Bollettino
For a particularly nauseating mixture of cravenness and pomposity, LI recommends going to this article by Robert Wright. Wright’s idea is that the American hoi polloi, fearing the world their children are growing up in, where it is possible they will even have sex at some point in their lives, would have been wooed by liberals coming out and forthrightly condemning Janet Jackson’s nipples.
We expect the “let’s all try to get along with the Taliban” line to be very popular in those quarters of the Democratic party where they are ‘fightin’ for liberal causes – and willing to betray them all if they are elected.”
Wright is the author of a totally nonsensical book, Non-Zero, that I eviscerated in a review a few years ago. For a while he stalked Stephen Jay Gould, having appointed himself, bizarrely, the defender the true Darwinian orthodoxy, as reflected in the pages of Richard Dawkins and (bizarrely) run through Wright’s own affection for Teilhard de Chardin, a charlatan priest who impressed people in the fifties with pseudoscientific mumbo jumbo. Teilhard, unfortunately for him, died to soon to great the New Age movement, where he would have certainly made a hit.
Wright, as a man who did feel he could serve two masters, wanted to water down science with gestures of reverence towards the Father of us All – his milquetoast religiosity forming an odd contrast to his Dawkinsian eccentricities.
Anyway, he purveys the kind of tripe you would expect. As we have been saying, however, the answer is simple. Progressives have to stop feeding the beast. They have to stop trying to help a constituency that would prefer to see its children wounded in war and their veteran’s benefits cut than to have them have gender inappropriate erections. It is time to reverse the flow of money out of the creative set. As LI pointed out when pondering Ayn Rand, the one good thing about her was the notion of the general strike, which she put into the minds of millions of high school students. Time to start pondering the consistency of some such strike. LI has been arguing about this with a friend, who believes, as we believed ourselves, recently, that it is the fault of the media, and the fault of history that the Godfearing masses are sunk in the acids of their cretinous hatreds. We actually believe the Godfearing masses have cleverly managed things so they could take a free ride on the massive entitlement programs devised and protected by liberals and get their emotional jollies by voting for psychos like the soon to be Senator from Oklahoma.
The intellectual defense of the liberal welfare state goes back to the enlightenment: that a level of prosperity would soften manners and bring about a spirit of generosity. Although conservatives confuse the welfare state with socialism, in reality the two are as different as a bear and a moose. The distinct feature of the welfare state is that the private sector is not simply preserved, but organic to the larger functioning of the social whole. Distributive justice, then, will have many channels to choose from. In debased intellectual form, this is the spirit behind both George Maximus' thousand points of light and Kennedy's ask not what your country can do for you.
Well, if the beneficiaries of that kind of state refuse to support its operations politically, and use it (by massive borrowing) to the malign end of warring across the globe, looting now a Middle Eastern country, now a South American country; if they use it to secure their homelives while they go out lynching gays and lesbians; if they use it to break up unions, and encourage the world wide impoverishment of the working class; then they abuse it. The abuse has to end.
The historic task now, it seems to us, is to make America, the ‘indispensable nation”, into a dispensable one. This means the slow creation of countervailing power outside of the old logic of class where that is appropriate. It is rather simple. But one despairs of the Democrats catching on to the simple logic of the situation – instead of, say, opposing the hairbrained new Senator from South Carolina, De Mint, and his scheme to burden the poorest with the majority of taxes – the sale tax – it should definitely be embraced. The people have chosen the morality of raising straight kids in abstinence happy schools (the same type that produce the highest teen pregnancy rates in the country) over economic self interest. Let them eat this decision until they puke. As Scrooge once said, are there no poorhouses in England?
Thursday, November 4, 2004
Bollettino
LI has made a couple of resolutions and had a couple of revelations due to the return of the Confederacy.
We’ve lived in the Confederacy most of our lives. We were educated among middle and lower middle class suburban Atlantans. We’ve been class conscious all of our political lives, on the side of the working class, etc., etc.
Well, it is time to say goodbye to all of that.
There are times when history does strike a bell. In 1933 in Germany, in 1995 in Serbia, etc., etc. When the working class comes out in their numbers to ward off the Other – Jew, Gay, Croatian – one has to make a choice. My choice is: fuck the working class.
Clearly, there are things that need to be done. One is to support wholeheartedly Bush’s economic mission. That mission can only help the investor class that lives in the Blue states. Those states, by a miscarriage of history, are yoked together with such devastations of the intellect as Oklahoma. Clearly, the thing to do is to dry the money up. Any look at the map of who has what will tell you that the poor states – the North Dakotas, the Nebraskas, the Louisianas – vote consistently against the very programs without which they could barely survive. Northern liberals have consistently felt like the sacrifice was worth it – that to help the working class and poor in New York City survive, they would vote for programs that took money out of New York and put it in Louisiana.
That should definitely stop. The New Deal, based on a compromise with Southern whites, is dead. And when something is dead, as Nietzsche (or was it one of the Ramones?) said, kick it as hard as you can. While we doubt that Blue state politicians will have any clout at all in the next four years, we do think that they should loudly and strongly support the destruction of those programs – the end of Social security, the end of the income tax system, and surely the end of Medicare. Those people who get their opiates from God, waddle to the polling booth to elect the latest homophobic psycho-path, and go to the drug store with their government support ‘script” – no mas. Let them drown in their aches and pains.
As for the Republican attempt to tamp down the benefits of the National Guard, and cut Veterans benefits – this should be promoted to the max. The biggest danger in the world today is the Confederate superpower. Luckily, it has its weak points. A population that is belligerent, but unwilling to sacrifice the least little twinkie, cannot easily encompass an empire.
We’ve been reading the curiously mute stories in the British press (one of our resolves is to read sparingly, if at all, in the American press) about the Satanic bond between Blair and Bush. Labour lost its vampire’s soul a long time ago. We think Jackie Ashley in the Guardian has it right:
“Apart from the fact that they speak English and have two legs apiece, it is hard to think of anything American conservatives have in common with European liberals. Tony Blair pooh-poohs the idea that Britain faces a choice between America and Europe. Now, it will be evident to everyone, there is a very clear choice, and the choice has to be Europe.”
Blair will never make that choice. He chose Bush a long time ago. That his natural constituency still can’t believe he made that choice simply shows that the effects of ideological opiates can be long lasting. We definitely hope they get over it.
Europe, however, has taken the sloth’s course for the past sixty years. Understandably, they have allowed one superpower, the U.S., to spend the majority of the money spent in the world on military matters – and they have watched without reaction as that power has pursued third world economic policies, becoming a sort of elephantine Argentina. This is only going to get worse. It is a most unlikely prospect that American households will experience the type of growth in wealth that would match the growth in their endebtedness over the next four years – in fact, the opposite is the better bet. There are a conjunction of interesting circumstances here, and the hinge factor will be the probability that the cost of oil will soon have to figure in terrorist attacks on oil facilities, given the probable expansion of hostilities in the Middle East to Iran (and, too, given the cycle of the overthrow of governments in the Middle East, surely the American allies there are due for a hit. I’d guess Egypt), and the let it bleed war in Iraq. These things have been looming on the margins. Surely they are eventually going to impact the ability of the American government to borrow. At a certain point, that the American consumer eats up all the junk the world produces has to be adjusted to the fact that to do this, the American consumer borrows all the money it can to eat up the junk. Europe is surely going to have to start looking East, to China, for a countervailing ally, and also as a market.
LI has made a couple of resolutions and had a couple of revelations due to the return of the Confederacy.
We’ve lived in the Confederacy most of our lives. We were educated among middle and lower middle class suburban Atlantans. We’ve been class conscious all of our political lives, on the side of the working class, etc., etc.
Well, it is time to say goodbye to all of that.
There are times when history does strike a bell. In 1933 in Germany, in 1995 in Serbia, etc., etc. When the working class comes out in their numbers to ward off the Other – Jew, Gay, Croatian – one has to make a choice. My choice is: fuck the working class.
Clearly, there are things that need to be done. One is to support wholeheartedly Bush’s economic mission. That mission can only help the investor class that lives in the Blue states. Those states, by a miscarriage of history, are yoked together with such devastations of the intellect as Oklahoma. Clearly, the thing to do is to dry the money up. Any look at the map of who has what will tell you that the poor states – the North Dakotas, the Nebraskas, the Louisianas – vote consistently against the very programs without which they could barely survive. Northern liberals have consistently felt like the sacrifice was worth it – that to help the working class and poor in New York City survive, they would vote for programs that took money out of New York and put it in Louisiana.
That should definitely stop. The New Deal, based on a compromise with Southern whites, is dead. And when something is dead, as Nietzsche (or was it one of the Ramones?) said, kick it as hard as you can. While we doubt that Blue state politicians will have any clout at all in the next four years, we do think that they should loudly and strongly support the destruction of those programs – the end of Social security, the end of the income tax system, and surely the end of Medicare. Those people who get their opiates from God, waddle to the polling booth to elect the latest homophobic psycho-path, and go to the drug store with their government support ‘script” – no mas. Let them drown in their aches and pains.
As for the Republican attempt to tamp down the benefits of the National Guard, and cut Veterans benefits – this should be promoted to the max. The biggest danger in the world today is the Confederate superpower. Luckily, it has its weak points. A population that is belligerent, but unwilling to sacrifice the least little twinkie, cannot easily encompass an empire.
We’ve been reading the curiously mute stories in the British press (one of our resolves is to read sparingly, if at all, in the American press) about the Satanic bond between Blair and Bush. Labour lost its vampire’s soul a long time ago. We think Jackie Ashley in the Guardian has it right:
“Apart from the fact that they speak English and have two legs apiece, it is hard to think of anything American conservatives have in common with European liberals. Tony Blair pooh-poohs the idea that Britain faces a choice between America and Europe. Now, it will be evident to everyone, there is a very clear choice, and the choice has to be Europe.”
Blair will never make that choice. He chose Bush a long time ago. That his natural constituency still can’t believe he made that choice simply shows that the effects of ideological opiates can be long lasting. We definitely hope they get over it.
Europe, however, has taken the sloth’s course for the past sixty years. Understandably, they have allowed one superpower, the U.S., to spend the majority of the money spent in the world on military matters – and they have watched without reaction as that power has pursued third world economic policies, becoming a sort of elephantine Argentina. This is only going to get worse. It is a most unlikely prospect that American households will experience the type of growth in wealth that would match the growth in their endebtedness over the next four years – in fact, the opposite is the better bet. There are a conjunction of interesting circumstances here, and the hinge factor will be the probability that the cost of oil will soon have to figure in terrorist attacks on oil facilities, given the probable expansion of hostilities in the Middle East to Iran (and, too, given the cycle of the overthrow of governments in the Middle East, surely the American allies there are due for a hit. I’d guess Egypt), and the let it bleed war in Iraq. These things have been looming on the margins. Surely they are eventually going to impact the ability of the American government to borrow. At a certain point, that the American consumer eats up all the junk the world produces has to be adjusted to the fact that to do this, the American consumer borrows all the money it can to eat up the junk. Europe is surely going to have to start looking East, to China, for a countervailing ally, and also as a market.
Wednesday, November 3, 2004
Bollettino
This was more than an election – this was the reversal of the Civil War. Jeff Davis, through one of those ironies of history, won through the party headed by his old enemy, Abraham Lincoln.
So what does it mean that the strongest power in the world, at the moment, is the Confederate States of America?
As LI has said before, states are modes for state interests. From the point of view of morality, a state’s interests can intersect with the interests of justice, but will never wholly intersect with it or subsume it. On the other hand, pathological states can intersect dramatically with injustice. We look like we are on the brink of one of those moments.
At the moment, the CSA intersects with some very bad things. Symbolic of this, we think, is the elevation of a man who is visibly sexually disturbed to the Senate seat from Oklahoma. Oklahoma, proud of its tradition of pograms -- the biggest massacre of blacks in the South occured in the Tulsa riots in the twenties - handed the man his victory on his promise to crush, as he could, homosexuals.
But more than symbolic problems confront the people of the Middle East. They are confronted, at the moment, by two vile powers. One, the U.S., will inflict much more loss of life at the moment than the networks around Osama bin Laden. We expect that the U.S. will proceed with the mass murder in Iraq full speed ahead. As for the elections in Iraq – the only necessity for those elections resided in the elections in the CSA. That has now dissipated. The CSA can now confabulate some gang of thugs – Allawi’s Ba’athists, plus theocrats it can sheer off of some of the other parties – and confront Iraq with the fait accompli of a ‘coalition government', for which they will be invited to vote. It will be rather like the last vote in Iraq, under Saddam Hussein. The principles are about the same: armed power, greed, and oppression. Yawer, who has been threatening to resign if the U.S. attacks Fallujah again – a fact that has been totally ignored in the CSA press –can now resign to his heart’s content. Who needs him?
The choices get harder. Luckily for the Iraqis, the CSA is still run on maximum incompetence, and the war will still be fought with the utmost frivolity. The end that LI had once hoped for – a society evolving towards democracy, autonomous with regard to America but somewhat friendly – can probably be ruled out for the nonce.
Complicating this will be the airstrikes that will soon be run against Iran. The question is: how will the revulsion of the Iraqi population express itself in successful guerilla strategy? Surely the jihadists will be pouring in in the next couple of months, and bad, in warfare extinguishes good -- a sort of malign natural selection. And so far there has been little good about the insurgency – the political programs range from merely the assertion of totalitarian power to the assertion of a bizarre Islamism. One can only hope that some small core of sanity – with the goal of a liberated, secular Iraq – can maintain its integrity in the coming revolution against the CSA invaders. That is, however, a thin hope.
As for the Confederates – the Pentagon Pumphouse gang will have to soon start seriously considering supporting a breakaway Kurdish state. While the fun and games of terrorbombing Fallujah, and gunning down civilians in the streets of Ramadi, does have its attractions, the cost in American personnel, while a minor consideration at the moment, might, above the two thousand point, not be tamped down by the much larger fear that a man and a man might take the vows of holy matrimony in a theater near you. To salvage something out of the ruins will be important, particularly as the most important part of bin Laden’s message was not his video witticisms a la Michael Moore, but was about considering something which so far, the Al Q. has not done – attacking the U.S. economically. Meaning pissing off his extended family and attacking the oil refineries and pipelines, I would imagine. Fortunately for the U.S., its terrorist enemies are symbolically headed by a man who has every stake in preserving the economic status quo in the Middle East. But once to every man and terrorist comes a moment to decide, as Martin Luther once (sorta) said.
Even LI sees one 'ray of hope' in the election -- Tom Daschle, a leader of utmost smallness, a stunted mediocrity whose instincts have lead the Democrats from defeat to defeat, was defeated himself.
This was more than an election – this was the reversal of the Civil War. Jeff Davis, through one of those ironies of history, won through the party headed by his old enemy, Abraham Lincoln.
So what does it mean that the strongest power in the world, at the moment, is the Confederate States of America?
As LI has said before, states are modes for state interests. From the point of view of morality, a state’s interests can intersect with the interests of justice, but will never wholly intersect with it or subsume it. On the other hand, pathological states can intersect dramatically with injustice. We look like we are on the brink of one of those moments.
At the moment, the CSA intersects with some very bad things. Symbolic of this, we think, is the elevation of a man who is visibly sexually disturbed to the Senate seat from Oklahoma. Oklahoma, proud of its tradition of pograms -- the biggest massacre of blacks in the South occured in the Tulsa riots in the twenties - handed the man his victory on his promise to crush, as he could, homosexuals.
But more than symbolic problems confront the people of the Middle East. They are confronted, at the moment, by two vile powers. One, the U.S., will inflict much more loss of life at the moment than the networks around Osama bin Laden. We expect that the U.S. will proceed with the mass murder in Iraq full speed ahead. As for the elections in Iraq – the only necessity for those elections resided in the elections in the CSA. That has now dissipated. The CSA can now confabulate some gang of thugs – Allawi’s Ba’athists, plus theocrats it can sheer off of some of the other parties – and confront Iraq with the fait accompli of a ‘coalition government', for which they will be invited to vote. It will be rather like the last vote in Iraq, under Saddam Hussein. The principles are about the same: armed power, greed, and oppression. Yawer, who has been threatening to resign if the U.S. attacks Fallujah again – a fact that has been totally ignored in the CSA press –can now resign to his heart’s content. Who needs him?
The choices get harder. Luckily for the Iraqis, the CSA is still run on maximum incompetence, and the war will still be fought with the utmost frivolity. The end that LI had once hoped for – a society evolving towards democracy, autonomous with regard to America but somewhat friendly – can probably be ruled out for the nonce.
Complicating this will be the airstrikes that will soon be run against Iran. The question is: how will the revulsion of the Iraqi population express itself in successful guerilla strategy? Surely the jihadists will be pouring in in the next couple of months, and bad, in warfare extinguishes good -- a sort of malign natural selection. And so far there has been little good about the insurgency – the political programs range from merely the assertion of totalitarian power to the assertion of a bizarre Islamism. One can only hope that some small core of sanity – with the goal of a liberated, secular Iraq – can maintain its integrity in the coming revolution against the CSA invaders. That is, however, a thin hope.
As for the Confederates – the Pentagon Pumphouse gang will have to soon start seriously considering supporting a breakaway Kurdish state. While the fun and games of terrorbombing Fallujah, and gunning down civilians in the streets of Ramadi, does have its attractions, the cost in American personnel, while a minor consideration at the moment, might, above the two thousand point, not be tamped down by the much larger fear that a man and a man might take the vows of holy matrimony in a theater near you. To salvage something out of the ruins will be important, particularly as the most important part of bin Laden’s message was not his video witticisms a la Michael Moore, but was about considering something which so far, the Al Q. has not done – attacking the U.S. economically. Meaning pissing off his extended family and attacking the oil refineries and pipelines, I would imagine. Fortunately for the U.S., its terrorist enemies are symbolically headed by a man who has every stake in preserving the economic status quo in the Middle East. But once to every man and terrorist comes a moment to decide, as Martin Luther once (sorta) said.
Even LI sees one 'ray of hope' in the election -- Tom Daschle, a leader of utmost smallness, a stunted mediocrity whose instincts have lead the Democrats from defeat to defeat, was defeated himself.
Bollettino
Jerusalem hath grievously sinned; therefore she is removed: all that honoured her despise her, because they have seen her nakedness: yea, she sigheth, and turneth backward.
Her filthiness is in her skirts; she remembereth not her last end; therefore she came down wonderfully: she had no comforter. O LORD, behold my affliction: for the enemy hath magnified himself.
The adversary hath spread out his hand upon all her pleasant things: for she hath seen that the heathen entered into her sanctuary, whom thou didst command that they should not enter into thy congregation.
All her people sigh, they seek bread; they have given their pleasant things for meat to relieve the soul: see, O LORD, and consider; for I am become vile.
Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by? behold, and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow, which is done unto me, wherewith the LORD hath afflicted me in the day of his fierce anger.
From above hath he sent fire into my bones, and it prevaileth against them: he hath spread a net for my feet, he hath turned me back: he hath made me desolate and faint all the day.
The yoke of my transgressions is bound by his hand: they are wreathed, and come up upon my neck: he hath made my strength to fall, the LORD hath delivered me into their hands, from whom I am not able to rise up.
The LORD hath trodden under foot all my mighty men in the midst of me: he hath called an assembly against me to crush my young men: the LORD hath trodden the virgin, the daughter of Judah, as in a winepress.
For these things I weep; mine eye, mine eye runneth down with water, because the comforter that should relieve my soul is far from me: my children are desolate, because the enemy prevailed.
Zion spreadeth forth her hands, and there is none to comfort her: the LORD hath commanded concerning Jacob, that his adversaries should be round about him: Jerusalem is as a menstruous woman among them.
The LORD is righteous; for I have rebelled against his commandment: hear, I pray you, all people, and behold my sorrow: my virgins and my young men are gone into captivity.
I called for my lovers, but they deceived me: my priests and mine elders gave up the ghost in the city, while they sought their meat to relieve their souls.
Behold, O LORD; for I am in distress: my bowels are troubled; mine heart is turned within me; for I have grievously rebelled: abroad the sword bereaveth, at home there is as death.
They have heard that I sigh: there is none to comfort me: all mine enemies have heard of my trouble; they are glad that thou hast done it: thou wilt bring the day that thou hast called, and they shall be like unto me.
Let all their wickedness come before thee; and do unto them, as thou hast done unto me for all my transgressions: for my sighs are many, and my heart is faint.
Jerusalem hath grievously sinned; therefore she is removed: all that honoured her despise her, because they have seen her nakedness: yea, she sigheth, and turneth backward.
Her filthiness is in her skirts; she remembereth not her last end; therefore she came down wonderfully: she had no comforter. O LORD, behold my affliction: for the enemy hath magnified himself.
The adversary hath spread out his hand upon all her pleasant things: for she hath seen that the heathen entered into her sanctuary, whom thou didst command that they should not enter into thy congregation.
All her people sigh, they seek bread; they have given their pleasant things for meat to relieve the soul: see, O LORD, and consider; for I am become vile.
Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by? behold, and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow, which is done unto me, wherewith the LORD hath afflicted me in the day of his fierce anger.
From above hath he sent fire into my bones, and it prevaileth against them: he hath spread a net for my feet, he hath turned me back: he hath made me desolate and faint all the day.
The yoke of my transgressions is bound by his hand: they are wreathed, and come up upon my neck: he hath made my strength to fall, the LORD hath delivered me into their hands, from whom I am not able to rise up.
The LORD hath trodden under foot all my mighty men in the midst of me: he hath called an assembly against me to crush my young men: the LORD hath trodden the virgin, the daughter of Judah, as in a winepress.
For these things I weep; mine eye, mine eye runneth down with water, because the comforter that should relieve my soul is far from me: my children are desolate, because the enemy prevailed.
Zion spreadeth forth her hands, and there is none to comfort her: the LORD hath commanded concerning Jacob, that his adversaries should be round about him: Jerusalem is as a menstruous woman among them.
The LORD is righteous; for I have rebelled against his commandment: hear, I pray you, all people, and behold my sorrow: my virgins and my young men are gone into captivity.
I called for my lovers, but they deceived me: my priests and mine elders gave up the ghost in the city, while they sought their meat to relieve their souls.
Behold, O LORD; for I am in distress: my bowels are troubled; mine heart is turned within me; for I have grievously rebelled: abroad the sword bereaveth, at home there is as death.
They have heard that I sigh: there is none to comfort me: all mine enemies have heard of my trouble; they are glad that thou hast done it: thou wilt bring the day that thou hast called, and they shall be like unto me.
Let all their wickedness come before thee; and do unto them, as thou hast done unto me for all my transgressions: for my sighs are many, and my heart is faint.
Tuesday, November 2, 2004
Bollettino
LI is planning on going out later today and getting champagne. We are also making – from a recipe forwarded to us by our invaluable friend, S. – cigarette borek. And then we are going to a friends house to watch the destruction of the Coup – or so we have high hopes.
Not that the Coup isn’t leaving as much poison behind as possible. Naomi Klein’s column in the Guardian, today, is an excellent piece of reporting about the venture vultures who have looked at Iraq as the kind of pickings worthy of… well, the Carlyle Group. LI first became aware of the Carlyle Group after 9/11, when there was a paranoid story linking the WTC mass murder to the group. This is what we said back then:
"Judicial Watch, the public interest law firm that investigates and prosecutes government corruption and abuse, reacted with disbelief to The Wall Street Journal report of yesterday that George H.W. Bush, the father of President Bush, works for the bin Laden family business in Saudi Arabia through the Carlyle Group, an international consulting firm. The senior Bush had met with the bin Laden family at least twice. (Other top Republicans are also associated with the Carlyle group, such as former Secretary of State James A. Baker.) The terrorist leader Osama bin Laden had supposedly been disowned by his family, which runs a multi-billion dollar business in Saudi Arabia and is a major investor in the senior Bush s firm." If you read further in the article, you'll find that Judicial Watch, the public interest firm that spreads intellectual corruption like an infected rat spreads plague, has no evidence whatsoever that bin Laden's ties with his family's business haven't been cut. But witchhunting groups racial profiling happily through the Wall Street Journal don't care, really.
Actually, it wouldn't surprise me at all if O. bin Laden did have money in the Carlyle group, but it wouldn't surprise me, either, if he had money in Judicial Watch -- the way investment has been freed up from those national agencies that wish to track it is pretty well known among real public interest groups.”
Little did we know that even the left (re Michael Moore’s Farenheit 9/11) would be complicit in anti-Arab racebaiting.
However, the CG deal with Iraq is a different story. We were puzzled, when the Big Eight met this summer, that Bush never pushed Chirac on canceling Iraq’s debts. This, we think, would be fairly popular in France, especially among the socialists. And surely picking on France is about the most popular thing Bush could do for his base. And, officially, the U.S. line has been to forgive the debts that Iraq rang up.
However, that official policy hasn’t reached down to the absurd insistence of the rich state of Kuwait that Iraq pay war reparations in perpetuity.
As Klein revealed in the Nation, the Carlyle Group, which boasts of two disgusting vultures, Dem Margaret Albright and Rep James Baker, has been quietly trying to get guarantees that Iraq will make good on the reparations. Since James Baker is also the official Bush delegate to creditor countries on behalf of Iraq, this is quite a conflict of interest. After the story broke, the CG publicly distanced themselves from that role. And so, supposedly, lost their chance for a billion dollar commission.
But it turns out that there is no paper proof that CG actually is backing off. It is the Jackel’s word we are supposed to be taking. Here are three paragraphs displaying the unedifying spectacle of the wealthiest squeezing the poorest for their medical money, while the U.S. government stands by, in its occupying role, playing the hypocritical role of helpless bystander. I believe there is a slang word for it in Dickens that I haven't been able to find – the word for the pickpocket’s assistant who obstructs the victim once the victim becomes aware of the crime, thus helping the perp to escape.
“The central question remains unanswered by the White House: have Baker's business interests compromised his performance as debt envoy? That question does not go away simply because $1bn will stay in the coffers of a wealthy oil emirate rather than in a Carlyle equity fund. The week after losing the deal, Carlyle handed a record-breaking $6.6bn payout to investors.
In Iraq, the last 18 months have been markedly worse, and the stakes for Baker's job performance there are considerably higher. This was underlined on October 13, when Iraq's health ministry issued a harrowing report on its post-invasion health crisis, including outbreaks of typhoid and TB and soaring child and mother mortality rates. A week after the report, Iraq paid out another $195m for war reparation debts, mostly to Kuwait. Meanwhile, the state department announced that $3.5bn for water, sanitation and electricity projects was being shifted to security in Iraq, claiming that, according to deputy secretary of state Richard Armitage, debt relief is on the way.
Is it? In fact, Iraq is being plunged deeper into debt, with $836m in new loans and grants now flowing from the IMF and the World Bank. Meanwhile, Baker has not managed to get a single country to commit to eradicating Iraq's debts. Iraq's creditors know that while Baker was asking them to show forgiveness, his company was offering Kuwait a special side deal to push Iraq to pay up. It's not the kind of news that tends to generate generosity and goodwill. And the timing couldn't be worse: the Paris Club is about to meet to hash out a final deal on Iraq's debt.”
LI is planning on going out later today and getting champagne. We are also making – from a recipe forwarded to us by our invaluable friend, S. – cigarette borek. And then we are going to a friends house to watch the destruction of the Coup – or so we have high hopes.
Not that the Coup isn’t leaving as much poison behind as possible. Naomi Klein’s column in the Guardian, today, is an excellent piece of reporting about the venture vultures who have looked at Iraq as the kind of pickings worthy of… well, the Carlyle Group. LI first became aware of the Carlyle Group after 9/11, when there was a paranoid story linking the WTC mass murder to the group. This is what we said back then:
"Judicial Watch, the public interest law firm that investigates and prosecutes government corruption and abuse, reacted with disbelief to The Wall Street Journal report of yesterday that George H.W. Bush, the father of President Bush, works for the bin Laden family business in Saudi Arabia through the Carlyle Group, an international consulting firm. The senior Bush had met with the bin Laden family at least twice. (Other top Republicans are also associated with the Carlyle group, such as former Secretary of State James A. Baker.) The terrorist leader Osama bin Laden had supposedly been disowned by his family, which runs a multi-billion dollar business in Saudi Arabia and is a major investor in the senior Bush s firm." If you read further in the article, you'll find that Judicial Watch, the public interest firm that spreads intellectual corruption like an infected rat spreads plague, has no evidence whatsoever that bin Laden's ties with his family's business haven't been cut. But witchhunting groups racial profiling happily through the Wall Street Journal don't care, really.
Actually, it wouldn't surprise me at all if O. bin Laden did have money in the Carlyle group, but it wouldn't surprise me, either, if he had money in Judicial Watch -- the way investment has been freed up from those national agencies that wish to track it is pretty well known among real public interest groups.”
Little did we know that even the left (re Michael Moore’s Farenheit 9/11) would be complicit in anti-Arab racebaiting.
However, the CG deal with Iraq is a different story. We were puzzled, when the Big Eight met this summer, that Bush never pushed Chirac on canceling Iraq’s debts. This, we think, would be fairly popular in France, especially among the socialists. And surely picking on France is about the most popular thing Bush could do for his base. And, officially, the U.S. line has been to forgive the debts that Iraq rang up.
However, that official policy hasn’t reached down to the absurd insistence of the rich state of Kuwait that Iraq pay war reparations in perpetuity.
As Klein revealed in the Nation, the Carlyle Group, which boasts of two disgusting vultures, Dem Margaret Albright and Rep James Baker, has been quietly trying to get guarantees that Iraq will make good on the reparations. Since James Baker is also the official Bush delegate to creditor countries on behalf of Iraq, this is quite a conflict of interest. After the story broke, the CG publicly distanced themselves from that role. And so, supposedly, lost their chance for a billion dollar commission.
But it turns out that there is no paper proof that CG actually is backing off. It is the Jackel’s word we are supposed to be taking. Here are three paragraphs displaying the unedifying spectacle of the wealthiest squeezing the poorest for their medical money, while the U.S. government stands by, in its occupying role, playing the hypocritical role of helpless bystander. I believe there is a slang word for it in Dickens that I haven't been able to find – the word for the pickpocket’s assistant who obstructs the victim once the victim becomes aware of the crime, thus helping the perp to escape.
“The central question remains unanswered by the White House: have Baker's business interests compromised his performance as debt envoy? That question does not go away simply because $1bn will stay in the coffers of a wealthy oil emirate rather than in a Carlyle equity fund. The week after losing the deal, Carlyle handed a record-breaking $6.6bn payout to investors.
In Iraq, the last 18 months have been markedly worse, and the stakes for Baker's job performance there are considerably higher. This was underlined on October 13, when Iraq's health ministry issued a harrowing report on its post-invasion health crisis, including outbreaks of typhoid and TB and soaring child and mother mortality rates. A week after the report, Iraq paid out another $195m for war reparation debts, mostly to Kuwait. Meanwhile, the state department announced that $3.5bn for water, sanitation and electricity projects was being shifted to security in Iraq, claiming that, according to deputy secretary of state Richard Armitage, debt relief is on the way.
Is it? In fact, Iraq is being plunged deeper into debt, with $836m in new loans and grants now flowing from the IMF and the World Bank. Meanwhile, Baker has not managed to get a single country to commit to eradicating Iraq's debts. Iraq's creditors know that while Baker was asking them to show forgiveness, his company was offering Kuwait a special side deal to push Iraq to pay up. It's not the kind of news that tends to generate generosity and goodwill. And the timing couldn't be worse: the Paris Club is about to meet to hash out a final deal on Iraq's debt.”
Monday, November 1, 2004
Bollettino
LI feels it ought to put out a little reminder of the stakes tomorrow, in terms of human lives. As if our readers -- hey, we now average 100 per day -- didn't know what this site was about. The LA Times runs a story on the upcoming war crime that Bush and Allawi are plotting against Fallujah. Interesting, the U.S. press line is that Allawi, that oh so independent soul, is pressing the assault. The U.S. press can only accommodate one dark skinned leader at a time in Iraq – so you hear very little about the more popular interim president. But… well, al-Yawer disagrees with sheering the meat off the bones of hundreds of Iraqis via terrorbombing and such. Obviously, he’s a terrorist stooge himself, and not a freedomloving Iraqi:
“Allawi's speech Sunday seemed aimed at preparing the Iraqi public for an onslaught in Fallujah, Allawi warned of civilian casualties, saying that if he orders an assault, it would be with a "heavy heart."
"But I owe, owe it to the Iraqi people to defend them from the violence and the terrorists and insurgents," he said. Commanders have estimated that up to 5,000 Islamic militants, Saddam Hussein loyalists and common criminals are holed up in Fallujah.
He did not give a deadline for how long he would give negotiations with Fallujah's city leaders in which he demands the handover of foreign fighters.
In a position that appeared to contrast with Allawi's, the country's interim president said a military assault was the wrong solution, according to an interview published today.
President Ghazi al-Yawer, a Sunni Muslim, told the Kuwaiti daily Al-Qabas that dialogue must continue and that insurgents "want nothing but a military solution, and the continuation of bleeding among Iraqis."
The Bush planning in Iraq is catastrophic in a characteristic way: it marries means that are at odds with its goals. Thus, the goal of liberating and democratizing Iraq, and paying outselves for the liberation out of Iraq's oil money. Thus securing the country and disbanding an army that was not in U.S. control. Etc., etc. In this case, the goal of making sure the Sunnis get a vote, and that the vote cements the legitimacy of an American friendly Iraq government, is being pursued by killing Sunnis and destroying the major Sunni city. We've seen the oddest self congratulation on the pro-war blogs about how well the U.S. did against Sadr in Najaf, which ignores the polls (U.S. sponsored polls) that showed how Sadr's popularity went up in all segments of Iraqi society after that triumph. This is what is peculiarly "no' reality based about the Bush approach -- it is the invisibility to the world outside a small, self-selected circle of conservative media and political types. In this monad, everybody watches Fox news all the time, and it is paradise.
Crime is one thing. Take the Bush gang's energy policy -- that is a standard Republican big business rip off with which we are all comfortable. But this is the gang that couldn't terrorbomb straight. Stop the Bushies before they kill again, as they try to instantiate their unique program of winning friends.
LI feels it ought to put out a little reminder of the stakes tomorrow, in terms of human lives. As if our readers -- hey, we now average 100 per day -- didn't know what this site was about. The LA Times runs a story on the upcoming war crime that Bush and Allawi are plotting against Fallujah. Interesting, the U.S. press line is that Allawi, that oh so independent soul, is pressing the assault. The U.S. press can only accommodate one dark skinned leader at a time in Iraq – so you hear very little about the more popular interim president. But… well, al-Yawer disagrees with sheering the meat off the bones of hundreds of Iraqis via terrorbombing and such. Obviously, he’s a terrorist stooge himself, and not a freedomloving Iraqi:
“Allawi's speech Sunday seemed aimed at preparing the Iraqi public for an onslaught in Fallujah, Allawi warned of civilian casualties, saying that if he orders an assault, it would be with a "heavy heart."
"But I owe, owe it to the Iraqi people to defend them from the violence and the terrorists and insurgents," he said. Commanders have estimated that up to 5,000 Islamic militants, Saddam Hussein loyalists and common criminals are holed up in Fallujah.
He did not give a deadline for how long he would give negotiations with Fallujah's city leaders in which he demands the handover of foreign fighters.
In a position that appeared to contrast with Allawi's, the country's interim president said a military assault was the wrong solution, according to an interview published today.
President Ghazi al-Yawer, a Sunni Muslim, told the Kuwaiti daily Al-Qabas that dialogue must continue and that insurgents "want nothing but a military solution, and the continuation of bleeding among Iraqis."
The Bush planning in Iraq is catastrophic in a characteristic way: it marries means that are at odds with its goals. Thus, the goal of liberating and democratizing Iraq, and paying outselves for the liberation out of Iraq's oil money. Thus securing the country and disbanding an army that was not in U.S. control. Etc., etc. In this case, the goal of making sure the Sunnis get a vote, and that the vote cements the legitimacy of an American friendly Iraq government, is being pursued by killing Sunnis and destroying the major Sunni city. We've seen the oddest self congratulation on the pro-war blogs about how well the U.S. did against Sadr in Najaf, which ignores the polls (U.S. sponsored polls) that showed how Sadr's popularity went up in all segments of Iraqi society after that triumph. This is what is peculiarly "no' reality based about the Bush approach -- it is the invisibility to the world outside a small, self-selected circle of conservative media and political types. In this monad, everybody watches Fox news all the time, and it is paradise.
Crime is one thing. Take the Bush gang's energy policy -- that is a standard Republican big business rip off with which we are all comfortable. But this is the gang that couldn't terrorbomb straight. Stop the Bushies before they kill again, as they try to instantiate their unique program of winning friends.
Bollettino
Good news from Uruguay this morning.
“Tabaré Vázquez, a Socialist doctor running as the candidate of an opposition coalition that includes former guerrillas, narrowly triumphed Sunday in the presidential election, bringing the left to power for the first time in this South American country.
The victory by the coalition, known as the Progressive-Encounter-Broad-FrontNew-Majority, whose largest faction consists of Tupamaro guerrillas turned politicians, strengthens a trend throughout the continent. As in the last presidential votes in Venezuela, Brazil, Ecuador and Argentina, the candidate most opposed to American-supported free-market policies has defeated backers of those policies.”
Given that the model in Iraq is the same model the U.S. has pursued in Central and South America, LI’s hope, floating somewhere in the distant future, is that Iraq will go through the furnace of the American occupation with its major industry and structure intact – a state owned petroleum company at the center of it – and resolutely and democratically break with the logic of neo-liberalism. It is a continuing astonishment to LI that Vietnam (or, on the right, WWII) have been the template comparisons for a black bag op that has all the indices of the usual slimy Latin American intervention, right down to Negroponte, the mollusk pulling the strings from the American embassy. In fact, we are pretty confident that the most successful American reconstruction project in Iraq will be the CIA’s cheerful attempt to get the torturers rolling again with its hands on aid to the Mukhabarat.
As for our election here in the States – LI has been waking up cautiously optimistic for the last couple of days. While the polls don’t look too good for Kerry, the voter turnout numbers look like they could be very good for him. The Republican strategy of suppressing the voter turnout is, we optimistically think, doomed to fail. Our slim hope rests, partly, on the odd difference between the reported results from early voting in Nevada and Florida, where there seems to be a Dem surge, and the polls, which record a Republican edge. Our desire that this coup be over (deliver us, o Lord) has briefly surmounted the usual intellectual distance we try to gaze into around the LI office. Yes, we folded up the intellectual distance and chucked it in the drawer for the nonce. We actually think Max Boot is about right – the options facing both Kerry and Bush, given the right-defined landscape of American politics, financial reality, and the American penchant for ending its foreign policy failures by retreating from the various bloody theaters into which we should never have stuck our beaks in a hail of bombs and bromides, are too narrow to allow for too much diversity – but a too studied disdain for the symbolic plane misses the way options are formed. There is literature in life as well as decision trees.
We’ve been pleased to see that the Sex industry is coming out for Kerry. While wiling away our surfing hours looking for comforting quotes from our Lord Jesus Christ, somehow, oh somehow, we came upon a situationist site run by a Pagan Moss, Sensual lib, full of pics of cheerful and intently bodacious naked gals interspersed with cutting remarks about jefe Bush. This is probably not a link you want to open around the kids, or at work (pay attention, now, to our prophylactic remarks, since there are penises involved here -- for those of you shocked at the existence of such things). Brian Leiter linked to a phone sex site for Republicans, Lie Girls, where all your Cheney-ite fantasies can come, briefly, true.
Good news from Uruguay this morning.
“Tabaré Vázquez, a Socialist doctor running as the candidate of an opposition coalition that includes former guerrillas, narrowly triumphed Sunday in the presidential election, bringing the left to power for the first time in this South American country.
The victory by the coalition, known as the Progressive-Encounter-Broad-FrontNew-Majority, whose largest faction consists of Tupamaro guerrillas turned politicians, strengthens a trend throughout the continent. As in the last presidential votes in Venezuela, Brazil, Ecuador and Argentina, the candidate most opposed to American-supported free-market policies has defeated backers of those policies.”
Given that the model in Iraq is the same model the U.S. has pursued in Central and South America, LI’s hope, floating somewhere in the distant future, is that Iraq will go through the furnace of the American occupation with its major industry and structure intact – a state owned petroleum company at the center of it – and resolutely and democratically break with the logic of neo-liberalism. It is a continuing astonishment to LI that Vietnam (or, on the right, WWII) have been the template comparisons for a black bag op that has all the indices of the usual slimy Latin American intervention, right down to Negroponte, the mollusk pulling the strings from the American embassy. In fact, we are pretty confident that the most successful American reconstruction project in Iraq will be the CIA’s cheerful attempt to get the torturers rolling again with its hands on aid to the Mukhabarat.
As for our election here in the States – LI has been waking up cautiously optimistic for the last couple of days. While the polls don’t look too good for Kerry, the voter turnout numbers look like they could be very good for him. The Republican strategy of suppressing the voter turnout is, we optimistically think, doomed to fail. Our slim hope rests, partly, on the odd difference between the reported results from early voting in Nevada and Florida, where there seems to be a Dem surge, and the polls, which record a Republican edge. Our desire that this coup be over (deliver us, o Lord) has briefly surmounted the usual intellectual distance we try to gaze into around the LI office. Yes, we folded up the intellectual distance and chucked it in the drawer for the nonce. We actually think Max Boot is about right – the options facing both Kerry and Bush, given the right-defined landscape of American politics, financial reality, and the American penchant for ending its foreign policy failures by retreating from the various bloody theaters into which we should never have stuck our beaks in a hail of bombs and bromides, are too narrow to allow for too much diversity – but a too studied disdain for the symbolic plane misses the way options are formed. There is literature in life as well as decision trees.
We’ve been pleased to see that the Sex industry is coming out for Kerry. While wiling away our surfing hours looking for comforting quotes from our Lord Jesus Christ, somehow, oh somehow, we came upon a situationist site run by a Pagan Moss, Sensual lib, full of pics of cheerful and intently bodacious naked gals interspersed with cutting remarks about jefe Bush. This is probably not a link you want to open around the kids, or at work (pay attention, now, to our prophylactic remarks, since there are penises involved here -- for those of you shocked at the existence of such things). Brian Leiter linked to a phone sex site for Republicans, Lie Girls, where all your Cheney-ite fantasies can come, briefly, true.
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