The Distant Ocean

Something completely different

I've long felt this quote from Groucho Marx is one of the single most clever things ever said in the English language:

Time flies like an arrow;
fruit flies like a banana.

It's funny because your brain reaches the end and then tries to reinterpret each half in terms of the other, and hilarity ensues at the resulting mental images.  But what's truly brilliant is that nearly every corresponding word and phrase in the two clauses changes its function—verbs becomes nouns, prepositional phrases becomes verb phrases, and so on.  It's hard to imagine a more compact sentence with more mutability, and especially one that manages to be a good joke at the same time.  You've got to hand it to Groucho; the dude was not just funny, but smart.

Are there any outstanding bits of human cleverness you'd like to share?

Iceberg in Sheol

I'm going to do something I rarely do.  Something that makes me feel cheap and dirty.

I'm going to sympathize with Barack Obama.

Yesterday I woke up to this puzzling headline: "With no apologies, Obama arrives in Las Vegas".  What could Obama possibly have to apologize for in Las Vegas, I asked myself?  Prepare yourself for the horror of his transgression:

The president, in town for an opulent fundraiser Tuesday night for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, spawned a teapot-sized tempest in Nevada earlier this year when he criticized the lavish use of federal bailout funds by high-rolling executives. "You can't go take a trip to Las Vegas or go down to the Super Bowl on the taxpayer's dime," Obama said in Indiana as he campaigned for his economic stimulus plan amid a wave of populist anger. [...]

"I am not interested in a handshake and a hello from President Obama," [Governor] Gibbons said in a statement released Monday. "I am interested in an apology and plan to undo the damage the president did."

So Obama is working in a political climate so toxic that saying something as head-slappingly commonsensical as "you can't go take a trip to Las Vegas or go down to the Super Bowl on the taxpayer's dime" generates enough controversy to warrant national coverage.  A minor controversy to be sure, but it says a lot about the box he and all other mainstream politicians work within.  You see his quandary, don't you?  Is it any wonder he has to tear up our rights, bomb foreigners, and sell us out to Wall Street at every turn?  Let's try to be realistic about this, people!

Ok, my sympathy may have slipped a little there, but seriously: hay caramba.

But it's worth thinking about why it's even possible for Gibbons to get away with such an outrageous display of outrage.  In a political culture slightly less debased than ours, a politician who objected to the notion that "you can't go take a trip to Las Vegas or go down to the Super Bowl on the taxpayer's dime" would have just seriously damaged his political career—and in a genuinely functioning democracy it'd be enough to bring out pitchfork-wielding mobs.  But in the country we live in, we're expected to soberly contemplate whether Obama went too far by saying that corporations shouldn't spend public money to finance their junkets to Las Vegas or the Super Bowl.

And it's no mystery why: because the U.S. is the most corporate-controlled society on the face of the planet, with no mainstream political voice for actual people's actual concerns—just two corporate-owned, corporate-run factions forever looking out for corporate interests, with a margin of difference between them just large enough to create the illusion of choice.  And despite presiding at a time when we're witnessing one of the most dramatic illustrations of how deeply broken that system is, Obama hasn't shown the slightest inclination to make any fundamental or even meaningful changes to it.  Instead, he's bent over backwards (or is it forward? I always wonder...) to prove his pro-corporate bona fides—throwing fistfuls of billion-dollar bills, just in case anyone doubted the sincerity of his fulsome verbal genuflections.

So I do feel some sympathy for Obama as I watch absurd political theater like this, but it only lasts for about a nanosecond.  Then I remember that he lied his way past other power-hungry opportunists to put himself in the position to spend day after day telling us how wonderful this system of state-assisted robbery really is, while simultaneously picking our pockets to keep it slouching towards its inevitable self-destruction.  So if he occasionally nicks his finger as he's oiling the machinery, whose fault is that?

And furthermore

You may be wondering exactly why I find it so extraordinary that only 31% of Israelis consider Barack Obama "pro-Israel".  You could be thinking to yourself, yes, I believe I see it, but an extended analogy sure would make things clearer.  And you might be waiting impatiently for me to produce just such an analogy.

Or, you might not.

But it's somewhat of a moot point, because that's what's on the menu today.  I'm afraid it's out of both of our hands.  God grant us the serenity to accept, what doesn't kill us makes us stronger, etc etc.  So without further ado:

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Imagine two countries, A (a world superpower) and B (a tiny outlaw state).  For years, country A has lavished billions of dollars on country B, protected it diplomatically, and insulated it from what would otherwise be worldwide condemnation for country B's atrocities.  Furthermore, every leader of country A pays continual homage to country B—and once a year goes entirely prostrate at a meeting of country B's supporters, declaring undying loyalty and indeed near-total identification.

And the latest leader of country A is no different—in fact, in his last appearance before country B's supporters he actually went farther in his genuflection than is the norm.  He's also cheered country B's vicious warmaking in the past, and after being elected but before assuming office he gave his tacit consent as country B raped its former colony.  And since taking office he's actually increased the flow of money to country B, while continuing the torrent of slavish declarations of fealty.

But despite all of this, a poll of citizens of country B shows that only 31% of them of them believe that country A's leader supports their country.  And this is by no means unique; the citizens of country B regularly claim that various politicians in country A aren't sufficiently supportive, no matter how much those politicians bow and scrape and throw money at them and cover for their crimes.

I know of no other values for A and B than "the United States" and "Israel" throughout recorded history (imagine the Roman Empire acting this way toward some tiny country on the horn of Africa, and having the citizens of that country scream "Caesar is secretly against us!"), and I can't imagine this situation ever arising again. It's absolutely, totally, and in all other ways inconceivable.  And I'd laugh it off as an absurd fiction but for the fact that it's happening right here and now, before our eyes.

The Tomb of the Unfortunate Civilian

Here's an excerpt from Obama's Memorial Day speech at Arlington National Cemetery:

...I cannot know what it is like to walk into battle.  I'm the father of two young girls -- but I can't imagine what it's like to lose a child.  These are things I cannot know.

But I do know this: I am humbled to be the Commander-in-Chief of the finest fighting force in the history of the world. [...]

With each death, we are heartbroken.  With each death, we grow more determined.

Now here it is with all the callous irony replaced by straightforward honesty:

...I cannot know what it is like to walk into battle.  I'm the father of two young girls -- but I can't imagine what it's like to lose a child.  These are things I cannot know.

But I do know what it's like to kill a child.  I killed a few the first week I took office, and I've killed and maimed dozens more since then.  But despite the glaring contradiction between talking lovingly about my two young girls and simultaneously being responsible for killing young girls just like them in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iraq, the only thing I care to say to you at this moment is that I am humbled to be the Commander-in-Chief of the biggest war machine in the history of the world. [...]

With each American death, we are heartbroken.  With each death that matters, we grow more determined to destroy lives that don't.

Honestly, I'd be much happier if politicians would just come right out and say things like this.

Here's a modest proposal: Obama made a point of honoring a previously-ignored group by becoming the first president to send a wreath to the African-American Civil War Memorial.  How about establishing a memorial to another ignored group—namely, the innocent people who've lost their lives as part of America's efforts to militarily spread freedom, democracy, and prosperity around the world?  I can't see how any patriotic and principled American could possibly object to this; after all, since one of the main purposes of American war-making is to help (say) Iraqis and Afghans, surely we should honor all the innocents who pay the ultimate price while we're liberating them and therefore never get to enjoy the fruits of the selfless sacrifices we make on their behalf?  It's the least a nation with such high ideals and morals (expressed through the use of such high explosives) can do.

Someday, I'm sure.  But until then we'll have to make do with our own personal remembrances of the millions of innocent people whose deaths have somehow—in the words of our maximum leader—allowed us to "know freedom."

Lord, please save us from your followers

Tony Blair apparently believed he was carrying out God's divine will as he was dipping his hands deeply into the blood of Yugoslavs and Iraqis:

"...Tony's Christian faith is part of him, down to his cotton socks. He believed strongly at the time, that intervention in Kosovo, Sierra Leone – Iraq too – was all part of the Christian battle; good should triumph over evil, making lives better.

Mr Burton, who was often described as Mr Blair's mentor, says that his religion gave him a "total belief in what's right and what's wrong", leading him to see the so-called War on Terror as "a moral cause".

"I truly believe that his Christianity affected his policy-making on just about everything from aid to Africa, education, poverty, world debt and intervening in other countries when he thought it was right to do it."

God replies:

"Somehow, people keep coming up with the idea that I want them to kill their neighbor. Well, I don't. And to be honest, I'm really getting sick and tired of it. Get it straight. Not only do I not want anybody to kill anyone, but I specifically commanded you not to, in really simple terms that anybody ought to be able to understand."

Fortunately for British arms manufacturers, Blair was able to overcome his "total belief in what's right and what's wrong" long enough to sell jets to the Indonesian military to help them kill more East Timorese.

U.S.-Israeli comedy week

It's been a week of high comedy for watchers of the U.S.-Israeli relationship.  First, in perhaps the most epic instance of nose-thumbing since Bill Clinton started bombing Iraq just as the Security Council was convening an emergency session on the issue, Israel began constructing the first new settlement in the Jordan Valley in 26 years—the day before Netanyahu's meeting with Obama:

Israel has moved ahead with a plan to build a new settlement in the northern West Bank for the first time in 26 years, pursuing a project the United States has already condemned as an obstacle to peace efforts.

The move comes on the eve of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's first meeting with U.S. President Barack Obama, despite Western calls for Israel to halt its settlement activity.

Tenders have been issued for 20 housing units in the new Maskiot settlement and contractors have arrived on site to begin foundation work.

Then, in response to Obama's pro forma plea to stop settlement expansion, Netanyahu knocked down a few lean-tos on a hill, in what is quite possibly the most perfunctory example of shack-smacking I've ever seen from an Israeli prime minister in this oft-repeated bit of kabuki theater:

Israeli police said they razed a tiny Jewish settlement outpost in the West Bank on Thursday in what media called a gesture to US President Barack Obama after his talks with Israel's prime minister.

"We dismantled seven tin huts," said police spokesman Danny Peleg, specifying that the outpost had been built without government authorisation.

"Seven tin huts"?  Stop, my sides, you're killing me.  You have to appreciate the attention to detail Peleg showed by specifying "tin" explicitly here—really draws a mental picture, doesn't it?  And I suppose they'd already blown down the houses of straw and sticks (oops, sorry, "huts") earlier, so he didn't even bother mentioning those.

And in case these examples of Israel's remarkable commitment to peace weren't a clear enough illustration of who typically calls the shots in this relationship, take a look at this Reuters article from yesterday:

The U.S. administration of President Barack Obama will not force Israel to state publicly whether it has nuclear weapons, an Israeli official said on Thursday. [...]  A senior Israeli diplomat, speaking after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held his first summit with Obama in Washington this week, said: "This has never happened, nor will it happen with this administration."

Don't you just love that tone of command?  Like a drill sergeant assessing his latest batch of recruits.  Exactly like a drill sergeant assessing his latest batch of recruits.  I'm not sure what's funnier here: that, or Reuters dutifully shoveling Ehud Olmert's explicit admission that Israel is a nuclear power down the memory hole.

I also found this bit particularly interesting: "That U.S. message had been conveyed, the diplomat said, 'on the various levels of our bilateral talks'."  See, I knew there was an agreement between the United States and Israel that the U.S. would never admit the existence of Israel's 200-400 nukes, but until now I'd never seen evidence that it was anything but tacit.  But there you have it: Israeli officials make a point of extracting promises from U.S. administrations to lie about Israel's ability to destroy the world.

You can usually count on one good laugh a week from the U.S.-Israeli relationship, but three?  Outstanding!

Is our children learning?

Quick: which of the following pictures represents a culture of hatred teaching its children to embrace violence?

If you said the first picture, you're a patriot and a great American; if you said the second picture, you're a freedom-hating, eagle-punching hippie; and if you said both pictures, you're clearly nothing more than a moral relativist whose views can be safely ignored by all serious people.

The second picture is from this story, which includes pearls like these:

"This is about being a true-blooded American guy and girl," said A. J. Lowenthal, a sheriff’s deputy here in Imperial County, whose life clock, he says, is set around the Explorers events he helps run. "It fits right in with the honor and bravery of the Boy Scouts." [...]

In a simulation here of a raid on a marijuana field, several Explorers were instructed on how to quiet an obstreperous lookout. "Put him on his face and put a knee in his back," a Border Patrol agent explained. "I guarantee that he’ll shut up." [...]

Cathy Noriega, also 16, said she was attracted by the guns. The group uses compressed-air guns — known as airsoft guns, which fire tiny plastic pellets — in the training exercises, and sometimes they shoot real guns on a closed range. "I like shooting them," Cathy said. "I like the sound they make. It gets me excited." [...]

The Explorer posts are attached to various agencies, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation and local police and fire departments, that sponsor them much the way churches sponsor Boy Scout troops. "Our end goal is to create more agents," said April McKee, a senior Border Patrol agent and mentor at the session here. [...]

The law enforcement posts are restricted to those ages 14 to 21 who have a C average, but there seems to be some wiggle room. "I will take them at 13 and a half," Deputy Lowenthal said. "I would rather take a kid than possibly lose a kid."

See, I strongly support the "take a penny, leave a penny" program, but I'm not sure I'm willing to extend it to 13.5-year-old kids.

(Thanks to Thomas Daulton for the pointer to the article.)

Credit where credit is due

I thought it was impossible to top the absurdist brilliance of George Bush's appointment of John "there is no such thing as the United Nations" Bolton as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, but then Ban Ki-moon goes and proves me wrong by naming Bill Clinton as his special envoy to Haiti.  Jeremy Scahill explains the obscene joke here.  An excerpt:

While Clinton and his advisers publicly expressed their dismay with the [1991] coup, they simultaneously refused to support the swift reinstatement of the country’s democratically elected leader and would, in fact, not allow Aristide’s return until Washington received guarantees that: 1. Aristide would not lay claim to the years of his presidency lost in forced exile and; 2. US neoliberal economic plans were solidified as the law of the land in Haiti.

"The Clinton administration was credited for working for the return to power of Jean Bertrand Aristide after he was overthrown in a military coup," says author William Blum. "But, in fact, Clinton had stalled the return for as long as he could, and had instead tried his best to return anti-Aristide conservatives to a leading power role in a mixed government, because Aristide was too leftist for Washington’s tastes."

Sadly for Ban, Luckner Cambronne died in 2006 and therefore wasn't available.

69% of Israelis are clinically insane

At least according to this article:

Only 31 percent of Israelis consider the views of American president Barack Obama's administration pro-Israel, according to a Smith Research poll released Sunday, on the eve of the meeting between Obama and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu at the White House.

Yes...yes, I suppose Barack Obama's pro-Israel credentials could reasonably be questioned.  Much like, say, Santa Claus's pro-Christmas credentials.  Why does he only wear red and no green?  I'm telling you, something's fishy about that bearded freak.

THIS JOKE JUST NEVER GETS OLD: 77% of Americans are total goobs.   And golly, it sure is tough being an Israel-first voter!

Sympathy barf

Dennis Perrin suggests projectile vomiting as a reasonable response to some of The Nation's recent Obama-related output, like Katrina vanden Heuvel's ode to the alpha Democrat:

In a recent summation of Obama's first 100 days, KVH recites the standard litany, by now a staple to anyone familiar with Obamaspeak. But amid the apologetics stands this revolting sentence:

"But there are two areas which I fear could endanger the Obama Presidency: military escalation in Afghanistan and the bank bailout."

Note where KVH's concern lies -- with the Obama Presidency. That the man is incinerating poor people in Afghanistan while allowing prisoners held without charge to rot in Bagram cages, and is paying back his wealthy benefactors with more state assistance while millions of Americans struggle to meet basic needs doesn't seem to seriously concern KVH. It's how all this might "endanger" Obama's rule that moves her to write.

I agree with Dennis that her framing deserves special attention; just read that one sentence over and over, and let it sink in.  It's also worth noting the deference to power represented by the erroneous capital at the beginning of "presidency"—which makes it clear that she's not talking merely about the period of time that will pass while Obama is president, but rather Obama's exalted reign itself.

Believe it or not, Dennis is actually too kind to KVH in this instance.  Here's how she explained her concern about the way that military escalation in Afghanistan might "endanger the Obama Presidency": 

On Afghanistan, I am concerned that it will bleed us of the resources needed for economic recovery, further destabilize Pakistan, open a rift with our European allies, and negate the positive effects of withdrawing from Iraq on our image in the Muslim world.

Got that?  Incinerating poor people in Afghanistan is bad because it might cost too much money to allow us to prop up the economy—among other similarly weighty and pressing concerns.

Note in particular the lack of any moral basis for rejecting a massive increase in the level of death and destruction inflicted by the American military in Afghanistan.  This is par for the course for liberals these days; piffling considerations like human life or international law are discounted for them in the age of Obama, in which the golden calf of Pragmatism is worshiped with single-minded devotion.  No, such outmoded concerns are the sole provenance of fuzzy-headed idealists who haven't managed to grasp that all the fundamental equations of moral calculus changed the instant a Democrat started doing the killing.

This is not to say these liberals don't care about human life, of course, even deeply; they just keep it in its proper perspective, as political expediency and U.S. exceptionalism demand.  KVH demonstrated this careful balancing act a month earlier when she wrote that "Escalation will not increase US security or secure a better future for the Afghan people--indeed, more troops will certainly mean more dead civilians."  So she did express some (muted) concern for the lives of Afghan civilians, but also made a point of properly subordinating it to "U.S. security"—thus maintaining her credentials as a serious mainstream commentator.  And she prefaced this sentence with the same list of "pragmatic" considerations I already quoted above, putting concern for the lives of Afghan civilians sixth in a list of six reasons, where it belongs.

In that same article she offered this plaintive cry, which goes back to Dennis's point:

Up to this point, the Afghan war belonged to George W. Bush, but Obama's escalation threatens to make it his own. There's still time to change direction. President Obama, don't make this your war!

Again, see how she focuses on her beloved President rather than distractions like the war itself or its innocent victims.  In her frame, war is not "the supreme international crime, differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole," but just another personality-driven/partisan policy issue, to be judged in terms of how it might "endanger the Obama Presidency" or undermine "U.S. security".

Finally, note the hilarious conceit of addressing Obama directly—as though he might actually be reading and carefully considering her words for himself.  This is the fatal flaw of liberals, which comes screaming to the fore whenever the Democrats they revere are in power: they genuinely believe they have an ally in the White House who shares their concerns and cares about what they have to say.  The fact that in Obama's case we already have mountains of evidence to dispel that fantasy—even after so little time—matters not at all; like all dogmatic beliefs, this one is proof against reason.  And the fact that people who labor under such a towering delusion also spend so much of their time accusing others of political naivete is just one of the many brain-numbing ironies we get to enjoy whenever a Democrat becomes president.

Proud to be an American

Jeremy Scahill has some required reading for the weekend.  An excerpt:

While much of the "torture debate" has emphasized the so-called "enhanced interrogation techniques" defined by the twisted legal framework of the Office of Legal Council memos, IRF [Immediate Reaction Force] teams in effect operate at Guantánamo as an extrajudicial terror squad that has regularly brutalized prisoners outside of the interrogation room, gang beating them, forcing their heads into toilets, breaking bones, gouging their eyes, squeezing their testicles, urinating on a prisoner's head, banging their heads on concrete floors and hog-tying them -- sometimes leaving prisoners tied in excruciating positions for hours on end. [...]

[O]ne Guantanamo lawyer, Ahmed Ghappour, said that his clients were reporting "a ramping up in abuse" since Obama was elected, including "beatings, the dislocation of limbs, spraying of pepper spray into closed cells, applying pepper spray to toilet paper and over-force feeding detainees who are on hunger strike," according to Reuters. [...]

While the dominant media coverage of the U.S. torture apparatus has portrayed these tactics as part of a "Bush era" system that Obama has now ended, when it comes to the IRF teams, that is simply not true. "[D]etainees live in constant fear of physical violence. Frequent attacks by IRF teams heighten this anxiety and reinforce that violence can be inflicted by the guards at any moment for any perceived infraction, or sometimes without provocation or explanation," according to CCR.

As you read the rest I'm sure your heart will swell with pride at this ongoing demonstration of our unique commitment to human rights, just like mine did.

Coincidentally, Scahill's article was published the same day as this one:

On Tuesday, the United States won a seat on the United Nations Human Rights Council.  

Each of the 47 members of the council is not only responsible for promoting human rights abroad, but they are also responsible for setting a high standard for human rights in their own countries. In support of its candidacy, the U.S. pledged to promote "human rights and fundamental freedoms of all persons within the United States."

I know this might seem just the tiniest bit ironic on the surface, but remember, Guantanamo is not within the United States.

I demand better lies about Iran

You're probably aware that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's threat to "wipe Israel off the map" is apocryphal, which is of course why it's so ideologically useful and is therefore quoted every other nanosecond by Israel's army of trained parrots (like this guy).  But apparently the fib in its current form isn't quite menacing enough, so the Times of London decided to up the ante:

Aipac’s 6,000 delegates are being urged to bombard Capitol Hill with demands that Congress support ever more draconian sanctions against Iran whose Government has threatened to wipe Israel off the face of the map.

I think we'd all agree this is a big improvement; "off the face of the map" sounds much more sinister and threatening than boring old "off the map", suggesting as it does "face of the earth" and thus invoking actual geography rather than a mere geographic metaphor.

But while I give the Times credit for undertaking the important work of fattening this lie, I'm confident they can do much better.  I won't be satisfied until I read that what Ahmadinejad really said was that he wanted to "wipe Israel off the face of the map using our enormous stockpile of illicit thermonuclear weapons that we've hidden from the world for years!  YEARS!  BWAH HA HA HA!"  I know this may seem ambitious, but what's the point of having the most sophisticated propaganda system in the world if it can't produce sufficiently entertaining lies?

One of our submarines

No posting for a few days—I've got a stratovolcano (and possibly some trees) to ogle.  Enjoy your weekend.

BACK: And in case you're curious, here's the volcano in question:

To boldly not go where one man has gone before

J.J. Abrams, director of the upcoming Star Trek XI: The Cash-In, explains why I have no desire to see it:

"I didn't know there had been 10 films," laughed Abrams, explaining that although he and his stars all held the "Trek" canon sacred, they were freed by their lack of awareness. "I've gotta tell you, approaching it from a non-fan point of view allowed me to be a little less precious about it. I didn't feel like I had to adhere to exactly what had been done already for four-and-a-half decades. Instead, I could go into it with a little bit more of an open mind.

"Our goal was to honor and respect what [the 'Trek' fans] love so much," Abrams said. "And yet, make our own statement." 

Yes, being "freed" by a "lack of awareness" to "make our own statement" so often produces worthwhile results.  Case in point: I remember an interview from 1994 with the writers of the thankfully-forgotten Star Trek: Generations who admitted that they, too, had never followed the original Star Trek.  They described how in the process of disgorging their script, they suddenly looked at each other with the shared realization that Captain Kirk had to die.  So two schmucks who'd never felt a connection to the original characters or story nonetheless decided it was their place to ornament their screenplay with the death of one of the most famous figures in science fiction.  Thanks for killing off my childhood icon, jackasses!

(You'll be happy to hear that one of them is currently writing the screenplay for a twice-unnecessary regurgitation of The Thing, which prompted this perfect comment on IMDB: "Hollywood is officially idea-free!")

ONE MORE REASON TO BE EXCITED: CNET says "the first 20 minutes contain not only ear-splitting action sequences, but brand-drops of both Nokia and Budweiser ... and the oddly effective use of the Beastie Boys' 1994 song 'Sabotage.'"  And I think we all recognize that what the tired old Star Trek was missing the most was prominent product placement.

(Not to mention ear-splitting action sequences and pop music tie-ins; after all, what's so special about Star Trek that it needs to be handled differently from any of the other dreck Hollywood keeps pumping out?  Transformers, Star Trek, whatever—it's all just product, people!)

There Might Be Blood

This is non-negotiable: I'm afraid the use of "reboot" in non-technical contexts is going to have to end, now.  To Hollywood pukes (easily the worst offenders): no, you are not "rebooting" Star Trek, the Lone Ranger, Roger Rabbit, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Spawn, Predator, Nightmare on Elm Street, RoboCop, etc etc etc ad nauseam, no matter how iPod it may sound to you.  If you must use a "re-" word try "retread", "rehash", or my personal favorite, "regurgitation"—any of which are far more accurate.  But the next publicist who uses that word is going to regret it.

You have been warned.

And while I'm at it, no, you can't "reboot" your life or your romance or your career.  Barack Obama can't "reboot" capitalism, America's image, or the music industry.  Yes, I know it sounds so hip and cool that you could practically piss yourself every time you say it, just like "2.0" did a year ago, but I can cyber-guarantee you that once virtual reality sets in it's going sound even less hella cool than "information superhighway" does today.  Yes, that's right: even less hella cool.

(Not convinced?  Thomas Friedman himself—the man with the unfailing anti-ear—has landed on it with all the enthusiasm of a fly on a steaming dog turd.  What more do you need to know?)

So if everyone will just back slowly away from this unutterably lame tech loan word, nobody gets hurt.  And by "hurt" I have in mind something involving splinters, barbecue sauce, and an underfed Schnauzer.  Are we clear on this?

There, I'm glad we've finally put that unpleasant episode behind us.

Obama administration demands a halt to reckless honesty by Israel

For years now (and with the full support of the United States), the Israeli government has been stealing as much Palestinian land as it can in every way it can, while simultaneously pretending to negotiate seriously with whatever co-opted entity happens to be claiming to represent Palestinian interests at the moment.  The technical term for this is the "peace process".  The goal has always been 1) to delay a final settlement as long as possible, thus allowing for the theft of the maximum amount of territory, or failing that, 2) to leave the Palestinians with meaningless administrative responsibility for the tiniest and most worthless possible parcels of land.  The technical term for this highly undesirable but increasingly unavoidable latter outcome is the "two-state solution".  And continuing the "peace process" in pursuit of a "two-state solution" is critical to keeping international criticism and public pressure for a genuine resolution of the issue at manageable levels.

Key to all of this is constant lying, of course, and Israeli governments have generally understood this necessity and deployed the proper euphemisms.  But like frothing right-wingers everywhere, the Netanyahu government (and Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman in particular) has shown a distressing tendency to just blurt out the unvarnished truth.  And the U.S., in its role as the "honest broker" (another technical term), has finally had enough of this irresponsible behavior:

The Obama Administration has signalled a tougher approach towards Israel ahead of fresh talks on the Middle East peace process by insisting it must endorse the creation of an independent Palestinian state.

"Israel has to work toward a two-state solution," declared Vice-President Joe Biden today in a speech to the annual conference of a powerful pro-Israel lobby group in Washington.

And it appears that the message is getting through:

Less than a month after Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman publicly declared all peace talks with the Palestinians were dead, the controversial Yisraeli Beiteinu head used a visit to Rome to insist that the government was dedicated to producing a peace deal with the Palestinians, and said he was confident that the Netanyahu government would "reach a secure and definitive peace" with not just the Palestinians, but all the Arab nations as well.

Further pointing to a dramatic shift in the hawkish government’s official position, Deputy Foreign Minister Daniel Ayalon says that, despite Lieberman’s previous claims to the contrary, the government would abide by the commitments of previous governments and would pursue a two-state solution.

Which is a shame, since I was enjoying this rare truth opening and hoped it might continue for a few more months.  But to the relief of the "honest broker", it looks like the "peace process" towards a "two-state solution" will soon be back in full swing.

UPDATE: You may think you've noticed some "changes" in this posting, but has the posting changed—or have you?  Just what is objective reality anyway?  Can we ever truly "know" what I wrote last night?

C.H. on B.O.

I can't quite pin it down, but Chris Hedges seems mildly dissatisfied with the alpha Democrat:

Barack Obama is a brand. And the Obama brand is designed to make us feel good about our government while corporate overlords loot the Treasury, our elected officials continue to have their palms greased by armies of corporate lobbyists, our corporate media diverts us with gossip and trivia and our imperial wars expand in the Middle East. [...]

Brand Obama offers us an image that appears radically individualistic and new. It inoculates us from seeing that the old engines of corporate power and the vast military-industrial complex continue to plunder the country. Corporations, which control our politics, no longer produce products that are essentially different, but brands that are different. Brand Obama does not threaten the core of the corporate state any more than did Brand George W. Bush.

Read the rest here.

Twit...err...

Like a devoted hound that forgives its master all the cuffs and kicks, Michael Moore has tagged gamely along behind his superhero to the Internet-flavor-of-the-month, and this is the first thought he wanted to share with the world: "Thank you, President Obama, for all that you do."

Aw.  And to think I'd almost lost my faith in true love.

"Historic suspicions"

Here's Barack Obama speaking at the recent Summit of the Americas:

I think it's important to recognize, given historic suspicions, that the United States' policy should not be interference in other countries, but that also means that we can't blame the United States for every problem that arises in the hemisphere.

"Historic suspicions"?  Yes, I imagine the International Court of Justice decision condemning the United States for its covert war against Nicaragua might have raised Nicaraguan suspicions of U.S. interference.  And I guess the report of the UN's Historical Clarification Commission for Guatemala, documenting U.S. backing of the genocidal forces the U.S. had installed in the 1954 coup, might have made the Guatemalans suspicious as well.  And I suppose watching U.S. planes, helicopter gunships, and warships destroying the El Chorrillo neighborhood of Panama during the 1989 invasion might also have given the Panamians some suspicions about U.S. interference.

(For just one second, imagine the U.S. reaction if Germany's Angela Merkel gave a speech in Israel calling out the "historic suspicions" of Jews regarding past German "interference" in their affairs.  In fairness to Obama, he did subsequently refer to "past errors, where those errors have been made," though he also said that discussion of those purported errors only rises to the level of "stale debates"; I'll leave the analogy to you.)

By contrast, here's how Obama characterized Venezuela:

You take a country like Venezuela -- I have great differences with Hugo Chavez on matters of economic policy and matters of foreign policy. His rhetoric directed at the United States has been inflammatory. There have been instances in which we've seen Venezuela interfere with some of the -- some of the countries that surround Venezuela in ways that I think are a source of concern.

So centuries of extensively-documented U.S. intervention in Latin America can be dismissed as "historic suspicions"—but when we're talking about allegations pulled out of the collective ass of the U.S. government and leveled at an official enemy, there's no longer any need to qualify this "interference" (which any reasonable person should agree is rightly a "source of concern" to us, though Obama tried to keep this menacing threat in perspective by noting that "Venezuela is a country whose defense budget is probably 1/600th of the United States").

And this was Obama's laugh line in response to Nicaraguan president Daniel Ortega's account of just a fraction of the vicious U.S. interference that produced these historic suspicions:

"I am very grateful that President Ortega didn’t blame me for things that happened when I was three months old," Obama said in his only direct reference to the Nicaraguan leader.

("I am very glad that Prime Minister Netanyahu didn't blame me for things that happened before I was born," Merkel said in her only direct reference to the Israeli leader.)  The article also notes that Ortega "prompted a smirk from Obama when he referred to 'Yankee troops.'"  Yes, what a hilarious anachronism!  How amusing our victims can sometimes be!  Like when the U.S.-backed Contras in Nicaragua would cut off men's testicles and leave them in their mouths?  Hey, what's the matter, cat got your tongue?  Oh, no, my mistake, you've got a mouthful of balls!  Ha ha ha!  Maybe Obama should have quipped, "I am very grateful that President Ortega didn't blame me for the U.S.-sponsored castrations and nun-raping that happened when I was still snorting cocaine in my youth."  The laughs just never stop, do they?

The smirk in question—which, as this small survey of his comments indicates, was only the most visible sign of Obama's paternalistic contempt for the banana republicans all around him and their petty obsession with the hundreds of thousands of their citizens killed by direct and indirect U.S. intervention over the years—looked something like this:

All of which illustrates why Obama truly is a perfect representative for the U.S.A., since he is, without a doubt, one of the most unbelievably sanctimonious assholes I've ever heard.