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Five years of Moon of Alabama – Time to close it down
From the MoA About page:
Some time ago, the commenting at Billmon's Whiskey Bar became a bit excessive. Billmon therefore closed the comments at his place on June 29, 2004. The community of commentators was left behind to search for a new place.
Moon Of Alabama was opened as an independent, open forum for members of the Whiskey Bar community.
Bernhard started and still runs the site. …
Now Bernhard stops the site. The decision to do so was taken six weeks ago and has nothing to do with recent developments in the world or any comment on this blog.
The main reason is financially. If there were a big, generous sponsor I could keep on doing this. Believe it or not, even while this is a small place, keeping it clean and posting on a wide range of issues makes it a full time job. Until recently I could sustain running it because I had reserves and a real job that allowed a lot of flexibility and a nice pay. Both are gone.
I now need to, again, 'get a life'. There are other issues too. Running such a blog is rather isolating. Being so much on the news and developing a bullshit detector as good blogging requires, creates too much distance from real, small issue social life around oneself. Psychologically it is quite a drag down. Read every line of The Daily Palestinian post from bottom to top and you will understand what I am thinking about.
In the total five years MoA got some 4,305,000 pageviews from about 2.1 million visits. Some 133,000 comments were posted and some 4,260 posts were published. Those numbers may sound big, but even with advertisement and small donations it would not be economically viable to run with this format and reach.
As this page view graph shows there were ups and downs but still a nice long-term up trend. A few more years on … but who knows?
bigger
Thanks to all who came here, read and commented. A special thanks to those who have been around since the very first days. Dan of Steele, Juannie, r'giap, annie ond others come to mind.
In a few days, I will close the comments to this and other threads. I'll arrange something for b real to keep his Africa Comments alive and free of spam. I'll stop reading news.
I may, (may!) produce a CD with the archives of this blog plus the full Billmon archives. Check back in two or three weeks on how, maybe, you can get it.
To all of you, thanks!
And goodbye.
Links June 30 09
Please add your links, views and news in the comments.
The Real Health Care Issue
The Economist has an interesting piece on The benefits, and the costs, of living longer. Part of it is a look at health care:
[A]s a rule of thumb, the bulk of spending on an individual’s health care is concentrated in the last year or two of life, and particularly in the final six months.
This leads, especially in the U.S. to some rather stupid rationing. Ron Beasly at the Newshoggers explains this well with a personal case:
Cont. reading: The Real Health Care Issue
Africa Comments (6)
For b reals exhaustive coverage of Somalia and other Africa issues.
The previous Africa thread is here.
Juan Cole – Neocon In Liberal Cloth
The original source is not online so I'll take this from Wikipedia:
While lecturing in early 2003 in a University of Michigan course focused on the impending conflict, Cole expressly stated that he thought the US should act to overthrow the Saddam Hussein regime, even though it might lead to unforeseen consequences.
Six years after that disastrous standpoint Cole today publishes a "Guest OpEd" from one of his colleges at University of Michigan at his widely read blog. That "Guest OpEd", from which Cole in no way distances himself, states:
It would be a mistake to think that people like Ahmadinejad are reasonable. It is counter productive to base policy on the untenable premise that he would be amenable to a cost-benefit analysis on the nuclear issue. Time and again he has announced that the nuclear issue is off the table. To believe or hope otherwise would be a profound and resonant error.
The option that is left for the United States is either to effectively support Mousavi’s camp today or risk a military confrontation with Ahmadinejad tomorrow.
Huh?
How could the U.S. "more effectively" help an opposition candidate who lost an election? The U.S. already spends hundreds of millions to achieve "regime change" in Iran. What is more effective? Creating thousands of Nedas? And unless the U.S. does that it needs to bomb Iran and created ten thousands more?
The whole "Guest OpEd" Cole published is a collection of lies and assertions and its conclusion could well have been written by Ariel Sharon, Bibi Netanjahu and other right-wing other slaughterers.
For publishing that and for his stand on the Iraq war Cole deserves to go to hell.
Links June 29 09
Please add your links, views and news in the comments.
Coup In Honduras
The Honduran president, Manuel Zelaya, was ousted by the army on Sunday after pressing ahead with plans for a referendum that opponents said could lay the groundwork for his eventual re-election, in the first military coup in Central America since the end of the cold war.
…
President Obama said Sunday that he was deeply concerned by the reports from Honduras about the detention and expulsion of the president.
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Mr. Zelaya, who has the support of labor unions and the poor, is an ally of President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela. During his three years in office, opposition to the president has mounted from the middle class and the wealthy business community who fear that he is planning to introduce Mr. Chávez’s brand of socialist populism into the country, one of Latin America’s poorest.
Honduran President Is Ousted in Coup , NYT, June 28, 2009
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TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras, Jan. 30, 2009 – The commander of U.S. Southern Command arrived here yesterday to reaffirm the United States’ strategic partnership with Honduras and praise the solid bilateral and interagency cooperation that is delivering tangible success.
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Declaring an “excellent state of cooperation between our two militaries,” [Navy Adm. James G.] Stavridis lauded tremendous progress within Honduras’ 11,000-member military.
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“The future of national security is the interagency, all working together,” he said.
Stavridis Praises U.S.-Honduran Cooperation in Confronting Mutual Threats, Defense Link
I am confident that readers and commentators here are able to conclude the rest of this tale.
Iraq After The U.S. Retreat
In two days U.S. troops in Iraq will have left most of the cities as demanded by the Status of Force Agreement (SOFA).
Back in April General Odierno sounded reluctant to follow that agreement. But as the Iraqis insisted, Odierno's tone changed. Maliki is hailing the U.S. retreat from the cities as an Iraqi victory.
Next January the Iraqi people will vote on the SOFA agreement. If they reject it, the U.S. troops will have to leave within the next 12 month. If they accept, the troops will stay at least a year longer.
Over the last weeks Iraq experienced a fresh string of bombings. These may well have been initiated by disgruntled Sunni tribes who were bought off by the U.S. during the 'surge' but have now lost that income. They want their share of the oil richness in the very corrupt state. How Maliki will handle these in the short term is difficult to know. In the end he will likely have little choice but to accommodate their demands.
More serious trouble may come up in the north. The autonomous region of Kurdish adopted a new constitution which would include the oil rich province of Kirkuk as well as Nineveh and Diyala. Baghdad certainly can not accept that. I find it difficult to see how this can be resolved in a peaceful way.
All in all Iraq is in a terrible condition and will take years to regain some sense of normality and a functioning state. Without outer interference it will be a bloody and long process. With outer interference this will also be bloody and it will take even longer.
Links June 28 09
Please add your links, views and news in the comments.
More Khobar Towers?
In 1996 a huge bomb exploded in front of the Khobar Towers complex in Khobar, Saudi Arabia. The complex housed U.S. Air Force personnel and the attack killing 19 U.S. airmen and wounded 372.
The political right wing in the U.S. blamed Iran for being behind the attack. When some of the alleged culprits, Saudis and Lebanese 'Hizbollah', were indicted in 2001, the NYT wrote:
United States officials have said they have evidence of Iranian involvement, and at a news conference announcing the indictment, Attorney General John Ashcroft charged that Iranian officials ''inspired, supported and supervised members of Saudi Hezbollah'' in the attack.
The F.B.I. investigated the attack with very reluctant assistance from the Saudis.
Ultimately, American officials said cooperation improved, and the Saudis are believed to have provided much of the evidence that led to the indictments.
The Saudis provided 'evidence' that Iran was involved, but the Clinton administration was not convinced. It asked Iran for help.
The letter was sent after the United States obtained convincing information that Iranian officials were behind the attack. The letter came in the midst of Mr. Clinton's broader efforts to reach out to Mr. Khatami and engage the reformist forces in Iran.
[F.B.I. director Louis] Freeh reportedly concluded that the Clinton administration was not serious about solving the case, and he is said to have waited until Mr. Clinton left office in order to try to bring charges in the matter. The indictment came in Mr. Freeh's last week in office as F.B.I. director.
The main figure who promoted the Saudi 'evidence' was indeed then F.B.I. director Louis Freeh. In March 2009 Freeh was hired by the Saudi Prince Bandar, longterm Saudi ambassador to the U.S., as his legal representative in a bribe case in which Bandar is accused of.taking money for arranging a huge BAE arms deal.
Historian and IPS author Gareth Porter recently investigated the tale. Porter, convincingly to me, proves that the Khobar attack was done by al-Qaeda and the Saudis were pushing to make Iran the culprit as a cover-up of their own involvement and to prevent a U.S.-Iran detente.
Here is his series:
The Saudis provided 'evidence' for Iranian and Lebanese Hizbollah
involvement in the Khobar attack on U.S. forces just as the Clinton
administration was trying to get warmer with Iran. The attack was likely carried out by some Saudi group, al-Qaeda or something similar.
Porter concludes:
The result of Freeh’s blatant pro-Saudi bias was that Osama bin Laden was allowed more years of unhindered freedom in which to plan terrorist actions against the United States. Had Freeh not become an advocate of the interests of the regime whose representative in Washington eventually put him on his payroll, U.S. policy would presumably have been focused like a laser on Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda two years earlier.
And perhaps the disinterest of the George W. Bush administration’s national security team toward al Qaeda before 9/11 would have been impossible.
The Saudi motive for pointing to Iran as a culprit was to prevent a detente between the U.S. and Iran. Their own involvement and support for the attack is still unknown.
Can we expect some similar event as Obama tries to engage Iran?
An Interesting Detail
A new interesting detail in a fresh NYT piece from Tehran:
The Expediency Council, headed by former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, issued a statement that called the supreme leader’s decision the final word on the election, although it still called on the government to investigate voting complaints “properly and thoroughly.” The group also asked the candidates to cooperate with the government in any probe.
Mr. Rafsanjani, though a consummate insider, has been one of Mr. Ahmadinejad’s strongest critics and one of the most ardent supporters of Mir Hussein Moussavi, Mr. Ahmadinejad’s chief rival in the election. Mr. Rafsanjani’s son had even financed an elaborate system intended to check for voting fraud before the election. But since the vote, the former president has been quiet, and many Iranians were hoping he could broker some compromise behind the scenes.
So there was a "elaborate" and "well financed" system not under government control to check for election fraud. Moisavi had over 40,000 election observers in the field who must have reported to some central entity. Where are its results? What are they? Why were they not released?
If Rafsanjani would have proof for election fraud, why would he not leak it too the public or hand it over to the guardian council? Instead he now agrees with Khamenei on Ahmadinejad's victory.
Of course there are again various conspracy theories one might (and some will) develop around this. For now I will go with the least conspirishy one and assume that, in absence of any proof, there was no fraud at all.
Links June 27 09
Please add your links, views and news in the comments.
Iran Election Wrap Up
It seems the Iranian election is now officially decided:
"After 10 days of examination, we did not see any major irregularities," Guardians Council spokesman Abbasali Kadkhodai told the state IRNA news agency, rejecting opposition allegations that have brought hundreds of thousands of demonstrators onto the streets.
"We have had no fraud in any presidential election and this one was the cleanest election we have had. I can say with certainty that there was no fraud in this election."
Well – who to believe? Unless we see some real proof of fraud I am content to believe that there was none.
The result is disappointing for the millions who voted for Mousavi and took to the streets in those big demonstrations. Pat Lang predicts:
Cont. reading: Iran Election Wrap Up
Jackson
Links June 26 09
Please add your links, views and news in the comments.
Lenin’s Red State Tomb
Lenin, the proprietor of the well visited British Lenin's Tomb blog, sometimes has some useful leftist thoughts and activism posts. He is on my blogroll for that reason. Lenin's real name, advertised at his own side, is Richard Seymour. He wrote a book :
Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, a number of prominent thinkers on the Left found themselves increasingly aligned with their ideological opposites. Over the last decade, many of these thinkers have become close to Washington; forceful supporters of the War on Terror, they help frame arguments for policymakers and provide the moral and intellectual justification for Western military intervention across the globe. From Kanan Makiya, one of the chief architects of the US invasion and occupation of Iraq, to Bernard Henri-Levy’s advocacy of “humanitarian” intervention, The Liberal Defence of Murder traces the journey of these figures from left to right and explores their critical role in the creation of the new American empire.
Lenin's book The Liberal Defence of Murder seems to be about the travels of the neo-cons from the pseudo left to the militaristic right.
Today Lenin writes:
The attempt to drown the protests in rivers of blood have reportedly led to a "massacre"
in Baharestan Square, outside the Iranian majles, today. Tens of
thousands of basiji reportedly surrounded hundreds of protesters in
this small square, and battered them, then opened fire
on them. It's not just basiji – multiple reports indicate that young
men without uniforms were given batons and let loose. How much of this
is true is obviously impossible to tell, but given that dozens have
been killed so far, the worst would not be surprising.
…
Okay – pretty energetic – now let's check Lenin's evidence.
Cont. reading: Lenin’s Red State Tomb
Merkel Stands Besides Demonstrators – “in Iran”
Key Western powers urged Iran’s leaders anew to ease up on the protesters and review the disputed election results.
“We stand beside you,” German Chancellor Angela Merkel said in remarks directed to “all in Iran who seek to demonstrate peacefully.”
Iran reform leader says he won’t end his challenge
Notice that Merkel said “in Iran”. She did not say “everywhere”. She did not say “in Germany”.
Last weekend in Berlin:
After a public referendum Tempelhof, the famous air-bridge airport in Berlin closed down last year. The buildings are now empty and the four square kilometer airfield is no longer in use. Business interests supported by Merkel’s party want to reopen the airport, in the middle of the city, with public money but for private use only. Other plans, currently not fundable, include new public housing and a public park.
On Saturday 2,000 young people held a peaceful demonstration for an immediate opening of the empty and unused outdoor airfield space for public use. When they tried to rush the fence that encloses the airfield, 1,500 policemen attacked and used water-cannons, batons and teargas to disperse the demonstrators. A policeman in civil cloth threw one of the demonstrators on the ground. When other people rushed to help the policeman in civil cloth drew his weapon and threatened to shot them. In total 102 demonstrators were detained, many more got hurt.
But sure, Merkel is really concerned. She stands beside people who seek to demonstrate. “In Iran”.
Cont. reading: Merkel Stands Besides Demonstrators – “in Iran”
Links June 25 09
Please add your links, views and news in the comments.
Boeing’s Very Bad Day
Not one of my usual themes for MoA but anyway:
Boeing announced today that it will delay the first flight of its new 787 Dreamliner. The reason is – again – a weakness in the 'wing box.' This is the crucial part of the plane where the wings connect to the fuselage and where the weight of the plane's body is transferred onto the wings. The 787 is the first major commercial plane ever to use a wing-box that is:
Cont. reading: Boeing’s Very Bad Day
Iran Lost The Propaganda War
Der Spiegel once was a somewhat lefty German weekly magazine. Recently it turned into a propaganda tool of the right. It has quite an influence, its sold circulation is over one million each week.
The increase of such quite ridiculous but effective propaganda like the above is the direct consequence of Mousavi's challenge of the state of Iran. He declared himself the winner in the election even before the vote count began. When the results were announced he alleged massive fraud without presenting any convincing evidence.
That again triggered big demonstrations of people who believed his allegations. When these non-rebellions turned into violent youth riots the state of Iran, like any other state on this planet would have done, asserted itself and suppressed them.
This again was a real gift for anti-Iran propagandists and their work will hurt Iran's image in the 'west' for a long time. When Iran's leaders are openly associated with bin-Laden in major publications Iran has lost the propaganda war.
I will not be surprised to see Mousavi punished for the obvious damage he has done to his country. But that would again only play right into the hand of the propagandists. Maybe he should be send off to some small town in the counryside where he can learn how the people living there really think. Give him a stern advice not to talk to the media and let him paint more pictures.
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