CommonPrejudice

Quote of the Day

Recently I heard someone argue that Saddam had to be removed because he had gassed his own people yet minutes later, when confronted with the fact that Reagan and Rumsfeld had supported him during the incidents, stated that Saddam had to be supported because he was the American's friend in the region. At all cost one must avoid arguing with conservatives and/or Republicans while standing close to concrete walls. Serious injury may result from the inevitable banging of the head.

Greenwald, while discussing the rampant yet hardly surprising hypocrisy exhibited by the right wing lie factory blogosphere regarding the hilarious Mr. Widestance scandal, (He just has a "wide stance.") says it perfectly.

They certainly don't seem to think that Craig's behavior is so irrelevant any more, do they? As always, it is astonishing to observe how the same human brain can accommodate those two opposite thoughts only a few months apart without even realizing that it is doing so.

Many a night on the town I have wished that I had that power to instantly forget what I had just said. Imagine how easy life would be that way. (Do click on the Greenwald link above and this one. There exist countless examples of how the right get their panties all up in a knot over an issue, then a few weeks or months later are proven ridiculously wrong. Like, oh I don't know Jamil Hussein)

Friedman and Extremism

Living within the beast it is sometimes difficult to determine the actual degree of lunacy, delusion and extremism that exists, not just among the wingnuts and their media whores like Fox and Limbaugh, but in mainstream society and mainstream media as well ... ok, not so difficult in the media.

Atrios and The Editors have been discussing that so-called liberal hawk little Tommy Friedman's insane commentary a few years back on Charlie Rose (video below) (btw I know Atrios calls him little Tommy now but I have been calling him this for years).

So let's first check out some of the seriousness of the Fried Man.

This terrorism bubble said that plowing airplanes into the World Trade Center was O.K., having Muslim preachers say it was O.K. was O.K., having state-run newspapers call people who did such things “martyrs” was O.K. and allowing Muslim charities to raise money for such “martyrs” was O.K. Not only was all this seen as O.K., there was a feeling among radical Muslims that suicide bombing would level the balance of power between the Arab world and the West, because we had gone soft and their activists were ready to die....

You think we are going to let this bubble fantasy go. Well suck on this...

Smashing Saudi Arabia or Syria would have been fine. But we hit Saddam for one simple reason: because we could, and because he deserved it and because he was right in the heart of that world. And don’t believe the nonsense that this had no effect. Every neighboring government — and 98 percent of terrorism is about what governments let happen — got the message.

"Suck on this?" "Because we could?" What, is he ten years old? Yes, that kind of psuedo machoism by multimillionaire pundits is totally effective when dealing with international crises, dictators, terrorism and  protracted and entrenched grievances between sovereign states.

And we can see how that attitude has been working out.

Anyway, this made me think of a conversation I had the other day with an American who had once been involved in the media and is a self-described independent along with a guy from Peru. We were talking about Reagan and his legacy. Me...I'm not exactly a big Reagan fan. (From Empire's Workshop, Greg Grandin)

All told, U.S. allies in Central America during Reagan's two terms killed over 300,000 people, tortured hundreds of thousands, and drove millions into exile (pg 71)

Reagan still took every opportunity he could to laud the Guatemalan regime, even though his administration had full knowledge that troops had orders 'to eliminate all sources of resistance" and were engaged in "large-scale killing of Indian men, women and children." Just a day before the Guatemalan army committed a particularly gruesome massacre (over the course of three days soldiers in a small village called Dos Erres killed more than 160 people, including 65 children who were swung by their feet so their heads were smashed on rocks), Reagan met with Efrain Rios Montt, the president of Guatemala and one of the principal architects of the genocide. Reagan complained to the press that his Central American counterpart, an evangelical Christian with strong ties to the fundamentalist movement in the United States, was getting a "bad deal" from his critics and assured reporters that Rios Montt was "totally committed to democracy." (pg 109-110)

What was significant about the conversation I had was not that my depiction of Reagan's actions were disputed, rather that both the American and Peruvian talked about the "greater good." One of them stated that in Iraq - displaying the same logic as little Tommy - that the Sunnis had to be wiped out ... for the greater good.

The greater good argument is absolutely appalling. Of course the first thing to ask is what gives anyone the right to kill thousands or hundreds of thousands of innocent people for some notion of a future "greater good." Whose greater good is this? Who gets to decide?

Further, note the parallel between this position and the one Friedman attributes to "the Muslims," - that it is Ok to fly a plane into a building in New York (or for that matter smash children's head on rocks, or drop bombs indiscriminately killing thousands. (Though in typical Friedmanese, he manages to refer to the bubble as a source of proclamations. Later in the interview the magic bubble becomes capable of "leveling" things)

This is no different whatsoever from Ward Churchill's nonsense of "little Eichmanns." The logic is the same, but Churchill (rightfully) is considered a nut and his attempt to justify the murder of the innocent people on 9/11 is almost universally condemned. In fact, in a sense invoking the "greater good" argument is worse. There is not even an attempt - unlike Churchill - to lay some guilt on the innocent. It really boils down to that we can kill thousands of innocent and you can't because we are thinking of the greater good and we are on the side of justice and nobility (or god - which of course is what Al-Qaeda argues as well). This is not only illogical and hypocritical but morally repugnant as well.

What is equally striking is that this somehow considered acceptable discourse. The kill them all (for the greater good of course) and let god sort them out  argument is no longer considered the ramblings of the loony fringe, but to me appears to be a position thoroughly defensible in mainstream society. Obviously I don't base this observation solely on the conversation I had the other night. Rather afterwards, it occurred to me how that discussion was not untypical.

And notion is seriously scary.

Agent Provocateurs Again

(Updated below)

Those who are not, and usually never have been, involved in a street protest, typically form their opinions of the protesters and their causes by watching the news on TV. The  protesters, meanwhile, have sworn for years - from the Genoa to Quebec City to Miami and everywhere in between - that agent provocateurs have infiltrated their ranks in order to give an excuse for the police to implement their heavy handed techniques.  Unfortunately all the average person sees by watching the evening news is the mainstream media's portrayal of the violence as being orchestrated by countless trouble makers within the actual protest movement.

And those who decide to make their voice heard protesting various injustices get labeled as wacked-out extremists determined to cause violence. Usually, though, this is not the case.

Take this account of the protest in Genoa in 2001:

...the police routinely plant infiltrators and agent provocateurs in the crowd. Four men masked-up and dressed all in black, as if they were Black Bloc members, were filmed getting out of the back of a police van and smashing up a bank. A prominent Italian Socialist MP told of how he observed a large number of similarly dressed men armed with various different weapons in a police station the morning of Friday 20th. I heard from another Irish protestor how, wearing a black t-shirt, he had felt something on his back at the GR protest early on Friday morning. He turned around, and there was no-one there. Later that day, when changing his clothes, he noticed that a large white X had been chalked on his back. A number of other black-clad protestors had been marked or covertly sprayed with red and yellow paint, being marked out for police snatch squads, presumably assumed to be members of the Black Bloc.

But, as the same writer continues it is often the authorities in charge of security who initiate the violence.

...As we sat around the campsite fire drinking wine and discussing the days events, spirits were high following what has since been hailed as the largest peaceful protest of our generation (the like of which has not been seen since the Sixties). The mood quickly turned as we were told of events at the Indy Media Centre that night by a clearly frightened and out of breath witness. A large squad of Carabinieri [military police of Italy] had stormed the IMC and the school beside it, also part of the IMC, and after locking the doors, had proceeded to violently beat all inside before arresting them on trumped up charges of resisting arrest and possession of weapons. They had claimed it was the headquarters of the Black Bloc; the real reason for this flagrant abuse of human rights was that much video and photographic evidence against the illegal actions of the police were contained within. They confiscated video cameras and tapes, computer hard-drives and photo films. I downloaded a video from the internet, filmed by one of the 6 who had escaped out a window at the back of the building, which showed a woman holding her hands above her head pleading "Non violencia, non violencia" repeatedly as a Carabinieri approached her. He drew back and smashed her in the face with his baton, and proceeded to kick and beat her as she fell to the ground. Another joined in, and continued to beat her until she stopped screaming. As the police left, photographs were taken of the blood-drenched walls and floor. 90 people from the IMC were arrested and badly beaten while in police custody. In a report written by an Italian police officer, we are told of the way in which those arrested were treated: "They lined them up and banged their heads against the walls. They urinated on one person. They beat people if they didn't sing Facetta Nera [A Fascist hymn]. One girl was vomiting blood but the chief of the squad just looked on. They threatened to rape girls with their batons." These actions were sanctioned by the State, and still have not been officially condemned, thus abolishing the thin veil of democracy under which we supposedly live. And still little concerning these atrocities has been reported in the mainstream media.

So what does the average person forming his opinion based on media accounts believe?

Those who write the news would have you believe that the protests were little more than an unruly gang of youths and hooligans smashing up shop-fronts with completely apolitical motivations. Although discouraging, it is hardly surprising that the media focused on 2000 rioters rather than over a quarter of a million non-violent protesters marching peacefully against the global ravages of capitalism on Saturday 21st July.

I have been to a couple of protests like these, in Argentina, and in Cancun, and I can assure you that those who are agent provocateurs are well-known and easily identified - though try convincing the average couch potato that they even exist. Further, I can assure anyone that the vast majority are not there to undertake any violent action whatsoever.

Well now more evidence has surfaced - much to my embarrassment in my own country - that sleazy behavior by police continues.

Protesters are accusing police of using undercover agents to provoke violent confrontations at the North American leaders' summit in Montebello, Que...

A video, posted on YouTube, shows three young men, their faces masked by bandannas, mingling Monday with protesters in front of a line of police in riot gear. At least one of the masked men is holding a rock in his hand.

The three are confronted by protest organizer Dave Coles, president of the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada. Coles makes it clear the masked men are not welcome among his group of protesters, whom he describes as mainly grandparents. He urges them to leave and find their own protest location.

Coles also demands that they put down their rocks. Other protesters begin to chime in that the three are really police agents. Several try to snatch the bandanas from their faces.

Rather than leave, the three actually start edging closer to the police line, where they appear to engage in discussions. They eventually push their way past an officer, whereupon other police shove them to the ground and handcuff them.

Late Tuesday, photographs taken by another protester surfaced, showing the trio lying prone on the ground. The photos show the soles of their boots adorned by yellow triangles. A police officer kneeling beside the men has an identical yellow triangle on the sole of his boot...

...The three do not appear to have been arrested or charged with any offence.

With the advent of YouTube hopefully the criminal actions of the authorities will become much more publicized and understood. Here is the video of the despicable scene from Quebec.

How pathetic is that?

Update: The Quebec provincial police now admit it:

Quebec provincial police are defending the actions of its three agents who posed as protesters during this week's North American Leaders' summit in Montebello, Que.

Insp. Marcel Savard defended the three agents today at a news conference in Montreal and insisted they were not there to provoke demonstrators.

He also says one of the officers was given a rock by protesters but the officer had no intention of using it.

After originally denying it, the force has admitted the trio were involved in the protest after a video clip of the them showed up on the popular website, Youtube.com...

But don't worry, the Quebec provincial government will not let this type of conduct slide.

A spokeswoman for Quebec Public Security Minister Jacques Dupuis says the minister won't comment on the actions of the officers because he doesn't get involved in police operations.

Well, local governments sure don't seem to have a problem getting involved in "protest operations." But no need to worry. The Canadian federal government will certainly look into this.

Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day has already rejected opposition calls for an inquiry.

Ok, not so much. Well, then, maybe now the media will vastly change its portrayal of protesters, focusing instead on the unethical and sleazy behavior of those who are supposed to be on the side of law and justice but instead do anything to tarnish the opposition to the status quo image while protecting the most powerful interests in society.

But then again, I'm not holding my breath.

In principle, I have nothing against police surveillance work. Those sorts of operations can be perfectly viable, especially at events where a small group of rabid, anarchist protesters have been known to incite full-fledged riot scenes. But there is fine line between reconnaissance operations and inciting protesters so that you can make the big arrest. The story at Montebello clearly appears to be a case of the latter, and, worse still, the pitiful work of amateurish incompetants.

The author of this editorial rightfully portrays this protest as one of older folks determined to keep the peace. But notice that by the end of the article he brings up once again the "rabid, anarchist protesters." Sure they exist, but does he really think that this is the first time police have sent in undercover cops with the express reason to stir it up and give security forces a chance to bust some heads? There will be some small repercussions but in the end it will always be the protesters who are blamed for any violence. You can count on it.

Paying three agents to go undercover. Price: a few hundred bucks.

Defending this as a legitimate operation: Priceless

And in other news, Broder defends Bush.

Gregg Easterbrook defends Michael Vick.

Surprised?

Along with taking a dig at PETA (ethical treatment for animals! ... the bastards!!) Easterbrook gives the usual (and silly in this case) not guilty until proven so argument  Ya see, we're not a courtroom, we can actually form opinions now ... as a matter of fact in the same article he notes how outrageous it is that you can buy an OJ Simpson jersey and not a Vick jersey. But Gregg, OJ wasn't "proven" guilty in a court of law. How can you judge him like that?

Then he gives some other reasons for his sympathy for Vick. Get some tissue ready. They're tearjerkers.

I feel sympathy for Vick because he tripped into a "summer scandal."...

I feel sympathy for Vick because he made his own problem worse...

I feel sympathy for Vick because he apparently is getting questionable legal advice...

I feel sympathy for Vick because he apparently received poor advice long before lawyers stepped onto the stage...

I particularly like the making his own problems worse one.  Like the way we feel sorry for the Bush administration for how it handled the Iraqi invasion. Poor guys - just didn't know when to stop making their own problems worse.

Easterbrook closes with:

You don't need to be Dr. Freud to see the parallels between killing a dog that lost a fight and cutting an NFL player who had a bad game ...

Yeah, it is just like that.

I feel sympathy for Easterbrook because people keep publishing him and in the process, keep demonstrating to the world what he fool he is.

Not Weird At All

Atrios:

Jim's right that civil war has basically been the policy in Iraq. The obsession with training Iraqi security forces was always weird for a variety of reasons, but ultimately we taught a bunch of people to kill each other and provided them with the weapons to do so.

What is so weird about it? This is classic US foreign policy. As we know (or should know) many of the neo-cons cut their teeth on the policies of torture, repression and the backing of death squads in Central America under Reagan. What in fact is weird is referring to this policy as such.

See, It IS Flat!!!

Dateline September 23,1493, Cadiz, Spain:
On the eve of Christopher Columbus's second journey across the seas, the shape of the earth controversy is once again heating up. Recently someone came forward asserting that they had seen a ship "completely disappear" over the horizon. Round earth alarmists are now enduring a fault line in their argument, and anti-rounders have another arrow in their quill.

King Ferdinand has rightly noted that the ship is no longer visible. Nevertheless, Columbus and the pro-rounders are still swallowing a bitter pill.

They should not be permitted to brush aside this new information, which makes their claims harder to prove. The fact that we can't see the ship any longer proves the earth is flat, that there is no obvious sign of roundness.

Ever since we became aware of this ship disappearing on the horizon, the pro-rounders have tried to downplay its significance, insisting for example, that the disappearance merely amounted to "us not being able to see it anymore due to the fact it is very far away." It's true that the ship disappearing from view is not a very dramatic occurrence. But the optics are.

Imagine if the shoe were on the other foot. Imagine the shrieking of the rounders if we had previously thought that ships that had disappeared had fallen off the earth, but then discovered that in fact they were simply very far away.

They would insist that the revised data would prove their case. They would blitz every map maker and town crier. They would demand to be allowed to indoctrinate school children on the shape and size of the planet.

It's tough to make a case for a round earth when the earth was in fact rounder twelve months ago. Nevertheless, I haven't heard the town crier in weeks. Pro-New World hackers have quickly shut him up.

Real scientists would rejoice at being corrected.

Honest sailors would rejoice that the earth has limits.

But Columbus and his ilk long ago stopped being real sailors, and Ferdinand and Isabella are too emotionally invested in their new round-religion to call off the voyage because of something as trivial as the facts.

[Paraphrased from the highly enlightened screeds of Lorne Gunter, David Silverberg and Ezra Levant. Note: see here, here, here and here to see what utter horseshit these people are peddling.]

The people that promulgate this nonsense are disingenuous morons, whose presence in the media is a disgrace and, due to their potential to influence, exceedingly dangerous. Take this Newsweek poll for example:

A recent Newsweek poll found that more than half of Americans don't think the greenhouse effect is felt today. Some two-fifths still believe there is "'a lot of disagreement among climate scientists" on the basic question of whether the planet is warming.'"

The Intergovernmental Panel On Climate, working for over 6 years, has had hundreds of the best scientists in the world, from hundreds of countries, produce thousands of reports and has concluded :

•     Warming of the climate system is unequivocal.
•     Most of (>50% of) the observed increase in globally averaged temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely (confidence level >90%) due to the observed increase in anthropogenic (human) greenhouse gas concentrations.
•     Hotter temperatures and rises in sea level "would continue for centuries" even if greenhouse gas levels are stabilized, although the likely amount of temperature and sea level rise varies greatly depending on the fossil intensity of human activity during the next century.
•     The probability that this is caused by natural climatic processes alone is less than 5%.
•     World temperatures could rise by between 1.1 and 6.4 °C (2.0 and 11.5 °F) during the 21st century and that: Sea levels will probably rise by 18 to 59 cm (7.08 to 23.22 in); There is a confidence level >90% that there will be more frequent warm spells, heat waves and heavy rainfall; There is a confidence level >66% that there will be an increase in droughts, tropical cyclones and extreme high tides.
•     Both past and future anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions will continue to contribute to warming and sea level rise for more than a millennium.
•     Global atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide have increased markedly as a result of human activities since 1750 and now far exceed pre-industrial values over the past 650,000 years

To the absolute buffooons like Gunter and Levant and the countless American flat-earthers along with, of course, those who would like to learn about some of the basic technical aspects of climate change here's a link (pdf).

For the love of this planet, I'm begging these fools to educate themselves before they ever even dare to open their mouths to comment on climate change. This isn't a fucking game.

Hillary on Lobbyists

Jon Stewart tonight offering up (very accurately) a shorter Hilliary Clinton:

Yes I take money from lobbyists because they are real people with real needs ... but don't worry I don't listen to them.

Not to engage in senseless hyperbole ...

but (unsurprisingly) there are quite literally a million things wrong with the Cal Thomas column today. (I am using Doughboy Pantload's definition of literal here). Here, though, is a particularly good howler:

Instead of viewing it as a generational war that will determine the future of civilization (because, if we lose, Iraq will become a launching pad for terrorist acts around the world and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis would surely die), is it now just another tool in the Democrat's quest for the White House?

Determine the future of civilization. Wow. I guess we'd better take that seriously. Especially given the wingnuts sterling record of accurately predicting the course of events in Iraq. Oh and this from the same column can only make his claims more plausible.

Much of Washington is buzzing over a recent New York Times column by two scholars from the Brookings Institution, Michael O'Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack. In addition to their association with a left-of-center think tank, the two have credibility because they have been harsh critics of the way President Bush has directed the war.

Oh wait, my mistake. It appears that O'Hanlon and Pollack, are in fact, the exact opposite of how Thomas portrays them. In reality the entire column is mind-numbingly stupid - yeah I know, you're shocked. Nevertheless, even after all the nonsense I have read, some days I still have problems understanding how such incredibly weak thinkers can earn a living by having major American newspapers publish their twaddle.

To Make Up for the Missing WMDs ...

.... the United States in Iraq is doing everything it can.

The US military cannot account for 190,000 AK-47 assault rifles and pistols given to the Iraqi security forces, an official US report says.

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) says the Pentagon cannot track about 30% of the weapons distributed in Iraq over the past three years.

But at least the Bush administration can sure where the U.S. administrators in Iraq stand on Roe vs Wade.