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August 14, 2006
OT 06-77
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More fecklessness, and maybe more cynicism, too: NBC reports that there was a dispute between the British and the Americans over when to make arrests in the latest plot. Since the alleged plotters weren’t ready to go — they hadn’t purchased airline tickets, and some didn’t even have passports yet — British officials wanted to watch and wait, hoping to gather more evidence. But according to NBC, the Americans insisted on early arrests.
Suspicions that the Bush administration might have had political motives in wanting the arrests made prematurely are fed by memories of events two years ago: the Department of Homeland Security declared a terror alert just after the Democratic National Convention, shifting the spotlight away from John Kerry — and, according to Pakistani intelligence officials, blowing the cover of a mole inside Al Qaeda.
But whether or not there was something fishy about the timing of the latest terror announcement, there’s the question of whether the administration’s scare tactics will work. If current polls are any indication, Republicans are on the verge of losing control of at least one house of Congress. And “on every issue other than terrorism and homeland security,” says Newsweek about its latest poll, “the Dems win.” Can a last-minute effort to make a big splash on terror stave off electoral disaster?
…
All Mr. Bush and his party can do at this point is demonize their opposition. And my guess is that the public won’t go for it, that Americans are fed up with leadership that has nothing to hope for but fear itself.
I would encourage MOA’s to visit my last 4 or 5 posts in the weekend OT.
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Aug 14 2006 6:53 utc | 3
The following post is rated: CD(TM) for ‘critical discernment’: Remember, CRITICAL DISCERNMENT IS REQUIRED. Having said that, this from one of LaRouche’s buds…okay…pot kettle black ….regardless, you might find it interesting if downright frightening…
The word is circulating in high-level Republican Party circles that former President George H.W. Bush is profoundly worried about the mental state of his son, the current President. According to the sources, Bush 41 has been communicating with his own intimate circle, including former National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft, and former Secretary of State James Baker III, along with former President Bill Clinton, about G.W.’s over-the-top support for Israel’s current self-destructive assault on Lebanon. The ex-President has reportedly conveyed to his close associates that he fears that G.W. is in a messianic state and is “unreachable,” even by such close advisors as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
Snip:
“If there’s a starting point for George W. Bush’s attachment to Israel,” Brooks told Hutcheson, “it’s the day in late 1998, when he stood on a hilltop where Jesus delivered the Sermon on the Mount, and, eyes brimming with tears, read aloud from his favorite hymn, ‘Amazing Grace.’ He was very emotional. It was a tear-filled experience. He brought Israel back home with him in his heart. I think he came away profoundly moved.”
In Your Guts, You Know He’s Nuts
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Aug 14 2006 7:46 utc | 5
@b: Ahmadinejad’s “blog” – if that’s for real b, the link was down briefly – “too busy”. Might be DoS attacks, but interesting that you can see from the error message that he’s on a MS .Net platform. Would have thought he would care more about security and reliability than that… Amazing.
Posted by: PeeDee | Aug 14 2006 7:52 utc | 6
From Uncle’s link James Baker puts Bush’s Iraq policy into rehab, an article in Washington Monthly by Robert Dreyfuss.
“Since March, Baker, backed by a team of experienced national-security hands, has been busily at work trying to devise a fresh set of policies to help the president chart a new course in–or, perhaps, to get the hell out of–Iraq. …
Baker’s commission … was created in March by Congress at the instigation of Rep. Frank Wolf, a Virginia Republican. … chairman of the appropriations subcommittee that funds the State Department, [Wolf has] clear leverage with Rice. … a key silent partner with Wolf in putting it together was his Virginia Republican colleague, Sen. John Warner, the chairman of the powerful Senate Armed Services committee.
…”Some of the things that were told to me, I had never seen before: the destabilization of the region,” Wolf told me. “Some of the scenarios that were given to me [included] the overthrow of the Saudi government, [along with both] the Jordanian government and the Egyptian government …
…Besides Baker, the bipartisan task force is co-chaired by Lee H. Hamilton, the Indiana Democrat and foreign-policy wise man. … Baker and Hamilton recruited a star-studded task force, evenly split between Republicans and Democrats. The Republicans include Robert M. Gates, the former CIA director; Sandra Day O’Connor, the retired Justice; Alan Simpson, the former Wyoming senator; and Edwin Meese III, attorney general under President Reagan. The Democrats are William Perry, President Clinton’s secretary of defense; Charles Robb, the former Virginia senator; Leon Panetta, Clinton’s chief of staff; and Vernon Jordan, the lawyer and Friend of Bill. …
[four working groups] Among the participants in these working groups are former ambassadors and State Department officials, intelligence officers from the CIA and other parts of the U.S. intelligence community, and think-tank denizens from the RAND Corporation, the Nixon Center, the Henry L. Stimson Center, the Brookings Institution, the American Enterprise Institute, the Middle East Institute, the Council on Foreign Relations, and others, along with a panel of retired military officers: three army generals, an air-force general, and an admiral. …
The relentlessly centrist nature of the Iraq Study Group has some, especially among the neoconservative cheerleaders for the war, worried. “You’ll notice, of course, that there are no neocons on the task force,” said a member of one of the working groups.
Here and there, scattered among the members of the working groups, are a handful of hard-line neocons, among them Clifford May, president of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, and Reuel Marc Gerecht, a former CIA Middle East hand who is a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. But they are vastly outnumbered by the moderates and centrists. In assembling the task force, Wolf, Baker and Hamilton were careful to avoid the neocons. “If you’d put [Douglas] Feith on it, people would say, ‘These are the guys who got us in there in the first place,'” said a Wolf aide. Thomas Neumann, executive director of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs and a neoconservative, is concerned that Baker will steer the group toward an Iraq exit. “Baker’s a lawyer,” he told me. “He’ll probably come up with some sort of position about getting an international consensus on Iraq.”
Posted by: jonku | Aug 14 2006 8:04 utc | 7
Won’t this be fun when we want to fly. It could be the end of “commuter” love affairs. I don’t think terrorists are the only ones that have a “fear of being caught”.
Posted by: ww | Aug 14 2006 8:04 utc | 8
Three great posts over on Lawrence of Cyberia (referred originally by the Moon. Thanks). Two document pretty thoroughly two issues in which the Israeli government’s propaganda look a lot like projection –
“The phenomenon of attributing to others behaviors that you are guiltily aware of performing yourself, a recognised condition in medical literature.”
“A defense mechanism to cope with internal or external stressors and emotional conflict by attributing to another person – usually falsely – thoughts, feelings, wishes, impulses, needs, and hopes deemed forbidden or unacceptable by the projecting party”.
The first – Lebanese Sovereignty And The Neighbour From Hell documents continual violation of the Lebanon-Israel border by an unruly militia. Turns out it’s the IDF though, rather than Hezbollah.
It is not the case that there was peaceful coexistence on that border till Hizbullah cruelly spoiled it, as the Israeli narrative would like you to believe. That border is regularly breached by hostile acts, usually – though not always – from the Israeli side.
The second Hiding Behind Civilians is the routine and habitual use of human shields. Whoops, turns out it’s the IDF again.
It strikes me that the recent popularity of calls of “Islamofascism” amongst the US leadership is a textbook example of the same sort of projection, and I’ve long listened to all of their pronouncements from that point of view. The Rover’s favourite tactic is to find out what is most likely to be a weak point, and then pre-emptively label the opponent with that very tag, eg. bomber, terrorist, fascist, torturer, liar, traitor, thief. The BIG lie, hard to rationally deal with because it is 180 degrees from the truth.
Finally, Preemptive Strike Removes Threat To Israel documents the latest atrocities that Israeli has carried out in Gaza have largely succeeded in removing the threat of negotiations from the table.
The Ramallah-based Near East Consulting opinion poll showed 55% of Palestinians believed Hamas should keep its vow to eliminate Israel, up from 44% in late June and 25% in January when the Islamist group won parliamentary elections.
It also showed only a bare majority of Palestinians backed a peace settlement with Israel, well down from previous surveys…
Only 51% of Palestinians backed a peace pact with Israel, down from 76% in late June, when the Gaza offensive erupted, added the poll, conducted early this month.
Mission Accomplished indeed.
Myself, I used to favour a two state solution on the 1967 borders. Now I find myself more inclined to a single democratic (by that I mean one person, one vote) state with universal human rights – which happen to include no legal preferences stemming from sex, race or religion. Why should Israel be a special case, and continue to be excused for the sort of institutional racial and ethnic discrimination and colonisation that South Africa was not? Would Israel be the only remaining example of a non-indigenous transplanted minority ethnic group imposing it’s will on a territory and people purely by overwhelming force of arms?
Was the very fact that Lebanon was successfully struggling towards a civil society that included such different religions and ethnicities an existential threat to the Israeli premise that democracy cannot work?
My thanks to all.
Posted by: PeeDee | Aug 14 2006 8:48 utc | 9
@Jonku – Great piece. Look, I know all Baker wants is to preserve the profit stream, but this has to be the most positive thing I’ve read since Fitzy backed off Rove.
“Baker must confront the president “like the way a family confronts an alcoholic. You bring everyone in, and you say, ‘Look, my friend, it’s time to change.'”
Please, please, please…
Posted by: PeeDee | Aug 14 2006 8:59 utc | 10
“If our fighters deep in Lebanese territory are left without food our water, I believe they can break into local Lebanese stores to solve that problem,” Brigadier General Avi Mizrahi, the head of the Israel Defense Forces logistics branch, said Monday.
Mizrahi’s comments followed complaints by IDF soldiers regarding the lack of food on the front lines.
“If what they need to do is take water from the stores, they can take,” Mizrahi told Army Radio.
According to Mizrahi, the logistics branch is prepared for the possibility that combat soldiers will have to remain in Lebanon during the winter.
Posted by: Cloned Poster | Aug 14 2006 12:22 utc | 11
Luckily those nice Hezbollah chappies would never think of taking advantage of a food raid to ambush hungry Israeli troops. Or of booby-trapping stores.
a fairly prominent conservo blog, Redstate, is encouraging readers to visit the Ahmedinejad blog and poll.
Posted by: Jonathan V.("Hugo Zoom") | Aug 14 2006 14:33 utc | 13
Just listening to KPFA’s morning show, they were interviewing Ari Berman of the Nation magazine.and Berman just sd, AIPAC is not a Political Action Committe and therefore have hundreds of little subsidiaries so they can bypass the laws requiring them to disclose how much money they give to congress. Which means they get much more than the quoted 9 billion a year. He further went on to say, AIPAC doesn’t represent Israel proper, but in fact represents the center /extreme right factions within Israel.
here’s his lastest article…
Also, next they intereviewed Jared Bernstein who is a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute and author of the new book, All Together Now: Common Sense for a New Economy Bernstein coined the term YOYO (Your On Your Own)”The reality is we are in a Calvinist economy” and the system of shifting risks of which he means the yoyo is destroying America and it’s education system. Rejecting The YOYOs
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Aug 14 2006 14:47 utc | 14
“Would Israel be the only remaining example of a non-indigenous transplanted minority ethnic group imposing it’s will on a territory and people purely by overwhelming force of arms?”
Well, that would still leave Australia, NZ and the whole American continent… Though, in these cases, the natives have been so thoroughly wiped out that in most cases they’re a barely significant minority. Not that it changes the essence of the genocidal land grab.
Posted by: CluelessJoe | Aug 14 2006 15:39 utc | 16
Bush’s belief in a worldwide Islamist conspiracy is foolish and dangerous
…Bush has chosen to lump together all violent Muslim opposition to what he perceives as western interests everywhere in the world, as part of a single conspiracy. He is indifferent to the huge variance of interests that drives the Taliban in Afghanistan, insurgents in Iraq, Hamas and Hizbullah fighting the Israelis. He simply identifies them as common enemies of the United States.
…
There is no chance that the west will get anywhere with the Muslim world until the US government is willing to disassemble a spread of grievances in widely diverse societies, examine them as separate components, and treat each on its merits. America cannot prevail through the mere deployment of superior wealth and military power, the failure of which is manifest. Judicious and discriminatory political judgments are fundamental, and today quite lacking.
The madness of Bush’s policy is that he has made a wilful choice to amalgamate the grossly irrational, totalitarian and homicidal objectives of al-Qaida with the just claims of Palestinians and grievances of Iraqis. …
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Aug 14 2006 16:32 utc | 17
To follow up on Unca’s link, Amy naturally had Sy Hersh on today. The Good News is that he doesn’t see anything imminent vis a vis Iran. He made 2 Extraordinary points:
1) Re Simpleton “thinking”:
One of the things that struck me right away, as soon as I saw how Israel was bombing, and my instinct told me there was something there, because in one of the Air Force plans that I knew about but didn’t write about, one of the Air Force options for taking out Iran was, of course, shock and awe, a massive, massive bombing well beyond any of the nuclear facilities. Go hit the country hard for 36 hours, drive people into underground bunkers. Don’t target civilians, necessarily, but hit their infrastructure, hit the roads, hit the power plants, hit the water facilities.
And so, when they come out of their bunkers after 36 hours, they look around. In the American neo-con view, they were going to say to each other, “Oh, my god, the mullahs did this to us, the religious mullahs who run the country. We’re going to overthrow them and install a secular government.” That was the thinking for the last year. That is the thinking for the last year inside some elements of the Pentagon, the civilian side, and also in Cheney’s shop.
So when you watch what Israel did in its opening salvo, the first targets, I remember vividly, was — and everybody should — they took out the civilian airstrip. They took away civilian — the ability to use aircraft to travel. They took out highways. They took out roads. They took out petrol stations. They basically isolated Southern Lebanon. But I think part of the reason they did so much damage to the infrastructure was they believed — and I think the Israelis have been very clear about it — that the Christian population and the Sunni population — don’t forget Hezbollah is Shia — would rise up against Hezbollah, and it would be a great feather in the cap, etc., etc., etc.
2) So much for that…but we’re not out of the woods yet.
Well, you can’t apply rationality to it, because I think it’s simply something Bush and Cheney want to do. As I said earlier, they want to take out Iran. They don’t want to talk to it. They believe it’s, you know, the axis of evil cubed. And so, frankly, my real worry is what’s going to happen — I think nothing’s going to happen before this election. That’s impossible. My real worry is what’s going to happen when George Bush is a lame duck. He’s talking about, privately now, so I’m told and so I’ve written, about Winston Churchill. If you remember, after leading England to war in World War II, he was turned out by the voters, and he wasn’t fully appreciated until years later. So I think he sees himself in the position of “I know I’m right. They don’t quite believe me. But I’m going to do the thing I think is right, the right thing. And maybe in 30 or 50 years, they’ll come to accept me for the great president I think I am.” And so, that’s what we really have as leadership right now.link
Posted by: jj | Aug 14 2006 17:03 utc | 18
Two insane people: Atlasshrugs interviews Bolton
(watch your stomach)
Sharon went septic ~2wks. ago. His kidneys failed – in ordinary people that’s a sign that the end is w/in hours. I’ve been wondering if they put him in icebox, rather than break the news to Israelis that Sharon died while they were losing their first war. …Dunno, but they’re now back to letting out the news…maybe it’s really backdated & these events happened 2 wks ago 🙂
In any event, Haaretz is reporting again that what little is left of Sharon is deteriorating even further…Funeral perhaps a welcome distraction this week..
haaretz.com/hasen/spages/750430.html
Posted by: jj | Aug 14 2006 18:27 utc | 20
At some point, all that Orwellian smack blows up in the face. We will pay the price if we do not inform our leaders that we wish them to stop casting us further into hell.
Reacting to the report that some Muslims in Britain were involved in the plot to blow up aircraft bound for US airports from London, the US president said: “It was a stark reminder this nation is at war with Islamic fascists who will use any means to destroy those of us who love freedom, to hurt our nation.”
Describing the US president’s remarks as “ill-conceived” and “inappropriate”, expatriates from Britain, India and Pakistan said some hypermarkets in Riyadh had already withdrawn American products from their shelves in response to the US’ anti-Islam campaign. “By linking Islam with fascism, Bush is stoking the fire of hatred against his country and his people, besides further expanding the recruitment pool of extremists,” said the expatriates.
Giving his name only as Hamza, a British expatriate, told Arab News that Bush’s remarks were racist.
“Would the term fascist also apply to the members of other communities? We never speak of Christian fascists or Jewish fascists when they are involved in acts of terror. On what ground has the US president used the term with reference to Muslims?” he asked.
Posted by: citizen | Aug 14 2006 18:51 utc | 21
At some point, all that Orwellian smack blows up in the face. We will pay the price if we do not inform our leaders that we wish them to stop casting us further into hell.
Reacting to the report that some Muslims in Britain were involved in the plot to blow up aircraft bound for US airports from London, the US president said: “It was a stark reminder this nation is at war with Islamic fascists who will use any means to destroy those of us who love freedom, to hurt our nation.”
Describing the US president’s remarks as “ill-conceived” and “inappropriate”, expatriates from Britain, India and Pakistan said some hypermarkets in Riyadh had already withdrawn American products from their shelves in response to the US’ anti-Islam campaign. “By linking Islam with fascism, Bush is stoking the fire of hatred against his country and his people, besides further expanding the recruitment pool of extremists,” said the expatriates.
Giving his name only as Hamza, a British expatriate, told Arab News that Bush’s remarks were racist.
“Would the term fascist also apply to the members of other communities? We never speak of Christian fascists or Jewish fascists when they are involved in acts of terror. On what ground has the US president used the term with reference to Muslims?” he asked.
Posted by: citizen | Aug 14 2006 18:53 utc | 22
BAGHDAD (Reuters):No evidence Iran active in Iraq: US general
There is no evidence the Iranian government is stirring trouble in Iraq, a U.S. general said on Monday, playing down suggestions that Tehran will retaliate for U.S. backing of Israel’s war on Hizbollah.
The war on Iran is in trouble. Get ready for a staged terror attack to revive the Neocon/PNAC/Israeli plans.
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Aug 14 2006 21:02 utc | 23
Iranians are super active bloggers, many Gvmt. members have or had blogs. That Ahmadinejad has a blog is perfectly natural.
Iran also has gay magazines, the highest sex-change stats in the world (say, I don’t have numbers to hand), malls to die for, great fashion designers, conspiracy theorists on every corner, poets galore….
and 10 – 12 million Revolutionary guards.
🙂
Posted by: Noirette | Aug 14 2006 21:12 utc | 24
A Comment From Angry Arab For Our Favorite Poster & Poet Here At MOA:
There’s a great moment in Pontecorvo’s Battle of Algiers when one of the underground leaders of the FLN says an Algerian military victory against the occupying French is just the beginning of the struggle to build a new Algeria.
In Lebanon, what now? Resistance is surely a stage, not a permanent condition. Where does it go?
That’s the question.
But that being said, Lebanon 2006 is Israel’s Dien Bien Phu. Vietnamese hand-dug bunkers and tunnels helped them overpower the occupying French brigades in less than two months. The similarities with Hizballah today are uncanny. Even radical Sunni shuyukh, Saudis amongst them, and bin Laden himself, have referred to Vietnam’s extraordinary, successful sacrifices against the French and US as presenting a model for Muslim resistance.
We all pay tribute to the inspired Hizballah fedayeen.
Eighteenth Brumaire
Posted by: Malooga | Aug 14 2006 21:26 utc | 25
Here is an Iran Gvmt. blog – Abtahi – very revealing and transparent, an internet freak, and the first in the Gvmt. afaik, so a model.
link (cache)
(other links don’t seem to work at the mo.)
Posted by: Noirette | Aug 14 2006 21:38 utc | 26
Bush Wants Direct Control of National Guard
Wonder why that is… *snark*
Also see:
Governors Oppose Federal Control of Guard
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Aug 14 2006 22:27 utc | 27
The State withers away-The Corporation expands
Who can fault Bill and Melindy Gates wish to “. . .put the power to prevent HIV in the hands of women. . .”
Certainly members of the amerikan left who have been appalled by their own governments espousal of the ‘ABC‘ program throughout Africa may feel gratified that the winds of change are blowing.
The ABC program which stands for – Abstinence, Be faithful and use a Condom has been taken up by governments as an excuse for not providing funding for condoms, repressing gay people and women’s rights movements while inflicting a particularly authoritarian style of government based on ‘bible’ teachings (ie bow to authority, never oppose the will of your masters), while enabling aid money to be spent on strengthening the leadership’s political machine.
‘Education programs’ invented by Marxist authoritarian regimes and now taken up by authoritarian regimes of whatever ilk are a beautifully simple way of distributing money out into communities in a way that favours ‘the faithful’. see amerikan rethug ‘silver ring thing’ program.
Very little resources are invested on supplies or physical items to be given to the masses (eg condoms), and everything goes to payments to educators in the form of wages allowances, transportation costs and the like. Politically ‘reliable ‘ people are chosen to deliver the message and since they are the only people in many communities with a steady income their little clique soon holds the bulk of the power in a community.
One of the first fights I had with established authority on an aboriginal community was back in the late 70’s when Malcolm Fraser in a fit of guilt introduced N.E.S.A. (National Employment Strategy for Aboriginals). This program was funded directly by commonwealth and state authorities rather than through the normal channels like local schools and such social service providers as there were.
The reason was simple. Far too little of the money was ever getting to the pointy end of the problem ie the people themselves. It nearly always got swallowed up in administration costs. I say nearly because the bloke I had the biggest blue with was a bloke who saw himself as being as honest as the day was long.
A senior figure in the Australian branch of the Dutch Reformed Church he had been principal of a school in an isolated aboriginal community for over 20 years. Even though it was a state school he had lots of prayers, all school staff were expected to go to church on Sundays and he enforced non-academic rules based upon his morality on students, many of whom were old enough (mid to late teens) to be considered adult within their own community.
Our program had gone outside his clique of ‘good’ black people. (read up on the Dutch Reformed Church who were the ‘spiritual influence’ behind apartheid if you want to get a handle on what his definition of a good black person was).
We were looking for those aboriginal people who had the skills and ability to communicate health and education messages into their community, but who had not been in employment for a long period. In this community that meant the “mayor’s” rejects. The “mayor’s” school was the only employment provider for a couple of hundred kilometres.
I can still remember the girls name, which I won’t write here as she died some time ago. She amazed me with her strength. She was only 19, very smart and had been shunned by this asshole for not going to church and doing as she was told. The shunning was purely in terms of ‘australian’ institutions on the community, as she was of the clan of the traditional landowners and therefore had to be listened to in traditional fora. The women who were our ‘target’ for the program she was to deliver on hygene and other health issues, did listen to her because even at that age she had an extremely mature grasp of the issues that her community would need to confront.
The prick was determined to stop her from becoming the NESA community educator. Although he claimed it was because she wasn’t a xtian (a complete non starter as far as the bureaucracy was concerned), his real reason was that if he didn’t establish control over NESA funding thenhis control over the community would be weakened.
That was what happened, eventually he did lose control, but it was a long and hard fight with many skirmishes, this just being the first. I was too young and naive to make the correct initial moves. I had falsely assumed that when it came down to it, the asshole and myself had basically the same objective, which was the long term welfare of the community.
This bloke had a completely other agenda though. His was about power.
All of that brings us back the W&M Gates affair. On the surface they seem to be ‘fighting the good fight’ arguing for aid money for HIV programs to be spent in a far more socially responsible way. If they are successful african/amerikan government’s monopoly on the content of education programs will be weakened. Many women will get to have more say in their own future. Most importantly prevention expenditure will have been moved away from just providing talking heads to communities and into providing goods and other services, thereby weakening the authorities’ stranglehold.
The question must be asked however,just who/what is it that W&M Gates represent? While we may support them on this issue, what power does anyone, particularly those most effected by their actions, have to persuade them away from a course at another time, which is dangerous or self serving?
The entirely unsupportable answer to that is none. Bill Gates and Warren Buffett (who quickly grasped what Gates was up to and jumped on the bandwagon) are establishing a fiefdom answerable to no one other than themselves, which will become far more powerful than the governments, democratically selected or tyrannical, of the people they claim to be assisting.
This is dangerous stuff. Their benign efforts (if indeed they are benign) will soon be aped by less well-meaning corporate ‘winners’. Both Buffett and Gates have eschewed the notion of passing their wealth on to their children. Their stated reasons appear noble and entirely supportable, but unless their accumulated wealth is distributed back to individuals in a way that is totally free from influence buying, it is in many ways, worse than the model it supplants.
We haven’t discussed the breakdown in the DOHA round in any depth at all round MoA. Other more pressing issues have rightly taken precedence and I don’t see this piece as a vehicle for discussing such a complex subject but imagine this for a moment:
You live in an agrarian society which despite famine and flood and all the other exigencies of agriculture manages to feed it’s population pretty damn effectively. Then imagine the effect that the onslaught of cheap produce from outside the region will have on the farmers in a developing nation. In some ways it will be the same as the issues that amerika or europe faced when their own manufacturing base was undercut. However no one sought control over their food supply and generally (yes there were many pay and workers rights issues) they were being beaten by a more efficient manufacturer.
Most importantly though, the result of this produce appearing in developing nations is that they will become entirely dependent on outside ‘powers’ to feed their population whether or not the weather has been favourable and they could have fed themselves.
The 3rd world nations won’t be driven out of agriculture by a more efficient agriculture. Modern farming is so destructive and input dependent that much of it’s inefficiency is hidden (in fact that is precisely how the subsidies began). Third world farmers will be driven to the wall because they are competing against produce which has been cross subsidised by the ludicrously high prices paid in the foreign producers domestic market. Sure when amerikan consumers buy amerikan grain it seems to be very reasonably priced. That price isn’t what amerikans are really paying for their domestic foodstuffs. In fact it probably represents no more than 25% of the actual cost to the amerikan consumer. All the rest of the cost is paid through taxes, subsidies, revenue rebates and the like.
That enables amerikan, european and australian producers to undercut centuries old agrarian economies and make them dependent on ‘world’ trade.
So one of the reasons that DOHA broke down was that the developing world demanded that the cross subsidisation of agricultural products coming into their economies be halted.
On the other side the so called ‘1st world’ wanted to inflict their Draconian intellectual property regimes onto the developing wold. This would completely undercut those nations’ ability to move out of a hand to mouth economic cycle. To over simplify, one of the chief leg-ups that asian economies had to get their economic momentum moving was the ability to copy 1st world products and then sell them back into the 1st world markets. The basket case economies of the 21st century are to be denied that advantage.
When one considers the driving force behind the economic booms that propelled both Buffett and Gates into the realm of the unimaginably wealthy (eg the sale of goods at artificially high prices maintained by monopolies on intellectual property), any thinking person must see the danger that pair plus the trail of imitators about to follow, pose to the people of this planet if they can use their largesse about the planet, totally outside of the people’s control.
Posted by: Debs is dead | Aug 14 2006 22:47 utc | 28
There are plenty more important issues around than the entirely predictable difficulties that people in the amerika and europe have in getting straight into his english language page.
When I posted the link in the last OT thread, it was the link on the bottom of his english language page that was suggested be used as a ‘link to’. His front page (the one that Bernhard has put up above), was Persian and the english page could only be found by clicking on a tiny logo of a weird combination of the union jack and stars and stripes (the USuk flag – must get a copy!).
For whatever reason that link became completely unusable. (It was going fine at the time I posted it as I checked it from a couple of different IP addresses and puta rigs).
The Iranians have responded to this attempted vandalism by making their front page english language. As well as complicating access for those who don’t speak english (the vast majority of the planet’s population) it tells us who the intended audience is. Therefore posting as wide a range of views to it as possible can only encourage communication.
Posted by: Debs is dead | Aug 14 2006 23:01 utc | 29
Jeez louise, that will teach me to proof no matter how short a time I have to spare. I was talkin bout Ahmadinejad’s blog. Sorry bout that – catch y’all.
Posted by: Debs is dead | Aug 14 2006 23:06 utc | 30
@Unca
I linked to your #27 above last week, but nobody seemed all that interested. If this unilateral administration wants its own Praetorian guard to prowl around its shores, I can foresee only one possible motivation… and it has little to do with another hurrican season brewing.
That nobody is paying this story, or the KB&R contract for building US internment camps, much more than a cursory nod is making me furious. Just like the bankruptcy bill that went into effect last October, this has all been on the table for awhile and apart from a few grumbles here, nobody seems to be doing much more than to watch it all happen.
I appreciate Billmon’s (and other’s) vigilant analyses of Lebanon/ Iraq/ Iran/ Israel, but there are a few very scary developments happening much closer to their own homes they would do well to stop being distracted from.
I sometimes think, even with CheneyCo running rampant on the landscape, that we are our own worst enemies (see, for example, the asanine San Francisco anti-war protests somebody-or-other mentioned recently). I forget who said it originally, but “experience for some is merely the repetition of the same mistakes”… and we’re getting to be a seriously experienced species. Just don’t forget to act all surprised when they start rounding us up, okay? Shock and awe are as much a part of the game as putting your faith in the efficacy of holding a picket sign or writing an angry letter.
Posted by: Monolycus | Aug 14 2006 23:27 utc | 31
Addendum: The very people who decry exceptionalism seem to be the first to bury their heads in the comfort that “It can’t happen here.” I don’t give half a hump if you don’t believe in worst-case-scenarios or not; the people who make things happen do. Maybe we should ask Riverbend if she thought things would ever get this bad.
Posted by: Monolycus | Aug 15 2006 0:04 utc | 32
@Monolycus. Wish someone would start a blog focusing on the really terrifying things happening here at home – economic & political – that’s supported by both parties. From the serious over-emphasis on foreign policy, one can see why they want to keep wars going – to keep eyes elsewhere.
Posted by: jj | Aug 15 2006 2:44 utc | 33
” From The Air ” Laurie Anderson
good evening. this is your captain. we are about to attempt a crash landing. please extinuish all cigarettes. place your tray tables in their upright, locked position. your captain says: put your head on your knees. your captain says: put your head on your hands. captain says: put your hands on your head. put your hands on your hips. heh heh.
this is your captain-and we are going down. we all going down, together.
and I said: uh oh. this is gonna be some day. standby.
this is the time. and this is the record of the time. this is the time. and this is the record of the time.
uh-this our captain again. you know, I’ve got a funny feeling I’ve seen this all before. why? cause I’m a caveman. why? cause I’ve got eyes in the back of my head. why? it’s the heat.
standby.
this is the time. and this is the record of the time. this is the time. and this is the record of the time. put your hands over your eyes. jump out of the plane. there is no pilot. you are not alone. standby.
Posted by: catlady | Aug 15 2006 2:54 utc | 34
Yep, denial will only save one till the bottom drops out. Then it’s every man for himself. It’s not gonna look nice, I been screaming about it for years, people use to laugh, the ones whose eyes don’t glase over, their not laughing anymore, they feel it , it shows in their eyes and demeanor. Fear, and apprehension. Lots of my friends grow very very quite when ever my more awakened friends and I talk about whats coming.
And like the side mirrors on my car says, “things are closer than they appear.” I expect to wake up anyday now, and it will have begun.
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Aug 15 2006 3:13 utc | 36
Uncle $:
Pray for the WITTs to wake up when the shit hits the fan. It’s easier to believe YOYO when the livin’ is easy. I’m not saying it won’t hit the fan; just that there are still a fair number of human beings left in the US.
“jump out of the plane….you are not alone. standby.”
Posted by: catlady | Aug 15 2006 4:17 utc | 37
@jj
“Wish someone would start a blog focusing on the really terrifying things happening here at home – economic & political – that’s supported by both parties. From the serious over-emphasis on foreign policy, one can see why they want to keep wars going – to keep eyes elsewhere.”
Bernhard started a thread on this very blog to deal with some of it, and it died from neglect. As did a thread a year or so ago about “What’s To Be Done?” As have a few other threads here and in various places. A couple of pithy turns of phrase, a few insightful observations, a tremendous number of digressions and then a mouldering death in the archives.
But, boy, we’re a smart group of folk here… unlike those “idiots” in Washington who keep getting every gorram thing they ever set their avaricious, sociopathic eyes on. “Boy, am I glad I’m not them! I’m so much smarter than they are!”
People can’t get over their own brilliant analyses about what the US is doing somewhere else to effectively confront the head of the beast where it lives. We established in one thread that the reason we are poisoning our own soldiers as well as the rest of the world with depleted uranium is cost efficiency and then left the whole issue at that. Doesn’t get more typical of what we’re all about than that shiny example. “Aren’t we smart for figuring that out? Head of the class for us!” News flash: ALL of the class is going down into the crapper together… including you “smart” guys up front.
I’m so filled with red rage I can barely stop shaking long enough to type this. “Look, what’s gonna happen! I saw it first! Look, Ma, no hands! Aren’t I clever?”
They are telegraphing what they are going to do to us and all we can do is pat ourselves on the back for stringing together a couple of observations about how we weren’t fooled and watched it coming. Oh, and we’ve peppered those observations with a few unkind words about the intellect of that smirking, dry-drunk who serves as the poster boy for the mess facing this planet and everyone and everything living on it.
For the last gorram time… are we going to keep patting ourselves on the back and wait for a white knight to rescue us or are we going to do something to stop this insanity? If the latter, WHAT??????
The last time I asked this question, we talked a little bit about throwing rocks and then devolved again into our typical, intellectual-but-ultimately-pointless digressions. Enough with the academic digressions and conciliatory bullshit! We’re all in this together… what are our realistic options here… apart, of course, from decorating our own little internment cells for doing nothing more than bitching?
In for a penny time, folks. You never made it through Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago? Since many people died in order to make that work available, let me just give you the Reader’s Digest version: They will take you… yes, you… because you have bitched or for no reason at all, and they will get rid of you. You are not safe. You have nothing to lose by acting, except an illusion of security and moral or intellectual superiority.
Here’s the caveat: If we act singly or if we act foolishly, we will hurt our own cause… and we’re doomed. If we do nothing, we’re doomed. But together, we can not be stopped. We are not simply helpless, herd animals unless that is what we allow them to make us into. So this is the last time I will ask this, I promise…
What are our options? The question is no longer: “What can we do?”… it is now: “What MUST we do?”
Posted by: Monolycus | Aug 15 2006 6:21 utc | 38
I don’t know if I’m losing my mind or finding my soul, but I am getting extremely impatient with things.
Posted by: Monolycus | Aug 15 2006 6:38 utc | 39
@Monolycus I hate to be the damn black cloud hangin overhead alla the time but don’tcha reckon all of those boys turned maniac by the marines in Iraq are just dyin to practise their new found population interdiction skills back in the world. Somewhere a bit more homely than Baghdad. Somewhere like your local Law Enforcement Agency.
Looking for a relatively small community approx 100,000 pop in a tolerant environment would be a priority that would supercede all others if I lived in the US.
I prefer to live in communities no larger than that size anyway. It’s still small enough for everyone to know everyone else and if the community leaders make a bad or greedy decision they know that they will not be able to avoid their constituents, which can keep them relatively honest.
Plus of course if the time comes a community of 80-100,00 is intimate enough for prople to know each other too well to be shootin the shit outta each other and it should have sufficient knowledge and skills within it to be reasonably self sufficient.
Posted by: Debs is dead | Aug 15 2006 6:42 utc | 40
@Debs
I have absolutely no illusions about what my countrymen (both trained and untrained in the art of subjugating and destroying their fellows) would do to me given half a chance. I’ve read the hateful, right-wing screeds about liberals and traitors and I’ve seen the abominable photos of what they have done to those they can get their hands on.
I also think that smaller communities are the only sensible way for humans to live without divesting themselves of their own humanity and becoming no more than cogs in giant, corporate machines whose only function is to consume.
But running away to my own private, “relatively small” community and praying fervently that somebody else will deliver us all from evil isn’t on the table since it is the planet itself that is being devoured. In another time and place, I could have easily become a monastic, but that isn’t doing anything except stalling the inevitable and trying to give myself a different set of illusions than the one the corporate machines want me to have. It does not solve the global problem.
Albert Camus wrote: “Conscious that I can not stand aloof from time, I have decided to be an integral part of it. This is why I esteem the individual only because he strikes me as ridiculous and humiliated. Knowing that there are no victorious causes, I have a liking for lost causes: They require an uncontaminated soul, equal to its defeat as to its temporary victories. For anyone who feels bound up with this world’s fate, the clash of civilizations has something agonizing about it. I have made that anguish mine at the same time that I wanted to join in. Between history and the eternal, I have chosen history because I like certainties. Of it, at least, I am certain, and how can I deny this force crushing me?
There always comes a time when one must choose between contemplation and action. This is called becoming a man. Such wrenches are dreadful, but for a proud heart there can be no compromise… If I choose action, do not think that contemplation is an unknown country to me. But it can not give me everything and, deprived of the eternal, I want to ally myself with time.” (The Myth of Sisyphus, 1955.)
Yes, US Marines or National Guard would kill me given half a chance, and that is by far kinder than what the CIA or Homeland Security would do. But I can’t live in constant, helpless fear and outrage anymore. And I can’t run away from it, either.
Sucks to have a conscience, but there it is.
Posted by: Monolycus | Aug 15 2006 7:16 utc | 41
There always comes a time when one must choose between contemplation and action. This is called becoming a man. Such wrenches are dreadful, but for a proud heart there can be no compromise..
thanks monolycus
Posted by: annie | Aug 15 2006 8:06 utc | 42
In seed time learn, in harvest teach, in winter enjoy.
Drive your cart and plow over the bones of the dead.
The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.
She who desires but acts not, breeds pestilence.
The cut worm forgives the plow.
She whose face gives no light, shall never become a star.
The hours of folly are measur’d by the clock, but of wisdom: no clock can measure.
All wholsom food is caught without a net or a trap.
Bring out number weight & measure in a year of dearth.
No bird soars too high, if she soars with her own wings.
The most sublime act is to set another before you
If the fool would persist in her folly she would become wise.
Folly is the cloke of knavery.
Shame is Pride’s cloke.
Prisons are built with stones of Law, Brothels with bricks of Religion.
Excess of sorrow laughs. Excess of joy weeps.
The fox condemns the trap not himself.
Joys impregnate. Sorrows bring forth.
The bird a nest, the spider a web, woman friendship.
What is now proved was once, only imagin’d.
Always be ready to speak your mind, and a base man will avoid you.
Think in the morning, Act in the noon, Eat in the evening, Sleep in the night.
The tygers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction.
Expect poison from the standing water.
You never know what is enough until you know what is more than enough.
The eyes of fire, the nostrils of air, the mouth of water, the beard of earth.
The weak in courage is strong in cunning.
If others had not been foolish, we should be so.
To create a little flower is the labour of ages.
The head Sublime, the heart Pathos, the genitals Beauty, the hands & feet Proportion.
Exuberance is Beauty.
Improvement makes strait roads, but the crooked roads without Improvement, are roads of Genius.
Sooner murder an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted desires.
Where man is not nature is barren.
Enough! or Too much
Between two moments, bliss is ripe.
The Proverbs of Hell
(selected & modified for the 21st century)
– William Blake (1757-1827)
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Aug 15 2006 8:06 utc | 43
I offer the following as another unca PSA: Crashwatch it’s coming kids.. best to prepare. Note also, I think it was none other than DeAnander whom turned me on to the above…
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Aug 15 2006 8:49 utc | 44
As the US warns India not to ban Pepsi-Cola implying it may impede future economic progress…
Shades of Kissinger? Population control? Here drink this poison or there will be conseqences…
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Aug 15 2006 9:29 utc | 45
addendum:
couple of links I should have put in the above #45
malooga’s prior mention of The Lugano Report: On Preserving Capitalism in the Twenty-First Century and the The Report From Iron Mountain
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Aug 15 2006 10:14 utc | 46
@uncle – How about ‘the vixen condemns the trap not herself’ ? Very odd to modify Blake for polical correctness.
Posted by: DM | Aug 15 2006 10:54 utc | 47
@Uncle: US warns India not to ban Pepsi-Co
I seem to remember within the last couple years the US warning (threatening) one or more of the Scandinavian countries not to ban Israeli products (I think it was fruit or other agricultural produce). Seems the US feels it has the right to tell other countries what to buy and what not to buy based on American (Israeli) interests. Does anyone remember that?
Posted by: Ensley | Aug 15 2006 13:33 utc | 48
PepsiCo has promoted its chief financial officer, Indra Nooyi, to become chief executive of the drinks manufacturer, making her one of the most powerful women in corporate America.
Ms Nooyi, who was born in India, will take over immediately in a surprise reshuffle
http://news.independent.co.uk/business/news/article1219334.ece
Posted by: dk | Aug 15 2006 13:41 utc | 49
Coincidentally, the new female head of Kraft/ Philip Morris is a Pepsi alum.
Not from India, however….
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Aug 15 2006 14:12 utc | 50
I want to thank everyone for the high level of discourse and work being done here. Especially, many newcomers, like Elie and 2nd Anon and others, are adding something very substantial to the conversation, and challenging the sclerotic thinking of the rest of us. Agreement is not required, intelligent informed debate is.
@debs is dead #28:
That is a very substantial post with a lot to think about and comment on. You have picked up a few strands of thought that I have been quietly cogitating on for the past few months. I hope to have the time to write a more detailed response soon.
I’d like to add that I have always truly appreciated your candor in sharing with us the lessons and struggles of your own life. This grounds your argument in the real world and gives us a basis to move forward with our own work in our local existences. Thank you.
Also Monolycus, who is always at his best when incandescent.
Posted by: Malooga | Aug 15 2006 15:18 utc | 51
So, what are you doing, Monolycus?
I live in a smallish city (50K) with a mostly tolerant and peaceable population. I teach for a living–not lucrative, but it builds community and doesn’t take up much in the way of physical resources. I live in a climate where a great variety of foods can be grown year-round (especially if you’re willing to eat brassicas in the winter). I’m not gardening at the moment, but I have in the past; and I plan to get my winter kale going this month. I live on a small urban stream; a small solar powered pump would pull up water to irrigate my garden during the dry summer months, and the blackberries growing on the banks would keep a couple of goats happy. I could lose it all, I know. I trust the people in my community to work together.
There’s so much more I could be doing; at least I’m starting. I wish I were better at speaking the truth to power. I wish I could write songs like the ones that spurred on the street movements of the 60’s and South African anti-apartheid. I wish to reduce my addiction to righteous outrage here at MoA. (I b’lieve the Brin link came from Uncle $ a while back, too. Thanks.)
More suggestions to start with from Uncle Scam’s PSA (#44).
Posted by: Anonymous | Aug 15 2006 16:04 utc | 52
From Uncle $cam’s #44 link. Good news? NSA risking electrical overload:
At minimum, the problem could produce disruptions leading to outages and power surges at the Fort Meade headquarters, hampering the work of intelligence analysts and damaging equipment, they said. At worst, it could force a virtual shutdown of the agency, paralyzing the intelligence operation, erasing crucial intelligence data and causing irreparable damage to computer systems —
Posted by: beq | Aug 15 2006 16:53 utc | 54
Thanks annie, worth the wait. My pup liked the music. (bagpipes!)
Posted by: beq | Aug 15 2006 22:35 utc | 56
Q:“So, what are you doing, Monolycus?
A: I’m throwing in the towel, is what.
Thought I was clear in my earlier rant about the consequences of acting singly and/or foolishly. Since it seems I’m stuck in both those places, there doesn’t look to be any sense in pursuing anything further. All roads look to lead to the same bad end on the map I’m holding. If there’s a point anymore, I can’t see it.
Posted by: Monolycus | Aug 15 2006 23:26 utc | 57
cool beq, you were able to watch it, w/out broadband? i was surprised by the bagpipes too.
Posted by: annie | Aug 15 2006 23:30 utc | 58
monolycus, i am experiencing a bit of a holding pattern myself. can’t quite shake it and hope it’s temporary.
Posted by: annie | Aug 15 2006 23:33 utc | 59
Here too. I think about the numbers that say there are more who feel the way we do but my map has me going in circles. To come this far in life and see what I’m seeing in such a brief amount of time.
bagpipes: I’ve read that bagpipes of some kind occur in all goat or sheep herding societies. Very stirring. The English outlawed the Scottish bagpipes at one time iirc.
Posted by: beq | Aug 15 2006 23:53 utc | 60
Allen’s undisputed power of invention notwithstanding, Makacke is a German/Dutch swearword.
Macaque Monkeys
Macaques live in many different habitats across the globe, making them the most widely distributed genus of nonhuman primates. Macaques (especially Macaca mulatta and M. fascicularis) are commonly used in research—most recently in AIDS research. Their coloration includes gray, brown or black fur. They tend to be heavily built and medium to large in stature. Males and females may differ in weight, body size and canine size. (from Nonhuman Primates in Biomedical Research: Biology and Management pp 41)
Macaques are native to Asia and Northern Africa, but thousands are housed in research facilities, zoos, wildlife or amusement parks, and are kept as pets in private homes throughout the world.
Posted by: Guthman Bey | Aug 16 2006 2:08 utc | 62
Anyone here following what’s happening in Mexico. They put Americans to shame. There was uprising in Oaxaca last week – everyone fed up w/the corruption. Group of women took over a tv station. Demonstrations all over the country opposing the fraudulent elections. It’s ongoing. Anyone know good sources of info. Interview today w/John Ross, an Am. poet who has lived down there for yrs/decades(?), @flashpoints.net.
Goddess knows why they’d want to merge w/us. Watching what’s happening there, you can see why neither Gore nor Kerry would protest crooked election. Someone just needs to say to them, c’mon you’re part of us, the elite. By protesting, you’d be stirring up the rabble. Do you really want to cast yr. lot w/them?
Posted by: jj | Aug 16 2006 2:18 utc | 63
it has crossed my mind several times over the last couple of weeks that we do need to be paying more attention to what’s going on in mexico. at some point, the govt is going to use heavy force against these people & we need to help keep the situation there as visible as possible to prevent another massacre. there hasn’t been a lot of press on this that i’ve seen. narconews hasn’t had much ongoing coverage. ross has made the rounds in the left-leaning media. the latin america news review picks up stories when they pop up but, as the blogger there says, there aren’t many press releases circulating on this. yahoo news mexico is a source for the syndicated articles, but you have to put up w/ the biases inherent in most of those wire stories. haven’t spent any time looking thru any sites in espanol, as mi vocabulario es limitado. i heard that today there was a confrontation w/ the police & 30 protestors were injured. more attention to the state down there will only help limit the level of repression that the govt can get away with.
Posted by: b real | Aug 16 2006 2:55 utc | 64
just catching up here, as best i can, monolycus #38 and #41 – spot on. thank you again for giving voice to my thoughts. working through that question myself. agree about acting singly. working through the various options about where to hitch my wagon – russ feingold’s campaign, the aclu, human rights watch, al gore and the environment are all strong contenders. i just need to organize my life and then choose the organization. as much as i learn here and appreciate the contributions, it is no longer enough to simply rage. and now for the next step. . .
Posted by: conchita | Aug 16 2006 3:58 utc | 65
not sure why i let it bother me, but maybe by typing out this little bit of wisdom from the decider yesterday, i can exorcise it from my mind before i retire for the evening.
Hizbollah attacked Israel, Hizbollah started the crisis, and Hizbollah suffered a defeat in this crisis.
this longish interview w/ a german journalist on his new book may be of interest to some
In his latest book, “How the Jihad Came to Europe”, German journalist Jürgen Elsässer unravels the Jihadist thread. Muslim fighters recruited by the CIA to fight against the Soviets in Afghanistan were used successively in Yugoslavia and Chechnya, still supported by the CIA, but perhaps sometimes out of its control. Basing himself on diverse sources, mainly Yugoslavian, Dutch, and German, he reconstructed the development of Osama bin Laden and his lieutenants at the side of NATO in Bosnia-Herzegovinia.
Posted by: b real | Aug 16 2006 4:17 utc | 66
Something seems to be in the air. I’ve been talking with near-strangers lately. An intellectual flirtation, but my cynicism leads to decidedly unsexy results. “If the ballot doesn’t work, if the marches don’t work, if nothing works, then how you can you live the ethical life, Rowan? Do you have any secrets.”
No, I had to answer. I have no secrets. As an American citydweller, I’m not sure it’s possible to live an ethical life.
She says she just wants to be friends.
I’m on the job market again. Feel the need to apply for something non-profity. Not sure I can fit in anywhere else, and I’m really bad at self-motivation. I hope to find something where I can do my job and feel good about telling people what it is, feel good about myself. If those jobs exist, they ain’t calling me back on my resume. The best I can hope for is a job that isn’t overtly evil, perhaps, but they ain’t calling me back either. They don’t even want to just be friends.
A friend of mine works at an independent video store, one which invites subculture on its own. It’s shutting down. “This city is like a pretty girl with the clap” she said. “Says it’s great for independent businesses, but doesn’t support them.” I was there when they started selling off their stock to pay the backlog of rent. The owner, going through the motions. Not speaking, bitterness incarnate. My friend, emotionally ragged. Drinking beer from a thermos, biting back tears as I left.
I told her as we left “They’re ragged there. Desperate but resigned. I feel like something’s going to be set on fire.”
Burn the whole goddamn place down. Not a good answer. But oddly appealing.
As I said that I wasn’t sure it was possible to be ethical and American at the same time, it hit me. That’s where the neocons started. Trotsyists, revolutionaries, idealists, come to some cynical conclusion where morality was no longer relevant, so fuck it, might as well be on the winning side. Perpetual revolution for my personal gain. Military junta indeed.
So what do we have left? Burn the whole goddamn place down? Say fuck it and join evil? Surrender? I can’t even throw in the towel with Monolycus, there’s no towel and no one to throw it to. Nothing to work with, except to smugly say “I saw it coming.” Being right and being damned.
Posted by: Rowan | Aug 16 2006 4:23 utc | 67
Manolycus #38, Annie, Debs, Malooga — everyone —
The only thing that I can think is that we — our society — our own spirits are in labor (hate to use anything that Rice did, but the anology works). Labor in giving birth is a long process that frequently looks chaotic, lost and messed up. You cannot force it, things must evolve. There are many other transitions in life besides waiting for birth. Waiting for death also has its process but I leave that aside for now.
Manonyclus — I too have almost screamed in frustration and rage at our collective inactivity. But we have to wait to have our levers turn up to us. They will. We need the evolution, the push and nexus of information, desire, will and ingredient x –the vision. It IS coming —
Will it be ragged at first? Probably. Like milk boiling, the edges bubble and sometimes you see the liquid actually move slightly but settle back down before the bubbles get bigger, coalesce and then convert the whole surface to a roiling mass. What was the tipping point?
It will be the same here. No running away though its understandable to have that desire..pass the bitter cup from my lips.
I am childless. Always wanted them, but it just didnt happen. I would give my life for something worthwhile — to trying for peace and sanity. I am a retired nurse. I can also deliver babies and dress wounds and do whatever else is necessary. I always liked raising things from vegetables to chickens.
I will be ready though I will morn my easy life now for a time…
Posted by: Elie | Aug 16 2006 4:47 utc | 68
For Monolycus: a practical thing for us to do now
Hope you’re still looking on here. I read you yesterday and have been trying to decide how to respond. I think you’re right that we must act together and wisely, but I question whether or not this community is one designed to do heroic things such as you might see in an action film. I think it is plenty heroic to figure out what is going on, to remember aloud to each other what has made popular action and change possible in the past, and to change the ebbing away of real popular change into a tide of understanding that activates precisely when our current Ring Wraiths take things so far that even the stonehearted cry out.
It is not glorious, but I am talking about study groups. Seriously.
We are dying for lack of understanding here. The old left tradition is virtually unknown to my generation. We are so lost that we can barely see that what is happening here in the states is not even fascism. It is Bolshevism.
But we don’t know it’s Bolshi shite. And although it seems too small; although the study groups will get rounded up and persecuted by the Bolsheviks; although. like the Lebanese people, we will have to take our bloodbaths. Also like them, we will survive – if we remember who we are.
I know that MOA conversations run on and then vanish into the past as we get on to the next news of the week. That is what this place is for. But, fortunately, there is another offspring to teh Whiskey Bar. Le Speakeasy is a quiet place to chew on ideas over time and digest them till they make sense. It has been quiet, as befits a place to figure things out over time. But I am proposing to start a study group there. On what?
It’s a little complex, but only a little, having two main threads. The first comes from my concern with rhetoric, especially the kind the neo-cons use to shout down the world. I would like as a general approach to de-zombify their key terms because they seem to be 100% projection, and so give away the actual neo-con project. But to the extent that we listen with dead ears, thatr zombie voodoo word magic works. We actually consider their twisted use fo the words. So, let’s clean up our minds. Particularly, let’s realize how to make clear to all that these people are betraying, the nation, terrorizing, allying with foreign terrorists, hating [democratic] freedom, hating American ideals, and subverting legitimate government [popular sovereignty]. (All their favorite swear words) My hypothesis: that we are governed by a kind of Stalinists, ones who seek to create a perfect state capitalism.
The second thread is inspired by b real’s post on Murray Bookchin when he died July 30. So, I propose to start working on the above cleanup of the language of democracy by studying Bookchin’s critique of the left and his ideas for how to actually raise consciousness in a coarsening world. A piece that could truly be salutary might be his piece from 1969, I believe, in which he warned student movements against being taken over by backward looking Marxist’s who he seemed to consider authoritarians in disguise. See Listen, Marxist!
I am particularly interested in what seems to be Bookchin’s ability to catch democratic thinking up to the age it actually lives in, and to reckon with a world in which entrepeneurs of all kinds base their projects on the future, but somehow activists expect themselves to act like bureaucrats.
If you catch my drift, please amplify this. Regrettably, my posts so often seem to miss the proper theme words here, but I believe this sort of study is something many would be interested in. If you think study is for the meek and the bold will inherit the earth, excellent, I imagine we will meet again anyway.
I think Gandhi and his like all succeeded because they made people want to change. That ‘s my idea here, and I think Bookchin makes a good place to help each other to understand it as a practical approach. The next stage in the project would probably be Third Revolution, simply because it is so easy for us to forget the valuable history of popular movements that actually feeds the real good in the world that we actually live in. And a reminder that violent change is largely another way for CAP to have its way with us.
Perhaps most of all though, I think the knowledge covered in Third Revolution might be just the right medicine for how you’re wanting to think and act with right now, Monolycus. Maybe we should even just start by introducing ourselves to the man. Check it out.
Posted by: citizen | Aug 16 2006 5:21 utc | 69
Elie 68,
You might enjoy the conversations at Le Speakeasy.
Check this.
Posted by: citizen | Aug 16 2006 5:32 utc | 70
citizen, I’d heard Le Speakeasy referenced a few times here, but I didn’t know it was simply a forum for barflies. I prefer the forum model to the “blog” format, although it does seem to be short on critical mass.
Posted by: Rowan | Aug 16 2006 6:26 utc | 71
Strife Moving Out From Baghdad to Villages
“Our mission is not to let them fail catastrophically,” one U.S. officer, speaking on condition of anonymity, said of the Iraqi troops.
i should have set that up a little better, i am still laughing. for me , the choice quote was do we need a smart president or is it enough to surround yourself w/intellegence people? . there is something surreal about this report on msnbc.
Posted by: annie | Aug 16 2006 8:10 utc | 74
Meanwhile, down South…
Excellent short series on the trumped-up and useful Triple-Border area of Brazil, Paraguay, Argentinay by Pepe Escobar. He mainly concludes that US/globalist sights are set on the Guarani Aquifer an other spoils of the energy wars – which is in great part true – but gives only limited attention to the other great agenda concerning continued Northern control over the drug and arms trade. Nevertheless, fine new updates and background for those following this and/or learning more about it.
I don’t think it can be emphasized enough that this area will be one to watch very closely in the next few years of the 5-pronged Long War. The North is trying to set the South up for a fall, and it may be one of their last cards to play should Latin America continue to swing left, oppose the ‘Free Trade Area of the Americas’ scam, and make claims on its own water and oil.
Hezbollah south of the border Updates on the Triple-Border of Brazil, Paraguay, Argentina
Part 1: Hezbollah south of the border
The “new threats of the 21st century recognize no borders”, according to the Pentagon. Ergo, everyone may be a terrorist, at least a potential one. Not accidentally, General Craddock hates “anti-globalization and anti-free-trade demagogues”. Sunni or Shi’ite, Marxist or anarchist, ruralist or existentialist, the Russian mafia, the Hong Kong triads, the Nigerian mafia, the Ukrainian mafia – they are all in cahoots. And for the Pentagon, Hezbollah is selling pirate video discs of Christina Aguilera to finance more Katyusha rockets.
…
US Immigration and Customs agents, financed to the tune of $2.25 million, will soon be parachuting into the Triple Border to help the locals fight money laundering, contraband and terrorism financing.
…
* The “Yankee troops” are holding “training exercises” in Paraguay (more on that in Part 2 of this report).
* And the World Bank is developing a program toward mapping the Guarani Aquifer – which is the first step toward commercial exploration of its precious waters.
…
The locals claim they don’t need Americans to arrest one of the top Brazilian narco-traffickers, Marcelinho Niteroi, as they did last week. [!!!]
…
When you combine a huge Arab community and lots of non-commercialized water in a Pentagon-defined “lawless area”, no wonder bells start ringing.
***
“dominion over ungoverned spaces”
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Fro…4Aa01.html
Quote:Part 2: Lost paraguayos: The Yankees are coming
US Special Forces are performing 13 military exercises, to expire late this year, including “educational courses”, “domestic peacekeeping operations” and counter-terrorism training, this one part of Operation Commando Force 6, scheduled to go on until next month.
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The US Special Forces are guaranteed total immunity and diplomatic status. They are free to import and export, they don’t pay any taxes, and what they trade is not subjected to any inspections. Contraband kingpins at the Triple Border would kill for a deal like that.
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It’s useful to remember that soon after September 11, 2001, notorious neo-con Douglas Feith suggested to George W Bush an air invasion of the Triple Border – where the boundaries of Paraguay, Brazil and Argentina meet – to capture al-Qaeda fighters and permanently occupy the region. No wonder that as early as 2002 a study by the Brazilian army was asking whether “these armed forces that ring the border of Brazil, especially in the Amazon region”, could be used “for reasons that are [at present] undeclared”.
Essential in the Pentagon machinery is the new Counter-Terrorism Fellowship Program, which is operated (with no supervision by anyone) out of the Pentagon’s Office of Special Operations and Low Intensity Conflict. What this represents in fact is nothing but a rerun of the infamous Operation Condor coordinated by infamous Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet during the 1970s. As much as Condor, the Counter-Terrorism Fellowship Program may work as the de facto Central Command in a South America-wide campaign of intimidation and political terror.
…
After September 11 the US State Department mantra was that al-Qaeda and/or Hezbollah had an intimate connection with FARC (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia). The “coincidence” could not be more extraordinary: “terror” at the geographic heart of Mercosur – which happens to be dreaded in Washington as the made-in-South America answer to the Washington-promoted Free Trade Area of the Americas – was suddenly connected with “terror”, which happens to be the biggest obstacle to the US occupation of the Amazon rainforest.
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Aug 16 2006 9:29 utc | 75
citizen- good ideas. wish i had more time right now to think about what you have proposed & comment intelligently on it. maybe you should start it as a thread in the speakeasy so that it doesn’t get lost in the news cycle. one political vision bookchin devoted a lot of thought to is the idea of libertarian municipalism. what i’ve read of it sounded appealing/relevant & i’ve been intending to followup w/ more critical investigation of these ideas.
Posted by: b real | Aug 16 2006 15:27 utc | 76
The Limits of Lakoff’s Politics
Outside the Frame
Robert Jensen
Lakoff’s “frame,” simply stated is:
(1) Right-wing Republicans are the cause of our problems, and
(2) progressives working through the Democratic Party will deliver the solutions.
So, out the window must go any facts or analyses that suggest
(1) the problems of an unjust and unsustainable world may be rooted in fundamental systems, such as corporate capitalism and the imperialism of powerful nation-states, no matter who is in power, and
(2) the Democratic Party is not only not a meaningful vehicle for progressive politics but, as a subsidiary of that corporate system with its own history and contemporary practice of empire-building, is part of the problem.
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Aug 16 2006 16:29 utc | 77
Anybody catch David Rivkin on “Democracy Now” today, defending rewriting of laws on interrogation techniques?
This is the same David Rivkin, I’m certain, who co-authored the Ha’aretz article Israel Must Win
Posted by: 2nd anon | Aug 16 2006 21:01 utc | 78
One would be wise to look deeper and around, under the surface of the coming next few days as to what the Cheneyco admin is up to. Why? Here comes a landslide of 24/7 Ramsey-a-thon distractions.
Breaking: JonBenet Ramsay’s Murderer Arrested in Thailand.
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Aug 16 2006 21:38 utc | 79
Yes, 2nd anon I caught that, and was appalled, thing is, his aruguements were done in such a fasion that joe sixpack (the un-critical thinker) will find it as refreshing, “honest and sensible” discourse. As we are dealing with ruthless “savages.”
who was it said, “care when dealing with monsters”…
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Aug 16 2006 22:06 utc | 80
Yes, 2nd anon I caught that, and was appalled, thing is, his aruguements were done in such a fasion that joe sixpack (the un-critical thinker) will find it as refreshing, “honest and sensible” discourse. As we are dealing with ruthless “savages.”
who was it said, “care when dealing with monsters”…
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Aug 16 2006 22:08 utc | 81
Uncle Scam – maybe I didn’t get it, but I didn’t think the rebuttal was done well. Rivkin kept saying, “Oh they’re changing it to make convictions more likely.” What nonsense – just because it’s on the books doesn’t mean it’s the only thing to be used or that it has to be removed so no one ever uses it! It was a BS argument.
Posted by: 2nd anon | Aug 17 2006 1:24 utc | 82
further to citizen’s 69 and b real’s 76, i received this email yesterday:
As the director of an intensive, two-year, activist training program in a graduate school setting, I start from the assumption that activist learning, education, and training improves the chances of our social
movements actually winning victories. This assumption has been well documented by researchers like Griff Foley and Michael Newman, but for me this core conviction grows mostly out of my own experience.
In the early 1970s, I helped organize an activist study circle designed by a popular education group called the Philadelphia Macro-Analysis Collective. My particular “macro” group involved close to two-dozen local activists in Minneapolis and St. Paul. Each week, about twenty of
us would settle in for two hours of reports anddiscussions based on our readings and experiences. The learning process was participatory and lively. Topics included the global environmental crisis, ecological limits to growth, North-South relations, U.S. history, militarism, political economy, social oppression, strategic nonviolent action,and other grassroots strategies for change. The result of these searching dialogues, which we always related to the concrete challenges in our own activist work, was not a group adherence to any single political line, but a dramatic deepening in our understandings of the world, the constraints and opportunities we each faced, and the programmatic and strategic options that might help us realize our goals. It was one of my most powerful learning experiences as an activist and has shaped my activities over the last three decades.
Happily, over thirty years later, a group of popular educators is now working to update and revise the old 24-week “macro-analysis” seminar, and they are even developing information on how to adapt the new format to shorter, democratically-run, political education classes within colleges and universities. This is a project to keep an eye on. If you would like more information about this and other study group efforts, please check out:
Blog: THE WELL-TRAINED ACTIVIST
Post: The Power of Activist Study Groups
Link: http://eaop-blog.blogspot.com
All my best,
Steve Chase
Director, Environmental Advocacy and Organizing Program
Department of Environmental Studies @ Antioch University New England
603-357-3122 ext. 298; 603-357-0618 (fax); Steven_Chase@antiochne.edu
EAOP’s Basic Website is at: http://www.antiochne.edu/es/eao/default.cfm
EAOP’s Blog — “The Well-Trained Activist” — is at:
http://eaop-blog.blogspot.com
Posted by: conchita | Aug 17 2006 2:52 utc | 83
Cops Arrest AFP Journalist Christopher Bollyn
9/11 Investigative Journalist harassed and beaten in his home
Posted by: Malooga | Aug 17 2006 4:28 utc | 84
Shit: This is what’s really going on and we are fretting about the housing market.
Posted by: Guthman Bey | Aug 17 2006 4:45 utc | 85