The Distant Ocean

A minor correction

Alan Grayson's heart is in the right place, but he got this wrong:

"If you get sick, America, the Republican health care plan is this: die quickly," [Grayson] said. "That's right. The Republicans want you to die quickly if you get sick."

No, the Republicans don't want you to die quickly, they want you to die profitably.  And as long as you're doing that they're happier if you stay alive longer, because after you shuffle off this mortal coil you stop being a human ATM for their various constituencies, like health care-denial corporations, pharmacidical firms, and residential fleecing facilities for the elderly.

And of course it's not just Republicans.

Other than than, totally agreed.

Apple tools reject Apple tool

I know you'll be shocked, shocked to hear that a corporation is censoring political content:

Apple rejected a free iPhone application that advocated a single-payer health system, calling the application "politically charged," according to the app’s developer.

Red Daly, a 22 year-old computer science grad student at Stanford, submitted his iSinglePayer iPhone app for Apple’s approval on Aug. 21. A little more than a month later Apple rejected it on the grounds of its content, Daly told Wired.com.

The iSinglePayer application includes facts and figures that support a Canadian-style health insurance plan where the government insures citizens and reimburses health providers, but doesn’t employ the doctors. The app also uses GPS to determine a user’s political representatives, and how much money health companies have given them in campaign donations. It also gives users a single button to call lawmakers.

It appears that some political apps are more equal than others.

Ok, I admit I mainly posted about this so I could use that title.  Still, jerks.

ALSO: As long as we're on the topic of politically-themed iPhone apps (seriously—how often is that going to happen?), I have to say that this is pretty funny.

Translating Lewis Anselem on Honduras

I'm proud to be an American today, as I listen to our fine officials and their stirring declarations:

[U.S. Ambassador to the OAS Lewis] Anselem also criticized Zelaya for fueling violence by slipping back into Honduras last week and holing up in the Brazilian Embassy, from where he has called on his supporters to take to the streets.

"The return of Zelaya absent an agreement is irresponsible and foolish ... He should cease and desist from making wild allegations and from acting as though he were starring in an old movie," Anselm said.

I think there might be some subtle message I'm missing here.  Let me see if I can get the Tony Snow Translation Device recalibrated to work on Anselem's remark...ah, there we go:

"The return of Zelaya is an irresponsible and foolish way of highlighting tacit U.S. support for the Honduran coup regime.  He should cease and desist from taking actions that undermine our strategy of running out the clock on his presidency until an election can be held in Honduras that has a more desirable outcome than the last one.  What does he think he is—the democratically-elected president of a sovereign nation?"

Man, that thing sure is useful.

For fun, try comparing Anselem's invective here to the furiously harsh rebuke the Obama administration delivered to Israel a few weeks ago.  I realize it would be easy to conclude that there's some kind of double standard going on, but we have to keep in mind that the Israelis are basically Europeans, whereas Hondurans like Zelaya are just little confused brown folk who can't seem to accept that their affairs should be governed from Washington.  We have to be harsh with them for their own good, the way you'd correct a puppy who ran out into the street.  We don't want you getting smooshed by a truck, Manuel!

Obama at the U.N.

I'll just say this: if hypocrisy was fatal in large doses, Joe Biden would be president now.  And if it was both fatal and communicable there'd be no one left alive on the entire East Coast.

Foregone conclusion, concluded

One of the few admirable things the Obama administration had done up to this point (which actually did exceed the measurement error of 3 nanofluxes on the change-o-meter) was to take a fairly strong rhetorical stance against Israeli settlement expansion.  The Israelis thumbed their noses, of course, leaving Obama with the choice of either backing up the rhetoric or abandoning it.  So which did he choose?  The answer may surprise you!

Prodding Israel and the Palestinian Authority to restart talks aimed at a permanent resolution of their decades-old conflict, President Obama dropped a demand for an Israeli settlement freeze, U.S., Israeli and Palestinian officials said. [...]

Sitting with Netanyahu and Abbas, Obama softened his regular language on a settlement "freeze," saying that Israel has had meaningful discussions about "restraining" settlement activity.

Hey, I said "may".  It may also surprise you to learn that polar bears like cold weather.  What am I, a mind reader?

I do like this notion of "restraining" settlement activity, though; you can imagine a similar story informing us that police asked a murderer to restrain his stabby activity while they continue to hold negotiations between him and his victim.  Or maybe you can't.  I think we already established that I'm not a mind reader, didn't we?  But I digress.

Several U.S. officials said that Obama told Abbas that although the U.S. believe a settlement freeze would create a better atmosphere for talks to begin, the lack of one should not be used an as excuse not to talk.

"Let's not have the perfect be the enemy of the good," Obama told Abbas, according to the officials.

More like "let's not have the awful be the enemy of the abysmal", but why quibble?  So now we're back to the standard U.S. position: Israel can keep stealing Palestinian land, using the peace-delaying process (technically referred to as the "peace process") as cover, and the Palestinians are expected to help the charade along by showing up for the meetings.  You couldn't even call this a fork in the road; it's more like the driver got distracted and the car drifted a few feet, but now we're right back to the center line.  On the road to nowhere.  In the dark.  And there is no driver.

Look, people, these metaphors don't write themselves.

I think my favorite bit was this, though:

U.S. President Barack Obama told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas Tuesday that he was dissatisfied with their recent foot-dragging on getting Israeli-Palestinian talks restarted.

A senior U.S. administration source Tuesday told Haaretz that "during the tripartite meeting Obama strongly expressed his impatience."

It's getting more and more difficult to choose Obama's most repellent trait, but I'm sure we'd all agree that the smug, paternalistic condescension is a serious contender.  Or maybe we wouldn't, because, well, minds, reading...you know.

Thanks for not killing us anymore

At a restaurant recently I asked a friend: isn't it hard to believe that just a few years ago there would have been people smoking at the tables all around us?  It's a mark of how much things have changed that the idea seemed so surprising, and that breathable, non-lethal air in restaurants has become something we basically take for granted around here.

Two new studies have verified the health benefits of smoking bans:

Overall, American, Canadian, and European cities that have implemented smoking bans had an average of 17 percent fewer heart attacks in the first year, compared with communities who had not taken such measures.

Then, each year after implementing smoking bans (at least for the first three years, the longest period studied), smoke-free communities have an average 26 percent decline in heart attacks, compared with those areas that still allow smokers to light up in public places.

(This echoes a study I mentioned a few months ago that showed a 41% drop in heart attack hospitalizations over three years thanks to a smoking ban in Pueblo, Colorado.)

And the benefits also extend to non-smokers inhaling the smoke from the other end of the cigarette:

Nonsmokers have a 25 percent to 30 percent higher risk of heart attack if they inhale smoke at home or at work, and smoke has been shown to affect heart health within minutes, says [Dr. David] Meyers.

"We can measure chemical changes within 20 minutes," he says. "The changes that occur primarily involve the clotting system. Basically, exposure to smoke makes your blood sticky and real clot-y and that's what causes heart attacks."

This is why I support smoking bans: because I'm happy with my blood's standard viscosity, I'm opposed to olfactory abuse in all its forms, and being alive is one of my favorite pastimes.  So to those people who've gotten hooked on the products of some of the most evil corporations on the planet, I say, sincerely: thanks for not killing us anymore.  I'm sure it's a pain to go smoke outside in the cold and I can imagine that the looks from non-smokers get on your nerves, but I thank you from the bottom of my heart for not causing my blood to clot excessively and, you know, terminate my existence.

The larger point here (and one that gives me hope) is that behaviors that are destructive to other people are continually becoming less acceptable.  As the movement against smoking gained traction in the U.S. I noticed a direct effect throughout my extended family, nearly all of whom used to be smokers and nearly all of whom no longer are—and I have no doubt that the lower acceptance and higher social costs of smoking contributed to that change.  Even before smoking bans were adopted where they lived, the growing sense that it was no longer acceptable to inflict cigarette smoke on innocent bystanders led many of them to change their smoking habits.

There's been a similar slow and steady growth in the notion that we need to take responsibility for the environmental consequences of everything we do.  The environment has become a central consideration in almost every public activity in a way that seemed unimaginable 20 or 30 years ago; witness the ubiquity of recycling, the rise of green architecture, and the changes in the way large events are handled (in terms of waste management, energy efficiency, environmental impact, and so on), to name just a few of the more visible effects.  The idea that it's immoral to harm the environment or to waste the planet's resources is becoming more widespread every day.

So I'd say the movement against smoking has contributed in a small but important way to the growing acceptance of a core principle of the left: that we need to take responsibility for the way our actions affect other people.  I've mentioned two of the signs of this pattern of change, but they're only the tip of the iceberg; in looking back at the past few decades I see a greater regard for human rights, an increased belief in the need for universal accountability, the steady growth of boundary-defying solidarity movements, and many other positive trends that can be traced to this same principle.

Against the best efforts of its worst members, civilization is slowly becoming civilized.  That's a major change for the better, and it's the one thing that makes me the most hopeful for the future.

New Yorkers shocked by unexpected appearance of facts in local rag

Congratulations to the Yes Men (or Los Hombres del Sí, as I like to think of them) for achieving the seemingly impossible feat of making the New York Post look intelligent:

Beautiful.  Go see the entire edition online here.

MEANWHILE, IN THE ACTUAL NEW YORK POST: Gabriel Schoenfeld is talking about yes men as well—"Osama's American yes-men", that is:

Osama bin Laden's recommended reading list has been growing. The surprise isn't that the al Qaeda-approved books all condemn Jewish influence on US policy -- but that the authors in effect return the favor.

In his latest audiotape, the al Qaeda leader urges Americans to read "The Israel Lobby" by academics John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt and Jimmy Carter's "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid." [...]

But now there's some mutual backscratching: Bin Laden's endorsees are calling for America to pull out of Afghanistan -- which is also Osama's top demand these days.

Just this Tuesday, Mearsheimer and Walt signed an open letter to President Obama saying that the US war effort is becoming "increasingly detached from considerations of length, cost and consequences." They call on Obama to scale back US forces and "focus on negotiations with moderate Taliban elements," a step that would surely please bin Laden highly. Carter, for his part, opposes an Iraq-style surge in Afghanistan: "Every time we launch one of our unmanned drones from Kansas and kill 100 people," he says, "we make 100,000 new enemies."

Furthermore, Osama bin Laden reportedly takes a dump every single day, and sometimes twice.  Therefore, constipation is patriotic!

Welcome back, Potter

Former CIGNA Oberführer Wendell Potter, who to his eternal credit "finally came to question the ethics of what I had done and been a part of for nearly two decades" and left his lucrative health care-denial job to join the truth heroes at the Center for Media and Democracy, offers a timely overview of the ways his former industry has prevented any unprofitable changes to the U.S. health care system over the years.  An excerpt:

[T]he insurers formed a front group called the Health Benefits Coalition to kill efforts to pass a Patients Bill of Rights. While it was billed as a broad-based business coalition that was led by the National Federation of Independent Business and included the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Health Benefits Coalition in reality got the lion’s share of its funding and guidance from the big insurance companies and their trade associations. [...]

One of the key strategies of the Health Benefits Coalition as it was gearing up for battle in late 1998 was to stir up support among conservative talk radio and other media. Among the tactics the PR firm implemented for the Coalition was to form alliances with important conservative groups, such as the Christian Coalition and the Family Research Council, to get them to send letters to Congress or appear at HBC press conferences. The Health Benefits Coalition also launched an advertising campaign in conservative media outlets. The message was that President Clinton owed a debt to the liberal base of the “Democrat” Party and would try to pay back that debt by advancing the type of big government agenda on health care that he failed to get in 1994. The tactics worked. Industry allies in Congress made sure the Patients’ Bill of Rights would not become law.

And the conclusion, which makes an important point:

During my 20 years in corporate communications and public affairs, I participated in the steady growth and influence of largely invisible persuasion -- and at a time when newsrooms are shrinking and investigative journalism seems to be vanishing. The number of PR people long ago surpassed the number of working journalists in this country. And that ratio of PR people to reporters will continue to grow. The clear winners as this shift occurs are big, rich corporations and other special interests. The losers are average Americans, most of whom are completely unaware how their thoughts and actions are being manipulated to achieve corporate goals on Capitol Hill.

There are many reasons for the media's awfulness, but one of them is just the fact that reporters swim in an ocean of PR.  And as media corporations have cut staff over the years there's only been a greater motivation for those who remain to take the shortcuts they can—and the PR industry is right there to fill the gap.  Which is just one of the many ways that the pursuit of corporate profits makes it easier for CIGNA, Pfizer, and their cohorts to plant their lies in our heads.

By all means, read the rest—and you may also want to follow Potter's blog.

[ Previous Pottery here. ]

Presented for your astonishment

Michael Moore's river of self-delusion truly does run deep and wide:

And as for Summers and Treasury secretary Tim Geithner (also not kindly treated [in the film]), Moore told the audience in a brief question and answer period that he hoped Obama had brought them on in the same way that some banks hire robbers to help them guard against future theft: "Maybe that's what Obama's doing -- he hired the people who robbed all the money to help him get it back. That's the optimistic version."

Noticing that the audience seemed lukewarm about the president, Moore rushed to add that the election was the best day of the last decade of his life and said, "Instead of us piling on him, he needs our support."

Speaking in a convention hall earlier, Moore said, "I have the feeling [Obama's] faking right to go left. Let's hope I'm right." And he chided his audience for not doing more to visibly support Obama in the trials of town-hall season. "I see him out there on his own," he said. "Who's got his back?"

Look, I could talk about battered wives and cities in Sweden and so on, but it would just be cruel.  This is a cry for help, people.  Would someone please get this man the psychotherapy he so desperately needs?

VOLTAIRE WEIGHS IN: Coincidentally (maybe a little too coincidentally), I read this just last night:

"Oh, Pangloss!" cried Candide, "though hadst not guessed at this abomination; it is the end.  I must at last renounce thy optimism."

"What is this optimism?" said Cacambo.

"Alas!" said Candide, "it is the madness of maintaining that everything is right when it is wrong."

We chain ourselves to giant dump trucks so you don't have to

I'm sure we've all thought to ourselves, man, I sure would love to chain myself to a giant dump truck.  That would totally kick ass.  But somehow it always gets pushed down to the bottom of the list, behind things like washing dishes and playing Scrabble and whatnot.

But luckily the good people at Greenpeace have a lot of free time on their hands, so they're willing to do it for us:

On the eve of the Harper-Obama meeting in Washington D.C., about 25 daring Greenpeace activists have locked down and blockaded a giant dump truck and shovel at Shell’s massive Albian Sands open-pit mine in northern Alberta to send the message that the tar sands are a global climate crime that must be stopped.

Activists from Canada, the United States and France entered the mine site, about 60 kilometres north of Fort McMurray, at 8:00 a.m. They blockaded a giant three-storey dump truck and hydraulic shovel by chaining together pick-up trucks. Two teams then scaled the truck and shovel and chained themselves to them, while another team placed giant banners on the tarry ground reading, "Tar Sands: Climate Crime."

Wow, I sure would like to see that!

And just why is Greenpeace doing this?  They've written a long and no doubt fascinating report which I'm sure you're itching to digest in its entirety, but I know you're probably also pressed to get back to a game of Yahtzee or somesuch, so you can just read some of the bullet points instead:

• Due to their extreme energy intensity, the tar sands have a higher carbon footprint than any other commercial oil product on the planet. Some projects are now 10 times dirtier than production of oil in the North Sea.
• Tar sands development "cannibalizes" Canada’s natural gas production. Enough natural gas to heat millions of homes is used every day for tar sands operations.
• Greenhouse gas emissions from the tar sands could grow to between 127 and 140 million tonnes by 2020, exceeding the current emissions of Austria, Portugal, Ireland, Denmark and likely Belgium.
• Tar sands revenue and oil industry lobbying have made Canada "a global carbon bully." Canada has actively fought standards to lower the carbon content of fuels, lobbied against US legislation to lower emissions, muzzled federal scientists and obstructed international climate change negotiations.

(Thanks to Greenpeace's designation of Canada as a "global carbon bully", we can spend some time engaging in one of America's favorite pastimes.)

I'd say this was my favorite take on this story:

Alberta's vast oilsands operations could be vulnerable to terrorist attack, analysts said Tuesday, after more than 20 Greenpeace activists infiltrated Shell's Muskeg River Mine, prompting the company to shutter its 155,000-barrel-a-day operation for several hours. [...]

Nathan Jacobson, an Israeli-Canadian businessman who led a security assessment of Alberta's oilpatch in 2007, said the breach reveals serious flaws in oilsands security.

"For 25 Greenpeace people to get in there — boy, is that a red light going off," he said from his home in Tel Aviv.

I can't help but feel that in a healthy society—you know, one that was concerned with genuine mortal threats rather than ideological bludgeons like terrorism—the red light going off would be the reckless pursuit of a project that accelerates our rush toward a civilization-smashing change in the planet's climate.  But that's just me.

To summarize

All of this...

...actually boils down to just one thing.

ADDING: I often used to say I thought "Dick Armey" referred to all Republicans, not just one of them.  And lo and behold:

Today, Armey will help lead an angry invasion of the nation's capital: a collection of "tea party" protesters and anti-Obama picketers marching from the White House to Capitol Hill to oppose what they see as the perilous, ravenous, unchecked growth of Big Government, embodied in the president's expansive proposal to overhaul the healthcare system. [...]

Healthcare reform has hit the rawest of conservative nerves, and if Obama's effort fails, Armey will happily take credit, as he does for defeating President Clinton's overhaul attempt 16 years ago. The main organizer of today's march is FreedomWorks, a conservative advocacy group led by Armey that was responsible for much of the venting at town halls last month.

I'm really, really glad I can start using that joke again.

Climate catastrophe roundup

So what's been happening in the Arctic over the past decade?

The Arctic climate has been warmer over the past decade than during any 10-year period in 2,000 years, according to a study by an international research team that adds powerful new evidence that human-generated greenhouse gases have speeded the pace of the planet's recent warming.

The report from an international team of climate scientists concludes that climate change in the Arctic has accelerated since the Industrial Revolution, abruptly reversing a long-term worldwide cooling trend. [...]

In another sign of the drastic effects of global warming on the world's far northern regions, newly released photos of 40 Alaskan glaciers taken by a U.S. Geological Survey scientist show the glaciers are continuing to shrink more rapidly than ever.

Anything else going on up there?

"On a calm day, you can see 20 or more 'seeps' out across this lake," said Canadian researcher Rob Bowen, sidling his small rubber boat up beside one of them. A tossed match would have set it ablaze.

"It's essentially pure methane."

Pure methane, gas bubbling up from underwater vents, escaping into northern skies, adds to the global-warming gases accumulating in the atmosphere. And pure methane escaping in the massive amounts known to be locked in the Arctic permafrost and seabed would spell a climate catastrophe.

Man, none of that sounds good.  So I'm sure people are getting more and more concerned, aren't they?

A significant proportion of the population have become more sceptical about climate change and the link with man-made emissions of greenhouse gases despite the fact that the scientific evidence has become stronger.

A survey of public opinion has found that 29 per cent of people believe claims that human activities are changing the climate are exaggerated compared with 15 per cent of respondents to a similar survey carried out in 2003.

Hmm.  But at least the U.S. is taking serious action and not just trying to palm off responsibility on developing nations, since we've contributed three times more greenhouse gas to the atmosphere than any other country on the planet—right?

"Let me say bluntly that the tenor of negotiations in the formal U.N. track has been difficult," Mr. Stern told the House Select Committee for Energy Independence and Global Warming. "Developing countries tend to see a problem not of their own making that they are being asked to fix in ways which, they fear, could stifle their ability to lift their standards of living."

Well, ok, but even if we don't make the emissions cuts that are mandatory right now to avert catastrophic climate change, can't we save ourselves with some kind of science miracle down the road?  After all, it worked great for the ozone hole:

This is not the funny kind of irony: Scientists say the chemicals that helped solve the last global environmental crisis -- the hole in the ozone layer -- are making the current one worse.

The chemicals, called hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), were introduced widely in the 1990s to replace ozone-depleting gases used in air conditioners, refrigerators and insulating foam.

They worked: The earth's protective shield seems to be recovering.

But researchers say what's good for ozone is bad for climate change. In the atmosphere, these replacement chemicals act like "super" greenhouse gases, with a heat-trapping power that can be 4,470 times that of carbon dioxide.

Now, scientists say, the world must find replacements for the replacements -- or these super-emissions could cancel out other efforts to stop global warming.

So it looks like the best we can hope for is that the zany geoengineering projects we eventually undertake in desperation to try to undo the disaster we've created—like shooting sulfur particles into the upper atmosphere—will at least have amusing side effects.  Like, say, giant swarms of locusts in Washington, D.C.

In a nutshell: we're doomed.

Have a great weekend!

A controversial notion

Imagine my surprise when I read this nugget from James Traub in the New York Times:

The idea that there is an "Israel lobby," with its undertones of dual loyalty, is a controversial notion. It has been around since the early 1970s at least, but it became a topic of wide discussion only after the publication of a notorious article in The London Review of Books in 2006 by the political scientists John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt.

Yes, it's wonderful that this "controversial notion" of the mere existence of a so-called Israel lobby is finally coming to the mainstream, since it's apparently freed AIPAC (the American Israel PAC, which has been known by that name since 1959) to openly identify itself as "America's pro-Israel lobby".  No longer must they hide in the shadows!

I can think of a few similarly controversial notions for Traub to write about:

• The mixture of 78% nitrogen and 21% oxygen known as "air" is breathable by human beings
• Dog turds may not be an ideal snack food
• War and Peace is a somewhat lengthy book
• Porcupines: pointy?

Seriously, though, I think it's wonderful that it's slowly becoming acceptable for a New York Times writer to allow that Israel may in fact not be the only country on the planet which has no lobby.

Dead bill walking

By my calculations, "health care reform" involved some meaningful level of reform of the health care system for about 16 picoseconds, and from that point forward it's just been a matter of seeing what pathetic joke of a bill corporate Democrats are going to settle on and whether or not they'll even be able to get that passed.  If you're interested in reading about this disaster-in-progress, Matt Taibbi examines it in detail.

I thought this was a particularly good point:

The bad news is our failed health care system won't get fixed, because it exists entirely within the confines of yet another failed system: the political entity known as the United States of America.

Just as we have a medical system that is not really designed to care for the sick, we have a government that is not equipped to fix actual crises. What our government is good at is something else entirely: effecting the appearance of action, while leaving the actual reform behind in a diabolical labyrinth of ingenious legislative maneuvers.

Over the course of this summer, those two failed systems have collided in a spectacular crossroads moment in American history.

(By the way, when Taibbi calls the U.S. a "failed political entity" I think he's speaking from the viewpoint of the vast majority of human beings who live under that entity, and not from the viewpoint of the relatively small number of people who've worked hard to make the system what it is today and who no doubt feel it's working marvelously well.)

Read the rest here.

You will wilt under the fury of our harsh rebuke

Feel the fury! ("US fury as Israel defies settlement freeze call"):

"We regret the reports of Israel’s plans to approve additional settlement construction," Robert Gibbs, the White House spokesman, said. "As the President has said before, the United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued settlement expansion and we urge it to stop." [...] Kurt Hoyer, a spokesman for the US Embassy in Tel Aviv, said that Washington would be unlikely to accept anything "contrary to the spirit of negotiations they’ve been undertaking".

Hear the harsh rebuke! ("US harshly rebukes Israel on settlement plans"): 

The White House said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's settlement plans were "inconsistent" with commitments the Jewish state has made previously and harmful to U.S. attempts to lay the groundwork for a resumption in peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians. [...]

"We are working to create a climate in which negotiations can take place, and such actions make it harder to create such a climate," [White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said in a statement].

Now I know these blistering verbal assaults have probably scorched the eyeballs right out of your head, but get this: I've actually been holding back the worst.  I know, I know, it doesn't seem possible, but I swear it's true.  So now allow me to present the unedited, uncensored blast of righteous outrage in all its withering intensity:

We regret the reports of Israel's plans to approve additional settlement construction.  Continued settlement activity is inconsistent with Israel's commitment under the Roadmap.

As the President has said before, the United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued settlement expansion and we urge that it stop.  We are working to create a climate in which negotiations can take place, and such actions make it harder to create such a climate.

We do appreciate Israel's stated intent to place limits on settlement activity and will continue to discuss this with the Israelis as these limitations are defined.

The U.S. commitment to Israel’s security is and will remain unshakeable.

Wow, the gloves really are off!  With the furiously harsh rebukes at such a fever pitch, can the breaking off of all diplomatic relations with Israel—or even, perhaps, U.S. bombing of Tel Aviv—be far behind?  I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

Let it float / It floats back to you

There's been no shortage of stories like this over the years:

"Why you want to put your shit in my salon?" [Ahmad] exclaims. Then he catches himself. "Sorry for the language, but sometimes it gets on my nerves."

"Gets on my nerves" is quite an understatement. Although Ahmad is talking figuratively, of Israeli settlements and Israeli walls and -- something you don't usually hear about -- Israeli trash dumps throughout the West Bank, scarring the landscape and invading Palestinian space, the reference to what is being dumped in the Palestinian salon applies literally as well as figuratively in the small village of Wadi Fuqin southwest of Bethlehem. A large settlement, Betar Illit, looms over this village and has on two occasions quite literally dumped its sewage down into the fertile valley where the village's life-sustaining agricultural land lies. That's sewage from a settlement of 25,000 poured onto a village of 1,200.

But now it seems the tables have been turned:

UN agencies and international aid groups urged Israel on Thursday to immediately ease its Gaza Strip blockade to allow in spare parts and building materials to repair the territory’s dilapidated sewage and water networks.

In a joint appeal, they also warned of environmental and health hazards, not only to Gaza, but to nearby Israel. Some 13 to 21 million gallons (about 50 to 80 million liters) of raw or partially treated waste sewage are pumped from Gaza into the Mediterranean every day for lack of treatment plants, and some of the waste is floating toward Israel, UN officials said.

(Of course the critical difference is that the Palestinians aren't intentionally dumping their sewage on Israelis; this is just one of many side effects of Israel's ongoing efforts to subject the subhumans next door to every form of privation, degradation, and humiliation.)

I can't help but think there's something deeply symbolic about this news.

"Increase profits at all costs"

If I had my way, words like these would be emblazoned in the minds of every human being on the planet:

[John] Kopchinski, appalled by Pfizer's tactics in selling the pain drug Bextra, filed a "qui tam" lawsuit in 2003, sparking federal and state probes that led to Wednesday's agreement by the company to pay $2.3 billion in civil and criminal penalties and plead guilty to a felony charge for promoting Bextra and 12 other drugs for unapproved uses and doses.

"In the Army I was expected to protect people at all costs," Kopchinski said in a statement. "At Pfizer I was expected to increase profits at all costs, even when sales meant endangering lives.

"I couldn't do that," added Kopchinski, 45, who was fired by Pfizer in March of 2003, two years before the company pulled Bextra from the market over concerns it raised the risk of heart attacks and strokes.

Is Pfizer uniquely evil among corporations?  Are Pfizer's executives uniquely evil among corporate executives?  No, definitely not.  Pfizer just happens to be in a business where it's more regularly presented with situations in which increasing profits requires endangering (or damaging, or ruining, or ending) lives, and its executives were only doing what any other corporation's executives would have done in their place.  This is the single most important thing to remember about corporations: that any corporation would do the same thing in similar circumstances.  If you ever doubt this, even for a moment, remind yourself that corporations will literally kill infants in order to make more money.  There is no lower bound.

That said, my two favorite words in this story, by far, are "plead guilty".  So thanks to John Kopchinski for forcing them out of Pfizer, and for coming forward with what he knew in the first place.

Putting the "BS" in PBS

I happened by PBS the other day when they took a break to blandish us thusly:

Check, Please! Bay Area is looking for an underwriter!
If you are seeking a unique sponsorship opportunity for your business and want to reach a prime demographic group through multiple platforms email us today...

"Reach a prime demographic group through multiple platforms"?  C'mon, guys, we're sitting right here.  Can't you at least do us the courtesy of being subtle about the fact that as far as you're concerned, we're nothing but pairs of eyes for corporate sponsors?  Just little nodes of potential consumption?

FAIR was warning about this trend years ago:

In a 1986 public notice, the FCC explained that "enhanced underwriting" would offer "significant potential benefits to public broadcasting in terms of attracting additional business support."

The "benefits" of making a public broadcasting system increasingly dependent on the same corporate sponsors that fund commercial TV seem dubious. Critics charge that corporate underwriting has led PBS stations to avoid controversial issues and focus too much on programming aimed at upscale audiences, to the neglect of the public they were originally intended to serve.

(For reference, "upscale audiences" = "prime demographic group".)

There was a day not that long ago when PBS's purpose was to provide, you know, broadcasting services for the public.  Now that they're just selling audiences to advertisers like the rest of the corporate media, they really should change the name—though I suppose "Supplier of Prime Demographic Groups to Underwriters through Multiple Platforms" doesn't quite have the same ring (and SPDGUMP doesn't exactly roll off the tongue either).

While they're at it, maybe they should change their standard sponsorship message as well.  Allow me to suggest an alternative:

This program was made possible by contributions to your PBS station from Upwardly Mobile Middle Class Consumers Like You.  Thank You!  But seriously, we're just as happy getting our money from ExxonMobil.