Stone Cold Pimpin'

This may be one of the few times I've blogged Andrew Sullivan, but his logic here is sound:

In all the discussion of John McCain's recently recovered memory of a religious epiphany in Vietnam, one thing has been missing. The torture that was deployed against McCain emerges in all the various accounts. It involved sleep deprivation, the withholding of medical treatment, stress positions, long-time standing, and beating. Sound familiar?
According to the Bush administration's definition of torture, McCain was therefore not tortured.
Cheney denies that McCain was tortured; as does Bush. So do John Yoo and David Addington and George Tenet. In the one indisputably authentic version of the story of a Vietnamese guard showing compassion, McCain talks of the agony of long-time standing. A quarter century later, Don Rumsfeld was putting his signature to memos lengthening the agony of "long-time standing" that victims of Bush's torture regime would have to endure. These torture techniques are, according to the president of the United States, merely "enhanced interrogation."

Posted by Ted Mills at 09:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I learned the phrase "snatching defeat from the jaws of victory," from watching years of Epic Democrat Fail. Michael Moore weighs in a has a few pertinent things to say:

4. Forget that this was a historic year for women.
Obama should be making a speech about gender like the brilliant one he gave on race back in March. Millions of people, especially women, had high hopes for the candidacy of Hillary Clinton. Attention must be paid. And you don't pay attention to it by having your advisers run your wife through the makeover machine, trying to soften her up and pipe her down. Michelle Obama has been one of the most refreshing things about this election year. But within weeks of the end of the primary season, the handlers stepped in to deal with the "Michelle problem."

What problem? She speaks her mind? She wears what she wants? Her biggest sin, according to the punditocracy, was to say that, as a black woman, this may be the first time in her adult life she's been really proud of her country. Shock! Surprise! Outrage! But not from any of the black women I know.

Posted by Ted Mills at 11:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The title of the book tells it all. Oh what a consummation devoutly to be wished. The Huffington Post has an excerpt.

I mean, in America, we apparently impeach presidents for having consensual sex outside of marriage and trying to cover it up. If we impeach presidents for that, then if the president takes the country to war on a lie where thousands of American soldiers die horrible, violent deaths and over 100,000 innocent Iraqi civilians, including women and children, even babies are killed, the punishment obviously has to be much, much more severe. That's just common sense. If Bush were impeached, convicted in the Senate, and removed from office, he'd still be a free man, still be able to wake up in the morning with his cup of coffee and freshly squeezed orange juice and read the morning paper, still travel widely and lead a life of privilege, still belong to his country club and get standing ovations whenever he chose to speak to the Republican faithful. This, for being responsible for over 100,000 horrible deaths? For anyone interested in true justice, impeachment alone would be a joke for what Bush did.

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Posted by Ted Mills at 02:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I came across the Tiny Choices blog when I was researching alternative to plastic sports bottles. I've seen the Siggi ones and such and I'm thinking I may buy one. Anyway, this blog is all about the little things we can start doing to help the Earth before we all get drowned by rising tides, beaten to death in food riots, or die working in the Dick Cheney Memorial Salt Mines. I've starting to use canvas bags instead of paper bags at the supermarket (the Trader Joes ones are great, the ones at Vons are balls). If I lived in a bigger apartment I would compost, but as it is, I don't have room. There's a tendency on the blog to fuss over really tiny things (plastic straws!) and some people seem to have a big problem learning to cook for themselves (something I've been doing for ages and have to remind myself is still rare). But still, you may find one or two things that you can start doing now. I mean, NOW!!!

Posted by Ted Mills at 12:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Michael T. Klare has an excerpt from his new book Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet over at TomDispatch, and it's a quite telling history of how our continual wars, our hubristic dismissal of Russia, and other egotistical blunders have bankrupted our country and sent it backwards. And so quickly!

Every day, the average G.I. in Iraq uses approximately 27 gallons of petroleum-based fuels. With some 160,000 American troops in Iraq, that amounts to 4.37 million gallons in daily oil usage, including gasoline for vans and light vehicles, diesel for trucks and armored vehicles, and aviation fuel for helicopters, drones, and fixed-wing aircraft. With U.S. forces paying, as of late April, an average of $3.23 per gallon for these fuels, the Pentagon is already spending approximately $14 million per day on oil ($98 million per week, $5.1 billion per year) to stay in Iraq. Meanwhile, our Iraqi allies, who are expected to receive a windfall of $70 billion this year from the rising price of their oil exports, charge their citizens $1.36 per gallon for gasoline.

In line with this outlook, President Bush believed that he could convert an impoverished and compliant Russia into a major source of oil and natural gas for the United States -- with American energy companies running the show. This was the evident aim of the U.S.-Russian "energy dialogue" announced by Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin in May 2002. But if Bush thought Russia was prepared to turn into a northern version of Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, or Venezuela prior to the arrival of Hugo Chávez, he was to be sorely disappointed. Putin never permitted American firms to acquire substantial energy assets in Russia. Instead, he presided over a major recentralization of state control when it came to the country's most valuable oil and gas reserves, putting most of them in the hands of Gazprom, the state-controlled natural gas behemoth.

Posted by Ted Mills at 02:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Thanks to homeslice Jon Crow for sending me this. Check out this vid from the StreetFilms group that promotes sensible living in urban areas. More rooms for pedestrians, more bikes, friendlier neighborhoods, more culture, more nightlife, less crime. Melbourne (yes, the one in Australia) took on very simple and easy changes and transformed their city. It gives one hope that many places could be like this.

Posted by Ted Mills at 12:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Are we truly screwed with this latest hike in gas prices? Two articles today want to make me break out the bicycle clips. The Wall Street Journal says Why This Oil Shock is the Big One in this article.

With the price shock of 2007-08, spending on energy as a share of wage income has shot up above 6%, topping the 1974-75 and 1990-91 shocks to be the worst since the 1980-81 runup. Comparing the additional cost of energy to income growth (especially sluggish in recent years), the current shock is far worse than any of the three prior ones, Mr. Carson says.
The figures “suggest that energy costs will crowd out other spending components because income growth is being stifled by weakness in payroll employment,” he writes. “Moreover, relatively thin saving flows offer consumers little cushion against the rising oil prices.”

The forecasts calling for a jump to between $7 and $10 a gallon are based on the view that the price of crude is on its way to $200 in two to three years.
Translating this price into dollars and cents at the gas pump, one of our forecasters, the chairman of Houston-based Dune Energy, Alan Gaines, sees gas rising to $7-$8 a gallon. The other, a commodities tracker at Weiss Research in Jupiter, Fla., Sean Brodrick, projects a range of $8 to $10 a gallon.
While $7-$10 a gallon would be ground-breaking in America, these prices would not be trendsetting internationally. For example, European drivers are already shelling out $9 a gallon (which includes a $2-a-gallon tax).

Posted by Ted Mills at 07:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

On the flight over to Hawaii, I got stuck into some old Harper's and came across this essay by Curtis White, "Hot Air Gods." To simplify, he equates a fractioning of belief (into a personal, isolated thing) to the fractioning of the self within a capitalist framework (where we are all individual worker bees without community). He says it much better than me, of course, but I was struck by this para:

...We need to come to an honest acknowledgment of what capitalism is, and that has been made very clear for us in recent months by the Chinese entrepreneurs who fill our pet food, toothpaste, animal feed, and even our Viagra with toxic filler. for the entrepreneur, such filler is poison only if someone dies; otherwise it's just a profit margin. The game is to take profit as close to the poison line as possible. When on occasion profit spills over into poison and someone dies, there is a wild wringing of hands (and , in china, death sentences), but soon back we go in search of that ideal balance between profit and death. We see very much the same principle at work in industrial agriculture. Just how much herbicide and pesticide can we put down before it starts killing something more than bugs and pigweed? Here we see the creed of "cost/benefit analysis" presided over with loving-kindness by accountants and legions of liability lawyers.

Here's an essay on Saving Private Ryan by White that's worth a peruse.

Posted by Ted Mills at 06:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Here's the opening of the New York Times editorial today:

Looking at America
Published: December 31, 2007
There are too many moments these days when we cannot recognize our country. Sunday was one of them, as we read the account in The Times of how men in some of the most trusted posts in the nation plotted to cover up the torture of prisoners by Central Intelligence Agency interrogators by destroying videotapes of their sickening behavior. It was impossible to see the founding principles of the greatest democracy in the contempt these men and their bosses showed for the Constitution, the rule of law and human decency.
It was not the first time in recent years we’ve felt this horror, this sorrowful sense of estrangement, not nearly. This sort of lawless behavior has become standard practice since Sept. 11, 2001.
The country and much of the world was rightly and profoundly frightened by the single-minded hatred and ingenuity displayed by this new enemy. But there is no excuse for how President Bush and his advisers panicked — how they forgot that it is their responsibility to protect American lives and American ideals, that there really is no safety for Americans or their country when those ideals are sacrificed.

We can only hope that this time, unlike 2004, American voters will have the wisdom to grant the awesome powers of the presidency to someone who has the integrity, principle and decency to use them honorably. Then when we look in the mirror as a nation, we will see, once again, the reflection of the United States of America.

Posted by Ted Mills at 12:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Salon.com breaks the story of the stomach-churning conditions within the CIA "Black Sites"--i.e. our totalitarian-regime-like torture sites.

The CIA held Mohamed Farag Ahmad Bashmilah in several different cells when he was incarcerated in its network of secret prisons known as "black sites." But the small cells were all pretty similar, maybe 7 feet wide and 10 feet long. He was sometimes naked, and sometimes handcuffed for weeks at a time. In one cell his ankle was chained to a bolt in the floor. There was a small toilet. In another cell there was just a bucket. Video cameras recorded his every move. The lights always stayed on -- there was no day or night. A speaker blasted him with continuous white noise, or rap music, 24 hours a day.
The guards wore black masks and black clothes. They would not utter a word as they extracted Bashmilah from his cell for interrogation -- one of his few interactions with other human beings during his entire 19 months of imprisonment. Nobody told him where he was, or if he would ever be freed.
It was enough to drive anyone crazy. Bashmilah finally tried to slash his wrists with a small piece of metal, smearing the words "I am innocent" in blood on the walls of his cell. But the CIA patched him up.
So Bashmilah stopped eating. But after his weight dropped to 90 pounds, he was dragged into an interrogation room, where they rammed a tube down his nose and into his stomach. Liquid was pumped in. The CIA would not let him die.

Posted by Ted Mills at 05:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Here's a jolly quote from Krugman's latest article in the NYTimes:

“What we are witnessing,” says Bill Gross of the bond manager Pimco, “is essentially the breakdown of our modern-day banking system, a complex of leveraged lending so hard to understand that Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke required a face-to-face refresher course from hedge fund managers in mid-August.”

Powered by ScribeFire.

Posted by Ted Mills at 03:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Mort Sahl was one of America's best-known satirists during the '50s and '60s. His politics offended enough people on both sides that he never really got the breaks other comedians who followed after him would get. He's quoted as saying "If you maintain a consistent political position long enough, you will eventually be accused of treason." However, I hadn't thought of Sahl for some time until Mr. C sent me this link to an interview with Sahl at TruthDig. It's full o' good quotes:

Mr. Fish: Are you at all frustrated by [Barack] Obama’s recent public displays of toughness, his willingness to bomb Pakistan and Iran, etc.?

Sahl: Obama is a black guy made in the lab by white guys.  Again, it’s about [Democratic] virtue, “We’re going to nominate a black man.” Look who they pick—they didn’t exactly pick Paul Robeson or Malcolm X.  Or it’s like with Hillary Clinton.  She says, “Believe me, I won’t let the war go on!” What reason is there to believe her?  She’s running on the entitlement ticket.  It isn’t enough that we had [Bill Clinton], now we have to have her?  Has everybody forgotten that he went into Kosovo and that he bombed civilians in Yugoslavia?  I mean, his presidency wasn’t exactly a high time in America—maybe for the stock market.  But getting back to Obama, Bill Bradley just the other day referred to him as a rock star.  What kind of an appraisal is that?  It’s not even a good parallel—how often do rocks stars have anything to do with music, not the music industry, but music?  It’s vaudeville.

Sahl: I think the artist is only that good. I don’t think it’s a broker’s decision to even try to meet the audience’s needs. A comedian nowadays is there to accommodate the audience’s materialism. They don’t have anything on their minds. [A comedian] will get up there and talk for an hour about women like they’re aliens, and that’s his act. I was in New York and I saw Judy Gold and she was complaining that CNN runs that line of headlines at the bottom of the screen—is that really what’s wrong? I just don’t think there’s any cultural depth perception anymore. Even the guys at “The Daily Show” aren’t making fun of the worst of [political wrongdoing]. Maybe they should just do more of what the real news doesn’t do. Those guys at CBS really ended [the Vietnam War]—Rather, Morley Safer and John Hart—by showing us what was going on. Everyday we hear that a bunch of American soldiers got killed, but we don’t see anything. You will on Al-Jazeera.

Posted by Ted Mills at 11:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Most MSM news run with the "but how will it affect you, the consuming consumer?" angle. This brief essay by someone called Trapper John on Daily Kos has this important point to make about the UAW and its history:

The UAW was at the heart of the creation of what we know as the American middle class -- more than any other force in society, it institutionalized the idea that workers should be entitled to health care, vacation, and a secure and comfortable retirement.  Before the rise of the UAW, blue-collar workers had no hope of securing their family and their future, and lived in constant fear of injury or layoff, with no prospect of anything resebling "retirement."  The UAW changed that.  The UAW made sure that the workers at the base of the postwar boom got their share.  The UAW made it possible for a man like my grandfather, a brilliant guy from the Irish ghetto in Buffalo who never had the opportunity to study past high school, to send every single one of his kids to college.  And the victories won by the UAW bore fruit well beyond the homes of their members -- because of the size and importance of the union, every UAW contract had a massive ripple effect.  Employers in other industries -- even non-union employers -- had to raise their standards to attract employees.  In short, the UAW allowed workers to get a taste of a life where leisure was possible, where relaxation and economic security were something that could be earned with hard work, and where their labor was treated with honor and dignity.

Posted by Ted Mills at 01:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

British journalist Johaan Hari went undercover on a sea cruise for readers of the National Review. It's a trip into the Heart of Darkness of rich, mostly white, fascist America. Oh for a torpedo!

Ship of Fools: Setting Sail With ‘The National Review’
I am traveling on a bright white cruise ship with two restaurants, five bars, a casino - and 500 readers of the National Review. Here, the Iraq war has been “an amazing success”. Global warming is not happening. The solitary black person claims, “If the Ku Klux Klan supports equal rights, then God bless them.” And I have nowhere to run.

Posted by Ted Mills at 06:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The statement isn't new or surprising. What is surprising is where it comes from: John S. Koppel, who currently works at the very Department of Justice on which he lays down the smack. This is serious business:

The Denver Post - Bush justice is a national disgrace

The sweeping, judicially unchecked powers granted under the Patriot Act should neither have been created in the first place nor permanently renewed thereafter, and the Act - which also contributed to the ongoing contretemps regarding the replacement of U.S. attorneys, by changing the appointment process to invite political abuse - should be substantially modified, if not scrapped outright. And real, rather than symbolic, responsibility should be assigned for the manifold abuses. The public trust has been flagrantly violated, and meaningful accountability is long overdue. Officials who have brought into disrepute both the Department of Justice and the administration of justice as a whole should finally have to answer for it - and the misdeeds at issue involve not merely garden-variety misconduct, but multiple "high crimes and misdemeanors," including war crimes and crimes against humanity.

I realize that this constitutionally protected statement subjects me to a substantial risk of unlawful reprisal from extremely ruthless people who have repeatedly taken such action in the past. But I am confident that I am speaking on behalf of countless thousands of honorable public servants, at Justice and elsewhere, who take their responsibilities seriously and share these views. And some things must be said, whatever the risk.

Posted by Ted Mills at 07:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I wrote my first ever diary/article for Daily Kos, about the polar bear cub story.

Daily Kos: Knut, Polar Bears, and the Right

When does a right-winger suddenly want to save the polar bears? When there's an opportunity to bash "Animal Rights Groups" of course!

Let's follow the story back to the source, then make our way out again!

Click on the link to read the full article.

Posted by Ted Mills at 09:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I know this is small potatoes compared to, gee, I dunno, torture, loss of habeas corpus, domestic spying, etc. bleedin' etc., but pending legislation threatens to kill online streaming radio by asking webmasters for royalties for every listener to an online station. Which, unless you are some corporate anus shitting out Top 40 hot squats (yes, I just said that), means you will have to close down your station. Which means most of NPR's online streams, and for me my beloved KCRW! Sooooooo:

Online Petition
A Save Our Internet Radio blog
An article in today's Salon

It's always something, isn't it?

Posted by Ted Mills at 08:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Riverbend doesn't blog that much in civil wartorn Iraq. But when she does it's not a pretty picture.

Let me clear it up for any moron with lingering doubts: It’s worse. It’s over. You lost. You lost the day your tanks rolled into Baghdad to the cheers of your imported, American-trained monkeys. You lost every single family whose home your soldiers violated. You lost every sane, red-blooded Iraqi when the Abu Ghraib pictures came out and verified your atrocities behind prison walls as well as the ones we see in our streets. You lost when you brought murderers, looters, gangsters and militia heads to power and hailed them as Iraq’s first democratic government. You lost when a gruesome execution was dubbed your biggest accomplishment. You lost the respect and reputation you once had. You lost more than 3000 troops. That is what you lost America. I hope the oil, at least, made it worthwhile.

Posted by Ted Mills at 12:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Stephen Colbert is not just a brilliant comedian, but one of the bravest people this year (in media, you know) after his electrifying speech in front of the National Press Club last weekend. If you haven't seen the video, this tribute page has been set up to guide you to the links. With our fascist "leader" only a few chairs away, Colbert flayed the administration and its lapdog press in his parody Right Winger persona. It was just great, and I won't ruin any of the jokes by printing them here, as they'll lose their effect. Why does it take a comedian to do the press' job, eh?

UPDATE: Graphic found (and presumably created by the fellow) here.

Posted by Ted Mills at 02:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Hell yes it's the cover of Rolling Stone.

Rolling Stone : The Worst President in History?George W. Bush's presidency appears headed for colossal historical disgrace. Barring a cataclysmic event on the order of the terrorist attacks of September 11th, after which the public might rally around the White House once again, there seems to be little the administration can do to avoid being ranked on the lowest tier of U.S. presidents. And that may be the best-case scenario. Many historians are now wondering whether Bush, in fact, will be remembered as the very worst president in all of American history.

Posted by Ted Mills at 03:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

"I've got 34 Scandals but a bitch ain't one!

Hit me!

Oh, and by the way, you're doin' a heckuva job, Brownie. And Rummy. And Cheney.

Also, over at Daily Kos, they are trying to figure out Chimpy's Top 10 Worst Days of 2005.

Was it playing guitar while New Orleans drowned? Was it Cindy Sheehan camping out? Was it Sweet Murtha of God? Was it Libby indicted?

So much to choose from!

Posted by Ted Mills at 12:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Battling numerous ailments and wheelchair-bound, playwright Harold Pinter still delivered a barnstorming critique of American Imperialism.

Art, truth and politics

I put to you that the United States is without doubt the greatest show on the road. Brutal, indifferent, scornful and ruthless it may be but it is also very clever. As a salesman it is out on its own and its most saleable commodity is self love. It's a winner. Listen to all American presidents on television say the words, 'the American people', as in the sentence, 'I say to the American people it is time to pray and to defend the rights of the American people and I ask the American people to trust their president in the action he is about to take on behalf of the American people.'

It's a scintillating stratagem. Language is actually employed to keep thought at bay. The words 'the American people' provide a truly voluptuous cushion of reassurance. You don't need to think. Just lie back on the cushion. The cushion may be suffocating your intelligence and your critical faculties but it's very comfortable. This does not apply of course to the 40 million people living below the poverty line and the 2 million men and women imprisoned in the vast gulag of prisons, which extends across the US.

Posted by Ted Mills at 02:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I had no idea, but this is the third Starbucks that is attempting to be unionized. Plus I really just wanted to include the cool graphic.

Workers at Third U.S. Starbucks Go Union

New York, NY - 25 Starbucks baristas and supporters wearing union pins and hats surrounded the store manager at the Union Square location in Manhattan tonight to announce their membership in the IWW Starbucks Workers Union (www.starbucksunion.org). The workers, joined by union baristas from two other New York Starbucks stores, demanded a guaranteed minimum of 30 hours of work per week and an end to Starbucks' unlawful anti-union campaign. The Union will assail Starbucks with a wide array of actions until the demands are met.

Posted by Ted Mills at 01:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

BoingBoing posted a fascinating article (as opposed to linking to one) that traces the creation of a fake news story. The story of "Black Friday"--the big shopping weekend after Thanksgiving--was already written before the weekend was finished, and was not the work of journalists, but of a press release. How the press release is used without question as "fact" shows how crummy most of our journalism is these days.

Note that this story is built with two pieces of information: it has numbers and it offers an explanation for those numbers. It's really the perfect story, regardless of whether it's true or not. More importantly, the information attempts to provide an answer to a reasonable question: "How busy was Thanksgiving weekend for retailers?" and one can *not* leave the question unanswered. The possible answers are "up, down or flat." The answer "We don't really know" is not acceptable; it's not news. So the press release provides an answer that Thanksgiving Weekend sales were up significantly and an answer that the NRF people like. That answer is also believable because a national industry trade group had real data to back up its claim.

One might also want to point out that there is no real opposing trade group here to offer a counter-claim. Those who don't shop over the weekend aren't represented by anyone with a commercial interest in this question. Also, I should mention that the "big" story the day before Thanksgiving is how many people are traveling for the holidays, and how crowded the roads and airports are. That story doesn't seem to have any impact on the post-Thanksgiving story, which says everyone was shopping.

The NRF "news release" thus becomes news, variously massaged and distributed by news services. You might think of it as a kind of journalistic mash-up.

Posted by Ted Mills at 10:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Not only did Rep. Murtha call for the immediate withdrawal of troops from Iraq--which essentially throws down a very big gauntlet to the ChimpyTwits and ruins what little steam Bush had in his Veterans' Day speech--but he threw in this jab at Dr. Evil:

I like guys who've never been there to criticize us who've been there. I like that. I like guys who got five deferments and never been there, and send people to war, and then don't like to hear suggestions about what need(s) to be done. I resent the fact on Veterans Day he criticized Democrats for criticizing them. This is a flawed policy wrapped in illusion! The American public knows it.

Posted by Ted Mills at 10:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Let's start our Monday with a cheerful little documentary on how the US is using white phosphorous to bomb civilians, one of the reasons it was able to take Fallujah. WP is evil, melt-your-skin-to-the-bone stuff, a little like napalm. So of course the story is off the American news radar. Italian news station RAI have just produced this expose, and put up this English language version for us to see and take in. Full size is 44mb, WMV file. It's gruesome stuff, so don't watch during lunch.

Posted by Ted Mills at 12:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Mike Davis on how the GOP would rather the poor and black never return to New Orleans, thank you.

Gentrifying Disaster

In a recent email to Louisiana officials, FEMA curtly turned down the state’s request for funding to notify displaced residents that they could cast absentee ballots in the city’s crucial February mayoral election. FEMA also declined to share data with local authorities about the current addresses of evacuees.
In the eyes of many local activists, FEMA’s refusal to support the voting rights of evacuees is consistent with a larger pattern of federal inaction and delay that seems transparently designed to discourage the return of Black residents to the city. As one Associated Press dispatch presciently warned, “Hurricane Katrina [may] prove to be the biggest, most brutal urban-renewal project Black America has ever seen.”

Posted by Ted Mills at 09:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Hilarious. The Bush Motorcade snarls traffic, delays everybody, and worse of all ruins a Kindergarten's field trip to the theater. Ho ho ho.

Bush Motorcade Leaves Other Folks Fuming

One hundred Brentwood kindergartners, many dressed in costumes, were all set to go see "The Wizard of Oz" on Friday when their first-ever field trip was blocked by the nation's 43rd president.

They never got to see the wizard.

[snip]

For the children of Kenter Canyon Elementary who had planned to see "The Wizard of Oz" at Pepperdine University, their buses were 90 minutes late. They missed the last performance and will not be given a rain check on $6 tickets.

Posted by Ted Mills at 01:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

First of all, I loved seeing DeLay's arrest photo today--keep smiling, bucky! You'll need it! Second, James Moore breaks down the Plame Case over at the Huffington Post with a most excellent article on an event I hope with flush away some of these evil turds in der White House.

The Most Important Criminal Case in American History

We may stand witness to a definitive American moment of democracy. The son of a New York doorman probably has in his hands, in many ways, the fate of the republic. Because far too many of us know and are aware of the crimes committed by our government in our name, we are unlikely to settle for a handful of minor indictments of bureaucrats. The last thing most of us believe in is the rule of law. We do not trust our government or the people we have elected but our constitution is still very much alive and we choose to believe that destiny has placed Patrick Fitzgerald at this time and this place in our history to save us from the people we elected. If the law cannot get to the truth of what has happened to the American people under the Bush administration, then we all may begin to hear the early death rattles of history’s greatest democracy.

Posted by Ted Mills at 01:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Thanks to Mr. C for the quote:

For in a community in which the ties of family, of caste, of class, and craft fraternities no longer exist people are far too much disposed to think exclusively of their own interests, to become self-seekers practicing a narrow individualism and caring nothing for the public good. Far from trying to counteract such tendencies despotism encourages them, depriving the governed of any sense of solidarity and interdependence; of good-neighborly feelings and a desire to further the welfare of the community at large. It immures them, so to speak, each in his private life and, taking advantage of the tendency they already have to keep apart, it estranges them still more. Their feelings toward each other were already growing cold; despotism freezes them.
Since in such communities nothing is stable, each man is haunted by a fear of sinking to a lower social level and by a restless urge to better his condition. And since money has not only become the sole criterion of a man’s social status but has also acquired an extreme mobility—that is to say is changes hands incessantly, raising or lowering the prestige of individuals and families—everybody is feverishly intent on making money or, if already rich, on keeping his wealth intact. Love of gain, a fondness for business careers, the desire to get rich at all costs, a craving for material comfort and easy living quickly become the ruling passions under a despotic government. [xiii]

Alexis de Tocqueville
The Old Régime and the French Revolution (1856)
(translated by Stuart Gilbert, 1955)
Doubleday Anchor Books, 1955

Posted by Ted Mills at 11:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I've read several posts on the "war porn" available on the NowThat'sFuckedUp site, but Billmon's very long post on the subject says it the best of all. Important reading.

Posted by Ted Mills at 04:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

First of all, there was this piece in Salon yesterday about Bush's Euro summit, written by Sidney Blumenthal. The gist was this:

President Bush has reached a dead end in his foreign policy, but even though he has posed this quandary himself, he has failed to recognize it. His belief that the polite reception to him on his European trip is a vindication of his previous adventures is a vestige of fantasy.

On his trip, Bush hummed a few bars of rapprochement. By their applause the Europeans began to angle him into a corner on Iran. In time Bush must either join the negotiations or regress to neoconservatism, which would wreck the European relationship for the rest of his presidency. If he chooses a course that is not "simply ridiculous," on his next visit the Europeans might be willing to play Beethoven's Third Symphony, the "Eroica."

Our sometimes poster Saruman has replied with this:

I don't think it's wishful thinking so much as I think it's an incomplete analysis of geopolitics and the acknowledgement that Bush is being given a last chance by the Europeans. Blumenthal does not assert that Bush will not choose 'the ridiculous' option of military action, simply that should Bush 'regress to neo-conservatism' he would 'wreck the European relationship for the remainder of his presidency.'

Blumenthal, here, does see the 'ridiculous' as a truly frightening option, as he should. A direct American military operation in Iran might trigger a global war, and no one can envision the consequences of such a confrontation. Rice is playing a stupid, and obvious, game. She and her minions at the NSA disliked Putin, and were unhappy when Bush 'looked into his soul' and decided to play footsie with the former KGB officer. For Rice, the real goal of stirring the pot with references to 'totalitarianism' in Iran could easily be that she hopes to inflame tension with Russia. While the Americans 'won' the Cold War to the extent that the Soviet Union's hold on eastern Europe and the central non-Rus republics (Georgia, Ukraine), Russia remains a world power. Perhaps not yet its own superpower, but it never was such.

There's pretty good evidence (see the issue of the Nation, e.g., 'The Harvard Boys Do Russia,' from the late 1990s) that the IMF/austerity planning done TO Russia under Yeltsin was an attempt to relegate Russia to Third World status. This strategy has failed. Note how aggressively Washington attempted to derail the seizure of Yukos, and the renationalization of Russia's natural gas fields. So, Rice and other ex-Cold Warriors have both a problem and an opportunity: a problem, in that the current leadership (Bush, Cheney) are comfortable with Putin and his 'strong hand,' and an opportunity, if they can re-cast Russia as a global villain. This role would then allow all the Cold War military-industrial infrastructure to crank back up, and the 'outmoded' skills of Rice and Co. would be back in high market demand.

Since Rice, Wolfowitz, John Bolton, and their various adherents, never gave up on Russia as a threat, the role of Iran may well soon become pivotal. Syria and Iran have made some sort of loose anti-US agreement (just what this understanding is remains murky to me) and Russia is about to ink some sort of deal with Iran on nuclear power-plant enhancement. One possible view: Putin is playing open footsie with Iran so as to ensure that Russia is a broker in any IAEA negotiations that take place under the auspices of the U.N. Could be. Could also be that Putin et. al. and sending Rice a message: 'this is still our sphere of influence.' That Russia has forgiven Syria's Cold War debt and pro-rated the interest, allowing Syria to pay 3 billions on 15 billions, is very clearly a sign that Russia is not a 'junior partner' to the US in the Middle East.

There are many ways to interpret this series of actions on Russia's part, and I suspect that Rice's chosen formulation in the speech she made at Sciences Po' is a hint as to her line of thinking: 'totalitarian' indeed. The French interlocutor was not willing to be serious with Blumenthal, in my reading of his piece. The folks at Sciences Po' knew what Rice was getting at: it takes a totalitarian mindset to ink deals with totalitarians. In a sense, she and her crew were outflanked by the wingnuts in using the term 'Islamofascism' rather than 'Islamo-Stalinism,' a formulation that is ridiculous, but that would have given Rice a better meme.

The maneuvering going on right now, however, as Blumenthal rightly points out, is qualitatively different than the period leading up to March 2003. Bush has no resolution from Congress and no platform in the UN. He might be able to get one, but every single Democrat in the Senate except Lieberman (and maybe that freak Biden) would vote Nay, as would the majority of Dems in the House. In addition, I think we might see a significant breakdown in party discipline in the GOP caucus.

The only way Bush could achieve a strong UN resolution would be for Iran do commit an egregious act, such as an actual nuclear weapons test, and they can't: they're years away. What they are not, however, years away from, is fission power plants. This reality in some ways scares Israel and the U.S. more than North Korea's probable but primitive and barely deliverable actual weapons. Why?

Workable, sustainable fission power-plants in Iran will greatly and permanently change Iran's place on the world stage, something that is slowly happening anyway. If Russia and Iran do in fact become partners, I suspect that there may be what amounts to a 'Persian Renaissance,' a flowering of a certain kind of strange new society in the Empire of the Peacock. Real modernization of Iran's infrastructure, and lucrative trade with Russia and India, will actually create a true center of gravity in the Middle East that has nothing to do with the West.

My suspicion is that if this flowering were to go forward unhindered that in a generation, maybe two, the theological basis for Iranian government would be essentially a shell, with a scientific and technical powerhouse underneath: think of an Shi'a Islamic Singapore, in a sense. That to me seems the goal that could unify all Persians, and all Shi'a Arabs, into a realistic coalition, which has obvious implications for Iraq. With the victory of Ibrahim al-Jaafari as Prime Minister in the interim Iraqi National Assembly, the likelihood of a refoundation of a serious bi-national Persian/Shi'a super state just took a big step towards reality.

Technological improvements cascade. The U.S. has created, in the invasion of Iraq, an historical moment that would otherwise have passed: the possibility of a non-democratic, non-Communist, non-totalitarian, but still restrictive and repressive, Shi'a Islamic pole in Iraq/Iran that will pull geo-politics towards itself as the stability and technology of the region expands. Personally, on one level, I think Blumenthal is right: it's too late for the Neoconservatives to carry out their plans with Iran. The U.S. is weakened. Russia is on the ascension in the Caucasus. India has even stopped allowing Westerners to adopt Indian children, a clear move to limit population shifts that India cannot control. These factors represent a kind of slow earthquake, and behind them is the shape of a very different global ordering.

Therefore, at present, what can Rice do? She's rattling the saber, but here I agree with Blumenthal: the moment is passed for an invasion of Iran, unless the Neocons are willing to risk World War III. They may be so willing, and of course the wild card is Ariel Sharon. If he orders massive, unilateral air-strikes on Iran's fission plants, he may well be acting in the role of Gavrillo Princip, and those bombs may be the 'blasts heard round the world' for our generation. As always, speculation is bootless, but it is entertaining.

Posted by Ted Mills at 03:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I don't know if there's a real point to these series of satellite images of the rightwing's favorite places to hang out, but the Eyeball Series is fascinating nonetheless. Gazing at Bush's Crawford ranch, you have to wonder, where is all this "brush" that he is always reportedly "clearing"? I mean, there's nothing for miles. Why is he clearing it? Doesn't he have a groundskeeper? Unless of course "clearing brush" is code for something else...

Posted by Ted Mills at 11:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

No real surprises here, just awful awful awful...

href="http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,6903,1406987,00.html">How
I entered the hellish world of Guantanamo Bay

Martin Mubanga can date the low point of his 33 months at Guantanamo
Bay: 15 June, 2004. That sweltering Cuban morning, he was taken from
the cellblock he was sharing with speakers of the Afghan language
Pashto, none of whom knew English, for what had become his almost
daily interrogation. As usual, his hands were shackled in rigid, metal
cuffs attached to a body belt; another set of chains ran to his
ankles, severely restricting his ability to move his legs. Trussed in
this fashion, he was lying on the interrogation booth
floor.

Posted by Ted Mills at 09:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

More proof that the great battles of the 21st century will be about copyright, and I'm not talking mp3s.

Iraq Farmers are not Celebrating World Food Day
As part of sweeping 'economic restructuring' implemented by the Bush Administration in Iraq, Iraqi farmers will no longer be permitted to save their seeds. Instead, they will be forced to buy seeds from US corporations -- which can include seeds the Iraqis themselves developed over hundreds of years. That is because in recent years, transnational corporations have patented and now own many seed varieties originated or developed by indigenous peoples. In a short time, Iraq will be living under the new American credo: Pay Monsanto, or starve.

On the other hand, who's going to enfore this? Our already stretched and bunkerized military? Monsanto representatives? The village cop?

Posted by Ted Mills at 11:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

You're making stuff up, idiot!

Warning: Contains footage of journalist actually doing his job.

Posted by Ted Mills at 02:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Juan Cole (and by extension Harris and Wright) are correct here on Holiday-meister Bush as his pathetic response to the tsunami tragedy. The Chimp is not known for his compassion, and here's more evidence of that. He doesn't care to respond, not just as a statesman, but as a human being. Apparently, he's being having a good time on the ranch, biking about, resting. Great.

Juan Cole's Informed Comment
As John F. Harris and Robin Wright of the Washington Post cannily note, US President George W. Bush has missed an important opportunity to reach out to the Muslims of Indonesia. The Bush administration at first pledged a paltry $15 million, a mysteriously chintzy response to what was obviously an enormous calamity. Bush himself remained on vacation, and now has reluctantly agreed to a meeting of the National Security Council by video conference. If Bush were a statesman, he would have flown to Jakarta and announced his solidarity with the Muslims of Indonesia (which has suffered at least 40,000 dead and rising).

Indeed, the worst-hit area of Indonesia is Aceh, the center of a Muslim separatist movement, and a gesture to Aceh from the US at this moment might have meant a lot in US-Muslim public relations. Bin Laden and Zawahiri sniffed around Aceh in hopes of recruiting operatives there, being experts in fishing in troubled waters. Doesn't the US want to outflank al-Qaeda? As it is, the president of the United States is invisible and on vacation (unlike several European heads of state), and could think of nothing better to do than announce a paltry pledge. As Harris and Wright rightly say, the rest of the world treated the US much better than this after September 11.

The last sentence is particularly important.

Posted by Ted Mills at 10:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Noam Chomsky brings some holiday cheer:

But what was dramatic about Fallujah was that it was not kept secret. So you could see on the front page of the New York Times, a big picture of the first major�step in the offensive, namely the capture of the Fallujah general hospital. And there�s a picture of people lying on the ground, soldier guarding them, and then there�s a story that tells that patients and doctors were taken from � patients were taken from their beds, patients and doctors were forced to lie on the floor and manacled, under guard, and the picture described it.

The president of the United States is subject to death penalty under US law for that crime � alone. I mean that�s a grave breach of the Geneva Conventions, Geneva Conventions say explicitly and unambiguously that hospitals must be protected, hospitals and medical staff and patients must be protected by all combatants in any conflict. You couldn�t have a more grave breach of the Geneva Conventions than that.

Posted by Ted Mills at 01:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)