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September 17, 2005
Another Weekend Thread
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The sorry state of US media They Shoot News Anchors, Don’t They?
Given all of the above, it comes as no surprise that, as early as that first Saturday, certainly by Sunday, inevitably by Monday, and no later than Tuesday, the post-Katrina images and issues were heavily weighted once again toward the power brokers and the predictable. The angry black guys were gone, and the lying white guys were back, hogging all the TV airtime. So many congressional Republicans were lined up on air to denounce the “blame-Bush game” — all the while decrying the Louisiana Democrats-in-charge — that it could have been conga night at the Chevy Chase Country Club.
…
I heard an interesting exchange on tv yesterday…was getting ready to go somewhere so I only heard snippets, but it was on CNN and two white guys were arguing about a parish…not the one that posted officers on the road to keep out anyone else…
this one was about Hispanic people in the county lacking any shelter, and the guy from the parish saying they had food and water (but no place to stay other than..the sidewalk, I suppose.)
anyway, the parish guy said it was all about politics because the guy criticising had run for political office, so apparently if you run for political office because you want to change things and are then critical of those in power it’s “all politics” and there’s no truth to anything you say.
Katrina tore the door off the southern segregationist house of the church of separate but “equal” and don’t live next door to me.
Posted by: fauxreal | Sep 17 2005 16:31 utc | 2
Chavez Stirs Things Up at the U.N.
Venezuelan Leader Wins Cheers With Rant Against U.S.
Snip:[The applause for Chavez was recognition of the “sheer entertainment factor” of his undiplomatic speech, said Nancy Soderberg, a former senior U.S. diplomat at the United Nations. “Those speeches get so boring.”
But Chavez would never be able to translate the popular reaction to his rant into political support for his positions because, while the moment “might be emotionally satisfying,” the delegates “know this is not the real world,” said Jeffrey Laurenti, a seasoned U.N. analyst at the Century Foundation.]
And herein lies the problem, “the real world”…
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Sep 17 2005 16:40 utc | 3
In Salon Gary Kamiya on Anthony Shadid’s “Night Draws Near: Iraq’s People in the Shadow of America’s War” What went wrong
“There was never really a plan for post-Saddam Iraq,” he writes. “There was never a realistic view of what might ensue after the fall. There was hope that became faith, and delusions that became fatal.”
Sick with anxiety and still want to read about Bush’s war in Iraq? Via the http://www.aldaily.com site look in the New Books column for ‘“Can something be achieved in that is worthy of the sacrifice in Iraq?” George Packer badly wants that the answer will turn out to be yes…’ for Michael Hersh review title “Confessions of a Humvee Liberal”. Follow the links to get to the review.
Posted by: christofay | Sep 18 2005 1:33 utc | 5
In the “real world,” the US is setting up military bases in Paraguay, that retirement home for old nazis-excuse of a country.
The only thing I can add is that, in the Amerika vs. Rest of the World War, Amerika will ultimately lose. Only the cost remains unquantified.
If resistance fighters around the world have only 1/10th of the imagination I have, the shit has barely begun.
And meanwhile, of course, the US elites, Ceaucescu-like, are conducting their own “war” against their own population.
I’m so glad we got out.
Posted by: Lupin | Sep 18 2005 6:33 utc | 6
Widespread Hunger Strike at Guantánamo
A hunger strike at the prison camp at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, has unsettled senior commanders there and produced the most serious challenge yet to the military’s effort to manage the detention of hundreds of terrorism suspects, lawyers and officials say.
As many as 200 prisoners – more than a third of the camp – have refused food in recent weeks to protest conditions and prolonged confinement without trial, according to the accounts of lawyers who represent them. While military officials put the number of those participating at 105, they acknowledge that 20 of them, whose health and survival are being threatened, are being kept at the camp’s hospital and fed through nasal tubes and sometimes given fluids intravenously.
From Juan Cole this morning:
“The situation has deteriorated in Baghdad dramatically today. Five neighborhoods (hay) in Baghdad are controlled by insurgents, and they are Amiraya, Ghazilya, Shurta, Yarmouk and Doura. It is very bad. My guys there report that cars have come into these neighborhoods and blocked off the streets. Masked gunmen with AKs and other weapons are roaming these areas, announcing that people should stay home. One of my drivers in Amiraya reports that his neighborhood is shut down totally, and even those who need food or provisions are warned not to go out.
…………………………….
(W) hat now? (W) hat next?
Posted by: anna missed | Sep 18 2005 9:15 utc | 8
Today Germany votes, the CDU has fondly called Ms Merkel Angie and play a Stones song during her electoral spots. It is somewhat apparent that those who chose the song either don’t understand english or have never listened to the words. Here are some of the lyrics…
With no loving in our souls and no money in our coats
You can’t say we’re satisfied
But angie, angie, you can’t say we never tried
Angie, you’re beautiful, but ain’t it time we said good-bye?
I live in Rheinland Pfalz now and see the party posters everywhere. I have no idea which way the 20% or so of undecided voters will go but I really can’t understand why any one of them would chose a woman who was a member of the east German communist party and now wants to crawl into bed with GW Bush. Sure, Schroeder is not perfect but will the average German be any better off with Merkel?
I will probably be very disappointed tonight…..
Posted by: dan of steele | Sep 18 2005 9:39 utc | 9
Dan, didn’t you live in Northern Italy? Must be quite different living in Germany now.
If you are interested on election discussions there are diaries on European Tribune, and I am sure new ones coming up this afternoon. Though the discussion is biased, so far no voices for Angie.
I apologize for the blockwhoring. 🙂
Posted by: Fran | Sep 18 2005 10:41 utc | 10
Fran, I just moved up here in July, I live in a very pretty village and it is really quite nice, of course it hasn’t got cold yet…….
Posted by: dan of steele | Sep 18 2005 11:14 utc | 11
Fran, I live in a town called Glan-Muenchweiler. The dialect here is interesting, not so hard as Bavarian or Swiss-Deutsch and quite colorful. For example, potatoes are called grumbeere and people say Moin! just like in Ost Friesland.
The Mosel valley is stunning and I am very disappointed I never bothered to see it earlier.
Posted by: dan of steele | Sep 18 2005 11:57 utc | 13
Dan, yes, the Mosel is beautiful, I took some pictures when I had to go to Koblenz this summer. So you picked a beautiful area to live in and good for Mosel and Pfälzer wines.
Posted by: Fran | Sep 18 2005 13:05 utc | 14
From the repubs house journalist Robert Novak: Filibuster Priscilla
According to Senate sources, Democratic Leader Harry Reid has informed Majority Leader Bill Frist that Federal Appeals Court Judge Priscilla Owen will be filibustered if President Bush names her to replace Justice Sandra Day O’Connor on the Supreme Court.
Republican senators are divided on whether former Texas Supreme Court Justice Owen is vulnerable because she underwent a filibuster for the appellate seat and was confirmed under the compromise agreement. Frist is known to believe Owen can be confirmed in the face of a filibuster.
Republican Senate strategists believe Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is the only possible Bush nominee to replace O’Connor who would not face a filibuster.
So first a “I will not say anything” Roberts and the Albterto “Torture” Gonzales – both unfilibustered?
Is there an opposition party in the US? Doesn´t look like it.
Sunday morning- Amy Goodman intro’d Hitchens and Galloway for a debated.
Galloway just said Hitchens was the first to achieve the metamorphosis from a caterpillar to a slug.
C-span book tv.
Posted by: fauxreal | Sep 18 2005 16:25 utc | 16
uh, make that debate.
Also, John Tierney spoke to the Heritage Institute about the peace movement and he lied in his opening statements, about the rationale behind opposition, and instead painted everyone with the same “commie” brush who also collude with terrorists.
It was astonishing to me to hear him lie. The right has to deny that the anti-war movement is a broad and deep swath of Americans who are not all America-hating commies in order to never have to defend its actions and outcomes against the real opposition among a cross-section of Americans.
…and to deny the reality of Bush’s total failure in every aspect of his tenure as prez.
Posted by: fauxreal | Sep 18 2005 16:34 utc | 17
sorry to go on about this, but in the following the writer appropriately, imo, compares the Hitchens/Galloway debate as the equivalent of a verbal prize fight…heavyweight class.
The Grapple in the Big Apple
Galloway is now quoting Barbara Bush’s “Let them eat the astrodome” comment.
Posted by: fauxreal | Sep 18 2005 17:34 utc | 18
Fauxreal, thanks. Caught a bit of their face-off. Goodman should have leashed Hitchens rather than letting him run on endlessly. He’s slipped into a drunken degenerate state, w/shaking hands & endless bullshit. Galloway had a good line at one particularly egregious point: “Mr. Hitchens, you have now fallen out of the gutter into the sewer.”
Posted by: jj | Sep 18 2005 18:07 utc | 19
Riverbend on the Iraqi constitution which has, in some unknown version, now been accepted as the final version by the parliament today (any news about this in the US press?) and will be printed by the UN (are there no Iraqi printshops?).
Yippee..Now that Iraqi Const. sewed up, it’s off to Syria!!
Hufffington got another scoop from her Aspen connections:
Dr. Zalmay Khalilzad, the US Ambassador to Iraq, made the off the record prediction that the US will go into Syria to combat insurgents that have been using the country as a staging ground for terrorist activity in Iraq.
Ambassador Khalilzad’s comments were made at businessman Teddy Forstmann’s annual off the record gathering in Aspen, Colorado this weekend.
In attendance at the conference, among others were: Harvey Weinstein, Brad Grey, Michael Eisner, Les Moonves, Tom Freston, Tom Friedman, Bob Novak, Barry Diller, Martha Stewart, Margaret Carlson, Alan Greenspan, Andrea Mitchell, Norman Pearlstein and Walter Isaacson.
It’s up today. That’s entirety of it, so I won’t link.
Posted by: jj | Sep 18 2005 18:30 utc | 21
Anybody curious what life is like in a civilized country? Does such a place even exist? Read it and Weep
(NOTE: This links to Pravda-on-the-Potomac art. in which writer merely in passing states that Corruption is Endemic in america.)
Posted by: jj | Sep 18 2005 19:09 utc | 22
A Time piece about the intelligence failure (not only the clandestine but the personal capacity of) in Iraq:
Saddam’s Revenge
“We have never taken this operation seriously enough,” says a retired senior military official with experience in Iraq. “We have never provided enough troops. We have never provided enough equipment, or the right kind of equipment. We have never worked the intelligence part of the war in a serious, sustained fashion. We have failed the Iraqi people, and we have failed our troops.”
Politics of Fear
‘Today it really doesn’t matter where you stand on most issues – what you think of the war in Iraq, whether you think Napoleon was a clever guy or a real idiot. What matters is where you stand in view of what constitutes personhood.’
Snip:
Politics of Fear: Beyond Left and Right, published by Continuum this week, analyses the exhaustion of public life in Britain and the USA, and comes to a stark conclusion. The end of the historic struggle between left and right has taken us, not towards a more secure future of greater choice and consensus, but into a pre-political age dominated by misanthropic mistrust. Whether you wear the badge of left or right means little – what counts is whether you view people as capable of shaping their own destiny.
Snip:
…the idea that politics has changed has been widely accepted. What has not been accepted, argues Furedi, is the magnitude of this change.
Snip:
It is not simply that the ideas of left and right fail to convince, or that people’s participation in politics takes a different form to the past (a conceit that Furedi terms ‘politics in denial’). Rather, the end of left and right has led to a situation in which politics itself, as an expression of human agency, is becoming systematically discredited. ‘Politics implies choice – the existence of alternatives’, explains Furedi. ‘Now that doesn’t exist, and it’s not because people lack the imagination to dream up new ideas. The idea of people as political animals has become displaced by the idea that they have no role.’
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Sep 18 2005 22:21 utc | 24
Krugman: Tragedy in Black and White
But let me not blame the Bush administration for everything. The sad truth is that the only exceptional thing about the neglect of our fellow citizens we saw after Katrina struck is that for once the consequences of that neglect were visible on national TV.
Consider this: in the United States, unlike any other advanced country, many people fail to receive basic health care because they can’t afford it. Lack of health insurance kills many more Americans each year than Katrina and 9/11 combined.
But the health care crisis hasn’t had much effect on politics. And one reason is that it isn’t yet a crisis among middle-class, white Americans (although it’s getting there). Instead, the worst effects are falling on the poor and black, who have third-world levels of infant mortality and life expectancy.
I’d like to believe that Katrina will change everything – that we’ll all now realize how important it is to have a government committed to helping those in need, whatever the color of their skin. But I wouldn’t bet on it.
Nice Observer/Guardian OpEd My American nightmare
The rich are different. The problem for Democrats trying to combat all the tax breaks afforded them is that so many on the US poverty line idolise them, believing that they, too, will one day become millionaires through happenstance (in their case, the lottery).
Which is why Paris’s appeal breaks the class barrier. The all-consuming elite also breaks the race barrier. Puffy, who boasts of never spending less that $1million on his parties, reached out to the victims of Katrina by donating $500,000. It is not surprising to learn that Paris Hilton recently gave away Tinkerbell for growing too big. A manicured, mink-lined nail in the coffin of my American dream, fostered by an early love of Springsteen and Steinbeck and their American dream, whose greatest tenet is the work ethic.
Bar snack!!!
Avast! It’s International Talk Like a Pirate Day!
But first you need a name or two.
Posted by: beq (a.k.a. Castaway Esmerelda the Bastard Eye) | Sep 19 2005 15:06 utc | 27
You Can’t Handle the Truth
Psy-ops propaganda goes mainstream.
A shadowy media firm steps in to help orchestrate a sophisticated campaign of mass deception. Rather than alert the public to the smallpox threat, the company sets up a high-tech “ops center” to convince the public that an accident at a chemical plant threatens London. As the fictitious toxic cloud approaches the city, TV news outlets are provided graphic visuals charting the path of the invisible toxins. Londoners stay indoors, glued to the telly, convinced that even a short walk into the streets could be fatal.