Port-au-Prince January 17, 2010In the just over four decades since Martin Luther King was murdered, it seems as if, were he to be resurrected, he would—after a brief acclimatization to the technological changes that had occurred—simply be able to pick up right where he’d left off. Because very little has changed. The illegal surveillance under which the FBI kept him throughout his career now extends to all Americans—and has been made legal. It is unlikely that he would draw comfort from the notion that, though America... [More]

In a very well-written piece, The Quiet American (Antiwar.com), by the always thoughtful Israeli journalist, Uri Avnery, the “War on Terror” is taken to task as an expression as well as a concept. Though the Obama administration has officially consigned the phrase to the dustbin, the policy it represents is nearly unchanged from the Bush era. The concept as a shining light leading America through the inky blackness of an ever more dangerous world lives on with a vengeance.

At the press circus after the... [More]

Rudy Giuliani is a mean, small, racially-motivated and purely political animal and always has been. Viz:

“We had no domestic attacks under Bush.”

Giuliani started the primary race for the Republican presidential nomination with a bang. That he was, for a while, running neck-and-neck with Hillary can be in no small part attributed to his near-constant reference to “9–11”. In fact, he quickly became known not as a “one-issue candidate” but as a “one-phrase candidate”. His orations were nothing... [More]

Documentary buffs, rejoice! There are a lot of very good documentaries coming out of the not-quite-yet-a-police-state of America. The following are all worth a look (or a listen is enough in most cases) if you’re interested in what America’s really doing, where it’s headed and how the hell we got here. As they say, “no matter how far down the wrong road you’ve traveled, turn around (it ain’t gonna get any better until you do).”

The following order is by release date, not by preference or rating.... [More]

And, from the department of “it’s not just the U.S. doing it” comes this article, Police routinely arresting people to get DNA, inquiry claims by Alan Travis (Guardian), which the recently released results of an inquiry into the national DNA database maintained by the various police forces of the U.K.

Similar to U.S. policy when it comes to deciding on whom to keep an eye, the U.K. is strongly racially biased, with the report “raise[ing] the possibility that the DNA profiles of three-quarters of young black males, aged... [More]”

“Cap & Trade” is ostensibly a policy for controlling climate-change. Like many other bright ideas, while it is technically feasible on paper, it is unlikely to satisfy any of its purported ecological goals when actually used. Like communism or capitalism, it’s a system that only works if human beings don’t get involved. It won’t even get out the door before it’s corrupted to serve power and generate wealth for the already wealthy instead of actually controlling carbon output.

This may not be... [More]

Cultures that haggle[1] have a rule-of-thumb when making deals that is approximately: “If the customer/shopkeeper is smiling, you got screwed.” On the other hand, if you’re walking away with purchases under your arm and you can just hear the sound of someone cursing you and your ancestors over the sound of your whistling, then you got a good deal.

The title says it all: Healthcare industry stocks explode as bill progresses by Glenn Greenwald (Salon.com).

Wall Street has been doing a frenetic jig, rubbing itself to new heights... [More]

It’s actually not complicated at all, if you’re willing to open your mind to logic just a little bit and suspend your belief that Iran is a double-boiler of barely suppressed rage and killing mayhem. The post, Iran Isn’t The Problem, Stupid by Evert Cilliers (3QuarksDaily) sums it up in three sentences:

“Why might Iran want the bomb? Well, some damn foreigner invaded Afghanistan and Iraq on either side of Iran, killing and maiming people for nine years now. You’d have to be Amish not to look into a deterrent.”

When you put it... [More]

Seventeen years ago, the nations of the world got together in Kyoto and agreed to a scheme that would bring climate change under control. After a round or ten of glad-handing and slapping one another on the back, they spent the intervening years ignoring all of the targets that they’d set, with some nations even backing out of the treaty entirely (I’m looking at you, GWB). The first world careened onward, pursuing “bigger, better, faster, more” without regard for the effects on the third world... [More]

So, after at least half a year of intense debate, political haggling and a spirited back-and-forth, we have the following ground-breaking legislation to transform the American health care system. In short, our legislators have determined that what we need is almost exactly that which we already have, but that we would like to pay much, much more for it.

1. It will cover more people.
2. It will be illegal to deny coverage for preëxisting conditions.

Negatives

1. It won’t be... [More]

The place: Norway; the occasion: the Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech from the Master of Rhetoric.

Shorter Obama:

“Until America gets everything it could possibly want—which includes unlimited resources and a continuation unchanged of the lifestyle to which our richest have become accustomed—there’s gonna be war. Until America doesn’t experience pants-shitting terror every time another nation achieves even 1% of our glory, there’s gonna be war. Anyway, thanks for the award and thanks... [More]”

This three-minute visualization of the relative sizes of four empires—France, Portugal, Spain and England—from the early 1800s to the present is mesmerizing. Once you’ve seen it, you want to see Holland, Russia and the U.S. as well. Definitely watch until 1960 so you can see the wonderful explosion of the French empire!

Visualizing Empire's Decline (YouTube)
 

In matters military, the Obama administration has followed closely in the footsteps of the Bush administration. The Bush administration, in turn, only really innovated in brazenness and speed of execution, but also pretty much hewed to the military policy of the 50 years before it. It comes as no surprise, then, that the Obama administration decided not to sign the most recent ban on land mines. Perhaps Carter would have signed it, but he’s proven to be a much stronger former president than he... [More]

The following citation from That Couple by Tom Schaller (538) applies to so much in popular American culture today.

“No, you’re not famous; you’re infamous. You’re situated squarely at the bottom of an already too-deep and increasingly murky barrel of celebrity culture, celebrity journalism, and (un)reality TV, the depths of which are probably making even Andy Warhol cringe in his grave. I want this to be your fifteenth minute. I want your egg timer to ding now, so you can exit our national discourse as swiftly,... [More]”

Christ almighty, does America suck.[1]

We’re so politically moribund it’s hard to see how anything significant will change without a revolution.

Consider the following citation from the column, The Defining Moment by Paul Krugman (New York Times):

“For this is the moment of truth. The political environment is as favorable for reform as it’s likely to get. The legislation on the table isn’t perfect, but it’s as good as anyone could reasonably have expected. History is about to be made — and everyone has to decide which... [More]”

As detailed in the article, Strip search of Ariz. teenager illegal, court says by Jesse J. Holland, the Supreme Court weighed in today on the case of the young lady who was strip-searched to determined whether she had brought Ibuprofen—Ibuprofen!—to school with her. The facts of case are as follows:

“Redding was 13 when the educators in rural eastern Arizona conducted the search in 2003. They were looking for pills — the equivalent of two Advils. The district bans prescription and over-the-counter drugs... [More]”

Obama recently fulfilled a campaign promise to deliver a speech from a the capital city of a Muslim country with what some consider a ground-breaking speech in Cairo, Egypt (full transcript (Miami Herald)). It’s been a few weeks and already his masterful oratory has been credited with influencing the election in Lebanon, though it hardly can be blamed for what happened in Iran (or the rightward swing in Europe, for that matter).

The speech was a masterpiece, to be sure, though reading it surely leaves less... [More]

At any rate, it will not fall now during this so-called “crisis of democracy” as western media—the media with nearly zero access to the country—likes to put it. The history of the Islamic Republic is rooted not in the 1979 revolution, but rather in the overthrow of Mossadeqh in the 1950s and the subsequent U.S.-supported rule of the Shah for more than two decades. The Islamic Republic’s power drew from this wellspring of resentment over the Shah’s Western-supported autocratic power. When he... [More]

In recent years, supplemental spending bills for war funding have been passed with depressing regularity since the launching of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. Over those years, the U.S. military apparatus has commanded declared budgets of well over $500 billion. That number is only a baseline which does not include other massive costs like those for maintaining over a dozen secret service agencies or the interest paid on debt incurred by spending so much money on the military over the last... [More]

Thanks to Twitter, we now have even better access to the splendidly corrupt, morally bankrupt and intellectually vacuous individuals that we send—every four years—to Washington to run America. As detailed in the article, Senator says Obama ‘got nerve’ to push lawmakers by Erica Werner (Google Hosted News), representative Grassley—who happens to be a Republican, but don’t fool yourself into thinking it matters—”tweeted” the following nugget of pith:

“Pres Obama you got nerve while u sightseeing in Paris to tell us ‘time to... [More]”

With Memorial Day just past and Independence Day coming up in about a month, the parade of miliaristic emails masked as patriotism is making the rounds. The text of one of these follows (in quotes and in red), interspersed with my comments in reply:

“I HOPE THERE ISN’T ANYONE ON MY E-MAIL LIST THAT WON’T KEEP THIS GOING.”

Veiled threats are unbecoming. To my mind, this translates to: I hope I don’t know anyone who doesn’t agree unquestioningly with the rather broad palette of jingoist sentiment... [More]

Recently, Lindsey Graham said in a hearing: “[…] one of the reasons these [torture] techniques have survived for about 500 years is apparently they work.”

In that, Mr. Graham is 100% correct. Torture does work, but not in the way touted by its proponents. In order to examine the issue more closely, we need to first clarify—come to agreement on, as it were—the definition of the word “work”, in this context. It’s just tossed in there, at the end of the sentence, as if its intent were... [More]

Hold on to your hats, citizens of the world, the American president is rattling sabers at a former ally. A parenthetical was left off the end of his statement, though. It should have ended:

“…that you don’t end up having a [another] nuclear-armed militant state ... [More]”

The Convention Against Torture (CAT) is an American law passed during the Reagan administration. It extends the provisions to which America was already bound as a signatory of the Geneva Conventions.[1] Even if we assume—as so many of the leading light’s of America’s intellectual elite and media have already done—that the Geneva Conventions do not apply to America, we have to acknowledge our own laws, don’t we? We can assume that a 21st-century America doesn’t give a rat’s ass about the Geneva... [More]

If only this were really the way it was:

Jeff Danziger: On the Elevator to the Executive Suite

That would be awesome, if only the subjugated classes—the other 90% of us—would realize our awesome power and bring those responsible for our current plight to justice. Make them give up every dime and shred of power and settle our accounts. If only we were brave enough to jettison all the criminals instead of putting up with those only willing to work with them. I’m looking at you, pretty much all of the Clinton (Greenspan, Summers, Rubin and co.... [More]

Culled from Republicans: The Stupid Party by Brad DeLong (Grasping Reality), written in response to the House Republicans publishing a “19-page pamphlet that does not include a single real budget proposal or estimate”. Instead the pamphlet consists almost exclusively of criticism of the House Democrat proposal, offering no concrete alternatives.

It is not known whether taking the pulse of political opinion via political cartoons is statistically valid, but it is kind of fun—fun in a way that makes your teeth grind in righteous indignation.

Chavez chooses SocialismPut a Fork in it; it's done

At a time when the U.S. and all the nations that followed it down the rabbit hole of pirate/casino capitalism are suffering massive hits on all fronts, it takes real dedication to turn one’s laser-like focus from the U.S. economy to criticize Hugo Chavez for choosing socialism instead. Mort... [More]

Conservatives recently gathered at a large conference to deliver a yearly report to one another on the state of the nation. Though the president was invited—and lauded—last year, they didn’t see fit to invite the still decidedly conservative[1] current president this year. It is more than mildly appalling to watch, however, as one commentator after another blithely acts as if conservatism had had nothing to with the ruling of the country for the last three decades or so. Though fiscal policy... [More]

A meme is an idea that takes root and spreads from person to person. A quick-fix meme[1] is such an idea, usually a solution, that sounds good but doesn’t hold up under scrutiny. Often the meme preys on people’s basic ignorance of the subject matter and their desire to believe that their gut instinct won’t steer them wrong.

One example of such a meme is that countries should pay people to scrap their cars, commonly called “scrappage payment” plans. Germany has something like this in place and... [More]

Conservatives are fond of invoking the Constitution and the “founding fathers” in order to end all discussion when a proposed change to existing law would evolve in a direction that they don’t like. This is not always wrong, but often seems quite cherry-picked. For example, when the Supreme Court granted corporations full rights as citizens in Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad (Wikipedia), there was no hue and cry about activist judges. That single decision has arguably had a tremendous... [More]