McClatchy News is reporting this:

Iraqi lawmakers say the United States is demanding 58 bases as part of a proposed “status of forces” agreement that will allow U.S. troops to remain in the country indefinitely.

Leading members of the two ruling Shiite parties said in a series of interviews the Iraqi government rejected this proposal along with another U.S. demand that would have effectively handed over to the United States the power to determine if a hostile act from another country is aggression against Iraq. Lawmakers said they fear this power would drag Iraq into a war between the United States and Iran.

“The points that were put forth by the Americans were more abominable than the occupation,” said Jalal al Din al Saghir, a leading lawmaker from the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq. “We were occupied by order of the Security Council,” he said, referring to the 2004 Resolution mandating a U.S. military occupation in Iraq at the head of an international coalition. “But now we are being asked to sign for our own occupation. That is why we have absolutely refused all that we have seen so far.”

Other conditions sought by the United States include control over Iraqi air space up to 30,000 feet and immunity from prosecution for U.S. troops and private military contractors.

Glenn Greenwald of Salon provides a detailed commentary on this latest revelation, documenting that back in 2003, the Bush Administration vehemently denied having any intentions of permanently occupying Iraq.

In 2006, Norman Solomon wrote War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death. His book detailed the information tactics the American government uses to launch wars.

War Made Easy has been such an influential book that it has now been made into a movie of the same name. You can view it here or you can order a copy of the DVD here.

I was able to attend a viewing of “War Made Easy” last Saturday night at the National Conference for Media Reform in Minneapolis (NCMR2008). This crisply edited movie was narrated by Sean Penn. Much of what keeps this movie engaging are the dozens of carefully chosen news media clips generated during various American wars for the past 50 years, including large numbers of videos clips from the Vietnam war and the Iraq occupation. The magic of “War Made Easy” is that the directors carefully edited and arranged these clips to show us that nothing much has really changed: If an American president has decided that he wants to go to war, the watchdog American media is likely to become a lapdog and we will inevitably go to war.

Following the screening of “War Made Easy,” I attended a discussion of the movie led by media critic Norman Solomon and the co-director and producer of the movie, Loretta Alper. The following morning, Ms. Alper granted me the opportunity to interview her further regarding the making of “War Made Easy.”

Whenever we Americans go to war, we get there through a well-documented series of stages. As I watched “War Made Easy,” I saw better than ever that these stages are entirely predictable in the context of America’s warmongering ways.

Perhaps this characterization of America sounds too shrill, but just look around. The evidence is everywhere that war is a sport in America just as sports are warlike. Our TV shows and movies overflow with violence as a first-rate method of dealing with conflict. The toys we foist on our boys extol violence as the most obvious way of settling disputes. We challenge each other with statements like “support the troops,” no matter what those troops are doing (and see here ). We are all too ready to invoke the word “war,” because that word triggers a ready-made conceptual frame for freely and guiltlessly expressing ourselves with bullets, bombs and blood. In America, this frame of war is such an incredibly effective filter that we proceed to consider only the “benefits” of war and we ignore the massive damages inflicted on both war-zone civilians and upon millions of Americans (and see here).

For most Americans, it is difficult to see that we are truly a nation of warmongers. After all, we are so absolutely used to being the way we are that even the most obvious things have become difficult to see. As George Orwell once noted, “To see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle.”

Before seeing “War Made Easy,” I was already familiar with the FAIR study documenting the manner in which our media rolled over rather than risk being accused of being unpatriotic. How much does the media roll over? So much so, that Americans see only an extremely filtered set of images representing the war. We see pictures of happy soldiers shipping out to “do their duty.” Pictures of dismembered civilian children are much too inconvenient for American patriotism, however.

Yes, Americans have become warriors looking for wars. America is a place where the thinnest of excuses will get the whole war machine revved. It is one of the points made by “War Made Easy” that America is gasoline needing only a small spark of an excuse to get us exploding off to war. Almost any excuse will do, it seems, and it doesn’t matter whether that excuse entirely false. In the 1960s, all it would took was the Gulf of Tonkin incident, an incident which never actually happened at all (based upon a recently declassified NSA document and other evidence). Nonetheless, the claim of the Gulf of Tonkin incident opened the floodgates to the American military buildup in Vietnam.

In 1993, all it took was a few well-placed public officials to stir up worries about “weapons of mass destruction” that didn’t exist. At that point, the confirmation bias and the herd instinct take over. How warped has our national perspective become? Whatever any perceived outsider does, we will see in the worst possible light and we will make damned sure that every other American becomes equally xenophobic. When this level of dysfunction occurs in an individual, we call that individual mentally ill. When it occurs nationwide, we call it “patriotism.”

The above observations are necessary prelude to my understanding of “War Made Easy.” I needed to consider these issues because of a question I had trouble getting past: Why isn’t going to war easy for most countries other than the United States? One obvious answer is that most other countries have not invested in a massive military infrastructure. The U.S. is physically able go to war at the push of a button, while most other would first require a long-term military buildup. The next obvious question, though, is why most other countries have not invested in their military might to the same extent as the United States. My unfortunate conclusion is that the U.S. has a warmonger mentality. When the President of the U.S. says we need to go to war, the citizens are already half-primed to agree. This would not be the case with, for example, the Prime Minister of Norway.

“War Made Easy” is an illustration of the predictable steps that will occur as soon as the spark of a false threat hits the gasoline of American militaristic exceptionalism. We see this same pattern over and over. Here are some of the predictable steps that occur when an American president presses for war. All of these are well substantiated by “War Made Easy.”

I. Public dialogue becomes simplistic. Consider Pat Buchanan’s warning that “When the war begins, the debate ends.” The media clips offered by “War Made Easy” substantiate the claim that once war is under way, there is no more media coverage for the rationale for the war, but only for the progress of the war. Once war is under way, it is produced like a TV show. The information from the war zone is tightly controlled by the government. The media does not protest this tight control, because it desperately craves the access and the market share. Therefore, whatever labels the government gives to a battle or a war (e.g., “Shock and Awe”), the media readily embraces it.

II. The President’s case for war is always built upon deception; the official story is false or it omits numerous key facts. Instead, the case is made primarily upon spin.

III. Americans are portrayed as “reluctant fighters.” We’d rather not go to war, but circumstances are allegedly forcing our hand. (more…)

When “Iranian” weapons in Iraq turn out not to be Iranian, the White House is silent.  That’s what recently happened, based on this post at Crooks and Liars.

Are you bored by those endless replays of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright? If so, Frank Rich of the NYT recommends that we visit YouTube to search for “John Hagee Roman Church Hitler,” whereupon we will be “recharged by a fresh jolt of clerical jive.”

What you’ll find is a white televangelist, the Rev. John Hagee, lecturing in front of an enormous diorama. Wielding a pointer, he pokes at the image of a woman with Pamela Anderson-sized breasts, her hand raising a golden chalice. The woman is “the Great Whore,” Mr. Hagee explains, and she is drinking “the blood of the Jewish people.” That’s because the Great Whore represents “the Roman Church,” which, in his view, has thirsted for Jewish blood throughout history, from the Crusades to the Holocaust.

Mr. Hagee is perhaps best known for trying to drum up a pre-emptive “holy war” with Iran. and see Max Blumenthal’s behind the scenes video where you’ll get the real flavor for what drives Rev. John Hagee’s followers.

Rich argues that Barack Obama is being picked on unfairly.

Mr. McCain instead told George Stephanopoulos two Sundays ago that while he condemns any “anti-anything” remarks by Mr. Hagee, he is still “glad to have his endorsement.” I wonder if Mr. McCain would have given the same answer had Mr. Stephanopoulos confronted him with the graphic video of the pastor in full “Great Whore” glory. But Mr. McCain didn’t have to fear so rude a transgression. Mr. Hagee’s videos have never had the same circulation on television as Mr. Wright’s. A sonorous white preacher spouting venom just doesn’t have the telegenic zing of a theatrical black man.

Arianna Huffington has just released her new book, Right Is Wrong: How the Lunatic Fringe Hijacked America, Shredded the Constitution, and Made Us All Less Safe. Huffington has reviewed the main themes of her book at Huffpo.

In the book, Huffington concludes that there are three main areas to consider in order to understand “how we got in the mess we’re in”:

A) the media;
B)  the role of fear in our politics; and
C) the failure of political leadership.

Huffington is a passionate and eloquent spokesperson for these critically important themes:

These three factors have combined to allow the lunatic fringe that has taken over the Right to hijack our country, our democracy, and our Constitution. So that 28 percent of the population that continues to support George W. Bush no matter how many bodies pile up in Iraq, how many jobs disappear overseas, how many For Sale signs go up on their block, or how high gas prices get, continues to dominate our politics.

I’m tired of hearing Neocons cavalierly talking about “nuking” one or more Middle Eastern countries. These days, Neocons often talk about this “need” to use nuclear weapons to show people in the Middle East that “we” mean business. I have personally heard this sort of talk several times (when you mostly listen instead of talk, you’d be amazed at what Neocons tell you). Former U.S. presidential candidate Tom Tancredo talks like this, for example.  [If you want to get a flavor for the scariest segment of the crowd that takes lightly the idea of using nuclear weapons, Google the phrase "nuke Mecca Medina."]

Here’s what I propose. The next time someone somberly (or cheerfully) suggests that the United States “nuke” a country in the Middle East, tell them to take a look at what it really means to use nuclear weapons on human beings. A site called Atomic Tragedy recently released these graphic photos of Hiroshima that had been donated to the Hoover Archives by a U.S. serviceman in 1998, with the provision that the photos shouldn’t be released until 2008. These horrific photos were taken by an unknown Japanese photographer.

Anyone inclined to use nuclear weapons should first be made to take a close look at what it means to use nuclear weapons by studying these photos and meditating carefully on the phrase “Love your enemy.” Yes, “Love your enemy,” that superb meditation on empathy. I don’t believe in the divinity of Jesus, but I do think that it’s time for Neocons to stop cherry-picking the Bible and to take their own Holy Book seriously.

My friend Russ sent me this link to an article in our local paper entitled, “Cowardly hypocrisy of Darwin fish displays”. The title does a good job of strongly framing a weak argument. After I read it, I decided to post my response here:

The article begins by framing anything interpretable as anti-Christian as equivalent to Muslim extremism; Jihadism. It illustrates the modern use of the ancient bi-stroke alpha as a covert Christian identity symbol in a repressive Islamic region.

Because of this still extant use in remote locations, the article advocates eschewing these tongue-in-cheek parody icons in the name of political correctness. It equates mockery with intolerance. The article never explains what makes it “cowardly” to openly display a Darwin fish. In the face of such hostility from the majority faith, “brave” seems a more apt term.

I do grant that Christians are a persecuted minority in a few places. In those places, Evolution is generally accepted as a Christian plot to weaken faith in Allah. In those places, a Darwin fish car would be bombed more quickly than a Jesus fish car.

Darwin fish aren’t generally mocking Christianity as a whole, but rather the Flat Earthers, Young Earthers, and Geocentric Universe sects. Most Christians actually believe in the (thoroughly proven) naturalistic explanations of nature, while firmly believing it to be God’s work. But there is a high correlation between the anti-scientific congregants and car fish.

We live in a country in which Christianity is by-far the dominant religion, one in which polls show that faith in virgin birth is more important to general health than the roots of modern medicine. With rationalists comprising a slim minority, and those openly admitting to it in public a small part of those, I don’t see how these icons can do any harm. A slim minority of Christians may well take offense. But they have the power, and therefore have nothing to fear.

I also give fish cars more room, as I do with cars driven by old men in felt hats. Call it profiling, if you must. But I trust drivers who believe there is everything to live for here, rather than those who openly proclaim that the point of life is to reach an idyllic eternity.

Price Of Oil
Bob Englehart, The Hartford Courant

Our Saudi Friends
Keefe, The Denver Post

Tanking Economy
Nate Beeler, The Washington Examiner

Iraq Milestone 4000
Brian Fairrington, Cagle Cartoons

McCain and the Iraq War
Bob Englehart, The Hartford Courant

Charlie Rose is having such a difficult time listening to his guests, because he has so obviously bought into the standard mainstream media view on the Iraq conflict (which is essentially the view developed by the Bush Administration).   He appears simultaneously ignorant yet preachy as two men with genuine familiarity with the people of Iraq repeatedly burst his bubble. 

This segment is well worth watching to hear the guests (Ali Fadhil and Sinan Antoon) uttering such an impressive stream of simple truths about Iraq.  Lesson number one:  what we call “Iraq” has little resemblance to the country the U.S. purportedly attempted to ”liberate.”  We’ve made a shambles of Iraq.

Most American media tells you nothing at all about what’s happening to real people on the ground.  This lack of information is astounding, given the Bush Administration’s constant claims of “success” in Iraq.   I’m tired of reading sterilized accounts of life in the Green Zone.   I really want to know what we are getting for the $13 billion we spend on the Iraq occupation each month.

At the recommendation of an article in Salon Premium (”The unsung heroes of Iraq war coverage“), I have now found what I’ve been looking for:  a blog called “Inside Iraq,” which is

updated by Iraqi journalists working for McClatchy Newspapers. They are based in Baghdad and outlying provinces. These are firsthand accounts of their experiences. Their complete names are withheld for security purposes.

At Inside Iraq I have finally found voices that sound authentic who are telling me about the real lives of real people who live in Iraq. The words of these journalists are written in plain English, but they’re difficult to read on an emotional level.  I plan to visit this site regularly.

Obama’s full speech is here.    What follows is a long excerpt from this October 2, 2002 speech:

Saddam poses no imminent and direct threat to the United States, or to his neighbors, that the Iraqi economy is in shambles, that the Iraqi military a fraction of its former strength, and that in concert with the international community he can be contained until, in the way of all petty dictators, he falls away into the dustbin of history. I know that even a successful war against Iraq will require a US occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences. I know that an invasion of Iraq without a clear rationale and without strong international support will only fan the flames of the Middle East, and encourage the worst, rather than best, impulses of the Arab world, and strengthen the recruitment arm of Al Qaeda. I am not opposed to all wars. I’m opposed to dumb wars.

So for those of us who seek a more just and secure world for our children, let us send a clear message to the President today. You want a fight, President Bush? Let’s finish the fight with Bin Laden and Al Qaeda, through effective, coordinated intelligence, and a shutting down of the financial networks that support terrorism, and a homeland security program that involves more than color-coded warnings. You want a fight, President Bush?

Let’s fight to make sure that the UN inspectors can do their work, and that we vigorously enforce a non-proliferation treaty, and that former enemies and current allies like Russia safeguard and ultimately eliminate their stores of nuclear material, and that nations like Pakistan and India never use the terrible weapons already in their possession, and that the arms merchants in our own country stop feeding the countless wars that rage across the globe. You want a fight, President Bush?

Let’s fight to make sure our so-called allies in the Middle East, the Saudis and the Egyptians, stop oppressing their own people, and suppressing dissent, and tolerating corruption and inequality, and mismanaging their economies so that their youth grow up without education, without prospects, without hope, the ready recruits of terrorist cells. You want a fight, President Bush? Let’s fight to wean ourselves off Middle East oil, through an energy policy that doesn’t simply serve the interests of Exxon and Mobil. Those are the battles that we need to fight. Those are the battles that we willingly join. The battles against ignorance and intolerance. Corruption and greed. Poverty and despair.

I’ve spent a lot of time studying Republican political anatomy.   You see, I’m not only an armchair anthropologist, but I’m a social neuro-surgeon (a brand-new expertise, created today).   After careful review of all available relevant data, I have developed a precise chart (click on the thumbnail below) detailing each of the major features of the modern Republican brain.  

No, you won’t find “Iraq” on this anatomical diagram, even though it reveals each of the major neural substructures found in the modern Republican brain.  That’s because the modern Repubublican has developed relatively recently.  No specialized “Iraq” module has thus had time to evolve. You will nonetheless find each of the brain structures that, working together, compel the instigation of multiple fear-induced, needless, destructive, ineptly planned, corrupt and potentially non-ending military conflicts in the Middle East. 

Whenever sufficient numbers of these malignant features are found in the brains of those who hold substantial political power, one can expect the atrophy of an entire country, absent immediate and dramatic political resuscitation. 

Without further ado, here it is.  Just click on the thumbnail for all the gory details:

If you’d like to review some fascinating and rigorous psychological data of what it means to be a conservative, check out this post regarding a study by Frank Sulloway or this post considering the work of psychologist Jonathan Haidt.

I watched a few minutes of a Sunday morning Fox political program, and noticed that their fair and balanced coverage of presidential politics had several distinct spins.

On the republican side, McCain is the anointed candidate.

On the Democrat side, the race will be decided by the super-delegates. Every bit of subtle mud that can be slung at Obama is being dug and slung. Why just Obama?

The message is clear: Conservatives think that Obama is electable, and they are not particularly worried about Clinton. It’s a safe bet that they have a campaign set up to effectively counter a Clinton candidacy; they’ve had over a decade to do the research. But they might fear that a proverbial left-field candidate like Obama might do something rash if elected, like expose and change the underpinnings of the lengthy and profitable electoral process.

Maybe they think that Muslim radicals will have a harder time convincing their young followers that Barack Hussein Obama is the enemy, and the profitable war will wind down.

Perhaps they simply think that he is activating the youth vote, and once the draft-age population is politically involved, all the profitable “wars” (on drugs, on terror, etc) will fade.

Possibly they fear that his multicultural upbringing and education will make it impossible for him to see just the narrow picture when asked to approve dumb laws and expensive and futile unfunded mandates.

Maybe it’s just that their pollsters think that someone with less of a melanin deficiency is more electable than one with two complete x chromosomes.

But, hey. I’m just an ignorant blogger.

According to this video by JustforeignPolicy.org, Iran once was a democracy. Until a foreign power crushed that democracy in 1953.

The take-away message from this video: it doesn’t have to be the way it is currently portrayed to be between Iran and the U.S.

The history of relations between the United States and Iran has been marked by misunderstanding and mistrust shaped by the unjust use of violence and threats of violence. Violent conflict has not served the interests of either country. Military threats have only deepened the hostilities and resentment and this makes future conflict more likely. Serious diplomacy between our two countries is urgently needed.

With the possible spoiler of Mike Huckabee, it’s clear that John McCain is set to be the candidate the Democrats need to beat in November. The irony of the ongoing battle between Hillary and Obama is that, policy-wise, they just aren’t that different. There were some real differences between the Republicans, but those differences are not what McCain seems to be gearing up to run on. He is all about Iraq.

McCain has to convince hardline conservatives that he’s their guy. Why? Because he has occasionally backed some responsible legislation, like McCain-Feingold. He refused to sugarcoat our waning industrial possibilities while campaigning in Michigan. He has spoken positively about amnesty programs for illegal immigrants. He has not always been a friend to Big Business. True Red Republicans of the Bush League see the potential for fiscal treason in McCain—that he might raise taxes, control campaign spending, or propose, back, and sign Democratic-sounding legislation that would take the country toward *gasp* Socialism.

I have a hard time squaring complaints from anyone that McCain is somehow not a fiscal conservative when Bush just put forward a three-point-one TRILLION dollar budget (with the largest slice for defense spending since WWII). It just goes to show, all the rhetoric about Democratic profligacy is really just a complaint that the Dems spend the money on things the Republicans don’t like. It’s not the money, it’s the programs.

Setting that aside, though, McCain obviously doesn’t think he can sway them all. So he’s about to start campaigning hard on the pitfalls of an Iraq withdrawal. I will wait for the P-word to rear its ugly torso—Patriotism. The suggestion will be made that anyone wishing to pull out is somehow not patriotic. We saw this under Bush, aspersions cast on some of the most loyal, patriotic, and demonstrably courageous people who suggested that maybe this war was a bad idea and that, furthermore, we more or less screwed it up by going in blind, deaf, and predetermined.

I hear echoes of the Sixties all over again, and of all the people who should know better, it is John McCain. (”Pull out…doesn’t sound manly to me, Bub. I say leave it in there till the job is done and they’re thoroughly messed up.”)

The problem is, this may well play for the American voter. When we have serious doubts, we tend to stick with what we’re doing rather than risk change. We have to have our faces rubbed in the muck of bad decision-making before we finally say—in sufficient numbers to matter—enough is enough. I am not sanguine about the political maturity of the American people.

And the thing is, we aren’t getting our faces rubbed in it. We’re adapting. Gasoline is high, the American industrial base is shrinking, we have infrastructure problems galore, but we’re making accommodations and doing fine, thank you. People complain, but by and large we haven’t actually lost anything that matters. So much of this debate is still in the realm of hypotheticals, theories, ideas, and potentials.

So we look to the Democratic candidates and what do we see? One old school politician who would probably do a fine enough job and maybe make a few worthwhile changes, mainly around the edges, and one young firebrand who is promising Big Changes. And a serious look at their policies shows that, really, they differ by degrees, not ideas. It’s going to devolve into a popularity and demographics battle. Which barrier do we want to break first? Gender or race? And underlying that, is the question no one wants to ask: does it really matter anymore?

In my misbegotten youth, I used to be what they call a Single Issue Voter. Was a time I voted against anyone who wanted to erode the Second Amendment. Yes, I was one of those Right to Bear Arms purists. I had bought into the argument that an armed populace kept the government in line and the first step towards tyranny is to disarm the population at large. There’s truth to that in history, but today, here, in this country, it’s a rather weak argument. Power doesn’t work that way. Not to say it couldn’t, but for now it simply doesn’t.

I could also argue that anyone wishing to tamper with the Constitution was de facto untrustworthy. Which may also be true. People doing good for me whether I want it or not is loathesome. Make the subject anything but guns and you see this immediately.

But the truth is, single issue voting only means you’re not informed, interested, or intellectually capable of understanding multiple issues. Or it means you don’t care about anything else, which is just as bad. It is stupid.

As it has transpired, most of the Second Amendment purists voted into office in the last forty years have also brought with them a whole suite of ideologies I cannot abide. They are, many of them, the natural constituency of the George W. Bush League. That single issue—preserving an unquestioned right to own, carry, and by implication use something which I, in fact, do not own or carry—comes packaged with people whose other policy positions I find absurd or dangerous.

The word Balance comes to mind. Tricky at the best of times.

McCain will campaign on a single issue. Oh, there will be other policy positions he’ll talk about and want to deal with, but at present it looks like he’s going to threaten America with the awful prospect of “pulling out” if we vote for the Democrats. He will polarize people over a Single Issue that will push all the rest to the side in an emotional gambit to convince us to—wait for it, he may yet use the phrase—Stay The Course.

In such an environment, the first casualty is reason. You can’t even get close to truth without that.

I would really like to see the two Democratic front-runners make a deal, put together a ticket that can roll over this irrationalism. The Republicans are once again demonstrating their major strength—they’re forming ranks and closing up behind a candidate and they will see it through as a group. For a bunch of people who profess to believe in American Individuality, they sure can cast it aside quickly enough for their Cause. Democrats traditionally devour each other.

The one factor we have left to see whether McCain has a reasonable shot or not is who he picks as a running mate. Because that will indicate who he thinks his successor will be, ought to be. As it appears right now, if Hilary and Obama made a deal and ran together, it would be the best of all possible worlds. Either one of them is acceptable to me.

I suppose I should say whether I think we should get out of Iraq. Saying— believing—that we should never have gone in to begin with is not the same thing. Now it would be like making a mess of a paraplegic’s kitchen, then leaving without cleaning up the mess. So I guess I’m forced into the opinion that we would be ill-advised to simply pull out until Iraq really does have a security base that works well enough. Otherwise, they will be divvied up by the various factions outside their borders. Iran has, in fact, an old score to settle, and they are more dangerous to future peace in the region than Iraq ever was. Saddam ultimately was just greedy. The Iranian hierarchy are Inspired.

But that doesn’t mean I’d vote for John McCain—all the other things he’s bringing to the table are things I do not really support.

Single Issue Voting is for morons.

Bhutto is dead.

One tries to be understanding, patient, tries to embrace the tolerance so thoroughly rejected by those who condemn out of hand, with no chance for counterargument, the possibility of dialogue.  Comes a point where one has to simply acknowledge that some people, in some places, just don’t share anything in common with us.

We have tried to explain the Jihadists by looking at history, pointing out where they have just cause to be angry with the West, outraged at what has been done to their people, and that the response can be understood from some exterior position that refrains from taking sides.  Suicide bombing as a cultural aberration can nonetheless be comprehended from the perspective of the political outsider who sees that the only weapon available to those with no voice is sometimes the loudest, most irrational shout imaginable.  We see the situation in the Middle East and shake our heads at the repeated injustices committed over and over again in the name of oil or power or faith, which may in the end all be one and the same.

But the simple truth now seems to be that any political or moral validity these movements may at one time have possessed has been squandered in a mindless lemming-like inability to allow for anything other than the preprocessed, spoonfed insanity of their religious convictions.  The act of destroying those who are not One Of Them has become a self-perpetuating series of negations, a denial that anyone can have any authority to negotiate, to make policy, to attempt reconciliation, to render the situation rational.  Only Allah may be “in charge” and anyone else who attempts to command a plebiscite to accomplish anything that in the least way deviates from the perceived path of the righteous must simply die.

Which in the end will be everyone.  Under such a program, no one may be in charge.

And since Allah chooses to be silent in the present day, the natural condition of such a polity will be subsistence and terror.  All progress must cease by this program.  Everything must be rendered down into a basic mortal pabulum that has no definable shape, no direction, no possibility of Becoming.

These people are insane.  Perhaps not clinically–there may be no organic component to their madness–which makes it all the more terrifying.  They value nothing by which common ground can be found or common cause be made.  Even their leaders probably cannot control them, once the zeal and the arrogance that has no Self at its center takes hold and they believe they are acting according to divine will.

There is no political future in that path and it is abhorrent to all we hold dear.  One may deride the West for many failures to live up to its own promises, criticize us for our lapses in conscience, but in the face of such utter nihilistic perversity one has to admire the things we cling to as noble and true and precious, at the base of which is the assumed freedom to simply have a different opinion.

The genius of the United States and modern Europe lies in the fact that when we have an election, regardless the outcome, we Go Home.  We do not riot.  We do not overturn the Constitution.  We do not have coups.  (One can argue these points, but in the end they are largely true.)  How does one teach that to a nation that seems incapable of accepting differences of opinion?  We see it time and again, when elections here or there or some other place are declared, by someone, to be not the will of the people, the cities burn, the leaders are shot, the military is called out, and democracy is kicked in the balls again.

Bhutto may not have been able to save Pakistan from itself.  But now we’ll never know. A plebiscite of one decided for the whole country.

And people wonder why religion in politics is such a Big Deal.

The “Unicef Photo of the Year 2007” is this picture by American photographer Stephanie Sinclair of an 11-year old Afghan girl sitting next to her 40-year old soon-to-be-husband.

Photo caption:

Portrait of soon to be wed Faiz Mohammed, 40, and Ghulam Haider, 11, at her home in a rural village of Damarda in Ghor province. Ghulam said she is sad to be getting engaged as she wanted to be a teacher. Her favorite class was Dari, the local language, before she was made to drop out of school. Married girls are seldom found in school, limiting their economic and social opportunities. Parents sometimes remove their daughters from school to protect them from the possibility of sexual activity outside of wedlock. It is hard to say exactly how many young marriages take place, but according to the Afghan women’s ministry and women’s NGOs, approximately 57 percent of Afghan girls get married before the legal age of 16. In addition, once the girl’s father has agreed to the engagement, she is pulled out of school immediately. Early pregnancies also result in an increase in complications during child birth.

From the Unicef website:

He’s forty, she’s eleven. And they are a couple – the Afghan man Mohammed F.* and the child Ghulam H.*. “We needed the money”, Ghulam’s parents said. Faiz claims he is going to send her to school. But the women of Damarda village in Afghanistan’s Ghor province know better: “Our men don’t want educated women.” They predict that Ghulam will be married within a few weeks after her engagement in 2006, so as to bear children for Faiz.

To download a zipfile with the images of the award winning photographers from the UNICEF website click here. The other entries are also worth taking a look at.

In such marriages, the man is likely to view the age difference as a fair bargain, his years of experience in exchange for her years of fecundity. At the same time, the girl’s wishes are customarily disregarded. Her marriage will end her opportunities for schooling and independent work.

On the day she witnessed the engagement party of 11-year-old Ghulam Haider to 40-year-old Faiz Mohammed, Sinclair discreetly took the girl aside. “What are you feeling today?” the photographer asked. “Nothing,” the bewildered girl answered. “I do not know this man. What am I supposed to feel?”

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/09/magazine/09BRI.html

This is a beautiful picture, it’s good photography, but the girl in the picture is a kid and she’s going to marry this man who will rape her and make her have babies although her body is not ready, although she hardly understands what is going on, although she is hoping for something else in her life. Something is wrong here.

Whenever I hear people talk “politically correct” and claim to respect cultural differences even in the face of barbaric traditions like these I don’t think they are liberals, I think they are stupid and cowards. I remember a case here where a Turkish man poured gasoline over his wife and set her on fire. The judge’s opinion was that this was a cultural thing and an extenuating cause. I don’t know what would have happened in a Turkish court, but marital rape is a crime in Turkey (it took a while, but still):

Also praiseworthy was the enactment of new legislation, including the law on the protection of the family, by which domestic violence had been legally defined for the first time, and the anticipated entry into force this year of the new Penal Code, which, for the first time, criminalized marital rape and sexual harassment in the workplace.

http://www.unis.unvienna.org/unis/pressrels/2005/wom1480.html

I wonder where people get the notion that “different culture” (or maybe I should say, “Islamic culture”) means living like animals and that people have no sense of wrong doing.

I often heard men complain about feminism (especially American men, by the way), even women make statements like “I’m not a feminist by nature” (meaning: unlike you I’m so supersuccessful with men - *yawn*) or “I’m not a feminist. I’m supersexual and feminine, I’m self-confident and well-educated with a college degree” (then take a good look at countries like Afghanistan and see where you might be without feminism), but when you see a picture like this you know they should shut up and that feminism is still a worthy cause.

On Bill Moyers’ Journal, Bill Moyers discussed this multifaceted issue with Kathleen Hall Jamieson, a professor at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. 

This video is well worth watching for many reasons.  The introduction includes a clip of John F. Kennedy’s 1960 speech to Southern Baptist preachers to answer their opposition to a Catholic president.  Kennedy’s understanding and articulation of the wall between church and state is inspirational. 

Watching this video, I learned of the “You Choose” site within youtube.com, where you can watch the candidates speaking on issues, side by side.  For instance, here are the candidates’ positions on energy independence. (check out Barack Obama’s position on energy in a speech he gave in Detroit.  In my opinion, he is one of the few candidates that “gets it.”).

Jamieson and Moyers spend substantial time analyzing the “avalanche of misogyny” aimed at Hillary Clinton, some of these attacks Bible-based, many of them verging on pornographic (here’s another site documenting these attacks).  Here’s a sampling of the discussion between Moyers and Jamieson:

KATHLEEN HALL JAMIESON:  [U]nderlying many of these assertions is the assumption that any woman in power will, by necessity, entail emasculating men and, as a result, a statement of fundamental threat.

So, why shouldn’t you vote for Hillary Clinton? Well, first, she can’t be appropriately a woman and be in power. She must be a man. Hence, the site that says Hillary Clinton can’t be the first woman president; Hillary Clinton’s actually a man. But also explicit statements that suggest castrating, testicles in lockbox. She’s going to emasculate men. It’s a zero-sum game in which a woman in power necessarily means that men can’t be men.

BILL MOYERS: And you can’t use your uterus and your brain. That’s the old argument, right? You can’t be caring and tough. That’s the old argument against women, right?

KATHLEEN HALL JAMIESON: Well, and at one time there was actually an argument that if women became educated, they would become infertile. There was also, for a long period of time, serious penalties for women who tried to speak in public. And the residue of this is a language that suggests that women in power cannot be women and be in power. And as a result, as Hillary Clinton certifies herself as being tough enough to be president, competent enough to be president, these attacks say then she can’t be president because she’s not actually a woman. And you can’t trust someone who is that inauthentic. So underlying this and underlying the vulgarity and underlying the assertions of raw sexual violence is deep fear about a woman holding power.

This is one of those really funny Onion articles with an extraordinarily sharp edge. Bravo to The Onion.

I haven’t kept up with Pat Buchanan.   I noticed a column of Buchanan’s in a brand new publication of columnists called The Cagle Post (this is the same Cagle of Cagle’s Professional Cartoonist Index)

So what does Buchanan think about Guliani’s proposed team to lead the “war on terror”?

Team leader is Charles Hill, a co-signer of the Sept. 20, 2001, neocon ultimatum to Bush, nine days after 9-11, warning the president if he did not attack Iraq, his failure to do so “will constitute an early and perhaps decisive surrender to the war on international terrorism.”

Yet Iraq had nothing to do with 9-11.

A second member of Rudy’s team is Martin Kramer, an Israeli-American who, according to Ken Silverstein of Harper’s, “spent 25 years at Tel Aviv University and whose Middle East policy can best be summarized as, ‘What’s Best for Israel?’” Silverstein calls Rudy’s eight-man advisory group “AIPAC’s Dream Team” — AIPAC being the Israeli lobby, two of whose leaders go on trial in January for espionage against the United States

According to The New York Times, another key Rudy adviser is Daniel Pipes, “who has called for profiling Muslims at airports and scrutinizing American Muslims in law enforcement, the military and the diplomatic corps.” Another is AEI’s Michael Rubin, “who has written in favor of revoking the United States’ ban on assassinations.”

Best known of Rudy’s advisers is Norman Podhoretz, who wrote in June, “The Case for Bombing Iran” in Commentary, thinks we are in “World War IV” and writes that “as an American and as a Jew, I pray with all my heart” Bush will bomb Iran.

Buchanan concludes this piece by suggesting that “a vote for Rudy is a vote for endless war. And, as James Madison said, wars are the death of republics.”

I’m in Washington DC still (I’ve been here most of the week for a business conference).  Yesterday was the day of the American flag.  You can see flag-waving everywhere these days.  Americans do focus on the accoutrements of democracy rather than making sure we have a healthy democracy with active citizen participation (e.g., consider our pathetic voter turnouts compared to many other countries).

We obsess about flags instead of getting our citizens involved in their government.  Our persistent failure to correct this situation is mind-numbing.  It’s like being a baseball player at bat in the 9th inning.  He could tie the game with one swing of the bat, but strikes out.   Instead of focusing on putting the wood of the bat on the ball, he’s obsessing about drinking champaign and having his photo in tomorrow’s newspaper.  He’s spending his energy at the wrong level.  The waving of American flags is like thinking of drinking champaign while at bat.  By waving flags instead of educating and empowering the People, we’re waiving real democracy.

For a strong democracy we need fewer flags, fewer Pledges of Allegiance and a lot more participation by informed citizens.  This would start with an active and vigorous media.  (more…)

Yesterday, Dennis Kucinich wrote this letter to the House Judiciary Committee Chairman:

November 9, 2007The Honorable John Conyers, Jr. Chairman Committee on the Judiciary 2138 Rayburn HOB Washington, DC 20515

Dear Chairman Conyers

I am writing in support of H. Res. 799, the Articles of Impeachment which were referred to the committee relative to the Impeachment of the Vice President of the United States of America.

Recent reports indicate that the Vice President is attempting to shape the National Intelligence Estimate on Iran to conform to his misperceptions about the threat Iran actually poses. Much like his deceptive efforts in the lead up to the Iraq war, the Vice President appears to be manipulating intelligence to conform to his beliefs.

If the reports are true, they add additional weight to the case for impeachment. I believe impeachment remains the only tool Congress has to prevent a war in Iran. This information relates directly to the Article III charges in the resolution. I urge your timely consideration.

Sincerely,
/s/
Dennis J. Kucinich
Member of Congress