Politics of the Guantamo Move

Josh Marshall understands the simple politics of the Guantanamo 14. It's a clear challenge from Bush, who believes that engaging this issue before November will benefit the GOP politically. So now we have to pin our hopes on the integrity of 3 senators. Here's hoping they stand firm.

Coffee Break

Bush admits use of torture in secret CIA prisons.

When Glenn Greenwald and John Podhoretz both believe that Bush is now committed to military action against Iran, it's time to be concerned.

Tony Blair looks ready to cave to pressure and name a departure date.

GOP blocks Rumsfeld no-confidence vote.

Two are dead in a Russian nuclear sub fire.

ABC and the Path to 9/11

So, ABC is marketing this as a "dramatization...not a documentary," which contains "fictionalized scenes." They also claim that it's based on the 9/11 Commission report, although, as the Post notes, the ABC drama and the 9/11 report conflict with each other. Figures such as Richard Clarke, Madeline Albright, and Sandy Berger have disputed key events of the ABC drama. ABC has further inflamed matters by providing sneak previews to right-wing pundits and right-wing blogs, but not allowing former Clinton officials to see the same previews.

First off, why ABC thinks that the five-year anniversary of 9/11 warrants a fictionalized version of the build-up to the attack, rather than a documentary or non-fiction docudrama, is anybody's guess. Second, ABC has clearly betrayed their biases to the world on this. If they were attempting to tell the truth, they would be open to giving advance viewings to all interested and relevant parties, but they're not forthcoming in doing so. How deep in the GOP pockets are they?

ABC and 9/11

Digby asks the right questions: why would ABC choose far-right filmmakers to make a supposed documentary about 9/11? And does this illustrate a pattern of ABC caving to the far right in its programming decisions?

Via Greenwald, we're reminded of CBS caving to the wingers regarding an "insufficiently reverent" docudrama about Reagan. Why do the major networks lose their spine when the right-wing makes a little noise? They're willing to go as far as false historical revisionism to make the Republicans happy.

Seriousness of the Day

From Red State:

A note on this: the Democrats have taken it upon themselves to issue a critique of the President's policy before he gave his speech, which they archly call "Neo-'Con.'" Now I'm as big of a fan of a good pun as anyone, but there is a time and a place for such things. Even if you are awed by the cleverness of the genius who crafted this rapier word play on "conservative" and "confidence trick," you should probably resist the temptation to make a pun the title of your counter-terrorism policy, which you are issuing in an attempt to make voters believe you have a serious alternative to Mr. Bush's strategy to propose. Of course, the Democrats have no such thing.

Malkin Ahmadinejad

Andrew Sullivan finds out just how damningly similar Christianists and Islamists can be.

Homelife of a Justice

What exactly has Justice John Roberts been telling his kids?:

"Let me explain the government to you. There’s God, then there’s the president and then there’s my father.”

— Jack Roberts, 6-year-old son of Chief Justice John Roberts, overheard speaking to one of his young peers on the last day of summer camp

Scarily, Kathryn Lopez thinks that qualifies him as the smartest kid in the country.

Coffee Break

The final decision in the Mexican election should come today.

Kofi Annan will help mediate discussion between Israel and Hezbollah to free the kidnapped soldiers.

Summer break is over for Congress.

GOP puts immigration overhaul on hold in advance on the November elections.

Israel settles in.

Somehow, opium cultivation is up by 59% in Aghanistan.

In better Aghani news, some 200 Taliban fighters are killed.

The Fear of Mark Steyn

Steyn apparently has a problem with the Fox newsman and cameraman participating in a videotaped "conversion" to Islam in order to save their lives. The typically brilliant Glenn Greenwald dismantles Steyn here.

Appeasement

This is a great and much-needed discussion of appeasement. What with Rumsfeld and Cheney bringing out that bogeyman again and again recently, some historical perspective is in order. I particularly like the points about Lyndon Johnson becoming trapped in Vietnam because he didn't want to appear like another Neville Chamberlain and about Reagan making enemies in the 1980s for holding talks with the USSR rather than confronting them militarily. It's good to remember where the fear of appeasement can lead. Don't let Rumsfeld and Co. get away with using the same bogeyman in Iran that they used in the build-up to Iraq.

Seriousness of the Day

Jonah:

Alas, if you spend even a fraction of time reading the comments sections at even eggheady leftwing blogs (Tapped, for example) your faith in the good will and intellectual seriousness of the opposition will not be bolstered.

Now, for something serious: Community colleges.

Coffee Break

Steve Irwin, 'crocodile hunter', killed by a stingray.

The NYT gives a breakdown of the House seats up for grabs.

The Battle of Seattle is to get the Hollywood treatment.

More trouble at TNR.

Your Daily Doone.

Everyone ever arrested was was the No. 2 al-Qaeda man.

Europe attacks moon.

What Hannity Would Die For

Via Atrios:

Sean Hannity thinks that preventing Pelosi from becoming House leader is worth dying for.

Good to see his priorities are straight.

And meanwhile, of the many people Ann Coulter would like to kill, Lincoln Chafee is but one.

Coffee Break

Another day, another bold California initiative.

Sanctions it is.

Pelosi says Rumsfeld's judgment is impaired.

Nobody can stop our children from calling Bush a lying drunk-driver chicken-hawk in chief who abused marijuana and cocaine.

Jonathan Woodward on justice in Uganda.

Annan scolds Israel over the use of cluster bombs in Lebanon.

What Year Do You Think It Is?

I missed this when it originally came out, but I was amused by the clever categorization of foreign policy types. I guess I'm a 1948ist, if any of those. I'm not sure it's helpful to think of the novel terrorism threat in any of these terms, though.

Iran Shelling Iraq

When I read this a few days back, I was amazed that I hadn't seen anything about this in the American press. If it's true that Iran has been shelling Kurds in Northern Iraq, and that Iran and Turkey are talking about conducting operations across the Iraqi border to root out Kurdish rebels, how can this not be pertinent to the US operations there? You would think that America's current enemy #1 shelling the country in which more than 100,000 US soldiers are stationed and which is already in a low-level civil war would be setting off a lot more alarms. Not to mention, Kurdistan has pretty much been the only stable region of Iraq until now. So how is the US addressing these actions?

Press Conferences

From the NYT:

The free-wheeling news conference veered off into an unruly question and answer session with reporters praising the president, questioning the president and some jumping from their seats, demanding that their questions be taken. The president politely admonished one reporter saying he needed to behave better.

One reporter said he had no question, but wanted to recite poetry.

“I was hoping when you arrived I would share my pain with you,” said a reporter for a small newspaper called The Path of the People, when he stood to ask a question. “Now I have no pain in my heart, only happiness.”

Did Jeff Gannon move to Iran?

Holder Who Dare Not Speak His Name

It looks like there's finally an answer to the Secret Holder mystery. TPMmuckraker is reporting that Ted Stevens is the man. This isn't really a surprise, what with Stevens being a petty curmudgeon, legendary pork-loving politician, and generally the worst senator in the country. It is odd that this article has gone unnoticed for the past couple of weeks while bloggers tried to eliminate senators one by one by calling their offices.

The entire secret holds thing seems very odd and mysterious to me. I have to admit, I didn't realize that legislation could be stopped in such an opaque way. And it's pretty funny that a piece of legislation encouraging transparency in government is being blocked by a "secret hold."

Coffee Break

Because I'm in Britain, this is what I see if I try to read this article. Here's the reason why.

Classy Rumsfeld.

Richard Armitage admits what Corn and Isikoff have reported, i.e. that he was the initial leak source for Plame's CIA identity.

Another investigation of Kenneth Tomlinson reveals his abuses at the Broadcasting Board of Governors and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Universal Music aims to steal Apple's thunder.

So which is it, the Freedom Falcons, The Freedom Hawks, or the Liberation Hawks?

Coffee Break

The California legislature prepares to do what the federal government won't.

If you decide to form a violent separatist group, don't give it a name that sounds like an American junior high football team.

After ten million articles about John Karr and utter media devotion to this case, charges against him are dropped.

26 more bodies are found in Baghdad.

The NYT has a piece on Bill Clinton's AIDS work.

This is odd timing on the part of Mr. Kerry.

Warren Steed Jeffs is in custody.

With a Thursday deadline looming, Ahmadinejad proposes a televised debate with Bush.

Jill Carroll

The release of the Fox News reporter and camera-man, coupled with the recently published details of Jill Carroll's kidnapping and release, reminds me of the right-wing blogosphere's widespread reaction to Carroll's ordeal. Think Progress kept track of the attacks. The gist is that Jill Carroll was somehow understood by right-wingers to be sympathetic to the terrorists and their cause. The most egregious attacks on Carroll came from Jonah Goldberg and John Podhoretz of The Corner, and Don Imus's producer, who likened Carroll to a suicide bomber. Even when the truth came out, that Carroll was forced at gunpoint to make propoganda videos and lied in her first public interview because she feared for her safety, the Cornerites in particular were unapologetic about their previous statements.

It's interesting that they slander someone so awfully and with no evidence to support their accusations, and yet when reporters from a Bush-friendly news outlet are kidnapped and forced to take part in videotaped propoganda, there's no mention of mental instability or Stockholm Syndrome or hidden sympathies. Why is that?

Update: Oh, I just found some new NRO stuff. First, we have Cliff May announcing the release of the Fox News guys, but lamenting that the reporter and camera-man said that their ordeal shouldn't dissuade reporters from covering Gaza and telling Palestinian stories to the world. May apparently thinks that the kidnapping may have badly affected the mens' impartiality, making them more sympathetic to their kidnappers.

Then we have Andy McCarthy, who takes the cake for NRO hypocrisy, as he accuses Reuters of bias for reporting that a video had appeared in which the men appeared to convert to Islam. After all the mud-slinging that NRO aimed at Jill Carroll for wearing Muslim garb and appearing in propoganda videos, they accuse Reuters of bias for reporting that the Fox guys did something similar? That's fucking rich. And I wonder if McCarthy will apologize after reading this. The reason the original article didn't mention that they converted at gunpoint is because the article was published before the men were released and held a press conference. NRO idiots.

Coffee Break

Richard Armitage was the first, but not the last, official to leak Plame's identity.

The American version of The Office gets some recognition.

Fox News journalists are released after vowing to convert to Islam.

Kofi Annan is in Lebanon to shore up the ceasefire talks.

This P-I commentary on Katrina reminds me of an old Mike Myers sketch from SNL. Anyone remember the hyper hypo?

The US is preparing to test its missile defense system again, this time with lowered expectations: "we're not going to try to hit the target"

Marine soldiers guarding Saddam Hussein have reportedly been forcing him to repeatedly watch the South Park movie which features him as the devil's lover.

Chutzpah

Indeed.

Valerie's identity was exposed by Scooter Libby, Dick Cheney, Karl Rove and others in Bush Administration in the summer of 2003 [as] she was doing undercover work to monitor, detect, and interdict nuclear technology going to Iran.

Now House members are criticizing US intelligence agencies for not coming up with enough damning evidence about Iran's nuclear activities. Memo to the GOP: maybe if you let our intelligence agencies do their jobs without injecting political sabotauge into the works, things would be different.

Also, since when do you come up with a foreign policy game plan and then wait for the intelligence to conform to the plan, rather than the other way around? What an ass-backwards administration we have.

Bad Cat

This is a great story. A 4-year-old boy camping with his family on Vancouver Island was attacked by a cougar, but his dad sprinted over and jumped full on its chest, chasing the cougar away and leaving the boy with only very minimal injuries. The boy's response: "It's a bad cat that made a bad choice."

His dad surely deserves consideration for father of the year.

Fortune Cookies

This is a pretty funny dig at neoconservative arguments, and I think it also hits on an important truth: when neocons go on and on about how serious they are, how their arguments are serious and that only other serious thinkers can appreciate them, and that realists and progressives aren't serious enough, the seriousness basically boils down to those three little words that Michael Brendan tacks on. They think of themselves as more serious because all of their solutions are militaristic. Maybe they should substitute "serious" with "grim."

I Want a Pair of These

This is awesome, and Stephon Marbury is my new hero. I know what I want for Christmas.

Turkey

I think Turkey was already doomed on its ambition to join the EU, but this would seal it.

Electra Glide in Blue

One of the very best things I've seen in this year's festival is the film Electra Glide in Blue, part of the retrospective of early 1970s lost classics. It's unbelievable that this movie is not more well-known, because the acting by Robert Blake is perfect, the cinematography by Conrad Hall is breath-taking, and the screenplay is just beautiful, striking the perfect balance of humor, drama and majesty. It feels very contemporary too, like something the Coen Brothers might achieve at their best. This was a one-off by director James Guercio and it's a shame that he didn't pursue film-making. I feel very lucky to have caught this one on the big screen.

John Banville

I saw an interview with John Banville this morning, as part of the Edinburgh Book Festival. I've been a fan of his for several years, since I lived in Ireland and read Book of Evidence and the Revolutions Trilogy, and it was exciting to see the writer sometimes referred to as the greatest living novelist of the English language. The conversation mostly centered around The Sea, his novel which won the Booker last year. He gave some great insight into the writing process, was witty and friendly and seemed like a man with genuine curiosity and astonishment at the things around him. But I have to say, both the interviewer and the audience questioners were horrible. The worst question from the interviewer: "You said a bit ago that you've always loved watching the sky and the clouds. And yet you called your last book The Sea. Why didn't you call it The Sky, or The Sea and the Sky?" And one audience member saw fit to waste all of our time by asking Banville which recent detective novels he liked. Banville did not answer.

Donkeyfuhrer

Via Atrios, I found this bit of GOP insanity: the Republican National Committee website posted a photo of several high-profile Democrats including Howard Dean, but in this photo they drew a faint Hitler-style moustache on Dean. Someone must've come to their senses, because it was soon removed, but luckily some bloggers copied the photo before they replaced it with a moustache-less one.

Click here to compare the two photos. Mind you, this isn't from some far-right blogger. This was posted on the Republicans' own national website.

This comes after Fox News anchor John Gibson goes on this tirade:

"Hang on, Dems. Here come the Pol Pots of your party. And if you were for national security, you are now emphatically not. Or else. Remember the mountain of skulls in Cambodia? It's the Democrats new reality now that the anti-war rabble has tasted blood by taking Lieberman down,"

Yes, they think of Democrats as akin to Hitler and the Khmer Rouge.

The Fear of Stefan Sharkansky and Co.

It's not a helpful fear.

I had remembered that Stefan Sharkansky wrote a few pieces in The Stranger a while back and was curious to check out his blog, Sound Politics. I was intrigued that Sharkansky was writing as a staunch conservative in the progressive bastion of Seattle and was curious to see his blog's conservative take on politics both local and beyond. But I was a bit shocked by what I found there.

Apparently, Stefan's favorite blogging theme right now is that the Seattle area Muslim community has not been apologetic enough in the aftermath of last week's Jewish center shooting. He has particularly singled out a Jeff Siddiqui of American Muslims of Puget Sound. Note Stefan's cute headline about 'reluctantly expressing sympathy,' trying to make Saddiqui seem very cold-hearted about the shooting. Here's Saddiqui's actual point:

We struggled for some time about whether a statement should be sent out or not, because we would like this to be recognized for the grievous crime that it is, rather than an event that calls for an explanation or apology by Muslims.

In the end, it was decided that we need to extend our sympathies and good will to those who were victimized by this crime because it would prevent misunderstandings between the faiths.

Now, I don't know the first thing about Siddiqui and am not going to try to judge him in general, but if we're just discussing his words, then Stefan is way off the mark in his interpretation. Siddiqui is saying that it should not be assumed that all Muslims are sympathetic with the gunman unless they explicitly come out and say that they are not.

But Stefan plods on. Apparently 9 days before the shooting, Siddiqui had a letter to the editor published in the Everett Herald, in which he wrote the following:

I grieve that once more Muslims will sit it out and watch the slaughter of Muslims and Arabs (many are Christians) [in Lebanon] and only grumble among ourselves.

I fear there may be some idiotic Muslim who will decide to take matters into his own hand and perpetrate some terrible act on people whose only guilt is inaction (just like the Muslims themselves). This will only fuel more fire against us.

His letter can be read in its entirety here. Stefan's comment is just plain nuts, saying that Siddiqui was making veiled threats and that it's 'not unreasonable' to surmise that the gunman was inspired by Siddiqui. In fact, Siddiqui's point seems to be that terrorists like Naveed Haq, the Seattle shooter, are not only committing terrible acts but also causing a great deal of grief for other Muslims, because the community holds all Muslims responsible. And in that respect Siddiqui is remarkably prescient, because that's exactly what Stefan and his crew are doing.

And then Stefan goes from the ridiculous to the sublime, apparently outraged that Muslims are organizing a peace march in Seattle. Stefan even puts 'peace march' in scare quotes. Shouldn't he be celebrating these Muslims? What do you want, Stefan?

I encourage you to read a few of the comment threads, as much as you can stomach. It gives an interesting taste of how deranged the far-right is in the US. I posted a few comments challenging Stefan's arguments and was threatened with decapitation and having a bullet put through my head. And these are the folks who brush all Muslims as being violent and sick.

It's sad, but people like Stefan and many of his readers seem to have sold their souls, thinking that doing so is necessary to fight the war on terror. Should we be concerned about fanatical Muslims? Absolutely - just look at the news today. But Stefan and many of his readers are demented and dangerous and afraid of everything, and they're absolutely not helpful, to say the least.

Update: I also found this, which Sharkansky seems to ignore.

British Muslims

Timothy Garton Ash should be required reading today.

Trans-Atlantic Plot

This is amazing and heartening news that authorities were able to thwart what sounds like a massive terrorist operation; impressive that the intelligence was there and that they could act on it successfully. It's also pretty scary for those of us who regularly fly from the UK back to North America. Sounds like those journeys will be much different in the immediate future, too (BA is not even allowing hand luggage).

I haven't heard yet if this was a joint US/UK intelligence operation, but the threat levels in both countries are at maximum.

Lamont Wins

In the US, the rate of incumbents being returned to office is pretty astronomical, so the fact that 3 incumbents lost primaries last night is huge. And the most significant by far is Lieberman's loss to newcomer Ned Lamont, which serves as an enormous boon to the grassroots and netroots progressive movements and bodes well for November. Yes, the Democrat tent needs to be big enough to support both those who initially supported the war and those who didn't, but it doesn't need to be big enough to support those who think it's going just fine today. Lieberman is delusional, he is blindly supportive of Bush, and he has gone so far as to warn that any criticism of Bush and the war is dangerous. Obviously, he had to go. Hopefully now he'll change his mind about running independent.

But it's interesting to see right-wingers try to spin this as good news for them, that 'the loony left' are taking over the party again. And this spin gets under some people's skin. Check out the comment thread in the Stranger when the decision was announced and you can see that people like commenter Fnarf buy heavily into this line. And I'm convinced that the only danger for Dems is precisely people like Fnarf believing this spin, which subsequently makes us seem fractured. You can see how this discussion unfolded in the thread linked above.

Anyway, it's refreshing to see one conservative admitting that the Lamont win is very bad for the GOP:

Well, someone has to be gloomy about this, so it might as well be me: I don't think that Lamont's win bodes well for the GOP in November. In fact, I think it's very bad news indeed. Yes, yes, Connecticut may not be typical of the nation, and, yes, yes, voters enthusiastic enough to vote in a primary may not be representative of the electorate as a whole, but add in some of the other results from last night, and Lamont's win adds yet more weight to the idea that "throw the bums out" is going to be an important factor this fall. As the National Journal asked last night, "when was the last time in a non-redistricting midterm that 3+ incumbent members of Congress have lost in primaries?" Clue: Newt Gingrich knows the answer.

Then there's the fact that the Lamont win makes it even more likely that the November vote will be a referendum on (a) a president whose ratings are, well, choose your grim adjective and (b) a war for which public support has ebbed substantially.

There are plenty of ways that the topic of debate could shift in a more favorable direction (for the Republicans) between now and November, but it's difficult to use last night's result as evidence for that case.

Border Force

This decision by Lebanon to send 15,000 troops to the Southern border seems like the first major breakthrough we've had in ending this conflict. A positive aspect of having a large Lebanese force there is that if Hezbollah continues fighting after a cease-fire is brokered, and Lebanese troops are stationed in the danger zone, it could turn Lebanese sentiment against Hezbollah again, which would be great. Of course, the preferred outcome is that Hezbollah agrees to a ceasefire.

Having heard the news so far on the draft UN resolution, however, I'm not certain that the US and Israel want a ceasefire at all. The keys words are Rice's:

We'll see who is for peace and who isn't.

Well, that's fine, but it reminds me of just the kind of trip-wire this administration loves, like the UN resolution regarding Iraq which they knew Iraq would not heed. Well, if they craft a ceasefire resolution that is pro-Israeli enough, they know that Hezbollah will not heed it and that it will open doors toward further action, perhaps against Syria and Iran. If that seems far-fetched, check this post again.

Edinburgh Festival - Smoking

This is the most hilarious example of Godwin's Law that I've seen in a while:

[Performer Les] Smith told an Edinburgh paper: "It would have delighted Adolf Hitler. Adolf Hitler, as you know, was anti-smoking. You couldn't smoke at Adolf Hitler's dining table, so he'd be pleased, wouldn't he? Congratulations Scotland."

Lieberman/Lamont

Well, today's the day then. Apparently the most recent poll shows Lieberman with a bounce and the linked article says he's optimistic (of course). The pro-Lamont blogs have been trying to dampen expectations a bit the past few days, partly to fight complacency and convince Lamont supporters that they need turn out in numbers, but also because I'm sure some of these bloggers know that Lieberman still has a very good chance of taking it all. And they don't want that result to be seen as a failure, since the movement that brought Lamont from zero to credible challenger has been pretty amazing, and that alone is a success for the movement that opposed the Iraq War and is tired of Lieberman's deference to Bush.

Festival

The Edinburgh Festival, 'the biggest assembly of arts in the world', is just under way and the crowds are already overwhelming. We're going to this tonight and I'm excited about that. They've come the last couple years and got rave reviews.

Also saw Talk Radio, the Eric Bogosian play directed by Stewart Lee. I thought the performances were great, especially Phil Nichol as Ray Champlain, though had some qualms with parts of the writing.

Anyway, lots of good happenings. Check it out.

Neocon Ambition

This Salon piece nicely captures how fucking nuts these guys are.

Heat: Fake Controversy

It's interesting that a few conservative commentators insist that there is still no scientific consensus on global warming and its ramifications. Add to that list of commentators one Tim Graham of NRO, who seems never to have heard of the European heatwave of 2003 and doesn't seem to believe that it killed so many:

The Washington Post just throws out today that 52,000 Europeans died of heat in the summer of 2003. Ex-squeeze me?

He then links to some conservative media watchdog that dismisses the source of those stats as hard-core greenies.

It doesn't take much googling to find the official numbers on how many died that summer. In France alone, the Health Ministry's own tally was astounding:

France's summer heatwave killed a total of 14,800 people, according to official figures released on Thursday.
The figure covers 1-30 August, including a fortnight of record-breaking heat.

News Busters doesn't seem like much of a watchdog. Sorry, Tim.

John Pilger

I've started reading The New Statesman recently, and find it to be pretty informative and more or less balanced on foreign affairs issues. But I was pretty stunned by how awful John Pilger's piece in the current issue is. He's passionately anti-Israeli with nary a condemning word about Hezbollah in Lebanon or Hamas in Gaza, and he writes with all the subtlety of a battering ram. Here are some of the worst bits:

An Israeli soldier belonging to an invasion force was captured and held, legitimately, as a prisoner of war. Reported as a "kidnapping", this set off yet more slaughter of Palestinian civilians.

This reminds me of a CNN International bit that I saw on the first day or so of Israeli response to Hezbollah. The anchor (Fanulah something or other?) interviewed the Israeli ambassador to Britain and was literally yelling at him, asking him how many innocent civilians he had killed so far. Mind, this was before Israel had accelerated to a full-out response and before they started tripping all over themselves. To be sure, Israel has lacked any strategy and shown true cruelty these past weeks, though not at that point. The anchor was just determined to villify Israel from the get-go. But the interesting thing is, they then cut to a demonstration in Trafalgar Square against the Israeli response, and they interviewed a Respect MP and a leader of the British Muslim Council. These interviewees also referred to Gilad Shalit as a legimiate prisoner of war, as John Pilger does above. The correspondent allowed them to go on for a long while with an anti-Israel tirade, then simply thanked them for their comments without so much as a challenge.

So where does this idea that Shalit was a legitimate prisoner of war come from? Palestinian militants tunneled under an Israeli base, killed several soldiers, kidnapped Shalit and withdrew to Gaza with him. Pilger endorses this is as legitimate. Something to remember when you read his stuff.

Another bit from Pilger:

"I want nobody to sleep at night in Gaza," declared the Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, as children went out of their minds. In their defence, the Palestinians fired a cluster of Qassam missiles and killed eight Israelis: enough to ensure Israel's victimhood on the BBC; even Jeremy Bowen struck a shameful "balance", referring to "two narratives". The historical equivalent is not far from that of the Nazi bombardment and starvation of the Jewish Warsaw Ghetto. Try to imagine that described as "two narratives".

Shameful words from Mr. Pilger. Comparing Jews to Nazis is a classic tactic of the anti-Semite, and it's amazing that the New Statesman finds this fit to print

Reverse Ink Spot

Ack:

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on Monday directed his country's military to heighten its readiness, vowing to back Lebanese resistance against Israel, the state news agency SANA reported.

On Tuesday, a senior Iranian cleric in Tehran called on Muslim states to arm Hezbollah in the struggle, according to an Iranian Students News Agency report monitored by The Associated Press.

"Now, it is expected that Muslim states not spare any assistance to Hezbollah and the Lebanese people, especially providing weapons, medicine and food," Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati told ISNA.

Gibson

From the NYT:

“I don’t think he should be doing a film on the Holocaust,” said Rabbi Marvin Hier, founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, who had previously criticized what he saw as anti-Semitic overtones in Mr. Gibson’s hit, “The Passion of the Christ.” “It would be like asking someone associated with the K.K.K. to do a movie on the African-American experience.”

It's astounding that ABC ever thought that was a good idea.

Qana

From the beginning of this conflict, I've believed that Israel had a right to respond to Hezbollah's incursion into Northern Israel. And I believed, and still believe, that those who immediately criticized Israel's decision to attack in the first day or two after the attack began are simply pre-disposed to opposing anything that Israel does in its own defense. But Israel has made an unbelievable muck-up of this. Has Hezbollah suffered any significant setbacks? And even if you believe that "collateral damage" is warranted in order to make in-roads to Hezbollah's hideouts, has anything good come from these attacks? I can't recall reading or hearing anything that makes me think the past two or three weeks have strengthened Israel in any way.

I see that the shameless folks at The Corner have put up several posts touting Israel's report that Hezbollah was launching from Qana, as if that settles the matter.

Israel's actions just serve, yet again, to make our enemies in the war on terror believe that we really don't know what we're doing.

Goss - Breaking News

Wow, CNN is reporting that Porter Goss has resigned as head of the CIA. This could mean anything, but his name has been linked to the growing Watergate prostitution scandal. This could be huge if scalps as big as Goss's are taken in this scandal.

Update: If you want some background.

Comment is Free

The Guardian's new group blog is still getting up on its feet, but a glance at the list of contributors shows how good it could potentially be. Timothy Garton Ash in particular is always balanced and intriguing when he writes in the paper. Not sure how some of these writers will transfer to the blog format, though.

Eyman Idiot

Recently, the Washington legislature passed House Bill 2661, outlawing discrimination against homosexuals in matters of housing, banking and employment. The passage was largely thanks to the tireless work of Ed Murray, who predicted on the day of its passage that there would be many challenges ahead. Well, we didn't have to wait long. Tim Eyman has announced that he will put an initiative on the ballot this Fall to strike down the bill. First of all, David Schmader hits it right on the head when he says that having minority rights determined purely by the majority is a bit fucked. Can you imagine if, after forced desegregation, Southern states were simply able to put popular initiatives on the ballot saying in so many words "nope, you know what, we're not crazy about this"? Good government looks after the minority when majority opinion threatens.

Anyway, when I heard about jackass Eyman's intention, I began to wonder how you could possibly justify such a move in the press. I mean, is there any appeal other than to straight-up bigotry? How can you possibly argue that anti-discrimination laws are undesirable? So I did a bit of searching and found that, unsurprisingly, he's not providing any explanation:

Eyman would not discuss his motivation for filing the measures except to say that voters should have the right to decide an issue this important and that "I do not believe a majority of voters are in favor of preferential treatment based on what group they belong to."

Uh, jackass, anti-discrimination isn't the same as preferential treatment. What this means is that you can't decide not to rent an apartment to a couple solely because they are gay, or to deny them a job for which they are qualified for the same reason. He doesn't attempt any other explanation because we all know that it boils down to conservative bigotry. The Christian Coalition of Washington is backing Eyman's effort. So, fuck you to Tim Eyman and to any so-called Christians who support discrimination.

Cuba and Denmark

The Poor Man is one of the funniest and most entertaining blogs out there, and one of the few that I read on a daily basis, but I gotta take him to task for this post on the Muhammad cartoon issue. Seems like a pretty dodgy game of moral equivalence that he's playing. Yes, the situation in Guantanamo Bay is outrageous; so is the violence being threatened and carried out by Islamist protesters. Neither justifies the other. If the Left cedes the protection of freedom of speech to the Right, then we're truly lost as a movement. It should be possible to recognize the Bush administration's abuses of power without subsequently bending over to anyone who challenges our ideals.

Extraordinary Rendition

If the moral case against torture isn't persuasive enough for you, here's strong evidence that it doesn't work, either. This particular case is apparently just coming to light, but we've known for months that our torture techniques are derived from techniques designed to extract false confessions. First, today's piece:

The Bush administration based a crucial prewar assertion about ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda on detailed statements made by a prisoner while in Egyptian custody who later said he had fabricated them to escape harsh treatment, according to current and former government officials.

Jane Mayer has been reporting on this phenomenon in several outlets, especially the New Yorker. Here's a bit from her February expose on extraordinary rendition:

Ten hours after landing in Jordan, Arar said, he was driven to Syria, where interrogators, after a day of threats, “just began beating on me.” They whipped his hands repeatedly with two-inch-thick electrical cables, and kept him in a windowless underground cell that he likened to a grave. “Not even animals could withstand it,” he said. Although he initially tried to assert his innocence, he eventually confessed to anything his tormentors wanted him to say. “You just give up,” he said. “You become like an animal.”

There you have it. Our intelligence-gathering bodies are no longer in the business of gathering intelligence, but rather creating false intelligence. Not particularly useful for fighting a war on terror, but a handy way to skew information to support your pre-set agenda.

Privatisation and the Wider Good

I thought this was an interesting Newsweek interview with the head of Fred Hutch on the development of an AIDS vaccine - particularly this bit:

There are several aspects organizationally of how we make vaccines that have been very tough. Initially we left it to the private sector. In retrospect, that was not the best idea.

Why?

Society will benefit more from an HIV vaccine than any company will.

Conservatives may tend to believe that there isn't anything that couldn't be improved and streamlined via privatization, but this is a clear counter-example to that viewpoint.

Murtha

I think pieces are starting to come together which help explain why the GOP went so quickly and intensely on the offensive in smearing John Murtha after he suggested that troops should begin withdrawing within 6 months. It seems that this is precisely what the GOP wants to propose themselves, and the last thing they want is to have it seem that they were bowing to Democratic pressure. Thus the House resolution that the GOP put forward in an attempt to embarrass Murtha (a resolution no Dem was suggesting, i.e. no one wanted immediate withdrawal). Thus Rep. Jean Schmidt calling Murtha a coward. And then Bush saying that he will only withdraw based on the advice of Iraqi leaders, and subsequently saying that withdrawal will be based solely on advice of US officers in the field. So expect Bush to report in the next few months that they have been given the go-ahead for the beginning of withdrawals (in time for midterms), and get ready for the GOP attempting to claim that this was their idea and that Dems had wanted immediate withdrawal regardless of the consequences (obviously not true).

Murtha was on All Things Considered today.

2 P.M.

Steve Clemons advocating the citizens' arrest of Ahmed Chalabi is one of the most brilliant things I've heard in a while.

Select

Hooray for the NYT's bold venture into irrelevance!

What Would Philip Do?

Philip Pullman, author of the great His Dark Materials series, has an op-ed piece in The Guardian today about how the UK Conservative party can regain power by revisiting some old conservative ideas which have no manifestation in modern conservatism. This seems very relevant to the post-Katrina debate about conservative social policy in the US.

Similarly, it's a conservative idea that provision of such things as healthcare and education should not be the subject of trading in the marketplace. The old-fashioned idea here is that looking after the sick and educating the young are matters of charity, not of business: you do them because they are good things to do, not because you can see profits to be made.

I would be curious to find out if anyone has written extensively on how so many conservatives and especially Christian conservatives became associated with you're-on-your-own social darwinism and market determinism.

Anyway, we'll see if the Tories take heed of Pullman's advice. Of course, he doesn't mention this, but a truly ascendant party would also have a magical knife that would allow them to visit multiple universes at will.

Heckuva

As the countdown begins to Brownie's Medal of Freedom and eventual replacement of Sandra Day O'Connor on the bench, I wonder why I keep expecting Ahmed Chalabi to be named as the new FEMA director. It fits some sort of pattern, though I can't figure out what that is. Spectactularly defying expectations, I guess. Ah, no - W's blind loyalty to the most discredited and slimy of his friends. Yeah, that's it.

Public Service

Simon Schama in the (new Berliner!) Guardian today, on helpful humane government:

Historians ought not to be in the prophecy business but I'll venture this one: Katrina will be seen as a watershed in the public and political life of the US, because it has put back into play the profound question of American government. Ever since Ronald Reagan proclaimed that government was not the answer but the problem, conservatism has stigmatised public service as parasitically unpatriotic, an anomaly in the robust self-sufficiency of American life. For the most part, Democrats have been too supine, too embarrassed and too inarticulate to fight back with a coherent defence of the legitimacy of democratic government. Now, if ever, is their moment; not to revive the New Deal or the Great Society (though unapologetically preserving social security might be a start) but to stake a claim to being the party that delivers competent, humane, responsive government, the party of public trust.

Clueless, Compassionless Conservatism

From the Houston Chronicle blog via The Washington Note, this shocking Tom DeLay anecdote:

DeLay to evacuees: 'Is this kind of fun?' U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay's visit to Reliant Park this morning offered him a glimpse of what it's like to be living in shelter.
While on the tour with top administration officials from Washington, including U.S. Secretary of Labor Elaine L. Chao and U.S. Treasury Secretary John W. Snow, DeLay stopped to chat with three young boys resting on cots.

The congressman likened their stay to being at camp and asked, "Now tell me the truth boys, is this kind of fun?"

They nodded yes, but looked perplexed.

Yes, Mr. DeLay, we're learning outdoor skills!

Survival

Cornel West in the Observer today, on the nature of conservative social policy.

Katrina

I was preparing to go to Lisbon and was in Lisbon during the hurricane and its immediate aftermath and that's why there hasn't been a post on it up till now. There is a massive amount of things to comment on, many of which have already been commented on more eloquently than I can muster at the moment. The onset of flooding and descent into chaos was horrifying, made more so by the obvious lack of governmental intervention during the first days. The lack of both short-term and long-term preparations is beyond baffling, it is infuriating. Both in Edinburgh and Lisbon I had conversations with people asking why my government was so slow to move, and all I could tell them was that most Americans were asking the same questions and being increasingly strident in demanding answers as the hours and days went by. Such a shameful episode for America, to fail our most vulnerable people this profoundly.

From my perspective, there are two major failures. The first one is a governmental organizational failure, and that is obvious enough and has been commented on everywhere. There was lack of communication, lack of preparation, lack of mobilization, and no over-arching game-plan agreed on between various levels of government. But the second failure is an ideological one, and is a kind of rot that has been setting in in our country. It's this large-scale shift to the right, in which the gospel of small government, gutted infrastructure, tax cuts for the wealthy, reduced social spending, social darwinism, opposition to equal opportunity measures, denial of affordable health care, and massively expensive (not to mention horrendously misguided and dangerous) foreign policy has been pushed forth repeatedly. Like David Wessel wrote in the Wall Street Journal (article subscription only), Katrina ended the era of small government. Note that this opinion is coming from the conservative opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal. Even they can apparently see the writing on the wall, that it is desirable and the right thing to do to have a strong government that looks after its people, can respond to crises, can make sure that no one falls through the cracks as hard as the poorest residents of New Orleans did. This doesn't necessitate massive, bloated bureaucracy. The Grover Norquists of the world had their day and blew it big time, dragging our country down with them. Look at what even the conservative Friedman has to say to the despicable and massively influential GOP guru Norquist. Theirs is a failed ideology.

One silver lining was the performance of the media, who did brilliantly and refused to play nice with the administration, and other local and state officials, when the incompetence became painfully obvious (e.g. FEMA head Michael Brown commenting on Thursday that he had only just found out that people were stranded in the Superdome). So you had people like Anderson Cooper, Aaron Brown, Tim Russert, Ted Koppel, even Shephard Smith at Fox, asking for accountability and generally tearing Michael Brown a new one. Eric Alterman commends them here and here.

There had better be soul-searching long into the future with regards to both of the types of failure mentioned above, because there is a hell of a lot of rot in our country. I think Katrina could cause a shift in our national consciousness much more profound than even 9/11 did, and I so strongly hope that the introspection over time leads our country to a more compassionate, socially just and fair society. I can't tell you how much this episode has soured my view of the current state of the US.

All of the Daily Show hurricane segments are worth watching, and I thought Brian Williams's interview was particularly good.

Fukuyama's Regret

Francis Fukuyama, perhaps the foremost conservative thinker of the past 20 years, has a fairly scathing opinion piece on the folly of Bush's foreign policy. I expect this will make pretty big waves in conservative discussion circles over the next few days. Who will be the first stooge at The Corner to argue that Fukuyama has lost his conservative credentials?

Oh, Jonah

He did it! Godwin's law has been upheld yet again. Jonah Goldberg took the Cindy Sheehan discussion to a predictable conclusion, and realized along the way that he had dug himself quite a hole. Watch him backtrack here and here.

A very weird aspect of his latter post is where he decries the left doing guilt-by-assocation with groups such as the so-called "Minuteman" (the border vigilantes), when that is precisely what he's trying to do with Sheehan. It seems that his own follow-up point argues against his original post. I emailed him with that point and he promptly responded:

not really. the point is that when the left does it, as in that example, it's
unfair.

So, to summarize Jonah: implying that a grieving war mother is in cahoots with Nazis is okay, but questioning the motives of border vigilantes is crossing the line. Or, a more concise summary: it's only wrong if you're on the left.

Jonah is actually one of my favorite conservative writers, along with Andrew Sullivan, but like Sullivan he feels obliged to make at least one bat-shit crazy post per year.

Sheehan

I haven't commented on this story about Cindy Sheehan and her son Casey, partly because it has been so grotesquely used by pundits and bloggers on the far right and left. Juan Cole calls her a media whore and Michelle Malkin employs the improbable phrase "grief pimps" to describe Sheehan's supporters, while the likes of Michael Moore try to capitalize on the Sheehan family's misfortune. But I support her very strongly and find it very distressing to see the amount of vitriol hurled at her from the Right. I found Walter Kirn's passing comment on the matter to be a simple and profound summary:

...a war that can't survive a mourning mother shouldn't be going on at all.

What does it say about the uneasiness of the few remaining war supporters, that even the act of a mother mourning her dead son amounts to treason in their eyes?

Some Candor on the Right

The administration is losing its own party members as this war goes on:

Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska on Thursday said the United States is "getting more and more bogged down" in Iraq and stood by his comments that the White House is disconnected from reality and losing the war.

The longer U.S. forces remain in Iraq, he said, the more it begins to resemble the Vietnam war.

Hagel mocked Vice President Dick Cheney's assertion in June that the insurgency in Iraq was in its "last throes," saying the U.S. death toll has risen amid insurgent attacks.

"Maybe the vice president can explain the increase in casualties we're taking," the Nebraskan told CNN.

"If that's winning, then he's got a different definition of winning than I do."

Savage Blogging

Hooray for Dan Savage guest-blogging over at Andrew Sullivan's site for the week.

Worst Advice Ever

Michael Lind suggests that, in order to regain the majority, Democrats must become socially conservative and economically liberal. Seriously, is this guy a plant? That's the exact opposite of what a party seeking centrist votes should offer. There are a lot of what Andrew Sullivan dubs "Eagles" -- socially liberal, fiscally conservative, fairly hawkish on defense -- out there, and very few, I imagine, social conservatives with leanings towards liberal economics.

State's Rights

I was watching some Daily Show clips and came across the recent interview with the despicable Senator Rick Santorum, wherein he discussed his new book on virtues with Jon. My biggest impression from the interview regards a comment he made that is very surprising coming from a conservative of his ilk. Jon asked about virtues today compared with virtues of the segregation era, and part of Santorum's reply was that we had needed a strong federal government to eradicate segregation. This comment may not seem particularly interesting until you consider that most people in his region of the far right use "state's rights" and "local government" as codewords for segregation, in order to woo certain white Southern votes. I think it's no small matter for a uber-conservative like Santorum to admit that strong federal authority was the cure for that ill. The Southern strategy that has stretched from Nixon to Reagan to George W. is one of the most disgusting political tactics of our time, and Santorum is right not to play into it.

From Your Lips to Goss's Ear

This cracked me up. Maybe I'm wrong, but the current CNN QuickVote survey seems like a sharp jab at the CIA:

If U.S. intelligence officials have an ‘excellent idea’ where Osama bin Laden is, should they go get him?

No prizes for guessing how the responders weighed in. It's currently up at the CNN main page.

Titular

British televison documentaries always have titles which are perfectly descriptive of the content, in a way that for some reason I find quite funny: The Boy Whose Skin Fell Off, Sleeping with the Au Pair, The Secretary Who Stole 4 Million Pounds, and tonight...She Stole My Foetus. Seriously, it's on Channel 5 tonight. Just hearing the name I feel that I know all there is to know. Which is to say, too much.

Live 8

Nice to hear from you, Jeff, though I have no idea what that post meant. Boy, it's been a while since I've posted...stretch...

This just in: Bob Geldof encourages every Briton to build a homemade rocket and "fly to the moon against poverty." I laud Geldof for all the reasons he should be lauded, but encouraging amateur British sailors and rowers to re-stage Dunkirk, combined with encouraging a million protesters to converge on Edinburgh before planning or consulting with the city, sounds like a lot of potential disaster. I'm glad I'll be gone for July.

Bolton...

Perhaps the US's own Michael Bolton could help out in the U.K.? I mean, he does a mean cover of "Sittin' on the dock of the bay". Really, someone should look into this.

Howard

So maybe the Southern strategy doesn't fly over here. They've been showing these Tory commercials the past few days in which Michael Howard refers to Britain's "forgotten majority." What with Labour having staked out the middle-ground, the Conservatives are starting to look a bit like the BNP.

Ambassador to UN

Brooks:

I don't like John Bolton's management style. Nor am I a big fan of his foreign policy views. He doesn't really believe in using U.S. power to end genocide or promote democracy.

But it is ridiculous to say he doesn't believe in the United Nations. This is a canard spread by journalists who haven't bothered to read his stuff and by crafty politicians who aren't willing to say what the Bolton debate is really about.

Bolton:

Bolton's bold and often-abrasive style has has earned him many critics over the years. In a now-famous 1994 speech at the World Federalist Association, Bolton declared that "there is no such thing as the United Nations." He added: "If the UN secretary building in New York lost ten stories, it wouldn't make a bit of difference."

Whaaa?

For a sign of how much disarray the New York Times is in, look no further than the headlines of today's op-ed pieces:

What's going on?

Whose team am I on?

Krugman's is worth reading; Brooks brings more fluff. Specifically, the former touches on religious extremism and the Schiavo case specifically. It ties in nicely with Andrew Sullivan's recent quote:

The important point is that religious zealotry cannot be incorporated into conservatism. It is the nemesis of conservatism. And it has to be purged in order for conservatism to be revived.

Lebanon and Iraq

The always excellent Dexter Filkins has a piece in the Sunday NYT drawing contrasts between the situations in Lebanon and Iraq, and pointing out how the view of Lebanon being a domino toppled by the Iraq war is too simplistic.

Fatwa

Well this is nice.

Brooks

Is this the most inane NYT op-ed ever? What happened to David Brooks?

Cedar

The last week or so has seen some enormous stories that I would normally be writing a lot on, and my silence shouldn't be seen as significant beyond just meaning that I have been very busy. Hopefully Harmony and Jeff will start making some more appearances too.

The recent developments in the Middle East are stunning, so much so that I would say they are not receiving as much media attention as they deserve (at least not in the British press). Not that Lebanon's or Egypt's slow movements to democracy are being ignored, but if these trends continue then it is just as big of a deal as the fall of the Berlin Wall.

I am skeptical, however, of those who would attribute the protests in Beirut to the liberation of Iraq. I think that the correct summation of the situation is that Lebanese protesters are emboldened by the Bush administration's words of support and presence in the region, but it is much too simplistic to say that the Iraq election was the first domino in the region. From the NYT article linked to above:

Another factor, pressure from the Bush administration, has emboldened demonstrators, who believe that their governments will be more hesitant to act against them with Washington linking its security to greater freedom after the Sept. 11 attacks. The United States says it will no longer support repressive governments, and young Arabs, while hardly enamored of American policy in the region, want to test that promise.

John Tierney

I was a bit surprised that the NYT did not snag a bigger name for Safire's replacement, but anyway, Editor and Publisher has the goods on John Tierney.

Broke by 1988

It's interesting that in 1978 George W. Bush was already giving speeches predicting the demise of the current Social Security system within 10 years:

Social Security "will be bust in 10 years unless there are some changes," he said, according to an account published the next day in The Midland Reporter-Telegram. "The ideal solution would be for Social Security to be made sound and people given the chance to invest the money the way they feel."

Comforting to know that some things never change.

Rowan Williams

It's interesting to see the U.S. and Canada standing side by side on a socially progressive issue, when Canada is usually seen as much more liberal on these things than its neighbor to the South. The Episcopal Churches of these two countries risk being expelled from the Anglican Communion as they stand their ground over the issue of homosexuality in the Church (both in the form of gay marriage and the allowance of gay bishops). Frank Griswold of ECUSA should be lauded for not backing down on this.

I certainly take issue with the way the Guardian characterizes the impending split:

The North Americans have precipitated the split because of their progressive stance on homosexuality, still regarded as anathema in many other parts of the communion, particularly in the developing world.

No, it's conservatives and homophobes like the archbishop of Nigeria who have precipitated the split. The North American churches did not intend to split the Communion, though perhaps they should've foreseen such an effect given the rabid nature of people like the Nigerian archbishop:

[Griswold] told the Guardian: "I can't imagine a conversation saying we got it wrong. I can see a conversation saying we should have been more aware of the effect that the decisions we took would have in other places."

He added: "It does not mean that our point of view has fundamentally changed. We have met this week at the level of the heart. There is an integrity we share across the communion, though in quite different forms."

Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams has lost all credibility in his pursuit of a via media on this. If the Canadian and American churches are expelled, the Anglican Church will surely deserve its remaining company: a collection of homophobes and far-right conservatives. Let them have their communion. Meanwhile, there is the little issue of the vast majority of the Anglican Communion's money coming from the States. Hope they don't miss it too much.

Lincoln

You know it's a divided country when even individual states are discussing an even split. This is of particular interest to me since it's my home-state and I have background on both sides (geographical and political). It's hard to imagine many places with such stark contrasts in proximity to each other. The Cascade Mountains really make a clean cut of Red and Blue as well as desert and sea, and the recent acrimonious and drawn-out governor's election has brought long-standing tensions between the two sides to a head.

There have always been those in Eastern Washington who felt that they were not represented by the powers that be in Olympia, and Dino Rossi's refusal to draw a line under the election seems to be encouraging some of the more fanatical of these folks to propose a drastic solution: partitioning the state into two, with Eastern Washington become the 51st. First things first: the separatist movement, as far as I know, has always championed "Lincoln" as the name for the new state, and this has a much finer ring than "Eastern Washington". We don't want to be like the Dakotas, do we? No, Lincoln it is.

Anyway, the plan is clearly a non-starter, but interesting for a couple of reasons. First, as noted in Jamieson's piece, Eastern Washington benefits greatly from the wealth of the Western side of the state, and separation is probably not in its best interest. Second, the entire issue is indicative of an issue in our country as a whole: what unites us? Why are we one country if there are two distinct sides that often seem to loathe each other? What precisely constitutes the common identity?

I can't say that there is an easily describable over-arching Washington identity that is as well known as, for example, the liberalism of Western Washington or the rural conservatism of Eastern Washington, but I am proud to be from a state of such diversity and would be sorry to lose half of it.

Wead

I think it's interesting that Bush referred to the spinning of his youthful indiscretions as "schtick":

When Mr. Wead warned that he had heard reporters talking about Mr. Bush's "immature" past, Mr. Bush said, "That's part of my schtick, which is, look, we have all made mistakes."

So how much of his cleaned-up, born-again image is really schtick?

Maybe he can make some amends with Old Europe by telling them that the Iraq War was part of his schtick too.

Back and in Effect

Was out of the country for a few days - things should shortly be back to normal.

Culture of Failure II

I thought of another great example of Britain's love of failure: the current London bid for the 2012 Olympics. British papers have been saying for months that London's bid is doomed and doesn't stand a chance compared with Paris's, and this is a loser's attitude that will surely go a long way toward convincing the IOC that London doesn't deserve the games.

Culture of Failure

Apparently a C4 exec's comments regarding Scotland are causing a bit of an uproar:

Scots, once regarded as the most innovative risk-takers in the world, have become an unimaginative, inward-looking people who like to celebrate failure and poverty, according to one of the country's leading broadcasters and cultural commentators.
In a controversial address to be delivered as part of the prestigious Edinburgh Lecture series, Stuart Cosgrove, Director of Nations and Regions at Channel 4, will condemn what he describes as the Scots' 'love and indulgence of the culture of poverty' which, he says, has become deeply embedded in the nation's collective psyche.

This story is interesting for a couple of reasons. First of all, I don't think Cosgrove is wrong, but this phenomenon is certainly not limited to Scotland. I see it in all of the UK and Ireland. They are obsessed with national failure and wallow in misery when the opportunity presents itself. Why do you think the English love Tim Henman? When Ellen MacArthur recently completed the fastest solo circumnavigation of the globe by sail, did the country rejoice? No, there were stories about how she had complained too much during the trip and how it wasn't really possible to love her. As for Scotland and Ireland, there is certainly a lack of dimensionality in current arts and entertainment depicting these countries. For Scotland it's the Trainspotting effect I suppose. For Ireland, Angela's Ashes and a slew of others. There is a demand for these depictions, to be sure; Americans, for example, love their romantic image of dirt-poor, lousy Ireland.

The second interesting thing about this story relates not to the subject matter itself, but to the way the story is presented. In fact, this is typical of British newspapers. They have either an exclusive interview or a guest editorial in their comment/op-ed section, and then they run a front-page article about how said commentary is so controversial, as if that were hard news. Can you imagine the New York Times running a front-page article proclaiming "Krugman Criticizes Social Security Plan"?

the time of the quasi-leader

I wonder why we have so few truly courageous leaders across the world today. When someone like Abbas does something bold and logical the media often tears them to shreds, villifying them and labeling them 'radicals' or crackpots. Guts is what our (US) leaders have lacked for so long the American public scarcely recognizes it anymore.

Guts

Why we need Abbas:

The Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas, dismissed three security commanders yesterday after a Hamas mortar barrage of Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip, just two days after the ceasefire declaration.
In response, the Israeli government called off a meeting with senior Palestinians to discuss an array of confidence-building measures, including lifting some roadblocks and releasing several hundred prisoners.

But it said it would not undermine confidence in Mr Abbas's commitment to curb violence, provided the Palestinian security forces dealt with those responsible.

Also here. Abbas smartly recognizes that these mortar barrages are not in Palestinian self-interest. Let's hope he can convince others of this.

Senator Franken

Listening to Air America at the moment to see if Al Franken announces that he will run for Minnesota Senator next year. I personally think it's a great idea. Some might have qualms about how it would look to have a comedian running for a national Dem position, but I think that the Dems precisely need to start putting forth candidates who capture the public imagination. Not to mention that Franken is smarter on policy than he probably gets credit for.

Update: Apparently not.

Legacy

The word "legacy" has been thrown around a lot lately. The way that history remembers the Bush administration seems almost to take priority over what is actually happening under the Bush Administration. Despite all the pomp and triumph following the election, in the days before the inauguration, things weren't looking so good for the GOP. Polls were steadily dropping as the media aired more and more dirty laundry from Iraq. Social Security reform was unpopular on both sides of the aisle. The air was ripe for dems to say "I Told You So."

Then, there was the election in Iraq.

Personally, I was ready for the worst: insurgent interference, corruption, low voter turn out or at least a general disillusionment with the so-called liberation process. But even nay-sayers have got to admit, the Iraqi election went well. It went so well, in fact, that some liberals are left with a bad taste in their mouths. How do we resolve all the mistakes and cover-ups and crap with this genuine public demonstration of independence and determination? I tend to agree with Biden, who suggests that Iraqis see elections as a step towards ending the American occupation. But no matter what the reasons and impulses, a happy ending in Iraq will put a Bush legacy in the bag. As Jonathan Schell writes,

There was, I confess, a momentary temptation for someone like me, who has opposed the war from the start and believed it would lead to nothing good, simply to scant the importance of the event, or react to it defensively, or speed past it on the way back to an uneasy confirmation of previous views. But the impulse passed. After all, hadn't I been irked that the war's promoters, including the President, had refused to admit a mistake when they had not found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, when they had failed to foresee the insurgency that soon broke out after Baghdad was taken, when American forces, encouraged by memos penned at the top levels of the Administration, had committed widespread acts of torture? More important, when masses of ordinary people act with courage to express deep and positive longings, shouldn't one give them their due? But most important of all, wasn't full acknowledgment of the magnitude of the event necessary for any real understanding of what might happen next in Iraq?

Now, death tolls are back up to pre-election levels, but nobody seems to notice. Moreover, “success” in Iraq makes me nervous about what’s next. Confidence, in the hands of the current admin, is a dangerous trait. It leads to situations like this.

Face of the Administration

More Ash:

Yet there's no doubt that the new US secretary of state has conducted an impressive charm offensive during her lightning tour of Europe. She has presented a more elegant face, spoken a more nuanced language and played a sweeter mood music than those whom most Europeans have come to associate with the Bush administration over the past four years.

It has been pretty surprising to me that the European press, which was no friend of Rice up to a month or so ago, has been fairly universal in praising her visit as the warming of relations between the two sides of the Atlantic. Colin Powell was easily the most respected member of the administration in international circles during the last term, and he put a friendly, multilateral facade on a unilateral, occasionally beligerent administration. So while Powell was often lauded for breaking from the Bush administration's talking points, it is Rice the loyal who is now being praised for thawing of relations. Why would that be? The answer, of course, is in the tragic story of Powell. While he was rightly recognized as a moderate and as being somewhat of a dove, the world knew that he only spoke for himself, whereas Rice speaks for Bush. When Rice speaks in conciliatory tones, it means something. The tragedy of Powell is that he was merely a 'nice' guy railing against the hawks in the administration, and who didn't have enough spine or a loud enough voice to make a difference in the cabinet.

The Gorby Moment

Timothy Garton Ash has a typically great piece about Rice's first trip abroad as SOS and the coincidental ceasefire between Israel and the Palestinians. Corner types were falling in love with Condi and proclaiming that she had single-handedly solved the Middle East crisis (tongue perhaps slightly in cheek, but only slightly I think). Ash isn't the first to note that she has benefited from some great timing and received credit where it was most likely not due. The Gorbachev analogy is great:

What's more, she's been lucky. Her conciliatory speech in Paris earlier this week coincided with the handshake of peace between Ariel Sharon and Mahmoud Abbas. That was a gift only in small measure of Washington's own making. The president whom Dr Rice serves so faithfully, George Bush, has long been inspired by the example of Ronald Reagan. Like Reagan, he wants his first term, in which he was demonised as a warmonger by many Europeans, to be followed by a second term in which he writes himself into the history books as both peacemaker and freedom spreader. (Into some history books, depending whose you read.) But Reagan could do this because the US's main geopolitical challenger produced a leader called Mikhail Gorbachev. Until recently, it was hard to see where Bush's Gorbachev moment would come from. Now there is a chance that Bush's Gorbachev will be called Mahmoud Abbas.

Arafat's death is, quite simply, a blessing. Abbas is as moderate as we can hope for at the moment, and Sharon is stubborn enough that we wouldn't have been at this stage right now if not for Arafat's demise. So do the Cornerites heap praise on Abbas? From what I've seen, the right-wing blogosphere prefers to pick him apart for his past unsavory comments about the Holocaust, which indeed were repugnant but which should not obscure the hope that lies with his ascension.

Have to run right now, but will have some more comments about Condi's trip real soon.

Below the Belt

They've straightened out gay marriage. They've liberated Christians to proselytize (er, pray) in public buildings. Now, the Virginia House of Delegates has cracked down on "below the waist undergarments." Here's the low down: any one publically exhibiting indecent display of such undergarments is subject to a $50 fine.

My favorite part of this is that they defined underwear as "garments intended to cover a person's intimate parts." I'm confused by what, exactly, is the crux of the offense: the garments themselves, or the parts that they are supposed to be covering? If the garment is serving the purpose of covering said intimate parts, then at least those parts are not on display, so the flesh itself can't be offending anybody. The implication, then, is that it is not the body itself that offends, but the actual garment, because it suggests naughty things.

What seems like a joke today actually establishes a disturbing sort of precedent: the out-lawing of something which suggests the indecent. In the future, who is to set the standards of decency? What is indecent: brown shoes with black pants? What about my Run Against Bush t-shirt -- is that offensive? I'm sure it is.

Clearly, the trick to avoiding such fines is to go commando. No undies = no illegal display of undergarments, guaranteed. In that case, the House of Delegates closed this loop hole just in time!

Honestly, if you want to be offended, check out the Cost of War. Look at the pictures from the Tal Afar shooting. Ask yourself why most Americans never saw those pictures -- were they too offensive? Too graphic? Too revealing?

New Members

There are a couple of new contributors to this blog, though I'm not sure how soon their introductory posts will be. I think Public Editor should be a little more interesting with a variety of takes on the news of the day, and we'll be able to bounce ideas off of each other. I am waiting with bated breath.

Policy Divide

It's interesting how so many neoconservatives think that the only serious foreign policy debates relate to the divisions within neoconservatism itself. How else to explain this passage from Jonah?

A foreign-policy realist might have said, "Oops, no WMDs" — and then bugged out. We called Saddam's bluff, which was our perfect right given the stakes, but it's not in our interests to stay. That's realism. And it's funny to hear Ted Kennedy, Michael Moore, et al. keep invoking it.

How dare a liberal take a foreign policy position!

The next point is more interesting:

Bush decided to stay partly out of a different realist analysis of our national interest: A democratic Middle East, he believes, is the best chance for stopping the production of terrorists.

I have made a similar point here several times before, that there are not a lot of foreign-policy idealists or democratic globalists in the administration, and that they do in fact believe they are operating in the country's self-interests. The problem is that so many of these people have a fundamental misunderstanding of our national interests. Anyone who still believes that taking resources away from the war on terror in order to invade Iraq was in our self-interest is simply nuts.

Social Security

To say the least, it's interesting that Bush has chosen to begin his second term by touting a plan that is wildly unpopular, dubious economically, and likely to be a giant embarrassment if the privatization scheme does in fact fail. Even at this early stage of the discussion, when Bush is just embarking on a sales tour, the plan seems dead in the water. Josh Marshall, who along with Paul Krugman has made swiss cheese of the proposal, notes that it is unpopular not just in liberal, Blue America but in areas where Bush is extremely popular:

This isn't particularly surprising when you think about it. These are areas are often older, more rural and have more voters with lower incomes. These are states where President Bush has campaigned on a pseudo-populism which is belied by his own economic policies. Phase-out is bringing the contradiction to the surface.

This is certainly one of the great tragedies of American politics, that so many people vote Republican when it is clearly not in their self-interest. That's the topic for another post, as the point here is how much Bush has gambled on a plan that makes no sense and which he doesn't understand anyway. Check out this horrifying attempt to explain the plan to a friendly Florida audience:

PRESIDENT: Because the -- all which is on the table begins to address the big cost drivers. For example, how benefits are calculate, for example, is on the table; whether or not benefits rise based upon wage increases or price increases. There's a series of parts of the formula that are being considered. And when you couple that, those different cost drivers, affecting those -- changing those with personal accounts, the idea is to get what has been promised more likely to be -- or closer delivered to what has been promised.

Does that make any sense to you? It's kind of muddled. Look, there's a series of things that cause the -- like, for example, benefits are calculated based upon the increase of wages, as opposed to the increase of prices. Some have suggested that we calculate -- the benefits will rise based upon inflation, as opposed to wage increases. There is a reform that would help solve the red if that were put into effect. In other words, how fast benefits grow, how fast the promised benefits grow, if those -- if that growth is affected, it will help on the red.

Okay, better? I'll keep working on it.

Shariah Don't Like It

Is this the worst possible outcome in Iraq?

With religious Shiite parties poised to take power in the new constitutional assembly, leading Shiite clerics are pushing for Islam to be recognized as the guiding principle of the new constitution...

Such a constitution would be a sharp departure from the transitional law that the Americans enacted before appointing the interim Iraqi government led by Prime Minister Ayad Allawi. American officials pressed Iraqi politicians drafting that law in early 2004 to guarantee equal rights for women and minorities. The Americans also persuaded the authors to designate Islam as just "a source" of legislation. That irked senior Shiite clerics here, who, confident they now have a popular mandate from the elections, are advocating for Islam to be acknowledged as the underpinning of the government. They also insist that the Americans stay away from the writing of the new constitution.

"It is Hard to Remain Uninvolved"

One of the most damning critiques of neoconservatism, in my mind, was written well before what we know as neoconservatism even existed. Graham Greene published the excellent book The Quiet American, about early American intervention in Vietnam, in 1955, and yet many of the quotes about the title character could be applied just as easily to Bush, Rumsfeld and others in the administration. Alden Pyle, the quiet American who meddles without considering the ramifications of his actions, is described as such:

He was impregnably armoured by his good intentions and his ignorance...

Pyle had been silent a long while, and I had nothing more to say. Indeed I had said too much already. He looked white and beaten and ready to faint, and I thought, 'What's the good? he'll always be innocent, you can't blame the innocent, they are always guiltless. All you can do is control them or eliminate them. Innocence is a kind of insanity.'

He comes blundering in and people have to die for his mistakes.

That about says it, doesn't it? This administration is 'innocent' in the worst sense: naive, overidealistic, careless, blundering and, most of all, ignorant.

Iraq and Iran

These past days the British media have seized on every Bush or Rice reference to Iran as a sign that an invasion is imminent, but I haven't heard much comment on the effect that invading Iran would have on the situation in Iraq. If anything, the Shia ties between the two countries have been used by some on the right as a justification for invading Iran, to prevent Iranian clerics from gaining strong influence in post-war Iraq. I think that this misses the point. Bush's greatest victory regarding Iraq will be if the election results are respected by all Iraqi parties involved and there is a transition to a relatively peaceful democracy in the next months. It is a given that the new government will be Shia-dominated. Now imagine how an invasion of Iran, controlled by a Shiite theocracy, could so easily upset any peaceful balance of power in Iraq. The US certainly needs to ensure that Iran doesn't gain influence in Iraq, but an invasion would only serve to agitate Shias in Iraq.

MSN Search

I have no intention of switching from Google, but it looks like MSN Search is after my heart.

Toy Soldiers

I like Jonah's response to the kidnapped toy:

I do think the doll-napping is really bad news for the insurgents, no matter how the story plays out. It looks so desperate and pathetic how can it do anything but undermine the credibility of the insurgents' tough-as-nails image? The Khmer Rouge never captured anybody's doll.

Today's Guardian features the photo prominently on page 2 without any mention of it possibly being a fake.