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Monday, August 01, 2011
A Defining Moment

I was watching The Office on television, when a commercial came on for an upcoming episode of The 700 Club. I began vigorously rolling my eyes, but before they completely dislodged themselves from their sockets, I couldn't help but notice that the upcoming episode was going to be about 9/11.

"Damn," I thought, "it's coming up on ten years."

Before I could slip into a proper state of melancholy, I heard the voiceover guy read that the attacks were "a defining moment for the US." That jolted me out of my Atheist's Prayer For The Death of Pat Robertson, and got me thinking.

Were the attacks ten years ago a defining moment for the United States? I honestly don't think so.

I think of defining moments in terms of the Civil War, the signing of The Declaration of Independence, or the moon landing in 1969. Events where the nation looked down the road into the future, asked itself whether or not it was up to the task of becoming more than it was, and then began the hard work of making it happen.

9/11? With no disrespect to the dead and their families, I don't feel like it measures up in terms of what it had to necessarily mean to America.

The closest comparison would be Pearl Harbor. When Japan attacked Hawaii, FDR declared that we were no longer sitting on the sidelines, it was time for the US to stop being a provincial backwater, and to either assume its destiny as a world leader, or perish in the attempt. My reading of history tells me that Roosevelt was a great leader at a time we needed one. But even without that, Americans knew what was going to be necessary, that the cost would be appalling, and your grandparents and great-grandparents created the arsenal of democracy, and began giving their lives by the thousands in Africa, Europe and Asia.

Pearl Harbor was not a defining moment. The selfless response of an entire nation was the defining moment. There was no other choice to be made.

In the case of 9/11, the attacks were not a defining moment. Instead, we stared at the moment, had a collective freakout, looked to the president for leadership, were told to go shopping, and just went downhill from there. And this isn't even about Bush, I'm pretty sure any of the weasels in office from LBJ on would have blown it.

This country has chosen to be defined by 9/11, instead of the event choosing our destiny for us.

We are now victims. We aren't simply the wronged, out for focused payback, we are a gigantic angry infant, lashing out at anyone and everyone who doesn't worship art the altar of American exceptionalism. Muslims? Europeans? Chinese? They're all against us, probably socialist, and definitely not Christian! We have been attacked (for some reason!), and it was because they hate our freedom, our iPods and our Jesus.

We had choices on September 12th, 2001. We could have taken effective, highly focused military action in specific places. We could have tried to act like adults who live in a scary world, and sorted out what the best short and long-term responses would have been. There were choices that could have been made that would have made the country and the world a better place for the next hundred years.

Alas, no.

I don't think 9/11 was a defining moment. It did not make plain for us what to do next. No, 9/11 was an illuminating moment, one which shined a harsh light on how truly small we have become since World War II. Walt Kelly called it 40 years ago:

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posted at 8:37 PM

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Sunday, July 05, 2009
Not over yet

A very interesting development in Iran, as the Association of Researchers and Teachers of Qum, a very important group of religious leaders in Iran, referred to the Ahmadinejad government as illegitimate.

Since the election June 12th, the most of the clerical establishment in the holy city of Qum, Iran's religious and political center of power, has remained largely silent. Many have wondered when, or if, the nation’s most powerful religious leaders would wade into the controversy that has created the most serious threat to the country’s leadership since the Islamic Revolution in 1979.

The answer, on Saturday, was clear: They are on the side of the opposition reform movement.

The Association, which did not back a candidate in the election, had asked, before the recount, for the election results to be nullified, since so many Iranians were doubtful of the legitimacy. The statement does help Mir Hussein Moussavi, as well as, Khatami and former speaker of Parliament, Mehdi Karroubi, who have been out front of the movement calling the election illegitimate and who have seen their supporters harassed, beaten, jailed and killed.

The bad news, however, is that many of the seminaries in Qum are directly funded by the Iranian government, and Khameini and Ahmadinejad are not without their own powerful supporters in the city. Pressure could easily be brought to bear.

Still, the statement is straightforward. In one passage, it reads:

“Is it possible to consider the results of the election as legitimate by merely the validation of the Guardian Council?”

The director of Iranian Studies at Stanford, Abbas Milani, added,

“I don’t ever remember in the 20 years of Khamenei’s rule where he was clearly and categorically on one side and so many clergy were on the other side. This might embolden other clergy to come forward.

“This crack in the clerical establishment, and the fact they are siding with the people and Moussavi, in my view is the most historic crack in the 30 years of the Islamic republic. Remember, they are going against an election verified and sanctified by Khamenei.”

If the clergy turns on Khameini and Ahmadinejad, anything could happen...

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posted at 12:03 AM

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Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Bringing people together

Nokia/Siemens is defending its sale of eavesdropping programs to the Iranian government last year. The government has very brutally and effectively used the technology to track people using cell phones to convey information to each other and the outside world, via phone calls, emails, texts and the internet.

I first assumed that the company's defense would be based on the premise that they sell things, and the Iranian government had money, but there was more.

A spokeswoman named Riitta Mard, expressed surprise at the negative reaction once people became aware of Nokia/Siemens' involvement. Mard pointed out that the company had followed trade rules and acted ethically, and also claimed that the technology permits the monitoring of local calls, but it does not allow monitoring international calls, Internet communications, or SMS or picture messages.

"Local calls, but not international?" Sure, that's believable.

Just 'fess up, admit that Nokia/Siemens saw the chance to make a sale, and made it. We buy oil from Saudi Arabia, even after fifteen of the nineteen 9/11 hijackers came from there, and we sold weapons to Saddam Hussein in the 80s.

Religion, ideology, politics, they all fade to obscurity when there's a buck to be made.

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posted at 6:15 PM

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Neda's killer showed remorse?

The doctor who tried to save the life of Neda Agha-Soltan, the Iranian woman killed June 20th, said in a BBC interview that the militiaman who murdered her claimed that he didn't mean to.

"It was a tough decision to make, to come out and talk about it," he said. "I am jeopardizing my situation because of the innocent look in her eyes before she died. She was fighting for basic rights... I don't want her blood to have been shed in vain."

Doctor Arash Hejazi, who fearing for his own life, fled for London, said that the crowd reacted to the incident immediately, grabbing a Basij gunman off of his motorcycle.

"They disarmed him and took out his identity card. People were furious and he was shouting, 'I didn't want to kill her! I didn't want to kill her!'" Hejazi said. "People didn't know what to do with him so they let him go. Some people said, 'Don't harm him. We are not killers like him."

Dr Hejazi said he first thought the gunshot had come from a rooftop.

"Suddenly everything turned crazy. The police threw teargas and the motorcycles started rushing towards the crowd. We ran to an intersection and people were just standing. They didn't know what to do.

"We heard a gunshot. Neda was standing one metre away from me. I turned back and I saw blood gushing out of Neda's chest.

"She was in a shocked situation, just looking at her chest. Then she lost her control.

"We ran to her and lay her on the ground. I saw the bullet wound just below the neck with blood gushing out.

"I have never seen such a thing because the bullet, it seemed to have blasted inside her chest, and later on, blood exiting from her mouth and nose.

"I had the impression that it had hit the lung as well. Her blood was draining out of her body and I was just putting pressure on the wound to try to stop the bleeding, which wasn't successful unfortunately, and she died in less than one minute."

The BBC article also said that Dr. Hejazi did not believe that he would ever be able to return to Iran.

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posted at 9:11 AM

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Ahmadinejad's victory...is YOUR victory?

Iran's president referred to the Guardian Council's confirmation of his "win" in the June 12 election a victory for the people of Iran.

"This election was actually a referendum. The Iranian nation were the victors and the enemies, despite their ... plots of a soft toppling of the system, failed and couldn't reach their aims."

I sit here, and I look at these types of quotes, straight out of the Orwell playbook, and I think, "How the hell do people swallow this stuff? What is the matter with the Iranians that they believe obvious lies spoken by authority?"

But it's not the Iranians. This is just how some people are. John Dean, former White House Counsel under Nixon, wrote a book a few years back called Conservatives Without Conscience. It's a fascinating study, explaining how there is a percentage of the human population, 20-25%, that is simply wired to be hyper-deferential to authority.

When you combine that with a religious culture led by an infallible leader, be he Ayatollah Khameini, or George W. Bush, you will always have a faction that is fearful of any change, or any thought process deemed outside the norm. The people in my own country that act this way scare the hell out of me, my guess is they are no different in Iran.

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posted at 8:41 AM

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Monday, June 29, 2009
Recount info

The Guardian Council's vote recount included 10% of randomly selected ballots in Tehran's 22 electoral districts. According to the Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA), the government is admitting a mistake.

Turns out that in one district, Ahmedinejad got more votes than initially reported. So again, go home, nothing to see here.

Paul Salem, of the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut said,

“There is a serious crisis of confidence and danger between the state and a large section of the population. I think this anger and discontent right now might have been managed and controlled, it might not erupt again in the next two days or week. But it has not been resolved.”

And that's pretty much it, this is going to be a long-term fight for the people of Iran to free themselves from religious fascism. Not that I particularly favor the secular version. Meanwhile, all people outside of Iran can do is try to keep communications up, so that the truth can be known to all, good and bad.

A political analyst in Iran, asking for anonymity, put it this way:

“It is a divided country now. We have two completely different world views. Ultimately, it is the competition between tradition and modernity.”

Tradition can be a fine thing. But some traditions are wrong, whether codified in scripture or not, and even people of faith inside Iran know it.

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posted at 6:19 PM

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Thursday, June 25, 2009
Cast blame everywhere

After doing the usual "Greatest Hits of Blame" in pinning the unrest in Iran on Britain, the US, and Zionists, and even going so far as to blame Neda's murder on a BBC reporter who "had her killed so he'd have material for a documentary," we have a new candidate.

Press TV, Iran's English-language channel, referring to a New York Times article from Wednesday about possible links between al Qaeda and some members of the Saudi royal family, headlined their story, "Saudi Royals Funded 9/11: Lawyers."

So, now the Saudi government is behind the unrest in Iran. It's no longer only an Islam vs The West battle, it's now devolving into a Saudi/Sunni vs Iran/Shi'ite issue.

Paranoia has got to be exhausting, and the clerics in Iran have it by the truckload.

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posted at 2:41 PM

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Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Some perspective

Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek has published a very interesting piece about how the roots of the current unrest extend backward 30 years. From the essay:

The green color adopted by the Mousavi supporters, the cries of “Allah akbar!” that resonate from the roofs of Tehran in the evening darkness, clearly indicate that they see their activity as the repetition of the 1979 Khomeini revolution, as the return to its roots, the undoing of the revolution’s later corruption. This return to the roots is not only programmatic; it concerns even more the mode of activity of the crowds: the emphatic unity of the people, their all-encompassing solidarity, creative self-organization, improvising of the ways to articulate protest, the unique mixture of spontaneity and discipline, like the ominous march of thousands in complete silence. We are dealing with a genuine popular uprising of the deceived partisans of the Khomeini revolution.

There are a couple of crucial consequences to be drawn from this insight. First, Ahmadinejad is not the hero of the Islamist poor, but a genuine corrupted Islamo-Fascist populist, a kind of Iranian Berlusconi whose mixture of clownish posturing and ruthless power politics is causing unease even among the majority of ayatollahs. His demagogic distributing of crumbs to the poor should not deceive us: behind him are not only organs of police repression and a very Westernized PR apparatus, but also a strong new rich class, the result of the regime’s corruption (Iran’s Revolutionary Guard is not a working class militia, but a mega-corporation, the strongest center of wealth in the country).

Second, one should draw a clear difference between the two main candidates opposed to Ahmadinejad, Mehdi Karroubi and Mousavi. Karroubi effectively is a reformist, basically proposing the Iranian version of identity politics, promising favors to all particular groups. Mousavi is something entirely different: his name stands for the genuine resuscitation of the popular dream which sustained the Khomeini revolution. Even if this dream was a utopia, one should recognize in it the genuine utopia of the revolution itself. What this means is that the 1979 Khomeini revolution cannot be reduced to a hard line Islamist takeover – it was much more. Now is the time to remember the incredible effervescence of the first year after the revolution, with the breath-taking explosion of political and social creativity, organizational experiments and debates among students and ordinary people. The very fact that this explosion had to be stifled demonstrates that the Khomeini revolution was an authentic political event, a momentary opening that unleashed unheard-of forces of social transformation, a moment in which “everything seemed possible.” What followed was a gradual closing through the take-over of political control by the Islam establishment. To put it in Freudian terms, today’s protest movement is the “return of the repressed” of the Khomeini revolution.



The rest of the piece can be seen here, really eye-opening stuff...

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posted at 11:41 AM

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Sunday, June 21, 2009
Sunday: Shiraz Street, Tehran

"Have no fear, we are all together."


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posted at 11:49 AM

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Saturday, June 20, 2009
"Marg bar dictator!"



Death to the dictator, indeed.


Would you be willing to do as much?

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posted at 1:17 PM

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Assassination in Tehran

Basij gunmen are assassinating bystanders in Tehran:



Islamic Republic? Sorry, any time you put a religion before the word "republic" or "democracy," it's always a lie. Democracy is difficult enough without imposing ancient and debunked belief systems upon it, and now power is resorting to what it always does: Hanging on to power at any cost.

I don't know what is going to happen in Iran, although I would dearly love to see the mullahs swinging from lamp posts. I would settle for them stepping down and fleeing to exile in Paris, so that we can do this dance again in another 30 years, but I am not hopeful.

I believe the Iranian people have the will and the desire to have a representative and largely secular government, but I don't know if another revolution is possible, at least right now. It is difficult for people who desire freedom to defeat those who prefer to kneel before the pious, because it is almost impossible to defeat heavily armed crazy people. People who wish to live freely are always at a disadvantage against people who aren't afraid to die.

I wish those in Iran the best of luck, your cause is just.


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posted at 11:50 AM

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Sunday, April 19, 2009
Amen to that

“If I had my way, I’d destroy all the mosques and spread the whores around a little more,” the detective said. “At least they’re not sectarian.”

It's a shame so many people have had to die to get things in Iraq back to where they were in 2002.

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posted at 2:07 PM

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Wednesday, July 09, 2008
Watch Your Crotch

I guess I have to ask this question: What possible use does a man like Senator Barack Obama have for a man like Reverend Jesse Jackson?

Jackson is a man who has always operated best in the shadow of great men, like Martin Luther King Jr., for example. Whenever he has stepped to the front of the line to be the voice of this or that, he always seems to put his foot in his mouth.

Which is easy, because his mouth is always open.

January of 1984 saw Jesse two months into his first campaign to win the Democratic nomination to be president. It also overheard him, in a conversation with a reporter, refer to New York City as "Hymietown." Jackson handled the situation spectacularly. He denied having said it.

Let me explain something. He made the remark to a man named Milton Coleman, who worked for a small newspaper called The Washington Post. Reporters like Coleman generally don't have the words "New York City" enter their ears, and result in their brain hearing "Hymietown." Jackson was forced to admit having said it.

Did that mean that Jesse is an anti-Semite? Well, most people might think that, but maybe he meant it as a term of endearment. You might believe that, too, but then Jesse went for the pièce de résistance of it's-not-my-fault-I-said-that-ism: He accused the Jews of conspiring to defeat him.

Bravo! The conspiracy of The Jews Are Out To Get Us, used by everyone from the Spanish Inquisition to The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, to the Third Reich and The Vatican. Everyone loves the classics, and nothing plays in every nation on Earth like the scheming Jew motif. Well, maybe not so much in Israel, although I'm sure you get self-hating Jews there like anyplace else.

Fortunately, Louis Farrakhan of the Nation Of Islam leapt to Jesse's defense, threatening the reporter during a radio broadcast, and just generally being the voice of reason.

What an awful thirty year period, from the 1970s through the 1990s, where when the phrase "black leader" was used, all you had to choose from were Jackson and Farrakhan.

Now in 2008, we have Barack Obama, who is obviously black, a Senator, and yet somehow manages to display almost none of the overwhelming sense of entitlement that has oozed from these other two men. Both of whom have squandered innumerable opportunities to help blacks in America, because speaking plainly about the problems in the black community is considered airing the dirty laundry, or as the kids say, snitching.

On Father's Day, just last month, Senator Obama spoke of the overwhelming problem of single-parent families in the black community, almost always led by the mother. He castigated men for not being fathers to their children.

These are not new sentiments, most recently, Bill Cosby has received a fair amount of crap for saying many of the same things. Jesse Jackson feels that when Barack Obama gives speeches of this type at black churches, he is hurting his relationship with black voters. In other words, Obama is talking down to blacks. I would assume it's the white part of the senator responsible for this affront, but let's let the man of God put it in his own words:




The language neither surprises nor offends me. I am mainly concerned that Reverend Jackson is thinking about Senator Obama's testicles. Especially in the summertime.

But why is Jesse even on TV? It happens this way:

Senator Obama improbably rises to a place where he becomes a serious political candidate. Don Imus has not said anything controversial that week, and Jesse needs something to do. He contacts Obama's campaign and offers his help. The poor staffer taking the call holds the phone away from his face and thinks, "Awwwww, Christ," promises to send the offer up the food chain, and hangs up.

You can't refuse Jesse Jackson's help. That would make you a racist. Or a Jew. So the campaign sends Jackson out to various media outlets when they can't find anyone credible to clip on a microphone on to.

I absolutely love the fact that Barack Obama has no use whatsoever for Jesse Jackson in his efforts to become president. All polling indicates that Obama has a commitment of between 91-95% of the black vote. No blacks who support McCain or even Ron Paul are going to be persuaded by Jesse Jackson to vote for Barack Obama, or anyone else for that matter. The Reverend is entirely superfluous and unnecessary.

What I do not love, is the possibility that if Barack Obama's campaign is to be undone, it will be by self-promoting religious hacks like Jesse Jackson and Jeremiah Wright.

You don't need them, Senator. You have everything you need already, and all you need to do is speak the truth about the state of things in America, the good, and especially the bad. I don't need a pep talk, I need the nasty medicine dispensed, that hard work will be required, and we may have to make do with less until we can fix the things that are broken in America.

These men are not fit to carry your jockstrap, Senator. And just in general, it would appear to be a very good idea to keep Jesse Jackson far away from that particular part of your anatomy.

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posted at 9:09 PM

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Sunday, December 09, 2007
Romney's speech

I'm not going to put it any better than Christopher Hitchens could, so here's the response:

Holy Nonsense
Mitt Romney's windy, worthless speech.
By Christopher Hitchens

Mitt Romney speaks on faith in America

Almost the only clever thing about Gov. Mitt Romney's long-denied and long-delayed but obviously long-prepared "response" was its location at the George H. W. Bush Presidential Library, which allowed him to pose (prematurely, I'd say) in front of a presidential seal as well as a thicket of American flags. Composed chiefly of boilerplate, the windy speech raised the vexed question of the candidate's religious affiliation—and thus broke the taboo on mentioning it—without setting to rest any of the difficulties that make it legitimate to raise the issue in the first place.

Actually, and in fairness, one should say "any but one" of those difficulties. Romney did avow, early on and in round terms, that "no authorities of my church" could ever exert any influence on his decision-making as chief executive. This may get him in trouble with some Mormons, and it does invite the question of why he adheres to a sect whose "prophet" is a supreme commander, but it is the most he could have been asked to say, as well as the least. Actually, the more he goes in one direction, the more he may find it is Mormons who are developing reservations about him. There is already grumbling in the ranks about his statement that the Bible is the revealed word of God, an absurd belief that Mormons do not truly profess, because they feel it is lacking an even more absurd later revelation to Joseph Smith. There are also those who think that Romney's disowning of past Mormon polygamy is too opportunistic, since the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints does still offer the consolation prize of multiple wives in heaven (just like the sick dream of Mohamed Atta).

Trying to raise himself above this swamp of nonsense—the existence of which is his responsibility, not mine—the governor mainly treated us to evasion and a rather shifty attempt to change the subject and rewrite the historical record. It may be true that Romney "saw my father march with Martin Luther King" (though the candidate himself, who was of age to do so at the time, doesn't claim to have joined in), but that doesn't answer the question about official Mormon racism, which lasted 10 full years after Dr. King had been murdered, or of what Mitt Romney did or said about this at the time.


Romney does not understand the difference between deism and theism, nor does he know the first thing about the founding of the United States. Jefferson's Declaration may invoke a "Creator," but, as he went on to show in the battle over the Virginia Statute on Religious Freedom, he and most of his peers did not believe in a god who intervened in human affairs or in a god who had sent a son for a human sacrifice. These easily ascertainable facts are reflected in the way that the U.S. Constitution does not make any mention of a superintendent deity and in the way that the delegates to the Constitutional Convention declined an offer (possibly sarcastic), even from Benjamin Franklin, that they resort to prayer to compose their differences. Romney may throw a big chest and say that God should be "on our currency, in our pledge," and of course on our public land in this magic holiday season, but James Madison did not think that there should be chaplains opening the proceedings of Congress or even appointed as ministers in the U.S. armed forces. Trying to dodge around this, and to support his assertion that the founders were religious in the Christian sense, Romney drones on about a barely relevant moment of emotion in 1774 and comes up with the glib slogan that "freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom." Any fool can think of an example where freedom exists without religion—and even more easily of an instance where religion exists without (or in negation of) freedom.

This does not mean that freedom of religion is not as important as freedom from it, yet Romney makes himself absurd by saying that Mormons may not be asked about the tenets of their faith, lest this infringe the constitutional ban on a religious test for public office. Here is another failure of understanding on his part. He is not being told: Answer this question in the wrong way, and you become ineligible. He is being told: Your family is prominent in a notorious church that proselytizes its views in a famously aggressive manner. Are you only now deciding to make a secret of your beliefs? And if so, why? Would he expect a Scientologist to be able to avoid questions about L. Ron Hubbard? Does the governor of Massachusetts who publicly tried for mob applause by demanding that we "double Guantanamo" (whatever that meant) add that the detainees must not be asked what branch of Islam they favor? If an atheist was running against him, would Romney make nothing of the fact? His stupid unease on this point is shown by his demagogic attack on the straw man "religion of secularism," when, actually, his main and most cynical critic is a moon-faced true believer and anti-Darwin pulpit-puncher from Arkansas who doesn't seem to know the difference between being born again and born yesterday.

According to the admittedly very contradictory scriptures of the New Testament, Jesus of Nazareth warned his disciples and followers that they should expect to be ridiculed and mocked for their faith. After all, how likely was it that God had decided to reveal himself to only a few illiterate peasants in a barbarous backwater? Those who elected to believe this stuff were quite rightly told to expect a hard time, and the expression "fool for God" or "fool for Christ" has been with us ever since. That concept has some dignity and nobility. Entirely lacking in dignity or nobility (or average integrity) is the well-heeled son of a gold-plated church who wants to assume the pained look of martyrdom only when he is asked if he actually believes what he says. A long time ago, Romney took the decision to be a fool for Joseph Smith, a convicted fraud and serial practitioner of statutory rape who at times made war on the United States and whose cult has been made to amend itself several times in order to be considered American at all. We do not require pious lectures on the American founding from such a man, and we are still waiting for some straight answers from him.

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posted at 12:59 AM

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Wednesday, November 07, 2007
This and that, 7 November 2007

The US Congress is openly questioning why we are sending aid money to Pakistan, which has recently seen its president nullify their constitution, and declare martial law. They are however, still paying President Bush's salary, and there has been no visible detection of irony anywhere inside the Beltway.

In a related story, Pakistani police beat protesters. I'm afraid that this is not a sports report.

Welcome to your inevitable, albeit less fashionable future.

General Motors reported that it lost $39 BILLION dollars in the third quarter of this year. The company isn't worth nearly that much. Can someone explain to me how this is even possible? I can't imagine why everyone isn't running out to buy Hummers to fill with $4 a gallon gas.

One study has linked birth control pills with clogged arteries, although the pill does still do a bang-up job preventing clogged vaginas.

Click here to get a look at the most adorable little terrorist I've ever seen. Still think it can't happen to you?

I'm not calling Pat Robertson a hypocrite. Some people might do so after he publicly endorsed Rudy Giuliani for president, a thrice-married, pro-choice, pro-gay rights, pro-gun control Catholic from New York City. But not me. All he's doing is sacrificing his principles and everything he stands for in hopes of winning. Big deal.

And the gays. Don't forget the gays.

Interpol put five Iranians and a Lebanese man on its most-wanted list. And that's how things are on the West coast.

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posted at 5:49 PM

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Thursday, September 13, 2007
The old Switcheroo

I was thinking this week about how great the war was going in Iraq, and it took me back to an article I read in the Fall of 2004, about why we had to invade. I know now that it is because we must grant democracy to the Iraqi people, but even three years ago, we had already gone through 21 different reasons for attacking. I shit you not, and here they are:

1) To prevent the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.
2) For regime change.
3) To further the war on terror.
4) Because of Iraq’s violation of United Nations resolutions.
5) Because of Saddam Hussein’s evil dictatorship and actions.
6) Because of a lack of weapons inspections in Iraq.
7) To liberate Iraq.
8) Because of Iraq’s ties to al Qaeda.
9) Because Iraq was an imminent threat.
10) To disarm Iraq.
11) To conclude the Gulf War of 1991.
12) Because Hussein was a threat to the region.
13) For the safety of the world.
14) To support the United Nations.
15) Because the United States could (easy victory).
16) To preserve peace around the world.
17) Because Iraq was a unique threat.
18) To transform the region.
19) As a warning to other terrorist nations.
20) Because Hussein hates the United States and will act against it.
21) Because history calls the United States to action.

Now, I suppose Number 18 might cover the whole "grant democracy to the Iraqis" thing, so I won't say that this notion is yet another excuse. But lists aside, have we made any progress?

According to the rather sunny report that General Petraeus delivered to Congress this week, the number of Iraqis being killed in terrorist incidents has dropped by 50% this year (only 2000 a month now!). In spite of this great news, the Iraqi government can't seem to get anything done. There are hopeless divisions due to the different Muslim factions that are trying to get their piece of the action, none of which are willing to compromise, take a step back, or admit that their side may have blood on its hands anytime in the, oh, let's say, eight centuries or so.

If you are willing to acknowledge these facts, you may want to throw your hands up in despair. I look at them, and can only think, "Mission Accomplished." In reverse.

George W. Bush, in his efforts to make Iraq more like the United States, has actually managed to make the US more like Iraq.

In Iraq, we have religious groups who have aligned themselves politically with parties that support their particular dogma. There is not, nor has there ever been, any room for compromise between these parties, because all sides are convinced that they are the only ones who know The Truth.

In the United States, where we used to have a two-party system that was capable of compromise, especially on important issues, we now have idiotic, fruitless (no offense Senator Craig) squabbling, because both parties are certain that their way is the only way to do things, and that compromise is a sign of weakness.

Iraq is in the Middle East, it is overwhelmingly Muslim, and even as an ostensible democracy, would still have an Islamic-oriented government. There could never be an institutionalized writ of separation between church (or mosque) and state.

The United States is predominantly Christian, and even though many of the founders were themselves believers in Christianity, they saw fit to not exclude anyone by having a de facto state religion.

Now, however, we have a government in place which is run at the highest levels by evangelical Christians, whose views on the universe and law are not altogether different than those held by Taliban clerics. They believe god, or more specifically, Jesus, should be a part of every single facet of American life, and that there is no type of charity but that of the Christian variety. They know that to believe otherwise makes one an infidel in this life, and condemned to hell in the next one.

Well, no thanks.

I wish the Iraqis well, but they and their inevitable theocracy can go rot. I want my country back. I want people running things that understand science and the value of research. I want the ones in charge to be able to see past their own selfish desires and dogma, and try to figure out what the consequences of actions might be, not just today but for the next fifty years. I want a president who has doubts, because no one but children and imbeciles could possibly ever have a clear conscience. Certainty, especially the moral brand, is the clearest evidence of a closed mind, and people who claim it ought not be left in charge of anything more important than a microwave oven.

These men who would protect us from evil have instead trashed our Constitution, and lowered us to the level of the enemy whom we proclaim to be so utterly backward in its thinking. And I'm not just talking about our Saudi allies who knocked down the World Trade Center, we have become more like the fascist Communist governments run by Stalin and Mao. We may be a ways off from that level, but we sure as hell are as close to that point as we have ever been.

George W. Bush, the staunch anti-Communist who kept the skies over Texas safe from the Viet Cong in the 1960s, and now battles to keep the American Way intact by taking moral lessons from the worst people on Earth. The 3,000 who died on 9/11/01, and the nearly 3,800 American servicemen and women who have died since then are casualties of a war to promote American-style democracy. It is a war we lost the moment the so-called Patriot Act was signed into law in 2001, and its headstone was cemented in place with the signing of the Military Commissions Act of 2006 which eliminated Habeus Corpus.

We have forfeited our birthright to a group of inbred fanatics who could not take it away from us if they had their numbers increased a thousandfold. And we have done it thanks to the type of leadership one would expect in a third-rate, pissant country like Iraq.

Iraq has American-style democracy all right. If that country even exists in ten years, I'll buy you a Coke.

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posted at 4:43 PM

2 comments

Wednesday, July 11, 2007
You're acting like a baby about this

As usual, I am conflicted. I have a feeling that it is simply my nature to feel this way. I am ambidextrous, I am politically all over the place, I am completely ambivalent about where I should go for dinner, and I despise clutter yet refuse to straighten up the living room.

I feel like it is terribly sad when a marriage breaks up, and yet find it utterly hilarious when a moral crusader is caught philandering with prostitutes.

I am conflicted.

But I'm over that now. Hello, Senator David Vitter!

Adultery is an awful thing, a real betrayal in a relationship. A lot of people seem to have trouble keeping themselves in line when it comes to this, and I'm not going to sit here in judgment of the senator's actions. Truth be told, I really don't care one bit what he does, any more than I did when Bill Clinton got caught with his hand in the humidor.

Did he divulge any classified material? Was anyone murdered? Was everyone a consenting adult?

I must state simply, the only reason I adore this story, and so many others like it, is because Senator Stupidhead wasn't content to simply enjoy the paid company of friendly women. Oh, no. Vitter was very active in the whole Sanctity of Marriage folderol, which is just religiously phrased cover for "No, you can't have a same-sex marriage."

And lest we forget the reasons why, gay marriage would undermine, if not destroy traditional marriage. My guess is that repeated visits to prostitutes who dress you up in a diaper is a far more tangible threat to the Vitter marriage, but I am a "live and let live" sort of person. I will not presume to judge whether or not this is a bad thing where that relationship is concerned. I assume that Mrs. Vitter was aware that the senator liked to dress up like a baby; it's not as if giant packs of adult-sized diapers are easy to hide around the house.

So, what is the ambivalent citizen to do? The higher brain functions know that there was no worrisome crime committed. The so-called victim got paid for her trouble, although she'll probably need to spend a fortune working through the image of Davey Boy in Huggies.

I won't even bother calling for Vitter to resign, because this just isn't that big of a deal. What I would like from the senator is for him to keep his lying, douchebag of a mouth shut. Keep going to work, do your job, make your votes, collect your bribes.

But you don't get to give moralizing speeches any more.

Any time you mention the sanctity of marriage, traditional families, or the like, all anyone is going to see is the image of you, in a diaper, with a pacifier in your mouth, and a wallet emptied of thousands upon thousands of dollars for services rendered.

Keep coming to work, Senator. You're getting paid to be there, and paid well. You may spend your salary and per diem on whatever you wish. Keep undermining the cabal of moral scolds who get caught over and over again saying one thing and doing the opposite.

I love ya, man. Don't crawl back to the bayou and disappear. Don't go to rehab, there's nothing wrong with you. This is America, and a man has the right to be cleaned, powdered, diapered and spanked, if he has the cash.

Addendum: This is just icing on the cake.

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posted at 8:32 PM

0 comments

Monday, July 02, 2007
I'm doing a rain dance

Over the weekend, in a story that was little reported, former KGB honcho and current Russian president Vladimir Putin hung out at the Bush compound in Kennebunkport. He was there to discuss the placement of a US missile defense system on European soil. Apparently where we want it and the Russians will tolerate it is a point of dispute.

Fortunately, when Chimpy McFlisghtsuit met Putin the first time, he reported that "I looked the man in the eye. I found him to be very straight forward and trustworthy and we had a very good dialogue. I was able to get a sense of his soul."

Sure, Putin assassinates political enemies and members of the press, but he's a good guy. You can't get to be a big shot at the KGB if you aren't a real people person.

All of this aside, this isn't really what motivated me to write today. The whole shindig was hosted by former President George H.W. Bush (Those words sound so nice. Former President Bush.), and like any good effete Ivy League Easterner, he knows how to make people feel comfortable. Here's how he explained it to a local radio station:

"What the President wants ... is the ambiance and the background and the life out here just as it is when our family is here . You sit down, no neckties, in a beautiful house looking over the sea and talk frankly without a lot of strap-hangers and note-takers."

"Strap hangers?"

The elitist arrogance of this family never fails to show itself, no matter how much they pretend to be cowboys. The former president and his son are from Milton, Massachusetts and New Haven, Connecticut respectively. They have not hung from straps all that much. You know who does that sort of thing?

People with jobs. People who go to work every day to make ends meet. People who ride the bus or the train to get to their place of employ, because they actually don't have a limo driver to haul their hungover DWI-having asses to the office.

If the former president was from New York instead of Massachusetts, he might have referred to working scum as "bridge and tunnel types." Fortunately, he had an equally denigrating term to use for people without trust funds.

This entire family has not one clue as to what 98% of the people in this country have to deal with on a daily basis. Anyone recall Barb's analysis of the refugees' situation in Houston after Katrina?

"So many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this--this is working very well for them."

Yeah, living with 20000 others in the Astrodome has got to be an improvement over living in an apartment or home without a sloop for your yacht.

This is more proof to me that there is no god, or at least that there isn't one who gives a damn about the goings on around here. These people of faith, American royalty, who hold such disdain for the poor and those who work, and who make no effort to hide their true feelings...

If there was a god, it should have taken down that whole boat and snuffed out Putin in the bargain.

"Strap-hangers." Fuck you, your highness.

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posted at 11:39 AM

2 comments

Sunday, May 27, 2007
Sunday

It's Sunday, and the faithful hit the streets this morning as they headed out to the various places of worship. I, on the other hand, watched Casino on DVD.

I've never really been very interested in religion, even though I had certainly been exposed to it when I was younger. I was lucky, my parents were never fanatics about it, although presumably they believed in what they were taught. It was all fairly benign, never any of that fire and brimstone garbage that is so effective in warping young minds and enforcing uniformity of thought. I think I was pretty much over the notion of religion by the time I got to high school, although I don't recall putting it in so many words at that point.

College was pretty much ideology-free for me, not surprising given that I'm not much of a joiner. A lot of kids head off to college and start to question what their parents have foisted on them. I was always allowed to ask questions (as all children ought to when something strikes them as ridiculous), so I never had a great spiritual revelation or crisis of faith. College is a chance to experiment, I'm told, and I've seen some young people abandon the faith they showed up with as freshmen, and end up with something completely different. I attribute most of it to rebellion, but if the mind is engaged in questioning, I suppose there may be some merit to it, even if you're only trading in one dogma for another.

I spent time considering what I thought the universe might ultimately be about, learned a little about different philosophies, and tried to develop my own. I knew from the outset that I would probably never know anything for certain, and that the only thing I absolutely did know was that I really didn't know anything at all. For whatever reason, this lack of certainty did not trouble me. The universe holds infinite mysteries, and I think just considering them is worthwhile, even if answers cannot ever be known.

I am friends with a lot of people who have wandered away from organized religion, and many of them say some variant of the following:

"I'm not religious. I'm spiritual."

I liked the way that sounded, and I probably said it myself once or twice.

But you know what? I'm not spiritual. To say I am is a lie. I don't believe I have any deep connection to the cosmos except for the fact that I am an inhabitant. I suppose I am an atheist, although I can easily admit that I could be wrong. There may be a god, supreme being, Big Kahuna, or something. The universe exists (at least I think it does. There's a deep philosophical conversation all by itself), so it was created. But does that mean there is a creator? Must there be? And even supposing there is, why would anyone assume or want this creator to have predetermined the course of all of our lives?

I believe that things are random. People can change the course of history, but are they destined to do so? Does Hitler become Hitler without the harsh toll of WWI? Does Stalin become Stalin? Does JFK become the man he is if he's born in Michigan instead of Massachusetts? Some people take advantage of the opportunities they are given, and most don't.

I actually like the idea of the universe being a random place. I think it's cool that almost anything could happen. I don't like when something bad happens and people say that it's God's will. That is the biggest copout load of shit imaginable. Your baby drowned in the pool to serve God's plan? Africans are slaughtered in Darfur because God wills it? I can't think of any reason why God would want to push someone's car into a ditch during a storm. God may exist, but like the president of the United States or the CEO of Starbucks, I hope he has better things to do than meddle in the lives of mortals.

Sometimes I wander around and try to see the world as it is, and I'm pretty impressed. Things make sense. You let go of something, it drops. The sun moves from east to west over the course of the day. Rain falls, things grow. Water boils or freezes depending on the temperature, and light travels at 186000 miles per second. These are the laws of nature. If this is your divinity, then so be it. If God created the universe, then the universe must act according to these laws. In recorded history, God has never seen fit to have a sunrise in the west, let a man give birth, or allow one single thing that is born to live forever. The laws of nature are good enough for me, and common sense covers most of the rest.

Do I really need God to tell me not to steal from others, and not to kill my neighbor? And this omnipotent god actually cares if I call him by the wrong name? This omniscient being is so jealous? I'll tell you, hand me the keys to the universe, and I hope I won't waste time on such petty human smallness. If I was God, I think maybe I'd cure cancer. I might eliminate some other sicknesses as well, although I wouldn't eliminate death. People already think of life too frivolously. Death is the only thing that puts it all in perspective. And the promise of reward in some afterlife is just so much pie-in-the-sky to keep people from asking too many questions.

What other conclusion can one come to except that religion exists to protect the status quo? It is man made, and we know this because the rules change all the time. The Vatican swears for centuries that the Earth is flat because God told them so, and then suddenly it isn't? The Mormons don't allow blacks in the church for a century, and then suddenly they're ok? The Jews are are condemned for perpetuity of killing Christ, and suddenly, just twenty centuries later, the edict has changed? Religion serves the purposes of those that run it, and nothing more. It's the greatest pyramid scheme of all time, a supernatural Amway.

And keep your spiritual mumbo-jumbo away from me, too. Your crystals have no power, although they are pretty. Maybe that's really it, now that I think about it. Just keep all of your beliefs away from me. I am not interested. I do not have a need for them. I have no gaping chasm inside of me that requires a supernatural filling, although I have worshiped an eclair or two. Just live your life, believe what you want and please keep it to yourself. I won't say that you're wrong, because I honestly do not know, but when you proselytize, you are insisting that I am wrong, and you don't know anything, either. Belief and knowledge are entirely different, and I will take the latter over the former any day of the week, and twice on Sunday.

It's Sunday. How did you serve your god today? All I did was think about the nature of the universe, and I didn't need to go to a special building to do it. I feel pretty good about it. I feel free.

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posted at 6:14 PM

0 comments

Tuesday, May 15, 2007
Jerry Falwell

So, Jerry Falwell has died. I will say, without reservation, that the world is now a better place.

People will tell you that it is wrong to speak ill of the dead, but I am not prepared for any fuzzy, soft-handed retrospectives into the life of this man. He simply does not deserve them. Jerry Falwell was an awful human being, and his death came decades too late by my reckoning.

Falwell was, quite simply, wrong about everything.

It's an astounding record, if you want the truth. You can look at almost any issue where he was on the record, and he was on the wrong side of it. I'm not even talking about political stuff necessarily, or abortion. I'm talking choices that should have been (and were) glaringly obvious to most people.

In 1965, when Falwell was in his thirties, he gave a speech criticizing Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement, which he cleverly referred to as "the civil wrongs movement."

Get it?

Regulars on his his TV show back then included well-known racists like Lester Maddox and George Wallace, and in 1958, in reference to the landmark desegregation Brown v. Board of Education decision, he declared, “If Chief Justice Warren and his associates had known God’s word and had desired to do the Lord’s will, I am quite confident that the 1954 decision would never have been made…. The facilities should be separate. When God has drawn a line of distinction, we should not attempt to cross that line.”

There is just nothing that warms the heart quite like divinely inspired bigotry. That may also explain his position on the Apartheid regime in South Africa. Where do you suppose he stood on this matter?

If you guessed "in favor of" give yourself a cookie.

During white minority rule, Falwell urged American Christians to buy Kruggerands in order to support the regime. Even fellow men of the cloth were not spared the loving hand of Falwell, as he called to Bishop Desmond Tutu a "phony." He later claimed to have misspoken, explaining he meant to call him a colored agitator who needs a-lynchin'.

All right, I made up just that last part.

Fine, he was a bigot, some people are raised that way. He was anti-gay, which again, in your personal life is your own business, but he used the bible to justify his fear. He was against public schools, trade unions, really believed the Clintons killed Vince Foster, was anti-free speech, was on the record with the assertion that when the Antichrist shows up, he will by necessity be a Jewish male. Let's not forget that he was terrified that one of the Teletubbies might be gay, and yet was close friends with disgraced minister Jim Bakker.

Wrong. About. EVERYTHING.

Let us go back a few years. It is only a couple of days after the events of September 11, 2001. The nation is still in shock, mourning the losses, and united like at no time since World War II. How would our great healers, our men of God help us make sense of these tragedies? Some tuned to Pat Robertson's 700 Club for guidance and understanding. Falwell was a guest, and offered this:

"I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularize America. I point the finger in their face and say 'you helped this happen.'"

He went on to add that he saw the attacks as God's judgment on America for "throwing God out of the public square, out of the schools. The abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked."

All these years later, I read these words, and all I can think is what I thought back then: Fuck you, Falwell. Die.

Now he's gone, and I'm actually happy that he's dead. Someone else will take over his grotesque ministry, but hopefully it will lose some of its luster without the cult of personality surrounding Falwell. This was a terrible human being.

I don't believe in heaven or hell, but I almost hope Falwell was right, and I am wrong this time. I hope there is a place where awful, exploitative hatemongers are sent for an eternity of torture.

You've earned it, Jerry. You will not be missed.

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posted at 11:48 AM

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