The Distant Ocean

Taking Responsibility (part 2: Ramallah)

[ Part 1.  The comment thread for all parts is available here. ]

Back at the hospital we waited anxiously for a phone call or any news from the other group.  After what felt like hours, they came through the front door of the hospital—and they were smiling.  I breathed a sigh of relief.  They told us that six of the group had managed to make it inside, including four Americans; this was crucial, because up to that point there had been no Americans in the compound.  Because the US was Israel's benefactor, protector and ally, having American citizens inside the compound would make it extremely difficult for the Israelis to launch an assault.  I had an anxious moment as I tried to find out what had happened to my roommate Nikolaj, a Dane, and nobody seemed to know where he was—but then I finally found someone who verified that he had been among the group that made it inside.  I wasn't surprised.  Nikolaj was a scout, always full of energy, and he walked twice as fast as anyone else in our group.  I'm sure he was the first one to the door.  All in all, the action had been a great success.

Some of the group headed back to Jerusalem or to houses where they'd been staying in Ramallah, while many of us remained in the hospital overnight.  This was not simply a matter of accommodations: the IDF frequently raids hospitals, taking injured men out of their beds or sometimes out of live operating theaters (as I was to learn later from a doctor in Hebron)—just one among a litany of violations of the Fourth Geneva Convention committed on a regular basis in the West Bank and Gaza by the Israeli occupiers.  ISM volunteers would frequently stay in hospitals to attempt to stop this from happening, or failing that to at least act as witnesses.  We were placed in two rooms and given mats and blankets to spread on the floor.  We were also given a dinner by the hospital staff, cooked especially for us.  I had heard about the graciousness and hospitality of the Palestinians, and now I was experiencing it firsthand.

We talked with the hospital orderlies, and they told us some of what had been happening during the Israeli invasion over the past few weeks.  One older woman had come to visit the hospital; the cast on her leg was causing her pain, and she could no longer bear it, so she broke the curfew to come and have it looked at.  As she left the hospital, leaning on her cane for support, she was shot by an Israeli sniper.  She cried out for help, but when the hospital staff tried to go outside to bring her back inside the snipers would fire at them as well, driving them back.  They continued trying to help her but the Israelis would not let them reach her, and eventually she bled to death—within a few feet of a hospital entrance.

Taking Responsibility (part 1: Jerusalem and Arafat's compound)

It's hard to believe it's been a decade since I traveled to the West Bank and Gaza during Israel's 2002 invasion (dubbed "Operation Defensive Shield" in proper Orwellian style), but the calendar is adamant on that point.  After I returned I wrote an account of my experiences there, and though an edited excerpt was published in the book Searching Jenin I've never published the essay in its entirety—despite my own good intentions and some requests from readers here.  So ten years on, here it is, along with photos I and others took.  It was written for a general audience so you may already be familiar with some of the background information, and in some cases events have overtaken the narrative, but I'm presenting it just as I wrote it at the time.  Also, since each installment is fairly long and contains quite a few images I've broken them up so they won't appear in their entirety on the front page; just click the "Continue reading..." link at the bottom of each post to see the rest.

Without further ado, here's part 1, and when I've finished publishing the other parts I'll update this posting with links to them as well.

(As promised....)

• Part 2: Ramallah
• Part 3: Jenin
• Part 4: Gaza City
• Part 5: Khan Younis, Rafah and Hebron
• Part 6: The Church of the Nativity

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Taking Reponsibility: In the West Bank and Gaza

At the end of March 2002, the Israeli army launched a massive assault on the West Bank.  Yasser Arafat's compound was put under siege and much of it was reduced to rubble.  The Israel Defense Forces, or IDF—the misnomer by which the Israeli army is known—were systematically attacking city after city, refugee camp after refugee camp, throughout the Occupied Territories.  The professed purpose was to stop terrorism, but reports coming from the Territories told of the wanton destruction of civilian infrastructure, the targeting of ambulances, the bulldozing of houses, the killing and wounding of civilians, the cold-blooded executions of Palestinian policemen.

I followed these horrifying events in the news with a rising sense of frustration, outrage and helplessness.  This was an attack by one of the most powerful armies in the world against an almost completely defenseless civilian population.  And how had Israel come to have such a powerful military?  As an American citizen who follows foreign policy closely, I knew all too well: because of the infusion of $3 billion in military and economic aid each year from the United States, along with billions more in loan forgiveness, military support through the Pentagon budget, loan guarantees, and other financial incentives.  The total amount of aid the US has given to Israel over the years is staggering—well over $90 billion, the bulk of which has been direct military aid.  This is money provided directly by US taxpayers to the state of Israel, and it is used by Israel to finance its ongoing occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.  It was my money being used to destroy these cities and towns and terrorize these people, and I watched and read about what was happening with that fact always foremost in my thoughts.

The breaking point for me came when I saw the Israelis begin their assault on the Jenin refugee camp.  Here was a group of 14,000 people who were already victims—refugees—under assault by the most advanced weaponry US money could buy.  I felt sickened as I watched the images of a US-supplied Apache helicopter hovering over the camp, launching Hellfire missiles down into the crowded streets and strafing houses and cars with cannon fire, and read the accounts of bulldozers laying waste to the center of the camp, in some cases burying people alive beneath the rubble of their destroyed homes.  The Israelis had closed Jenin to "outsiders" so that they could carry out their violence without any witnesses; they had gone so far as to bar the Red Cross and other humanitarian organizations from entering the camp to help the people inside.

But one group had managed to place people inside the camp, to document the atrocities and report back to the outside world: the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), a loose coalition of people dedicated to assisting the Palestinians in resisting the Israeli occupation.  I heard the reports from ISM volunteers around the world who had picked up and left their homes to follow their consciences and put their bodies on the line in a struggle that was not their own.  I watched as ISM volunteers marched into Arafat's compound, in between tanks and APCs (armored personnel carriers), with bullets flying over their heads, to act as human shields in order to protect the hundreds of Palestinians trapped inside.  I was amazed at their bravery and inspired by their example.  I realized then that I could do something to help, simply by going to the West Bank to witness, to document, and if necessary to put myself between the Israeli tanks and the Palestinian civilians.  It was a difficult decision to make, but in the end the images coming out of the West Bank were too horrific for me to choose otherwise.  I arrived in Israel on April 19th and began one of the most important experiences of my life.

_________________________________________________________________

My first stop was East Jerusalem, the gathering point for ISM volunteers (or just "internationals").  We were waiting for training before going out "into the field", and so we stayed in and around Jerusalem itself for the day.  I went out to see the town with a group of new friends, expecting a relatively quiet day since Jerusalem itself was not part of the invasion; but I quickly learned that even in this seemingly calm place, the effects of the occupation were quite visible.

As I was walking back to the hotel with my friends, we saw a police van with blue lights flashing and Israeli flags flying.  Four police (men and women) were standing at points around the van with their automatic weapons raised and aimed at a nicely dressed Palestinian man who looked to be in his 30's.  I immediately took out my camera to get a picture, in case the worst happened and this man ended up like many others who've been similarly detained by the Israelis.  My friends and I took up a position where we could witness what was happening.  The police were shouting commands at the man, and he was holding his jacket open, apparently to let them see if he was wearing a bomb vest.  He put his briefcase down on the sidewalk and began emptying some of the contents from it, moving slowly and deliberately.  I watched the gun barrels—they appeared to be aimed directly at his head.  I imagined, with a twist in my stomach, what would happen if he made any move that startled them.  The tension in the air was palpable.

Thank you, God, for saving me from your lightning strike

How I've always wished I could get people to apply this kind of reasoning to me:

A Wichita man was hit by lightning on Thursday night just hours after buying three tickets in the record-setting $656 Mega Millions lottery, drawn on Friday. [...] "But for the grace of God, I would have been dead," Isles said. "It was not a direct strike."

But unfortunately for me and my secret desire to push a tiny boy into a river and then fish him out and have everyone call me a hero for the rest of my life, rationalizing at this level is reserved for deities, whether imaginary or earthbound.  Who was it who said of Obama, "Much like God—in fact, exactly like God—he's never held responsible for even his worst crimes and betrayals"?  Oh, right.

I like Mark Weisbrot

Whenever I see an article by (or interview with) Mark Weisbrot I'm always impressed by how well-informed and perceptive he is; he's definitely on my short list of people whose every opinion is worth listening to.  He's also one of those rare leftists who manage to pull off the whole suit-and-tied think tank wonk thing without mealy-mouthing his points into a bland paste.  Here's a recent example:

Iran, which even the U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has acknowledged is not pursuing a nuclear weapon, is portrayed as hell-bent on getting one. And why? So they can nuke Israel and become the first nation on Earth to commit mass suicide, since Israel has enough nuclear weapons to kill every Iranian several times over. It all makes sense, if you assume that mass suicide is Iran’s deepest national aspiration.

Nice (and I don't just appreciate it because I've said the same thing myself).  And:

Back to the U.S.:  The good news is that Israel will not attack Iran before the U.S. presidential election. Many people see Obama as a pushover – he got rolled by his generals in Afghanistan, by Wall Street on financial reform, etc.  But woe unto him who tries to mess with Obama’s re-election.  He will crush them. And a war with Iran – no matter who starts it -- is much too risky for an election year. It’s a safe bet that Obama reminded the Israelis who is boss, and who gives billions of dollars annually to whom.

I think Weisbrot is right that the mixed signals the U.S. has been sending about an attack on Iran are mainly about timing.  It's true that an unprovoked assault on yet another country would probably be wildly popular with the public, but as illustrated in Iraq and Afghanistan (and even Libya) you can choose when your war will start but you may not get to choose when it'll end.  Obama's already vaporized enough human beings to establish his national security credentials; why throw the dice again this close to the election?  And it's not as though he doesn't have a history of tailoring bloodletting to his own political fortunes.

If you need more Mark Weisbrot in your life (and who doesn't?), read the rest or take a trip through his archives.

Missing hammer

Truer words were never spoken:

[T]he Obama administration ... has brought more prosecutions against current or former government officials for providing classified information to the media than every previous administration combined. [...] Mr. Corallo, who served under Mr. Bush’s attorney general John D. Ashcroft, said he was “sort of shocked” by the volume of leak prosecutions under President Obama. “We would have gotten hammered for it,” he said.

The lesson: if you're going to leak information, do it while a Republican is president.

CLARIFYING: Since 100% of the people I've asked have given this a reasonable interpretation that's not the one I intended: not because a Democrat is more likely to prosecute you, but because when you're prosecuted you'll have that many fewer people on your side.  As inspiring as the support for Bradley Manning has been, imagine what it would have looked like if he'd been thrown in prison and given the full torture-that-leaves-no-marks treatment by Bush instead of Obama.  The moral cretins who rationalize away their selective lionization by convincing themselves that Manning's no Daniel Ellsberg are right in one sense, anyway: Ellsberg had the good fortune to be persecuted by a Republican.

Not a sparrow falls

This is just one of the ways you can tell that the U.S. is backing a coup:

A visiting U.S. official said Saturday that the Maldives wasn't ready for early elections as a way out of its political crisis as the Indian Ocean nation's new president agreed to an independent investigation into his takeover of power. ... [U.S.-backed usurper Mohammed Waheed Hassan] said Saturday there wasn't a need for "a snap election," saying that "the country is deeply divided and the political landscape has many potholes."

[U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Robert] Blake endorsed Hassan's position not to hold early elections and urged Nasheed's Maldivian Democratic Party to join the proposed coalition.

"Members of the civil society told me that the country is not ready for early elections now because the police, election commission and judiciary are not sufficiently prepared to ensure free and fair elections," Blake said, urging the formation of a broad coalition to enable those institutions to be reformed.

(Apparently "members of the civil society" does not include deposed president Mohamed Nasheed and the people who elected him, who are calling for the early elections; funny how that works.)

The mechanisms of democracy prevention do vary depending on the country and the situation.  In this case helping the favored coup government solidify its grip on power means blocking elections, but other times it means pushing for sham elections and blocking attempts to invalidate them:

In Honduras this past summer and fall, the U.S. government did everything it could to prevent the rest of the hemisphere from mounting an effective political opposition to the coup government in Honduras. For example, they blocked the Organization of American States from taking the position that it would not recognize elections that took place under the dictatorship. At the same time, the Obama administration publicly pretended that it was against the coup.

What's interesting here isn't so much the standard backing of a violent anti-democratic coup or the minutiae of how that support is being carried out, though, but the presumptive reason why the Obama administration is backing this particular coup: because Nasheed was one of the most outspoken proponents of real action on global warming.  More than anything else, the U.S. backing for the Maldives coup is another illustration of just how determined the Obama administration is to do nothing at all about climate change.

ADDING: Good luck getting a liberal to understand that.  The U.S. position on global warming has remained perfectly consistent from Clinton/Gore to Bush to Obama; the only difference has been how it's publicly represented.  But all it takes is the most perfunctory rhetoric—even when it's entirely at odds with concrete evidence—to convince liberals that the Democrats are on their side.

Deuce coup

No one saw this coming:

The United States on Thursday recognized the new government of Maldives President Mohamed Waheed as legitimate and urged him to fulfill a pledge to form a national unity government. [...] "We do," Nuland told reporters when asked if Washington recognizes the new government as the legitimate government of the Maldives. She called Waheed the president and Nasheed the former president.

Hey, at least they're consistent.  (And half credit for this, but it would have ruined the title.)

Deposed underwater president Mohamed Nasheed outlines the way that the government the Obama State Department is so eager to pronounce "legitimate" took power:

[M]y government asked the United Nations to help us investigate judicial abuses and ordered the arrest of Abdulla Mohamed, the chief judge of the criminal court, on charges of protecting the former president and corrupting the judicial system. However, in a dramatic turn of events on Tuesday, the former president’s supporters protested in the streets, and police officers and army personnel loyal to the old government mutinied and forced me, at gunpoint, to resign. To avoid bloodshed, I did so. I believe this to be a coup d’état and suspect that my vice president, who has since been sworn into office, helped to plan it.

Choosing to stand up to the judge was a controversial decision, but I feel I had no choice but to do what I did — to have taken no action, and passively watched the country’s democracy strangled, would have been the greatest injustice of all.

I forget: which dimension are we on now in that chess game?  5th?  8th?  Because man, the 11th is going to be one hell of a show.

SPEAKING OF DENIAL: Here's Bill McKibben—whose never-wavering faith in his hero Barack would touch the stoniest heart—speaking (before the above announcement, one assumes) about the Obama administration's reaction to the coup:

JUAN GONZALEZ: And Bill, the denial of the State Department that this is even a coup?

BILL McKIBBEN: You know, it’s so depressing to hear that. Let’s hope that the State Department is getting new information. [...] It’s just the saddest of thoughts to think that we might be moving backwards and that the State Department—I mean, one trusts that they’re not—you know, that they’re taking this seriously. Clearly, in certain ways, Nasheed was a thorn in their side, because he kept bringing up the topic of climate change, a topic they’re not that keen on. On the other hand, he, almost to a fault, was cooperative with U.S. efforts to try and do something—you know, what little we’re doing—about climate change. The State Department owes him, and I hope that they take this seriously.

Clearly they do, Bill.  How about you?

Obligatory

Expecting me not to link to an article that calls out "repulsive progressive hypocrisy" is like expecting a panda bear to forgo that sweet, sweet bamboo, so here you go.

ADDING: Hypocrisy doesn't interest me in and of itself, but seeing what really motivates people interests me quite a bit, and genuine examples of hypocrisy are an ideal guide to that.  "Progressives" who excoriated Bush's detainee policies and drone bombings but who now give Obama a pass for the same (or worse) are just letting us know what they really are: robotic partisans, whose professed values are purely contingent.  That's useful and important information, especially for anyone whose belief to the contrary leads them to mistake those people for genuine allies.

Linus Pauling was right

Every once in a while I get the urge to do a posting that might actually help someone somewhere, and this is one of those times.  You've probably heard that vitamin C can help you avoid a cold, or at least lessen the severity.  While the results of controlled studies are mixed at best (I tend to think they're doing it wrong), I can tell you it works wonders for me and for friends I've encouraged to try it.

Here's what I've found is the key: you must start taking vitamin C the moment you suspect that you're about to get a cold.  You know that little catch in your throat you get a day or so before you even have a sore throat?  The one you desperately try to convince yourself is really nothing?  Yeah—right then.  You've got to set aside the denial and instantly start in with the C.  If you wait until you've got full-blown cold symptoms it's too late.

So how much?  I start out with 2000mg every hour for three hours and then 1000mg every hour after that for a day or more.  I'll also often do another 2000mg dose when I'm going to bed and when I wake up in the middle of the night, to give my system a boost while I'm sleeping.  You can expect some gastric excitement at these levels (15-20,000mg or so a day, depending on how careful you are about keeping up with it), but it's more entertaining than anything else and you won't be doing it for long—at some point in the second day I typically scale it back to just a few 1000mg doses, since by that time the die seems to be cast.

What kind of results can you expect?  I've found that if I felt I was headed for a minor cold I can often head it off entirely—I just don't get sick.  If I think I've gotten a more serious bug (based on the symptoms of the person I think I've gotten it from or the strength of the initial hints of symptoms I see in myself), I may still end up getting sick, but the symptoms are far less serious when I do.  I haven't had a truly miserable cold since I've been doing the vitamin C trick; the last time I got sick I had just a mild sore throat one day and some fairly benign coughing, and never even had a runny nose.

One downside is that while you can escape minor colds, you'll often find that your body can't entirely knock out the tougher ones, so instead of being miserably sick for a few days you'll feel like you're at 95% for as much as a few weeks.  Sometimes in those situations I feel like I'd be better off just having the damn cold and getting it over with, but...not really.  Another downside is that I find I have to rest just as though I'd gotten the cold (i.e., avoiding the cold doesn't mean I can go for a 10-mile hike)—which again sometimes makes me wonder if it's worth it.  But I'd rather be resting relatively comfortably by choice than being forced to do it because I'm wracked by violent coughing and sneezing fits.

Is there any danger?  It does concern me to take doses this big, but supposedly your body will just eliminate whatever it doesn't use.  If you read up on vitamin C toxicity you'll see that it may cause kidney stones and other long-term issues, but problems like these have been observed only very rarely and the connection is inconclusive (Pauling supposedly took tens of thousands of milligrams of vitamin C all the time without apparent ill effects).  Still, I do drink lots of water when I'm doing it, and I also try to taper off as soon as I feel it's not making a major difference anymore.

You can decide for yourself if it's worth the risk (and compare that to the side effects of other medicines you might take...), and if your retinas detach or your brain explodes don't even think about suing me for it.  But the reason I'm posting about this is that I'm in the process right this very moment of using vitamin C to prevent myself from getting a serious cold, and (as usual) it's helping immensely.  So given that it's cold season, I thought I'd spread the love to y'all as well.

Clarification

Actually, accusing people like Haim Saban and Sheldon Adelson of "dual loyalty" is deeply offensive.  Their loyalty to Israel is second to none.

Memo

TO: Robert Fisk

RE: Your mention of "all the poppycock about Saddam's titanic arsenal"

Robert,

Just wanted to reassure you that I find nothing at all humorous about this phrase.

Soberly,
John

State of the Illusion

For anyone on the left who's tempted to relapse into 2008 euphoria by the president's early-campaign turn to rhetorical populism, this remains as true as it always was: Obama is not your ally who's been co-opted; he's your enemy who is co-opting you.

Nothing else ever has

I'm glad to see that my 2012 resolution to post grudgingly and infrequently until SOPA/PIPA are defeated is finally inspiring other people sit up and take notice of this threat to the continued existence of the Internet.  If you want to do your small part to help free us all from the grasp of pure evil, head on over to EFF and click it up.

LESSER EVIL: A little something for your Democratic friends:

Members of the Senate are rushing for the exits in the wake of the Internet's unprecedented protest of the Protect IP Act (PIPA). At least 13 members of the upper chamber announced their opposition on Wednesday. [...] The newly-opposed Senators are skewed strongly to the Republican side of the aisle. An Ars Technica survey of Senators' positions on PIPA turned up only two Democrats, Ben Cardin (D-MD) and Jeff Merkley (D-OR), who announced their opposition on Wednesday. The other 11 Senators who announced their opposition on Wednesday were all Republicans.

(This was an early count—later in the day the tally stood at 2 Democrats and 16 Republicans.)

Loose juice

Leon Panetta on the assassination of yet another Iranian nuclear scientist:

"We have some ideas as to who might be involved but we don't know exactly who was involved," [Panetta] said, adding that "we were not involved in any way, in any way, with regards to the assassination that took place there."

In related news, O.J. will find the real killer any day now.

Only off by three years

"We are incredibly disappointed that President Obama signed this new law even though his administration had already claimed overly broad detention authority in court," said Romero. "Any hope that the Obama administration would roll back the constitutional excesses of George Bush in the war on terror was extinguished today."

We will eventually have assumed control

Living through 1984 was a worthwhile milestone even if it didn't quite live up to the billing, and 1999 was good as far as it went, but even as a kid I'd figured out that I'd have to settle for 2012 as my closest brush with the ultimate year in rock (since the eternal youth treatments that might have given me the extra century are as conspicuously absent as the rocket cars, hyper-intelligent apes, teleportation and rollerball tournaments).  Though it does seem like the elder race of man (is that us?) should be well on its way to destruction by now (oh, right), and maybe someone should start thinking about a charter for that whole Solar Federation thing or at least scoping out a good site for temples at Syrinx, or of Syrinx, or however that works.

Oh well; on the plus side, at least we still have our guitars.

RELATED P.S.: This was always one of my favorite deep B-side selections from the lads in question, and thanks to this posting it's been playing in my brain all day long (and it should explain what the hell I'm talking about if you're not one of the two people who knew right off or the six others who were curious enough to figure it out with Google).

UNRELATED P.S.: On the plus side, this is the last of ten hellish years of having no agreed-upon way to refer to the current decade, followed by two years in pure decadal limbo; thank god that nightmare is nearly over.

Annals of nincompoopery: Dave Lindorff edition

It's hard to imagine a better example of reputation destruction than Dave Lindorff's 2008 pledge to vote for Obama, which I happened across again recently.  Let's take a look, shall we?

I also, perhaps against all logic and experience, admit that I expect something good of an Obama presidency.

Well sure, because the success rate of choosing to act "against all logic and experience" is so high.

Call me naïve...

...should become the nickname he uses in all his future writing, on his business cards, whenever he introduces himself to people, etc: Dave "Call me naïve" Lindorff.

The unfortunate reality is that the true left in the US is a joke...

Yes, largely because of people who regularly opt to swim in rivers of self-delusion rather than pay attention to trivialities like "logic and experience."  For example:

Finally, with respect to war and militarism, I tend not to take Obama’s warmongering seriously. Given the man’s background, I am confident that he is not a militarist by nature.

Right, because it's always a good idea to disregard a politician's most damning statements and instead trust that he'll contradict not only his own words but the consistent actions of every other politician who's ever held the office he's pursuing (that would be the aforementioned "experience").  If you want to know where Lindorff crossed the line from garden variety sucker to complete maroon, look no further.

A President Obama will have his hands full trying to deal with an unprecedented financial fiasco, and will want the wars off his plate as quickly as possible. Maybe I’m being a Pollyanna, but I simply can’t see a smart guy—and Obama is a smart guy—getting dragged into another quagmire.

Pollyanna?  God, no, it's like you were Nostradamus.

[T]he crisis of global warming, so long denied by the Bush administration, is going to make itself felt soon in ways that will be impossible to ignore, and which will demand a crisis response. Obama, I believe, will be the right person at the right time, to lead that response.

Sure, if you happened to be ExxonMobil.

Now, I realize it's easy to laugh at people like Lindorff.  But it's also fun.  Give it a try and see for yourself.

ALSO: If you think I'm being too hard on our erroneous friend, consider these choice morsels from a February 2009 article of his:

[A]ll this formalistic arguing about the virtues of supporting a third party is an infantile diversion. ... In a way, the obsession of some people on the left with third party politics is like a perfect safety valve to prevent real change within the Democratic Party. ... [L]et me say it straight: third parties are a useless, and even dangerous diversion.

(Well of course, because real adults ignore "all logic and experience," right?)

Lindorff dubbed this infantile/useless/dangerous diversion of less politically savvy activists the "third party delusion"—clearly a malady to be avoided.  Until he adopted it himself in July of 2011, that is:

There is at this point only one thing to do...It is to move forward with a strategy to develop a fully-competitive progressive Third Party to run races in every Congressional district and for every Senate seat up for grabs in 2012, and to run a serious candidate for President.

Feel free to search for any recognition of the hilarious contradiction between these two quotes.  As with his logic-and-experience-eschewing support for Obama—and in behavior that's 100% consistent with other former Obama-backing progressive commentators I've read—Lindorff reverses himself without the slightest nod to the repudiation of his previous certainties, much less any admission of error.  How wonderful it must be to live in an eternal now, where you feel that nothing you've said or done in the past has any bearing on whether or not people should listen to you today.

Apotheosis Now

Not content with merely groin kicking Newt Gingrich's "invented people" quote, MJ Rosenberg fires up a stadium-sized pile driver and totally GROIN OBLITERATES it.  Were he to be deified for this feat he would forever be known as TESTISMASHICLUS, RACKER OF WORLDS.  Fear his wrath, hasbarists!

Stalliony Christmas

On this of all days, I'm sure many of us gain a deeper appreciation for Tolstoy's observation that "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."  And for the few Bradys out there who don't: count your blessings, you nauseating bastards.

FURTHERMORE: Someone needs to say it: when it comes to A Christmas Carol, the George C. Scott version is far and away the best.  It's not only an effective ghost story but offers a measured and believable transformation—you can feel every word Scott speaks in the cemetery at the end.  I can understand the attachment people have to the Sim version and it does have its charms, but it just doesn't achieve anything similar, and I expect there'll never be a more convincing Scrooge than George C. Scott.

AND: On a related note (and closer to the usual blog fare), John Nichols admonishes us to remember that it's evil Republicans who're just like mean old Mr. Scrooge, no doubt hoping to prevent his readers from directing any of their ire toward the wrong party.

Near miss

Just when I'm ready to give up on the human race and settle into a life of comfortable apathetic resignation I see something like this:

In the eyes of many of the people I "served" with, the people of Fallujah remain dehumanised and their resistance fighters are still believed to be terrorists. But unlike most of my counterparts, I understand that I was the aggressor, and that the resistance fighters in Fallujah were defending their city.

It is also the seventh anniversary of the deaths of two close friends of mine, Travis Desiato and Bradley Faircloth, who were killed in the siege. Their deaths were not heroic or glorious. Their deaths were tragic, but not unjust.

How can I begrudge the resistance in Fallujah for killing my friends, when I know that I would have done the same thing if I were in their place? How can I blame them when we were the aggressors?

Thanks a lot, former-marine-with-a-conscience Ross Caputi.

After the war, Hitler will have the courage to really help the Jews

Presented for your hilariation:

I very much hope for a [Barack] Obama reelection. In his second term, he will have the courage to really represent his progressive base and stand up to the corporately controlled Congress people — people who are trying to obstruct the democratic process, who openly say their mission is to defeat Obama.

I realize tweaking Ani DiFranco for Obamalove doesn't even merit the phrase "low-hanging fruit"—more like the peaches are throwing themselves into the basket.  But I've got presents to wrap, and I think all our lives are richer for the phrase "corporately controlled Congress people."

The things we do for love

Names you will see in Michael Moore's article decrying the detention and mistreatement of Bradley Manning: Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz.  No prize for guessing which name you won't see.

CONJUGATIONAL RELATIONS:  Here's the passage in question:

But it is not Bush or Rumsfeld or Cheney or Wolfowitz who sit in prison tonight. It is the hero who exposed them. It is Bradley Manning who has lost his freedom and that, in turn, becomes just one more crime being committed in our name.

Odd how the passive voice has become Moore's favorite verb tense since the divine ascension of January 2009, isn't it?

From metaphorical to actual ghoul

I'll get around to writing a lengthy commentary on the death of Christopher Hitchens as soon as I run out of things I care more about, like this nasty hangnail.

Iran attacks our fist with its face

And I thought I couldn't be surprised anymore:

The Obama administration said it has delivered a formal request to Iran for the return of a U.S. surveillance drone captured by Iranian armed forces, but is not hopeful that Iran will comply.  President Obama said Monday that the U.S. wants the top-secret aircraft back. "We have asked for it back. We'll see how the Iranians respond," Obama said during a White House news conference with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki on Monday.

But wait, it gets better:

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Panetta said they're not optimistic about getting the drone back because of recent Iranian behavior that Clinton said indicated "that the path that Iran seems to be going down is a dangerous one for themselves and the region." [...] "Given Iran's behavior to date we do not expect them to comply but we are dealing with all of these provocations and concerning actions taken by Iran in close concert with our closest allies and partners," she said.

Yes, and not only do these nefarious Iranians provoke our peace-loving country by capturing the drone we were using to spy on them, they also refuse to return the bullets, bombs and poison we and/or Israel have been using to murder their nuclear scientists!  Why, I haven't seen such a shocking disregard for international norms of behavior since Iraq chose to let children play with our unexploded cluster bombs rather than returning them to the nearest U.S. base.

Palestinians are also known homo sapiens

Saying the Palestinians are "an invented people" is like calling the Dallas Cowboys "an invented football team".  Of course they are—exactly like every other national group in the world.  Does Newt Gingrich think some people have a particular nationality stamped into their genome?  And does he also search for a big black line painted on the ground whenever he's near a national border?

Gingrich isn't concerned about making sense, of course; his purpose is just to sufficiently delegitimize the Palestinians that the destruction of their homes and theft of their land will become less objectionable.  He wants to make the West Bank and Gaza safe for people who have an organic, indisputably legitimate claim to it: Russian Jews, say, or Peruvian Indians who've converted to Judaism.

(Funny how only Israeli settlers can create "facts on the ground," isn't it?  No matter how long a Palestinian family has lived in the same house, they'll never be anything more than squatters on someone else's land.)

BONUS: Proving once again that Democrats are some of the best Republicans around, Obama attempts to outflank Gingrich et al from the right on Israel.

Standing correction

In my experience, almost any article that starts out with "Obama should", "Obama could" or (my personal favorite) "Obama must" can be converted from a sad plea into an accurate prediction of the future by changing it to "Obama won't."

See for yourself:

• What Obama Should Won't Be Saying About a Public Option
• Obama Could Won't Save the Talks With a Single Call to COP17
• Obama Must Won't Condemn Egyptian Military
• Obama Must Won't Call Israeli Settlements Illegal
• Obama Must Won't Talk to Iran
• Holder -- and Obama -- Must Won't Focus on Torture Accountability

Uncanny, isn't it?  Like you've got a working crystal ball.

Custer != Sitting Bull

This article by Glenn Greenwald is generally good, with one glaring exception:

What we find here is that the extremes on both sides of every conflict eventually come to mirror one another perfectly. Israelis settlers and Hamas have an equal desire to prevent a peace agreement and for the same reasons.

The notion that Hamas wants to prevent a peace agreement is certainly received wisdom in the U.S., but it's also completely false.  Here's Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh:

In a rare public appearance, the leader of the Hamas authority in Gaza, Ismail Haniyeh, said the organisation was willing to accept a Palestinian state within the borders that existed before the 1967 war. [...] "If there is a real plan to resolve the Palestinian question on the basis of the creation of a Palestinian state within the borders of June 4, 1967, and with full sovereignty, we are in favour of it."

Haniyeh said this 6 months after the Israeli attack on Gaza, and he was repeating the same things he'd said well before the attack as well.  And here's Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal:

"There is a position and program that all Palestinians share," he tells NEWSWEEK. "To accept a Palestinian state on the 1967 borders with Jerusalem as the capital. With the right of return. And this state would have real sovereignty, on the land and on the borders. And with no settlements."

So Hamas's position is exactly in line with the rest of the civilized world, and the opposition to a peace agreement based on the 1967 borders comes—as it always has—from Israel and the United States.

But the notion that Hamas wants to prevent peace "for the same reasons" as Israeli settlers isn't just factually wrong but fundamentally misguided as well.  Israeli settlers (and the Israeli political establishment generally) want to prevent peace because they know any real peace agreement will mean they'll have to stop stealing Palestinian land, whereas Hamas and other Palestinian resistance groups want to keep them from stealing any more of it.  Even if we were to ignore the facts and accept for the sake of argument that Hamas wants to prevent peace, it's not as though Hamas members are flying from Gaza to establish settlements and set up military checkpoints in Brooklyn.

So not only is there no parity between these two positions, it's impossible for there to be parity between them.  Even the most strident and rejectionist member of Hamas would have a more coherent moral justification for his position than an Israeli settler, and you can no more reasonably equate their motivations than you can compare the Sioux to the European colonists who drove them from the land.

AND ALSO: No discussion of Hamas and peace would be complete without this background:

[B]eginning in the late 1970s, Tel Aviv gave direct and indirect financial aid to Hamas over a period of years. Israel "aided Hamas directly -- the Israelis wanted to use it as a counterbalance to the PLO (Palestinian Liberation Organization)," said Tony Cordesman, Middle East analyst for the Center for Strategic Studies. [...] "The thinking on the part of some of the right-wing Israeli establishment was that Hamas and the others, if they gained control, would refuse to have any part of the peace process and would torpedo any agreements put in place," said a U.S. government official who asked not to be named.

So whenever you hear an Israeli official bemoaning the lack of a "partner for peace" or claiming that Hamas can't be bargained with, never forget the unspoken clause: exactly as we intended.  In fact the Israeli assault on Gaza in December of 2008 was in large part an attempt to reverse Hamas's acceptance of peace and willingness to pursue change through elections rather than force, but—as the quotes from Haniyeh and Meshaal show—it failed in this way just as it failed in so many others.

There may be some subtle message here

AP informs us that Iran has built an unmanned aircraft with a range "far enough to reach Israel," but is curiously silent on whether it can also reach Kyrgyzstan, Cyprus or India.

Moses to God: thanks but no thanks

I do my level best to avoid mainstream media tabloid news, but I also have a news page up all day long that bludgeons me with vacuous headlines (with excerpts my monkey brain can't help but partially absorb), so despite my best efforts I end up knowing a thing or two about clowns like Herman Cain.  Which is my excuse for having come across this article three weeks ago:

Cain says God persuaded him to run for president

[...] In a speech Saturday to a national meeting of young Republicans, Cain said the Lord persuaded him after much prayer.

"That's when I prayed and prayed and prayed. I'm a man of faith — I had to do a lot of praying for this one, more praying than I've ever done before in my life," Cain said. "And when I finally realized that it was God saying that this is what I needed to do, I was like Moses. 'You've got the wrong man, Lord. Are you sure?'"

I actually find this pretty damn funny not only for the notion that the ALL-POWERFUL CREATOR OF THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE is concerned that Herman Cain become the president of the United States in the year 2012 (as opposed to, oh, say, living a life of quiet worship and service to the poor), but because this same God is telling other Republicans the exact same thing.  Now that is a deity with a sense of humor.  (Of course He apparently also wants both Michigan and Nebraska to score touchdowns in the same game, so how can we possibly understand His divine will?)

It's even funnier in the case of Cain, though, since he's now bowing out on the task Almighty God set before him.  Really, consider this: Cain says the Lord of Hosts personally instructed him to run for president, but after a few weeks of bad publicity he's tossing aside this divine calling.  It's as though Moses said to YHWH: wait—I have to wander through the desert how long?  Huh.  Well, thanks just the same, flaming shrubbery, I mean I'm genuinely flattered, but I've got my family to think about here.

Will Cain get the full Lot's wife treatment for his disobedience?  We can only hope.

Revealed in the clauses

Looking at that Syria quote brought home to me just how much Hillary Clinton's true nature is revealed in her choices of clauses.  Here it is again:

Yes, I think there could be a civil war with a very determined and well-armed and eventually well-financed opposition that is, if not directed by, certainly influenced by defectors from the army.

The key word there is the otherwise-superfluous eventually, which makes it clear that Clinton is not just speculating about one possible outcome but outlining an offer to interested parties.  She's saying to any Syrians who're paying attention: look, start calling yourselves something plausibly authentic like the Syrian Liberation Council, ally yourself with military elements we plan to use as proxies after the Assad government is brought down, and if you manage to establish yourselves as the most promising clients in the country we'll anoint you as The Official Syrian Opposition and make sure you have the weapons and cash you need.

Matter-of-fact solicitation for a bloody civil war is a good start, but the depth of Hillary's vampiric psychopathy is most clearly revealed by the clauses in her infamously bellicose threat to "totally obliterate" Iran:

ABC News' Chris Cuomo asked Clinton what she would do if Iran attacked Israel with nuclear weapons.

"I want the Iranians to know that if I'm the president, we will attack Iran," Clinton said. "In the next 10 years, during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them."

Consider her choice of the phrase be able to.  Clinton obviously wasn't saying that some increase in military power would be required before the U.S. would be able to obliterate Iran; no, "be able to" strikes me as being not so much about capabilities as eager anticipation.  And even if you don't accept that, her barely-contained enthusiasm comes across even more clearly through the also-superfluous intensifier "totally"—as though the threat of mere "obliteration" from the world's largest military power (and the only country to kill hundreds of thousands of human beings with nuclear weapons) was somehow insufficient to communicate the full measure of her intended menace.

It goes without saying that a willingness to shed unworthy people's blood is a requirement for high office in the U.S., but for reasons exactly like these Clinton has always struck me as someone who takes it beyond willingness to a twisted aspiration—and phrases like "be able to" and "totally" are Clinton's mania peeking through her mask of neoliberal rationality.  I have little doubt that one of her happiest days will be when rather than having to settle for the second-hand thrill of being Secretary of State in the most warlike administration in recent years, she finally has the deep satisfaction of ordering killings herself.

Thanksgiving leftovers

I always get a flurry of hits for this posting around Thanksgiving, which makes me happy since it's one of my all-time favorites, though I'm never sure how random Googlers will take it.  So I thought I'd point y'all at it as well.

Hope your day was turkeytastic (or tofutastic).

Punctuation

I appreciate the information Seymour Hersh manages to ferret out, but I often have a hard time understanding how he can avoid some of the obvious conclusions of his own research.  For example, this is what he had to say about the Obama administration's ever-increasing attempts to manufacture conflict with Iran:

I don’t know if you want to call it a "psychosis," but it’s some sort of a fantasy land being built up here, as it was with Iraq, the same sort of—no lessons learned, obviously.

"No lessons learned"?  No, lessons learned.  It's not "psychosis" but a successful strategy being redeployed, albeit at a slightly lower intensity and with greater international resistance (in large part because of the results in Iraq).

In discussing this "sort of a hysteria that we had over Iraq that's coming up again in Iran" Hersh points out how thrilled the U.S. was to replace Mohamed ElBaradei with Yukiya Amano as head of the IAEA (according to the U.S. mission in Vienna, Amano "was solidly in the U.S. court on every key strategic decision, from high-level personnel appointments to the handling of Iran's alleged nuclear weapons program"), and how the IAEA's first report under Amano is little more than a "political document" that sensationalizes old and discredited accusations—which the U.S. has of course done everything it can to capitalize on.  But then he goes on to contradict the clear conclusion of every bit of evidence he's just adduced: "I do think—I have every reason to believe that, unlike Mr. Bush, President Obama really is worried about an attack. He doesn’t want to see the Israelis bomb Iran."

Yeah.  See, I might find that convincing if every single thing Obama and company do and say—like maneuvering to get an IAEA director general who's "solidly in the U.S. court on every key strategic decision" and then using his politicized report to further isolate Iran—didn't point to their desire to clear the way for an attack.  While I don't doubt that Obama does have concerns (since he's nothing if not a calculating imperial manager), I'm also sure they're strictly tactical; he has no compunction whatsoever about the Israelis bombing Iran so long as they can get away with it.  And regardless of the wishful thinking of Hersh and others, that's the one and only consideration standing in the way of an attack.

PRONOUN TROUBLE: Reuters offers an analysis of "Iran's nuclear showdown with [the] West", which makes me wonder if they have a similar analysis of "UC Davis students' pepper spray showdown with police".

Fairly standard police procedure

If you thought the pepper-spraying of non-violent demonstrators in a police riot at UC Davis was unjustifiable, think again:

[UC Davis police chief Annette Spicuzza] said officers were forced to use pepper spray when students surrounded them. They used a sweeping motion on the group, per procedure, to avoid injury, she said.

The students were informed repeatedly ahead of time that if they didn't move, force would be used, she said.

It's revealing to see Spicuzza unselfconsciously endorsing the notion that giving a warning validates subsequent violence; every thug who's ever told a victim that if they just cooperate they won't get hurt will recognize that logic.

And about "per procedure", there's this:

Charles J. Kelly, a former Baltimore Police Department lieutenant who wrote the department's use of force guidelines, said pepper spray is a "compliance tool" that can be used on subjects who do not resist [...]. After reviewing the video, Kelly said he observed at least two cases of "active resistance" from protesters. In one instance, a woman pulls her arm back from an officer. In the second instance, a protester curls into a ball. Each of those actions could have warranted more force, including baton strikes and pressure-point techniques.

"What I'm looking at is fairly standard police procedure," Kelly said.

Yeah, Chuck, that much is clear.  But the most interesting part to me is the notion that curling into a ball constitutes "active resistance", and that if you instinctively adopt this purely defensive pose—say, in an attempt to protect yourself from further excruciating pain when you're being attacked with the "compliance tool" of pepper spray—you've now given the police justification to beat you with truncheons, so you'll unroll yourself into a more vulnerable position and they can get on with, oh, say, rupturing your spleen.  Have I got that about right, Chuck?

Your government, ladies and gentlemen, protecting and serving the shit out of you.

Addendum

I like this L.A. Times headline: "Hillary Rodham Clinton: Syria conflict could become civil war".  You can practically hear the with a little luck, can't you?  And I think you can safely append that to just about any of her pronouncements about a potential Syrian civil war.  Wipe that drool off your chin, Hillary!

Here's the apparent source quote:

"I think there could be a civil war with a very determined and well-armed and eventually well-financed opposition that is, if not directed by, certainly influenced by defectors from the army," Clinton told NBC.

Coming from the U.S. Secretary of State, a phrase like "well-armed and eventually well-financed opposition" isn't a prediction but a business proposition.

Things you'll never see me say

Include, but are not limited to, the following:

• "Raised a few eyebrows": Christ, are we all Noel Coward?  Regularly deployed by the Washington press corps; come up with something original, you rancid twits.  This goes double for "tongues are wagging" (which is mercifully rarer).
• "Wait for it": This worked exactly one time in a Robert Fisk article from 2002 and has never worked since for anyone, including Robert Fisk.  Feels like being put in timeout even though you've done nothing wrong.  Every time this phrase is imposed on me I want to spend my wait time jabbing a rusty knife into the eye of the person who wrote it.  I promise that rather than making you wait for it, I'll give it to you RIGHT NOW.
• "Hit all the right notes": The phrase of choice of sycophants when His Holiness the President offers exactly the platitudes they not only expected to hear, but wanted to hear (thus: "right"). Taught on the first day of Political Hackery 101; useful in that it instantly tells you that the person uttering it can safely be ignored in perpetuity.

Ever.  Promise.

One dog to rule them all

It's of course outstanding that the folk of Occupy Denver elected a border collie as their leader, but the reason why is almost as good:

[I]t began with Michael Moore.  Stung by the documentarian's refusal to follow general assembly guidelines at his recent visit to Occupy Denver, the idea of electing a symbolic (if hairy) leader struck [Nesby] as an opportune statement. "(Moore) walked in with security and made everyone listen to him in the center of the circle with a bullhorn like he was our leader, even though he said out loud it's a leaderless movement," says Nesby [...].  He and a few fellow occupiers gathered to contradict the misconception that the group needs an end-all representative.

Ooh, that's gotta hurt.  And for your amusement (always my top priority), here's Time's creative rendition of that same point:

Nesby decided to throw his furry friend’s proverbial hat in the ring after Michael Moore visited Occupy Denver and captivated him with the possibility of a symbolic leader.

“(Moore) walked in with security and made everyone listen to him in the center of the circle with a bullhorn like he was our leader, even though he said out loud it’s a leaderless movement,” told the Denver Westword.

Oh man, so close.

Israel's other airline

Democracy Now! correspondent Jihan Hafiz describes her experience on a Continental Airlines flight from Tel Aviv to Newark after Israel deported her:

Yes, when I was put on the Continental flight home, I was given no information. The guard that put me on, I’m not sure what he told the stewardess—who put me on this plane—but I did ask her multiple times for a newspaper. [...] I asked her a couple of times, "Can I have a newspaper? Can I have a newspaper?" And then, very last minute, she said, "No, you don’t get newspapers."

This was familiar to me not only because former US diplomat Edward Peck received similar treatment in 2010 after being kidnapped on the high seas by Israel and sent back to the US on a Continental flight...:

Peck said that after he was placed aboard a Continental Airlines jet for the trip back to the U.S., he met with rejection after requesting a drink with his airplane meal.

"I have a sense of humor," he said. "When I had my dinner and I asked for a bottle of red wine, I was told, 'No. You are not allowed alcoholic beverages. You are a threat to national security.'"

...but because it matched my own experience in 2002, when I left Israel on a Continental flight (the return flight I was already scheduled to be aboard, as it happens) after being detained with a dozen other activists after we'd broken the Israeli siege of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem.  The Israelis had taken my passport and were holding on to it as they kept me locked up at the "refusal center" at Ben Gurion Airport to await my flight.  When I finally boarded the flight I asked the head stewardess about my passport, and she said the Israelis were going to give it to her just before the plane pushed back from the gate and she could get it for me once the flight was underway.  Later, long after we'd left Israel, I asked her if she could give me my passport—and she flatly refused.  I reminded her of what she'd said when I got on board and she just brushed it off.  When I asked her (in perfectly even tones) what possible basis Continental had for withholding my passport from me, she not only wouldn't offer any explanation but threatened to have me restrained for the rest of the flight.  She didn't follow through on the threat but wouldn't answer any more of my questions either, and I only got my passport back (from another stewardess) after we'd landed and started taxiing to the gate.

I'll never forget the intense look of smug self-satisfaction on that Continental stewardess's face, or the visceral realization that she was not only acting as an agent of the the Israeli government but was enthusiastic about it.  And as Peck's and Hafiz's experiences show, this is standard operating procedure for Continental.  The collusion between corporations and governments to keep us under control was no surprise to me, of course (though the fact that Continental would show such fealty to the Israeli government was a bit of an eye-opener)—but  it's one thing to understand it intellectually and another thing entirely to get such a personal demonstration.

I don't have much to add beyond that except to say, man, what giant dicks.  It's not like there weren't already plenty of reasons to avoid Continental, but this is just one more thing to keep in mind when you're choosing your airline.

Transference

I headed over to my credit union today to see how things were going for Bank Transfer Day, and it was packed—the lobby was full and at one point a few dozen people came marching through who'd apparently been waiting upstairs for their turn to open an account.  Even after being told it could take up to two hours before someone would be able to help them, new arrivals were happily signing their names on the list and taking a clipboard to fill out an application.

The person I spoke with said they usually get around 350 new accounts a month, but in the past month they've had 1600—and that's not counting today.  Even though they close at 3pm they were going to stay as late as necessary to make sure every person who made it in the door would be able to get a new account opened (in true credit union service fashion).

Absolutely beautiful.  This is the kind of protest the banks can't ignore.

Anyone else have Bank Transfer Day stories (personal or general) to share?

Class warfare in action

I hadn't yet been to either of the two major Occupy encampments in the Bay Area, but even with a freshly sprained ankle I knew I had to head across the bay for the general strike and port shutdown in Oakland.  Being a carpetbagger made for a few awkward moments as I tried to figure out an appropriate response to "Whose streets?"—I mean technically your streets, but I'm sure there's some state and federal tax money going toward local infrastructure, right?  But I got past it.

Here's the closure of maritime commerce in action (those are the port's cranes in the distance):

And though it doesn't capture the size of the crowd, I liked the symbolism of this shot:

Port officials declared the port closed soon after thousands of us started pouring into the main entrance, and the shutdown lasted for hours afterward (there's word that they may have to close it overnight as well).  To their credit, the trapped truckers I saw overwhelmingly supported the action—in fact many of them were blowing their air horns and waving at the crowd as people climbed on top of their trucks.  Overall it was one of the most inspiring actions I've seen in the Bay Area, and despite what you may have heard about Occupy protesters having no coherent message I thought it was also one of the most focused (a rarity in the Bay Area, where for better or worse every protest ends up being about everything).  Definitely worth limping around for the next few days.

My favorite sign: "We should do this again sometime."  Yes, indeed.

Moore's Rebellion

I've been trying to give Michael Moore the benefit of the doubt about his appearances at Occupy Wall Street even though it went against my better judgment (since I'm well and truly tired of watching him try to position himself at the front of every movement).  Maybe he just wanted to help by bringing out more media coverage with no thought for his own ego, right?  C'mon, it was at least theoretically possible.

Then on last night's local newscast I saw him say this after speaking at Occupy Oakland: "I made the movie. It was called 'Capitalism: A Love Story' and I called for this rebellion. And I'm just thrilled."

Good grief.  Even when he's trying to help, Moore can't help but try to make it all about him.

I PRESUME: And furthermore:

[Moore] said the movement has already had "a number of victories in our first six weeks," saying, "We've killed despair across the country and we’ve killed apathy."

Not to be a grammar nazi, but I have this rather strong conviction that people who haven't spent a good portion of those weeks freezing their asses off in a tent or risking brain damage in a police riot should think twice before cavalierly tossing out pronoun forms like "our" and "we" around people who have.

(Yeah, sure, "we are the 99%"—but inclusive slogans don't change the fact that it's just .00099% of us out there right now making the sacrifices and taking the risks.)

And he eats adorable infants like popcorn, too

I don't have much to add to this and I don't even think it's one of Ran HaCohen's best, but I'm always happy to endorse any article that associates Elliott Abrams and Hitler.

(HaCohen was right, by the way; guess what the top Google hit is now for "Abrams Hitler"?)

Like schoolgirls critically supported Elvis

Ha ha ha!

AMY GOODMAN: Now, you both supported President Obama.

CORNEL WEST: It was critical support, I think, we both had—

MICHAEL MOORE: Yeah, yeah.

Here's Michael "yeah, yeah" Moore offering his critical support of Obama on inauguration day, my friends:

We have made it through the Dark Ages and here we are, in one of the most redemptive moments history has ever witnessed. Barack Obama is our best hope to get it right, to heal our national soul, to reach out to the rest of the world with an olive branch instead of shocking brutality. [...] It has been a heartbreaking time. But the sun comes out at noon today. [...] We are fortunate to have a new president who is smart and kind and committed to serving his country.

And just a few months later he declared his intention to "await the President's next superhero move"—though I suppose you could make the argument that that's closer to qualifying as critical support than "one of the most redemptive moments history has ever witnessed", in about the same sense your golden retriever might be considered more critically supportive of you at one year old than he was as a puppy.

Who says you can't change the past?

"Censorship, like everything else in the West, has been privatized"

It's a well-known fact that people these days are flush with cash.  If you're in a quandary about what to do with your own surplus fortune, why not give some of it to Wikileaks?

Announcing a "temporary suspension" of the whistleblowing website's publishing activities, Assange said the site had been deprived of 95% of its revenue by the "dangerous, oppressive and undemocratic" blockade, and now needed to direct its energy purely into "aggressive fundraising" to fight for the organisation's survival.

"This financial blockade is an existential threat to WikiLeaks. If the blockade is not borne down by the end of the year the organisation cannot continue its work," Assange told a news conference in central London.

Look at it this way: it's better than blowing it on prostitutes.

Miscellania

I greatly approve of the "other" in this headline from Democracy Now!:

New figures show President Obama continues to pull in huge donations from the financial sector, with more money from Wall Street this year than all other Republican presidential candidates combined.

Not sure if this was intentional, but I'll take it anyway.

Also: you might hazily recall that just last week the very existence of the United States was threatened by a dastardly scheme cooked up by Iran to employ rum-running Jamaican voodoo priests to pilot exploding narwhals into our precious bodily fluids, if I understood it correctly and I'm pretty sure I did.  One of the best headlines I saw about this dread existential threat came from Tony Karon, and went a little like this:

"Obama's Iran Dilemma: How to Respond to a Plot Seemingly Designed to Provoke Escalation?"

You can just imagine the 1939 version of Tony Karon responding to the Gleiwitz incident with the plaintive question, "Hitler's Poland Dilemma: How to Repond to a Plot Seemingly Designed to Provoke Escalation?"

And finally: congratulations to our teen-killin', dictator-bombin' Nobel laureate for bringing us a few more corpses closer to world peace.

(Was my omission of those g's inherently racist?  Empty minds want to know.)

The awesome media power of blogs

The Christian Science Monitor asks if Ron Paul is really still being ignored by the media and concludes that no, he is not.  Why not?  Well, first because surveys showing that he's not getting much attention are looking at a mere 52 different news outlets from newspapers, cable news, broadcast television, the 12 most popular news websites in the country, and radio news—apparently an inadequate measure of mainstream media attention in CSM's view.  But the second reason is the one that caught my attention:

Of all GOP candidates, Paul gets the most positive coverage on blogs. Some 48 percent of conversation about him on the Internet tubes is positive, according to Pew’s analysis. Only 15 percent is negative, with 38 percent neutral. No other White House wannabe comes close in terms of good blog tone.

It’s true that Paul is only the fifth-most-discussed candidate on the Internet. But that’s where the core of his support – and his coverage – lies.

(Note that CSM admits that Paul only gets the fifth-highest level of discussion overall even in the murky waters of the blogosphere—but they nonetheless dismiss the Paul-is-being-ignored notion based on the fact that a higher proportion of that smaller amount of discussion was positive.  I wonder what they'd make of my 100% approval rating among writers of this blog?)

Yeah.  See, as overjoyed as I'd be if the things I choose to expatiate upon here actually were responsible for setting the national policy agenda, I suspect they don't carry quite as much weight as the front page of the New York Times.

Inspiration on strike

But may return at any time.  If it does, you'll be the first to know.

Investment in the future

Item:

For the second year in a row, U.S. President Barack Obama has waived a Congressionally-mandated ban on military aid for four countries that use child soldiers.

The four countries that will continue to receive military assistance despite the use of child soldiers in their armed forces include Chad, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Yemen and the newly independent nation of South Sudan, according to a memo released by the White House late Tuesday.

All four, which are slated to receive a total of more than 200 million dollars in military aid in 2012, were given waivers by the administration last year, as well.

I have to say that the heat Obama's taken over this is a perfect example of knee-jerk leftist posturing.  Don't these "critics" understand how much more it costs to train a child than it does to train an adult?  Not to mention the expense of new uniforms every few years.  Think, people.

Dark anniversary

Malalai Joya is always worth listening to, and especially so as she looks back on ten years of U.S. killing and destruction in Afghanistan.  On Obama:

During these bloody years, tens of thousands of innocent civilians have been killed by occupation forces and terrorist groups. When Barack Obama took office in 2008, unfortunately his first news for my people was more conflict and more war. It was during Obama’s administration that civilian death tolls increased by 24%. And the result of the surge of troops of Obama’s administration is more massacres, more crimes, violence, destruction, pain, and tragedy. That’s why he has proved himself as a warmonger — as second even more dangerous Bush.

On Afghanistan:

I believe that the only solution for the catastrophic situation of Afghanistan is withdrawal of ALL of the troops of our country because their presence is making much harder our struggle for justice and peace. By empowering the reactionary dark minded terrorist groups who are great obstacles for true democratic minded elements. If honestly they leave Afghanistan , the backbone of fundamentalist warlords in Taliban will break.

And on what she wants from all of us:

So now I would like to ask all peace-loving, justice-seekers, anti-war movements and democratic-minded intellectuals, individuals around the world to join their hands with democratic-minded people of our country who are able to fight against fundamentalism and occupation. Therefore, my message to you is please empower my people educationally, as I believe education is a key against ignorance and toward emancipation.

One of the things I've always appreciated about Joya is how she connects the fight against foreign occupation by the U.S. with the fight against domestic occupation by the fundamentalist yahoos who still hold sway in Afghanistan and the broader region (and who are only strengthened, as she points out, by ongoing U.S. violence).  There aren't many people who'd get my vote for emperor of the world, but she's one of them.

Read the rest.

The sting of plagiarism

Apparently I forgot to copyright my point about the oddly incongruous reaction of Michael Moore (et al) to evil Georgia's killing vs. saintly Obama's killing, and now Glenn Greenwald is shamelessly swiping it:

Remember, Good Democrats hate the death penalty because they think it’s so terribly barbaric to execute people whose guilt is in doubt (even if, unlike Awlaki, they’ve enjoyed an indictment and full jury trial, lawyers, the right to examine evidence and to confront witnesses, multiple appeals, and habeas petitions).

You'll be hearing from my lawyers, Glenn.

Seriously: there comes a point in a liberal Democrat's political existence where they're given an umbiguous choice between either a) staying true to their values or b) powering through the cognitive dissonance and embracing party loyalty—and the Awlaki hit truly is the distilled essence of one of these moments, coming as it does after eight years of shrill Democratic denunciations of Bush's disregard for civil rights, due process, the rule of law, etc.  It's just this simple: anyone who attacked Bush over Guantanamo, renditions, military tribunals and the rest but who rationalizes away Obama's assassination of Awlaki is nothing more than an empty partisan shell.  And quite possibly a skunk-raper too.  But definitely an empty partisan shell.

STUNG AGAIN: Mr. Greenwald today:

[S]elf-identified progressive Democrats — who a few years ago were shrilly objecting to Bush’s mere attempt to eavesdrop on or detain Americans without due process — now running around defending the President’s power to target American citizens for assassination...

"Shrilly"?  Yes, I see.  Think the judge is going to believe that was just a coincidence too, Glenn?

Susan Rice harshly critical of Susan Rice

Susan Rice confesses the Obama administration's shame to the world:

The US ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice, said they had carried out a "cheap ruse" because they would "rather sell arms" to a "regime of thugs" than protect peaceful demonstrators.

Clearly in reference to this:

The Obama administration has announced plans to sell $53 million worth of military equipment to Bahrain just months after the Gulf state brutally cracked down on Shiite protesters. The proposed sale includes bunker buster missiles, armored vehicles and wire-guided missiles. Maria McFarland of Human Rights Watch criticized the arms deal. McFarland said, "This is exactly the wrong move after Bahrain brutally suppressed protests and is carrying out a relentless campaign of retribution against its critics."

We'll see if she'll end up resigning over her anguished realization that she's part of an administration that would "rather sell arms" to a "regime of thugs" than protect peaceful demonstrators, but either way, I'm sure her moral clarity and consistency are an inspiration to us all.

RICE ON RICE, CONT'D: Here's more from our outraged diplomat:

"And during this season of change, the people of the Middle East can now see clearly which nations have chosen to ignore their calls for democracy and instead prop up desperate, cruel dictators."

Why yes, Susan, I imagine they can.