Bigotry for broadcast

What's it like meeting hatemongers such as Pamela Geller and the folks from Westboro Baptist Church? I tell you in my latest piece for Al Jazeera.

I wonder why?

"The idea that Wall Street criminals are getting away with a criminal conspiracy against the American people is a popular one. Nobody ever asks how the seemingly victimized American people managed to make so much of Wall Street’s money disappear through their own deadbeat behavior."

--Tim Cavanaugh, Reason, 14 October 2011

Tool of American imperialism insufficiently pro-American

Like the United Nations, which is supposed to oppose its members attacking each other in wars of aggression but let the United States invade Iraq without so much as a stern non-binding condemnation, the Organization of American States (OAS) is more often than not a tool of American imperialism than a foe. But, like the UN, serving as a tool of its most powerful, wealthy member is not enough for some politicians, who will (grand)stand for nothing less than complete subservience to the goal of U.S. hegemony.

Earlier today, House Republicans lambasted the OAS at a hearing held by the Foreign Affairs Committee, voting to block U.S. payments to the multilateral body. U.S. support for the OAS is "hurting the people of Latin America," Rep. Connie Mack (R-FL) said, according to excerpts posted by the Center for International Policy. "There is a better way to support Latin America, and that is..." -- come on, you know it -- "to pass free trade agreements."

"Let's not continue to fund an organization that's bent on destroying democracy in Latin America," Mack added, noting the case of Honduran President Manuel Zelaya, who was overthrown in a military coup. "[I]t was the OAS who was helping Zelaya, who by the way was instigating the real coup in Honduras by trying to take over that country and trying to take away the right of its citizens to elect a president."

"Let's not continue to fund an organization that's bent on destroying democracy in Latin America," Mack added.

Mack could of course be dismissed as a raving idiot -- and he of course is. But he is, unfortunately, a raving idiot who chairs the House subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere. Let's go over that again: he's a chairman. Someone trusts this man with a gavel. And, even more unfortunately, don't kid yourself -- this is the best the U.S. political system can do.

Here's the thing about Honduras, though: while I don't much care about Manuel Zelaya, or any politician for that matter, I do care -- and please don't groan -- about blatant bullshit being passed off as the truth. And the truth is that Zelaya, far from "trying to take away the right of [Honduras'] citizens to elect a president," was seeking to hold a non-binding referendum on whether his country should have a constitutional convention to revise a document crafted by its previous military dictatorship. If the referendum had been approved, Honduras could have, but would not have been legally bound to, hold said convention, where delegates could have -- potentially -- voted to remove the provision that forbids presidents from serving two consecutive terms.

It's all a bit confusing, yes, but a lot more fact-y.

Zelaya, meanwhile, was not running for reelection, as he was legally barred from doing so. Had the referendum gone forward and been passed, and assuming a convention was held that removed the presidential term limits, Zelaya could run again if he wanted at some point in the future. This would not, however, be akin to taking away Hondurans' right to vote, but could in fact be see as expanding their right to vote by allowing them to reelect a former president if they should so choose.

But Mack didn't even utter the stupidest thing that was said at the hearing. That honor was left to fellow Florida Republican David Rivera (it's not secession, I know that, but what do you call it when you forcibly require a state to leave the union?). Courtesy the Center for International Policy are these two nuggets of congressional wisdom:

• “It kind of reminds me of that scene in Animal House where the college pledges, pledging the fraternity, as part of the ceremony to become a member of the fraternity you have to get paddled, and every time he gets paddled he says, ‘Please, sir, may I have another.’"

• “How much longer are we going to say to the OAS, ‘Please, sir, may I have another?’ I understand a little bit about Stockholm Syndrome, where the hostage becomes enamored with their persecutor. And I don’t know if that’s going on with this administration or some who support involvement in the OAS, but maybe it is.”

Animal House, folks. I don't have the transcript, but presumably he worked in a reference to Big Daddy and Old School during questioning.

As Jonathan Schwarz often notes, the hardest part about analyzing members of the political class is figuring out whether they're wicked, evil liars are just really that stupid. Having spent my fair share of time interviewing members of Congress, I wouldn't dismiss out of hand that they are just stupid. But then stupid and evil go together like cookies and milk.

My conversation with Iranian state television

A week ago I published a satirical article on this blog, “EXCLUSIVE: Obama orders air strikes on Guantanamo Bay,” intended to highlight the absurdity of people (I'm looking at you establishment liberals) condemning the Gitmo military prison and the government’s denial of habeas corpus to the “suspected terrorists” imprisoned there (and the others even the Obama administration concedes are innocent but whom they won’t release) while condoning extrajudicial killings by U.S. Predator drones in Yemen, Iraq, Somalia, Afghanistan and Pakistan. This being the internet, that the piece is satire was of course lost on some, which probably says more about what people believe the U.S. government is capable of than anything else.

One such person is “Sarah”, employed by the Iranian government’s English-language news/propaganda service, Press TV, who emailed me yesterday with the subject line “Interview Request” after the piece was published over at Dissident Voice. Now mind you, the second paragraph of my piece quoted a supposed “senior White House official” as stating that the attack “killed a whole damn bunch of them there terrorist sons of bitches” -- “the sound of clinking glasses and celebratory gunfire audible in the background.” Further, the next paragraph said the men imprisoned at Guantanamo were there because they “were suspected of being Muslim” (well…) and having “maintained an interest in recruiting sheep to be suicide bombers.” Sheep. In other words, there were ample signs, I think, the piece was satirical -- in addition to it being categorized as “satire.”

With that in mind, here’s the email I received:

This is Sarah, Press TV's newsroom coordinator. Press TV is an English News channel being broadcasted from Iran. we just saw one of your articles "EXCLUSIVE: Barack Obama orders air strikes on Guantanamo Bay killing at least 220 detaineees" on the net. Would we be able to get you on the phone for an interview on this story? i would really appriciate it if you reply back soon and give me your contact number.

Regards

Sarah

Press TV's Newsroom Coordinator

www.presstv.ir

Being a bit of an asshole, I of course responded by sending my Google Voice number. About five minutes later I received a call from “Sarah” in Tehran, who conducted a fact check of my piece consisting of the question: “Is it credible?” Again, being a bit of an asshole, I assured her my sources were second-to-none and that the credibility of the piece was not in doubt, prompting her to invite me to appear on *LIVE* television in an hour. I naturally accepted. You should probably just listen to the conversation yourself:

A few minutes later I received another email from Sarah, this one in preparation for my coming appearance:

charles would you mind sending a brief profile about urself as well along with the pic, thanks

I quickly complied, sending along this bio -- “Charles Davis is a journalist based in Washington, DC, where he covers U.S. foreign policy. His work has appeared in highly credible publications throughout the world.” -- and this picture.

For those unfamiliar, that’s Emiliano Zapata, a prominent leader in the Mexican revolution, an advocate of land reform and decentralization, one of my idols for actually turning down political power rather than trying to seize it for himself (see a paper I wrote about him in college), and, as you can see, an all-around mustachioed badass. Unfortunately, I was informed that “it seems we can use black and white pics for the documentaries but only allowed to use colored pics for the live shots like news, let me see what happens…” This did not dissuade the folks at the Iranian regime’s international mouthpiece from persisting in their effort to get me on the air, though:

can we have u at the studio maybe? one of our studios is on M street in WDC, like around 9pm?

“Holy shit,” I thought, wondering how the hell I could pass myself off as a 90-years-dead Mexican revolutionary. I would also need to concoct a story -- and concoct I did, penning a tale of a CIA carrier pigeon “going rogue”, refusing to carry out its mission to inform the drone operators in Langley, VA, of their assignment to bomb Guantanamo Bay and instead flying to my apartment to spill the beans on the imminent attack, coming to me due to my “longstanding ties to the dissident carrier pigeon community.” Alas, YouTube stardom was not to be as Sarah apparently wisened up before I could tell my story on the air -- presumably because she read my Twitter feed -- never responding to my request for directions. Sigh.

If Chris Matthews only had a brain

Chris Matthews is paid around $5 million a year by the kind folks at General Electric/MSNBC to pontificate on politics and to essentially act as a guardian of the establishment. So it makes sense that he would be not only stunningly, offensively ignorant of American history, but that his ignorance would be displayed in such a way as to flatter the ruling elite. In that respect, Matthews is typical of the DC commentariat -- he makes up in blind worship of power what he lacks in actual knowledge -- as he displayed during his most recent appearance on Comedy Central’s The Colbert Report, where he claimed that not only had the Kennedy clan saved us from nuclear war (after bringing the world to the brink of it due in part to the ill-conceived Bay of Pigs invasion), but that they actually "created the civil rights movement." Sorry Rosa Parks!

Though the stupidity starts at the beginning of the clip, the mind-numbing, make-your-brain-hurt ignorant adulation of the political class begins about three minutes in:

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Chris Matthews
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Protests

The problem with folks like Matthews, and the very thing that makes him so attractive to politicians and his corporate paymasters, is that they envision all social progress as something bequeathed to us mere peons by the state and our betters in the halls of Congress and the White House. Our benevolent political leaders -- presidents and senators, kings and queens -- in the view of the these courtiers are the drivers of history, with we serfs merely along for the ride.

That it was the people, through protests, boycotts and open defiance of state-backed discrimination that forced the government to grant concessions to basic human decency if only to head off the prospect of an actual revolution (and to counter anti-American Soviet propaganda) is apparently lost to this class of professional flatterers. To claim the civil rights movement was “started” by a bunch of white aristocrats from New England reveals an incredible historical ignorance and bias in favor of the powerful, and ignores the fact that watershed events like the Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Greensboro sit-ins, all aimed at protesting government-backed segregation, occurred while John F. Kennedy was busy hanging out at country clubs enjoying the favored pastime of the idle rich and years before he became president.

That history is comprised of little more than the actions of elites is a view held not merely by U.S. officials and media sycophants, mind you. For instance, a few months ago I attended a luncheon here in DC where an aide to a Canadian premier remarked to those around him that Lyndon Baines Johnson had gotten a bad rap from ungrateful Americans given all he had done for minorities in this country, evidenced by the passage of the Civil Rights Act. Since it is rude to eavesdrop -- and ruder still to call someone a f_cking idiot from across the table at these sorts of functions -- I held my tongue, but couldn’t help but wonder if this official had ever considered the civil rights of those tens of thousands of African-Americans and other minorities drafted and sent off to kill and be killed in the jungles of Vietnam, much less the millions of Vietnamese who suffered the liberatory aftermath of the U.S. munitions dropped on their homes and schools.

Pondering these sorts of questions is probably why I’m just some small-time reporter with a blog, though, rather than a highly paid celebrity commentator. That said, here’s what a I propose: that from here on out, the term “Chris Matthews” become synonymous with “pompous, historically ignorant windbag” -- if it isn't already. Come on folks, through the power of the people we can make this happen.

Someone buy John Shadegg a dictionary

At a press conference I attended today where Republicans accused the EPA of covering up the views of a "career scientist" who questioned the scientific consensus that human activity contributes to climate change, I noted during the question-and-answer period that I had talked to said "scientist" earlier in the day and that he had confirmed to me that he had absolutely no background in climate science. Rather, he was an economist with an undergrad degree in physics.

In response, Arizona Republican John Shadegg congratulated me for demonstrating great "entrepreneurship" by seeking out the EPA employee in question. As I muttered to a reporter sitting next to me, "I don't think that word means what he thinks it does . . ."

Fear nutjobs with guns, not 'anti-government' ideas

Casting your political opponents as enemies of the state who are aiding and abetting terrorism -- was it so long ago this was the favored debating tactic of the political right? Fast forward one historic, transformational election, however, and it is the nominal left in this country accusing their opponents of fomenting violence, calling for increased domestic surveillance and alluding to a coming civil war. By no means unexpected, the transformation has been rather stunning, though I must admit I find the prospect of a shoot-out between Daily Kos diarists and Free Republic posters to be somewhat amusing, if a bit unlikely.

Since the tragic shooting at the Holocaust museum, legions of earnest Democrats have been quick to lay blame at right-wing talk radio and the GOP, none less than the hysterical “progressive” journalist David Neiwert, who has spent the better part of a decade selling books to Concerned Liberals on the specter of right-wing violence in America -- along the way smearing anyone who may hold (gasp!) anti-government views. With right-wingers generally reviled as of late -- and for good reason -- it makes sense for someone trying to hawk a new book on the evils of the right to pin the acts of murderous nutjobs on the likes of Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh. But Neiwert’s latest hack job, typified by the juvenile “wingnut” name-calling in the opening sentence, goes far beyond criticizing right-wing blowhards, instead tarring certain ideas as Officially Off Limits.

For example, criticism of the Federal Reserve is out of bounds -- anti-semitic even -- or so Neiwert implies in this passage about the suspected museum shooter:

[T]he truly telltale aspect of his record: In 1981, he was arrested for attempting a "citizen's arrest" of Alan Greenspan at the Federal Reserve Building in D.C. and was sentenced to a prison term for it.

More to the point, this is precisely the same belief system that today fuels the cottage industry in conspiracy theories -- promulgated by the likes of Ron Paul and Alex Jones -- that the Fed is part of a massive conspiracy of "international [read: Jewish] bankers" to enslave Americans and destroy the country.

First: Paul Volcker was Federal Reserve Chairman in 1981, not Alan Greenspan, who didn’t take over for another six years. This is probably a good indication of how closely Neiwert has followed economic policy. Admirably, this doesn’t stop him from accusing folks like Ron Paul from being wink-and-a-nod anti-Semites for criticizing Fed policy, despite the fact Paul hates the Fed for inflating the money supply while the Holocaust shooter hated the Fed for precisely the opposite reason: that it wasn't inflating fast enough. Say what you will about Paul’s philosophy, but the man is clearly driven by economic ideology, and in speeches and columns he drones on at length about monetary policy, not The Jews. Example:

The Fed has followed a consistent policy of flooding the economy with easy money, leading to a misallocation of resources and an artificial "boom" followed by a recession or depression when the Fed-created bubble bursts.

Though the Federal Reserve policy harms the average American, it benefits those in a position to take advantage of the cycles in monetary policy. The main beneficiaries are those who receive access to artificially inflated money and/or credit before the inflationary effects of the policy impact the entire economy. Federal Reserve policies also benefit big spending politicians who use the inflated currency created by the Fed to hide the true costs of the welfare-warfare state. It is time for Congress to put the interests of the American people ahead of the special interests and their own appetite for big government.

Huh. I guess there was a secret code in there somewhere.

Neiwert’s suggestion that criticism the Fed is destroying the country is somehow the sole domain of the racist far right is symptomatic of his rigid and outmoded definition of what constitutes “left” and “right”. One needn't be a Bircher to see something wrong with the way the Fed operates, as evidenced by Dennis Kucinich's speeches on the topic. A nominally private institution dominated by banking interests and given the monopoly power to manipulate a nation's currency is of concern to people of many political stripes – witness the majority of the House, including progressive Democrats like Lynne Woolsey, who are co-sponsoring Paul's bill calling for an audit of the secretive Fed. No doubt Neiwert will inform us these people are all promulgating “the same belief system” that drove the Holocaust museum shooter, the bastards.

In many respects, Neiwert is doing for the left what hate sites like Little Green Footballs do for the right: conflating every isolated instance of violence with an emerging “fascist” threat, only replacing Muslims with paranoid hicks. More troubling, he uses his fearmongering to paint his peaceful, non-violent political opponents – like the consistently anti-war Paul – as in league with the basest members of society, not because they objectively incite violence, but because in some instances their views sound superficially similar to those embraced by right-wing conspiracy theorists; ergo a U.S. congressman voicing criticisms of the Fed's monetary policy gives aid and comfort to those who think Ben Bernanke is actually a Jewish-Lizard hybrid.

That The New Republic's insufferable Jamie Kirchick uses the Holocaust museum shooter and the exact same formulation as Neiwert to smear the left -- even citing the “fringe” left's interest in Ron Paul's presidential campaign as evidence of their “views about Israel, the Middle East and 'neocons'” are the same as those of the Holocaust museum shooter -- is a strong indication of how silly this type of argument is, and how it's nothing more than a dishonest tool of partisan hacks too lazy or incapable of rationally debating policy.

And not to undercut Neiwert’s theory of an emergent reactionary menace, but since Obama took office, how many people have been killed in the United States by politically motivated violence? I’m not sure, but I can guarantee you the number’s less than those killed in Pakistan from the drone attacks Obama has authorized. And in terms of threats to minorities, the enlightened, liberal Obama administration oversees the world’s largest prison population, largely consisting of non-violent drug offenders – disproportionately black and Hispanic -- and has shown no signs of promoting serious reform to address this scandalous condition.

Unfortunately, Neiwert and his fellow liberal travelers prefer focusing on the violent hyperbole of their domestic political opponents to the very real and much greater evil of state-sanctioned murder and incarceration. While quick to denounce the “eliminationist” rhetoric of the right, Neiwert characteristically had precious little to say about liberal Hillary Clinton's vow last year to “obliterate” the more than 65 million people of Iran should their government attack Israel. Likewise, Neiwert’s preoccupation with his theories on freelance fascism have caused him to go conspicuously silent on those the progressive Obama administration slaughters overseas, suggesting a rather misplaced set of priorities.

As Reason's Jesse Walker writes of the spate of right-wing violence:

Yes, these murders are terrorism, but they're the sort of terrorism that can be contained by the average small-town police force. If you try to blow them up into a grand pattern that threatens ordinary Americans, you're no different from the C-level conservative pundits who treat every politically motivated crime by a Muslim as evidence of a broad Islamic threat to ordinary Americans' well-being.

Exactly. Conflating a few gun-toting crazies with the threat of a looming civil war might sell a few books and reassure a few liberal of their own superiority, but is about as loony as Glenn Beck accusing Ron Paul supporters of (wait for it) . . . being domestic terrorists.

Meanwhile, as the notorious right-wing extremist Henry David Thoreau wrote when the U.S. government was similarly engaged in an indefensible, immoral war, "How does it become a man to behave toward the American government today? I answer, that he cannot without disgrace be associated with it."

I'm guessing Mr. Thoreau would have a hard time in the Age of Obama posting that on most liberal blogs, the traitorous old kook.

'The ax in my head is really bumming me out . . . got any Prozac?'

An ad for the anti-depressant Cymbalta that I saw on TV the other night cautioned any would-be consumer not to take the product if suffering from “uncontrolled glaucoma.” This raises the obvious question: If you have freaking uncontrolled glaucoma, don’t you think that might have something to do with any sense of unhappiness you may feel? And might I suggest that -- despite the average American’s propensity to pop prescription happy pills like popcorn -- you talk to your doctor about that whole impending blindness thing first, before asking about your media-induced fears of mood-altering chemical imbalances?

I’m guessing the treatment for glaucoma might also help with any other lingering feelings of malaise. Just a thought.

Jamie Kirchick: put down the thesaurus, buy a dictionary

Jamie Kirchick of The New Republic has a typically asinine column in The Los Angeles Times today blasting President Obama for being insufficiently jingoistic and arrogant during his recent European tour. Unfortunately, there are a few glaring errors in the piece -- beyond the fact that it is premised on the inside-the-Beltway bullshit notion that rhetoric on foreign affairs is more important than actual policy -- that undermine his case.

For starters: "apologetics" is not the plural form of "apology", but rather a term meaning a formal argument in defense of a belief, typically concerning theology. Thus, saying "Obama waited to ramp up the apologetics until his first trip overseas" implies he waited until he was in Europe before launching into a detailed defense of the Trinity and transsubstanation.

Furthermore: Kirchick claims "the use of the atomic bomb in ending the war with Japan saved hundreds of thousands of lives, and America's possession of nuclear weapons prevented the Cold War from becoming bloodier." Of course, dropping nuclear weapons on Japan -- twice -- was a political decision made by President Truman intended primarily to scare the Soviet Union, as Japanese leaders had already sought to surrender. Hypotheticals about lives saved do not negate the fact that hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians were intentionally killed by the U.S. military. And as that committed pacificist, Allied Commander Dwight D. Eisenhower, remarked to Newsweek, the war with Japan was nearly over at the time the bombs were dropped, and "it wasn't necessary to hit them with that awful thing.''

Finally: Kirchick trashes Obama for not defending the concept of "American exceptionalism" with enough vigor, his bombing of a sovereign, nuclear-armed ally apparently not being indication enough of the exceptional status he believes the U.S. enjoys on the world scene. To Kirchick's dismay, Obama apparently chose diplomacy over arrogance during his European tour, telling other countries that, yes, you too can be exceptional! But that's "impossible," writes Kirchick:

If all countries are "exceptional," then none are, and to claim otherwise robs the word, and the idea of American exceptionalism, of any meaning. Besides, American exceptionalism is demonstrable -- Cuban journalists, Chinese political dissidents, Eastern Europeans once again living in the shadow of a belligerent Russia and, yes, even some Brits and Greeks look toward the U.S. and nowhere else to defend freedom.

It's unclear to what extent Mr. Kirchick has traveled the globe and spoke to its several billion inhabitants, but a few anecdotes about certain select peoples officially recognized as Oppressed by the State Department supposedly looking to the "U.S. and nowhere else to defend freedom" demonstrates precisely nothing. For every Cuban journalist looking to the US to defend their freedom one can point to a thousand Vietnamese civilians burned to death liberated by American military might, for example. It's also much more likely the vast majority of the world's people who seek freedom do not hinge their hopes on the benevolence of a foreign power thousands of miles from their home with a dubious commitment to liberty itself, but in fact look to themselves and their compatriots to fight for their rights.

To Kirchick and his neoliberal/neoconservative brethren, however, if a dictator falls and a CIA agent wasn't there to see it, then it never really happened. In their view, the United States government is the last best hope of man and really is god's gift to the world. An exaggeration? Hardly. Consider Kirchick's own definition of American exceptionalism.

This is the notion that our history as the world's oldest democracy, our immigrant founding and our devotion to liberty endow the United States with a unique, providential role in world affairs.

Skipping past the fact that the United States is not "the world's oldest democracy" -- women only gained the right to vote here in the 1920s, for one -- rather telling is Kirchick's use of the word "providential" to describe the U.S. role in the world; that is, his apparent belief that the U.S. government is "of, pertaining to, or resulting from divine providence." If anyone's guilty of engaging in "apologetics," it's Kirchick.

War is the health of the state (and hack columnists)

Not every dimwitted and bloodthirsty pundit mouthing off on the Israeli invasion of Gaza is worth legitimizing with a response, but some commentators are more stridently obtuse and vicious than others -- and benefit from the prominent platforms handed to them by publications like Newsweek and The Washington Post -- and sometimes it's worth examining the actual arguments made by the over-compensating La-Z-Boy brigade. Take Carlos Alberto Motaner, "one of the most influential and widely-read columnists in the Spanish-language media," who pens an entire disingenous column on the notion that all critics of Israeli military actions are more or less driven by either 1) anti-semitism, or 2) a desire to kill Jews. Here's the nuanced argument:

Israelis are being accused of suffering too few casualties in their confrontation with the Hamas terrorists. Those who reason thus usually speak the words "disproportion" or "asymmetry" in an indignant tone. While at this writing close to a thousand Arab Palestinians have died or been wounded as a result of the bombings, the Israeli losses amount to just over a dozen.

Tel Aviv's critics -- from whom an anti-Semitic stench often rises -- do not say whether Israel should increase its quota of cadavers or if it must reduce the Arabs' quota to achieve the reasonable proportion of blood that will soothe the peculiar itch for parity that afflicts them. Nor do they specify the morally permissible number of casualties to end the rain of rockets that for years has been constantly falling on the heads of Israeli civilians.

Unfortunately, Mr. Motaner never gets around to citing any prominent voices stating the sentiments he decries, possibly because there aren't any -- a fact that would seem to undermine the straw man he constructs. Also, it never seems to occur to Motaner that perhaps some crtics of the Gaza invasion object to killing people, regardless of nationality and , and see no great moral principle behind the Israeli government's distinction between attacking civilian populations with ineffectual rockets (cold-blooded terrorism) and attacking them with the finest in U.S.-subsidized munitions (legitimate self-defense). Murder is murder, whether it's caused by a Qassam rocket or a smart bomb -- though chances are if it'll be one, it'll be the latter.

Here's more from Motaner, who seems genuinely perplexed as to why the concept of total, "all-out" war is abhorrent to some people:

This demand for "proportionality" can only be called surprising. Until this conflict began, history books everywhere always expressed great satisfaction and a certain chauvinistic pride when a nation's army inflicted on the enemy a large number of casualties, vis-à-vis a trifling price paid by "our boys." Israel is the only country expected to behave differently and, in fact, it does; I know of no other nation that announces where and when it will drop its bombs, thus enabling civilians to evacuate the territory. Of course, in this it behaves asymmetrically, because the Hamas terrorists, forever eager to cause the greatest damage possible, never announce when or where they will launch their rockets against Israel's civilian population.

First, a legalistic point -- namely, article 57, 2(c) of the Geneva Conventions, Protocol I: 

effective advance warning shall be given of attacks which may affect the civilian population, unless circumstances do not permit.

In other words, warning civilians of an impending attack isn't a courtesy (sometimes) granted the Palestinians out of the Israeli government's benevolent goodness, it's a law of war that if ignored (as it often is) could open up Israeli officials to charges of war crimes -- as if their actions to date haven't already. It should also be mentioned that the 1.5 million residents of the Gaza Strip notably don't have the freedom to merely flee the conflict as Israel has maintained an increasingly stringent blockade on the region since Hamas came to power, preventing both the exodus of people and goods as well as the importation of fuel and humanitarian goods. And when residents of the Strip have heeded Israeli warnings and evacuated to several of the UN schools in the region designated for refugees, the Israeli military has had no compunction blowing up said schools up if a suspected Hamas militant (that is, a Palestinian male over the age of 12) is thought to be in the area.

But talking of "war crimes" at times feels a bit academic, as war itself is a crime against nature that -- like government -- is at best a necessary evil, and at worst an intolerable one. Indeed, the only thing mass armed conflict is really healthy for is the state, as Randolph Bourne pointed out during World War I, which invariably expands its power while spawning dime-a-dozen courtiers like Motaner (who wistfully bemoans the loss of stature the mass murder of civilians has suffered over the years). That's all the reason to give Bourne's radical advice -- that one should seek not to stop some wars, but to abolish the power structure that enables them -- a little thought:

War is a very artificial thing. It is not the naïve spontaneous outburst of herd pugnacity; it is no more primary than is formal religion. War cannot exist without a military establishment, and a military establishment cannot exist without a State organization. War has an immemorial tradition and heredity only because the State has a long tradition and heredity. But they are inseparably and functionally joined. We cannot crusade against war without crusading implicitly against the State. And we cannot expect, or take measures to ensure, that this war is a war to end war, unless at the same time we take measures to end the State in its traditional form. The State is not the nation, and the State can be modified and even abolished in its present form, without harming the nation. On the contrary, with the passing of the dominance of the State, the genuine life-enhancing forces of the nation will be liberated. If the State's chief function is war, then the State must suck out of the nation a large part of its energy for its purely sterile purposes of defense and aggression. It devotes to waste or to actual destruction as much as it can of the vitality of the nation. No one will deny that war is a vast complex of life-destroying and life-crippling forces. If the State's chief function is war, then it is chiefly concerned with coordinating and developing the powers and techniques which make for destruction. And this means not only the actual and potential destruction of the enemy, but of the nation at home as well. For the very existence of a State in a system of States means that the nation lies always under a risk of war and invasion, and the calling away of energy into military pursuits means a crippling of the productive and life-enhancing processes of the national life.

The bipartisan war on Pakistan

As the U.S. government's cronies on Wall Street press for taxpayers to pay inflated prices for their worthless assets, gone little noticed is that the United States and Pakistani militaries have, you know, been shooting at each other all week.

As the LA Times reports:

WASHINGTON -- U.S. and Pakistani forces exchanged gunfire Thursday along the Afghan border, as simmering tensions over American incursions into Pakistan reached full boil.

The incident began, U.S. officials said, when forces from a Pakistani outpost fired on two Kiowa OH-58 reconnaissance helicopters. That touched off a five-minute small-arms fight when a ground unit made up of Afghan and U.S. forces returned fire, U.S. military officials said.

Of course, only in America could an incipient war with an unstable nuclear power be dwarfed in media coverage by the release of a new Google-powered cell phone, but so it goes.

Worth noting, however, is that the U.S. policy of violating Pakistan's sovereignty to kill innocent civilians -- excuse me, "suspected Taliban" -- was first proposed by the progressive, vehemently anti-war Barack Obama, and only belatedly endorsed by the Bush administration.

As Obama adviser Susan Rice noted the other day, the Bush administration's attacks on Pakistan's Pashtun tribal areas is "the kind of policy we have to pursue and continue". Indeed, to the Obama campaign the Bush administration's policy of violating Pakistan's sovereignty -- practically inviting another military coup -- is just a "baby step in the right direction" that silly old peacenik John McCain has been all too slow to support.

Lovely. No wonder McCain is trying to pull out of tomorrow's "debate" -- after portraying Obama as a terrorist-sympathizing, crypto-Marxist McGovernite for the past few months, what could he say when the guy beats him at his own militaristic game?

"9/11 truthers": a persecuted minority?

In response to my post about this past weekend's Ron Paul rally in DC, commenter David Stratton accuses me of engaging in the same sort of bigotry toward so-called "9/11 truthers" -- those who believe the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon were an "inside job" perpetrated by the U.S. government -- that I criticized when directed toward illegal immigrants:

Kurt Vonnegut might say "so it goes...", but I doubt he would use words like "lunacy" "kookery" and the like to denounce people without exploring their side of the issue whatsoever. If you want to sit and cast stones at the guy who was being a bigot and using hateful language towards Mexican illegals, perhaps you ought not to build yourself a glass house in which to live by turning right around and casting your *own* hateful propaganda at your *own* group of hated persons.

I'm actually glad this came up, because I am typically hesitant to denounce anyone as a "kook" or a "lunatic". If you check out my posts over the years, you'll find a good deal of them are spent defending people who have been denounced by all Right Thinking people as crazed lunatics (see Jeremiah Wright). As for 9/11 truthers? I referred to them in my last post as kooky lunatics because, in my experience, the vast majority are kooky lunatics.

I have watched the exceedingly silly Loose Change -- God's word to truthers, set to a hip-hop soundtrack -- and witnessed the tinfoil hat-wearing creators make fools of themselves on national television. Consider this exchange, where Loose Change creator Dylan Avery attempts to cite some former Underwriters Laboratories employee to back his assertion that there was just no way for the steel in the World Trade Center to collapse due to burning jet fuel:

DYLAN AVERY: Well, real quick, I just want to jump in and say, Kevin Ryan has been open about his statement. He has always been public about the fact that he worked for the—I don’t remember the exact name, but it was a subdivision of Underwriters Laboratories, which did water testing. But it was the fact that he got the higher-up from—he got the word from his higher-ups that they actually had certified the steel and, I mean, his science still adds up.

DAVID DUNBAR: In fact, Underwriter Laboratories does not certify structural steel.

DYLAN AVERY: Oh, okay.

It pretty much goes on like that from there. Now, I'm not looking to conduct an exhaustive debunking of 9/11 conspiracy theories (others with much more will power than me have already done that), but let me throw one question out there for any conspiracists looking to bombard my comments with "gatekeeper!": if the Bush administration was so damn good at pulling off a massive "inside job" on 9/11 in order to justify the war in Iraq, then how come they couldn't even plant a few WMDs? As Alexander Cockburn suggested in a 2006 debunking of 9/11 conspiracies, wouldn't planting a few boxes saying "Weaponized Anthrax, Destination: Middle America" be much easier to pull off than a controlled demolition of WTC 7?

But I digress.

Whether 9/11 conspiracies are true or not (they're not), they serve as a massive distraction from much more worthy causes. In fact, if one were a government agent bent on discrediting anti-establishment movements, one would be hard-pressed to come up with a better marginalizing tool than the truthers (how's that for a conspiracy?). At nearly every anti-war rally I've been to there have been people holding "9/11 was an inside job" signs; I saw the same the same thing when I covered an ACLU-sponsored rally last year in support of habeas corpus (yes, in these here United States people have to protest for rights King John recognized in the 13th century).

And what have 9/11 truthers gained? Why, they've done their damndest to discredit a whole bunch of movements that have much, much more popular support then their -- yes -- kooky theories. Hell, they even did their best to ensure that Ron Paul's chances of securing the Republican presidential nomination went from "slim" to "non-existent" by trying to make his campaign not about opposition to militarism and the burgeoning police state, but about WTC 7 (which, naturally, the hacks at Fox News were more than willing to exploit).

So again I ask, what have 9/11 truthers done for America lately -- convinced a few naive high schoolers to download Loose Change?

That said, here's my message to David Stratton and any other truthers lurking out there: thanks for nothing.