“More light!”

Posted by: gylangirl | Dec 19 2005 3:01 utc | 4

viva morales! this should be a boost to the indigenous movements elsewhere in latin america. mexico. peru. ecuador. guatemala. momentum is surely on the south’s side. and, upon reflection, another looking glass moment – the national security state has moved from the backyard right into the eagle’s nest!

Posted by: b real | Dec 19 2005 4:03 utc | 6

For r’giap…
Colombia’s indigenous people take back land, force a draw with military using slingshots, sticks and stones

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Dec 19 2005 7:30 utc | 8

Did Andy Card rush in after the speech, and throw a purple sequened cape over the sweat drenched quivering and spent king? Comeon, you know he wanted it…Maybe after the cameras were off.

Posted by: anna missed | Dec 19 2005 11:30 utc | 10

I watched the speech and didn’t have much of a response one way or another. It didn’t raise my blood pressure the way his usual pronouncements do because I think I am becoming inured to it. It’s obvious his speechwriters were trying a different tact; it seems to have finally gotten through to them that the unilateral cowboy act doesn’t make their product look as much like a “uniter, not a divider” as they had hoped. I guess after dealing with five years of Creon from Antigone I couldn’t find it in myself to get terribly upset that the language and presentation seemed to be aimed at the average five year old.
Nothing new except the acknowledgement this time that his “tough decisions” will continue to make people die.

Posted by: Monolycus | Dec 19 2005 14:13 utc | 12

More of the same crap…
Nobody expects anything better any more…anyway.
More people will die and what only counts for American public more Americans will die.
Nothing new under the sun .There were people dieing somewhere in the world all the time because of American “interest”…it’s just a matter of numbers. That what Empires do…and USA is one (and only) Empire of our times. Some nations are just not lucky because they became a subject of USA interest…
Here on TV “big” news is that for the first time Bush ADMITTED publicly that there is something wrong with “wining” in Iraq…it costs too much…
I could vomit both for his speech and for the “big” news and how all of the crap has been manipulated for the public here…like we are all idiots…But I am almost used to it.

Posted by: vbo | Dec 19 2005 15:19 utc | 14

Uncle…the only way this crap is to collapse is when they hurt each other (meaning American politicians representing different interests inside USA) in their straggle for power…It has been seen in history before too. Empires collapsing inside…Well maybe it’s a beginning but I am not so sure…It looks like more entertainment for masses to me at this point while everything actually goes according to plan…

Posted by: vbo | Dec 19 2005 15:49 utc | 16

Goodness Annie that was creative! In a way, it does not matter what Bush says. Those who adhere continue to do so, the others are in any case of no account in the present schema.

Posted by: Noisette | Dec 19 2005 16:40 utc | 18

Monocyclous, yes, more or less. However Nation States hold powerful cards up their sleeves; just one point, they influence and utlimately control people, and people still count, as they are needed to produce, consume, fight, work, and provide leaders with a ‘base’, in whatever way one would want to describe that (cheerleaders, cannon fodder, motors for innovation, etc. etc.) There is a reason why Corporations keep a low profile, and indulge in manipulations, corruption, etc. That reason is that they don’t really possess the leverage to make people march or pray. Corporations make people work; Nation States give them group-belonging, a stake in their community, a belief in justice (even under dictators, even if misguided…) Today, in the US, a true and full blown marriage between Corporations and the State is not overtly possible. Both parties know it.

Posted by: Noisette | Dec 19 2005 17:01 utc | 20

@Obs
That would actually be a fairly brilliant, if disingenuous, strategy. I shouldn’t be opposed to some disingenuousness that worked to alleviate the killing and suffering for a change.

Posted by: Monolycus | Dec 19 2005 17:48 utc | 22

…and murals

Posted by: b real | Dec 19 2005 18:15 utc | 24

you are closer to the action
but from europe they are saying morales has a decisive majority
it is such good news – that one by one – nation who existed under the boot of th ‘north american’ empire as morales calls it are finally within grasp of their destiny
it is a light that gives great hope

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Dec 19 2005 19:09 utc | 26

che’s 1 2 3 many vietnams perhaps has a certain resonance in the corridors of washington, tonight
& b – i eagerly await our anna miised’s art – i hope it is coming….
& to conchita….the boat still floats…..

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Dec 19 2005 20:19 utc | 28

Sarcastic or not, you raise a very good point, Bernhard. Even if Bush the Younger’s speech yesterday appeared to be prevailing to the American people, it is obvious by the official US response to Katrina (and all environmental issues), their reticence to relinquish the Executive Right to Torture (or to prosecute the human rights abuses that have been uncovered), their undercutting of Social Security (and every other social program they can get their hands on), their war-profiteering (and self-interested deregulation of all corporate piracy) , their defense of domestic spying (and demonstrable contempt for all individual rights of privacy), and their suppression of political debate (including the arrests of third party candidates) that at least the official US philosophy of what a government is has nothing whatsoever to do with the welfare of the governed.

Posted by: Monolycus | Dec 19 2005 20:54 utc | 30

Of course in the time I took to write the post above, drive the young fella to school, fix my daughter’s mp3 player, and scratch my ass the discussion has moved on.
I am more sanguine about the victory in Bolivia than giap.
BushCo have really screwed the pooch on this one and Poppy n his aged elitist mates will be climbing the walls.
In fact it is this issue that is more likely to cause W’s impeachment than anything else. That would bever be the stated motive of course but dem and rethug legislators palsy with the corporations making a buck in Latin America (ie most dem and rethug legislators) will be tearing the hair outta their rugs.
My view is that the swing to the left in South America has gone too far for any US administration to be able to ‘restore order’ easily.
The Iraqi invasion has demonstrated the dangers of concentrating one’s efforts in one place and though the US elites will be pissed about South America, they won’t want to try and regain that lost ground if by doing so they endanger their hold in Central America which is strategically more important and hasn’t really been challenged yet.
The problem the US has it that it won’t be able to use the puppets in other Latin American nations to criticise the actions of their neighbour in any of the many American fora thereby using that crticism as an excuse for intervention. Attempts to do so with Venezuala have been unsuccessful with governments who are desperate not to get offside with their own voters.
US and EU governments already have a major issue that undercuts their stated committment to democracy.
That is the recent victories of Hamas in Palestinian local body elections. This is going to be really difficult to argue against while arguing in favour of ‘democracy in Iraq’, which despite the huge sea change in Latin America is obviously the major priority of USuk.
It may be that the worm has turned the chickens have come home to roost etc. If that is the case it is the beginning of the end of empire.
I realise that we shouldn’t be quite so flippant about this because the US is the devil we know.
I console myself with the knowledge that for a few thousand years China has made it plain that they regard any further expansion of their empire as self defeating. Yes they did grab Tibet back and won’t surrender Taiwan but that is more an affirmation of their ancient borders than a decision to expand further.
The vast majority of China’s military forces are directed inwards at their own population which is not a good thing but it’s better from our p.o.v. than having them directed at us.
They have also successfully expanded their economy without expanding their empire and as long as they continue to do that there will be no motive for expansion of empire.
If the above is correct we have reached a point where we can push for multi-lateralist solutions to international problems.

Posted by: Debs is dead | Dec 19 2005 22:30 utc | 32

I just saw on Atrios that Rep. John Lewis, a bonified American hero, is calling for Bush to be impeached for breaking the law. He’s the first member of congress to do so specifically. Go SNCC.
Link here.

Posted by: Rowan | Dec 19 2005 22:52 utc | 34

Some required reading from Mr Engelhart

Posted by: Debs is dead | Dec 20 2005 3:23 utc | 36

Quote:
The point is that having lived for lengthy periods in a number of different nations I have become very unsure of the worthiness of ‘national group belonging’.
***
Oh you wouldn’t believe how ‘national group belonging’ is alive and well around the globe. Even here in Australia during those racist riots in Sydney it was obvious…A lot of hooligans from “white supremacy” groups were wearing Australian flags around their bottom…Australian nation (same as American nation) expression is pretty hard for me to understand what exactly it represents. Looks like a new nation but at some point you just suddenly find out that what they mean by it is Anglo Saxons and all the others are just ugly necessity that should at least behave and feel like Anglo Saxons. On the other hand those guys “of middle east appearance” as they call them here on TV being put all in the same basket may also feel like having some kind of “Middle East” nation that they belong to. They are not even all of Islamic religion…
Everyone wants to belong and to be able to cover his behavior with some flag…

Posted by: vbo | Dec 20 2005 16:15 utc | 38

@vbo
Yeah, I guess you do know what I am on about. The angriest I ever got at Ted Koppel was when he travelled to the former Yugoslavia in 1995 and “interviewed” (read: lambasted) two aged Serbian men in front of the bombed-out remains of their home and badgered them about why they wanted to kill Albanians (although it was from Koppel that I first heard the detested words “depleted uranium”, and give him credit for that). I feel a bit like that now.
I was (and am) no fan of Clinton, and it was during his presidency that I first began to realise how deeply and effectively the un-nuanced blanket arguments and “talking points” work to conceal the truth and stifle dissent. I was accused of being a Republican (!) because the words “perjury” and “obstruction of justice” turned into “blowjob” as soon as they hit the air. I was against the Kosovo War just as I was against Gulf War I… but from where I was, there was no real debate in either case. It has only been retrospectively that I have seen any real analyses, and even those are presented as curious historic footnotes.
This will be of no comfort to you (and will probably justifiably infuriate you… I apologise), but no American I have ever met hates Serbs. They have no idea who the Serbian people are. They have heard the names of the states and the ethnic groups who live there, but could not find the Balkan Peninsula on a map if their lives depended upon it. I was in Dayton, Ohio during the 1995 Dayton Accords, but if Wright-Patt Air Force Base increased security for the occasion, it was not visible nor did it need to be. Apart from a two-minute announcement on the news, nobody here seemed to know or care what was going on. The only “debate” heard were the rote “talking points”.
It was during this time that the “talking point” and blanket generalisation became most transparent to me, although I have since re-visited previous rationales for atrocities and discovered that this had been the case all along (Bernhard has mentioned that there are still Germans who cling to the talking point that Poland attacked Germany first).
Specifically, it seemed obvious to me that Operation Allied Force in Yugoslavia in 1999 (as well as Operations Infinite Reach and Desert Fox in Afghanistan, Sudan and Iraq) were pursued with the specific intent to distract people from discussing Clinton’s impeachment scandal. I was completely horrified by this interpretation; the wholesale slaughter of human beings was nothing more than a political game or a public relations move. That it was done so blatantly and so callously changed my view of “politics-as-usual” forever and cemented the idea in me that the discussion can never be restricted to the simplistic memes that cover up what is really going on… whether that meme is “unseating a brutal dictator” on the one hand or “American Imperialism” on the other.
I wish you peace, vbo. You do not need to apologise for sounding harsh and angry. I prefer genuine anger about genuine issues to the artificial apathetic serenity I am usually surrounded by.

Posted by: Monolycus | Dec 20 2005 18:11 utc | 40

edward herman, in his year-end recap over at swans, Reflections On 2005 And The Future, writes We are beyond the age of Orwell, into the Kafka years and then asks

Of course, the US citizenry deserves a lot of credit for this parlous situation. It is true that the media divert and propagandize them into supporting not very plausible scoundrels, but shouldn’t we hold them to a moderate standard of concern for truth and decency as citizens? Should we excuse their frequent racist bias and easy manipulability by formulas and stereotypes? Shouldn’t they be able to see through used car salesmen’s, grade-B actors’, and spoiled frat-boys’ facades and not be taken in by rank demagoguery and serial lies?

for decades, herman has written on the doublespeak/doublethink the united states govt & media employ to hoodwink the public & manufacture consent. one criticism of his & chomsky’s propaganda theory has been that they don’t allocate enough critique to the role of the consenting, in that coercion & consent are intertwined & difficult to separate (if that is even possible). so, along w/ his alarming assessment that we are beyond orwell now, the ending to his yearly observation also raises the hairs on the back of my neck:

At the possible cost of being called an “elitist,” I close with a quote from Vernon Louis Parrington’s review of “Sinclair Lewis: Our Own Diogenes” (written back in 1927 and published in Parrington’s classic Main Currents in American Thought):

Now what is the tremendous discovery that Sinclair Lewis makes so much of, and what we pay so great a price to learn? It is no other than this: that the goodly United States of America are peopled by a mighty herd, which like those earlier herds that rumbled about the plains, drives foolishly in whatever direction their noses point — a herd endowed with tremendous blind power, with big bull leaders, but with minds rarely above their bellies and their dams. In the mass and at their own romantic rating they are distinctly imposing-big-necked, red-blooded, lusty, with glossy coats got from rich feeding-grounds, and with a herd power that sweeps majestically onward in a cloud of dust of its own raising, veritable lords and masters of a continent. But considered more critically and resolved into individual members, they appear to the realist somewhat stupid, feeble in brain and will, stuffed with conceit at their own excellence, esteeming themselves as the great end for which creation has been in travail, the finest handiwork of the Most High who spread the plains for their feeding-grounds: with a vast respect for totems and fetishes; purveyors and victims of the mysterious thing called Bunk, who valiantly horn to death any audacious heretic who may suggest that rumbling about the plains, filling their bellies, bellowing sacred slogans, and cornering the lushest grass, are scarcely adequate objectives for such immense power: a vast middleman herd, that dominates the continent, but cannot reduce it to order or decency.

Posted by: b real | Dec 21 2005 4:33 utc | 42

Another visting American dignitary who is spreading
good cheer to the Afghan parliament where his old
friend

Mr Karzai repeated pleas for an end to the booming drugs trade. At least 20 parliamentarians are directly involved in drugs smuggling, according to diplomats.

But the high point of the visit (as noted on Pat Lang’s Sic Semper Tyrannis blog was thus chronicled:

After Mr Cheney entered the parliament chaotic scenes erupted when Afghan security guards insisted on searching the Americans’ bags – including a briefcase containing America’s secret nuclear bomb codes. An angry White House official ordered the guards to “open the gate now”, an AP reporter said. “These are the vice-president’s military aides.”
The Afghans, who were trained by the US security contractor Dyncorps, allowed the aides through but insisted on a thorough body search of the rest of the party.

Has Cheney really assumed responsibility for “the football”?

Posted by: Anonymous | Dec 21 2005 8:00 utc | 44

U.S. air power strikes Iraq targets daily

The number of U.S. airstrikes increased in the weeks leading up to last Thursday’s election, from a monthly average of about 35 last summer to more than 60 in September and 120 or more in October and November. The monthly number of air missions, including refueling and other support flights, grew from 1,111 in September to 1,492 in November, according to figures provided by Central Command Air Force’s public affairs office.

Posted by: b | Dec 21 2005 12:06 utc | 46

thanks b real, bageant is always a scorching treat to read…

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Dec 21 2005 21:32 utc | 48

That link doesn’t seem to be working, b. I get a “We are unable to locate the page you requested” page.

Posted by: Joe F | Dec 21 2005 22:19 utc | 50

Thanks for that link b real even if it has scared the living shit outta me.
Stop me if you’ve heard this before (oops sorry you can’t. lol) but when we had our elections in NZ a few months ago the country was plastered with handbills and circulars informing the populace that the Green Party was an agent of the devil promulgating the homosexualist lifestyle. That the laws allowing gay marriage, legalisation of prostitution and introducing a carbon tax (weird) were evidence that satan wanted to bring the country to her knees.
The next step was going to be the introduction of capital gains tax so that decent folks would have to give the proceeds of the property boom to satan’s army and would end up living on the streets.
Because it was a huge and well co-ordinated campaign it was obviously not the work of an isolated looney tune. It had cost millions to put in place but the addresses put on the flyers (as required under electoral law) were of empty rental properties.
The big conservative parties denied all knowledge of who the organisers could be apart from being both dedicated and smart if a little over the top.
There had been a similar bit of muckraking in some municipal elections the year before which on investigation turned out to have come from a Tory’s campaign strategist and which took the campaign expenditure well over the limit allowed. Because of that and a foreign affairs official spilling the beans about the Tory leadership asking for a few bucks from some US senators to have NZ’s non nuclear policy ‘gone by lunchtime’ there was considerable interest in who had paid for this.
The journalists did their job and found out that the houses were owned by the leadership of a mob who called themselves “The Exclusive Bretheren” This fundie mob has been active in the US, Australia and NZ for about a century.
We always used to feel a bit sorry for them at school because the kids had to eat their lunch away from the rest of us, weren’t allowed radios or the latest big thing, Television and never saw a movie etc. Up until this little incident I had always made a point of doing business with the brethren small businesses that belonged to the families I went to school with. I’m sure most of us were like that because even if they were told to keep us at bay we wanted them to know we were there if they ever decided to run away from their oppressors. It is a very heavy very sexist cult of about 30,000 in NZ 100,000 in Australia and several hundred thousand in the US.
After a day of speculation about cults and facist agendas a group of Bretheren Leadership called a press conference to come clean. It was the hottest ticket in town in the run up to polling day. These white middle class, middle aged blokes, who all looked like clones of each other in their open necked business shirts (some stricture against neckties) said they couldn’t understand what the fuss was about. That they were merely exercising their democratic perogative.
Oh said the reporters. That’s interesting. How does that square with your church’s admonishments to avoid all wordly things like politics, TV’s newspapers, and voting? How can your mob have a clue about what’s going on? Given that you’re not allowed to vote why get involved in an election.
They were rattled and said that as men they could be trusted not to become tainted by all the evil in the media. Went down like a lead balloon with the mainly female gang of reporters. As did these blokes’ barely disguised contempt for talking with women at all, much less women who hadn’t covered most off their bodies and heads. harlots!
They got so rattled they said something that really shot themselves in the foot.
Why they had several meetings with National Party leader Don Brash (up until this point he was looking like a shoo-in for PM) and devised the strategy in conjunction with the Nats. So it wasn’t secret hidden or looney toons.
Maybe they had been following their rules about newspapers, radios and TV; because Brash’s boys had been all over the media denying that they knew anything about the ‘smear campaign’ against the faggot, tree huggin communistic greens.
So the reporters who had been following Der Fuhrer around while he shook hands with babies and kissed shoppers got calls from their colleagues at brethren central suggesting that it would be a good idea to ask Brash what he knew about these claims. Do it before the nats had time to prepare a story. Hee hee!
As a bloke that has trouble thinking on the run (sold as an asset ie he’s not a sleazy spinner) Brash did a quick impersonation of a goldfish out of water before confessing that he had caught up with the god botherers ‘once or twice’.
The next question was “What about your offsiders on talkback radio? As we speak they are telling the country that you guys knew nothing about this mailout. More goldfish impersonations followed by “Errr Aaaaah I didn’t tell them. I kept it to myself”.
Yeah right Don. You didn’t feel the need to share with anyone in your party that you had secured by far the largest private donation in the history of that party.
That was pretty much the end of the Don for PM push. However the inept bumblings of the bible bashers still had a chapter or two.
The international leader of the bretheren an Australian who has a reputation of backing up his strictures with a drop of the old ultra-violence, couldn’t help but stick his head up to prove his power and say “What’s the problem the NZ branch was just following orders we gave heaps to the conservatives in Australia and millions to the Bush campaign in 2004.
Johnny Howard managed to mutter something about not keeping track of the plethora of discriminating organisations which threw money at his campaign. Doubtless if it was raised in the US it would have been well down the list of important questions to ask W.
Since proportional representation has been introduced into NZ the fundies have tried unceasingly to get a few of their fellow travellers into Parliament and failed miserably.
Yet the con-men are on every channel here at sparrow fart when decent folks are having their first piss of the day.
As far as I can discern they do a good trade in neon replicas of the Waco compound (where there were more than a few Kiwi’s and Aussies when ATF did their thing). I’ve stopped paying much interest since Jimmy Swaggert copped the flick. Now there was a great country band. Damn shame that boy couldn’t have been more like his cousin .
So even though we’ve our share of dupable disciples up here on the Southern end of the planet, (the old girl looks a lot less like a rape victim if you stick Antarctica at the top), as I said earlier if people are given a wide enough range of choice most do prefer a separation of church and state. Back in the first past the post system, polls would show that between 5 to 9% of Tory support was from the fundies. This is why some mainchancing xtians set up the xtian Heritage Party which died a rapid demise. Admittedly assisted in part by the revelation that founder and leader Graham Capill took his pleasure by denying little girls their childhood after telling them God wanted her to let him play with her pink bits. (Yeeech!)
But long before that revelation it became apparent that although fundies didn’t approve of baby murdering or buggery it would never be the prime motivator for selecting leaders ahead of someone likely to make getting food on the table less hassle. And this wasn’t for a lack of mainchancing evangalists who wanted a more secure income than the vagaries of the tithe. These luuvies were telling them that their salvation lay in voting for the weasel from the churches’ head office.
If we advocate power to the people we must redevelop our faith in the ability of all people to do their level best to make responsible choices. I like people meself even the dupable or maybe especially the dupable.
The left will go nowhere if it looks down on those whose lives it seeks to ‘improve’.

Posted by: Debs is dead | Dec 21 2005 23:48 utc | 52