Whoever pulled the grenade pin or fired the gun that killed Benazir Bhutto, it’s now pretty obvious that the Pakistani state was at least a half-partner in the assassination. That was unintentionally confirmed by the bizarre explanation of the interior ministry spokesman who cobbled together the completely incredible official account of her death in 48 hours without the benefit of an autopsy. So we’re to swallow the absurd tale that Bhutto hit her head on a metal bar and died of a concussion while people standing around her were splattered with her blood and immediately reported that she had been shot through the neck.
The Independent of London notes that the entire area around the assassination point was promptly washed down with high-powered hoses, which conveniently removes key evidence and is also par for the course in Pakistani political hits, including that of Bhutto’s own brother while she was prime minister. The mounting evidence that Musharraf and his secret police are complicit makes even more repugnant the facile crap mouthed by our own presidential candidates about the need for Pakistan to ‘continue on the path to democratization’ (Edwards, who should know better).
The reality-based candidates (i.e. not including McCain who thinks Musharraf has done a heckuva job) are now recognizing that the credibility of the Pakistani regime is approaching absolute zero. But their policy suggestions don’t rise to the occasion.
We should be hearing much more about restoring the independent judiciary recently trashed by Musharraf as a minimum first step both toward finding out the truth about the Bhutto assassination and any chance of building a system based on the rule of law. Instead, the candidates are far too focused on U.S. security needs to be distracted by anything as dull as the well-being of Pakistanis.
It’s the same exact error committed 30 years ago with the bitter-end support for the Shah of Iran, and the consequences were and are neither security nor well-being for anyone. I will be dumbfounded if the endgame in Pakistan leads in any other direction.
Sunday 30 December 2007
Friday 28 December 2007
Yucks from the Huck
I have a confession to make: I’ve been secretly rooting since October for Mike Huckabee to pull off an upset and take the Republican nomination. I admit it’s perverse, but there’s a twisted logic to it. First of all, his positions on a lot of domestic issues have been remarkably sane compared to the rest of the australopithecus-heavy field. He says reasonable things about prisons and the war on drugs and other nuts-and-bolts state government issues.
Second and most importantly, I am convinced Huckabee would be annihilated by any credible Democrat, especially when people hear his hard-line wacko religious beliefs, which are not as slicked up as Bush’s were. Huckabee is a true believer and capable of saying shrill, punitive things through which he imprudently shows the true face of the theocrats.
Huckabee would run on what the religious right actually thinks and believes, rather than a prettified version of it, and that would be extremely inconvenient for the Republicans because I think the great American middle is pretty much fed up with their fanatical, holier-than-thou shit and ready to give them a licking they won’t forget.
But the limelight hasn’t been kind to ol’ Mike. One of the things that first attracted my attention was his entirely decent comments about the immigration issue in which he focused on the real human beings who have poured into his own state rather than the abstract Illegal Alien [organ chords!]
But the sudden pressure of being a frontrunner has pushed Huckabee over the edge. Friday, he picked up on the Bhutto assassination to say that it showed how we need a solid wall on the Mexican frontier and an ‘immediate, very clear monitoring to make sure if there’s any unusual activity of Pakistanis coming into this country.’ Huh?
We periocially see those stories about how most Americans can’t find Canada on a map, but I’d have thought a presidential candidate would know that Pakistan doesn’t lie in South America.
But aside from the dubious geography lesson, here’s the Huck’s new religion on the topic:
The fact is that the immigration issue is not so much about people coming to pick lettuce or make beds, it’s about someone coming with a shoulder-fired missile.
Um, no, Mike, it’s actually about coming to pick lettuce and make beds, which you know perfectly well because you grow lettuce in Arkansas, along with psilocybin mushrooms, apparently.
And I recommend strict limits on the hours you’re spending on the Book of Revelations, my man. Time to stick to Third John and Habbakuk.
Once upon a time, Huckabee was grounded in reality on immigration. The fact that he could so suddenly lift off into the ionosphere is a good measure of the utter irrationality that the issue stirs in the hearts of his fellow fantasists.
Second and most importantly, I am convinced Huckabee would be annihilated by any credible Democrat, especially when people hear his hard-line wacko religious beliefs, which are not as slicked up as Bush’s were. Huckabee is a true believer and capable of saying shrill, punitive things through which he imprudently shows the true face of the theocrats.
Huckabee would run on what the religious right actually thinks and believes, rather than a prettified version of it, and that would be extremely inconvenient for the Republicans because I think the great American middle is pretty much fed up with their fanatical, holier-than-thou shit and ready to give them a licking they won’t forget.
But the limelight hasn’t been kind to ol’ Mike. One of the things that first attracted my attention was his entirely decent comments about the immigration issue in which he focused on the real human beings who have poured into his own state rather than the abstract Illegal Alien [organ chords!]
But the sudden pressure of being a frontrunner has pushed Huckabee over the edge. Friday, he picked up on the Bhutto assassination to say that it showed how we need a solid wall on the Mexican frontier and an ‘immediate, very clear monitoring to make sure if there’s any unusual activity of Pakistanis coming into this country.’ Huh?
We periocially see those stories about how most Americans can’t find Canada on a map, but I’d have thought a presidential candidate would know that Pakistan doesn’t lie in South America.
But aside from the dubious geography lesson, here’s the Huck’s new religion on the topic:
The fact is that the immigration issue is not so much about people coming to pick lettuce or make beds, it’s about someone coming with a shoulder-fired missile.
Um, no, Mike, it’s actually about coming to pick lettuce and make beds, which you know perfectly well because you grow lettuce in Arkansas, along with psilocybin mushrooms, apparently.
And I recommend strict limits on the hours you’re spending on the Book of Revelations, my man. Time to stick to Third John and Habbakuk.
Once upon a time, Huckabee was grounded in reality on immigration. The fact that he could so suddenly lift off into the ionosphere is a good measure of the utter irrationality that the issue stirs in the hearts of his fellow fantasists.
Blowback and Bhutto
Jimmy Carter, champion of human rights, led the charge way back in 1979 to pour billions through the CIA into the hands of all sorts of Pakistani reactionaries, the ancestors of the suicide bombers who blew a hole into the country’s yearning for a modern, democratic state on Thursday.
But back then in the 1970s world communism led by the USSR was the principal bugaboo driving American policy, and Carter faithfully fell into line behind that campaign—not that it did him any good. He wasn’t nearly far enough on board for the organized military-industrial complex, which mobilized through things like the Committee on the Present Danger to pave the way for a more enthusiastic shifting of national priorities into war preparation and warmaking under Saint Ronald of Malibu.
It’s certainly ironic to learn decades later that Carter’s Condi Rice, Zbigniew Brzezinski, worked hard to provoke the Soviet invasion in the first place, hoping to snooker the Russians into a Vietnam-like quagmire. As ZB himself put it (Le Nouvel Observateur, 1998) ‘We didn’t push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would.’
They got their wish, and it only took a million Afghan deaths to provide Zbig with his Cold War triumph. Cheap at half the price.
There were moderate forces involved in the resistance to Soviet occupation of Afghanistan way back then, but they attracted little interest from the CIA handlers who were much more excited by people like Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and other Islamic fundamentalists from the Seven Party Mujahideen Alliance and their eager volunteers like one Osama bin Laden.
Why is it that the ‘moderate’ types we supposedly need and want to be in charge, like the late Mrs Bhutto, only get a hand from Washington when their true favorites, military dictators who can deliver on demand with a flick of the baton, begin to stumble?
The body-blow taken to Bush’s schemes in Pakistan reveals yet again why a policy led by the intelligence services and based on secret dungeons around the world is doomed to implosion sooner or later. Bush and Cheney were delighted with Musharraf because he could deliver key targets to the CIA interrogators, and the regime in Washington could then beat interesting facts out of the prisoners and trumpet their successes, thus justifying the eclipse of the rule of law once and for all.
No matter that Musharraf simultaneously cut deals with the fundamentalists, which allowed them to regroup and carry on their war in Afghanistan. Now Bush & Perv are stuck with each other, and the Taliban are laughing all the way to Tora Bora.
But back then in the 1970s world communism led by the USSR was the principal bugaboo driving American policy, and Carter faithfully fell into line behind that campaign—not that it did him any good. He wasn’t nearly far enough on board for the organized military-industrial complex, which mobilized through things like the Committee on the Present Danger to pave the way for a more enthusiastic shifting of national priorities into war preparation and warmaking under Saint Ronald of Malibu.
It’s certainly ironic to learn decades later that Carter’s Condi Rice, Zbigniew Brzezinski, worked hard to provoke the Soviet invasion in the first place, hoping to snooker the Russians into a Vietnam-like quagmire. As ZB himself put it (Le Nouvel Observateur, 1998) ‘We didn’t push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would.’
They got their wish, and it only took a million Afghan deaths to provide Zbig with his Cold War triumph. Cheap at half the price.
There were moderate forces involved in the resistance to Soviet occupation of Afghanistan way back then, but they attracted little interest from the CIA handlers who were much more excited by people like Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and other Islamic fundamentalists from the Seven Party Mujahideen Alliance and their eager volunteers like one Osama bin Laden.
Why is it that the ‘moderate’ types we supposedly need and want to be in charge, like the late Mrs Bhutto, only get a hand from Washington when their true favorites, military dictators who can deliver on demand with a flick of the baton, begin to stumble?
The body-blow taken to Bush’s schemes in Pakistan reveals yet again why a policy led by the intelligence services and based on secret dungeons around the world is doomed to implosion sooner or later. Bush and Cheney were delighted with Musharraf because he could deliver key targets to the CIA interrogators, and the regime in Washington could then beat interesting facts out of the prisoners and trumpet their successes, thus justifying the eclipse of the rule of law once and for all.
No matter that Musharraf simultaneously cut deals with the fundamentalists, which allowed them to regroup and carry on their war in Afghanistan. Now Bush & Perv are stuck with each other, and the Taliban are laughing all the way to Tora Bora.
Thursday 27 December 2007
Death of Benazir Bhutto
The assassination of Benazir Bhutto is a reminder of how quickly conditions can change for the worse when you’ve spent a decade wasting your resources in the pursuit of fantastic dreams based on telegrams from God.
Bhutto as Bush’s last-ditch effort to save the sinking Pakistani ship was never a great bet; now it’s gone entirely. Pakistan’s January elections, if held at all, will be meaningless, and the Musharraf dictatorship, which now lacks any semblance of fig leaf over its unlovely nether regions, will have to fall back on the support of the discredited army and intelligence apparatus, at least portions of which must loathe him. Nothing in the present scenario suggests that the comparisons with Iran circa 1979, much dismissed a month ago, are off the mark.
Meanwhile, the unexpected event blew the skirts of the U.S. presidential candidates up over their heads as well. Most of them showed signs of megalomaniac dementia in announcing that Bhutto’s death was really about them, a reflection of their core belief that the United States is the center of the known universe and that the republic’s heart in fact beats within their own hoary breasts.
Giuliani promptly scheduled more Twin Tower ads, proving the truth of Joe Biden’s mock that he couldn’t form a sentence about Bhutto or anything else without ‘9/11’ appearing as a particle. For his part, Biden at least threw down the gauntlet at Musharraf and suggested that security for Mrs Bhutto was lax, a hint at negligent collusion in her death.
But Biden couldn’t resist mentioning that he had told Perv as much personally twice—just so we see how awesomely plugged in he is.
McCain and Clinton said the event proved the need for ‘experienced’ pols at the helm, i.e. themselves, while the untutored Romney said there was plenty of good advice to be had at the State Department without actually citing any of it.
Obama sounded unconvincing and lost, declaring that ‘we’ve got a very big problem there.’ Thank you for sharing that, but I’d say the Pakistanis have rather a larger problem there.
After Biden, only Richardson showed any substantial grasp of the situation and addressed it rather than the mirror bearing his own likeness. He was the only Democrat to offer a policy shift and a bold one at that, saying that U.S. military aid should be suspended and Musharraf step down.
In response, Edwards echoed the Bushite line and sounded like the noon briefer at the State Department with some facile, holiday b.s. about letting Pakistan ‘continue on the path to democratization.’ Ho ho ho!
The United States, whether led by Bush, a Democrat or Balthazar of Smyrna, is likely to have damn little to say about what goes on in Pakistan for the foreseeable future. The war on Al-Qaeda was never popular there, but Bush went ahead and then pursued it in the worst possible way, half-heartedly, while his real passion was the conquest of Iraq. So now we have a fine mess and nothing much left in the policy arsenal to do about it. Musharraf, like the Shah of Iran in 1979, was the Americans’ default position because policymakers in Washington thought that anything that followed him could only be worse. So they dug their, and our, grave deeper and deeper. The results have been with us ever since.
Bhutto as Bush’s last-ditch effort to save the sinking Pakistani ship was never a great bet; now it’s gone entirely. Pakistan’s January elections, if held at all, will be meaningless, and the Musharraf dictatorship, which now lacks any semblance of fig leaf over its unlovely nether regions, will have to fall back on the support of the discredited army and intelligence apparatus, at least portions of which must loathe him. Nothing in the present scenario suggests that the comparisons with Iran circa 1979, much dismissed a month ago, are off the mark.
Meanwhile, the unexpected event blew the skirts of the U.S. presidential candidates up over their heads as well. Most of them showed signs of megalomaniac dementia in announcing that Bhutto’s death was really about them, a reflection of their core belief that the United States is the center of the known universe and that the republic’s heart in fact beats within their own hoary breasts.
Giuliani promptly scheduled more Twin Tower ads, proving the truth of Joe Biden’s mock that he couldn’t form a sentence about Bhutto or anything else without ‘9/11’ appearing as a particle. For his part, Biden at least threw down the gauntlet at Musharraf and suggested that security for Mrs Bhutto was lax, a hint at negligent collusion in her death.
But Biden couldn’t resist mentioning that he had told Perv as much personally twice—just so we see how awesomely plugged in he is.
McCain and Clinton said the event proved the need for ‘experienced’ pols at the helm, i.e. themselves, while the untutored Romney said there was plenty of good advice to be had at the State Department without actually citing any of it.
Obama sounded unconvincing and lost, declaring that ‘we’ve got a very big problem there.’ Thank you for sharing that, but I’d say the Pakistanis have rather a larger problem there.
After Biden, only Richardson showed any substantial grasp of the situation and addressed it rather than the mirror bearing his own likeness. He was the only Democrat to offer a policy shift and a bold one at that, saying that U.S. military aid should be suspended and Musharraf step down.
In response, Edwards echoed the Bushite line and sounded like the noon briefer at the State Department with some facile, holiday b.s. about letting Pakistan ‘continue on the path to democratization.’ Ho ho ho!
The United States, whether led by Bush, a Democrat or Balthazar of Smyrna, is likely to have damn little to say about what goes on in Pakistan for the foreseeable future. The war on Al-Qaeda was never popular there, but Bush went ahead and then pursued it in the worst possible way, half-heartedly, while his real passion was the conquest of Iraq. So now we have a fine mess and nothing much left in the policy arsenal to do about it. Musharraf, like the Shah of Iran in 1979, was the Americans’ default position because policymakers in Washington thought that anything that followed him could only be worse. So they dug their, and our, grave deeper and deeper. The results have been with us ever since.
Monday 24 December 2007
Mr White's blackness
It must be vaguely disturbing to be born with dark skin, even today, even in this supposedly hip and liberal city. One goes about one’s business, interacts with whites, Chinese, Latins and Azerbaijanis, but there is always that subtle question of who or what will come to one’s aid in a pinch or what will be the outcome of a clash with the majority ethnicity or the powers of the state.
A black man, John White, was convicted Dec 21 of manslaughter for shooting a young Italian kid, and I can’t help thinking that if the skin colors were reversed, the guy facing prison would have been hailed as a hero in the tabloid press and his prosecution denounced by the chattering nabobs on CNN. The man had guns in his Long Island house for his family’s protection (that alone would give him NRA points) and pulled one out when a screaming carload of white guys pursued his own teenager up to their doorstep shouting racist threats. There’s a dispute about exactly what happened next, but if a white suburbanite had faced down a posse of drunken black hoodlums, something tells me he wouldn’t be facing 30 years.
Meanwhile, the trial of the three cops who shot at Sean Bell 50 times outside a Queens club in 2006 the night before his wedding are about to go to trial, too, and you can bet there will be plenty of support for them from the newspapers and from their uniformed colleagues, who invariably pack courtrooms to express their collegial solidarity. The three plainclothes detectives say they thought Bell and his friends had weapons (they didn’t) and blasted them without further ado. Bell might have mistaken them for muggers and tried to drive away. Even Mayor Bloomberg said at the time that 50 shots against unarmed suspects seemed a little excessive. Bell died, and his fiancée is leading the campaign for justice. The cops’ defense lawyers want the venue moved away from Queens so they can get an unbiased trial.
That doesn’t happen, however, when a police officer is gunned down, and fellow cops pour into the courtroom every day to glare. Then they mass outside to roar their approval at the police union head Patrick Kelly’s hysterical news conferences calling for the attacker’s head on a platter. A juror would think twice about that if he planned to live in the same city after the trial was over.
I’m reading about Cicero again (Imperium by Robert Harris) and his attempts to use the Roman courts against the powerful aristocrats who were used to bribing everybody and getting their way. It’s a reminder that the rule of law as a way of resolving disputes depends heavily on the relative balance of forces within a society. If things are too skewed one way or the other, the assumption that there is a set of rules that everyone must obey really doesn’t hold up though even the illusion sometimes can work in your favor if Cicero is your lawyer.
The one bright spot in the local judicial panorama is the new trial being granted to Martin Tankleff, who’s now spent 17 years in prison for killing his parents, which he didn’t. As a dazed 19-year-old he wandered downstairs in his Long Island home one morning in 1990 to find his parents’ bodies and then was tricked by the police detectives into thinking he’d blacked out and done it himself. The prosecutors did no forensic work since they had somebody to charge and then ignored ample evidence that someone else was behind the crime. Finally, an appellate court gave the whole system a tongue-lashing for caring so little about the facts and ordered a new trial. Tankleff, whose story was featured on a one-hour, prime-time investigative special a few months ago, may soon be a free man, and the long-suffering relatives are cheering at last.
On the other end of Long Island at the White trial, the attitudes outside the courtroom were a study in contrasts. Both before and after White’s conviction, he and his lawyers spoke with regret about the loss of the young man’s life; the Italian family high-fived each other as if they had just won the state basketball championship. This, they told reporters, proves that Daniel wasn’t a racist.
A black man, John White, was convicted Dec 21 of manslaughter for shooting a young Italian kid, and I can’t help thinking that if the skin colors were reversed, the guy facing prison would have been hailed as a hero in the tabloid press and his prosecution denounced by the chattering nabobs on CNN. The man had guns in his Long Island house for his family’s protection (that alone would give him NRA points) and pulled one out when a screaming carload of white guys pursued his own teenager up to their doorstep shouting racist threats. There’s a dispute about exactly what happened next, but if a white suburbanite had faced down a posse of drunken black hoodlums, something tells me he wouldn’t be facing 30 years.
Meanwhile, the trial of the three cops who shot at Sean Bell 50 times outside a Queens club in 2006 the night before his wedding are about to go to trial, too, and you can bet there will be plenty of support for them from the newspapers and from their uniformed colleagues, who invariably pack courtrooms to express their collegial solidarity. The three plainclothes detectives say they thought Bell and his friends had weapons (they didn’t) and blasted them without further ado. Bell might have mistaken them for muggers and tried to drive away. Even Mayor Bloomberg said at the time that 50 shots against unarmed suspects seemed a little excessive. Bell died, and his fiancée is leading the campaign for justice. The cops’ defense lawyers want the venue moved away from Queens so they can get an unbiased trial.
That doesn’t happen, however, when a police officer is gunned down, and fellow cops pour into the courtroom every day to glare. Then they mass outside to roar their approval at the police union head Patrick Kelly’s hysterical news conferences calling for the attacker’s head on a platter. A juror would think twice about that if he planned to live in the same city after the trial was over.
I’m reading about Cicero again (Imperium by Robert Harris) and his attempts to use the Roman courts against the powerful aristocrats who were used to bribing everybody and getting their way. It’s a reminder that the rule of law as a way of resolving disputes depends heavily on the relative balance of forces within a society. If things are too skewed one way or the other, the assumption that there is a set of rules that everyone must obey really doesn’t hold up though even the illusion sometimes can work in your favor if Cicero is your lawyer.
The one bright spot in the local judicial panorama is the new trial being granted to Martin Tankleff, who’s now spent 17 years in prison for killing his parents, which he didn’t. As a dazed 19-year-old he wandered downstairs in his Long Island home one morning in 1990 to find his parents’ bodies and then was tricked by the police detectives into thinking he’d blacked out and done it himself. The prosecutors did no forensic work since they had somebody to charge and then ignored ample evidence that someone else was behind the crime. Finally, an appellate court gave the whole system a tongue-lashing for caring so little about the facts and ordered a new trial. Tankleff, whose story was featured on a one-hour, prime-time investigative special a few months ago, may soon be a free man, and the long-suffering relatives are cheering at last.
On the other end of Long Island at the White trial, the attitudes outside the courtroom were a study in contrasts. Both before and after White’s conviction, he and his lawyers spoke with regret about the loss of the young man’s life; the Italian family high-fived each other as if they had just won the state basketball championship. This, they told reporters, proves that Daniel wasn’t a racist.
Thursday 20 December 2007
Bush's thugs & Schumer's complicity
We’re getting a first glimpse of the Attorney General whom Bush named to replace the historically corrupt and partisan lapdog Alberto Gonzales, and guess what? He’s eager to continue the cover-up, defend torture and deepen the irrelevance of the legislative branch. Surprise, surprise!
But in the long and depressingly predictable article in today’s NY Times about Michael Mukasey’s aggressive defense of Bush’s CIA torturers and the ensuing cover-up, there isn’t a single line about who is responsible for this new creep: New York’s liberal Democratic Senator, Charles Schumer.
Schumer pushed Mukasey to replace Gonzalez just as he had earlier peddled his name as a Supreme Court nominee. Mukasey was appointed to a federal judgeship by Ronald Reagan, contributed to the political campaigns of Rudy Giuliani and Joe Lieberman and still serves on Giuliani’s Justice Advisory Committee.
Mukasey’s confirmation hearings were truly appalling coming on the heels of the wholesale dismantling of the rule of law led by his predecessor. Even the usually supine Democrats finally turned against him, only to see Schumer and the loathesome Dianne Feinstein throw him a lifebuoy. They provided the swing votes to allow the Republicans to vote him into office.
Camera-horny Chuck likes to be in the limelight, but he’ll probably try to stay out of the coverage of Mukasey’s tenure at Justice. It’s good to be reminded that whatever the Bush administration’s lawyers do now, Charles Ellis Schumer of New York made it all possible.
But in the long and depressingly predictable article in today’s NY Times about Michael Mukasey’s aggressive defense of Bush’s CIA torturers and the ensuing cover-up, there isn’t a single line about who is responsible for this new creep: New York’s liberal Democratic Senator, Charles Schumer.
Schumer pushed Mukasey to replace Gonzalez just as he had earlier peddled his name as a Supreme Court nominee. Mukasey was appointed to a federal judgeship by Ronald Reagan, contributed to the political campaigns of Rudy Giuliani and Joe Lieberman and still serves on Giuliani’s Justice Advisory Committee.
Mukasey’s confirmation hearings were truly appalling coming on the heels of the wholesale dismantling of the rule of law led by his predecessor. Even the usually supine Democrats finally turned against him, only to see Schumer and the loathesome Dianne Feinstein throw him a lifebuoy. They provided the swing votes to allow the Republicans to vote him into office.
Camera-horny Chuck likes to be in the limelight, but he’ll probably try to stay out of the coverage of Mukasey’s tenure at Justice. It’s good to be reminded that whatever the Bush administration’s lawyers do now, Charles Ellis Schumer of New York made it all possible.
Wednesday 19 December 2007
Capitalism and the Alien Hordes
The Federal Reserve’s issuance of rules Tuesday to prevent further mortgage lending abuses makes it abundantly clear that Alan Greenspan could have done the same years ago and refused to, despite ample warnings that the practices were dangerous. It will be interesting to see if the revered AG, who spoke only with gods and presidents during his excessive tenure, will now get a sound licking for his responsibility in the current credit mess that has drilled a hole in the U.S. economy.
Greenspan has been so slavishly lathered in the press for so long that one could be forgiven for not knowing that some economists think his reign was perfectly appalling. They point at the total abandonment of the Fed’s regulatory role, and even the Dec. 18 flip-flop doesn’t really mean all that much given that the industry already realized that it had shot itself and not just in the foot. So much of what Bernacke’s team is proposing is already being done—a day late and a dollar short.
Ideology rules our lives today, ironic since the Cold War was fought partly over its oppressive role in the enemy camp. But according to marketplace econ 101, the mere thought of restraining the cash-handlers in any way is nanny-statism and party-pooping. So the standard response is to give the financiers (or the industrialists or the traders) free rein to do whatever makes short-term sense, and that’s a pretty good recipe for catastrophe given the inherent, periodic irrationalities of markets, of which the latest meltdown is a fine example.
***
Given the hysteria about ‘aliens’ and illegal immigration these days, I have been surprised to see so few references to the seizure of the commanding heights of U.S. capitalism by foreign communists and Islamic fundamentalists. The Chinese government’s investment vehicle took a $5 billion piece of Wall Street firm Morgan Stanley today due to that entity’s huge losses after being suckered by the subprime mortgage market just as badly as Aunt Myrtle and Uncle Ed. This follows the November news that a 4.9 percent equity stake in Citibank was snapped up by the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, i.e. a couple of guys in long gowns. As long as they don’t try to do our yard work!
Greenspan has been so slavishly lathered in the press for so long that one could be forgiven for not knowing that some economists think his reign was perfectly appalling. They point at the total abandonment of the Fed’s regulatory role, and even the Dec. 18 flip-flop doesn’t really mean all that much given that the industry already realized that it had shot itself and not just in the foot. So much of what Bernacke’s team is proposing is already being done—a day late and a dollar short.
Ideology rules our lives today, ironic since the Cold War was fought partly over its oppressive role in the enemy camp. But according to marketplace econ 101, the mere thought of restraining the cash-handlers in any way is nanny-statism and party-pooping. So the standard response is to give the financiers (or the industrialists or the traders) free rein to do whatever makes short-term sense, and that’s a pretty good recipe for catastrophe given the inherent, periodic irrationalities of markets, of which the latest meltdown is a fine example.
***
Given the hysteria about ‘aliens’ and illegal immigration these days, I have been surprised to see so few references to the seizure of the commanding heights of U.S. capitalism by foreign communists and Islamic fundamentalists. The Chinese government’s investment vehicle took a $5 billion piece of Wall Street firm Morgan Stanley today due to that entity’s huge losses after being suckered by the subprime mortgage market just as badly as Aunt Myrtle and Uncle Ed. This follows the November news that a 4.9 percent equity stake in Citibank was snapped up by the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, i.e. a couple of guys in long gowns. As long as they don’t try to do our yard work!
Monday 17 December 2007
Atlanta flyover
Flying over Atlanta as I have done all too frequently in recent weeks, one is struck by the vast urban sprawl down below that used to be peculiar to places like Los Angeles. You can observe how the woods are being gobbled up acre by acre, as the construction of yet more suburban split-levels guns the engine of growth, delights the Home Depot stockholders and sucks in droves of Mexican laborers--or did until the recent housing debacle.
How appropriate, then, that the area should be facing a severe drought that ought to put the whole development scheme in serious doubt. While Georgia’s builders and planners (or anti-planners, more exactly) bulldozed forward to add their quota of tonnage to greenhouse gases, they have also harvested the result of this ill-advised strategy in the form of a globally-warmed water shortage. Gov. Sonny Perdue called upon the Lord recently in a prayer vigil on the statehouse steps, but unless something changes pretty soon, he’s going to need more than a good drenching from Jaysus to save the lifestyle he’s encouraged his constituents to expect as their due.
The optimistic news out of Bali about the eleventh-hour agreement on global warming forced upon Washington is welcome, of course. But it is hard to see this translating into a radical reshaping of the ‘facts on the ground’ that places like Atlanta have created. The new, planet-friendly city, if it does indeed come into being, will have to be far more dense with far less vehicular traffic than anything we’ve seen so far. Will we survive long enough to see the vast square mileage of suburban tracts named “Leafy Acres” and “Golden Meadow” turned into ghost towns of urban kitsch, right next to the pink flamingoes?
How appropriate, then, that the area should be facing a severe drought that ought to put the whole development scheme in serious doubt. While Georgia’s builders and planners (or anti-planners, more exactly) bulldozed forward to add their quota of tonnage to greenhouse gases, they have also harvested the result of this ill-advised strategy in the form of a globally-warmed water shortage. Gov. Sonny Perdue called upon the Lord recently in a prayer vigil on the statehouse steps, but unless something changes pretty soon, he’s going to need more than a good drenching from Jaysus to save the lifestyle he’s encouraged his constituents to expect as their due.
The optimistic news out of Bali about the eleventh-hour agreement on global warming forced upon Washington is welcome, of course. But it is hard to see this translating into a radical reshaping of the ‘facts on the ground’ that places like Atlanta have created. The new, planet-friendly city, if it does indeed come into being, will have to be far more dense with far less vehicular traffic than anything we’ve seen so far. Will we survive long enough to see the vast square mileage of suburban tracts named “Leafy Acres” and “Golden Meadow” turned into ghost towns of urban kitsch, right next to the pink flamingoes?
Sunday 16 December 2007
The Bible tells me so
I don’t see what all the fuss is about if Mike Huckabee wants to know whether the Latter Day Saints believe Jesus and the devil are brothers. It’s seems like a valid question to me if you’re going to base public policy on the Voice of God trumpeted either through Pat Robertson or a huddle of Mormon prophets.
The early centuries of Christianity were replete with wars over whether JC was human, divine or a little of both. Huckabee got pulled into exactly that terrain with his not-so-innocent query, and if true, it’s one of the least bizarre Mormon beliefs out there. In Paradise Lost Milton placed Lucifer in heaven as a top angel who got thrown out for rebelliousness. I’m sure theologians can work out whether that makes JC and Old Scratch siblings or second cousins, once removed.
Now that the Bible-thumpers have had their day in the halls of state stretching over the last 25 years, we can now view the effects of forcing theology down the throat of the body politic. I think it’s just grand that Romney has to throw himself naked onto the floor before the assembled elders and parse his spiritual well-being for them—that’s what you get for pushing our polity towards theocratic rule.
The spectacle is exactly what the founding fathers tried to spare us when they decided to separate church and state and keep dangerously potent religious beliefs as far from the business of state as possible.
I sometimes perversely hope that the injection of religious sects (like Baptists) into politics deepens and undermines religious belief entirely. Our evangelicals ought to pay some attention to what has happened in Iran after three decades of clerical rule where political and religious dissidence are officially equivalent because the mullahs are the tax collectors and vice versa. Iranian youth are fed up with religion and increasingly secularized. We should live so long.
The early centuries of Christianity were replete with wars over whether JC was human, divine or a little of both. Huckabee got pulled into exactly that terrain with his not-so-innocent query, and if true, it’s one of the least bizarre Mormon beliefs out there. In Paradise Lost Milton placed Lucifer in heaven as a top angel who got thrown out for rebelliousness. I’m sure theologians can work out whether that makes JC and Old Scratch siblings or second cousins, once removed.
Now that the Bible-thumpers have had their day in the halls of state stretching over the last 25 years, we can now view the effects of forcing theology down the throat of the body politic. I think it’s just grand that Romney has to throw himself naked onto the floor before the assembled elders and parse his spiritual well-being for them—that’s what you get for pushing our polity towards theocratic rule.
The spectacle is exactly what the founding fathers tried to spare us when they decided to separate church and state and keep dangerously potent religious beliefs as far from the business of state as possible.
I sometimes perversely hope that the injection of religious sects (like Baptists) into politics deepens and undermines religious belief entirely. Our evangelicals ought to pay some attention to what has happened in Iran after three decades of clerical rule where political and religious dissidence are officially equivalent because the mullahs are the tax collectors and vice versa. Iranian youth are fed up with religion and increasingly secularized. We should live so long.
Saturday 15 December 2007
Morituri te salutant
If the popularity of professional wrestling is any guide, the steroid scandal will have little effect on major league baseball, which is not so much a commentary on the sport itself as on the audience for it. The narrative of the ‘home’ team will go forward, and those who enjoy a good story won’t care much if it is based on a pack of lies. It also says a lot about the public disinterest in the mere playing of a good game. If you don’t win, you don’t exist.
I’m not the first person to notice that this phenomenon parallels the one surrounding our ongoing nation-at-war myth in which the reasons for starting it and the benchmarks for ending it all shift like a sand dune, but the meaning of continuing it trumps everything, at least for a sizeable chunk of the public. In both cases the obvious lies fail to overcome the eagerness for believing in a good tale and enjoying the narcotic thrill of triumph.
No doubt after some public breast-beating with downcast eyes and mumbled confessions of ‘poor judgment,’ the sport will get around to the business of pillorying those who dared to spill the beans. I am reminded of the wonderful Robert Redford-produced movie, Quiz Show, based on the true story of the rigged 1950s program ‘Twenty-One’, in which the contestants who finally admitted to the scam were tossed onto the trash heap while the network execs who covered it up for their bosses went on to greater and more glorious spectacles.
It’s ironic in the midst of so much concern about health and fitness that the vast professional sporting apparatus should be built on a system that feeds athletes into its destructive maw like logs into a wood chipper. If the steroid business doesn’t cost baseball plenty, no talented kid will have a chance for a pro career in any sport if he doesn’t sacrifice his body on the pyre of first-place standings. We look back at the Romans with a shudder, but we seem to be headed for a gladiator system of our own with the unforgiving TV viewer as the new emperor. ‘We who are about to juice, salute you.’
I’m not the first person to notice that this phenomenon parallels the one surrounding our ongoing nation-at-war myth in which the reasons for starting it and the benchmarks for ending it all shift like a sand dune, but the meaning of continuing it trumps everything, at least for a sizeable chunk of the public. In both cases the obvious lies fail to overcome the eagerness for believing in a good tale and enjoying the narcotic thrill of triumph.
No doubt after some public breast-beating with downcast eyes and mumbled confessions of ‘poor judgment,’ the sport will get around to the business of pillorying those who dared to spill the beans. I am reminded of the wonderful Robert Redford-produced movie, Quiz Show, based on the true story of the rigged 1950s program ‘Twenty-One’, in which the contestants who finally admitted to the scam were tossed onto the trash heap while the network execs who covered it up for their bosses went on to greater and more glorious spectacles.
It’s ironic in the midst of so much concern about health and fitness that the vast professional sporting apparatus should be built on a system that feeds athletes into its destructive maw like logs into a wood chipper. If the steroid business doesn’t cost baseball plenty, no talented kid will have a chance for a pro career in any sport if he doesn’t sacrifice his body on the pyre of first-place standings. We look back at the Romans with a shudder, but we seem to be headed for a gladiator system of our own with the unforgiving TV viewer as the new emperor. ‘We who are about to juice, salute you.’
Wednesday 12 December 2007
Thugs and Consiglieres
The Bushite torturers will get theirs some day, and I hope I’m alive to see it. However, there is something particularly oily and nauseating about the faux criticism from people who knew what was happening all along and abetted the crimes willingly. Our homegrown star collaborator is Nancy Pelosi who, turns out, was one of the few in Washington privy to the official crimes, which she faithfully kept secret.
The particular twisted spin Pelosi and others use to get themselves off the hook is that they swore to uphold national security secrets. Here’s NP herself on the topic [all quotes cribbed from a Ray McGovern post on CommonDreams.org]:
When the administration notifies Congress in this manner, it is not seeking approval. There is a clear expectation that the information will be shared by no one, including other members of the intelligence committees.
How convenient for everyone! The crimes are committed; four screened and vetted legislators of the 535-member Congress get the skinny, thus fulfilling the ‘consultation’ requirement; no one can breathe a word of any of it, assuring that the oversight is meaningless; and when the poo-poo flies, no one is responsible.
Even the apparently decent Dick Durbin of Illinois got seduced into this abandonment of his legislative, not to mention moral, mandate:
We’re duty-bound once we enter that room to respect classified information. Everything you hear is supposed to stay in the room…I certainly had enough to know that the statements that were made about mushroom clouds were not the conclusions of someone in the administration who was really being honest about the full debate. But you really know, walking in the room, what the rules of the game will be.
Well, Dick, maybe you shouldn’t be playing along by them! Perhaps it isn’t so important to be one of the big players getting to hear all the cool secrets if the cost is betraying your public trust.
I am old enough to remember the exact same weaselly bobbing and dodging among the pious Democrats during the carnage of the Vietnam war when they proved again and again, with extremely scarce exceptions, that they cared more about their pathetic sinecures than another million or so human lives. I am not surprised, only depressed, to see it all once again.
The particular twisted spin Pelosi and others use to get themselves off the hook is that they swore to uphold national security secrets. Here’s NP herself on the topic [all quotes cribbed from a Ray McGovern post on CommonDreams.org]:
When the administration notifies Congress in this manner, it is not seeking approval. There is a clear expectation that the information will be shared by no one, including other members of the intelligence committees.
How convenient for everyone! The crimes are committed; four screened and vetted legislators of the 535-member Congress get the skinny, thus fulfilling the ‘consultation’ requirement; no one can breathe a word of any of it, assuring that the oversight is meaningless; and when the poo-poo flies, no one is responsible.
Even the apparently decent Dick Durbin of Illinois got seduced into this abandonment of his legislative, not to mention moral, mandate:
We’re duty-bound once we enter that room to respect classified information. Everything you hear is supposed to stay in the room…I certainly had enough to know that the statements that were made about mushroom clouds were not the conclusions of someone in the administration who was really being honest about the full debate. But you really know, walking in the room, what the rules of the game will be.
Well, Dick, maybe you shouldn’t be playing along by them! Perhaps it isn’t so important to be one of the big players getting to hear all the cool secrets if the cost is betraying your public trust.
I am old enough to remember the exact same weaselly bobbing and dodging among the pious Democrats during the carnage of the Vietnam war when they proved again and again, with extremely scarce exceptions, that they cared more about their pathetic sinecures than another million or so human lives. I am not surprised, only depressed, to see it all once again.
Tuesday 11 December 2007
CIA porn
A lot of the hand-wringing about the destruction of the torture tapes seems to me to miss the point. People talk about the false evidence used to arrest Jose Padilla or to condemn the accused in Guantanamo based on phony confessions produced by waterboarding. But the hue and cry about what was or wasn’t on those videos presumes that people care about fairness to individuals. I don’t see the evidence of that.
The argument in favor of torture from the beginning—and that seduced many so-called liberals who eagerly debated how many angels should be tortured on the head of pin—was that no matter who got hurt, saving innocent Americans was more important. That’s the standard retort to any claim that something is going wrong with the interrogation/secret prison/beat-em-to-a-pulp system. Are you willing to risk thousands of dead Americans by restraining us? That is, who cares if the guy's innocent? We might find a guilty one.
Obviously, most people prefer their own safety to the civil rights of others and are willing to sacrifice the historic protections from tyranny built up over centuries to make sure that no 9/11s ever happen again. I would add my own personal belief that there is a strong whiff of vengeance involved as well as people sit back and contemplate or refuse to contemplate torture because they are pissed off about what happened and want someone to pay. It works in criminal justice all the time—bring in someone and accuse them whether they did it or not—so why not in world politics?
I thought that Rumsfeld would be toast 48 hours after the Abu Ghraib photos came out, and instead he lasted for years. Why does anyone think the torture videos would have changed the debate significantly? The moral rot oozing from the centers of power here has only begun to emit its penetrating scent. We have a lot longer to wait before the stench becomes overwhelming. But that day will come, and one piece of evidence more or less won’t make all that much difference. Underneath is a collective, national crime whose poison runs far too deep.
The argument in favor of torture from the beginning—and that seduced many so-called liberals who eagerly debated how many angels should be tortured on the head of pin—was that no matter who got hurt, saving innocent Americans was more important. That’s the standard retort to any claim that something is going wrong with the interrogation/secret prison/beat-em-to-a-pulp system. Are you willing to risk thousands of dead Americans by restraining us? That is, who cares if the guy's innocent? We might find a guilty one.
Obviously, most people prefer their own safety to the civil rights of others and are willing to sacrifice the historic protections from tyranny built up over centuries to make sure that no 9/11s ever happen again. I would add my own personal belief that there is a strong whiff of vengeance involved as well as people sit back and contemplate or refuse to contemplate torture because they are pissed off about what happened and want someone to pay. It works in criminal justice all the time—bring in someone and accuse them whether they did it or not—so why not in world politics?
I thought that Rumsfeld would be toast 48 hours after the Abu Ghraib photos came out, and instead he lasted for years. Why does anyone think the torture videos would have changed the debate significantly? The moral rot oozing from the centers of power here has only begun to emit its penetrating scent. We have a lot longer to wait before the stench becomes overwhelming. But that day will come, and one piece of evidence more or less won’t make all that much difference. Underneath is a collective, national crime whose poison runs far too deep.
Wednesday 5 December 2007
Faulty & Fallacious Assumptions
Now that the dust is partially settled from the unbombshell dropped by the intelligence agencies over the Iranian nukes, I wonder if anyone makes the connection with the intelligence that buried hundreds of guys in the Guantánamo dungeons (one of whom just tried to commit suicide by cutting his own throat with a fingernail). The reasons given for them to be held there is that they are ‘terrorists’ and ‘very bad people,’ in the words of a guard.
But if our intelligence can be so faulty on Iran, could it also be the case that some of the men imprisoned at Guantánamo are in fact innocent? Does it matter to anyone?
It certainly doesn’t seem to matter much to the American people—otherwise, someone among the Democratic contenders might be insisting on raising the issue. They’d be trashed as wacko-lovers who hate America, but at least they’d be able to defend their behavior to their grandchildren, something damn few of us can claim these days.
As for the sudden release of the National Intelligence Estimate on Iran’s nuclear program, that huge, stinking turdette dropped onto the desk of a certain oval-shaped office bears the stamp of a resurgent spyboy coalition flexing some long-unused muscle. I would also guess, based on the commentaries and subtle hints in the news coverage, that some top-level military guys also weighed in and said, Stop these lunatics! And it looks as though the famous Cheney machinery that could have detoured that document into the trash-heap four years ago is now good and well checked, if not checkmated. We still have a year to go before these demented elements will leave the stage en route to the fetid caves that history will assign them. But it certainly seems that major adventurism is getting pushed gingerly off the table, let’s hope for good. Perhaps we can even start thinking about how to repair the damage over the next few decades that these creeps have done.
But if our intelligence can be so faulty on Iran, could it also be the case that some of the men imprisoned at Guantánamo are in fact innocent? Does it matter to anyone?
It certainly doesn’t seem to matter much to the American people—otherwise, someone among the Democratic contenders might be insisting on raising the issue. They’d be trashed as wacko-lovers who hate America, but at least they’d be able to defend their behavior to their grandchildren, something damn few of us can claim these days.
As for the sudden release of the National Intelligence Estimate on Iran’s nuclear program, that huge, stinking turdette dropped onto the desk of a certain oval-shaped office bears the stamp of a resurgent spyboy coalition flexing some long-unused muscle. I would also guess, based on the commentaries and subtle hints in the news coverage, that some top-level military guys also weighed in and said, Stop these lunatics! And it looks as though the famous Cheney machinery that could have detoured that document into the trash-heap four years ago is now good and well checked, if not checkmated. We still have a year to go before these demented elements will leave the stage en route to the fetid caves that history will assign them. But it certainly seems that major adventurism is getting pushed gingerly off the table, let’s hope for good. Perhaps we can even start thinking about how to repair the damage over the next few decades that these creeps have done.
Monday 3 December 2007
Attending to duties
I'm traveling, conferencing, free-lancing with deadlines and generally staying up way too late, so I can't offer anything amusing from this end until Wednesday.
However, I can't resist noting this genius headline from AP: "Violence Hampers Iraqi Security Forces." Thank you for sharing that! Who would have known?
However, I can't resist noting this genius headline from AP: "Violence Hampers Iraqi Security Forces." Thank you for sharing that! Who would have known?
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