Seeds of liberty

The military operation to “secure” Iraq so that elections can be held has the vaguely condescending name “Operation Seeds of Liberty.” Here, Charles Graner shows off his green thumb.



The announced security measures, UnFairWitness notes, seem to involve a ban on both driving and walking near polling places, necessitating the use of “pogo sticks of liberty” by would-be voters.

An Austrian Green Party official wants Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Austrian citizenship revoked for signing the death warrant in the execution that took place this week, on the grounds that he brought Austria into disrepute. I don’t suppose we can revoke his American citizenship on the same grounds.

The Sunday Times of London has details, leaked by South African intelligence, of the plans the British investors including Mark Thatcher (currently awaiting news on whether his American visa will be re-issued) had for Equatorial Guinea if their “time-share coup” had succeeded. The plan was to create a company on the model of the East India Company to run the country (and its oil). They planned to put an exiled opposition leader in nominal charge while keeping him in virtual house arrest; their greatest worry was that he actually become popular and hence less controllable.

I support breast equality

When Arafat was alive, the State Department (and Thomas Friedman, who just thinks he’s the State Department) frequently issued fiats demanding that he say this or that... in Arabic. The charge being that he said one thing to the West in English and another to his own people. So what the WaPo story headlined “Arabs Say U.S. Rhetoric Rings Hollow” is really asking is, will the US say the same thing in Arabic that it says in English. Another article, “Bush Speech Not a Sign of Policy Shift, Officials Say,” answers that question with a resounding “No.”

In fact, Dan Bartlett insists, “it is not to say we’re not doing this already. It is important to crystallize the debate to say this is what it is all about, to say what are our ideals, what are the values we cherish.” In other words, it’s all about--and only about--re-branding. Which we all knew, but I didn’t expect to hear a Bushie admit it just a day later.

By the way, all those commentators who are so impressed with Shrub’s “bold,” “sweeping” proclamation of a crusade to end tyranny everywhere, his shift from opposing “nation-building” to advocating Utopia-building, should note that this is actually a narrowing of focus. After 9/11, Bush said he would “rid the world of evil” (like Kane in “Kung Fu,” I said at the time). So just restricting that to tyranny is really a step down.

Speaking of ending tyranny, the LA Times has an article about a public defender fighting for the right of women to go topless in California’s beaches and parks, where now only man-boobs are allowed free rein. Her slogan: “I support breast equality.” Women convicted of indecent exposure have to register as sex offenders.

How to speak to baboons

Emily Latella Memorial Editorial: I agree with Bill Thomas that Bush’s Social Security privatization plan is a dead whore.

Speaking of the elderly, the power of the people, or at least the power of pissed-off old people, turns out not to be completely dead in Russia. Huge protests have made Putin back off the elimination of various benefits for pensioners and veterans. Instead, to reduce the cost of those programs he’ll have to go back to the policy of the last few years: steadily reducing Russia’s life expectancy.

Oh give me a fucking break [Indy link no longer working]:

International aid agencies in India have been horrified to find, even amid the suffering caused by the tsunami, some survivors being refused access to basic relief because they are considered “Untouchables”.

Accounts have emerged of members of the former Untouchable castes not being allowed to drink clean water from a tank provided by Unicef because other castes believed it would pollute the water in the tank. Dalits, as the former Untouchables are known today, have been thrown out of government relief camps by the other survivors staying there ....

Zoo keepers in Kent, England, are having to learn French in order to communicate with their baboons.

Fired

I probably spent too much time yesterday analyzing Bush’s speech, considering that his only contribution was to read it out loud, but one last observation, or a question really, about the use of metaphor: he referred to the “untamed fire of freedom,” and called 9/11 the “day of fire.” Is this just sloppy writing, or does it mean something?

Classic good news/bad news: the FBI has shelved its Carnivore program for surveilling the entire internet... because over-the-counter commercial software does the job just as well.

If we can avoid it

Consecutive stories listed on the Nation & Politics page of the WaPo: 1) “An Ambitious President Advances His Idealism,” 2) “Cheney Warns of Iran As a Nuclear Threat.”

Cheney says, “We don’t want a war in the Middle East, if we can avoid it.”

We don’t want to fight
but by jingo if we do...
We’ve got the ships, we’ve got the men,
and got the money too!

Avoid. Like “war in the Middle East” is a runaway truck. Of course you can “avoid” war, it’s easy: don’t invade, don’t bomb, no war.

As Viktor Yushchenko clears the last legal challenge and is sworn in as Ukraine’s president, Vladimir Putin finally admits defeat and sends a telegram looking forward to “good-neighborly and equal relations,” adding “or we will crush you.”

Speaking of good-neighborly and equal relations, Bush in his speech said, “We have known divisions.... and I will strive in good faith to heal them,” adding, “Or we will crush you.” “Yet those divisions do not define America. We felt the unity and fellowship of our nation when freedom came under attack”. What’s he saying, that in order to heal divisions, he’ll engineer another terrorist attack?

Independent editorial title: “Let Us Hope That Mr Bush’s More Nuanced Words Could Be Heard above the Gunfire in Iraq.” (No link, as the article is behind a pay barrier, but other than the title it’s nothing special).

Another Indy op-ed piece, by Johann Hari, says, “George Bush presented America as the armed wing of Amnesty International.” Also pay or Lexis-Nexis only.

Speaking of spreading freedom, the WaPo says that the prison camps maintained by the US in Iraq are almost full, with about 9,000 prisoners, and more every day. If Venezuela, say, arrested thousands of opponents in advance of an election, what would the US say about that?

The Colombian “bounty hunters” who kidnapped a FARC rebel in Venezuela, turn out to be members of Venezuela’s security forces, who will be charged with treason. I was right that there was no extradition request; but also, Interpol had rejected Colombia’s request to put the man on its wanted list because they saw the charges against him as political.

Israeli troops in Gaza shoot dead a Palestinian boy playing with a toy gun he’d been given for Eid, presumably by people who didn’t like him much. You have to ask why toy guns are even on sale there.

Freedom blah blah liberty blah blah freedom again blah blah...

One of my favorite Daily Show segments is when they have children read transcripts of tele-pundits tele-punditting at each other. Bush’s second inaugural speech reminds me of that, in that none of it was in his own voice. Phrases like “multiply in destructive power,” “pretensions of tyrants,” etc do not roll trippingly off his tongue.

(Who are the idiots yelling “four more years”?)

Before I forget, I want to call attention to the coded anti-abortion language: “Even the unwanted have worth.”

He used the word “freedom” 893 times in 20 minutes, and “liberty” 562 times. These are essentially negative words, at least the way Bush used them, in contradistinction to tyranny and oppression. It’s hard to say what the features are of a place with freedom and liberty, except that they lack the secret police, punishment of dissidents etc of tyrannies. Even Norman Rockwell had a more sophisticated vision of freedom:



Did Bush use the word “democracy” even once? By his choice of words--and wouldn’t you like to see him forced to define them?--he set the bar pretty low; hell, he thinks Iraq and Afghanistan have freedom now.

I was definitely right in my last post about his use of “freedom” as a threat, a dagger aimed at the heart of any regime he doesn’t like, members of the “axis of evil” or the “outposts of oppression.” I mean, really: “one day this untamed fire of freedom will reach the darkest corners of our world.” It’s a top-down view of freedom, something that applies to nations or regions and only as an afterthought to individuals.

Other words that stand out, although less obviously, are words like “permanent,” “eternal” and “always,” applied to the values of America, which evidently have something to do with liberty and freedom. OK, it doesn’t sound sinister when I write it like that, but there’s something rigid and unexamined in his invocation of the permanence of his alleged values. Coming out of his mouth, the notions of freedom and liberty take on his own personal characteristics: stubbornness, lack of reflection. Read the speech, if you have the stomach for it, and see if you don’t see what I mean.

All that remains is to observe that Chimpy’s tie was ugly, and that there was a wide variety of amusing hats on view. Rehnquist’s little beret, or whatever that was, went so well with the Gilbert and Sullivan robes, and Rummy’s consiglieri hat.

After interpreting omens

Inauguration, from the Latin inauguratus, meaning “consecrated after interpreting omens.” And, indeed, His Fraudulency said yesterday that “We have a calling from beyond the stars to stand for freedom”. You know, George, I hear a tin-foil hat will block the flying-saucer messages. He also called for “the expansion of freedom in all the world.” Only Shrub could make “freedom” sound so much like a threat.


I may just spend the day hiding under the bed.

The dangly bits

Condi is voted out of committee 16-2.



Sharon’s government secretly decided 6 months ago to seize the East Jerusalem property of Palestinians who live in the West Bank, without compensation. This has been applied to Palestinians who own agricultural property on what is now the wrong side of the Wall. So the Wall has turned out to be a land grab after all, who’d have guessed?

As you may remember, police in Inglewood, CA. were filmed in July 2002 beating a black 16-year old in what it was feared would be another Rodney King incident.



The white officer who did most of the beating was fired, but two hung juries failed to convict him. Another white officer on the scene was suspended for 10 days for failing to report the incident and then lying about it, while a black cop received only 4 days’ suspension for beating the kid with a flashlight. So the 2 white cops sued for...wait for it... discrimination, and were awarded $1.6 million and $810,000 respectively.

New Zealand has put out a series of stamps in recognition of New Zealand’s unique cultural contrib... well, all right, sheep. But one stamp featuring a male merino sheep has been denounced as an insult to rural NZ because it doesn’t show “the dangly bits.”

Rocks

I guess someone thought twice about the name “America Rocks the Future: A Call to Service,” and changed it to “America’s Future Rocks.” And nothing says rock & roll like George & Laura in their most rockin’ party togs.

With a forklift

2 posts ago I said I didn’t know what this was about.

Well, according to the lawyer of the soldier responsible for it, he was simply moving the prisoner out of the sun. With a forklift. So it was an act of kindness. With a forklift.

His understanding

Alberto Gonzales has answered more questions in writing, no more satisfactorily than he did in Senate testimony. Torture bad, still won’t define it, does say that techniques which would violate the 8th Amendment ban on cruel and unusual punishment if they were used in the US might be ok if we used them abroad, not that we’d ever do that, unless we did, and the CIA can do whatever it wants. And this, on rendition, with the weasel phrases highlighted: “It is my understanding that the United States does not render individuals to countries where we believe it is more likely than not they will be tortured.”

Though several Bushies have been asked about waterboarding, none will say a word against it.

To return yet again to Bush’s “accountability moment” line: I’ve said before that Bush’s life is marked by periodic declarations of clean-slate moments, when everything is supposed to have changed, and everything he did before is supposed not to matter: going teetotal and Jesusy at age 40, 9/11, etc. The accountability moment is another one of these.

Condi says the solution to North Korea’s nuclear problem is 6-party talks which will tell NK, “If you intend to a be part of the international system, you have got to give up your nuclear weapons programs.” When has North Korean ever shown an interest in being part of the international system, whatever that might be?

Cowabunga

Condi: “I have to say that I have never, ever, lost respect for the truth in the service of anything.” Can’t lose what you don’t have.

Condi is the “intellectual” of the Bush administration, which means she tries to phrase things intellectually: “Our role is directly proportional, I think, to how capable the Iraqis are.” She of course meant to say inversely proportional. Nice try.

Yet more pictures of the abuse of Iraqi prisoners, this time, phew, not by us, but by the Brits. The London Times attempts to explain this one: “Lance Corporal Darren Larkin appears to be pretending to surf on his victim, seemingly unaware that he is in a country where even the slightest contact with the soles of the feet is regarded as a grave insult.”




What this one is all about, who knows.


There are also the usual simulated sex acts, but it’s mild by Abu Ghraib standards, abuse rather than torture, unless there’s something in the Geneva Conventions about simulated surfing. The pics were discovered because a fusilier used a commercial film developer.

Latest thing British people will bet on: the next James Bond. Clive Owen is currently at 4:1.

Tonight will see the first execution of the Schwarzenegger administration, of a man with brain damage, which the jury never heard about.

One of the “youth events” associated with the inauguration, hosted by Jenna and Not-Jenna, will have the beyond-parody name “America Rocks the Future: A Call to Service.” Room service, possibly.

The time for diplomacy is now...no, wait, it’s... now, no no no, ok NOW is the time for diplomacy

Called on to reassess the 1989 events at Tiananmen Square following the death of Zhao Ziyang, Chinese foreign minister spokesmodel Kong Quan (!) says that the economic growth since proves that the massacre was “correct.”

I’ve only watched a little of Condi Rice’s confirmation hearings (still dragging on uninformatively as I write) but this just has to be the biggest lie she told: “I look forward to personally working with Palestinian and Israeli leaders, and bringing American diplomacy to bear on this difficult but crucial issue”. In the history of the world, no one has ever looked forward to working with Palestinian and Israeli leaders.

Condi: “The tsunami was a wonderful opportunity for us.” Oy.

Condi: “The time for diplomacy is now.”

“Our interaction with the rest of the world must be a conversation, not a monologue.” Of course the rest of the world’s role in that conversation will be confined to “Sir, yes sir!”

She’s the last Bushie still to claim that the US had to invade Iraq over WMDs, which she somehow combines with admitting that there were none. I don’t understand how she does that either. “Now, there were lots of data points about his weapons-of-mass- destruction programs. Some were right and some were not.” I don’t know what a data point is when it’s at home, but I’m pretty sure a data point that is wrong is not a data point. “But what was right was that there was an unbreakable link between Saddam Hussein and weapons of mass destruction.” That sentence has less meaning each time I read it.

It wasn’t just WMDs. Here’s another discredited oldie but goodie: “And I know that there was no single thing that might have prevented [9/11].”


Secretary of State nominee Rice.

Here comes the post-accountable president

We’re fast approaching the exquisite awfulness of the anti-accountability moment, the Bush inauguration. Other blogs--I apologize to them for forgetting which--have noted that Laura Bush’s defense of the lavish, partying-on-the-Titanic celebrations in a time of war and tsunami tsuris (I still think the crime against common decency was in continuing to fund-raise for this thing after the tsunami hit), her assertion that the inauguration is never cancelled, mistook the parties afterward, which are often muted, for the inauguration itself. One is the civic ritual, which celebrates democracy and the presidency itself, the peaceful handover of power from President Gore to President-Elect Bush; the other is a celebration of the president, the mere man. Increasingly, Bush and his henchmen do not know the difference, and they were always inclined sharply to the imperial view of the presidency.

This blog has spoken frequently about the poverty of Bush’s understanding of democracy in the context of Afghan and Iraqi elections, but I’d like to return to his much-quoted comment in the WaPo interview that “We had an accountability moment, and that’s called the 2004 elections.” Here’s how my computer dictionary defines “moment”: “1 a brief period of time. 2 an exact point in time.” In Bush’s vision, democratic accountability is an exact point in time, Election Day, one day out of 1,461, and the very last accountability moment of his political career is now behind him. What does that make him, class? That’s right: unaccountable. So abandon your protests, your speeches and diatribes, your letters to the editor or the White House, your petitions and remonstrances, because the moment in which even Bush considered himself accountable to the American people has come... and it has gone.

I have a nightmare

Finally, late in the day, something on the White House website vaguely relating to M.L. King, or at least an event where Bush mentioned King, actually an event to honor Colin Powell (and his wife). His references to King are as anodyne as it is possible to be, and it is impossible to detect any influence the civil rights movement or Dr. King had on Bush himself. He did live through those years, after all. Bush said that he was honoring a man who has “upheld the highest ideal of American citizenship.” He doesn’t mean King, civil rights leader and anti-war activist, but rather Colin Powell, the former general and the man who helped cover up My Lai. “In their [Colin and Alma Powell] love of country, and their heart for service, they show the same character found in the life of Dr. Martin Luther King.”


Martin Luther King, not looking pleased.


Shrub, looking too pleased.

Riddle me this

While I was waiting for a fuller text of Pentagon spokesmodel Lawrence DiRita’s “rebuttal” of Sy Hersh’s article to show up somewhere on the web (I still haven’t found it), Eli at LeftI has written exactly what I planned to write, which is that DiRita’s talk about rumor, innuendo, statements never made, etc. failed to deny a single specific in the Hersh piece or name a single one of the alleged factual errors. You can’t accuse DiRita of making factual errors, because his non-denial denial was completely fact-free. But this isn’t about facts, per se. DiRita says that these unspecified errors with which the article is “riddled” (riddled is the key word in denigration this week; Dan Bartlett used it yesterday) mean that “the credibility of his entire piece is destroyed.” It’s not really about facts, it’s about the media’s, at least the non-compliant media like Hersh’s, credibility.

The annoying thing is that I have much the same problem with the Hersh article: he didn’t provide enough backing evidence for me to judge the accuracy of his charges, so I’m left relying on his credibility, although that credibility is quite high with me, given his track record.

As a long-time observer of CIA dirty tricks, Hersh is especially worried that the shift of covert operations to the Pentagon will remove what little Congressional oversight was set up in the 1970s. The incursions into Iran are being defined not as intelligence ops but as “preparing the battlefield,” and as such immune from scrutiny.

Also, and I can’t believe even the Bushies are being this stupid again, they evidently believe that a successful operation against an Iranian nuclear facility would bring about an uprising against the government because it would destroy the mullahs’ “aura of invincibility.” Which come to think of it is roughly what the right is trying to do with the media: first make a surgical strike on Dan Rather, then Rather-bate other journalists, so you can dismiss Seymour Hersh’s “credibility” without having to address his accusations.

(Update: here’s the DiRita “rebuttal,” which is actually snider than I’d imagined. My favorite phrase is the dismissal of agreements between Douglas Feith and Israel as “the soft bigotry of some conspiracy theorists.”)

Not getting through

Just a few days ago Bush said of his 11% black vote in the 2004 election, “as to why that message hasn’t made it through, I don’t know, I’m not a pundit.” I just went to the White House website looking for Martin Luther King Day material to make fun of--it’s what I do--and there’s NOTHING there.


Just totally perplexed by the black people.

Still, it could be worse.

Leaning

If Iraq’s election monitors will be in Jordan, Western journalists still have to cover the country from in their countries, practicing “hotel journalism.” Robert Fisk reports that NBC journos not only don’t leave their hotel, but their security advisers have told them not to visit the hotel’s pool or restaurant. He notes that during the invasion, reports from embedded reporters were prefaced with warnings that they were produced under military restrictions, but now, when their only “reporting” consists of reaching out from under their bed to grab the latest press release issued by the US military or the puppet government, themselves isolated in the Green Zone from the real situation in Iraq, no such warnings are given.

With British elections coming up sometime in spring, the talk is of a further Tory party meltdown. Still, none of the parties are going in to the election with the leader they want. The Conservatives have discarded three party leaders since the last time they were in office, and Michael Howard is doing no better with the public. The Liberal Democrats are led by a man with a disconcerting resemblance to Conan O’Brien, enough said there. Labour would do better with anybody but Bush’s poodle, and there are fierce battles, all leaked to the press, being waged over when to replace him with Gordon Brown, the current chancellor, so they’re not looking too great either. Labour are currently thrilled that they were able to arrange for a Tory MP and former minister for higher education, Robert Jackson, to defect to Labour, although 1) he’s not planning to run again anyway, 2) all the issues on which he disagrees with the Tories are ones on which Labour is further to the right (charging tuition for universities, Iraq, etc).

Bill “Here Kitty Kitty Kitty” Frist says that Americans might have to “take some medicine” in the form of lower Social Security benefits. You know, as awful as Frist is as a senator, if poverty is his idea of medicine it’s probably just as well he gave up the doctoring gig.

Speaking of evil ex-doctors, the New Yorker just posted not only the Sy Hersh story about secret incursions into Iran, but also an interesting profile of Iyad “Comical” Allawi, another detailed biography which still doesn’t answer my question whether the guy ever practiced medicine.

In, pathetically, the boldest Democratic move yet on Alberto Gonzales, Ted Kennedy says he is “leaning against” voting to confirm him. But if you consider support for torture to be an absolute disqualification for the job of attorney general, and funnily enough I do, you don’t “lean” because there is nothing left to consider. You do not “lean” on issues of principle.

Not a pundit

Emperor Chimpy, in full-on smug mode: “We had an accountability moment, and that’s called the 2004 elections. The American people listened to different assessments made about what was taking place in Iraq, and they looked at the two candidates, and chose me.” Of all the assessments of the election results, I’m not sure anyone has said before that the electorate thought Bush was doing a really good job in Iraq.

And this bit, I just have to quote from the Post verbatim:

As for perhaps the most notorious terrorist, Osama bin Laden, the administration has so far been unsuccessful in its attempt to locate the mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Asked why, Bush said, “Because he’s hiding.”

He admits that Muslims hate us, but is sure they’ll come around, he says: “There’s no question we’ve got to continue to do a better job of explaining what America is all about.” Yeah, because it’s the explanations that have been at fault, not anything you’ve actually done.

He also admits that black people didn’t vote for him, and is equally baffled by that, and equally convinced that he’s just being misunderstood: “the policies that we have put forth in this administration are, I think, beneficial to all. And as to why that message hasn’t made it through, I don’t know, I’m not a pundit.” Or a rocket scientist. Interview excerpts.


Perplexed by the black people.
In my on-going efforts to improve your vocabulary, here is a story from the London Times:

Constantin Putica, whose surname means “small penis” in Romanian, has given up trying to change it because he’s fed up with the red tape involved, reports the Ananova news agency. “I have got used to people laughing when they hear my name,” says the 45-year-old.

“I can live with it.” According to a local newspaper there are not only 243 Puticas in Romania but also 233 people called Muia, which means “oral sex”.

Our apologies for not mentioning the names of all the candidates

Charles Graner: “I can see, to a layperson, a lot of things happen in prison that may look wrong.” D’ya think?

Freedom, ain’t it grand:

The predicament for candidates was spelled out on a flier passed around town by the United Iraqi Alliance. The flier listed the names of 37 candidates for the national assembly. The 188 others, the flier said, could not be published.

“Our apologies for not mentioning the names of all the candidates,” the flier said. “But the security situation is bad, and we have to keep them alive.”

An election with no candidates, sounds like heaven after months of Bush & Kerry, doesn’t it? Oh sure, it’s a mockery of the political process, and it’s an insult to compare this with real democracy, but still... an election with no candidates.