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Thursday, January 27, 2005

Teddy talks

Senator Ted Kennedy spoke downstairs in my place of employment this afternoon. I didn't attend, but I believe the aged legislator was expounding on one of the following topics: "Post-Prandial Etiquette For the Randy Diplomat," "The Future of My Waistline," or "Go Pats."

Go Eagles.

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You don't say

Incisive commentary on NPR this morning: "Democratic elections in Iraq are a watershed, but they come at a difficult time."
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Wednesday, January 26, 2005

Aw, you missed me? How sweet.

I tried posting something a few days ago, but Blogger was down and I got frustrated and gave up. Till today. Not that I have a whole lot to report at this hour. I still want to share what I tried to put up the other day, which is that Dick Cheney said the following during the course of the interview with Don Imus in which he laid the rhetorical groundwork for an Israeli strike on Iranian nuclear sites: "We don't want a war in the Middle East, if we can avoid it."

Yeah, God forbid. Asshole.

From Seymour Hersh's New Yorker piece and some other things that have come to light from the mouth of our benevolent government itself, it seems Iran is in fact in the crosshairs. I have to say that I'm a bit surprised. I consider myself as cynical as the next guy, but I really thought that the reality of a conflict with Iran would put a crimp in the current wave of neocon messianism. But now Cheney has given Israel a backhanded ok in a public forum (as if they needed it) to take a whack at Iran, and the US is basically just waiting for European nuclear negotiations with Tehran to fail, plus the defense apparatus is saying the CIA isn't capable of doing enough sketchy covert shit around the world (cogitate on that for a minute). It doesn't bode well.

In light of all this, the liberal antiwar movement needs to take stock of itself. The outpouring of opposition to the Iraq war was heartening and impressive, but it didn't slow the Bush team down by one second. (Meanwhile, on Monday Bush praised anti-abortion protesters in DC for turning out in the cold to support a "culture of life." Seriously, if Orwell were alive . . . dude would be raking it in as a talking head for CNN.) It's safe to assume that the administration is currently in the early stages of paving public acceptance of the idea of an attack on Iran, just as they did with Iraq in 2002. I don't think that means that such an attack is a foregone conclusion at all; the waters are much muddier here than they were with Iraq for all kinds of reasons. But if it comes to the point were polls start to sway in support of covert ops or "surgical" bombings in Iran, antiwarriors need to stop and think before they go apply for their standard mass march permits. It didn't work with Iraq and it won't work with Iran.

Part of the issue is the unique obstinacy of the Bushies. But the other part of it, which ought to hit close to home for most liberals, is that the "big government" they usually praise has turned into a "fucking enormous government" that doesn't require any degree of public consensus to carry out major confrontational actions. Now, obviously this is the case with most governments most of the time - if they wanna do it, they can probably get away with it. The difference here is a government that can do almost anything its devious little leaders can dream up, and one that has seriously escalated and consolidated its internal security systems. Protesters in the Vietnam era were a) fighting a government that was only one half of a bipolar global power structure, b) aided by the confluence of multiple domestic resistance movements that crested at roughly the same time, and c) with all due respect to the Fred Hamptons and the Kent Staters and the like, opposing a government with weaker, less militarized mechanisms for supressing dissent. I write this not to sound like a nostalgic romantic pining for the good 'ol days of fighting the system, but rather as someone who would like to stop the government from throwing its next haymaker at the Middle East but who realizes that 200,000 people marching around "peacefully" is not going to get the job done.

In the meantime, you can email your thoughts to recyclebin@whitehouse.gov.



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Wednesday, January 19, 2005

So?

I bet YOUR blog gets boring and out of date sometimes too. Shut up.
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Tuesday, January 11, 2005

It's your money...make it your party

Now that the federal government is dumping the cost of the inauguration on DC residents, we should feel that much more motivated to make January 20 our day rather than theirs. It's bad enough that Bush is going to rule the planet for another four years through his phalanx of able, justice-minded ambassadors such as Charles Graner. (For those keeping score, Graner's lawyer is arguing that American cheerleaders make pyramids all the time and that isn't torture.) Forcing DC to foot the bill is just rancid icing on the cake. If you're on the fence about whether to participate in the counter-festivities, please remember that parties aside, ideology aside, next Thursday's ceremonies are nothing more than a celebration of torture. And of war, and fear, and hate, if torture alone isn't enough to propel you from your sofa. Those of us who benefit from that catalog of atrocities are obliged ultimately to try to end them, but in the meantime to at least make things as uncomfortable for their perpetrators as possible. So, get out in the streets (of this town or your own), make a scene, and if you can prove you disobeyed a lawful order, there might be a humanist merit badge for you somewhere. I'll at least make you a dry pasta necklace or something.
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Friday, January 07, 2005

Troubling indeed

According to the upcoming issue of BusinessWeek magazine, whose cover story focuses on The New York Times Co., an internal debate has been raging at the newspaper over whether its online edition, which had about 18.5 million unique monthly visitors as of November, should adopt a subscription fee.

N.Y. Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. was quoted in the article as saying: "It gets to the issue of how comfortable are we training a generation of readers to get quality information for free. That is troubling."

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...until the last record company executive is hanged with the guts of the last chain store owner

Yet another article about how music downloads aren't hurting record sales. To the suits in the music biz: acknowledge the worthlessness of your existence and get out of the way - it'll hurt less if you do it now rather than post-retirement; to the people who are trying to make downloading "work" (ie, saving the asses of the corporate leeches), you are the problem now - information doesn't stop wanting to be free just cause you want to play middleman; and to all the honest musicians out there: keep on keepin' on - we'll support you. (Yes, even what's-his-name who lives upstairs.)

Need inspiration? Here is a sample of DC/MD/VA labels who do amazing things without the corporate overhead.

Level Plane
Robotic Empire
Dischord
Exotic Fever

Magic Bullet
Reptilian
Amor y Lucha

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Thursday, January 06, 2005

State logic

Limited time and interest have kept this page fairly static recently. But then I see something like the following quote from Alberto Gonzalez and the urge to blog comes flowing back.

Responding to questions about the administration's decision not to apply the Geneva Conventions to the war against the al Qaeda terrorist network, Gonzales said that conclusion was "absolutely the right decision," because doing otherwise "would make it more difficult for our troops to win. . . ."

Asked why he won't unchain his wife from the kitchen stove, Gonzalez responded that it would "make it more difficult for my dinner to be ready on time."