The Distant Ocean

And by "bigger holocaust" I meant "not a holocaust at all"

Deputy Israeli Defense Minister Matan Vilnai offers a warning to the Palestinians:

"The more Qassam (rocket) fire intensifies and the rockets reach a longer range, they (the Palestinians) will bring upon themselves a bigger holocaust because we will use all our might to defend ourselves," Vilnai told Army Radio.

Vilnai was just trying to wrest the prize for Most Ironic Statement From An Israeli Military Official from this officer:

In order to prepare properly for the next campaign, one of the Israeli officers in the territories said not long ago, it's justified and in fact essential to learn from every possible source. If the mission will be to seize a densely populated refugee camp, or take over the casbah in Nablus, and if the commander's obligation is to try to execute the mission without casualties on either side, then he must first analyze and internalize the lessons of earlier battles - even, however shocking it may sound, even how the German army fought in the Warsaw ghetto.

The Palestinian targets of the "bigger holocaust" may not be able to muster the detachment necessary for a proper appreciation of this superior display of irony, though.

Just as the Israeli military "revised" Brigadier General Ron Kitrey's admission that "there were apparently hundreds of dead" in Israel's attack on the Jenin refugee camp in 2002, I'd imagine Vilnai's immoderate honesty will shortly be "revised" as well.  Interestingly, Kitrey was also speaking to Army Radio at the time—but then we all know that it's easier to relax and say what you're really thinking when you feel you're talking among friends.

Gonzalez on Obama

Matt Gonzalez wrote a detailed article explaining why he's not impressed with Barack Obama.  The conclusion:

Once I started looking at the votes Obama actually cast, I began to hear his rhetoric differently. The principal conclusion I draw about “change” and Barack Obama is that Obama needs to change his voting habits and stop pandering to win votes. If he does this he might someday make a decent candidate who could earn my support. For now Obama has fallen into a dangerous pattern of capitulation that he cannot reconcile with his growing popularity as an agent of change.

I remain impressed by the enthusiasm generated by Obama’s style and skill as an orator. But I remain more loyal to my values, and I’m glad to say that I want no part in the Obama craze sweeping our country.

It's worth reading the entire article for the careful analysis Gonzalez presents of Obama's actual record of votes and stances on issues like Iraq, limiting plaintiffs' rights, single-payer healthcare, impeachment, the death penalty, and so on.  This is typical of Matt's approach, by the way—he's thorough and deliberate in the way he reaches his positions, which is one of the reasons I respect him.

Local boy makes good

I was pleasantly surprised today to learn that Ralph Nader has chosen former San Francisco Supervisor and mayoral candidate Matt Gonzalez as his running mate.  Matt is as good a spokesperson for progressive values as you could ask for; he's thoughtful, considered, soft-spoken, articulate, and very smart.  He switched from the Democrats to the Greens several years ago, ran for supervisor in his district, and won, eventually being elected president of the Board of Supervisors.

I worked on his campaign for mayor in 2003, which he lost in large part thanks to the machinations of supporters of Democrat Gavin Newsom who ignored city law by refusing to institute instant runoff voting in time for the election, since they felt it would hurt their candidate (the then-head of the election commission had declared herself a "Gavin Girl" a few weeks before the final hearing in which she played an instrumental role in spiking IRV).  The Democratic Party pulled out all the stops to defeat Gonzalez (and more importantly, the Green Party); Bill Clinton, Al Gore, Nancy Pelosi and Diane Feinsten all made appearances in the city on Newsom's behalf.  It was a real firsthand education in just how hell-bent the Democrats are to beat back any challenge on their left flank, and the type of tactics they'll use to do it.

Matt's a decent guy all around as well.  I went to an event a few months back at a neighborhood theater where Nader and Gonzalez were scheduled to speak.  I was sitting up front and Matt came in, noticed a chair next to me and asked if he could sit down, and then offered me some of his popcorn.  That's just the kind of guy he is.

If you're under the illusion that San Francisco is a bastion of lefty ferment, by the way, be sure to read the comments on the article I cited above.  Trust me when I say that that's representative of the city as a whole.  There's a strong progressive contingent in San Francisco, of course, but it's dwarfed by the veritable army of entitled, insufferable, Lexus-driving, party-line Democrats who live here.

BONUS: It's always instructive to see how the gloves come off when the Washington press corps writes about progressives.  If you'd like to see the full range of "ridicule, acerbity, and bigotry" they have to offer, look no further than this (and while you're reading, try to imagine them daring to show this kind of condescension to any conservative candidacy).

LOCAL PAPER SMEARS LOCAL BOY WHO MADE GOOD: If you want to see an example of what I mean about the army of party-line Democrats in this town, take a look at the San Francisco Chronicle's sneering editorial about Gonzalez (and Nader).  Believe me, it's nothing new.

Obama love love loves Israel

And he's at pains to prove it to Jewish leaders (again), here.  One noteworthy excerpt:

I also expect to work on behalf of peace with the full knowledge that Israel still has bitter enemies who are intent on its destruction. We see their intentions every time a suicide bomber strikes, we saw their intentions with the katusha rockets that Hezbollah rained down on Israel from Lebanon in 2006 and we see it today in the Kasams that Hamas fires into Israel every single day from as close as Gaza or as far as Tehran.

Hamas has been firing missiles at Israel from Tehran?  Why was the entire Iran-bashing media apparatus not mobilized to trumpet this information in 72-point headlines?  Why did George Bush not make it the centerpiece of his declaration of war against Iran?  And why did Israel not cite this as a justification after they flattened Tehran with a nuclear strike?

Now, this was billed as a "rough transcript", so maybe there was a transcription error (though it reportedly came from someone within the Obama campaign, and you'd expect them to be careful about statements like this one).  If it's accurate, though, maybe Obama has been spending a little too much time over at WorldNetDaily or DEBKAfile.

Obama sniffs at Nader

Here's Barack Obama discussing Ralph Nader:

"My sense is that Mr. Nader is somebody who, if you don't listen and adopt all of his policies, thinks you're not substantive," Obama told reporters when asked about Nader's possible candidacy.

"He seems to have a pretty high opinion of his own work."

Obama said Nader "is a singular figure in American politics and has done as much as just about anyone for consumers."

"I don't mean to diminish that," he said. "There's a sense now that if someone's not hewing to the Ralph Nader agenda, he says they're lacking in some way."

(Obama then inhaled a sliver of snuff, mounted his carriage, and instructed his coachman to take him back to the estate.)

Here's Nader responding:

Nader called Obama "a person of substance" and "the first liberal evangelist in a long time" who "has run a good tactical campaign." But he accused Obama of censoring "his better instincts" on divisive issues.

And:

[Nader] criticized the Illinois Democrat for having been "pro-Palestine when he was in Illinois, before he ran for the state senate" but now "supporting the Israeli destruction" of Gaza.

Quite a contrast between Obama's dismissive condescension and Nader's straightforward assessment.  As usual, Nader is spot on, and his criticism of Obama closely matches my own.  And as for Obama, along with his "excesses of the 1960s and 1970s" jab, this is another clear indication of how he wants to distance himself from progressive ideals—and is willing to abandon his previously-professed principles to do it.  It's that willingness to put the desire for power ahead of other considerations that leaves me with no hope that there'd be meaningful change in an Obama presidency.

MORE OBAMA CARPING: John Nichols of The Nation lauds the wisdom of Obama's response to Nader's candidacy.  One highlight (for me):

"Ralph Nader deserves enormous credit for the work he did as a consumer advocate," Mr. Obama said while campaigning in Ohio "But his function as a perennial candidate is not putting food on the table of workers."

I've looked and looked, but I've been unable to determine exactly how Obama's senatorial and presidential campaigns have put food on the tables of workers.

It's not all bad news

Every once in a while there's a little ray of sunshine.

I sometimes wonder if the people who share George Bush's professed world view (and favorite philosopher) ever hear about something like this and think: hmm...I wonder what message God was trying to send us?  As a noted Christian thinker proclaimed, "it appears that the judgment of America has begun."

AP provides helpful context

Here's an AP video report by Diane Kepley on the burning of the US embassy in Belgrade:

 

For viewers who may be confused about the context, Kepley provides this helpful explanation (at 0:14): "Many rioters here blame the US for trying to spread democracy in the region."

Now, see, this was news to me.  I thought the 150,000 demonstrators were angry because the US attacked their country in 1999 in support of a CIA-backed separatist group, in large part to establish NATO's credibility (and shore up its relevance prior to its 50th anniversary celebration, spurred on by the realization that it must go "out of area" or it would be "out of business", in Richard Lugar's memorable phrase)—with the usual natural resource and basing considerations as part of the background—and that despite "Reaffirming the commitment of all Member States to the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and the other States of the region, as set out in the Helsinki Final Act and annex 2" in UN Security Council resolution 1244 (the standard formulation at the time for recognition that Kosovo remained a part of Yugoslavia), the United States has now quickly moved to recognize Kosovo's secession.

But apparently I was way off base with this, and it's really just that these people (oops: rioters) can't stand the fact that the US is trying to spread democracy in the region.  I could still use some clarification on this, though.  Do the rioters actually hate democracy itself?  Or do they like democracy, but want it to be spread only by nations other than the US?  And when they're not rioting, are they still human beings?  It's all so confusing.

I was apparently confused about one other thing as well: I thought "AP" stood for "Associated Press", but based on this report it looks like it might be "Actually Pravda".  But there's a key difference between (Soviet) Pravda's propaganda and the invisible form of propaganda that reinforces the fantasy that the US is motivated solely by a desire to spread democracy: in the case of Pravda and other similar state-controlled media, people knew they were being lied to.  But in the US, half the population thinks the media is basically giving them an accurate picture of reality, while the other half thinks it's too anti-American.  Or in other words, we span the full range from dangerously deluded to completely insane.

(Then there's the half that knows full well they're being lied to—but these people are of no relevance whatsoever, and can safely be ignored.)

Your bi-monthly dose of Ran HaCohen

As I've mentioned before, I've always found Ran HaCohen to be one of the most perceptive and worthwhile commentators on the Palestinian situation, though he doesn't write nearly often enough.  But the long wait is over—he's got a new article here.  Some highlights:

Hamas offers a long-term cease-fire, lasting years or even decades. Israel says "no" to that too. Why? The idiotic Israeli answer is that Hamas would use the time to rearm. As if Israel would use the time to make love. A pseudo-democracy run by the military is totally blind to the rational logic of creating a "temporary" peaceful atmosphere, boosting the parties' vested interest in a peaceful life, raising a new generation in prosperity and free of old hatreds, and so on. Better a war right now than decades of peace and a war – perhaps – afterwards. It surely is better – for the weapons industry, and for the graveyards.

And:

Evacuating the town [of Sderot], says official Israel, would be yielding to terror. Obviously, an 8-year-old child losing a leg in Sderot is a propaganda asset Israel cannot resist. How easy it is, sitting in an armchair in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, or Washington, to make a point on the back of innocent civilians – both in Gaza and in Sderot.

You can read the rest here.

In praise of 121

I'm a night person, and 1:21am is my favorite time.  Why?  Well, if you read it as decimal 121 it's a perfect square, and if you add up the number of minutes past midnight that it represents (81) it's still a perfect square.  Yeah, I know, pretty darn cool.

But it gets even better.  A few nights ago as I was about to go to sleep I looked at the clock, which just happened to be hitting 1:21 at that moment.  I started thinking about the number and realized that 121 isn't just a perfect square in decimal; it's also a perfect square in base 8, and base 11, and base 20, and base 7, and so on.  Now this may be old hat to everyone else, but it was news to me.  So is it a perfect square in every base (in which it's a valid number), I wondered?  Sure enough, it is, and I realized why: for every base b, (b+1)² = 1b²  + 2b + 1 (which is, by definition, 121 in that number system).  Which also means that the square root of 121 for any base b is always 11 (i.e. b+1).  How cool is that?

Putting it in those terms made me realize that the same is true of a number of 3-digit perfect squares that can be represented in decimal, like 144 (b+2)² and 961 (3b+1)².  And also that it goes beyond 961 if you don't constrain yourself to decimal—but I'm biased against digits beyond 9, so it doesn't excite me quite as much to know that 4GG is a perfect square for every base greater than 16.  And I realized that it probably applied to many squares with more than three digits as well (in fact an infinite number of them), but at that point I fell asleep.

Knowing that there are an infinite number of similar perfect squares doesn't make me admire 121 any less, though.  It's not my favorite number overall, but still, I think you'd have to agree that it's got a lot going for it.

MATH PHUN: Using a 24-hour clock, there's one other time of day besides 01:21 that's a perfect square both as a decimal number and in terms of its total minutes past midnight (not counting the cheater squares between 00:00 and 00:49).  The first one to find it wins a prize!*

* WARNING: Prize may suck.

I don't care as long as it's a DEMOCRAT!

Today in San Francisco I saw a small sign plastered to an advertising kiosk:

Man or Woman,
White or Black,
I don't care as long as it's a
DEMOCRAT!

You know, I couldn't have said it better myself.  And it's worth going back to the Clinton years to expand on just a few of the things they don't care about as long as it's a DEMOCRAT!:

• Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis dying from sanctions
• Corporate rights agreements like NAFTA, the WTO, and the MAI
• Bombing Yugoslavia for 78 days, without UN authorization
• US-supported ethnic cleansing in Turkey
• US-backed civil war in Colombia
• Bombing Iraq (continually, when you count attacks from the no-fly zones)
• The Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act
• Record prison incarceration levels
• Bombing Afghanistan
• "Death by negotiation" for the Kyoto Protocol
• Endless corporate giveaways
• Permanent normal trade relations with China
• Executing the mentally retarded
• Bombing the largest source of malnutrition drugs in the Sudan during a massive famine
• Neutering the International Criminal Court
• Ending welfare as we know it
• Sending Haitian refugees back to Haiti, where they belong
• Etc, etc, etc.

And if a DEMOCRAT! wins in 2008—man or woman, white or black—I'm sure I'll be able to start a whole new list of things they don't care about.

More deeply shocking news from Pakistan

Pakistan's upcoming parliamentary elections should be (even more) interesting in light of this:

A prominent U.S.-based human rights group Friday released what it said was a recording of Pakistan's attorney general acknowledging that next week's national elections would be "massively" rigged. ...

In the recording, Qayyum, Pakistan's top legal officer, can be heard advising the caller to accept a ticket he is being offered by an unidentified political party for a seat, Human Rights Watch said.

"They will massively rig to get their own people to win," Qayyum said, according to a transcript released by Human Rights Watch. "If you get a ticket from these guys, take it."

Of course, this is news only to someone who hasn't paid any attention to Musharraf's MO since he first seized power, but it's still entertaining to have the smoking gun.  Musharraf is now so wildly unpopular that members of his own party are distancing themselves from him, and in a fair election it seems certain that they wouldn't win enough seats to form a government (and in the best scenario Musharraf may even end up being impeached by a freely-elected parliament).  So if the results from Monday's election show a sudden turnaround for Musharraf's party, we'll know why.

Pakistan's "President Dictator" (or "Prictator", as I like to think of it) sought to assure the nation that the elections will be fair and free, and they'd better believe it, or else:

On Thursday, Musharraf warned the opposition that it must accept the outcome of Monday's voting, without resorting to massive street protests.

"Let there be no doubt that anyone will be allowed to resort to lawlessness in the garb of allegations about rigging in the elections," Musharraf was quoted as telling a seminar of government officials in Islamabad by the state-run Associated Press of Pakistan. "Let this serve as a warning to all those who think they can disturb the peace of the country. They will not be allowed. Do not test the resolve of the government."

"No agitation, anarchy or chaos can be acceptable," he said. "I assure you that the elections will be fair, free, and transparent and peaceful."

And why should we doubt his word?  After all, it's not as if he declared a state of emergency, suspended the Constitution, and sacked the Supreme Court in order to maintain his grip on power.  Oh, wait.

PLUS: The State Department is deeply concerned about the elections too:

"Given the rate of abstention, plus expressions of concerns by prominent [citizens], we would see that this reflects a broad lack of confidence in the impartiality and transparency of the electoral process, which is worth noting," State Department deputy spokesman Adam Ereli said.

Did my subtle ruse fool you?  I'm guessing no:

"We would certainly look to Venezuela to address the issues of transparency and impartiality for the benefit of Venezuelan democracy."

Man exorcises dog, again

Since I seem to be on the exorcism beat now, I felt I should share this:

Exorcism - the church rite of expelling evil spirits from tortured souls - is making a comeback in Catholic regions of Europe. In July, more than 300 practitioners gathered in the Polish city of Czestochowa for the fourth International Congress of Exorcists.

One of the practitioners is Wieslaw Jankowski, who offers this illustration of why exorcism services are so sorely needed these days:

Typical cases, he said, include people who turn away from the church and embrace New Age therapies, alternative religions or the occult. Internet addicts and yoga devotees are also at risk, he said. ...

Jankowski cited the case of a woman who asked for a divorce days after renewing her wedding vows as part of a marriage counseling program. What was suspicious, he said, was how the wife suddenly developed a passionate hatred for her husband.

"According to what I could perceive, the devil was present and acting in an obvious way," he said. "How else can you explain how a wife, in the space of a couple of weeks, could come to hate her own husband, a man who is a good person?"

Hmm, yes.  How else can you explain why a woman whose marriage had been on the rocks would suddenly ask for a divorce?  Let me see if I can come up with some alternatives:

1. Finally realized her husband was an insufferable putz
2. Couldn't stand living a lie even one more day
3. Ran into his mistress
4. Demonic possession

Now, demonic possession strikes me as a pretty low probability here.  But then again, I may not have the same deep understanding of conjugal relations as a Catholic priest, so I could be wrong about this.  So it's probably best to stop surfing the web and going to yoga classes, just to be on the safe side.

And actually, when I think about it, this could explain an awful lot of otherwise impenetrable mysteries.  Why won't anyone publish my novel?  DEMONIC POSSESSION.  Why does that cute receptionist at the office keep blowing me off when I ask her to lunch?  DEMONIC POSSESSION.  Body odor?  DEMONIC POSSESSION.  Oh no, crabgrass!  DEMONIC POSSESSION.

"It really dawned on me"

The Washington Post has an article on Marc Garlasco of Human Rights Watch that's worth reading, for this if nothing else:

Sitting in a secure vault deep inside the Pentagon, Marc Garlasco cheered when the laser-guided bombs he had helped target slammed to Earth, striking Iraqi soil. As a body flew like a rag doll across the video screen, framed in a bright flash and a cloud of dust, Garlasco and his fellow intelligence analysts thought they had taken out one of the U.S. military's top targets during the early days of the Iraq war.

But even as he reveled in the April 2003 airstrike, Garlasco was thinking ahead to his next job, which would take him to the edges of the very crater he had just helped create. Just two weeks after the failed attack targeting Iraq's notorious Ali Hassan Majeed, known as Chemical Ali, Garlasco left the Defense Intelligence Agency and traveled worldwide as a human rights activist seeking to determine the civilian toll of his previous work.

"I found myself standing at that crater, talking to a man about how his family was destroyed, how children were killed, and there was this bunny-rabbit toy covered in dust nearby, and it tore me in two," Garlasco said. "I had been a part of it, so it was a lot harder than I thought it would be. It really dawned on me that these aren't just nameless, faceless targets. This is a place where people are going to feel ramifications for a long time."

It shouldn't take something like this for a person to understand that bombs are killing actual flesh and blood human beings, of course, but it's still good to see someone with Garlasco's background come to the realization.

BONUS: Here's another former agent of empire coming to a similarly unexpected realization, after reading through the complete internal record of decision making:

[Vietnam] was no more a "civil war" after 1955 or 1960 than it had been during the U.S.-supported French attempt at colonial reconquest.  A war in which one side was entirely equipped and paid by a foreign power—which dictated the nature of the local regime in its own interest—was not a civil war.  To say that we had "interfered" in what is "really a civil war," as most American academic writers and even liberal critics of the war do to this day, simply screened a more painful reality and was as much a myth as the earlier official one of "aggression from the North."  In terms of the UN charter and of our own avowed ideals, it was a war of foreign aggression, American aggression.

[This] judgment was not one I came to lightly or easily.  It was the kind of charge I associated with antiwar rallies.  I had never been to one of these (since the first one, with Patricia in 1965), but I had read references to such claims before and dismissed them, as my colleagues did, as overblown rhetoric.  It was what "extreme" critics, radicals, and most international lawyers, though I didn't know that, had been saying about the nature of our involvement for years.  I had not believed them.  Now I had to.

That's Daniel Ellsberg, writing in Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers.

Next: I discuss the concept of fair use.

Still serving the master after the master has left

By now you've probably heard the great news that as its first official act the Australian government of Kevin Rudd has formally apologized to the Aboriginal population.  I read about it this afternoon in an AP article, but nearly fell out of my chair when I hit this part:

From 1910 until the 1970s, about 100,000 children were taken from their parents under state and federal laws based on a premise that Aborigines were dying out, and saving the children was a humane alternative.

We've all seen the press bend over backwards to parrot an official government line, but this is truly an extraordinary and sickening example; even as the Australian government is recanting and condemning its own former policies, AP is making sure it gives us the official justification.  A careful parse shows that "based on a premise" is the AP writer presenting the rationale that was given when the policies were being implemented, but why even pass along that kind of shameful rationalization now of all times?

AP may have realized just how awful this sounded as well, because by this evening the article had been changed to omit "saving the children was a humane alternative" (the original version is currently available here if you want to compare).  But as if to compensate for this improvement, AP also replaced a quote of Michael Mansell saying "It was clearly the Australian policy to breed out those Aboriginal children that were grabbed ... it was an attempt at genocide" with this:

Michael Mansell, spokesman for the rights group the National Aboriginal Alliance, said the word "sorry" was one that "Stolen Generation members will be very relieved is finally being used."

And the word "genocide" is now completely missing from the article, despite the fact that it was a key finding of the official Australian national inquiry into this issue.  AP isn't alone in this; according to Google news, out of approximately 3100 hits for articles about the apology, only 90 refer to "genocide", and nearly all of those were published in Australian news outlets.  There's a strange mechanism at work here, as though the press understands that using the word outside of the standard/approved frames—and especially in a discussion of official accountability—may eventually lead to it being applied in contexts that are completely unacceptable (like, say, the extermination of Native Americans by the US government).

But setting aside the press response, this is a great moment.  Congratulations to Kevin Rudd's government for having the resolve to go through with this after years of stalling and double talk by former governments.  I can only hope that some day we'll be fortunate enough to have a government here that's willing to take responsibility for even a fraction of its many crimes.

Truthophobia

I find it interesting that the two things John McCain has said recently that have drawn the most criticism are this:

"My friends, some of the jobs that have left the state of Michigan are not coming back."

And this:

[Questioner]: President Bush has talked about our staying in Iraq for fifty years.

MCCAIN: Make it a hundred. How long—We’ve been in Japan for 60 years, we've been in South Korea for fifty years or so. That’d be fine with me as long as Americans are not being injured or harmed or wounded or killed.

Whatever you think of McCain's positions, the first of these is just stating the obvious.  And as for the second, it's a virtual certainty that either party will maintain an ongoing US military presence in Iraq; if you want a precedent, look at how Bill Clinton kept US forces in Saudi Arabia throughout his presidency and continued to say they were needed even after 9/11, when the full cost was made apparent.

So McCain's sin here is that he's telling the truth.  And in these days of vague promises of "change" and "hope" that show no evidence of being anything but the same policies we've seen for years, that's not what people want to hear.  Ok, let's be serious—it's something they never want to hear.  But there seems to be a manic pitch to the "think happy thoughts" contingent in these waning days of the Bush presidency; eight years of exposure to harsh reality has left them bruised and battered, and now they just want to curl up in mommy's lap for a while and feel loved.

Personally, I'd be much happier if one of the major party candidates would just come out and say that they're going to sell out to corporations on every issue and treat the world as their own personal Risk game board.  I can respect that kind of honesty, even if I bitterly oppose the thinking behind it.  It's better to be aware of reality, no matter how unpleasant it may be, than to live in a world of comforting self-delusion.

And the award for most wide-eyed, spittle-flinging, batshit insane headline goes to...

..."Big Oil Strikes Back at Petrotyrants", by Investor's Business Daily!  Let's give them a big round of applause, everyone!

But can the article possibly live up to the headline?  Let's take a look:

Last year, the power-mad petrotyrant [Hugo Chavez] declared Exxon and Venezuela's other foreign investors "robbers" and vowed to conquer them like Simon Bolivar taking the Andes. He hurled leftist nationalistic rhetoric against these private companies whose only "crime" was to invest in and bring jobs to Venezuela. ...

Seeing themselves as powerless and eager to limit their losses, some of the companies caved. But not Exxon. It took a hit on its balance sheet, and decided something bigger was at stake. With operations all over the world and every other tinhorn dictator watching its moves, it knew a precedent could be set and refused to appease.

In so doing, it put all petrotyrants on notice that their power extends only as far as their borders and no more.

[Cue music: "Glory, Glory Hallelujah..."]

Yes, once you let those tinhorn dictators start pushing you around with those, uhh...tin horns of theirs, you just end up all...err...pockmarked and...tinny.  And I think we all know that can't lead anywhere good.  So thank you, Big Oil, for having the courage to be the plucky David to Chavez's bellowing Goliath.

(More sober analysis from IBD—the business outlet that tries its best to make the Wall Street Journal look liberal—here.)

UPDATE: That "hit on its balance sheet" is really going to bruise poor beleaguered underdog Exxon, which was just in the news for having "the largest quarterly and annual profits  ever reported by a U.S. company."  And of course IBD failed to explain how winning a $12 billion judgment against Venezuela shows that Exxon was putting principle before profit (because "something bigger was at stake," after all).  Maybe they've got really, really expensive lawyers.

As for "every other tinhorn dictator watching its moves," here's a story that tells you who's actually paying the closest attention to this case.

Expand the military so that...?

Some excerpts from the foreign policy section of Obama's campaign site:

Obama has been a consistent, principled and vocal opponent of the war in Iraq. ...

Bring Our Troops Home: Obama will immediately begin to remove our troops from Iraq. He will remove one to two combat brigades each month, and have all of our combat brigades out of Iraq within 16 months.
...
Expand the Military: We have learned from Iraq that our military needs more men and women in uniform to reduce the strain on our active force. Obama will increase the size of ground forces, adding 65,000 soldiers to the Army and 27,000 Marines.

So according to his web site, Obama has opposed the Iraq war from the start and he plans to remove all combat brigades from Iraq within 16 months—and yet the lesson he's learned from Iraq is that the military needs to be expanded.  But the military only needs to be expanded if you accept the premise that the United States should be able to fight two wars of the scope of Iraq and Afghanistan, simultaneously, with no shortage of troops.  We can conclude, then, that Obama does accept that premise.

Maybe it's just me, but I find these two positions ever so slightly contradictory.  But maybe I'm just not thinking it through clearly enough; maybe he genuinely did believe the war in Iraq wasn't the right war, but he's got another one in mind of about the same size somewhere else.  It certainly recalls this famous quote from Madeleine Albright: "What's the point in having this superb military you are always talking about if we can't use it?"

I wonder where Obama would decide to use it?

How do you change an entire culture?

Charge people 33 cents for doing the wrong thing:

In 2002, Ireland passed a tax on plastic bags; customers who want them must now pay 33 cents per bag at the register. There was an advertising awareness campaign. And then something happened that was bigger than the sum of these parts.

Within weeks, plastic bag use dropped 94 percent. Within a year, nearly everyone had bought reusable cloth bags, keeping them in offices and in the backs of cars. Plastic bags were not outlawed, but carrying them became socially unacceptable — on a par with wearing a fur coat or not cleaning up after one’s dog. ...

Gerry McCartney, 50, a data processor, has also switched to cloth. “The tax is not so much, but it completely changed a very bad habit,” he said. “Now you never see plastic.”

I admit that I find this absurdly hopeful—not just that people's behavior changed, but that their attitudes did as well.  It's an example of how close to the surface the potential for meaningful change can be without us realizing it.  You see signs of these kinds of changes on a host of issues (like this, for example), and it's one of the things that makes me optimistic.

On this particular topic: for a while now I've made it a habit to take my own plastic bags with me to stores, since they compress down to nothing in your pocket and keep you from collecting yet more of their petroleum-based, landfill-choking brethren (of course it's easy doing that at small corner stores in a city like San Francisco; I admit I might lose my nerve under the withering glare of veteran shoppers at a suburban Target).  Just another simple way in which you, personally, can save the entire planet.

Good news: the judiciary still exists as a semi-independent entity

Despite our malevolent boy-king's belief that he can rule by decree, the federal judge in the Evil Navy vs. Adorable Puppies case begs to differ:

A federal judge rejected on Monday President Bush's attempt to exempt the Navy from environmental laws protecting endangered whales from sound waves caused by underwater sonar blasts during anti-submarine training off the Southern California coast.

Bush issued an order Jan. 15 that sought to override the judge's order limiting the Navy's use of sonar in Channel Islands waters frequented by whales and other marine mammals. The president said the restrictions would interfere with military exercises that are essential to national security.

But U.S. District Judge Florence-Marie Cooper of Los Angeles said Monday that Bush lacked authority in this case to suspend the National Environmental Policy Act, on which her earlier order was based.

I didn't see how Bush's order could stand, and it's good to see that Cooper agrees and isn't going to back down.

Guilty until proven innocent

My vow (and one I hope you'll consider as well): if a Democrat wins the presidency in 2008, no matter who it is, I'll consider them guilty until proven innocent.  I'll give them zero benefit of the doubt.  I won't feel one shred of hope or optimism about their impending time in power, and in fact I'll expect the worst.  I'll take every positive thing they say as a lie and every negative thing they say as an understatement.

After they assume office, there's only one thing that will make me consider changing my mind on this: concrete actions on major issues that indisputably contradict it.  And even then I'll assume that each good action is sui generis—improbable to have happened in the first place and unlikely to be repeated.

This isn't a prediction (though in light of American history, especially over the past few decades, it may as well be).  It's also neither pessimism nor hopelessness.  It's a recognition that lofty rhetoric not only has the power to blind us to what really matters, but that practically without exception in mainstream politics, that's exactly what it's intended to do.  It's an acknowledgment that those who seek power almost universally do so at the expense of their integrity and to the detriment of their humanity, and that to allow ourselves to lose sight of that is to participate in our own deception.

True hope comes from below—not from above.