations. I speak, of course, of zombies." -- Night of the Living Wonks: Toward an international relations theory of zombies by Daniel W. Drezner (Foreign Policy 2010-07/08).
"The first rule of fight club is one never mentions fight club":
Plus ca change...: "Southasian fiction has provided many insights into the persona and conflicts of the exploited-empowered dancing girl. It is not a coincidence that the earliest novels of the Subcontinent dealt with the intense and memorable characters of ‘nautch girls’. Essentially a colonial construct, a nautch girl referred to the popular entertainer, a belle beau who would sing, dance and, when required, also provide the services of a sex worker. The accounts on the marginalised women from the ‘dishonourable’ profession are nuanced, concurrently representing the duality of exploitation and empowerment." My candle burns at both ends by Raza Rumi (Himal 2010-08).
Oh, jeeze. Amid all the chatter about Lindsay's incarceration, Chelsea's nuptials, and the plot to install the Bin Laden Memorial Mosque at Ground Zero, almost forgot there's a war on. Think that's the plan. What about you?
"I'm going to be killing people. I'm actually joining the Marines and will be doing this in real life": Just because we haven't finished the war we have doesn't mean we can't have another one. "War springs eternal. Compare the words of the 18-year-old boy quoted above by Philadelphia radio station WRTI, as he was wielding a pretend machinegun at a video-game parlor/Army recruiting center at a Philly shopping mall, with those of two neocons, Charles Robb and Charles Wald (retired senator and general, respectively), writing last month in the Washington Post: 'We cannot afford to wait indefinitely to determine the effectiveness of diplomacy and sanctions. . . . Instead, the administration needs to expand its approach and make clear to the Iranian regime and the American people: If diplomatic and economic pressures do not compel Iran to terminate its nuclear program, the U.S. military has the capability and is prepared to launch an effective, targeted strike on Tehran's nuclear and supporting military facilities.' We're running out of time to act, they add, turning the fear crank, ratcheting up the pressure like good used car salesmen. Iran could have a nuclear bomb by the end of the year, they warn, citing no evidence for this assertion. Evidence? They all but cried: 'We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.'" -- The Next War by Common Dreams (Common Dreams 2010-08-05).
Does singing about being president make Wyclef Jean the Mike Huckabee of Haiti?
'Nuff said.
Saturday Catchup 2010-07-31
One Good Turner Deserves Another
Still right after all these years: "The war in Afghanistan is nearly nine years old—the longest in American history. After the U.S. quickly toppled the Taliban regime in October 2001, the Taliban, by all accounts, came back stronger and harsher enough to control now at least 30 percent of the country. During this time, U.S. casualties, armaments and expenditures are at record levels. America’s overseas wars have different outcomes when they have no constitutional authority, no war tax, no draft, no regular on the ground press coverage, no Congressional oversight, no spending accountability and, importantly, no affirmative consent of the governed who are, apart from the military families, hardly noticing." -- Out of Afghanistan by Ralph Nader (Common Dreams 2010-07-31).
Follow the money (if you can): "On July 27, 2010 the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR) released an audit of the Department of Defense’s (DOD) management of the Development Fund for Iraq (DFI), which was used as a source of money for rebuilding Iraq. The Inspector General found that the DOD used the Fund in an ad hoc manner, never followed the guidelines set up for U.S. agencies involved in reconstruction, which means it can’t account for almost all of its spending, and is probably still using the Fund today even though it has no authority to do so anymore." -- Department Of Defense Didn’t Follow Accounting Rules During Iraq Reconstruction by Joel Wing (Musings on Iraq 2010-07-29). See, also: Audit: US can't account for $8.7B in Iraqi funds by Tarek El-Tablawy and Sinan Salaheddin (AP 2010-07-27).
Wikioverdose: "I know. What's a thousand documents amongst friends? Well, there's your problem. We don't have any friends. Corruption over there is endemic, pandemic and epidemic. Our allies aren't necessarily allied on our side. The fighting is going badly and a halfway decent deep-dish pizza crust remains a concept the Afghanis seem unable or unwilling to embrace. Not to mention Democracy. Unplug the drain and the ring around the tub is we've been there 8 years and things are so not getting better. As a matter of fact you could say the movement more resembles whatever is the opposite of getting better. Don't even mention quagmire. Hah. Hah. We sneer at your quagmire. Our Afghanistan participation makes a quagmire look like a refreshing dip in a spring fed pool with buckets of frosty beer within reach and cold cucumbers slices on our eyelids. Spa spangled bog." -- Spa Spangled Bog by Will Durst (Huffington Post 2010-08-01). A few more tentative thoughts on the Afghanistan wikileaks to hold us until someone does the hard work of sorting through all this raw data: Are the WikiLeaks War Docs Overhyped Old News? by Spencer Ackerman (Danger Room 2010-07-26). And Andy Borowitz: "Russia Disbands Spy Agency; Will Use WikiLeaks Instead."
Always good to know what the next president is thinking: "The tradition that general officers should provide disinterested advice to policymakers based on their best judgments and the most current available intelligence has long since passed. Modern generals first test the wind before they offer an opinion and then carefully tailor their comments to support the prevailing policy. Petraeus, who is regarded as an intellectual and even somewhat of an iconoclast, is no different. His counterinsurgency strategy, far from a new development, is a replay of similar thinking during the Vietnam war and a repudiation of the Powell Doctrine, which asserted that wars should be in the national interest, with attainable objectives, fought using overwhelming force, and incorporating a clear exit strategy. In short, Petraeus is the architect of the counterinsurgency long war combined with nation building strategy that has been embraced by both Presidents Bush and Obama." -- Who Owns General Petraeus? by Philip Giraldi (AntiWar.com 2010-07-29).
This Week's Sermon: "When the First Congress subsequently wrote the Bill of Rights in 1789, one of the main objectives was to confirm that the new republic was anchored first and foremost in religious freedom. It is no wonder, then, that the very first freedom listed in the Bill of Rights is freedom of religion. And religious freedom was given pride of place for a reason: to signal clearly to Americans that gone were the days of living under the thumb of an oppressive regime that dictated religious thought." -- No, America Is NOT a Christian Nation by Richard Albert (Alternet 2010-07-31).
Harlem Nocturne: "The end of an era has been declared repeatedly ever since the death, in December, of Harlem political patriarch Percy Sutton and the political demise of Governor Paterson this winter. Yet the more accurate, and complex, tale is an unfinished one. It starts in 1944, when a brilliant, singular personality, Adam Clayton Powell Jr., became the first person elected to represent a congressional district created to empower central Harlem. By 1970, Powell was sick with cancer and brooding on a Caribbean island, and was knocked off by Charlie Rangel, who has become the consummate Washington insider, steering tens of millions of dollars to the district and making Harlem a force in city elections. Now, though, in an echo of the financial and legal messes that brought down Powell, an ethics investigation has forced Rangel to give up his chairmanship of the House Ways and Means Committee; last week, a congressional panel accused him of multiple ethics violations. Racial politics in New York and nationally have shifted to the point where the machine model that served Rangel so well has grown creaky. No one knows what the new order will look like, but the struggle to define it is under way in the cradle of black politics. The battle isn’t simply to follow Rangel in Congress—the district’s next congressman could as easily be white or Latino as black—but to determine what style of politics will control Harlem in the future: a revitalized, updated clubhouse, a reform movement in the Obama mold, or perhaps something in nobody’s mold, like the freewheeling pioneer who’s the father of Harlem politics." Knocking on Harlem's Door by Chris Smith (New York Magazine 2010-07-24).
It's all Bush's fault: "...we seem to have forgotten how much of a wretched impact [George W. Bush's] years in the Oval Office had and continue to have on this nation and the world. Part of the reason we've managed to forget, of course, is that he's been gone for almost two years now. Under normal circumstances, that tends to put the onus on the current president; Obama has been holding the reins with a Democratically-controlled congress on Capitol Hill for eighteen months, and therefore all eyes tend to fall on him. The problem is that no president in American history has done more damage and screwed us worse than George W. Bush did. In the nearly 3,000 days he spent in office, Bush cut the country to ribbons in ways that have never been seen before, and the impact of that era lingers to this day. The main reason for our forgetfulness, however, can be found on your television and in the pages of your newspaper. The media has completely redacted the impact of the Bush era from their coverage of the Obama administration, a continuing act of deception that I believe is completely deliberate. The entire Bush administration is a lesson in media cowardice and complicity; they rolled over for him for virtually every one of those 3,000 days, and would now like to have us all forget it happened. If as Bush falls in the forest and the media doesn't cover it, did it happen? Certainly, but when the daily grind of the 24-hour news cycle omits the idiot elephant that remains in the room, the narrative of the present becomes skewed and distorted." -- The Missing Piece Meets the Big O by William Rivers Pitt (truthout 2010-07-31).
On the other hand: "I have often said the biggest problem with the Democrats is that we are not tough enough. Now is the time to be tough." -- No More Apologies -- It's Time to Stand Up for Our Convictions by Howard Dean (Huffington Post 2010-07-26).
This week in Crazy: Glenn "Beck has done all he can to scare the hell out of people about the Tides Foundation and 'turn the light of day' onto an organization that actually facilitates non-profit giving. And guess what? Everybody in America would have found out about the Tides Foundation last week if Byron Williams had had his way. He's the right-wing, government-hating, gun-toting nut who strapped on his body armor, stocked a pickup truck with guns and ammo, and set off up the California coast to San Francisco in order to start killing employees at the previously obscure Tides Foundation in hopes of sparking a political revolution. Thankfully, the planned domestic terrorist attack never came to pass because California Highway Patrol officers pulled Williams over for drunk driving on his way to his killing spree. Williams quickly opened fire, wounding two officers during a lengthy shootout. Luckily, Williams wasn't able to act out the ultimate goal of his dark anger -- fueled by the TV news he watched -- about how 'Congress was railroading through all these left-wing agenda items,' as his mother put it. Williams wasn't able to open fire inside the offices of the Tides Foundation, an organization 'nobody knew' about until Glenn Beck started targeting it." -- Beck's incendiary angst is dangerously close to having a body count by Eric Boehlert (Media Matters 2010-07-27).
Backlist: "I am told by people I respect that Barack Obama cannot pull out of both Iraq and Afghanistan without becoming a one-term president. I think that may be true. The charges from various quarters would be toxic—that he was weak, unpatriotic, sacrificing the sacrifices that have been made, betraying our dead, throwing away all former investments in lives and treasure. All that would indeed be brought against him, and he could have little defense in the quarters where such charges would originate." -- A One-Term President?: The Choice by Garry Wills (New York Review of Books 2009-12-03). Nearly a year later, the question remains: shouldn't your willingness to kill people in order to be president automatically disqualify you from holding the office?
It appears that there are no videos of Titus Turner. What a loss.
Still right after all these years: "The war in Afghanistan is nearly nine years old—the longest in American history. After the U.S. quickly toppled the Taliban regime in October 2001, the Taliban, by all accounts, came back stronger and harsher enough to control now at least 30 percent of the country. During this time, U.S. casualties, armaments and expenditures are at record levels. America’s overseas wars have different outcomes when they have no constitutional authority, no war tax, no draft, no regular on the ground press coverage, no Congressional oversight, no spending accountability and, importantly, no affirmative consent of the governed who are, apart from the military families, hardly noticing." -- Out of Afghanistan by Ralph Nader (Common Dreams 2010-07-31).
Follow the money (if you can): "On July 27, 2010 the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR) released an audit of the Department of Defense’s (DOD) management of the Development Fund for Iraq (DFI), which was used as a source of money for rebuilding Iraq. The Inspector General found that the DOD used the Fund in an ad hoc manner, never followed the guidelines set up for U.S. agencies involved in reconstruction, which means it can’t account for almost all of its spending, and is probably still using the Fund today even though it has no authority to do so anymore." -- Department Of Defense Didn’t Follow Accounting Rules During Iraq Reconstruction by Joel Wing (Musings on Iraq 2010-07-29). See, also: Audit: US can't account for $8.7B in Iraqi funds by Tarek El-Tablawy and Sinan Salaheddin (AP 2010-07-27).
Wikioverdose: "I know. What's a thousand documents amongst friends? Well, there's your problem. We don't have any friends. Corruption over there is endemic, pandemic and epidemic. Our allies aren't necessarily allied on our side. The fighting is going badly and a halfway decent deep-dish pizza crust remains a concept the Afghanis seem unable or unwilling to embrace. Not to mention Democracy. Unplug the drain and the ring around the tub is we've been there 8 years and things are so not getting better. As a matter of fact you could say the movement more resembles whatever is the opposite of getting better. Don't even mention quagmire. Hah. Hah. We sneer at your quagmire. Our Afghanistan participation makes a quagmire look like a refreshing dip in a spring fed pool with buckets of frosty beer within reach and cold cucumbers slices on our eyelids. Spa spangled bog." -- Spa Spangled Bog by Will Durst (Huffington Post 2010-08-01). A few more tentative thoughts on the Afghanistan wikileaks to hold us until someone does the hard work of sorting through all this raw data: Are the WikiLeaks War Docs Overhyped Old News? by Spencer Ackerman (Danger Room 2010-07-26). And Andy Borowitz: "Russia Disbands Spy Agency; Will Use WikiLeaks Instead."
Always good to know what the next president is thinking: "The tradition that general officers should provide disinterested advice to policymakers based on their best judgments and the most current available intelligence has long since passed. Modern generals first test the wind before they offer an opinion and then carefully tailor their comments to support the prevailing policy. Petraeus, who is regarded as an intellectual and even somewhat of an iconoclast, is no different. His counterinsurgency strategy, far from a new development, is a replay of similar thinking during the Vietnam war and a repudiation of the Powell Doctrine, which asserted that wars should be in the national interest, with attainable objectives, fought using overwhelming force, and incorporating a clear exit strategy. In short, Petraeus is the architect of the counterinsurgency long war combined with nation building strategy that has been embraced by both Presidents Bush and Obama." -- Who Owns General Petraeus? by Philip Giraldi (AntiWar.com 2010-07-29).
This Week's Sermon: "When the First Congress subsequently wrote the Bill of Rights in 1789, one of the main objectives was to confirm that the new republic was anchored first and foremost in religious freedom. It is no wonder, then, that the very first freedom listed in the Bill of Rights is freedom of religion. And religious freedom was given pride of place for a reason: to signal clearly to Americans that gone were the days of living under the thumb of an oppressive regime that dictated religious thought." -- No, America Is NOT a Christian Nation by Richard Albert (Alternet 2010-07-31).
Harlem Nocturne: "The end of an era has been declared repeatedly ever since the death, in December, of Harlem political patriarch Percy Sutton and the political demise of Governor Paterson this winter. Yet the more accurate, and complex, tale is an unfinished one. It starts in 1944, when a brilliant, singular personality, Adam Clayton Powell Jr., became the first person elected to represent a congressional district created to empower central Harlem. By 1970, Powell was sick with cancer and brooding on a Caribbean island, and was knocked off by Charlie Rangel, who has become the consummate Washington insider, steering tens of millions of dollars to the district and making Harlem a force in city elections. Now, though, in an echo of the financial and legal messes that brought down Powell, an ethics investigation has forced Rangel to give up his chairmanship of the House Ways and Means Committee; last week, a congressional panel accused him of multiple ethics violations. Racial politics in New York and nationally have shifted to the point where the machine model that served Rangel so well has grown creaky. No one knows what the new order will look like, but the struggle to define it is under way in the cradle of black politics. The battle isn’t simply to follow Rangel in Congress—the district’s next congressman could as easily be white or Latino as black—but to determine what style of politics will control Harlem in the future: a revitalized, updated clubhouse, a reform movement in the Obama mold, or perhaps something in nobody’s mold, like the freewheeling pioneer who’s the father of Harlem politics." Knocking on Harlem's Door by Chris Smith (New York Magazine 2010-07-24).
It's all Bush's fault: "...we seem to have forgotten how much of a wretched impact [George W. Bush's] years in the Oval Office had and continue to have on this nation and the world. Part of the reason we've managed to forget, of course, is that he's been gone for almost two years now. Under normal circumstances, that tends to put the onus on the current president; Obama has been holding the reins with a Democratically-controlled congress on Capitol Hill for eighteen months, and therefore all eyes tend to fall on him. The problem is that no president in American history has done more damage and screwed us worse than George W. Bush did. In the nearly 3,000 days he spent in office, Bush cut the country to ribbons in ways that have never been seen before, and the impact of that era lingers to this day. The main reason for our forgetfulness, however, can be found on your television and in the pages of your newspaper. The media has completely redacted the impact of the Bush era from their coverage of the Obama administration, a continuing act of deception that I believe is completely deliberate. The entire Bush administration is a lesson in media cowardice and complicity; they rolled over for him for virtually every one of those 3,000 days, and would now like to have us all forget it happened. If as Bush falls in the forest and the media doesn't cover it, did it happen? Certainly, but when the daily grind of the 24-hour news cycle omits the idiot elephant that remains in the room, the narrative of the present becomes skewed and distorted." -- The Missing Piece Meets the Big O by William Rivers Pitt (truthout 2010-07-31).
On the other hand: "I have often said the biggest problem with the Democrats is that we are not tough enough. Now is the time to be tough." -- No More Apologies -- It's Time to Stand Up for Our Convictions by Howard Dean (Huffington Post 2010-07-26).
This week in Crazy: Glenn "Beck has done all he can to scare the hell out of people about the Tides Foundation and 'turn the light of day' onto an organization that actually facilitates non-profit giving. And guess what? Everybody in America would have found out about the Tides Foundation last week if Byron Williams had had his way. He's the right-wing, government-hating, gun-toting nut who strapped on his body armor, stocked a pickup truck with guns and ammo, and set off up the California coast to San Francisco in order to start killing employees at the previously obscure Tides Foundation in hopes of sparking a political revolution. Thankfully, the planned domestic terrorist attack never came to pass because California Highway Patrol officers pulled Williams over for drunk driving on his way to his killing spree. Williams quickly opened fire, wounding two officers during a lengthy shootout. Luckily, Williams wasn't able to act out the ultimate goal of his dark anger -- fueled by the TV news he watched -- about how 'Congress was railroading through all these left-wing agenda items,' as his mother put it. Williams wasn't able to open fire inside the offices of the Tides Foundation, an organization 'nobody knew' about until Glenn Beck started targeting it." -- Beck's incendiary angst is dangerously close to having a body count by Eric Boehlert (Media Matters 2010-07-27).
Backlist: "I am told by people I respect that Barack Obama cannot pull out of both Iraq and Afghanistan without becoming a one-term president. I think that may be true. The charges from various quarters would be toxic—that he was weak, unpatriotic, sacrificing the sacrifices that have been made, betraying our dead, throwing away all former investments in lives and treasure. All that would indeed be brought against him, and he could have little defense in the quarters where such charges would originate." -- A One-Term President?: The Choice by Garry Wills (New York Review of Books 2009-12-03). Nearly a year later, the question remains: shouldn't your willingness to kill people in order to be president automatically disqualify you from holding the office?
It appears that there are no videos of Titus Turner. What a loss.
Saturday Catchup: 2010-07-17
Shticks and Stones
It's jobs, stupid: Nearly the entire deficit for this year and those projected into the near and medium terms are the result of three things: the ongoing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Bush tax cuts and the recession. The solution to our fiscal situation is: end the wars, allow the tax cuts to expire and restore robust growth. Our long-term structural deficits will require us to control healthcare inflation the way countries with single-payer systems do. So lets talk about balancing the budget. -- Deficits of Mass Destruction by Christopher Hayes (The Nation 2010-07-15).
Where is the guillotine when you need it?: In modern American life, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner stands out as latter-day Talleyrand, amazingly resilient and remarkably lucky -- despite presiding over or being deeply involved in a series of political debacles, he has gone from strength to strength. After at least eight improbably bounce backs, he might seem unassailable. But his latest mistake -- blocking Elizabeth Warren from heading the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau -- may well prove politically fatal. -- Tim Geithner’s Ninth Political Life by Simon Johnson (The Baseline Scenario 2010-07-15). Also, Elizabeth Warren Should be a Role Model in the Obama Administration Instead of a Pariah by Mark Karlin (BuzzFlash 2010-07-17).
There's plenty of good money to be made/Supplyin' the army with tools of the trade*: "Why is nobody talking about the Afghanistan adventure as a cause of our plunging recession? Or at least citing the 30-year-old endless war as a major contributory factor in wasting our money to 'nation-build' in the Hindu Kush while our own country falls to pieces on food stamps, foreclosures and child poverty -- one in five kids -- that would put the world's poorest nations to shame?" -- America: hooked on war and getting poorer by Clancy Sigal (Guardian UK 2010-07-13). (*Country Joe and the Fish)
Lucky for us, it can't happen here: From Mexico to Peru to the Philippines, armies have learned to portray themselves to beleaguered civilian leaders as the only chance to defeat the security challenges -- so long as the government agrees to the military’s demands for greater funding, more autonomy, and a larger role in politics. -- Military Rule 2.0: Why bother with a coup when there are better ways to take control? by Joshua Kurlantzick and Shelby Leighton (Boston.com 2010-07-11).
Hey, Wait a Minute!: We have a "fairness instinct," thinks Lixing Sun, a professor of biology at Central Washington University. And he may be right. He maintains that high on the roster of human propensities is a "Robin Hood mentality" that characterizes our species and qualifies as one of those "mental modules" that evolutionary psychologists consider part of our likely biological inheritance. If so, our fairness instinct goes far beyond the pleasure we take in romantic tales of medieval Merry Men adventuring in Sherwood Forest. Sun believes that despite the fact of our specieswide social and economic disparities -- perhaps in part because of them -- human beings are endowed (or burdened) with an acute sensitivity to "who is getting how much," in particular a deft attunement to whether anyone else is getting more or less than one's self. -- Biological roots of today's anger by David P. Barash (The Chronicle of Higher Education 2010-07-11).
Megagrammar: "The jumper colon is a paragraphical Red Bull, a rocket-launch of a punctuator, the Usain Bolt of literature. It’s punchy as hell. To believers of short first sentences -- Hemingway? -- it couldn’t get any better. To believers of long-winded sentences that leave you gasping and slightly confused -- Faulkner? -- it also couldn’t get any better. By itself this colon is neither a period nor a non-period… or rather it is a period and it is also a non-period. You choose." -- Colonoscopy: It’s Time to Check Your Colons by Conor J. Dillon (The Millions 2010-07-13).
No room for argument; very little for vermouth: If the news is driving you to drink, at least the libation in question can be the perfect martini: "First a note about substituting ingredients or tools. Don't. This method has been exhaustively tested and retested for excellence and the smallest variation can result in catastrophic and unintended consequences. See the 'butterfly flaps its wings and causes hurricane' metaphor from Chaos Theory. There is room for personal preference and improvisation in many things. This is not one of them. 'Oh, I love Bach's Fourth Brandenburg Concerto, but perhaps it should be just a touch slower.' 'I cropped Caravaggio's Crucifixion of Saint Peter along the top a bit to get rid of some of that icky dark area.' Begin by assembling the following materials and a clean, white towel at your work space. Turn off the television and eliminate other distractions. John Coltrane's First Meditations is appropriate music to work by. I cannot vouch for anything else." -- Perfect by Jim Coudal (Coudal Partners).
The first cut is the deepest: In attempt to reframe the debate over budget priorities, Reps. Barney Frank and Ron Paul have been tag-teaming across the country calling for dramatic cuts in military spending. Basing their critique on “Debt, Deficits and Defense: A Way Forward” (pdf), a study by the bipartisan congressional Sustainable Defense Task Force, they call for cutting the Pentagon’s annual “base”budget by $960 billion over ten years, an average annual reduction of roughly 17 percent below current spending levels. Defense spending accounts for more than half of the federal government’s entire discretionary budget. At a time when virtually every community in the country is facing critical budget shortfalls, defense spending has continued to grow. The Task Force’s report proposes cuts such as reducing the number of deployed nuclear weapons to 1,000 and cutting the number of submarines and missiles which carry them; cutting the total number of active duty members of the Army and Marine Corps to 50,000 below their levels before the Iraq and Afghanistan wars; cutting certain weapons programs including the Joint Strike Fighter, the V-22 “Osprey” tilt-rotor aircraft, and the total number of Navy aircraft carriers; and reforming the Pentagon’s health care and compensation systems. Regardless of the impact this or any other letter has on the deficit debate in Congress, the Task Force report insures one important thing: supporters of reduced military spending now have an answer to the question, “how do you cut Pentagon spending without undermining our nation’s security?” At a time when all areas of federal spending should be subject to the budget cutter’s knife, it can no longer be said, even within the mainstream debate, that it’s impossible to identify significant savings in the Pentagon budget. -- Pentagon Spending on the Chopping Block by Christopher Hellman (Yes! Magazine 2010-0715).
Maybe Asian tourists can be enticed to spend money in Billings on cow-tipping expeditions: According to both Montana Sen. Max Baucus and Texas Rep. Kevin Brady, ratifying the Korea-U.S. Free Trade Agreement in Congress will be the most important thing our national legislature accomplishes in the next year. In the avenue of international commerce, our political leadership has no goals. They have empty ideals and failed methodology. They ingratiate themselves with organizations like Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation in order to forward their own positions, but they provide nothing substantive and lasting to the people they represent. -- APEC and America's Dangerous Free Trade Deception by Craig Harrington (Economy in Crisis 2010-07-16).
Long live rock and roll:
Wanna be friends?: If these supernets continue to thrive and grow, they could fundamentally change the way we share information about the world and transform our notions of friendship and acquaintance. If so, the likes of Facebook, LinkedIn and MySpace might just turn out to be the harbingers of a sea change in our social evolution, in the same way that the arrival of language transformed our ancestors. -- Why Facebook friends are worth keeping by Richard Fisher (New Scientist 2010-07-15).
Finally, a stupid (but very cold) party trick for a hot summer barbecue:
It's jobs, stupid: Nearly the entire deficit for this year and those projected into the near and medium terms are the result of three things: the ongoing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Bush tax cuts and the recession. The solution to our fiscal situation is: end the wars, allow the tax cuts to expire and restore robust growth. Our long-term structural deficits will require us to control healthcare inflation the way countries with single-payer systems do. So lets talk about balancing the budget. -- Deficits of Mass Destruction by Christopher Hayes (The Nation 2010-07-15).
Where is the guillotine when you need it?: In modern American life, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner stands out as latter-day Talleyrand, amazingly resilient and remarkably lucky -- despite presiding over or being deeply involved in a series of political debacles, he has gone from strength to strength. After at least eight improbably bounce backs, he might seem unassailable. But his latest mistake -- blocking Elizabeth Warren from heading the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau -- may well prove politically fatal. -- Tim Geithner’s Ninth Political Life by Simon Johnson (The Baseline Scenario 2010-07-15). Also, Elizabeth Warren Should be a Role Model in the Obama Administration Instead of a Pariah by Mark Karlin (BuzzFlash 2010-07-17).
There's plenty of good money to be made/Supplyin' the army with tools of the trade*: "Why is nobody talking about the Afghanistan adventure as a cause of our plunging recession? Or at least citing the 30-year-old endless war as a major contributory factor in wasting our money to 'nation-build' in the Hindu Kush while our own country falls to pieces on food stamps, foreclosures and child poverty -- one in five kids -- that would put the world's poorest nations to shame?" -- America: hooked on war and getting poorer by Clancy Sigal (Guardian UK 2010-07-13). (*Country Joe and the Fish)
Lucky for us, it can't happen here: From Mexico to Peru to the Philippines, armies have learned to portray themselves to beleaguered civilian leaders as the only chance to defeat the security challenges -- so long as the government agrees to the military’s demands for greater funding, more autonomy, and a larger role in politics. -- Military Rule 2.0: Why bother with a coup when there are better ways to take control? by Joshua Kurlantzick and Shelby Leighton (Boston.com 2010-07-11).
Hey, Wait a Minute!: We have a "fairness instinct," thinks Lixing Sun, a professor of biology at Central Washington University. And he may be right. He maintains that high on the roster of human propensities is a "Robin Hood mentality" that characterizes our species and qualifies as one of those "mental modules" that evolutionary psychologists consider part of our likely biological inheritance. If so, our fairness instinct goes far beyond the pleasure we take in romantic tales of medieval Merry Men adventuring in Sherwood Forest. Sun believes that despite the fact of our specieswide social and economic disparities -- perhaps in part because of them -- human beings are endowed (or burdened) with an acute sensitivity to "who is getting how much," in particular a deft attunement to whether anyone else is getting more or less than one's self. -- Biological roots of today's anger by David P. Barash (The Chronicle of Higher Education 2010-07-11).
Megagrammar: "The jumper colon is a paragraphical Red Bull, a rocket-launch of a punctuator, the Usain Bolt of literature. It’s punchy as hell. To believers of short first sentences -- Hemingway? -- it couldn’t get any better. To believers of long-winded sentences that leave you gasping and slightly confused -- Faulkner? -- it also couldn’t get any better. By itself this colon is neither a period nor a non-period… or rather it is a period and it is also a non-period. You choose." -- Colonoscopy: It’s Time to Check Your Colons by Conor J. Dillon (The Millions 2010-07-13).
No room for argument; very little for vermouth: If the news is driving you to drink, at least the libation in question can be the perfect martini: "First a note about substituting ingredients or tools. Don't. This method has been exhaustively tested and retested for excellence and the smallest variation can result in catastrophic and unintended consequences. See the 'butterfly flaps its wings and causes hurricane' metaphor from Chaos Theory. There is room for personal preference and improvisation in many things. This is not one of them. 'Oh, I love Bach's Fourth Brandenburg Concerto, but perhaps it should be just a touch slower.' 'I cropped Caravaggio's Crucifixion of Saint Peter along the top a bit to get rid of some of that icky dark area.' Begin by assembling the following materials and a clean, white towel at your work space. Turn off the television and eliminate other distractions. John Coltrane's First Meditations is appropriate music to work by. I cannot vouch for anything else." -- Perfect by Jim Coudal (Coudal Partners).
The first cut is the deepest: In attempt to reframe the debate over budget priorities, Reps. Barney Frank and Ron Paul have been tag-teaming across the country calling for dramatic cuts in military spending. Basing their critique on “Debt, Deficits and Defense: A Way Forward” (pdf), a study by the bipartisan congressional Sustainable Defense Task Force, they call for cutting the Pentagon’s annual “base”budget by $960 billion over ten years, an average annual reduction of roughly 17 percent below current spending levels. Defense spending accounts for more than half of the federal government’s entire discretionary budget. At a time when virtually every community in the country is facing critical budget shortfalls, defense spending has continued to grow. The Task Force’s report proposes cuts such as reducing the number of deployed nuclear weapons to 1,000 and cutting the number of submarines and missiles which carry them; cutting the total number of active duty members of the Army and Marine Corps to 50,000 below their levels before the Iraq and Afghanistan wars; cutting certain weapons programs including the Joint Strike Fighter, the V-22 “Osprey” tilt-rotor aircraft, and the total number of Navy aircraft carriers; and reforming the Pentagon’s health care and compensation systems. Regardless of the impact this or any other letter has on the deficit debate in Congress, the Task Force report insures one important thing: supporters of reduced military spending now have an answer to the question, “how do you cut Pentagon spending without undermining our nation’s security?” At a time when all areas of federal spending should be subject to the budget cutter’s knife, it can no longer be said, even within the mainstream debate, that it’s impossible to identify significant savings in the Pentagon budget. -- Pentagon Spending on the Chopping Block by Christopher Hellman (Yes! Magazine 2010-0715).
Maybe Asian tourists can be enticed to spend money in Billings on cow-tipping expeditions: According to both Montana Sen. Max Baucus and Texas Rep. Kevin Brady, ratifying the Korea-U.S. Free Trade Agreement in Congress will be the most important thing our national legislature accomplishes in the next year. In the avenue of international commerce, our political leadership has no goals. They have empty ideals and failed methodology. They ingratiate themselves with organizations like Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation in order to forward their own positions, but they provide nothing substantive and lasting to the people they represent. -- APEC and America's Dangerous Free Trade Deception by Craig Harrington (Economy in Crisis 2010-07-16).
Long live rock and roll:
Wanna be friends?: If these supernets continue to thrive and grow, they could fundamentally change the way we share information about the world and transform our notions of friendship and acquaintance. If so, the likes of Facebook, LinkedIn and MySpace might just turn out to be the harbingers of a sea change in our social evolution, in the same way that the arrival of language transformed our ancestors. -- Why Facebook friends are worth keeping by Richard Fisher (New Scientist 2010-07-15).
Finally, a stupid (but very cold) party trick for a hot summer barbecue:
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