The Distant Ocean

Reprisal you can believe in

I'm sure you've heard about (and likely seen) those protesters singing their $5000-a-head song to Obama, but unless you're a San Francisco local you may not have heard this:

The White House threatened Thursday to exclude the San Francisco Chronicle from pooled coverage of its events in the Bay Area after the paper posted a video of a protest at a San Francisco fundraiser for President Obama last week, Chronicle Editor Ward Bushee said. White House guidelines governing press coverage of such events are too restrictive, Bushee said, and the newspaper was within its rights to film the protest and post the video.

(I didn't realize the Chronicle was responsible for getting that video out, and the notion that they deserve some level of praise for their reporting is novel and slightly disturbing.)

Man, you can just imagine the chorus of condemnation we're going to hear from outraged liberals over this blatant attempt at censorship, can't you?  Oh...wait, I think I flashed back to the Bush presidency for a moment there.  Sometimes I forget that things are completely different now that an articulate and intelligent Democrat is attacking basic freedoms.

IN DEFENSE OF THOSE $5000-A-HEAD PROTESTERS: Many people have shaken their heads in understandable dismay at the fact that these people paid $5000 for the privilege of telling Obama that they'd vote for him no matter what he's done to Bradley Manning (or anyone else).  But here's some relevant background that makes the situation a little clearer:

Naomi Pitcairn, the ringleader of the East Bay serenaders who disrupted President Obama's breakfast fundraiser to protest the treatment of accused WikiLeaks source Pfc. Bradley Manning, says she's actually a big supporter of the president.

In fact, records show she gave $28,500 to Obama's Victory Fund in 2008.

"He's the best shot we have," said Pitcairn, a fourth-generation heir to the Pittsburgh Plate Glass fortune. [...] The cost of the group's tickets was over $76,000, which Pitcairn said she fully intends to pay.

(Which may or may not mean that Pitcairn was fronting the money for everyone, but it seems clear she could afford it.)

So these aren't people who baked 500 pies and sold them for $10 each to scrape together the cash to attend this event; these are rich Obama donors—or at least one rich Obama donor—who'd already given him bushels of money in the past and were planning to do so again.  And to their credit, they decided to use that access to confront Obama over his sorry record in general and Bradley Manning in particular (Pitcairn was the one wearing the Manning t-shirt, even though her main issue at the event was apparently legalization of marijuana), rather than just sitting there in the "extra special rich people room" (Pitcairn's phrase) quietly eating their lobster and listening in rapt attention as Obama explained what a wonderful leader he's been.

So as much as I cringed at the "we’ll vote for you in 2012" line, I give them a lot of credit for having the guts to confront Obama in a public forum—and I'm glad they were able to bring so much attention not just to Manning's case but to the breathtaking pettiness of President Narcissus (whether or not that was their intent).  If more rich Obama supporters decide to do the same thing, more power to them.

Rimshot, please

When I saw this lede in the Jerusalem Post...:

Netanyahu huddles with top officials to discuss diplomatic, security impact of Abbas’s embrace of "most extreme, violent enemies of peace."

...I thought: but Abbas embraced Israel years ago!

Seriously though, I'm laughing my ass off watching the U.S./Israeli response to the Fatah-Hamas agreement.  If you're curious why I've reached this arectal state, you should definitely spend a few minutes reading this horrifying bit of recent history, which is the single most important thing you need to know to understand the last five years' worth of events in the Occupied Territories (and is therefore studiously avoided in nearly all Western commentary).  Meanwhile, I'll try to figure out how to use a chair.

Gomer Abbas

As examples of the Obama reality distortion field go, I have to say that this one is pretty amusing:

[Mahmoud Abbas] told me bluntly that Obama had led him on, and then let him down by failing to keep pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for a moratorium on settlement building in the West Bank last year. “It was Obama who suggested a full settlement freeze,” Abbas explained. “I said OK, I accept. We both went up the tree. After that, he came down with a ladder and he removed the ladder and said to me, jump. Three times he did it.”

As a great philosopher said: fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me; fool me three times...hey wait, aren't you Barack Obama?  Gosh, I'm so sorry I accused you of fooling me—that was way out of line!  What were you saying again?

Spade actually heart, says Keller

Here's New York Times editor Bill Keller's latest rationalization for why torture isn't torture when the U.S. does it:

Q. The article today says the documents "are largely silent about the use of the harsh interrogation tactics at Guantánamo." Why does The New York Times continue to refuse to call torture by its name?  — Aaron Dome, Chicago

A. Some of the interrogation methods may fit a legal or common-sense definition of torture. Others may not. To refer to the whole range of practices as "torture" would be simply polemical. — Bill Keller

That bit about "some of the interrogation methods" is a new one; apparently the Times is incapable of mentioning "torture" unless it occurs in perfect isolation from any other tactic?  So as long as U.S. interrogators ask one polite question, they can pull out the thumbscrews the rest of the time?  Man, all these rules!

Fortunately the rules are much simpler and the word is no longer "simply polemical" when it's being used to characterize the actions of designated enemies:

The BBC report adds to testimony from Libyan opponents of the Qaddafi government as well as refugees fleeing the country that Libyan security forces have routinely tortured those in their custody.

And it's also perfectly acceptable when describing the excruciating pain of being forced to sip wine for 30 minutes as your friends carry out over-elaborate food presentation, as in a recent Diner's Journal article titled "Our Friends Torture Us with Fancy Plating" (I'm sure we can all sympathize).  Though in fairness, "Our Friends Inflict Harsh Tactics On Us with Fancy Plating" really doesn't scan that well.

I realize some people may criticize Keller and the Times for this, but I for one appreciate them providing us with such a simple and reliable way of determining that they're still boot-licking stenographers of power, since the day I see a Times article that actually calls recent U.S. actions "torture" is the day I'll have to consider subjecting myself to the pain of reading their articles in full (though I'm guessing my bigger concern will be how to dodge all the flying pigs).

Elemental

I've been thinking about the fact that we dedicate just a single day to the Earth every year.  While it may seem a bit stingy to allocate only 1/365th of our time to appreciating the importance of the very foundation of our existence, it's actually not inappropriate, since 0.27% is not only a fair but possibly over-generous assessment of the level of concern humanity as a whole has shown for the planet.

Following that same principle of proportionality, I'd like to suggest some new annual events as companions to Earth Day:

• Air Minute
• Water Millisecond

C'mon, people, this is almost literally the least we can do.

(In case any classicists out there are wondering, Fire already has awareness weeks and even months dedicated to it, though it's not like it has a tough time getting human attention whenever it wants to anyway.  And thanks to global warming-caused drought, it'll be doing just fine for many years to come.)

Earth Day coincidence!

Earlier today I was thinking what a huge coincidence it is that Earth Day just happens to fall on the same day as Fuck the Earth Day this year!  But then I remembered that Fuck the Earth Day is actually observed all day every day year-round in Washington D.C. and corporate boardrooms throughout the world, so I guess it's not really as much of a coincidence as I originally thought.

Clinton vs. Clinton vs. Clinton

Hillary Clinton, today:

"Colonel Gaddafi's troops continue their vicious attacks, including the siege of Misrata. There are even reports that Gaddafi forces may have used cluster bombs against their own people," Clinton said in a joint press availability with Dutch Foreign Minister Uri Rosenthal.

"In the face of this inhumanity, the international community remains united in our resolve."

You can't help but be inspired by her deep concern for the use of cluster bombs against civilians.  Unless you have a functioning memory, that is, since this would be the same Hillary Clinton who voted against a Senate amendment that stated:

No funds appropriated or otherwise made available by this Act may be obligated or expended to acquire, utilize, sell, or transfer any cluster munition unless the rules of engagement applicable to the cluster munition ensure that the cluster munition will not be used in or near any concentrated population of civilians, whether permanent or temporary, including inhabited parts of cities or villages, camps or columns of refugees or evacuees, or camps or groups of nomads.

And the same Hillary Clinton who's part of an administration that carried out this attack:

A US cruise missile armed with cluster ammunition was used in an attack in Yemen in December which resulted in the deaths of 52 people, more than half of them women and children, according to a human rights watchdog. [...] Amnesty International has now released photographs of missile parts from the attack which appear to show that it was a BGM-109D Tomahawk cruise missile designed to be launched from a warship or submarine. Further images reveal BLU 97 A/B cluster munitions which spray steel fragments for 150 meters along with burning zirconium for igniting buildings.

And while we're at it, this is also the same Hillary Clinton who's married to Bill Clinton, who was praised by liberals everywhere for committing acts of cluster humanitarianism like these:

Adem Muncaj, an ethnic Albanian boy from Kosovo, recently found a bright orange container that looked like a soft drink can and brought it home to his family. They are now dead.

When the "soft drink can" -- actually a NATO cluster bomb -- exploded, Adem, his brother and mother, his uncle, an aunt and their three daughters were injured and died within minutes in the village of Velika Jablanica, near the town of Pec.

Reports reaching Belgrade May 14 say that 100 civilians were killed and 50 wounded by eight NATO cluster bombs dropped on the Kosovo village of Korisa at midnight.

The week before, 18 people died in the southern city of Nis while shopping at an open market in the middle of the day, killed by cluster bombs, which also reached a nearby hospital. NATO said it was a "mistake" while planes were bombing the city's airport.

But in Hillary's defense, I guess as long as the Obama administration doesn't actually launch one of those steel shard- and burning zirconium-filled Tomahawks within the borders of the United States, she won't be a complete hypocrite.

ALSO: The Libyans who've kindled such an unquestionably authentic and entirely believable sense of moral outrage in our Secretary of State might want to steer clear of weddings and funerals for a while.

How, not if

As Obama was laying the groundwork for his attack on Libya, I realized there's a crucial and fundamental difference between me and most liberals or progressives in terms of how we listen to him (and other Democrats).  The difference is this: when liberals listen to Obama they're typically waiting to see if he's going to do the right thing, but the only question in my mind is how he's going to do the wrong thing.  Liberals labor under the crippling delusion that Obama is on their side, which makes it impossible for them to see the plain truth no matter how intently it might be staring them in the face.  It's a close cousin of the DOTIGOTUS—and just like that unfortunate malady, it makes it anywhere from difficult to impossible to arrive at the most Occam-satisfying conclusions.

With that background, I was happy to add this stellar new entry to my ongoing "Glenn Greenwald is getting better" series:

When I first began blogging five years ago, I used to write posts like that all the time. I'd lament that Democrats weren't more effectively opposing Bush/Cheney National Security State policies or defending civil liberties. I'd attribute those failures to poor strategizing or a lack of political courage and write post after post urging them to adopt better tactics to enable better outcomes or be more politically "strong." But then I realized that they weren't poor tacticians getting stuck with results they hated. They simply weren't interested in generating the same outcomes as the ones I wanted.

It wasn't that they eagerly wished to defeat these Bush policies but just couldn't figure out how to do it. The opposite was true: they were content to acquiesce to those policies, if not outright supportive of them, because they perceived no political advantage in doing anything else. Many of them supported those policies on the merits while many others were perfectly content with their continuation. So I stopped trying to give them tactical advice on how to achieve outcomes they didn't really want to achieve, and stopped attributing their failures to oppose these policies to bad strategizing or political cowardice. Instead, I simply accepted that these were the outcomes they most wanted, that Democratic Party officials on the whole -- obviously with some exceptions -- weren't working toward the outcomes I had originally assumed (and which they often claimed). Once you accept that reality, events in Washington make far more sense.

Yes indeed they do (for comparison purposes, I wrote in the DOTIGOTUS posting that "it's still amazing to me how simple it became to understand the US's role in the world once I was willing to follow the facts wherever they might lead rather than trying to bend reality to a predetermined conclusion").  I'm glad to see the G-man coming around to this way of thinking not only because I'm always happy to see any human being rejecting the reason-warping siren song of partisanship, but because he's got a platform from which he can corrupt many more minds with this mundanely accurate and therefore highly subversive way of thinking.

Is there a danger in this viewpoint as well?  Sure; it's possible that on the one or two occasions every few years when Obama or other slithering Democrats like him actually do the right thing for the right reasons*, you might not give them enough credit for it.  But arriving at the right conclusion the remaining 99.992% of the time more than makes up for it, and your lack of appreciation will be easily compensated by the tens of millions of people giving them credit (and the benefit of the doubt) when they don't deserve it.

---

* ("For the right reasons" is critical here, since there are occasions when doing the right thing just happens to be advantageous or politically expedient enough that even a Democrat will choose it—which I'd guess was the guiding logic behind the Obama administration's otherwise perplexingly laudable decision to stop defending DOMA.)

Memo to NPR

Re: Your article, "Whatever Happened To The Anti-War Movement?"

Dear NPR,

A Democrat in the White House.

Always glad to help,
John

Atlas plotzed

You may have heard about the premiere this weekend of the first installment of the film version of Atlas Shrugged, and in honor of this seminal event (which I mean literally, given the reaction of most right-wing libertarians to all things Ayn Rand) I thought I'd point y'all to the best and funniest antidote to Rand-worship you're ever likely to read: Matt Ruff's Sewer, Gas & Electric.

Ruff is one of the few authors I make a point of tossing a few bucks to rather than getting their stuff from the liberry, and SGE is his best; it's certainly possible for a book featuring the head of Ayn Rand in a hurricane lamp to go astray, but this one doesn't.  I beseech you: read it, live it, love it.

(For the record, despite the heat he took from Rand groupies, Ruff says that he didn't really take a position and the book functions as a sort of Rorschach test for the reader.  It's been over a decade since I read it, so I wouldn't doubt him, but based on the consistency of the responses I've seen to the book I'd say that in this case the ink blot really is two giraffes mud-wrestling over a pineapple.)

TANGENTIALLY: The book opens with this quote from Abbie Hoffman, who also appears in the book as a VW Beetle:

[I]n my view, if the next generation is going to make some contribution it'll be the discovery of how you struggle for social change without having any hope.  In the Sixties, you see, when you jumped on the earth, the earth jumped back just like Einstein said it would.  We knew we'd win every battle because every day we grew up.  Every day was a new day and being on the brink of the Apocalypse was romantic.  But maybe this vision that you have is the more realistic of the two...

Which I mention because "how you struggle for social change without having any hope" has been the central conundrum of my political life for the past decade.

The United States, summarized

This is a country where people who were on unemployment the entire year pay income tax, but corporations like Enron and General Electric don't.

I will now stab you defensively three times

Hilarious:

Although American officials had said that no aircraft would fly offensive strike missions, unless officially approved in Washington, 11 warplanes have flown 97 sorties intended to electronically jam or otherwise suppress Libyan air defenses since April 4, when command of the mission was handed over to NATO and the United States publicly said it was stepping back to a supporting role.

The number of actual missile strikes during those missions was only three; all were against Libyan air defense systems, whether radars, command-and-control sites or surface-to-air missiles. Two of them were to destroy hard-to-find and hard-to-strike mobile targets.

In explaining the gap between public statements and operational details, officials said the trio of strikes on Libyan targets since April 4 were classified as defensive, not offensive.

In the Pentagon's defense, I'm sure it's difficult to keep track of all the countries they're bombing these days, and 97 sorties and three missile strikes barely merits the attention of a first lieutenant somewhere.  So you can see how this might have slipped through the cracks.

(Not to mention the fact that every attack by the United States on another country is by definition defensive—just as self-defense against any attack by the United States is by definition offensive.  Is it really the Pentagon's fault if a few dullards in the media haven't managed to figure this out?)

ADDING: Look, it's like this: Libya has been attacking our right to attack them without being attacked, leaving us with no choice but to defend ourselves.  Does that make it clearer?

Le geek c'est chic

Since his worshippers are already convinced that Obama IS the Kwisatz Haderach, would it be too much to ask to have him go through the formality of the whole box-and-gom jabbar thing?  I mean, just to be sure.    

Glenn Greenwald, unicorn

It seems all my postings lately involve the avoidance of being remiss, and that's what I'd be yet again if I didn't highlight this bit of commentary from Glenn Greenwald:

[I]f you were a Democratic Party official, wouldn't you also ignore -- and, when desirable, step on -- the people who you know will support you no matter what you do to them? That's what a rational, calculating, self-interested, unprincipled Democratic politician should do:  accommodate those factions which need accommodating (because their support is in question), while ignoring or scorning the ones whose support is not in question, either because they will never vote for them (the hard-core right) or will dutifully canvass, raise money, and vote for them no matter what (the Democratic base).  Anyone who pledges unconditional, absolute fealty to a politician -- especially 18 months before an election -- is guaranteeing their own irrelevance.

Why does this sound hauntingly familiar to me?  Oh, right, because of this and this and this and this and I think we'd both agree that's enough of that for now, wouldn't we.  I've spent so much time riding this hobby horse because I've always felt it's one of the most important domestic political questions (if not the most important).  Or as Greenwald puts it, it's "one of the most important domestic political questions (if not the most important)".  Gaaah!  Stop doing that!

As I've said before, I give Greenwald tremendous credit for continuing to follow his principles wherever they lead even now that President Fleshword has taken up residence in the White House.  It's a rare person—and a downright unicornesque high-profile liberal blogger—who chooses that path over partisanship.  And he's paying a price for it; I regularly see him being slagged in the comments sections of liberal blogs and media outlets for the exact same kinds of observations that won him ringing praise when he was applying them to Bush.  If he keeps this up, he may find that instead of writing for Salon he's reduced to tapping out his opinions on some obscure blog somewhere.  Ha ha ha ha!  Oh, wait.

Another victory for democracy

I'd also be remiss if I didn't follow up on this posting of two weeks ago with the wonderful news that right-wing coup fan and homophobe Michel "Sweet Micky" Martelly—the candidate whose inclusion in the presidential runoff election Hillary Clinton was personally dispatched to Haiti to ensure—is going to be the next president of Haiti.  For anyone who missed it the first time around, here's just a small taste of what this U.S. favorite is all about:

Seven months after his inauguration, President Aristide was overthrown by a US-backed neo-Duvalierist military putsch on 30 September 1991. "Sweet Micky" was one of the principal cheerleaders of this three-year coup, which claimed some 5,000 lives, according to Amnesty International.

In the years following Aristide's restoration to power in 1994, Martelly became obsessed with hatred for the man. In a video from not too long ago, which can be seen on YouTube, the candidate threatens a patron in a bar where he has performed. "All those shits were Aristide's faggots," he says. "I would kill Aristide to stick a dick up your ass."

"I would kill Aristide to stick a dick up your ass FOR THE GOOD OF THE PEOPLE OF HAITI," I'm sure he meant to say.

That takes care of the Haitian elections, but there's no time for celebration in the Obama administration when people around the world keep trying to arrogate to themselves the U.S.'s right to govern their affairs.  Onward to Egypt!

Zobambies! (The Return of the Liberal Dead)

Since I poked Kevin Drum just last week, I'd be remiss if I didn't take a moment to acknowledge his publication of this extraordinary bit of credibility auto-demolition:

But the reason I voted for Obama in 2008 is because I trust his judgment. And not in any merely abstract way, either: I mean that if he and I were in a room and disagreed about some issue on which I had any doubt at all, I'd literally trust his judgment over my own. I think he's smarter than me, better informed, better able to understand the consequences of his actions, and more farsighted. I voted for him because I trust his judgment, and I still do.

As I read this I couldn't help but be reminded of CommonDreams commenter Joe Hope, who wrote the following immortal words (and many more just like them) shortly after Obama's election:

Obama is my commander (in-chief) and I trust him. Okay, so here's the tricky part. In a war, it is not the duty of a foot-soldier to develop the entire strategy for the war, nor is it the duty of a foot soldier to decide what orders to obey and which to disobey. No war could be won by an army governed by anarchy.

In this war, (against radical Right-wing government and social forces) it is up to Obama to craft a winning strategy, not us - the disorganized rabble. When we judge his strategy in a negative light, our criticism is ignorant, because we do not know what his full strategy entails. Keep in mind, it would be foolish, in a state of war, to simply divulge what that strategy is. So we must have faith in Obama and trust him. If we want change (and I know I do) then we must trust him, even when we feel we can't. We must see beyond our fears, and remember that sometimes it is more important to follow than to try to lead. The Left does not need more wannabe leaders and more petty infighting. It's like each of us has a piece of a puzzle, but only Obama can put the pieces together to create an image for our future.

Separated at birth, maybe?  Hard to say.  But in fairness to Mr. Hope, he was writing in 2008 and I'm guessing by now he probably feels some serious twinges of regret, whereas Drum offered his subordination of self right here in 2011, after the burden of proof has been more than satisfied and the jury's verdict is a foregone conclusion to any objective observer.  The mind, she boggles.

All I can say to Drum is, you stay away from my tasty brains.

(Drum posted a followup in an attempt to do some damage control for his reputation, if you're interested.  The most notable part for me was his peremptory dismissal of various critics "who simply find it risible that I think well of Obama in the first place"; in Drum's world, apparently, you're not worthy of consideration unless you were snowed by Obama at some point along the way.)

Burn them all

I despise religion, and things like this are exactly the reason why:

Stirred up by three angry mullahs who urged them to avenge the burning of a Koran at a Florida church, thousands of protesters overran the compound of the United Nations in this northern Afghan city, killing at least 12 people, Afghan and United Nations officials said.

The dead included at least seven United Nations workers — four Nepalese guards and three Europeans from Romania, Sweden and Norway — according to United Nations officials in New York. One was a woman. Early reports, later denied by Afghan officials, said that at least two of the dead had been beheaded. Five Afghans were also killed.

Imagine that: these people woke up this morning thinking it would be a day like any other and that their heads would remain fully attached to their bodies, just like usual.  And now their lives are over—because some vicious yahoos felt their precious god was maligned by the mere act of someone somewhere burning a book, and that this grave insult justified murdering other people who didn't have a damn thing to do with burning the book in the first place.  And this sort of response is by no means unusual.

Look: I'm not a fan of book burning when it's done for the purpose of preventing people from reading, but if you want to make a religious or political or artistic statement?  Knock yourself out.  Burn them all: the Koran, the Bible, the Torah, the Kalevala, the Eddas, the Vedas, the Mabinogi, The Silmarillion, and everything L. Ron Hubbard ever wrote.  Burn the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.  Burn the U.N. Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and all four Geneva Conventions.  Burn Mein Kampf, the Kama Sutra, The Diary of Anne Frank, The Turner Diaries, Chomsky's entire output, and Everyone Poops.  Burn the Black Book of Arson just for the perfect irony of it, you little firebug you.

I may not agree with you.  I may even decide that you're a benighted, knuckle-dragging barbarian who isn't worth the air you breathe.  But if you genuinely feel that burning, tearing up, pissing/crapping/spitting on, or otherwise defiling some book is the only way to express your deepest innermost feelings about something that matters to you, by all means do it.  But stop killing people for either their beliefs or yours.

ADDING: As I've mentioned in comments, the point of this posting is entirely independent of the war in Afghanistan; this incident was just a starting point, not the main point at all (which is why I included other examples).  But for the many people questioning whether or not this attack was actually motivated by religious outrage, here's Staffan di Mistura (the U.N. envoy to Afghanistan) describing what happened:

Freedom of speech does not mean freedom of offending culture, religion, traditions, especially when there are so many of us, both civilians and frankly military, in many parts of the world and particularly in Afghanistan. So I think the main blame we have is about the irresponsible gesture that was made on that case. The proof is that those who entered our building were actually furiously angry about the issue about the Koran. There was nothing political there.

Given his stance on offensive speech, the blame he places on the Koran burners, and the fact that what he says agrees with every news account I've seen, I don't see any reason to doubt this account.