Cartel of Defiance

"No law at all"

2008-03-28T04:15:00.000-04:00

“There’s a strong commitment by the central government of Iraq to say that no one is above the law.” -- GWB, March 27, 2008

Message in a Bottle

2008-03-18T15:47:00.000-04:00

So I think I figured out how to still post on Cartel of Defiance. As John Belushi says in Animal House, "who's with me!!?"

How to recognize different types of lies from quite a long way away

2007-02-25T14:55:00.000-05:00

No. 1
The larch.
The larch.

And now...
No. 1
The larch.
The larch.

And now...
No. 1
The larch.
The larch.

synchronicity

2007-01-03T02:49:00.000-05:00

Even as Democrats filtered back to Capitol Hill on Tuesday in anticipation of the opening of the 110th Congress on Thursday, there was a bit of confusion about just when the 100 hours would officially begin. Would it be as soon as the new Congress was sworn in and began voting on internal rules changes? Or when the House takes up its first actual legislation next Tuesday? . . . . [N]ext Monday is out since the House, despite Democratic pledges of a disciplined five-day work schedule, will not be in session. The day off was scheduled to allow freshman lawmakers time to return from an orientation session — and others to attend the college football national championship game. Democrats eventually decided Tuesday that the 100-hour timer would be started next Tuesday, when the House is scheduled to take up H.R. 1, a measure enacting recommendations from the bipartisan Sept. 11 commission that never made it out of the Republican-controlled Congress. -- "Democrats Plan First 100 Hours, Give or Take a Speech", New York Times, Jan 2 2007

President Bush is expected to announce his new Iraq strategy in an address to the nation early next week, several sources in Washington told CNN Tuesday. The president has not yet signed off on any changes, including a possible increase of U.S. troops, according to sources with information about Bush's deliberations on Iraq. However, the sources say he is 'driving toward a conclusion' and a plan is 'taking shape' which is 'getting more detailed' as the president puts 'on the finer points.' -- " Officials: Bush 'driving toward' new Iraq plan", CNN, Jan 2 2007

Fuckers.

Bush and Reagan

2006-12-29T02:34:00.000-05:00

"[T]he problem is not that the people are taxed too little, the problem is that the Government spends too much. Until President Clinton and the liberals in Congress accept that principle and act accordingly, I'm afraid we are headed for a repeat of the late 1970's. And that is something we can all live without. . . . For more than four decades, one party, the Democratic Party, has controlled the House of Representatives. The solution to the deficit problem is not to ask heavily taxed working Americans to 'sacrifice' even more. It's the big-spending liberals controlling the Congress who need to show some restraint and 'sacrifice' a few of the pork-barrel measures they've been slipping past the taxpayers for far too long." (From a 1993 op-ed that Atrios very shrewdly points to tonight)

"President Bush is considering new economic initiatives to go along with a possible increase in troops to help stabilize the country, according to officials familiar with the administration's review. . . . The economic package now on the table focuses on three elements, and is separate from the long-term jobs-creation program being promoted by the U.S. military." (Washington Post, "Bush Considers Economic Package For Iraq: Officials Describe the Initiatives as Part of a Series of Steps Designed to Counter Insurgency," also tonight)

Oxymoron

2006-11-23T08:15:00.000-05:00

White House officials said Wednesday that Mr. Bush and Mr. Maliki would discuss a range of issues — from giving the Iraqis more control over security forces to American frustrations with the pace of the disarmament of militias in Iraq. -- This Thanksgiving, Bush Team and Iraq Leaders Face Range of New Realities, New York Times, Nov 23, 2006

In Clover

2006-11-08T13:03:00.000-05:00

“Once the minority of House and Senate are comfortable in their minority status, they will have no problem socializing with the Republicans. Any farmer will tell you that certain animals run around and are unpleasant, but when they’ve been fixed, then they are happy and sedate. They are contented and cheerful. They don’t go around peeing on the furniture and such.” -- Norquist

This was more than the hungry animals could bear. With one accord, though nothing of the kind had been planned beforehand, they flung themselves upon their tormentors. Jones and his men suddenly found themselves being butted and kicked from all sides. The situation was quite out of their control. They had never seen animals behave like this before, and this sudden uprising of creatures whom they were used to thrashing and maltreating just as they chose, frightened them almost out of their wits. After only a moment or two they gave up trying to defend themselves and took to their heels. A minute later all five of them were in full flight down the cart-track that led to the main road, with the animals pursuing them in triumph. -- Orwell

in the western night

2006-11-06T22:54:00.000-05:00

For the present stalks abroad
Like the past and its wronged again
Whimper and are ignored,
And the truth cannot be hid;
Somebody chose their pain,
What needn't have happened did.

Occurring this very night
By no established rule,
Some event may have hurled
Its first little No at the right
Of the laws we accept to school
Our post-diluvian world:

But the stars burn on overhead,
Unconscious of final ends,
As I walk home to bed,
Asking what judgement waits
My person, all my friends,
And these United States.

--W.H. Auden, from "A Walk After Dark" (1948)

Poll-Watching

2006-11-05T11:33:00.000-05:00

There are croakers in every country, always boding its ruin. Such a one then lived in Philadelphia; a person of note, an elderly man, with a wise look and a very grave manner of speaking; his name was Samuel Mickle. This gentleman, a stranger to me, stopped one day at my door, and asked me if I was the young man who had lately opened a new printing-house. Being answered in the affirmative, he said he was sorry for me, because it was an expensive undertaking, and the expense would be lost; for Philadelphia was a sinking place, the people already half-bankrupts, or near being so; all appearances to the contrary, such as new buildings and the rise of rents, being to his certain knowledge fallacious; for they were, in fact, among the things that would still ruin us. And he gave me such a detail of misfortunes now existing, or that were soon to exist, that he left me half melancholy. Had I known him before I engaged in this business, probably I never should have done it. This man continued to live in this decaying place, and to declaim in the same strain, refusing for many years to buy a house there, because all was going to destruction; and at last I had the pleasure of seeing him give five times as much for one as he might have bought it for when he first began his croaking. -- Benjamin Franklin, Autobiography

Oh yeah !

2006-10-01T08:48:00.000-04:00

"'[Bush, Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld] didn't see it coming,' Garner added. 'As the troops said, they drank the Kool-Aid.'"
-- Secret Reports Dispute White House Optimism
by Bob Woodward, Oct. 1, 2006

"Army Reserve Sgt. Terri Doughty made an important discovery while stationed for 12 months in Kuwait during Operation Iraqi Freedom: Kool-Aid and hot water taste pretty good together."
-- Retiree Aids Soldiers With 'Kool' Drink While Deployed
by Sgt. 1st Class Doug Sample, American Forces Press Service, Dec. 16, 2004

"130-some"

2006-09-11T07:39:00.000-04:00

Ahmed Rashid, Losing the War on Terror, Washington Post, Sept 11 2006: "In the five years since Sept. 11, the tactics and strategy of Islamic extremists fighting U.S. or NATO forces have improved dramatically. To a degree they could not approach five years ago, the extremists are successfully facing off against the overwhelming technological apparatus that modern armies can bring to bear against guerrillas. Islamic extremists are winning the war by not losing, and they are steadily expanding to create new battlefronts. . . . No doubt on all these battlefields Islamic extremists are taking massive casualties -- at least a thousand Taliban have been killed by NATO forces in the past six months. But on many fronts there is an inexhaustible supply of recruits for suicide-style warfare. Western armies, with their Vietnam-era obsession with body counts, are not lessening the number of potential extremists every time they kill them but are actually encouraging more to join, because they have no political strategy to close adjacent borders and put pressure on the neighbors."

Dick Cheney, Meet The Press, Sept 10 2006: "But just in the last 48 hours we’ve killed 130-some Taliban in, in southern Afghanistan."

"Pull out his eyes! Apologise!"

2006-08-23T19:30:00.000-04:00

Q: David, what are your personal and professional goals for the "The Wire"? To change minds, to make money, to employ people, to be successful? [Jim King]"

A: Change minds? Nobody changes anyone's mind anymore. People strain facts through their own ideology and ignore that which is happening before their eyes. Alive in this millennium, Orwell would be embarrassed for having so grossly understated his case. -- David Simon, at the opening of extended interview on The Wire

I had the opportunity this afternoon to be part of a relatively small group who heard President Bush talk, extemporaneously, for around forty minutes. It was an absolutely riveting experience. It was the best I've ever seen him. Not only that; it may have been the best I've ever seen any politician. . . . The conventional wisdom is that Bush is not a very good speaker. But up close, he is a great communicator, in a way that, in my opinion, Ronald Reagan was not. He was by turns instructive, persuasive, and funny. His persona is very much that of the big brother.
-- "Hail to the Chief," Powerline

Zoo Story

2006-08-17T13:59:00.000-04:00

The desire for the presence of the most anicent is a hope that animal creation might survive the wrong that man has done it, if not man himself, and give rise to a better species, one that finally makes a success of life. Zoological gardens stem from the same hope. They are laid out on the pattern of Noah's Ark, for since their inception the bourgeois class has been waiting for the flood. The use of zoos for entertainment and instruction seems a thin pretext. They are allegories of the specimen or the pair who defy the disaster that befalls the species qua species. This is why the over-richly stocked zoos of large European cities seem like forms of decadence: more than two elephants, two giraffes, one hippopotamus, are a bad sign. Nor can any good come of Hagenbeck's layout, with trenches instead of cages, betraying the Ark by simulating the rescue that only Ararat can promise. They deny the animals' freedom only the more completely by keeping the boundaries invisible, the sight of which would inflame the longing for open spaces. . . The more purely nature is preserved and transplanted by civilization, the more implacably it is dominated. We can now afford to encompass ever larger natural units, and leave them apparently intact within our grasp, whereas previously the selecting and taming of particular items bore witness to the difficulty we still had coping with nature. The tiger endlessly pacing back and forth in his cage reflects back negatively, through his bewilderment, something of humanity, but not the one frolicking behind the pit too wide to leap. -- Adorno, Minima Moralia, 75

Clearest Article on Iraq

2006-08-17T09:20:00.000-04:00

is this one from the NY times. Essentially: violence, against U.S. troops, is getting much worse. Specifically, in July 2625 roadside bombs were laid (and 1666 exploded); in January of this year, only 1450. This is up to almost 100 a day. 518 U.S. troops wounded in July, compared to 287 in January.

These facts rebound back, for me, to any number of military and political statements over the last two years that justified increased U.S. aggression on the grounds that it would decrease insurgent capacities. Such statements -- like the raft of comments about WMD -- are now proven not just ideologically but empirically wrong.

How will the right-wing or the media get its head around these facts? What *possible* strategy is left in the face of ied attacks nearly doubling in six monthes? Particularly in the context of increasing "sectarian clashes" which, as the NY times puts it, "have killed an average of more than 100 Iraqi civilians per day over the past two monthes."

Even before these latest reports were released (the Times artice is based on a nine page classified Aug 3 report entitled "Iraq Update"), the rhetoric of a right-wing hawk like Richard Lowry was already getting pretty damn wobbly. "Bush would be much better served by forthrightly acknowledging Iraq’s distressing circumstances and backing an all-out push to secure Baghdad even if it takes thousands more American troops in the country. . . . It is not too late to tamp down that militia-directed violence, which hasn’t yet taken on an uncontrollable life of its own." If Lowry is reduced, in the second sentence, to this rather extreme standard -- not just that violence has taken on a "life of its own" but "an uncontrollable lifeof its own," the first sentence is, conversely, strikingly restrained: with between 120-130 thousand troops in Iraq for 3 years, will adding thousands more really constitute "an all-out push to secure Baghdad?" And what would happen after this "all-out push" Rick? -- since (to mention the obvious) we wouldn't have anything left if it were all-out.

Bad Quote

2006-08-13T17:45:00.000-04:00

The creation of COP Falcon, as well as a handful of other combat outposts throughout Ramadi, marks a radical departure from past U.S. military practices here that focused on defending a main thoroughfare through town and its embattled government center. Under the command of Col. Sean MacFarland of the 1st Brigade, 1st Armored Division, Bajema’s company and a handful of others have taken up permanent residence in what one commander called Ramadi’s “heart of darkness” in a bid to regain control of the city. -- Stars and Stripes, August 13, "Marines, GIs take up residence in insurgent haven: Goal is to drive enemy from Ramadi one block at a time"

Survivor

2006-08-10T18:01:00.000-04:00

Even someone believing himself convinced of the non-comparability of works of art will find himself repeatedly involved in debates where works of art, and precisely those of highest and therefore incommensurable rank, are compared and evaluated one against the other. The objection that such considerations, which come about in a peculiarly compulsive way, have their source in mercenary instincts that would measure everything by the ell, usually signifies no more than that solid citizens, for whom art can never be irrational enough, want to keep serious reflection and the claims of truth far from the works. This compulsion to evaluate is located, however, in the works of art themselves. So much is true: they refuse to be compared. They want to annihilate one another. Not without cause did the ancients reserve the pantheon of the compatible to Gods or Ideas, but obliged works of art to enter the agon, each the mortal enemy of each. The notion of a "pantheon of classicity", as still entertained by Kierkegaard, is a fiction of neutralized culture. For if the Idea of Beauty appears only in dispersed form among many works, each one nevertheless aims uncompromisingly to express the whole of beauty, claims it in its singularity and can never admit its dispersal without annulling itself. -- Theodor Adorno, Minima Moralia: Reflections on a Damaged Life (1.47)

Pshaw

2006-08-09T00:08:00.000-04:00

"Lieberman was widely ridiculed for calling his fifth-place showing in the 2004 New Hampshire presidential primary a three-way tie for third." -- Washington Post

soldier's point-of-view

2006-07-27T00:38:00.000-04:00

This is a surprising article to see in The Washington Post. It describes the really depressing, futile and harrowing position of one 750-person batallion in Iraq charged with patrolling part of Southern Baghdad. A particularly relevant article given the redeployment of more U.S. troops into Baghdad. The title of the article, drawn from one of many disturbing comments offered by these soldiers, is "Waiting to Get Blown Up."

I feel like I've been reading a lot of good journalism about Iraq recently. Nearly everything one reads these days reinforces the depth and seriousness of this disaster. I caught an article in the most recent issue of Harper's that was certainly worth reading. Again -- focused and devestating. It concerned Bayan Jabr, currently the Interior Minister, but previously the head of housing construction projects under Paul Bremer. The article presents a disturbing picture of entrenched and pervasive corruption and theft; how Bremer had to tolerate this corruption because he was already so mired in failure and also had few real options; how the Americans that tried to call Jabr to account were themselves fired; and the connection of Jabr, today, to the infilitration of the Iraqi police and military by death-squads and private militia.

Linklater

2006-07-19T07:04:00.000-04:00

In the offline world Staurt Klawans has a good description of the "situation" at the heart of Richard Linklater's new adaptation of Philip K Dick's 1977 novel, Through A Scanner Darkly: "Kenau's character let's slip his sense of identity -- as you'd expect of a drug-addicted undercover narc assigned to carry out intensive surveillance on himself." You would indeed!

In fact, in this tightly conceived scenario Dick and now Linklater pack in so many degrees of self-fissure, it's almost hard to keep track. In this world, the cops wear continually shifting "scramble suits" that conceal them as a vague blur of ordinary looking people. This is essential to the premise -- while undercover the cop is concealing his identity as Fred the cop, pretending to be a user; on the job, Fred is hiding the fact that he's the addicted-Bob Arcter, who he then is forced to "investigate," spending more and more of his time, as the movie progresses, (covertly) monitoring (a version of) himself on a surveillance screen -- the title's scanner.

"Substance D," the fictional drug in the film, is at once located in the specfic drug culture of the 1960s and allegorically generalized (people often refer to the drug simply as "D" or sometimes "Death"). It suggests any number of levels of addiction, addiction to any life-destroying aspect of our culture for instance, or, perhaps,"addiction" to life or to culture itself. Does any thinking person summon up some version of the Bob Arctor/Agent Fred divide -- an estranged part of our selves, criminal, gestural, vague, out of time, and a reflective part, the part that continually thinks about "who we are," and, in a manner of speaking, sets up shop in a surviellance post, monitoring all of, say, awol's activity through a scanner, darkly.

While its easy enough to imagine this scenario being translated into a Hollywood film -- there have been a lot of Philip K Dick adaptations of course -- it's hard to see this deep fissuring not getting resolved with some kind of very large, very loud futuristic weapon -- some cross between a laser and a bazooka. This is not the case at all in Linklater's film -- as it goes forward it only gets more unresolved, we learn that both Arctor and Fred emerge out of an earlier splitting where Arctor/Fred had walked out of his "safe" "real" life in a suburban family, and then, progressing further, there are simply a coiled number of further turns, betrayals, and splits. Not to mention the much publicized technique of roto-scoping that Linklater has developed in this film and A Waking Life, which bizarrely draws over "live action" film with this fluid, shifting and sometimes groovy (sometimes slightly dizzying) animation, draining reality in every frame and causing another level of identity fissuring that is built into the texture of the film.

In short: what's at stake with Linklater "doing" a Philip K Dick novel at all?

Dick's novel was written in 1977, a year after Dazed and Confused, Linklater's 1993 film, was set. (Ironically, Dick set his novel in 1994). The mid-70s are also, of course, the first summers of the blockbuster action films that have been ever since such a central part of U.S. culture and film politics: Star Wars was released on May 25, 1977 and Jaws was released on June 20, 1975. (The Terminator, one apotheosis of this trend, was released, appropriately enough, in 1984; Arnold's version of Philip K. Dick, Total Recall, was released on June 1, 1990).

In retrospect, the rise of the 70's blockbuster coincides with the long era of (relative) peace, between the Vietnam War and 9/11-Iraq. Certainly, the mind-boggling success of those early Speilberg and Lucas films must have had something to do with a negation of or escape from the previous 10 year death-spiral in Indochina; since then, we might imagine that the continual formula and power of the summer release -- particularly those versions that are really about "action" in some way -- benefitted from the way that Vietnam receded into memory. The Sylvester Stallone-Arnold Schwarzanager connection would seem to play out along these lines: Rocky was released and won the academy award in 1976, Rocky 2 in (June of) 1979, Rambo: First Blood in 1982 and Rambo 2 in (May of) 1985.

Linklater's A Scanner Darkly is, in this light, an interesting mix: half (radically) independent film (using an experimental technique, keyed into a number of his earlier films) and half summer blockbuster (explicitly in relation to a long-line of Philip K Dick adaptations and The Matrix). The casting choices seem, to me, to emphasize this as well: its five stars in a weird range, from Keanau and Woody Harrelson to the exiled-from-Hollywood Robert Downey Jr and Winona Ryder to Rory Cochrane, a Linklater actor who gives a kind of dystopic rewriting of his pothead role in Dazed and Confused. The film plays with any number of conventions, essentially critiquing/subverting both the plotlines and action-ideology of Hollywood "summer science-fiction" and the slack, conversation-driven looseness of his own films. Such positioning seems, to me, very political, beside or in addition to the overtly political take down on our own surveillance-based, "crime-fighting" political culture. (The most striking resonances with the NSA are, superficially, just a coincidence, since most of this news broke after the film had been made).

Iraq

2006-07-09T16:08:00.000-04:00

I think there is a change, perhaps a sea-change, that's beginning to take place in the political understanding of Iraq in the U.S.

There are different ways to understand this, and in this post I'll just rely on my own inchoate recent associations. Three things in particular. First, for some reason, I was impelled to write this post at k/o the other day. It seemed to me that calling Iraq a "racist" war was something that simultaneously felt obvious and untenable, almost banal in its familiarity and yet urgent and still unarticulated. (Hence the title of the post, ironic and unironic at the same time).

Second, I just read a Digby post, itself drawing heavily on an an op-ed in Sunday's Washington Post, and thought to myself that this was one of the best things I've yet read on the Iraq war. And, again, Digby seems to be saying nothing that we haven't heard a thousand times and yet it produced this level of interest and conviction in me.

And Digby's final point (obviously I'd say the whole piece is eminently worth reading) struck home the most forcefully. Countering the oddly optimistic ending of the Post op-ed piece (after a scathing indictment that doesn't seem at all to motivate such an ending), Digby takes issue and writes (with emphasis added by me):

"This was a very good article until this point. Our failure is already certain no matter what we do. The fundamental flaw in this entire enterprise is not how we did it, although the massive failures outlined in this article are so obvious that it's imperative to discuss them on their own terms. In fact, I worry that what this failure of execution reveals is a military leadership so lacking in intellectual ability and so wracked with primitive racism that this country cannot count on it to actually defend us in case of a real war. The officer corps are supposed to be smart guys, not a bunch of idiots who would read some piece of trash like "The Arab Mind" and actually believe it --- much less use it as the basis for tactics on the ground. This is a dangerous situation for America. However, the fundamental flaw remains the invasion itself, a bad decision from which everything else flows. The lesson is that an illegal, dishonest war of choice is doomed on its own terms. In the modern world outright conquest is impossible and anything else cannot be finessed with spin and wishful thinking. That we compounded that error with a comic book understanding of the people we were "liberating" and a lack of postwar planning that was criminal in its negligence is just more evidence of the perfidy of this administration and its congressional enablers. But the central problem remains that it is not how we waged the war, it's that we waged it at all.

A few things to point out here. First, I love the way that Digby takes on this odd, almost-mechanical optimism at the end of the op-ed piece (which concludes "Unless we demonstrate by our actions that we value their lives as much as the lives of our own troops, our failure is certain"). Digby suggests, it seems to me, that the last sentence is this unthinking concession to the dominant, bullying, hegemonic politics of our time -- a meaningless rhetorical squib in one sense ("our failure is certain" doesn't concede, of course, that "success" is at all likely) but a lame and unnnecessary (and destructive) concession in another sense. The end of the op-ed is like a limit-case for the dominant problem of opposition at the moment, a yes-yes-yes-yes-but structure (yes the war was unnecessary, yes its been a disaster, yes it gets worse all the time, yes its destablizing not stabilizing the region, yes we were wrong to get involved, yes we were probably mislead by the very people who are still leading the war, yes there were no weapons of mass destruction, yes the violence hasn't diminished, yes our military is over-extended, yes there is increasing ethnic strife in Iraq, yes this kind of ethnic strife necessarily tends to *create more* strife, yes the Iraq police and military are so filled with paramilitary and insurgent forces that strengthening these forces almost necessarily strengthens sectarian strife and the insurgency as well, but -- but we need to stay and accomplish something still, but we can turn around our failure in some way, at some point, in another six months, or year, or two years, or five years).

Second, Digby's post also concerns what we might call the overt racism of this war. As Digby points out -- in fact, this is the central argument of the entire essay -- the way we fight this war is necessarily implicated in and shaped by the decision to fight the war in the first place. Similarly, the racism that informs how we've fought the war (the "get-tough" policy that is the focus of the Post op-ed) is deeply connected to the decision to fight in the first place. The Post op-ed, like Digby's post, like the quotation from Cobra 2, insists on the conncetion between racism and our incompetent military strategy in Iraq. *All our failure* in fighting in Iraq is directly attributable to a get-tough policy on the insurgents which, in turn, directly relies on a perception of ethnic Arab culture. The Cobra quote (which I predict we will hear more of) lays this out most viscerally: "The only thing these sand niggers understand is force and I'm about to introduce them to it." This also holds for the great turning-point in the Iraq war, Operation Vigilant Resolve, the utterly failed assualt on Fallujah in April 2004. This operation, which was instigated, it seems, directly by President Bush, and had the initial "mission" of "capturing" the Iraqis who killed the four Blackwater employees, emptied 9/10ths of the city (from 350,000 to 30,000 civilians). According to Wikipedia, 60% of buildings in Fallajuh have been damaged, 20% "totally destroyed," and "the current population is unknown but estimated at less than 200,000".

Finally, Digby's post is unequivocal about the ultimate failure of the Iraq war. This seems to me to be the turning-point that I was alluding to above. And brings me to the third association: Ned Lamont's comments in the debate last week with Lieberman. In Jack Murtha's critque of the war, one claim had disproportionate relevance and significance for his entire chain of reasoning: "I have concluded that the presence of U.S. troops in Iraq is impeding this progress. . . . Our troops have become the primary target of the insurgency. They are united against U.S. forces and we have become a catalyst for violence."

Murtha's key point is that the U.S. presence actually increases the violence of the insurgency, even in the act of attempting to decrease this violence. Every year we stay, according to this part of Murtha's argument, brings us further away from our goals. Lamont made this point repeatedly in the hour-long debate. He was unwavering in this strong version of an anti-war position. "I think it's important to look at the facts on the ground, and we're not making the situation better by our frontline presence there. . . . In fact, in the last six months, the number of sectarian deaths has increased a lot. There are deaths of Americans. It's going downhill. . . . I think our very visible, frontline military presence is making the situation worse."

Rejecting any "optimistic" scenario, highlighting the racist underpinnings of both the motives for the war and the means of the war; and pointing to the way that front-line US troops increase violence: these are all connected. We can't be optimistic because the presence of U.S. troops is resulting in the exact oppositte of what is intended (more brutal violence not less); and U.S. troops are having this effect because every action of our troops in Iraq -- how they are positioned, what they are supposed to do, what "missions" they are supposed to be accomplishing -- is fundamentally shaped by misguided assumptions about Arab culture that lead us into the war. The "Arabness" of Iraq was a fundamental part of why we invaded their country in the first place and its no wonder that our occupation has and continues to precipitate ethnic violence, sectarianism, and extremism. Not to mention that the particular brutality of the occupation -- exemplified in Operation Vigilant Resolve, but also obviously apparent in strafe bombing, checkpoints, detention "policy", Abu Ghraib, civilian massacres, etc. etc. -- is also based on fundamentally flawed and racist views on military strategy.

It's this fundamental reality that makes the ever-more discredited positions of liberal hawks like George Packer so problematic. Their "do-good" fantasy about a just-war intersects in about a million places with the "get-tough" fantasy that actually has always been at the heart of the Iraq invasion and occupation.

Finally, I think this equation will become -- or is, in front of our eyes, becoming -- more visible as the Bush administration runs out of the "benchmarks" which have formed the basis of their counter-narrative. With the Malaki government in place and no more elections impending how will Bush -- or for that matter Leiberman -- frame the continual violence that is both inflicted upon and provoked by the U.S. occupation?

small point

2006-07-09T00:26:00.000-04:00

In the Peter Hoekstra letter to Bush that was leaked to the NY Times, the angry Repulican congressman is quoted as writing: "I have learned of some alleged intelligence community activities about which our committee has not been briefed. If these allegations are true, they may represent a breach of responsibility by the administration, a violation of the law, and, just as importantly, a direct affront to me and the members of this committee who have so ardently supported efforts to collect information on our enemies."

In the casual equation that it makes, this statement seems emblemtic of something one notices more and more these days. Why shouldn't a "violation of the law" be of much greater importance than a breach of responsibility or even this "affront" to the committee? The disregard for the law in our political culture -- or, to put this differently, our confused lawlessness -- surfaces even here, in the unorthodox effort of a Republican to call Bush on some of his shit.

"grub first, then ethics"

2006-05-31T12:38:00.000-04:00

Where are we going, Walt Whitman? The doors close in
an hour. Which way does your beard point tonight?

(I touch your book and dream of our odyssey in the
supermarket and feel absurd.)

Will we walk all night through solitary streets? The
trees add shade to shade, lights out in the houses, we'll both be
lonely.

Will we stroll dreaming of the lost America of love
past blue automobiles in driveways, home to our silent cottage?

Ah, dear father, graybeard, lonely old courage-teacher,
what America did you have when Charon quit poling his ferry and
you got out on a smoking bank and stood watching the boat
disappear on the black waters of Lethe?

--Allen Ginsberg, from "A Supermarket in California," Berkeley 1955

"Be grateful to them which brought you up by hand!"

2006-05-25T13:30:00.000-04:00

"And then, dear boy, it was a recompense to me, look'ee here, to know in secret that I was making a gentleman. . . When one of 'em says to another, 'he was a convict, a few years ago, and is a ignorant common fellow now, for all he's lucky,' what do I say? I says to myself, 'If I ain't a gentleman, nor yet ain't got no learning, I'm the owner of such. All on you owns stock and land; which on you owns a brought-up London gentleman?' -- Great Expectations, Chapter 39

an alliance between government and commerce

2006-05-13T15:48:00.000-04:00

In the spring of 1996, at an annual conference organized under the name "Computers, Freedom, and Privacy" (CFP), two science-fiction writers told stories about cyberspace's future. Vernor Vinge spoke about "ubiquitous law enforcement," made possible by "fine-grained distributed systems"; through computer chips linked by the Net to every part of social life, a portion dedicated to the government's use. This architecture was already being built--it was the Internet--and technologists were already describing its extensions. As this network of control became woven into every part of social life, it would be just a matter of time, Vinge siad, before the government claimed its fair share of control. Each new generation of code would increase the power of government. The future would be a world of perfect regulation, and the architecture of distributed computing--the Internet and its attachments--would make that perfection possible.

Tom Maddox followed Vinge. His vision was very similar, though the source of control, different. The government's power would not come just from chips. The real source of power, Maddox argued, was an alliance between government and commerce. Commerce, like government, fares better in a regulated world. Property is more secure, data more easily captured, and disruption is less of a risk. The future would be a pact between these two forces of social order. Code and commerce.

The attribute which most singularly defines this administration is its insistence that our Government is based on unilateral and unreviewed Presidential Decree. The President directs the telecom companies to turn over this information and they obey. That’s how our Government works, as they see it. And if the telecom companies are concerned about their legal liability as a result of laws which strongly suggest that they are acting illegally if they comply with the President’s Decree, and thus request a judicial ruling first, that request, too, is denied. There is no need for a judicial ruling once the President speaks. What he orders is, by definition, legal, and nobody can say otherwise, including courts....[snip]

Magically, hordes of brilliant pro-Bush legal scholars have been able to determine instantaneously -- as in, within hours of the program's disclosure -- that the program is completely legal and constitutional (just like so many of them were able confidently to opine within hours of the disclosure of the warrantless eavesdropping program that it, too, was perfectly legal and constitutional). Having said that, there are some generally pro-Bush bloggers expressing serious skepticism over the legality and/or advisability of this program.

-Glenn Greenwald, May, 2006, from his blog. (Follow the link for the complete essay.)

A new Pentagon research office has started designing a global computer-surveillance system to give U.S. counterterrorism officials access to personal information in government and commercial databases around the world.

The Information Awareness Office, run by former national security adviser John M. Poindexter, aims to develop new technologies to sift through "ultra-large" data warehouses and networked computers in search of threatening patterns among everyday transactions, such as credit card purchases and travel reservations, according to interviews and documents....[snip]

"How are we going to find terrorists and preempt them, except by following their trail," said Poindexter, who brought the idea to the Pentagon after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and now is beginning to award contracts to high-technology vendors...[snip]

The office already has an emblem that features a variation of the great seal of the United States: An eye looms over a pyramid and appears to scan the world. The motto reads: Scientia Est Potentia, or "knowledge is power.

-Robert O'Harrow Jr., Tuesday, November 12, 2002,
© 2002 The Washington Post Company

House and Senate negotiators included language in the Department of Defense Appropriations Act, 2004, Pub. L. No. 108-87, § 8131, 117 Stat. 1054, 1102 (2003) signed into law by President Bush on October 1, 2003), prohibiting the further use of funds for the TIA program. Further, the Joint Explanatory Statement included in the conference committee report specifically directed that the IAO (the program manager for TIA) be terminated immediately (149 Cong. Rec. H8755—H8771 (Sept. 24, 2003). Notwithstanding the defunding of TIA and the closing of the IAO, several TIA projects continued to be funded under the classified annexes to the Defense and the Intelligence appropriation bills in 2003 and subsequently.

For example, several TIA projects were funded through the National Foreign Intelligence Program for foreign counterterrorism intelligence purposes by the National Security Agency as Advanced Research and Development Activity (ARDA) under the classified annex to the 2004 DOD Appropriations Act as contemplated in §8131 thereof. Recent reports suggest that some of this activity is now part of the Disruptive Technology Office (DTO) reporting to the Director of National Intelligence.

-Wikipedia, Information Awareness Office, article current on May 13th, 2006

Slip of the Tongue

2006-05-09T16:57:00.000-04:00

"By the '70s and into the '80s and '90s, the Democratic Party solidified its gains in the African American community, and we Republicans did not effectively reach out," Mehlman says in his prepared text. "Some Republicans gave up on winning the African American vote, looking the other way or trying to benefit politically from racial polarization. I am here today as the Republican chairman to tell you we were wrong."
-- RNC Chief to Say It Was 'Wrong' to Exploit Racial Conflict for Votes, Washington Post, July 14 2005
****

MR. RUSSERT: Headlines in the Capitol Hill paper: “Dems prepare for transition.” Today’s Washington Post: “Confident Dems lay out agenda.” You’re measuring the draperies in the speaker’s office.

REP. PELOSI: No we’re not. No we’re not. The American people would like to know what we would do if we take over.

MR. RUSSERT: Ah, absolutely. If they...

REP. PELOSI: And that’s what...

MR. RUSSERT: ...and let me ask you about that, because you told The Washington Post that there will be investigations if the Democrats regain control of the House. The chairman of the Judiciary Committee would be someone named John Conyers. I went up to his Web site and this is what’s on his Web site: “Stand with Congressman Conyers. Demand an investigation of administration abuses of power and make recommendations regarding grounds for possible impeachment.”

REP. PELOSI: Democrats are not about impeachment. Democrats are about bringing the country together. This is what we have to do.

MR. RUSSERT: But that’s the man who would be chairman of the Judiciary Committee.

Tim Russert on Meet the Press, May 7 2006

*****

COOPER: It's interesting, though, because Democrats seem to be trying to fire up their base. And I'm wondering if it is going to backfire.

You have Democratic House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi telling "The Washington Post" that, if Democrats regain the House, they would launch investigations into energy prices and the war.

When people start hearing about investigating the president, I mean, does that just fire up the Democrats, or does that play into the Republicans' hands?

GERGEN: Terrific question.

I -- it -- it -- when I read that story over the weekend, I thought, you know, this is going to wave a red flag in front of the Republican bulls. They're going to look at this and say, we're not going to spend the next two years with investigations, led by Ron Dellums and others and people who want to impeach the president. We're just not going to get into that.

-- David Gergen on Anderson Cooper 360, May 8 2006

****
John Conyers is currently the ranking Democratic member of the Judiciary Committee. Ron Dellums retired from Congress, after 28 years of service, in 1999.

Reliable Source

2006-05-03T06:21:00.000-04:00

"You have to have a great deal of confidence to do self-deprecating humor, especially when you're being attacked day in and day out," said Landon Parvin, who helped Bush and Bridges write the jokes contrasting Bush's public voice with his supposed inner thoughts." -- Washington Post, The New Bush Twins: Double Dubya

"Make. Announce. Type. Just put 'em through a spell check and go home." -- Colbert

The reviews from the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner are in, and the consensus is that President Bush and Bush impersonator Steve Bridges stole Saturday's show -- and Comedy Central host Stephen Colbert's cutting satire fell flat because he ignored the cardinal rule of Washington humor: Make fun of yourself, not the other guy. -- Washington Post, The New Bush Twins: Double Dubya

"Wheels within wheels"

2006-04-29T14:59:00.000-04:00

"After this introductory preface, the three chums informed Mr. Pickwick, in a breath, that money was, in the Fleet, just what money was out of it." -- Pickwick Papers, Chapter 42

[the following selections all taken from today's San Jose Mercury News]

"The cost of the war in Iraq is skyrocketing, largely because tanks, trucks, helicopters and other military gear are wearing out in Iraq's harsh climate and have to be replaced faster than ever before, a review of military budgets shows. The Pentagon's cost for new weapons and equipment has risen sharply since U.S. troops entered Iraq, from about $8 billion in 2003 to more than $24 billion this year, according to statistics compiled by the Congressional Research Service. As a percentage, new equipment now accounts for 20 percent of military expenditures in Iraq and Afghanistan. The cost of replacing equipment is one of the factors likely to make Iraq one of the costliest military engagements in U.S. history." ("Fresh Military Gear Drives Up War Costs: Iraq's Climate Hard on Equipment")

"With oil prices above $70 a barrel fouling the world economy, dismay is focusing on Iraq, whose exports have slipped to their lowest levels since the 2003 invasion. Contrary to optimistic expectations, Iraq's oil production has slipped further and further since the U.S.-led invasion, to an average of 2 million barrels a day. . . . Those figures suggest misplaced optimism by Iraq's oil ministry, which in 2005 predicted crude production would reach 2.5 million or even 3 million barrels a day by the end of 2006. Analysts have called that prediction a pipe dream. Insurgents have been so deft at shutting down the pipelines from the giant fields aroud the northern city of Kirkuk that Iraq authorities tried to move crude by truck to its refineries and crude-burning power plants. But after insurgents attacked the trucks, drivers became difficult to recruit and the oil ministry was forced to cut production." ("Iraq's Failure at Oil Exports a Key to Crunch")

"The U.N. food agency said Friday that it is cutting rations in half for about 3 million refugees in Sudan's war-ravaged Darfur region because of a shortage of money, calling it 'scandalous' that it has to stretch out supplies while it pleads for funds. The World Food Program said it would reduce food handouts to 1,050 calories a person starting Monday -- down from the 2,1000 calories that is considered the daily mininum requirement, meaning some of those being helped could eventually face starvation. . . . Donor governments have given the World Food Program only $238 million of the $746 million the agency needs this year for the whole of Sudan, said WFP official Christiane Berthiaume." ("Money Shortage Forcing U.N. to Cut Food Aid to Sudan by Half")

"Lt. Col. Steven L. Jordan faces six charges, including allegations that between September 2003 and December 2004 he oppressed Iraqi detainess 'by subjecting them to forced nudity and intimidation by military walking dogs' and later repeatedly lied about his knowledge of any such abuse, according to the Army. Jordan would become the highest-ranking Army officer tried in the abuses at Abu Ghurayb. . . . Unrelated to the prisoner abuse, Jordan was also charged with fraud for submitting receipts for car repairs that were several hundred dollars more than the actual cost of the repairs." ("No. 2 Interrogation Officer Charged in Iraq Prison Abuse")

The Fixer

2006-04-25T09:43:00.000-04:00

"Sometimes con mobs operate through one fixer who buys protection wholesale, so to speak, for all types of criminals. This is likely to be the case in cities under 30,000 in population, where one man handles all types of protection for a price. More often, however, they locate the big store in a comm unity permanently, say, as a merchant might locate a dry-gods store there. This means that they must have sound con nections with the forces of law and order--connections which can be depended upon to withstand stormy times. It also means that often the fixer must have a specialized technique for this type of work--fixing con touches. Hence, con men sometimes depend upon one powerful fixer who works constantly in their interests for a stipulated percentage--usually fifty per cent of the insideman's share after he has paid off the necessary expenses incidental to playing the mark."

-- David W. Maurer, The Big Con, Ch. 7 (1940)

real horrorshow

2006-04-23T01:53:00.000-04:00

"Nobody likes to see violence on the TV screens. Nobody wants to see little children blown up when a U.S. soldier is trying to give them candy. Nobody likes to see innocent women die at the hands of suicide bombers. It breaks our heart." -- George W. Bush, "President Bush Discusses Global War on Terror" 4.6.06

"It's funny how the colours of the real world only seem really real when you viddy them on the screen."-- Alex, A Clockwork Orange (1971)

freudian slip?

2006-04-20T15:47:00.000-04:00

MCCLELLAN: You have accomplished a lot over the last several years with this team. And I have been honored and grateful to be a small part of a terrific and talented team of really good people. Our relationship began back in Texas, and I look forward to continuing it, particularly when we are both back in Texas.

BUSH: That's right.

MCCLELLAN: Although I hope to get there before you. (laughter)

--AP 4.19.06

all work and no play

2006-04-19T11:12:00.000-04:00

"Here's Donny! In His Defense, a Show Is Born," NYTimes, 4.19.06

"Here's Johnny!" The Shining (1980)

murdeR was the Case

2006-04-19T04:49:00.000-04:00

WENDY: Danny? Hon?
TONY: Danny's not here, Mrs. Torrance.

-- The Shining (1980)

a right witty scholar

2006-04-18T23:45:00.000-04:00

Hoopsa boyaboy hoopsa! Hoopsa boyaboy hoopsa! Hoopsa boyaboy hoopsa!
--James Joyce, Ulysses, "Oxen of the Sun" 14.5-6

in a world of shit

2006-04-18T14:45:00.000-04:00

Colonel: Marine, what is that button on your body armor?
Private Joker: A peace symbol, sir.
Colonel: Where'd you get it?
Private Joker: I don't remember, sir.
Colonel: What is that you've got written on your helmet?
Private Joker: "Born to Kill", sir.
Colonel: You write "Born to Kill" on your helmet and you wear a peace button. What's that supposed to be, some kind of sick joke?
Private Joker: No, sir.
Colonel: You'd better get your head and your ass wired together, or I will take a giant shit on you.
Private Joker: Yes, sir.
Colonel: Now answer my question or you'll be standing tall before the man.
Private Joker: I think I was trying to suggest something about the duality of man, sir.
Colonel: The what?
Private Joker: The duality of man. The Jungian thing, sir.
Colonel: Whose side are you on, son?
Private Joker: Our side, sir.
Colonel: Don't you love your country?
Private Joker: Yes, sir.
Colonel: Then how about getting with the program? Why don't you jump on the team and come on in for the big win?
Private Joker: Yes, sir.
Colonel: Son, all I've ever asked of my marines is that they obey my orders as they would the word of God. We are here to help the Vietnamese, because inside every gook there is an American trying to get out. It's a hardball world, son. We've gotta keep our heads until this peace craze blows over.
Private Joker: Aye-aye, sir.

--Full Metal Jacket (1987)

In Two Acts

2006-04-15T13:33:00.000-04:00

Office of Intelligence and Analysis
Homeland
Security

Homeland Security Assessment

(U-FOUO) Preventing Attacks by Animal Rights Extremists and Eco-Terrorists: Fundamentals of Corporate Security

13 April 2006

[...]

(U) Scope

(U-FOUO) Attacks against corporations by animal rights extremists and eco-terrorists are costly to the targeted company and, over time, can undermine confidence in the economy.

Your com mie has no regard for human life, not even his own.

Within this context, the goal of eco-terrorists and animal rights extremists is to disrupt and ultimately shut down corporations that are perceived to violate the ideology of the terrorist organizations.

That's the way your hard core commie works.

Although we have no specific, credible information at this time suggesting animal rights extremists and eco-terrorists are planning to target known corporations, ...

The enemy may come individually, or he may come in strength. He may even come in the uniform of our own troops. But however he comes we must stop him.

... we encourage private sector owners and operators to remain vigilant, report suspicious activity, and continue to enhance protective measures.

Now, I am going to give you three simple rules. First, trust no one, whatever his uniform or rank, unless he is known to you personally. Second, anyone or anything that approaches within 200 yards of the perimeter is to be fired upon. Third, if in doubt, shoot first, and ask questions afterwards. I would sooner accept a few casualties through accident than lose the entire base and its personnel through carelessness.

[...]

DHS document (at the TPM Document Collection)

Dr. Strangelove script

Learn more about how you can help stop the terrorists and extremists.

UPDATE (4/17/6) by &y:

homeland security

2006-04-13T11:29:00.000-04:00

ATF agents are always on alert for anything suspicious — including ninjas.

Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearm agents, on campus Tuesday for Project Safe Neighborhoods training, detained a “suspicious individual” near the Georgia Center, University Police Chief Jimmy Williamson said.

Jeremiah Ransom, a sophomore from Macon, was leaving a Wesley Foundation pirate vs. ninja event when he was detained.

After being held in investigative detention, he was found to have violated no criminal laws and was not arrested.

“It was surreal,” Ransom said. “I was jogging from Wesley to Snelling when I heard someone yell ‘freeze.’”

Ransom said he thought a friend was playing a joke before he realized officers had guns drawn and pointed at him.

ATF agents had noticed Ransom’s suspicious behavior and clothing and gave chase, apprehending him, Williamson said.

“Agents noticed someone wearing a bandanna across the face and acting in a somewhat suspicious manner, peeping around the corner,” said ATF special agent in charge Vanessa McLemore.

Ransom was wearing black sweatpants and an athletic T-shirt with one red bandanna covering the bottom half of his face and another covering the top of his head, Williamson said.

“Seeing someone with something across the face, from a federal standpoint — that’s not right,” McLemore said, explaining why agents believed something to be amiss.

Agents noticed Ransom peering around a corner and said when police sirens sounded, he took off running.

After chasing Ransom and identifying themselves, ATF agents detained him, turning him over once University Police arrived, McLemore said.

Ransom said Williamson told him the incident should not have been handled in such a manner and he would file a complaint with the ATF.

“I was in shock, to say the least,” Ransom said.

--"ATF rids Univ. of ninja threat," The Red and Black, 4/12/06

8 little words (or, "Back! Caught You Looking For the Same Thing")

2006-04-12T06:36:00.000-04:00

Hey, how do you like this? A whole front page expose by the Washington Post on "we have found the weapons of mass destruction" (my dkos signature).

Liar.

interior monologue 4.09

2006-04-09T22:45:00.000-04:00

Observing me, the young lady came over and asked me did I wish to buy anything. The tone of her voice was not encouraging; she seemed to have spoken to me out of a sense of duty. I looked humbly at the great jars that stood like eastern guards at either side of the dark entrance to the stall and murmured:

'No, thank you.'

The young lady changed the position of one of the vases and went back to the two young men. They began to talk of the same subject. Once or twice the young lady glanced at me over her shoulder.

I lingered before her stall, though I knew my stay was useless, to make my interest in her wares seem the more real. Then I turned away slowly and walked down the middle of the bazaar. I allowed the two pennies to fall against the sixpence in my pocket. I heard a voice call from one end of the gallery that the light was out. The upper part of the hall was now completely dark.

Gazing up into the darkness I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity; and my eyes burned with anguish and anger.

--James Joyce, "Araby"

S.O.S.

2006-04-07T23:51:00.000-04:00

a blue French telegram, curiosity to show: Nother dying come home father.
-- James Joyce, Ulysses

"The attacks came as the American ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, said in an interview with the BBC that if a unified government was not formed soon, a sectarian war could erupt in Iraq and that such a war could engulf the entire Middle East."
-- Edward Wong, "Suicide Bombers Kill at Least 71 at Shiite Mosque" NY Times, April 8

Orwell #11

2006-04-02T17:30:00.000-04:00

In the case of a word like democracy, not only is there no agreed definition, but the attempt to make one is resisted from all sides. It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it; consequently the defenders of every kind of regime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using the word if it were tied down to any one meaning. -- "Politics and the English Language"

world leader pretend

2006-04-02T14:23:00.000-04:00

Needling press and politicians goes over well, of course. But there are moments when audiences are left wondering just what he's talking about. At Freedom House, Bush called on a member of the audience, then, before the man could ask a question, segued into his plans to leave for a summit in Cancun, Mexico.

"No Speedo suit here," Bush declared. "Thankfully."

The questioner, unsure if Bush was done, waited patiently. "Ready?" the man finally asked.

"Yes," Bush said. "Sorry to interrupt you. Just testing your concentration."

--Washington Post, "The President as Average Joe" (4/1/06)

cry, the beloved country

2006-04-01T18:26:00.000-05:00

"One of the great things about America, one of the beauties of our country, is that when we see a young, innocent child blown up by an IED, we cry."
--George W. Bush, 3/29/06

Obsession

2006-03-18T21:29:00.000-05:00

Forests, you scare me like cathedrals do;
You roar like an organ, and in our despicable hearts,
Chambers of tireless mourning where old gasps haw,
The echoes of your sacred chants reverberate.

I hate you, Ocean. Your bounding and your tumults,
My spirit rediscovers itself in them; that bitter laugh
of the vanquished man, full of sobs and insults,
Is what I hear in the enormous laugh of the sea.

How you would please me, O Night! Without your stars
whose light speaks an unknown tongue-
For I seek the empty, the black, the bare.

And the darkness is itself like a canvas
where-pouring from my eyes by the thousands
live the familiar faces of my lost and my dead.

Charles Baudelaire, les Fleurs du Mal
English adaptation © 2006 Paul Delehanty

Michael Gordon, War Guilt and the "one-track mind"

2006-03-18T20:57:00.000-05:00

From Atrios, link to disturbing interview between Amy Goodman and Michael Gordon, who co-authored the A1 NY Times story from September 8, 2002, "US Says Hussein Intensifies Quest for A-Bomb Parts." Let's remember these basic facts: September 8. 2002. Front page story. Written by Michael Gordon. Co-written with Judith Miller. September 8 2002 was a SUNDAY. That same day Dick Cheney cited this article on Meet the Press. Condi Rice cited it on CNN Late Edition.

What's so disturbing about this interview is how much Gordon wants to run away from these facts. It's nauseating to see a reporter that would be so impatient with questions, which are after all, his own stock in trade. "I don't know if you understand how journalism works . . . Can I answer your question, since you asked me a question? . . . No, wait a second, if you ask me a question – I'm happy to answer all your questions, but what I'm trying to explain to you is one thing. That was what I knew at the time. . . by the way, if you know how newspapers work, I actually don't decide what goes on the front page of the New York Times, and I think the New York Times did its best, you know, and had no agenda certainly in this issue, in trying to cover this issue. . . . Are you going to let me talk now? . . . Yeah. You're not well-informed on this issue, because – I don't have any, you know, criticism of you as an individual, but you're not very well informed on this, because if you were well-informed on this – I'm friends with David Albright. . . . Do you want me to say something? . . . I think you can beat this dead horse forever, but I think I'm going to make one point. . . . [and, most remarkably] You have a one-track mind. I thought we were going to talk about the Iraq war."

Can you imagine a reporter, an investigative reporter, criticizing another reporter for having a "one-track mind"? While the war goes on in Iraq, and American soldiers, still, every week, come home shrouded in the body bags which are, themselves, shrouded from view, while Rumsfield and Cheney still spew out the lies that this reporter helped to propagate?

Voices, Passive and Active

2006-02-26T02:42:00.000-05:00

One wartime moment not at all vile occurred in June 5, 1944, when Dwight Eisenhower, alone with himself, for the moment disjunct from his publicity apparatus, changed the passive voice to active in the penciled statement he wrote out to have ready when the invasion was repulsed, his troops torn apart for nothing, his planes ripped and smashed to no end, his warships sunk, his reputation blasted:

Our landings in the Cherbourg-Havre area have failed to gain a satisfactory foothold and I have withdrawn the troops.

Originally he wrote the trops have been withdrawn, as if by some distant, anonymous agency instead of by an identifiable man making all-but impossible decisions. Having ventured this bold revision, and secure now in his painful acceptance of full personal accountability, he is able to proceed unevasively with My decision:

My decision to attack at this time and place was based on the best information available.

Then, after the conventional "credit," distributed equally to "the troops, the air, and the navy," Eisenhower's noble acceptance of total personal responsibility:

If any blame or fault attaches to this attempt, it is mine alone.

As Mailer says, you use the word shit so you can use the word noble, and you refuse to ignore the stupidity and barbarism and ignobility and poltroonery and filth of the real war so that it is mine alone can flash out, a bright signal in a dark time.

-- final paragraphs of Paul Fussell's Wartime (1989).

nostalgia for the present

2006-02-23T15:42:00.000-05:00

"Postmodernism" is itself the prime example of the conceptuality that results from such a system, in which reality itself is organized a little like those networks of political cells whose members have only met their immediate opposite numbers. Within this "concept," then, that coexistence of distinct representations we already know, but whose unique operations we have not sufficiently admired, can be compared to schizophrenia, if this last is really what Pynchon tells us it is ("Day by day, Wendell is less himself and more generic. He enters a staff meeting and the room is suddenly full of people"). A roomful of people, indeed, solicit us in incompatible directions that we entertain all at once: one subject position assuring us of the remarkable new global elegance of its daily life and forms; another one marveling at the spread of democracy, with all those new "voices" sounding out of hitherto silent parts of the globe or inaudible class strata (just wait a while, they will be here, to join their voices to the rest); other more querulous and "realistic" tongues reminding us of the incompetences of late capitalism, with its delirious paper-money constructions rising out of sight, its Debt, the rapidity of the flight of factories matched only by the opening of new junk-food chains, the sheer immiseration of structural homelessness, let alone unemployment, and that well-known thing called urban "blight" or "decay" which the media wraps brightly up in drug melodramas and violence porn when it judges the theme perilously close to being threadbare. None of these voices can be said to contradict the others; not "discourses" but only propositions do that, and the identity of identity and nonidentity does not seem very satisfactory for this one, for which "coexistence" is too reassuring a term as well, implying some ultimate chance of intergalactic collision in which matter and antimatter might finally meet and shake hands.... As an ideology which is also a reality, the "postmodern" cannot be disproved insofar as its fundamental feature is the radical separation of all levels and voices whose recombination in their totality could alone disprove it.

--Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, pp. 375-76 (1991)

Idle Hands

2006-02-19T04:49:00.000-05:00

Nice article -- but was this really "roundly condemned" last time around?

How Long, O Lord?

2006-02-19T00:02:00.000-05:00

At a time when the liars, the stupid, and the greedy seem too greatly in control of a society's policies, philosophies of materialistic reduction may bring us much solace in reminding us that the very nature of the materials out of which a civilization is constructed, or in which it is grounded, will not permit such perfection of lies, stupidity, and greed to prevail as some men might cause to prevail if they could have their way. For obstructive policies are self-defeating, often ironically hastening the very reforms that these policies were designed to prevent. Sinister interests may have so strong a hold upon the channels of authority, that the people will try their utmost to do what is asked of them, even to the point of destitution, perplexity, and suicide. Yet, even though the people would obey, there is materialistic solace in the thought that the sheer brute materials of the world as it is will disobey. For there are properties of the material order that are grounded in a more basic constitution than any that men can write. These material properties will produce the effects that go with their nature, regardless of how thoroughly the apologists of an outdated order may be equipped to deny this nature, and to so miseducate and misinform that men are trained to draw the lines at the wrong places, interpreting both private and social situations in woefully inaccurate terms. Then it is not by the Courts, but by the constitution of the materials themselves, that false measures will be invalidated.

--Kenneth Burke, A Grammar of Motives

spiny norman over texas

2006-02-17T21:46:00.000-05:00

"This past weekend encompassed all of us in a cloud of misfortune and sadness that is not easy to explain, especially to those who are not familiar with the great sport of quail hunting," Mr. Whittington said.

"My family and I are deeply sorry for all that Vice President Cheney and his family have had to go through this past week," he added....

Mr. Whittington spoke in a firm, slightly raspy voice on Friday, and referring to Mr. Cheney and his family, he said: "We send our love and respect to them as they deal with situations that are much more serious than what we've had this week. And we hope that he will continue to come to Texas and seek the relaxation that he deserves."
--"Compassion for Cheney as Victim Heads Home," NYTimes 2/18/06

~~~

Presenter: Another man who had his head nailed to the floor was Stig O' Tracy.

Interviewer: I've been told Dinsdale Piranha nailed your head to the floor.

Stig: No. Never. He was a smashing bloke. He used to buy his mother flowers and that. He was like a brother to me.

Interviewer: But the police have film of Dinsdale actually nailing your head to the floor.

Stig: (pause) Oh yeah, he did that.

Interviewer: Why?

Stig: Well he had to, didn't he? I mean there was nothing else he could do, be fair. I had transgressed the unwritten law.

Interviewer: What had you done?

Stig: Er... well he didn't tell me that, but he gave me his word that it was the case, and that's good enough for me with old Dinsy. I mean, he didn't *want* to nail my head to the floor. I had to insist. He wanted to let me off. He'd do anything for you, Dinsdale would.

Interviewer: And you don't bear him a grudge?

Stig: A grudge! Old Dinsy? He was a real darling.

--M.Python, "Ethel the Frog" (1970)

Applause

2006-02-16T15:16:00.000-05:00

When South Africa applauds the way
The Tories use their power
To silence the debate on Northern Ireland
I wonder how long it will be
Before the nations of the world
Begin to impose sanctions upon my land.

--Billy Bragg, Ideology (stray live verse)

The Week That Was

2006-01-28T05:34:00.000-05:00

We saw three big lies this week, as Bush clearly stepped up activity before the State of the Union address. Never has the Matrix analogy seemed more real to me as, with flashes of the broken city of New Orleans running through the mind, the systematic and evil distortion of reality continues, old, new, borrowed, blue. New, of course, is the stunning victory of Hamas, which, having the misfortune to occur right in the whirling dervish of new Republican spin, was merely swallowed up into it. Having taught Orwell's 1984 recently, I was shocked to see what I take as one of the most unrealistic scenes of the novel -- the public rally that Winston Smith witnesses, where, right before his eyes, the war with Eastasia is instantly turned into the war with Eurasia (or perhaps the other way around) -- become yet another useful point of reference. (In the space of a minute, new posters up, old posters down, newspapers changed, a speaker continuing with the new Super-State without even breaking the rhythym of his speech).

Bush's press conference is striking in this regard, as is the press coverage more generally: as though reeling under a mutli-pronged assault, there is a reflexive, allergic reaction to not really registering this stunning blow. As though this election has nothing to do with the War in Iraq (or the "War on Terra"), as though we're not even at War. The Hamas election, in fact, gives the lie to so many of the basic rhetorical constructions that prop up Bush's Iraq War that it can almost not be seen at all. Either this is simply an event that happens to the United States, something out there which, like a hurricane, blows in onto the press that is covering it, from the U.S., and has nothing to do with the United States itself, or, even more radically, as Bush suggested several times in his initial statements, its not really an event at all. Besides there's too many other things going on. "But if nothing else, legal and political analysts say, Bush administration officials appear to have succeeded in framing the legal debate on their own terms and daring critics of the National Security Agency operation to prove them wrong. 'It's a very astute strategy," said Peter J. Spiro, a law professor at the University of Georgia. "They don't have much to work with legally, but they're framing these justifications in constitutional terms to a public audience. That may serve them well.'"

As we know, this particular rhetorical jijitsu was not only conceived but actively avowed by Karl Rove last Friday, whose speech now reads as a diestic prequel to the Week That Would Be. "On Friday, the Justice Department capped the week's blitz with a 27-point rebuttal to its critics labeled 'Myth V. Reality.' The first 'myth' listed: 'The N.S.A. program is illegal.'" The third lie, is, of course, Abramoff, dramatized so remarkably in the crazy events at the Washington Post, whose ombudsman (of all people) was caught at the precise moment of alchemical transformation: between hard lie (Abramoff gave money to both parties) and soft (Abramoff directed money to both parties, still, of course, patently untrue -- but untrue more deeply in the insidious way it shifts, or begins to lose sight of, the very essential terms of the news story itself).

Hamas, NSA, Abramoff: is there any doubt that we are still livng in Rove's world, where the truth is not merely hidden but somehow metastasized into an even bigger lie (not only did Abramoff not really *happen*, he gave money to the Democrats as well; not only is the shocking victory of Hamas unrelated to the Iraq War, it offers us democracy in action; not only is extra-legal wiretapping not illegal, but those who passed these laws are themselves criminals, seeking to endanger you). It makes you wonder what the State of the Union would look like if the four corners of Fitzgerald's investigation had been just a little bit wider.

What Is It Like to be Bush: Little Rascals Edition

2006-01-23T14:51:00.000-05:00

"It's amazing that people say to me, `Well, he's just breaking the law,' the president said, with Roberts sitting behind him on stage at Kansas State University. "If I wanted to break the law, why was I briefing Congress?"

-- Washington Post, "Bush Says Surveillance Legal and Necessary," January 23 2005

The Representation of Reality

2006-01-15T13:48:00.000-05:00

The poet explains nothing, and yet the things which happen are stated with a paratactic bluntness which says that everything must happen as it does happen, it could not be otherwise, and there is no need for explanatory connectives. This, as the reader knows, refers not only to the events but also to the views and principles which form the basis of the actions of the persons concerned. The knightly will to fight, the concept of honor, the mutual loyalty of brothers in arms, the community of the clan, the Christian dogma, the allocation of right and wrong to Christians and infidels, are probably the most important of these views. They are few in number. They give a narrow picture in which only one stratum of society appears, and even that stratum in a greatly simplified form. They are posited without argument as pure theses: these are the facts. No argument, no explanatory discussion whatever is called for when, for example, the statement is made: paien unt tort et christiens unt dreit (l. 1015: heathens are wrong and Christians are right), although the life of the infidel knights -- except for the names of their gods -- seems hardly different from that of the Christians. . . . The Christianity of the Christians is simply a stipulation. It exhausts itself in the creed and the liturgic formulas that go with it. Furthermore it is, in a very extreme sense, made to serve the knightly will to fight and political expansion. The penance laid upon the Franks when they pray and receive absolution before going into battle is to fight hard; whoever falls in the fight is a martyr and can surely expect a place in Paradise. Conversions by force which involve the killing of those who offer resistance are works with which God is well pleased. This attitude, astonishing as a Christian attitude and non-existent as such in earlier times, is not based, here in the Chanson de Roland, on a given historical situation, as it was in Spain, whence it would seem to have stemmed. Nor is any other explanation of it given. That is the way it is -- a paratactic situation, made up of theses which, extremely narrow as they are, are yet full of contradiction.

--Erich Auerbach, Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature, "Roland Against Ganelon," pp. 101-102

an affirming flame

2006-01-11T17:08:00.000-05:00

Under the familiar weight
Of winter, conscience and the State,
In loose formations of good cheer,
Love, language, loneliness and fear,
Towards the habits of next year,
Along the streets the people flow,
Singing or sighing as they go:
Exalté, piano, or in doubt,
All our reflections turn about
A common meditative norm,
Retrenchment, Sacrifice, Reform.

--W.H. Auden, "New Year Letter" (1940)

the Splendid Shilling

2006-01-02T23:39:00.000-05:00

HAPPY the man who, void of cares and strife,
In silken or in leathern purse retains
A Splendid Shilling; he nor hears with pain
New oysters cried, nor sighs for cheerful ale;
But with his friends, when nightly mists arise,
To Juniper's, Magpye, or Town-Hall repairs:
Where, mindful of the nymph whose wanton eye
Transfix'd his soul and kindl'd amorous flames,
Chloe, or Phyllis, he each circling glass
Wisheth her health, and joy, and equal love.
Meanwhile he smokes, and laughs at merry tale,
Or pun ambiguous, or conundrum quaint.
But I, whom griping penury surrounds,
And hunger, sure attendant upon want,
With scanty offals, and small acid tiff
(Wretch'd repast!) my meagre corpse sustain:
Then solitary walk, or doze at home
In garret vile, and with a warming puff
Regale chill'd fingers...

From John Philips's 1704 "the Splendid Shilling: an imitation of Milton" at the Poet's Corner.

Imperial Units

2005-12-04T17:46:00.000-05:00

Went down the harbour and stood upon the quay,
Saw the fish swimming as if they were free:
Only ten feet away, my dear, only ten feet away.

-- from W.H. Auden, "Refugee Blues"

Situation Normal

2005-11-23T06:27:00.000-05:00

"This is very good indeed … Encouraging … Not like the crap we are all so used to getting out of CIA."

-- Dick Cheney's "barely legible" handwritten comment on a report "detailing purported evidence of links between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein" issued by Douglas Feith's covert "Iraqi intelligence cell" (quoted at the end of Murray Waas's blockbuster National Journal article)

"Iran's supreme leader urged the Iraqi president on Tuesday to seek a timetable for the withdrawal of US troops from Iraq, saying the American presence harms the country. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei met with Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, who is paying a three-day visit to Iran, a country the United States accuses of meddling in Iraq but that is closely allied to Iraq's new Shiite and Kurd-dominated leadership."

--Associated Press, "Khameni to Talabani: Seek date for US withdrawal," Nov 23

"In speeches over the last week, [Murtha] has repeatedly referred to a constituent, Pfc. Salvatore Ross Jr., a combat engineer from Dunbar, Pa., who was badly wounded while landmines he was clearing near Baghdad went off. The explosion blinded him in both eyes and tore off his leg below the knee, Private Ross said in an interview. He spent more than a month in a coma at Walter Reed and later underwent more than a dozen surgeries."

--New York Times, "Lawmaker Returns Home, a Hawk Turned War Foe," Nov 23

The Mark

2005-11-22T11:40:00.000-05:00

People who read of con touches in the newspaper are often wont to remark: "That bird must be stupid to fall for a game like that. Why, anybody should know better than to do what he did...." In other words, there is a widespread feeling among legitimate folk that anyone who is the victim of a confidence game is a numbskull.

But it should not be assumed that the victims of confidence games are all blockheads. Very much to the contrary, the higher a mark's intelligence, the quicker he sees through the deal directly to his own advantage. To expect a mark to enter into a con game, take the bait, and then, by sheer reason, analyze the situation and see it as a swindle, is simply asking too much. The mark is thrown into an unreal world which very closely resembles real life; like the spectator regarding life groups in a museum of natural history, he cannot tell where the real scene merges into the background. Hence, it should be no reflection upon a man's intelligence to be swindled. In fact, highly intelligent marks, even though they may tax the ingenuity of the con men, respond best to the proper type of play. They see through the deal which is presented, analyze it, and strike the lure like a flash; most con men feel that it is sport of a high order to play them successfully to the gaff. It is not intelligence but integrity which determines whether or not a man is a good mark.
--David W. Maurer, The Big Con, Ch. 4

CREEP

2005-11-17T00:58:00.000-05:00

Middle-Aged Man [in doorway]: I know who you are and I'm not afraid but that don't mean I'll talk to you either--you're just a couple Democrats out to stop Nixon getting re-elected.

Woodward: Democrats?

Middle-Aged Man: That's right.

Bernstein: I hate both parties.

Woodward: And I'm a Republican.

[The middle-aged man looks at him.]

Bernstein [surprised, turns to Woodward]: Republican?

Woodward: Sure.

Bernstein: Who'd you vote for?

Woodward: When?

Bernstein: '68.

Woodward: Nixon.

[Bernstein stares at him in silence]

--All The President's Men, original script by William Goldman, 1975

Nous Sommes Tous Communards

2005-11-07T11:38:00.000-05:00

A person of bourgeois origin goes through life with some expectation of getting what he wants, within reasonable limits. Hence the fact that in times of stress 'educated' people tend to come to the front; they are no more gifted than the others and their 'education' is generally quite useless in itself, but they are accustomed to a certain amount of deference and consequently have the cheek necessary to a commander. That they will come to the front seems to be taken for granted, always and everywhere. In Lissagaray's History of the Commune there is an interesting passage describing the shootings that took place after the Commune had been suppressed. The authorities were shooting the ringleaders, and as they did not know who the ringleaders were, they were picking them out on the principle that those of better class would be the ringleaders. An officer walked down a line of prisoners, picking out likely-looking types. One man was shot because he was wearing a watch, another because he 'had an intelligent face'. I should not like to be shot for having an intelligent face, but I do agree that in almost any revolt the leaders would tend to be people who could pronounce their aitches.

-- Orwell, The Road to Wigan Pier

It can happen that I am observed without knowing it, and again I cannot speak of this experience, since I have determined to be guided by the consciousness of my feelings. But very often (too often, to my taste) I have been photographed and knew it. Now, once I feel myself observed by the lens, everything changes: I constitute myself in the process of 'posing,' I instantaneously make another body for myself, I transform myself in advance into an image. This transformation is an active one: I feel that the Photograph creates my body or mortifies it, according to its caprice (apology of this mortiferous power: certain Communards paid with their lives for their willingness or even their eagerness to pose on the barricades: defeated, they were recognized by Thiers's police and shot, almost every one). Posing in front of the lens (I mean: knowing I am posing, even fleetingly), I do not risk so much as that (at least, not for the moment).

-- Barthes, Camera Lucida

A History of Violence

2005-11-07T06:33:00.000-05:00

But Mr. Alito, after eight years as a civil servant, brought something else, friends say: a respect for stability and continuity in the law, as well as deep admiration for President Ronald Reagan's emphasis on family, neighborhood and work.

-- New York Times, "Court Choice Is Conservative by Nature, Not Ideology", Nov 7

No

2005-10-31T10:50:00.000-05:00

He says No! in thunder; but the Devil himself cannot make him say yes.

-- Herman Melville, letter to Nathaniel Hawthorne, April 1851

strange fitz of passion have I known

2005-10-25T23:04:00.000-04:00

"TRUE! --nervous --very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad? The disease had sharpened my senses --not destroyed --not dulled them. Above all was the sense of hearing acute. I heard all things in the heaven and in the earth. I heard many things in hell. How, then, am I mad?"
--Poe, "The Tell-Tale Heart"

simple pleasures

2005-10-20T18:45:00.000-04:00

Eve Arnold, "Marilyn Monroe Reading Ulysses" (Long Island, 1954)

"By the way, in this job, there are some simple pleasures in life that really help you cope. One is Barney the dog, and the other is books. I mean, books are a great escape. Books are a way to get your mind on something else."
--George W. Bush 1/30/05

Orwell #10

2005-10-19T12:30:00.000-04:00

His mind slid away into the labyrinthine world of doublethink. To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again: and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself. That was the ultimate subtlety: consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed. Even to understand the word 'doublethink' involved the use of doublethink. -- Orwell, 1984, 1948

Are you referring to, what, a New York Daily News report? Two things: One, we're not commenting on an ongoing investigation; two, and I would challenge the overall accuracy of that news account. -- Scott McClellan, Press Gaggle, Today

things fall apart

2005-10-18T01:09:00.000-04:00

Horatio: A mote it is to trouble the mind's eye.
In the most high and palmy state of Rome,
A little ere the mightiest Julius fell,
The graves stood tenantless and the sheeted dead
Did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets:
As stars with trains of fire and dews of blood,
Disasters in the sun; and the moist star
Upon whose influence Neptune's empire stands
Was sick almost to doomsday with eclipse:
And even the like precurse of fierce events,
As harbingers preceding still the fates
And prologue to the omen coming on,
Have heaven and earth together demonstrated
Unto our climatures and countrymen.--
But soft, behold! lo, where it comes again!
--Hamlet I.i

Minor Characters

2005-10-17T18:58:00.000-04:00

Jim Wilkinson.

had had

2005-10-16T05:38:00.000-04:00

A man borrows a kettle from his neighbour. When he returns it, the neighbour complains that it’s got a hole in it. Don’t look at me, says our man, I never borrowed your kettle. Besides, it was fine when I gave it back to you. I wish I’d never borrowed it anyway - it’s useless, it’s got a great big hole in it. -- Freud

His main theme echoed that of other senior officials: that contrary to Mr. Wilson's criticism, the administration had had ample reason to be concerned about Iraq's nuclear capabilities based on the regime's history of weapons development, its use of unconventional weapons and fresh intelligence reports. -- Miller

the persistence of memory

2005-10-15T20:29:00.000-04:00

"Mr. Fitzgerald asked me about another entry in my notebook, where I had written the words 'Valerie Flame,' clearly a reference to Ms. Plame. Mr. Fitzgerald wanted to know whether the entry was based on my conversations with Mr. Libby. I said I didn't think so. I said I believed the information came from another source, whom I could not recall.

Mr. Fitzgerald asked if I could recall discussing the Wilson-Plame connection with other sources. I said I had, though I could not recall any by name or when those conversations occurred....

...I told the grand jury about my last encounter with Mr. Libby. It came in August 2003, shortly after I attended a conference on national security issues held in Aspen, Colo. After the conference, I traveled to Jackson Hole, Wyo. At a rodeo one afternoon, a man in jeans, a cowboy hat and sunglasses approached me. He asked me how the Aspen conference had gone. I had no idea who he was.

'Judy,' he said. 'It's Scooter Libby.' "

--Judith Miller, "My Four Hours Testifying in the Federal Grand Jury Room," NYT 10/16/05

~~

Leonard Shelby: "If we talk for too long, I'll forget how we started. Next time I see you, I'm not gonna remember this conversation. I don't even know if I've met you before."
--Memento (2000)

Anticipation

2005-10-12T21:23:00.000-04:00

You walked into the party
Like you were walking onto a yacht
Your hat strategically dipped below one eye
Your scarf it was apricot.
You had one eye on the mirror as you watched yourself gavotte
And all the girls dreamed that they’d be your partner
They’d be your partner, and...

You’re so vain, you probably think this song is about you
You’re so vain, I’ll bet you think this song is about you
Don’t you? don’t you?

You had me several years ago when I was still quite naive
Well you said that we made such a pretty pair
And that you would never leave
But you gave away the things you loved and one of them was me
I had some dreams, they were clouds in my coffee
Clouds in my coffee, and...

You’re so vain, you probably think this song is about you
You’re so vain, I’ll bet you think this song is about you
Don’t you? don’t you?

Well I hear you went up to saratoga and your horse naturally won
Then you flew your lear jet up to nova scotia
To see the total eclipse of the sun
Well you’re where you should be all the time
And when you’re not you’re with
Some underworld spy or the wife of a close friend
Wife of a close friend, and...

You’re so vain, you probably think this song is about you
You’re so vain, I’ll bet you think this song is about you
Don’t you? don’t you?

-- Carly Simon, "You're So Vain"

Battle Anthem for the Fightin' Dems of Aught-Six

2005-10-11T20:57:00.000-04:00

The mountain sheep are sweeter,
But the valley sheep are fatter;
We therefore deemed it meeter
To carry off the latter.
We made an expedition;
We met a host, and quelled it;
We forced a strong position,
And killed the men who held it.

On Dyfed's richest valley,
Where herds of kine were browsing,
We made a mighty sally,
To furnish our carousing.
Fierce warriors rushed to meet us;
We met them, and o'erthrew them:
They struggled hard to beat us;
But we conquered them, and slew them.

As we drove our prize at leisure,
The king marched forth to catch us:
His rage surpassed all measure,
But his people could not match us.
He fled to his hall-pillars;
And, ere our force we led off,
Some sacked his house and cellars,
While others cut his head off.

We there, in strife bewild'ring,
Spilt blood enough to swim in:
We orphaned many children,
And widowed many women.
The eagles and the ravens
We glutted with our foemen;
The heroes and the cravens,
The spearmen and the bowmen.

We brought away from battle,
And much their land bemoaned them,
Two thousand head of cattle,
And the head of him who owned them:
Ednyfed, king of Dyfed,
His head was borne before us;
His wine and beasts supplied our feasts,
And his overthrow, our chorus.

--Thomas Love Peacock, "The War-song of Dinas Vawr" (1829)

at home he's a tourist

2005-10-08T11:36:00.000-04:00

Don't stop out too late at night
Stop! It's a caution

Don't cross the red light
Stop! It's a caution

To act for the good for congressman is money
The right to get rich is in the constitution
Talk of corruption is to preach insurrection
Elected to power men suspend self-interest

You and I, we are satellites, it's a shame
You and I, we are satellites, it's a shame

Life!
(Making money is making sense)
(Making money is making sense)
It's a shame
(It's logical, making sense)
(Making money is making sense)

To act for the good is to defend our homeland
A balance of power will ensure our safety
To step out of line is to risk disaster
To walk in the rain is to risk pneumonia
A balance of power will ensure our safety...

--Gang of Four, "Life, It's a Shame" (1982)
[Go4 links: !, @, #, &, %]

The Real Thing

2005-10-07T06:03:00.000-04:00

I noticed the bouquet of tulips on her coffee table, and the sight of them struck me with shame. Some guys show up with flowers, I thought; other guys just show up.

-- Tom Perrotta, Joe College

Patrick, der Zorn Gottes

2005-10-06T21:42:00.000-04:00

We see the Molly Aida shove off from the riverbank, smoke pouring out of the chimney. People wave, some toss their hats in the air. Yes, Fitzcarraldo has friends. The Molly Aida picks up speed and heads upstream. The cheering dies down, the people stare in disbelief.

On the riverbank we see Molly. Shouts are heard. "Wherever is he going? He's going upstream!"

The three Borja brothers step up to Molly in incredulous astonishment. "He's not going to the Ucayali River. He should be heading downstream," says Clodomiro Borja.

Molly suddenly stops weeping; pride surges up in her. "Yes," she says, "you have seen right. Brian Sweeney Fitzgerald is moving against the Amazon!"

--Werner Herzog, Fitzcarraldo (1982) [story]

The Horror! The Horror!

2005-10-06T12:11:00.000-04:00

From the editors who brought you Bush's War.

August Wilson 1945-2005

2005-10-03T18:32:00.000-04:00

Romare Bearden, "The Piano Lesson" (1983)

a curious encounter

2005-10-03T07:25:00.000-04:00

"I awoke early one morning and noticed a peculiar woman outside my window pane. She worked brusquely sweeping the cobblestones in the street below with a long broom made of twigs wielded in a circular motion. Every so often, however, she would stop, and in that pause, a small bird flew down from its mansard and perched upon her shoulder.

This woman, whom I had never before had occasion to notice, would then speak to this sparrow in a hoarse whisper that I could barely make out, so much so that I took in nothing of her actual words. What was remarkable to me was that this bird seemed to listen, and then, when she'd finished, would alight and make to the nearest sign-pole where it would warble as she swept.

Now this sweeper, dressed all in black, might have otherwise made a foul impression on me. Her countenance was grim and her attitude gruff. Indeed, I realized that the percussive rasp of her broom on the paving stones had awoken me from my slumber.

But her friendship with this delightful dunnock redeemed all such foulness. And, like a springtime sun breaking through a cold morning's rain, gave me quite a large measure of happiness and light. Since I had arranged that morning to meet some acquantainces at a nearby coffeehouse, I shuffled downstairs in good mood, intent on making inquiry of this woman and her remarkable bird. Alas, just as I had put on my boots to step out-of-doors I saw her figure pass out of my street, followed closely by her avian companion, flapping its wings behind her.

I must admit that although I never saw this woman again, it has given me a curious joy to think on her since...I often wonder what became of her and her friend."

-from Darby's Journey into London, and other tales of Alacrity and Woe, 1754

looks like meat's back on the menu, boys

2005-10-01T02:40:00.000-04:00

“Alas for the folly of these days!” said Legolas. “Here all are enemies of the one Enemy, and yet I must walk blind, while the sun is merry in the woodland under leaves of gold!”
“Folly it may seem,” said Haldir. “Indeed in nothing is the power of the Dark Lord more clearly shown than in the estrangement that divides all those who still oppose him.”
--J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

closer

2005-09-28T22:10:00.000-04:00

"When pushed on the nature of DeLay’s friendship with the president, Bush’s aides like to say they aren’t close. Instead they stress how effective DeLay has been as part of Team Bush. Those terms were repeated Wednesday as the White House responded to DeLay’s indictment. “Congressman DeLay is a good ally, a leader who we have worked closely with to get things done for the American people,” said White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan."
--"Not So Bosom Buddies", Newsweek 9/28/05

Jack Lint: "Sam, we've always been close, haven't we?"
Sam Lowry: "Yes."
Jack Lint: "Well, until this all blows over... stay away from me."
--Brazil (1985)

S/D

2005-09-28T06:40:00.000-04:00

In the dime stores and bus stations,
People talk of situations,
Read books, repeat quotations,
Draw conclusions on the wall.
Some speak of the future,
My love she speaks softly,
She knows there's no success like failure
And that failure's no success at all.

Scorsese/Dylan: an open thread (why not?) to discuss the remarkable, troubling, thought-provoking, 200 minute documentary.

Orwell #9

2005-09-26T16:17:00.000-04:00

"Today there are only eighty people in the United Kingdom with net incomes of over six thousand pounds a year." (Mr. Quintin Hogg, M.P., in his pamphlet The Times We Live In.)

There are also about eighty ways in the English and American languages of expressing incredulity -- for example, garn, come off it, you bet, sez you, oh yeah, not half, I don't think, less of it or and the pudding! But I think and then you wake up is the exactly suitable answer to a remark like the one quoted above.

"As I Please," 55, Tribune, 19 January 1945 (In The Complete Works of George Orwell, ed. Peter Davison, vol. 17, p. 23).

Friday Cat Blogging

2005-09-23T11:18:00.000-04:00

And that will be England gone,
The shadows, the meadows, the lanes
The guildhalls, the carved choirs.
There'll be books; it will linger on
In galleries; but all that remains
For us will be concrete and tyres.

Most things are never meant.
This won't be, most likely: but greeds
And garbage are too thick-strewn
To be swept up now, or invent
Excuses that make them all needs.
I just think it will happen, soon.

From "Going, Going"
Philip Larkin

suspicion

2005-09-14T23:36:00.000-04:00

"Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, said that Judge Roberts's refusal to answer many questions had rendered the hearings absurd. Mr. Schumer suggested that Judge Roberts would not even name his favorite movies. Judge Roberts named two: 'Doctor Zhivago' and 'North by Northwest.'"
--"Roberts Parries Queries on Death and Roe v. Wade," NYT 9/15/05

[Thornhill is wearing sunglasses to hide his identity]
Ticket Seller: Something wrong with your eyes?
Roger Thornhill: Yes, they're sensitive to questions.
--North by Northwest (1959)

Balls/Strikes

2005-09-13T23:13:00.000-04:00

Time will one day heal the wound to that confidence that will be inflicted by today's decision. One thing, however, is certain. Although we may never know with complete certainty the identity of the winner of this year's Presidential election, the identity of the loser is perfectly clear. It is the Nation's confidence in the judge as an impartial guardian of the rule of law.

-- John Paul Stevens, Dissent, "Bush v. Gore"

Our consideration is limited to the present circumstances, for the problem of equal protection in election processes generally presents many complexities.

-- William Rehnquist, "Bush v. Gore"

The counting of votes that are of questionable legality does in my view threaten irreparable harm to petitioner, and to the country, by casting a cloud upon what he claims to be the legitimacy of his election. Count first, and rule upon legality afterwards, is not a recipe for producing election results that have the public acceptance democratic stability requires.

-- Antonin Scalia, Concurring Opinion on Petition For Stay, "Bush v. Gore"

Judges and justices are servants of the law, not the other way around. Judges are like umpires. Umpires don’t make the rules; they apply them. . . . Nobody ever went to a ball game to see the umpire. . . . If I am confirmed, I will confront every case with an open mind. I will fully and fairly analyze the legal arguments that are presented. I will be open to the considered views of my colleagues on the bench. And I will decide every case based on the record, according to the rule of law, without fear or favor, to the best of my ability. And I will remember that it’s my job to call balls and strikes and not to pitch or bat.

-- John Roberts, Opening Statement, Confirmation Hearings

a perilous escapade

2005-09-13T19:37:00.000-04:00

I shall not soon forget that moment when I, Joseph Darby, Esq., known in parts of this great city simply by my last name...Darby of London...decided to publish a small broadside for the common consumption out of a printing shop owned by the father of my late wife, my father-in-law, Mr. Hodges.

Little is known of this journal, for it dissappeared almost as quickly as it was born...printed on a single page, and oftentimes with the remaining ink from what had been the profits of the previous day's run at Mr. Hodges' shop....such are the limits of the not-so-independent publisher.

But fame was not to be caught in my frail net. And what little observations I had to make upon the stories of the day were always overshadowed by the importance I assigned to subjects that were not so bold, so noticed, nor bourne on the tongues of lords of court. Simply put, I was a press man hard-pressed to push, and pushed to my own peril to pay attention to the popular. And so my little broadside seemed to shrivel for want of readership.

One morning, a sheaf of the penultimate issue in the crook of my arm, I set off to the public square to hawk it there...and despite my lack of balance, general unease in the midst of the throng, and my soft voice, not well-suited to barking, crying or even indulging that last resort of the marketplace hack...the confident hiss of the whispered entreaty which proposes to sell by revealing a secret to vulnerable ears....I waded into the thick of the crowd, broadside held high.

Whatever strategy I had been intending to employ, however, was put to vain end when a young beggar immediately bowled me over and made off with the entire days run. I am sure he sold many more copies of my efforts than I might ever have, and justly so. How often is that the fate of the quick, the easy and the ephemeral in this world!

Such was the last issue of the Daily Darb. Abandoning it, I dedicated myself to the writing of weightier and longer-lasting fare. I must say, Mr. Hodges was quite relieved...seeing me returning to print shop empty handed so soon after I had left, he prodded my firmly upon the shoulder..."Why sell for pennies what others will pay for in pounds?"

Which, indeed, gave me a great deal to think about.

echoes

2005-09-07T15:21:00.000-04:00

~~

~~

~~

"Three Deaths"

2005-09-06T13:05:00.000-04:00

One

Two

Three

A Tale of Two Cities

2005-09-04T22:12:00.000-04:00

"You may be sure that there are men and women already on their road, who have their business to do with YOU, and who will do it. Of a certainty they will do it. They may be coming hundreds, thousands, of miles over the sea there; they may be close at hand now; they may be coming, for anything you know or anything you can do to prevent it, from the vilest sweepings of this very town."

-- Dickens, Little Dorrit

****

"We cannot allow it to be said by history that the difference between those who lived and those who died in the great storm and flood of 2005 was nothing more than poverty, age or skin color." --

-- Rep. Elijah Cummings, Sept 2, 2005

****

"Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist died yesterday evening at his home in suburban Virginia, said Supreme Court spokeswoman Kathy Arberg. A statement from the spokeswoman said he was surrounded by his three children when he died in Arlington."

-- Associated Press, "Chief Justice Rehnquist Dies," Sep. 04, 2005

****

SUMMARY: San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez , March 21, 1973: A class action on behalf of certain Texas school children was instituted against state school authorities in the United States District Court for the Western District of Texas. The plaintiffs challenged the constitutionality, under the Equal Protection clause, of using property tax in each district to supplement educational funds. The three-judge District Court held that the Texas school financing system was unconstitutional under the Equal Protection clause because it discriminated on the basis of wealth and was unconstitutional under the Equal Protection clause. On direct appeal, the United States Supreme Court reversed the holding.

****

"It was a monumental case, billed as promising massive educational upgrading for poor children everywhere. Marshall, White, Brennan and Douglas felt that the property taxes had to be reallocated, to even out the expenditures in different areas. Otherwise, there would never be a way to ensure equal educational opportunities, a right they felt was guaranteed by the Constitution. The other side argued that the Constitution did not require any such allocation."

-- Bob Woodward and Scott Armstrong, The Brethren: Inside the Supreme Court, p. 306

****

"In retrospect, there were clear signs that the Supreme Court would not look too favorably on the lower court rulings on school finance coming out of Texas and California. Although the Warren Court's aura of judicial activism still glowed, the Court was under increasing political pressure to scale back its agenda. Importantly, President Nixon had appointed three politically moderate or conservative judges in the early 1970s: Chief Justice Warren Burger and Associate Justices William Rehnquist and Lewis Powell. . . . With the Rodriguez case, the plaintiffs hoped that the important position of public education within American political and economic life would lead the Court to declare education a fundamental right, thereby forcing the Court to examine much more carefully any wealth-based discrimination in the provision of public education. Certainly, the Court's position in Brown v. Board of Education supported the view that education was, implicitly at least, of central importance to governance and citizenship. After all, Chief Justice Earl Warren had written for a unanimous Court that "education is perhaps the most important function of state and local governments," adding, a few lines later, that educational opportunity, "where the state has undertaken to provide it, is a right which must be made available to all on equal terms."11 But what had been "the most important function of state and local governments" under the Warren Court in 1954 became somewhat less important under the Burger Court in 1973. This transformation of education's centrality--combined with a reluctance to view wealth as a suspect classification--led the Supreme Court to deny, by a narrow 5-4 margin, the claims of Demetrio Rodriguez and his fellow plaintiffs."

-- Douglas Reed, On Equal Terms: The Constitutional Politics of Educational Opportunity

****

"With desegregation orders losing favor in the courts, education reformers turned to the other main source of inequality in education, which desegregation advocates had thus far largely missed -- unequal financing across school districts. Because a school's resources are tied to its local tax base, children in wealthy suburbs enjoy quality teachers, smaller classes and up-to-date science labs, while students in poor areas make do with far less. In 1973, in San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez, the Supreme Court had put an end to these cases in federal court, ruling 5 to 4 that school finance was a local matter. Now advocates for poor children were meeting with some success bringing state constitutional claims. Courts from Connecticut to Kentucky to, a few months ago, New York issued orders that school financing in their states be made fairer. But in many more states, courts rejected these claims. Under Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, who wrote a memorandum as a Supreme Court law clerk arguing for reaffirming Plessy, progress on desegregation has not only stopped but reversed. In a series of decisions in the 1990's, sometimes called the ''resegregation cases,'' the court made it far easier for school districts to skirt desegregation orders already in place. A pair of cases in the early 1990's lowered the obstacles for school systems once held to be segregated to achieve ''unitary status,'' meaning they had legally desegregated and could start becoming segregated again. In the majority's view, desegregation was no longer a state for America to aspire for and work toward, but a punishment imposed on districts that had once done wrong, to be lifted as soon as possible."

-- Adam Cohen, "The Supreme Struggle," The New York Times, January 18, 2004

****

AUSTIN - The state of Texas has agreed to take in an additional 25,000 Louisiana refugees from Hurricane Katrina and plans to house them in San Antonio, Gov. Rick Perry's office said today. Louisiana requested that Texas provide shelter for the evacuees, and Perry has spoken with the mayor and county judge in San Antonio to begin making the plans, said Perry's spokesman, Robert Black. "We don't know where, we don't know a timetable yet,'' Black said. More details were expected later today.

--Associated Press, Sept. 1, 2005, "San Antonio to take in 25,000 more from Louisiana"

Two Evacuations

2005-09-04T11:42:00.000-04:00

Tim Russert's interview with Chertoff, already on-line, is exemplary for showing how questions about the horrific govt failure during the post-flooding catastrophe lead inevitably back to the first evacuation.

Unfortunately, it took a while for Russert to get to this first evacuation, so Chertoff's shocking comments didn't receive full scrutiny. But please use this post for any thoughts about these comments -- or any news sources that continue to push this. (In this light, the Washington Post gives us the crucial article to date about how Bush/Chertoff/Brown are trying to "shift blame" to local authorities. The Chertoff interview repeats these absurd talking points, but also shows what a weak reed they lie on). Here is the crucial exchange:

CHERTOFF: The fact of the matter is, there's only really one way to deal with that issue, and that is to get people out first. Once that bowl breaks and that soup bowl fills with water, it is unquestionably the case, as we saw vividly demonstrated, that it's going to be almost impossible to get people out. So there is really only one way to deal with it, and that is to evacuate people in advance. Michael Brown got on TV in Saturday and he said to people in New Orleans, "Take this seriously. There is a storm coming." On Friday there was discussion about the fact that even though this storm could fall anywhere along the Gulf, people had to be carefully monitoring it. We were watching it on Saturday and Sunday. The president was on a videoconference on Sunday telling us we've got to do everything possible to be prepared. But you know, Tim, at the end of the day, this is the ground truth: The only way to avoid a catastrophic problem in that soup bowl is to have people leave before the hurricane hits. Those who got out are fine. Those who stayed in faced one of the most horrible experiences in their life.

RUSSERT: But that's the point. Those who got out were people with SUVs and automobiles and air fares who could get out. Those who could not get out were the poor who rely on public buses to get out. Your Web site says that your department assumes primary responsibility for a national disaster. If you knew a hurricane 3 storm was coming, why weren't buses, trains, planes, cruise ships, trucks provided on Friday, Saturday, Sunday to evacuate people before the storm?

CHERTOFF: Tim, the way that emergency operations act under the law is the responsibility and the power, the authority, to order an evacuation rests with state and local officials. The federal government comes in and supports those officials. That's why Mike Brown got on TV on Saturday and he told people to start to get out of there. Now, ultimately the resources that will get people who don't have cars and don't have the ability to remove themselves has to rest with the kinds of assets a city has--the city's buses, the city's transportation.

Mike Brown went on TV. George Bush had a videoconference. And, most remarkably, the statement, as dogma, that the evacuation of a city can be supported only by the "assets a city has".

Put out the light, and then put out the light

2005-09-01T23:53:00.000-04:00

Never Forget: There have been two evacuations of New Orleans.

On Saturday August 27, with no federal help, the city of New Orleans decided to evacuate itself. The president was in Crawford, on vacation.

On Sunday August 28, with no federal help, the city of New Orleans attempted to evacuate itself. Bush stayed on vacation.

Regardless of anything that happened after Monday night, the US neglect during the "first" evacuation is stunningly crinimal. Bush's horribly mindless vacation is criminal. An entire city needed to empty itself. Four years after 9/11, the government did nothing.

From Yahoo News, on August 28: "As many as 100,000 inner-city residents didn't have the means to leave, and an untold number of tourists were stranded by the closing of the airport. The city arranged buses to take people to 10 last-resort shelters, including the Superdome. Nagin also dispatched police and firefighters to rouse people out with sirens and bullhorns, and even gave them the authority to commandeer vehicles to aid in the evacuation."

From the NY Times: "The response will be dissected for years. But on Thursday, disaster experts and frustrated officials said a crucial shortcoming may have been the failure to predict that the levees keeping Lake Pontchartrain out of the city would be breached, not just overflow. They also said that evacuation measures were inadequate, leaving far too many city residents behind to suffer severe hardships and, in some cases, join marauding gangs."

Again, from the Times: "Mr. Compass said the federal government had taken too long to send in the thousands of troops - as well as the supplies, fuel, vehicles, water and food - needed to stabilize his now 'very, very tenuous' city. Col. Terry Ebbert, director of homeland security for New Orleans, concurred and he was particularly pungent in his criticism. Asserting that the whole recovery operation had been 'carried on the backs of the little guys for four goddamn days,' he said that 'the rest of the goddamn nation can't get us any resources for security.'

Two evacuations. Two murderous failures.

rage

2005-09-01T16:11:00.000-04:00

"I don't want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub." -- Grover Norquist, NPR 5/25/01

Infamy

2005-09-01T14:11:00.000-04:00

"I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees."

-- Bush. Today.

So when Janie looked out of her door she saw the drifting mists gathered in the west -- that cloud field of the sky -- to arm them with thunders and march forth against the world. Louder and higher and lower and wider the sound and motion spread, mounting, sinking, darking.

It woke up old Okechobee and the monster began to roll in his bed. Began to roll and complain like a peevish world on a grumble. The folks in the quarters and the people in the big houses further around the shore heard the big lake and wondered. The people felt uncomfortable but safe because there were the seawalls to chain the senseless monster in his bed. The folks let the people do the thinking. If the castles thought themselves secure, the cabins needn't worry. Their decision was already made, as always. Chink up your cracks, shiver in your wet beds and wait on the mercy of the Lord.

-- Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God, 1937

homeland security

2005-08-31T15:34:00.000-04:00

"Evelyn Turner, right, with friends and family, waits with the body of her common-law husband, Xavier Bowie, after he died in New Orleans, Tuesday, Aug. 30, 2005. Xavier and Turner had decided to ride out Hurricane Katrina when they could not find away to leave the city. Xavier, who had lung cancer, died when he ran out of oxygen Tuesday afternoon." (AP Photo/Eric Gay)

"The U.S. poverty rate rose to 12.7 percent of the population last year, its fourth consecutive annual increase, the Census Bureau said Tuesday."--AP, 8/31/2005

"It appears that the money has been moved in the president's budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq, and I suppose that's the price we pay. Nobody locally is happy that the levees can't be finished, and we are doing everything we can to make the case that this is a security issue for us."--Walter Maestri, Emergency Management Chief for Jefferson Parish, Louisiana; New Orleans Times-Picayune 6/8/2004 (via E&P)

American History X

2005-08-29T10:13:00.000-04:00

That said, though, as a student of American history it's hard not to be contemptuous of anyone who would dare compare what the framers tried to do in Philadelphia to the deal that just went down in the Baghdad bazaar.

-- scorching Billmon post, "The Philadelphia Experiment"

Well, I say that all the time, as well, because the person who writes it in the short-term is somebody who is not going to have the advantage of time to look at history, look at the true history of the presidency. You know, it's amazing that - there's kind of an interesting George Washington now - Ellis has written a book which I'm reading now, and David McCullough is writing a book on George Washington. I read one earlier on Washington - I can't remember the name of it - Washington Crosses The Delaware - something - it was a very interesting book about some of the many - how he organized the army. The Alexander Hamilton book by Chernow, which is obviously about Hamilton, but it was about the time of George Washington and Washington plays a prominent role. It's very interesting, there's a resurgence in analyzing Washington, the first President, during the time of the 43rd President, which makes my point - that there's - history is always evolving, and people's appreciation of a President changes over time, as well - one way or the other.

-- GWB, Cal Thomas Interview, 2 Feb 2005

Look, history -- shall I give you my talk on history and presidencies? OK, thank you. What's interesting is George Washington is now getting a second or third or fifth or tenth look in history. I read the Ellis book, which is a really interesting book, and “His Excellency, “ it's called. McCollough's writing a book on George Washington as well.

-- GWB, , Press Conference, 16 March 2005

"I think that part of education is to expose people to different schools of thought," Bush said. "You're asking me whether or not people ought to be exposed to different ideas, the answer is yes."

-- GWB, "Bush: Intelligent Design Should be Taught", Associated Press, 2 August 2005

Like our own nation's founders over two centuries ago, the Iraqis are grappling with difficult issues, such as the role of the federal government. What is important is that Iraqis are now addressing these issues through debate and discussion -- not at the barrel of a gun.

-- GWB, Radio Address, 27 August 2005

I want our folks to remember our own Constitution was not unanimously received. Some delegates at the Philadelphia Convention in 1787 refused to sign it. And the draft was vigorously debated in every state and the outcome was not assured until all the votes were counted.

-- GWB, Presidential Address, 28 August 2005

that colossal wreck

2005-08-25T01:18:00.000-04:00

If the tombstone says "Freedom," it must be true.

from the Associated Press 8/24/05:

Unlike in earlier wars, nearly all Arlington National Cemetery gravestones for troops killed in Iraq or Afghanistan are inscribed with the slogan-like operation names the Pentagon selected to promote public support for the conflicts.

Families of fallen soldiers and Marines are being told they have the option to have the government-furnished headstones engraved with "Operation Enduring Freedom" or "Operation Iraqi Freedom" at no extra charge, whether they are buried in Arlington or elsewhere. A mock-up shown to many families includes the operation names.

The vast majority of military gravestones from other eras are inscribed with just the basic, required information: name, rank, military branch, date of death and, if applicable, the war and foreign country in which the person served.

( . . . )

It was not until the invasion of Iraq in March 2003 that the department [Veterans Affairs] instructed national cemetery directors and funeral homes across the country to advise families . . . that they could have operation names . . . included on the headstones.

VA officials say neither the Pentagon nor the White House exerted any pressure to get families to include the operation names.

the smell, that gasoline smell

2005-08-24T17:01:00.000-04:00

Kurtz [reading aloud from a sheaf of old news reports]: Time magazine. The weekly news magazine. September 22, 1967, volume ninety, number twelve. ‘The War on the Horizon.’ ‘The American people may find it hard to believe that the U.S. is winning the war in Vietnam. Nevertheless, one of the most exhaustive inquiries into the status of the conflict yet compiled, offers considerable evidence that the weight of U.S. power, two and a half years after the big buildup began, is beginning to make itself felt. White House officials maintain the impact of that strength may bring the enemy to the point where he could simply be unable to continue fighting.’

[to Willard] Is this familiar?

Kurtz [continues reading]: ‘Because Lyndon Johnson fears that the U.S. public is in no mood to accept its optimistic conclusions, he may never permit the report to be released in full. Even so, he is sufficiently impressed with the findings, and sufficiently anxious to make their conclusions known, to permit experts who have been working on it to talk about it in general terms.’ No date, Time magazine. ‘Sir Robert Thompson, who led the victory over Communist guerrillas in Malay, and is now a RAND Corporation consultant, recently returned to Vietnam to sound out the situation for President Nixon. He told the president last week that things felt much better, and smelled much better over there.’

[He looks over at Willard]

Kurtz [to Willard]: How do they smell to you, soldier?

--Apocalypse Now Redux (1979/2000) [audio 1 & 2]

four horsemen

2005-08-20T18:47:00.000-04:00

--Mark Tansey, "Forward Retreat" (1986)

Four horsemen coming right through
Four horsemen and they're pissing by you
They make you look like you're wearing a truss
Four horsemen and it's gonna be us
--The Clash, "Four Horsemen" (1979)

. . .

Orwell #8

2005-08-19T15:39:00.000-04:00

It is not easy to find a direct economic explanation of the behaviour of the people who now rule the world. The desire for pure power seems to be much more dominant than the desire for wealth. This has often been pointed out, but curiously enough the desire for power seems to be taken for granted as a natural instinct, equally prevalent in all ages likes the desire for food. Actually it is no more natural, in the sense of being biologically necessary, than drunkenness or gambling. And if it has reached new levels of lunacy in our own age, as I think it has, then the question becomes: what is the special quality in modern life that makes a major human motive out of the impulse to bully others?

"As I Please," Tribune, 29 November 1946

class warfare

2005-08-18T12:22:00.000-04:00

I was a miner
I was a docker
I was a railway man
Between the wars
I raised a family
In times of austerity
With sweat at the foundry
Between the wars

I paid the union and as times got harder
I looked to the government to help the working man
And they brought prosperity down at the armoury
We're arming for peace, me boys
Between the wars

I kept the faith and I kept voting
Not for the iron fist but for the helping hand
For theirs is a land with a wall around it
And mine is a faith in my fellow man
Theirs is a land of hope and glory
Mine is the green field and the factory floor
Theirs are the skies all dark with bombers
And mine is the peace we know
Between the wars

Call up the craftsmen
Bring me the draftsmen
Build me a path from cradle to grave
And I'll give my consent
To any government
That does not deny a man a living wage

Go find the young men never to fight again
Bring up the banners from the days gone by
Sweet moderation
Heart of this nation
Desert us not, we are
Between the wars

--Billy Bragg, "Between the Wars" (1985)

Constitutional

2005-08-16T07:17:00.000-04:00

President Bush played down the delay and applauded the Iraqis, saying, "Their efforts are a tribute to democracy and an example that difficult problems can be solved peacefully through debate."

New York Times, 16 August 04, "Leaders in Iraq Extend Deadline on Constitution"

By the end of the day, the divergence was so great that there was not even a consensus on the main points of disagreement.

Ibid.