The Distant Ocean

Revealed in the clauses

Looking at that Syria quote brought home to me just how much Hillary Clinton's true nature is revealed in her choices of clauses.  Here it is again:

Yes, I think there could be a civil war with a very determined and well-armed and eventually well-financed opposition that is, if not directed by, certainly influenced by defectors from the army.

The key word there is the otherwise-superfluous eventually, which makes it clear that Clinton is not just speculating about one possible outcome but outlining an offer to interested parties.  She's saying to any Syrians who're paying attention: look, start calling yourselves something plausibly authentic like the Syrian Liberation Council, ally yourself with military elements we plan to use as proxies after the Assad government is brought down, and if you manage to establish yourselves as the most promising clients in the country we'll anoint you as The Official Syrian Opposition and make sure you have the weapons and cash you need.

Matter-of-fact solicitation for a bloody civil war is a good start, but the depth of Hillary's vampiric psychopathy is most clearly revealed by the clauses in her infamously bellicose threat to "totally obliterate" Iran:

ABC News' Chris Cuomo asked Clinton what she would do if Iran attacked Israel with nuclear weapons.

"I want the Iranians to know that if I'm the president, we will attack Iran," Clinton said. "In the next 10 years, during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them."

Consider her choice of the phrase be able to.  Clinton obviously wasn't saying that some increase in military power would be required before the U.S. would be able to obliterate Iran; no, "be able to" strikes me as being not so much about capabilities as eager anticipation.  And even if you don't accept that, her barely-contained enthusiasm comes across even more clearly through the also-superfluous intensifier "totally"—as though the threat of mere "obliteration" from the world's largest military power (and the only country to kill hundreds of thousands of human beings with nuclear weapons) was somehow insufficient to communicate the full measure of her intended menace.

It goes without saying that a willingness to shed unworthy people's blood is a requirement for high office in the U.S., but for reasons exactly like these Clinton has always struck me as someone who takes it beyond willingness to a twisted aspiration—and phrases like "be able to" and "totally" are Clinton's mania peeking through her mask of neoliberal rationality.  I have little doubt that one of her happiest days will be when rather than having to settle for the second-hand thrill of being Secretary of State in the most warlike administration in recent years, she finally has the deep satisfaction of ordering killings herself.

Thanksgiving leftovers

I always get a flurry of hits for this posting around Thanksgiving, which makes me happy since it's one of my all-time favorites, though I'm never sure how random Googlers will take it.  So I thought I'd point y'all at it as well.

Hope your day was turkeytastic (or tofutastic).

Punctuation

I appreciate the information Seymour Hersh manages to ferret out, but I often have a hard time understanding how he can avoid some of the obvious conclusions of his own research.  For example, this is what he had to say about the Obama administration's ever-increasing attempts to manufacture conflict with Iran:

I don’t know if you want to call it a "psychosis," but it’s some sort of a fantasy land being built up here, as it was with Iraq, the same sort of—no lessons learned, obviously.

"No lessons learned"?  No, lessons learned.  It's not "psychosis" but a successful strategy being redeployed, albeit at a slightly lower intensity and with greater international resistance (in large part because of the results in Iraq).

In discussing this "sort of a hysteria that we had over Iraq that's coming up again in Iran" Hersh points out how thrilled the U.S. was to replace Mohamed ElBaradei with Yukiya Amano as head of the IAEA (according to the U.S. mission in Vienna, Amano "was solidly in the U.S. court on every key strategic decision, from high-level personnel appointments to the handling of Iran's alleged nuclear weapons program"), and how the IAEA's first report under Amano is little more than a "political document" that sensationalizes old and discredited accusations—which the U.S. has of course done everything it can to capitalize on.  But then he goes on to contradict the clear conclusion of every bit of evidence he's just adduced: "I do think—I have every reason to believe that, unlike Mr. Bush, President Obama really is worried about an attack. He doesn’t want to see the Israelis bomb Iran."

Yeah.  See, I might find that convincing if every single thing Obama and company do and say—like maneuvering to get an IAEA director general who's "solidly in the U.S. court on every key strategic decision" and then using his politicized report to further isolate Iran—didn't point to their desire to clear the way for an attack.  While I don't doubt that Obama does have concerns (since he's nothing if not a calculating imperial manager), I'm also sure they're strictly tactical; he has no compunction whatsoever about the Israelis bombing Iran so long as they can get away with it.  And regardless of the wishful thinking of Hersh and others, that's the one and only consideration standing in the way of an attack.

PRONOUN TROUBLE: Reuters offers an analysis of "Iran's nuclear showdown with [the] West", which makes me wonder if they have a similar analysis of "UC Davis students' pepper spray showdown with police".

Fairly standard police procedure

If you thought the pepper-spraying of non-violent demonstrators in a police riot at UC Davis was unjustifiable, think again:

[UC Davis police chief Annette Spicuzza] said officers were forced to use pepper spray when students surrounded them. They used a sweeping motion on the group, per procedure, to avoid injury, she said.

The students were informed repeatedly ahead of time that if they didn't move, force would be used, she said.

It's revealing to see Spicuzza unselfconsciously endorsing the notion that giving a warning validates subsequent violence; every thug who's ever told a victim that if they just cooperate they won't get hurt will recognize that logic.

And about "per procedure", there's this:

Charles J. Kelly, a former Baltimore Police Department lieutenant who wrote the department's use of force guidelines, said pepper spray is a "compliance tool" that can be used on subjects who do not resist [...]. After reviewing the video, Kelly said he observed at least two cases of "active resistance" from protesters. In one instance, a woman pulls her arm back from an officer. In the second instance, a protester curls into a ball. Each of those actions could have warranted more force, including baton strikes and pressure-point techniques.

"What I'm looking at is fairly standard police procedure," Kelly said.

Yeah, Chuck, that much is clear.  But the most interesting part to me is the notion that curling into a ball constitutes "active resistance", and that if you instinctively adopt this purely defensive pose—say, in an attempt to protect yourself from further excruciating pain when you're being attacked with the "compliance tool" of pepper spray—you've now given the police justification to beat you with truncheons, so you'll unroll yourself into a more vulnerable position and they can get on with, oh, say, rupturing your spleen.  Have I got that about right, Chuck?

Your government, ladies and gentlemen, protecting and serving the shit out of you.

Addendum

I like this L.A. Times headline: "Hillary Rodham Clinton: Syria conflict could become civil war".  You can practically hear the with a little luck, can't you?  And I think you can safely append that to just about any of her pronouncements about a potential Syrian civil war.  Wipe that drool off your chin, Hillary!

Here's the apparent source quote:

"I think there could be a civil war with a very determined and well-armed and eventually well-financed opposition that is, if not directed by, certainly influenced by defectors from the army," Clinton told NBC.

Coming from the U.S. Secretary of State, a phrase like "well-armed and eventually well-financed opposition" isn't a prediction but a business proposition.

Things you'll never see me say

Include, but are not limited to, the following:

• "Raised a few eyebrows": Christ, are we all Noel Coward?  Regularly deployed by the Washington press corps; come up with something original, you rancid twits.  This goes double for "tongues are wagging" (which is mercifully rarer).
• "Wait for it": This worked exactly one time in a Robert Fisk article from 2002 and has never worked since for anyone, including Robert Fisk.  Feels like being put in timeout even though you've done nothing wrong.  Every time this phrase is imposed on me I want to spend my wait time jabbing a rusty knife into the eye of the person who wrote it.  I promise that rather than making you wait for it, I'll give it to you RIGHT NOW.
• "Hit all the right notes": The phrase of choice of sycophants when His Holiness the President offers exactly the platitudes they not only expected to hear, but wanted to hear (thus: "right"). Taught on the first day of Political Hackery 101; useful in that it instantly tells you that the person uttering it can safely be ignored in perpetuity.

Ever.  Promise.

One dog to rule them all

It's of course outstanding that the folk of Occupy Denver elected a border collie as their leader, but the reason why is almost as good:

[I]t began with Michael Moore.  Stung by the documentarian's refusal to follow general assembly guidelines at his recent visit to Occupy Denver, the idea of electing a symbolic (if hairy) leader struck [Nesby] as an opportune statement. "(Moore) walked in with security and made everyone listen to him in the center of the circle with a bullhorn like he was our leader, even though he said out loud it's a leaderless movement," says Nesby [...].  He and a few fellow occupiers gathered to contradict the misconception that the group needs an end-all representative.

Ooh, that's gotta hurt.  And for your amusement (always my top priority), here's Time's creative rendition of that same point:

Nesby decided to throw his furry friend’s proverbial hat in the ring after Michael Moore visited Occupy Denver and captivated him with the possibility of a symbolic leader.

“(Moore) walked in with security and made everyone listen to him in the center of the circle with a bullhorn like he was our leader, even though he said out loud it’s a leaderless movement,” told the Denver Westword.

Oh man, so close.

Israel's other airline

Democracy Now! correspondent Jihan Hafiz describes her experience on a Continental Airlines flight from Tel Aviv to Newark after Israel deported her:

Yes, when I was put on the Continental flight home, I was given no information. The guard that put me on, I’m not sure what he told the stewardess—who put me on this plane—but I did ask her multiple times for a newspaper. [...] I asked her a couple of times, "Can I have a newspaper? Can I have a newspaper?" And then, very last minute, she said, "No, you don’t get newspapers."

This was familiar to me not only because former US diplomat Edward Peck received similar treatment in 2010 after being kidnapped on the high seas by Israel and sent back to the US on a Continental flight...:

Peck said that after he was placed aboard a Continental Airlines jet for the trip back to the U.S., he met with rejection after requesting a drink with his airplane meal.

"I have a sense of humor," he said. "When I had my dinner and I asked for a bottle of red wine, I was told, 'No. You are not allowed alcoholic beverages. You are a threat to national security.'"

...but because it matched my own experience in 2002, when I left Israel on a Continental flight (the return flight I was already scheduled to be aboard, as it happens) after being detained with a dozen other activists after we'd broken the Israeli siege of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem.  The Israelis had taken my passport and were holding on to it as they kept me locked up at the "refusal center" at Ben Gurion Airport to await my flight.  When I finally boarded the flight I asked the head stewardess about my passport, and she said the Israelis were going to give it to her just before the plane pushed back from the gate and she could get it for me once the flight was underway.  Later, long after we'd left Israel, I asked her if she could give me my passport—and she flatly refused.  I reminded her of what she'd said when I got on board and she just brushed it off.  When I asked her (in perfectly even tones) what possible basis Continental had for withholding my passport from me, she not only wouldn't offer any explanation but threatened to have me restrained for the rest of the flight.  She didn't follow through on the threat but wouldn't answer any more of my questions either, and I only got my passport back (from another stewardess) after we'd landed and started taxiing to the gate.

I'll never forget the intense look of smug self-satisfaction on that Continental stewardess's face, or the visceral realization that she was not only acting as an agent of the the Israeli government but was enthusiastic about it.  And as Peck's and Hafiz's experiences show, this is standard operating procedure for Continental.  The collusion between corporations and governments to keep us under control was no surprise to me, of course (though the fact that Continental would show such fealty to the Israeli government was a bit of an eye-opener)—but  it's one thing to understand it intellectually and another thing entirely to get such a personal demonstration.

I don't have much to add beyond that except to say, man, what giant dicks.  It's not like there weren't already plenty of reasons to avoid Continental, but this is just one more thing to keep in mind when you're choosing your airline.

Transference

I headed over to my credit union today to see how things were going for Bank Transfer Day, and it was packed—the lobby was full and at one point a few dozen people came marching through who'd apparently been waiting upstairs for their turn to open an account.  Even after being told it could take up to two hours before someone would be able to help them, new arrivals were happily signing their names on the list and taking a clipboard to fill out an application.

The person I spoke with said they usually get around 350 new accounts a month, but in the past month they've had 1600—and that's not counting today.  Even though they close at 3pm they were going to stay as late as necessary to make sure every person who made it in the door would be able to get a new account opened (in true credit union service fashion).

Absolutely beautiful.  This is the kind of protest the banks can't ignore.

Anyone else have Bank Transfer Day stories (personal or general) to share?

Class warfare in action

I hadn't yet been to either of the two major Occupy encampments in the Bay Area, but even with a freshly sprained ankle I knew I had to head across the bay for the general strike and port shutdown in Oakland.  Being a carpetbagger made for a few awkward moments as I tried to figure out an appropriate response to "Whose streets?"—I mean technically your streets, but I'm sure there's some state and federal tax money going toward local infrastructure, right?  But I got past it.

Here's the closure of maritime commerce in action (those are the port's cranes in the distance):

And though it doesn't capture the size of the crowd, I liked the symbolism of this shot:

Port officials declared the port closed soon after thousands of us started pouring into the main entrance, and the shutdown lasted for hours afterward (there's word that they may have to close it overnight as well).  To their credit, the trapped truckers I saw overwhelmingly supported the action—in fact many of them were blowing their air horns and waving at the crowd as people climbed on top of their trucks.  Overall it was one of the most inspiring actions I've seen in the Bay Area, and despite what you may have heard about Occupy protesters having no coherent message I thought it was also one of the most focused (a rarity in the Bay Area, where for better or worse every protest ends up being about everything).  Definitely worth limping around for the next few days.

My favorite sign: "We should do this again sometime."  Yes, indeed.