The Distant Ocean

Crickets

You might recall that Michael Moore was filled with righteous dudgeon over Georgia's callous disregard for human life:

I encourage everyone I know to never travel to Georgia, never buy anything made in Georgia, to never do business in Georgia. I will ask my publisher to pull my book from every Georgia bookstore and if they won't do that I will donate every dime of every royalty my book makes in Georgia to help defeat the racists and killers who run that state. I ask all Americans with a conscience to shun anything and everything to do with the murderous state of Georgia.

Boy, if he was this steamed about one person being executed in Georgia after a trial and multiple appeals, you can only imagine how angry he must be about Barack Obama executing two American citizens without so much as an indictment!  Forget voting for the vicious bastard—I'm sure Moore's typing up a blistering repudiation of his support for Obama and preparing a boycott call for Washington, D.C. even as you read this!  Right?

Right?

What's that sound I hear?

Bullseye

Jonathan Turley is so right it hurts in this op-ed of his in the LA Times.  After taking a brief trip through some of Obama's civil rights abuses (framed with the observation that "President Obama not only retained the controversial Bush policies, he expanded on them"), he writes:

But perhaps the biggest blow to civil liberties is what he has done to the movement itself. It has quieted to a whisper, muted by the power of Obama's personality and his symbolic importance as the first black president as well as the liberal who replaced Bush. Indeed, only a few days after he took office, the Nobel committee awarded him the Nobel Peace Prize without his having a single accomplishment to his credit beyond being elected. Many Democrats were, and remain, enraptured.

It's almost a classic case of the Stockholm syndrome, in which a hostage bonds with his captor despite the obvious threat to his existence. Even though many Democrats admit in private that they are shocked by Obama's position on civil liberties, they are incapable of opposing him. Some insist that they are simply motivated by realism: A Republican would be worse. However, realism alone cannot explain the utter absence of a push for an alternative Democratic candidate or organized opposition to Obama's policies on civil liberties in Congress during his term. It looks more like a cult of personality. Obama's policies have become secondary to his persona.

This is strong stuff indeed, coming from a mainstream commentator like Turley and appearing as it does in a high-profile mainstream source.  I still doubt Obama will have much of a problem securing the votes of the vast majority of his 2008 supporters, whatever their state of disillusionment, but the fact that the Turleys of the world are openly rebelling is encouraging.

NYPD blew

Speaking of hummingbirds, I recommend John Halle's account of his experiences at the Occupy Wall Street protests.  This in particular is (I'm sure) just one high point among many for the NYPD:

What was extraordinary was how the man impeded the cop: he did so by pushing a stroller which enclosed the man’s three or four year old child in the cop’s way. The cop pushed the stroller aside and attacked the man with real viciousness, in full view of the child.  I didn’t see what would later materialize-how or whether the man would be arrested.  I did, however, see another small child in the park who was a spectator to the event breaking down in tears, as his father, a dreadlocked man, tried to console him.

Coincidentally, I read John's account just after I saw this tidbit:

Pelley: Are you satisfied that you've dealt with threats from aircraft, even light planes, model planes, that kind of thing?

[New York police commissioner Ray] Kelly: Well, it's something that's on our radar screen. I mean in an extreme situation, you would have some means to take down a plane.

Pelley: Do you mean to say that the NYPD has the means to take down an aircraft?

Kelly: Yes, I prefer not to get into the details but obviously this would be in a very extreme situation.

Kelly's claim is likely a tad hyperbolic, but it does speak to his ambitions, and in light of the NYPD's steady transition from an ostensible police force into a domestic intelligence and internal security agency—with the kind of organized thuggery John describes being deployed regularly to put down internal dissent—I'm left wondering if we should even bother attaching the prefix "para" to "military" anymore when describing it.  In fact, with tactics and capabilities like this, a budget of ~4 billion dollars and a uniformed strength of 34,500, a better question would seem to be: where would the NYPD rank on the list of the world's armies?

Wangari Maathai's story

I often recall this story Wangari Maathai liked to tell:

Well, there was this huge forest that caught fire and all the animals in the forest decided to leave the forest and save themselves. They came to the edge of the forests and watched the fire from a distance: overwhelmed and disempowered by the raging fire.

Except this humming bird, which said, “I am going to do something about the fire!”

And so it flew to the nearest stream and brought a drop of water in its beak and put it on the raging fire! It flew fast back and forth, every time bringing a drop of water in its beak and putting it on the fire.

In the meantime the other animals were watching in dismay as the fire raged. “What can you do?”, the other animals wondered aloud. “You are too small, you cannot put out such a fire! Come and join us and watch the fire!”

Unmoved, the humming bird kept its focus, maintained its commitment, remained focused and responded without losing patience or speed,

“I am doing the best I can!”

And that is what we are all called to do: the best we can!

Goodbye to a great woman.

P.S. — I saw her tell this story in Dirt! The Movie; you can see the clip (with fun bonus animation) here.

Just a matter of kine

Have you considered how drastically things are going to change once the cows finally come home?

Putting American interests first

The best couplet I've seen today comes from the New York Times, reporting on Obama's contortions at the United Nations:

...since he is, first and foremost, the president of the United States, he has had to put American interests first.  So Mr. Obama’s entire 47-minute address appeared, at times, an effort to thread the needle meant to balance his efforts in support of democratic movements against his efforts to stand behind Israel...

Hard to say what's funnier: the Times equating "American interests" with "standing behind Israel", Obama trying to square his pro forma call for a rump Palestinian state last year with his outright obeisance to Israel now, or the fact that even this level of servility isn't enough to insulate him from accusations of being a secret Palestinian mole bent on the destruction of the Jewish state.  Luckily we don't have to choose, so we can just sit back and enjoy it all.

Sonny Bono's brother, Cui

When it comes to global warming denial, this has always been my favorite accusation:

Did you ever think that many of the scientists could be in error? I guess not. The falsifying of data probably didn't enter your little minds. Perhaps the data was changed to get more grants? Follow the money.

This is what it means to be a conservative*: you think it's obvious that 98% of climate scientists are falsifying data and/or supporting transparently bogus theories because they want to get their greedy little hands on some of that sweet, sweet grant money, while at the same time recognizing no financial incentive whatsoever on the part of oil company-funded "skeptics"—much less the oil companies themselves.

No really, work with me here: someone decides to spend ten years and tens of thousands of dollars earning a PhD, subjecting themselves to upper-level math/physics/statistics and classes with names like "Fluvial Geomorphology" and "Stochastic Hydrology", and finally manages to land a faculty position with a middling salary at some university somewhere.  But you don't really think they care about any of that stuff, do you?  Ha!  No, it's just so they can risk their entire career and academic reputation by making shit up, in order to get their hands on some grant money they can then use to make even more shit up and get even more grant money, in a neverending cycle of dishonesty and megaprofit.  Science, schmience; it's all about the stipends, baby!  I mean sure, I suppose these same people could have just taken a community college course and gotten their real estate license, or maybe started a porn site or become an investment banker, but everyone knows the real money is in climate "science".  Right?

(Just like everyone knows the best way to parlay your junk science into a massive payday is to set yourself in effective opposition to some of the most powerful and ruthless corporations on the planet, whose products also happen to be the foundation of modern society.  Right?  I mean, how else could you possibly profit from the calculated misuse of academic credentials?)

Head, meet ass; I think you two are going to be inseparable!

--

* (Or Alexander Cockburn)

The other boogeyman

Man, was I ever mistaken about this:

[Ezra Klein wrote that] "If the Democratic Party won't uphold its end of the bargain, there's no reason its base should pretend the deal is still on."  But the Democrats know this storm will pass once the base has had a little ice cream and been tucked in for the night—and if that doesn't work, they'll just read them the bedtime story about Scary Sarah.  That does it every time.

Turns out it was Scary Perry.

MECA and MOCHA

I realize that doing stuff is for squares, but from time to time I ask you anyway—and since the site doesn't have a tip jar I basically consider this the subscription price.  Now, if you continue reading my stuff without taking these small actions your eyes probably won't explode in your head, but you may feel like a rotten mooching heel.  And no one wants that!

So without further ado, here's what I'd like you to spend a few clicks caring about:

The Museum of Children’s Art in Oakland (MOCHA) has decided to cancel an exhibit of art by Palestinian children in the Gaza Strip. The Middle East Children’s Alliance (MECA), which was partnering with MOCHA to present the exhibit, was informed of the decision by the Museum’s board president on Thursday, September 8, 2011. For several months, MECA and the museum had been working together on the exhibit, which is titled “A Child’s View From Gaza.”

MECA has learned that there was a concerted effort by pro-Israel organizations in the San Francisco Bay Area to pressure the museum to reverse its decision to display Palestinian children’s art.

This is one of those cases where a few friendly appeals might actually make a difference, so please do send email to MOCHA asking them to reverse this decision (and yes, it's fine if you're out of state; you might visit some day, right?).  You can take a look at some of the art for yourself here.

If you'd like to see some of the Gaza TERROR CHILDREN whose nefarious drawings so threaten the continued existence of Israel, here you go:

Menacing, aren't they?  That's Nour on the left and little Muhammed (who loved head-butting balls thrown at his head) on the right.  It's been nine years since I took this picture so they're 12 and 11 now (and have a little sister, according to their dad Khalil).  Have they produced art that's in MECA's possession at this very moment, waiting to poison the minds of unsuspecting Americans and turn them against the Jewish state?  I don't know, but I'd like to have an opportunity to find out.  So send that email right away!

Or maybe .8181...

9-11: what does it mean?

-2.

WE ARE THE WORLD: The best headline I've seen today comes from the New York Times: "On Sept. 11, a Day That Stands Alone".  Here are just a few victims (ours, as it happens) who apparently no longer count:

[O]n Sept 11 1973, US-backed Pinochet forces rose to power in Chile to overthrow the democratically elected Salvador Allende. Allende died in the presidential palace. On September 11, 1990, American anthropologist Myrna Mack was murdered by U.S.-backed Guatemalan security forces. On September 11, 1977, in South Africa, Steve Biko, founder of the black consciousness movement, was being beaten in the back of a van by apartheid forces. He died in the early morning hours of September 12, 1977. On September 11, 1993, in the midst of the U.S.-backed coup in Haiti, Antoine Izméry was dragged out of a church by coup forces and murdered in broad daylight. He had been commemorating a massacre of parishioners at the Saint-Jean Bosco Church that had occurred five years earlier on September 11, 1988. Father Jean-Bertrand Aristide had narrowly escaped death in that attack. He later became president of Haiti.

Next time die in a country that matters, losers.

Weekend movie recommendation

Keith (2008).  Unforgettable.  I won't spoil it except to say that there's more to it than you might think at first glance.  Don't risk ruining the joy of discovery by reading the synopsis or reviews—just watch it fresh.  You won't be sorry.

Any other recommendations?

Ringside seats

This certainly sounds like it would make for a more entertaining than usual news cycle:

In his comments to Al-Jazeera, Mr Erdogan said Turkish warships were "authorised to protect our ships that carry humanitarian aid to Gaza".

"From now on, we will not let these ships to be attacked by Israel, as what happened with the Freedom Flotilla," he said, referring to the Mavi Marmara incident.

(Erdogan has made similar noises in the past, so don't hold your breath.)

As I've said before, in my fantasy scenario Israel is actually insane enough to confront an aid flotilla even with the Turkish navy protecting it—thus triggering the treaty responsibilities of Turkey's NATO partners, including the US, which is forced to start sinking Israeli warships and shooting down Israeli planes (or hold hugely entertaining press conferences explaining why it won't).  A war involving world-class ethnic cleansers and human rights abusers like Israel, Turkey and the US would pose some tricky moral dilemmas, though.  How would we know who to root against the most?

The Obama they elected

As Israel was blanketing the Gaza Strip with high-powered explosives and white phosphorous in January of 2009, I wrote:

I have little doubt that Israel notified the Bush administration of their attack plans, but I'm equally confident they informed Obama's team.  The Israelis want to have a good relationship with the incoming administration, and I can't believe they'd have blindsided them. 

And sure enough:

One FBI post passed by Leibowitz to Silverstein indicated that the Israeli Embassy in the United States provided "regular written briefings" on Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza intended for "President Obama in the weeks between his election and inauguration."

In the same posting I predicted the Israelis would provide Obama with a "January surprise" by terminating their attack before his inauguration day, which of course they did—and though it was apparent at the time that that was coordinated, the fact that we now know Obama was getting regular updates from the Israeli government puts it beyond a reasonable doubt.  To put it another way: one of Obama's first acts as president—before he'd even been inaugurated—was to give the Israelis both approval and political cover to turn Gaza into a free-fire zone as long as they agreed to pull back from Guernica levels of mayhem to a less obtrusive Jack the Ripper style before his inauguration, thus sparing him the embarrassment of openly backing mass murder on his first day in office.

Figuring that out didn't require ESP any more than it does to guess what's going to happen when you throw an egg at the ground—just a willingness to ignore Obama's totally exciting yeswecanitudes and instead pay attention to tedious minutiae like his speeches to AIPAC, his articles in foreign policy journals, his pledges of undying loyalty to Israel on his campaign website, his Likudnik cabinet appointments, decades of lockstep US policy by both Democrats and Republicans, etc etc ad nauseum.  Yawn.  Nonetheless, Glenn Greenwald wrote at the time that "reliably predicting" whether or not Obama was going to continue the standard US policy of blind support for Israel "requires a clairvoyance which I believe people lack"—just one example of the misguided but depressingly universal wait-and-see attitude among Democratic-voting progressives after the election.

Why couldn't so many informed, intelligent and otherwise skeptical people "predict" something so obvious?  Because they didn't want to, of course.  Because seeing what was already so clear—among many other things, that Obama was a willing accomplice in Israel's orgy of killing and destruction in Gaza, with all that implied—would have harshed their pre-inaugural buzz by forcing them to accept the fact that they hadn't elected a champion of liberal values and human rights, but just another standard-issue imperial manager and corporate errand boy.  The number of Obama voters who were even open to hearing the facts (much less accepting them) may have exceeded the world's unicorn population, but not by much.

They did Obama a real favor by giving him the benefit of the doubt in spite of the ample evidence that he didn't deserve it, since it made it just that much easier for him to do all the wonderful things he's done.  And as much as I'd love to believe otherwise, I'm sure many of them will keep waiting to see the real Barack Obama—"the Obama we elected", as they often call him, as though their illusions still carry more weight than the unwelcome reality—right to the bitter end.

Disinformation contest

It's hard to tell what I like better in this article; the use of "despite" instead of the obviously more accurate "because of":

The Bush administrations sent terror suspects to Libya for interrogation, despite that country's reputation for torture, according to documents found in the abandoned office of Libya's spy chief.

Or someone from my favorite human rights organization implying a) that this is any kind of unique "stain" on the record of US intelligence services and b) that the "dark chapter" is now closed:

Peter Bouckaert of Human Rights Watch, which found the documents, called the ties between Washington and Qaddafi's regime "a very dark chapter in American intelligence history, and it remains a stain on the record of the American intelligence services that they cooperated with these very abusive intelligence services."

(But then this is the same Human Rights Watch that declared that "Under limited circumstances, there is a legitimate place" for renditions—once the Obama administration claimed the right to perform them, that is.)

Or if neither of those do it for you, there's always the straight hypocrisy:

The CIA was among a number of foreign intelligence services that worked with Libya's agencies. Reports of such cooperation have surfaced before, but the documents provide new details on the ties between Western countries and Qaddafi's regime.

Many of those same countries backed the NATO attacks that helped Libya's rebels force Qaddafi from power.

It's also hard to say which is funnier: the way similar crimes go from being highly useful to a human rights emergency requiring immediate air strikes, or the fact that there are people in the world so blithely unaware (or dismissive) of that transition that they see "humanitarian war" as a good idea rather than an oxymoron.

Danny Schechter starts blaming himself

Given that I just wrote an article that ends with the line "in the age of Obama, being a liberal means never having to say you're sorry", I feel obliged to give Danny Schechter credit for being an exception to that rule:

I have to admit that I was seduced by the idea of Barack Obama.

The idea of a black President, the idea of a young President, the idea of an articulate President, and the idea of a man married to such a stand up women from a working class family was hard to resist. [...] There were those who warned, but I guess, I didn’t want to listen.

Why? I didn’t want to reinforce my own skepticism and sense of despair. [...]

The search for truth and reality has hit a wall but has to continue. The lessons need to be learned. We have to say we were wrong, when we were, not in our beliefs, but in pinning our hopes on a shrewd, ambitious, and double-faced political performance artist.

It's great that at least one Obamaniac is realizing his mistake, but (as Schechter accurately observes) it's not going to stop most of them from doing it again:

Yet, at the same time, many of us who now know how we have been used, will vote for him again, because, as he rightly calculates, there is no one else, and the alternative is even worse. Watch and weep as today’s rebels become next year’s rationalizers.

(He apparently wasn't including himself in that "many", by the way.)

Now, you might say the fact that I'm even momentarily encouraged by a relatively meager offering like this says more about how low my expectations have fallen over the past decade than it does about Schechter's article itself.  And as much as I'd love to follow that up with a "but", you are, in fact, dead on.  Thanks for destroying my hope for the future, American Left!