Wednesday, February 23, 2005
"I am the one who speaks for the spirit of freedom and decency in you" -- unlike "these flag-sucking half-wits who get fleeced and fooled by stupid rich kids like George Bush ... who ... speak for all that is cruel and stupid and vicious in the American character." –Hunter S. Thompson, Kingdom of Fear
Propaganda (cont.)
"We continue to discover biological and chemical weapons and facilities to make them inside Iraq." ----Chris Cox, (R-California), introducing Dick Cheney at the conservative conference in D.C. last week. No one flinched, apparently…unsurprisingly. He was talking about sarin and ricin, but still… http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/02/19/cpac/index.html
What’s Happening, Afghanistan: The UN Development report found the country to be in miserable shape.
“Our team found the overwhelming majority of people hold a sense of pessimism and fear that reconstruction is bypassing them,'' said Daud Saba, one of the report's authors.
The report was also critical of the U.S.-led military engagement in Afghanistan, saying it helped produce a climate of ``fear, intimidation, terror and lawlessness'' and neglected the longer-term threat to security posed by inequality and injustice.
It also described reconstruction projects sponsored by the U.S. military as ``inadequate and dangerous,'' echoing concern from some relief groups that they have blurred the lines between soldiers and civilians, and made aid workers into militant targets. http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Afghan-Development.html?
What’s Happening, Iraq: So Ibrahim Jafari is the name to know, the likely prime minister. He’s from a religious (Dawa) party which has historically been close to Iran. The Kurds and the Allawi types will seek to limit his powers. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/iraq/la-fg-shiites23feb23,0,2966698.story?coll=la-home-headlines
Meanwhile, fear not for old Pentagon pal Ahmad Chalabi who might have been soothed by an offer to make him the new Finance Minister. http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0222/p06s02-woiq.html
Social Security: “It could be many years before the conditions are such that a radical reform of Social Security is possible; But then, as Lenin well knew, to be a successful revolutionary, one must also be patient and consistently plan for real reform."- Stuart Butler, Peter Germanis, Heritage Foundation analysts, 1983
I was just talking with a reader as to my informing my students as to the Right’s (led by the CATO Institute and Heritage Foundation) 20-year effort to dismantle Social Security, via privatization. Tuesday’s WaPost:
Cato's privatization effort was aimed from the start not just at dismantling Social Security but also at making major inroads against what it considered an overweening central government. "Social Security," said David Boaz, Cato's executive vice president, "is the linchpin of the welfare state." http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A42525-2005Feb21?language=printer
Krugman: He warns that however faltering the initial SS push is, it could pass in a different atmosphere, a mere sideshow in the next ‘war on terror’ “crisis”. Makes sense, as personal accounts ARE a national security issue, yes? And:
My point is that Mr. Bush's critics are falling unnecessarily into a trap if they focus only on domestic policies and allow Mr. Bush to keep his undeserved reputation as someone who keeps Americans safe. National security policy should not be a refuge to which Mr. Bush can flee when his domestic agenda falls apart. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/22/opinion/22krugman.html?hp
Taxes The Right considers whether it would be worth it to up some taxes in exchange for trashing Social Security.
But some conservative activists say they would be willing to accept a tax increase in return for achieving such longtime conservative aims as overhauling Social Security, which was established under President Franklin Roosevelt. "If you can take 10 steps forward in exchange for three steps back, that's not unreasonable," says Dan Mitchell, a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation, which generally favors lower taxes to encourage economic growth. http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB110903245754660411,00.html?mod=politics%5Fprimary%5Fhs
Oil and Dollars: Yes, the price of oil has gone up and down, but the real concern is the second half of this sentence. May such happen very slowly.
U.S. stocks sank on Tuesday as oil prices jumped above $51 a barrel and the dollar slid on concerns that other central banks would follow South Korea’s lead in diversifying reserves out of U.S. assets. http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=580&ncid=580&e=1&u=/nm/20050222/bs_nm/markets_stocks_dc
Bush Visit: The media dutifully supply the images of rapprochement- the smiles (Bush’s, not Chirac’s), the jokes, etc. But, as William Pfaff observes, there will not be a full reconciliation:
His trip will fail because he and his administration do not understand what really divides most continental European governments from the US today. At the same time, Europeans are mostly unwilling to confront these issues, because of the trouble with Washington they imply. But, unacknowledged or not, they count.
First is the definition of the crisis. Few Europeans believe either in the global 'war on terror' or the 'war against tyranny', as Washington describes them.
American claims about the threat of terrorism seem grossly exaggerated, and the American reaction disproportionate and even hysterical. Three thousand were killed in the Twin Towers, but most advanced societies have already had, or still have, their own wars with 'terrorism' sustaining losses proportionately as severe: the British with the IRA, Italians and Germans with their Red Brigades, the Spanish with the Basque separatist Eta, and so on. It has been a condition of modern political existence.
The American-led invasion of Iraq is widely regarded in Europe as irrelevant to the reality of terrorism, overwrought in scale and destruction, and perverse in effect, vastly deepening hostility between the Western powers and Muslim society. To most Democrats as well as Republicans, September 11 was the defining event of the age, after which 'nothing could be the same'. Their imperviousness to any notion that this might not be so astonishes many abroad. Many European believe it is not the world that has changed, but the United States.
The second cause of transatlantic disagreement is the American claim to global domination, and its hostility to Europe's acquiring political or military power commensurate with European economic power. http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticle.asp?xfile=data/opinion/2005/February/opinion_February42.xml§ion=opinio n
I’m sure I wasn’t the only one who gagged when hearing Bush say, "We must always remind Russia, however, that our alliance stands for a free press, a vital opposition, the sharing of power, and the rule of law."
Gannon: Dems Act! A flurry of activity is what’s needed…to further activate the media.
The Senate Democratic leadership is privately circulating a letter calling for other senators to join a call for an investigation into discredited White House reporter Jeff Gannon….
The letter, issued from Minority Whip Richard Durbin (D-IL), calls on President Bush to “order a full inquiry” into how a “fake” journalist working for a “sham” news organization got access to the president. http://rawstory.com/news/2005/index.php?p=117
Anyone so disposed should email/write/call Kennedy and Kerry and tell them to sign on.
Counterpunch’s Justin Raimondo on Gannon’s purpose
Who planted Gannon in the White House press pool, and gave him all that access – and to what purpose? Clearly part of the scheme was to lob softball questions at a beleaguered White House press secretary facing a barrage of pointed questions about the war and the Bush administration's many scandals. However, the idea was also to debunk and distract attention away from the questions that were beginning to be raised not only about the Plame matter, but also about the series of outright fabrications that represented a great deal of this administration's case for going to war. That case had been made by influential neocons now facing scrutiny from Congress and the Justice Department, and Gannon served as their personal pitbull, going after Wilson and other debunkers of the neocons' war myth. http://antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=4879
-R
Propaganda (cont.)
"We continue to discover biological and chemical weapons and facilities to make them inside Iraq." ----Chris Cox, (R-California), introducing Dick Cheney at the conservative conference in D.C. last week. No one flinched, apparently…unsurprisingly. He was talking about sarin and ricin, but still… http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/02/19/cpac/index.html
What’s Happening, Afghanistan: The UN Development report found the country to be in miserable shape.
“Our team found the overwhelming majority of people hold a sense of pessimism and fear that reconstruction is bypassing them,'' said Daud Saba, one of the report's authors.
The report was also critical of the U.S.-led military engagement in Afghanistan, saying it helped produce a climate of ``fear, intimidation, terror and lawlessness'' and neglected the longer-term threat to security posed by inequality and injustice.
It also described reconstruction projects sponsored by the U.S. military as ``inadequate and dangerous,'' echoing concern from some relief groups that they have blurred the lines between soldiers and civilians, and made aid workers into militant targets. http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Afghan-Development.html?
What’s Happening, Iraq: So Ibrahim Jafari is the name to know, the likely prime minister. He’s from a religious (Dawa) party which has historically been close to Iran. The Kurds and the Allawi types will seek to limit his powers. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/iraq/la-fg-shiites23feb23,0,2966698.story?coll=la-home-headlines
Meanwhile, fear not for old Pentagon pal Ahmad Chalabi who might have been soothed by an offer to make him the new Finance Minister. http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0222/p06s02-woiq.html
Social Security: “It could be many years before the conditions are such that a radical reform of Social Security is possible; But then, as Lenin well knew, to be a successful revolutionary, one must also be patient and consistently plan for real reform."- Stuart Butler, Peter Germanis, Heritage Foundation analysts, 1983
I was just talking with a reader as to my informing my students as to the Right’s (led by the CATO Institute and Heritage Foundation) 20-year effort to dismantle Social Security, via privatization. Tuesday’s WaPost:
Cato's privatization effort was aimed from the start not just at dismantling Social Security but also at making major inroads against what it considered an overweening central government. "Social Security," said David Boaz, Cato's executive vice president, "is the linchpin of the welfare state." http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A42525-2005Feb21?language=printer
Krugman: He warns that however faltering the initial SS push is, it could pass in a different atmosphere, a mere sideshow in the next ‘war on terror’ “crisis”. Makes sense, as personal accounts ARE a national security issue, yes? And:
My point is that Mr. Bush's critics are falling unnecessarily into a trap if they focus only on domestic policies and allow Mr. Bush to keep his undeserved reputation as someone who keeps Americans safe. National security policy should not be a refuge to which Mr. Bush can flee when his domestic agenda falls apart. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/22/opinion/22krugman.html?hp
Taxes The Right considers whether it would be worth it to up some taxes in exchange for trashing Social Security.
But some conservative activists say they would be willing to accept a tax increase in return for achieving such longtime conservative aims as overhauling Social Security, which was established under President Franklin Roosevelt. "If you can take 10 steps forward in exchange for three steps back, that's not unreasonable," says Dan Mitchell, a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation, which generally favors lower taxes to encourage economic growth. http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB110903245754660411,00.html?mod=politics%5Fprimary%5Fhs
Oil and Dollars: Yes, the price of oil has gone up and down, but the real concern is the second half of this sentence. May such happen very slowly.
U.S. stocks sank on Tuesday as oil prices jumped above $51 a barrel and the dollar slid on concerns that other central banks would follow South Korea’s lead in diversifying reserves out of U.S. assets. http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=580&ncid=580&e=1&u=/nm/20050222/bs_nm/markets_stocks_dc
Bush Visit: The media dutifully supply the images of rapprochement- the smiles (Bush’s, not Chirac’s), the jokes, etc. But, as William Pfaff observes, there will not be a full reconciliation:
His trip will fail because he and his administration do not understand what really divides most continental European governments from the US today. At the same time, Europeans are mostly unwilling to confront these issues, because of the trouble with Washington they imply. But, unacknowledged or not, they count.
First is the definition of the crisis. Few Europeans believe either in the global 'war on terror' or the 'war against tyranny', as Washington describes them.
American claims about the threat of terrorism seem grossly exaggerated, and the American reaction disproportionate and even hysterical. Three thousand were killed in the Twin Towers, but most advanced societies have already had, or still have, their own wars with 'terrorism' sustaining losses proportionately as severe: the British with the IRA, Italians and Germans with their Red Brigades, the Spanish with the Basque separatist Eta, and so on. It has been a condition of modern political existence.
The American-led invasion of Iraq is widely regarded in Europe as irrelevant to the reality of terrorism, overwrought in scale and destruction, and perverse in effect, vastly deepening hostility between the Western powers and Muslim society. To most Democrats as well as Republicans, September 11 was the defining event of the age, after which 'nothing could be the same'. Their imperviousness to any notion that this might not be so astonishes many abroad. Many European believe it is not the world that has changed, but the United States.
The second cause of transatlantic disagreement is the American claim to global domination, and its hostility to Europe's acquiring political or military power commensurate with European economic power. http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticle.asp?xfile=data/opinion/2005/February/opinion_February42.xml§ion=opinio n
I’m sure I wasn’t the only one who gagged when hearing Bush say, "We must always remind Russia, however, that our alliance stands for a free press, a vital opposition, the sharing of power, and the rule of law."
Gannon: Dems Act! A flurry of activity is what’s needed…to further activate the media.
The Senate Democratic leadership is privately circulating a letter calling for other senators to join a call for an investigation into discredited White House reporter Jeff Gannon….
The letter, issued from Minority Whip Richard Durbin (D-IL), calls on President Bush to “order a full inquiry” into how a “fake” journalist working for a “sham” news organization got access to the president. http://rawstory.com/news/2005/index.php?p=117
Anyone so disposed should email/write/call Kennedy and Kerry and tell them to sign on.
Counterpunch’s Justin Raimondo on Gannon’s purpose
Who planted Gannon in the White House press pool, and gave him all that access – and to what purpose? Clearly part of the scheme was to lob softball questions at a beleaguered White House press secretary facing a barrage of pointed questions about the war and the Bush administration's many scandals. However, the idea was also to debunk and distract attention away from the questions that were beginning to be raised not only about the Plame matter, but also about the series of outright fabrications that represented a great deal of this administration's case for going to war. That case had been made by influential neocons now facing scrutiny from Congress and the Justice Department, and Gannon served as their personal pitbull, going after Wilson and other debunkers of the neocons' war myth. http://antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=4879
-R
