Tony Soprano for President?

Chances are, if we have friends who consistently lie to us, we tend to wall off that relationship, finding minimal space for remnants of friendship that won't lead to danger or disappointment. A friend who steals things from us is soon to be disinvited from visiting, and one who openly commits violence against others is soon apt to be held at arm's distance lest their gaze and physicality be turned to us. We like to surround ourselves with people who make us laugh, who share the bounties of open hearts or engaged minds. We respect people who make achievement seem easy, and are glad for useful advice that is the fruit of sagely earned or learned wisdom and experience.

Isn't it amazing that so many people cast aside these logical behaviors when deciding whom to listen to in the public square? How we tell ourselves that it's okay to put time-honored strategies for self-preservation out of our heads? That we must submit to betraying our every instinct to choose not what we want but what we dislike less? And truthfully this is only half the story. For a great many people, a political system based on poisonous exploitation and oppression transforms the values that we would recognize as normal, empathetic and humane into a corrupt sociopathology dominated by heartlessness, selfishness, bigotry, anti-intellectualism, and rationalization.

Last year at the White House correspondents' Association dinner, President Obama joked about teen idols the Jonas Brothers: "Sasha and Malia are huge fans but, boys, don't be getting any ideas. I have two words for you: predator drones." A friend pointed me to this cartoon from vastleft.com:



This refers to a story mentioned on the OpEd Page of the NY Times about a community meeting in Pakistan: "During the meal, I met a boy named Tariq Aziz. He was 16. As we ate, the stern, bearded faces all around me slowly melted into smiles. Tariq smiled much sooner; he was too young to boast much facial hair, and too young to have learned to hate.... When it was my turn to speak, I mentioned the official American position: that these were precision strikes and no innocent civilian had been killed in 15 months. My comment was met with snorts of derision. ...At the end of the day, Tariq stepped forward. He volunteered to gather proof if it would help to protect his family from future harm. ... [But on] Monday, he was killed by a C.I.A. drone strike, along with his 12-year-old cousin, Waheed Khan. The two of them had been dispatched, with Tariq driving, to pick up their aunt and bring her home to the village of Norak, when their short lives were ended by a Hellfire missile."

Obama's joke isn't so funny now, is it? I voted for him: I advocated voting for him, and I thought I was keeping my eyes open. And sadly, there was never any chance that the 2008 election would lead to a less horrible moral conundrum than the one it lead to. It is probable that the election of John McCain and Sarah Palin would have been even worse. Not that it mattered so much to Tariq.

Consider Herman Cain, the right-wing Republican businessman with the unlikely honor of being somewhere near the top of the heap of the Republican presidential primary. It's been revealed that he was repeatedly accused of sexual harassment, that is, of being a sexual predator using his power as a rich businessman to make life uncomfortable for women working under him. While all the facts of this story have not yet been aired, the evidence strongly suggests not the story of a philandering politician consensually consorting with someone randomly extracurricular to the embarrassment of his spouse, but a man engaged in non-consensual harassment of his employees. Cheating on your spouse is not against the law. But sexual harassment is. And yet a portion of the Republican electorate is not shunning Cain like normal people would do, but actually rallying around him.

Or there's the Republican governor of Texas, Rick Perry, also running in the primary. A couple months ago he accused his fellow candidates of being heartless for his policy of offering some social benefits to the children of undocumented immigrants. "If you say that we should not educate children who have come into our state for no other reason than they've been brought there by no fault of their own, I don't think you have a heart." This small modicum of human decency was too much for the Republican electorate, and Perry was forced to apologize. "I was probably a bit over-passionate by using that word and it was inappropriate."

There's pseudo-intellectual Newt Gingrich who, as we've discussed before, has twice ditched ailing wives for healthier mistresses and told outrageous racist lies about Obama. There's Michele Bachmann who has told nothing but fantastic lies in her entire political career and makes government money off the discredited fake-therapy of trying to convert unhappy gay men to heterosexuality. There's Rick Santorum and his unhealthy obsession that the small percentage of gay people in society are at the cause of everything "wrong" with it. And there's poor pathetic Mitt Romney who Republicans are desperate to avoid voting for because even they can see his utter moral emptiness and total vacuity of principle.

These are people I would not invite across the threshold of my front door. Why are we in the position of thinking our only choice is to vote for one of them? Even the ones we convince ourselves are the "good guys" are narcissistic sociopaths. Earlier this year I wrote a defense of lesser-evil voting. I wrestle with this constantly. At this moment I still imagine myself voting for Obama again next year...if only because I fear how much more damage the Republicans could do to civil rights laws. This, knowing that his second term is as likely to be as full of betrayals and disappointments, and of lost children named Tariq, as his first was. Knowing it was a mistake to trust him to be different than his predecessors at the helm of the American state.

But it's why I feel such hope in #OWS: finally here is a flicker that it doesn't have to be that way. Politics isn't all about elections, and elections don't always have to be the way they are today. What if people stopped being willing to vote for sociopaths? Or for would-be child murderers or aspiring rapists? Or valued smart people instead of bigoted morons and village idiots? Or together organized and took for ourselves what is rightfully, morally, our own. The elections — the choice between evil and more evil — become less important, when we create alternatives, when we're actively engaged in changing the fundamental problems and social relations not just hoping they'll get better in time.

Because we really are all in this together. We don't have to pretend Democrats or Republicans represent us, because they obviously don't. We can find our own voice.

We know how a fairytale marriage to Kim Kardashian ends. We know what happens when you place your trust in Tony Soprano. So how come here, back in the real world, we don't know how to change the channel?

News from the Malabar Front: Job-Killing Ozone Regulations Halted! Job Creators Applaud! "Air You Can See" Restored!

"As president, I will restore the force of the Clean Air Act. I will fight for continued reductions in smog and soot, and continue my leadership in combating toxins that contribute to air pollution. Unlike President Bush, I will listen to my scientific advisers on air quality standards. And I will reverse the Bush administration's attempts to chip away at our nation's clean air standards and the integrity of our national parks. I will also protect roadless areas in our national lands."
— Presidential Candidate Barack Obama, 2008

"The Bush-era EPA's decision was immediately challenged in court.... The legal defensibility of the 2008 decision posed major challenges for the federal government given the strength of the scientific record at that time.... I decided that reconsideration was the appropriate path based on concerns that the 2008 standards were not legally defensible."
— President Obama's EPA administrator Lisa P. Jackson, July 13, 2011 on her office's strong recommendation to revamp current ozone/air pollution regulations

"What we need to do is pass the mother of all repeal bills, but it’s the repeal bill that will get a job killing regulations. And I would begin with the EPA, because there is no other agency like the EPA. It should really be renamed the job-killing organization of America."
— 2012 Republican Presidential Candidate Michele Bachmann, June 2011

"State and Local Officials Speak Out on President’s Commitment to Clean Air and a Strong Economy

Over the last two and half years the Obama Administration, under the leadership of EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, has taken some of the strongest actions since the enactment of the Clean Air Act four decades ago to protect our environment and the health of our families from air pollution.

On Friday, President Obama asked Administrator Jackson to withdraw the draft Ozone National Ambient Air Quality Standards at this time, as work is already underway to update a 2006 review of the science that will result in the reconsideration of the ozone standard in 2013...."
— bizarrely titled blogpost by "Cecilia Muñoz, Deputy Assistant to the President and Director of Intergovernmental Affairs," apparently the most junior possible person to quote, on whitehouse.gov explaining President Obama's abandonment of new clean air rules

"I have continued to underscore the importance of reducing regulatory burdens and regulatory uncertainty, particularly as our economy continues to recover."
— President Obama, September 2, 2011

"[private-sector job growth] continues to be undermined by the triple threat of higher taxes, more failed ‘stimulus’ spending and excessive federal regulations."
— John Boehner, September 2, 2011

"I would like to say a few words in respect of the various other participants, besides ourselves, in the Munich Agreement. After everything that has been said about the German Chancellor today and in the past, I do feel that the House ought to recognise the difficulty for a man in that position to take back such emphatic declarations as he had already made amidst the enthusiastic cheers of his supporters, and to recognise that in consenting, even though it were only at the last moment, to discuss with the representatives of other Powers those things which he had declared he had already decided once for all, was a real and a substantial contribution on his part."
— British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, October 1938, offering sympathy for all the sacrifices Adolf Hitler had to make in the Bipartisan Munich Agreement. Chamberlain was shortly afterwards out of a job when German tanks rolled into Czechoslovakia and later, Poland.

Newsflash from the Malabar Front!

"Attention! Your attention, please! A newsflash has this moment arrived from the Malabar front. Our forces in South India have won a glorious victory. I am authorized to say that the action we are now reporting may well bring the war within measurable distance of its end." -- George Orwell, 1984

"Of course, there is no question that Libya -– and the world –- would be better off with Qaddafi out of power. I, along with many other world leaders, have embraced that goal, and will actively pursue it through non-military means. But broadening our military mission to include regime change would be a mistake." -- Barack Obama's address to the nation on Libya, March 28, 2011

"Leaders of the four dozen countries and international organizations meeting here on Tuesday made it clear that they agreed that Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi would have to relinquish power, even though regime change is not the stated aim of the United Nations resolution authorizing military action against his forces...." News report the very next day, March 29, 2011

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"For more than four decades, the Libyan people have been ruled by a tyrant -– Muammar Qaddafi. He has denied his people freedom, exploited their wealth, murdered opponents at home and abroad, and terrorized innocent people around the world." -- Barack Obama's address to the nation on Libya, March 28, 2011

Estimated Total Deaths from U.S. Drone Strikes in Pakistan, 2004 - 2011
1,435 (low estimate) 2,283 (high estimate)
number of actual militants killed in these strikes
1,145 (low estimate) 1,822 (high estimate)
non-militant fatality rate since 2004 according to our analysis is approximately 21 percent

"Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair offered confirmation on Wednesday that the U.S. intelligence community is authorized to assassinate Americans abroad who are considered direct terrorist threats to the United States." --news report February 2010

Remember Our Boys on the Malabar Front!

"Speaking on CNN's "State of the Union," Navy Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that after one day of operations, the coalition already has taken out most of Gadhafi's air defenses and airfields, and that the no-fly zone in Libya has been established. "We've worked hard to plan this in a relatively short period of time," Admiral Mullen said. "I would say that the no-fly zone is effectively in place." -- US Air Force news March 20, 2011

"The military campaign to destroy air defenses and establish a no-fly zone over Libya has nearly accomplished its initial objectives, and the United States is moving swiftly to hand command to allies in Europe, American officials said." -- New York Times Summary March 22, 2011

"Libyan air force no longer exists....the coalition no-fly zone now stretches across all of coastal Libya." -- British & American Military authorities, March 23, 2011

"A Libyan military aircraft was shot down in Mistrata by a French fighter jet on Thursday." -- News reports, March 24, 2011

11:00 pm update: "GEN. JACK KEANE (RET.), U.S. Army: Well, I think they have done a remarkable job in a short period of time. Establishing a no-fly zone, I think, is something of a misnomer. We have destroyed their air forces and we destroyed their air defenses. And the decisive force in Libya has always been his ground forces, and we're beginning to destroy them. They have got some problems with it. You just on the report -- those forces that are committed forces, that is, they're engaged with the rebels or are in proximity to civilians, we have to destroy those forces. To be able to do that, we must put air-ground teams with the rebels on the ground to be able to identify those targets." -- retired general and current military consultant (hired by the US for advice in Iraq), ABC News adviser, and General Dynamics and MetLife Boards Member Jack Keane interviewed tonight on PBS TV

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"President Obama says he remains confident that the U.S. will be able to transfer the coalition military operation in Libya to international control within a matter of days." -- News Reports on Presidential Press Conference, March 22, 2011

"The coalition that was formed following the Paris meeting will abandon the mission and hand it over entirely to a single command system under NATO," -- (NATO Member) Turkey's Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, March 24, 2011

"U.S. and NATO troop strength in Afghanistan has recently passed the 150,000 mark. Two years ago there were an estimated 34,000 U.S. troops and approximately 28,000 from other NATO nations in the country. The increase since 2008 is almost 250 percent....The most recent Pentagon figures show 94,000 US personnel are now in Afghanistan compared with 92,000 in Iraq." Statistical reports here and here

"Whereas a decade ago the US accounted for just under half of NATO members' defense spending, today the US share is closer to 75 percent – and growing." 2010 Analysis in Christian Science Monitor

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"SEN KERRY: I met one of the leaders of the opposition, came from Benghazi to meet with me in Cairo.... Secretary of State Clinton met with the same individual that I did. People in Brussels, in NATO, have met with this individual.

NPR's MELISSA BLOCK: That's one individual you're talking about.

SEN. KERRY: Well, no, but this is their designated representative. We also know through them who a lot of the other players are." -- US Senator John Kerry on NPR Radio, March 22, 2011

"In 1998, the Clinton administration pushed through Congress the Iraq Liberation Act, which provided $100 million to Iraqi opposition groups – headed by the Iraqi National Congress [led by Ahmed Chalabi] – to topple Saddam Hussein." -- Al Jazeera

"Dear Mr. President: ... We urge you, after consulting with Congress, and consistent with the U.S. Constitution and laws, to take necessary actions (including, if appropriate, air and missile strikes on suspect Iraq sites) to respond effectively to the threat posed by Iraq's refusal to end its weapons of mass destruction programs." --Letter to President Clinton from Senator Carl Levin and others including John Kerry, Oct. 9, 1998

"After the war, even Chalabi's sponsors at the Defense Intelligence Agency concluded that most of the information they had received from his defectors was 'of little or no value.'" --from Ahmed Chalabi The Manipulator 2004

"Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, who met with Chalabi in 1998, said Wednesday that Chalabi did not deserve U.S. support and that the Bush administration should not have relied on him for intelligence and strategy on the invasion." -- USA Today 2004

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"I think what we are doing is enforcing a resolution that has a very clear set of goals, which is protecting the Libyan people, averting a humanitarian crisis, and setting up a no-fly zone,” Rhodes said. “Obviously that involves kinetic military action, particularly on the front end. But again, the nature of our commitment is that we are not getting into an open-ended war, a land invasion in Libya.” --Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes quoted in Politico, March 24

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"At this moment, for example, in 1984 (if it was 1984), Oceania was at war with Eurasia and in alliance with Eastasia. In no public or private utterance was it ever admitted that the three powers had at any time been grouped along different lines. Actually, as Winston well knew, it was only four years since Oceania had been at war with Eastasia and in alliance with Eurasia. But that was merely a piece of furtive knowledge which he happened to possess because his memory was not satisfactorily under control. Officially the change of partners had never happened. Oceania was at war with Eurasia: therefore Oceania had always been at war with Eurasia. The enemy of the moment always represented absolute evil, and it followed that any past or future agreement with him was impossible....The Party said that Oceania had never been in alliance with Eurasia. He, Winston Smith, knew that Oceania had been in alliance with Eurasia as short a time as four years ago. But where did that knowledge exist? Only in his own consciousness, which in any case must soon be annihilated. And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed -if all records told the same tale -- then the lie passed into history and became truth. ... The instructress had called them to attention again. 'And now let's see which of us can touch our toes!' she said enthusiastically. 'Right over from the hips, please, comrades. One-two! One- two!" Winston loathed this exercise, which sent shooting pains all the way from his heels to his buttocks and often ended by bringing on another coughing fit. ..."Remember our boys on the Malabar front! And the sailors in the Floating Fortresses! Just think what they have to put up with. Now try again. That's better, comrade, that's much better!" " --George Orwell, 1984

The Tragedy. . . of Pro-War Propaganda

It is a horrible image: a woman with her nose cut off by the fundamentalist Taliban as punishment for violating their particularly backward interpretation of law and morality. But is it worse than the image on the right? A girl with her face burned and scarred simply for being in the wrong place in the wrong time during an American raid in May of 2009?

Time's argument is the familiar one that the Taliban are so awful, so barbaric, that the United States is obligated to protect Afghan women from their return to power, no matter what. (See the recent Unrepentant Marxist for a useful post noting Time's grim history as ruling class mouthpiece.) But the Time article omits the truly backward interpretation of law and morality, the one that grants the American military (including its spy agencies) the unfettered right to assassinate whom it pleases whenever it pleases, "collateral" damage of innocent bystanders or surrounding communities be damned.

As I have argued before, the problem is that American violence against Afghan civilians is just as bad as Taliban violence. Americans seem to be oblivious to the horror being committed in their name first by Bush and now by the Obama administration. And as I have also argued before, the problem is that war will not solve the problems of the Afghan, or for that matter American, people. The Time article itself notes that the horrible disfigurement shown on its cover was done since the overthrow of the Taliban regime, in an area outside the control of the Afghan central government: U.S. military might did not protect the woman on the left...as surely as it consigned the one on the right to agony.

The Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) has done massive amounts of work documenting and arguing against the Taliban's anti-women policies, and they've been recognized in the media for doing so. But their understanding is deeper than that of the media: RAWA argues for the defeat of the Taliban along with the defeat of the Karzai government and for the end of the American occupation. RAWA calls for the Afghan people to rise up against U.S. war criminals. (And for the record RAFA also condemns the ruling Afghan Communists of the 1980s).

Time magazine is trying to claim there is humanitarian good in the war in Afghanistan. But this is just not true. The question "What happens when we leave Afghanistan" is asked here by Time on its cover as pure propaganda: juxtaposed with this photo we are meant to make an immediate emotional answer. This is a false question, because the answer to the question "What happens when the U.S. stays in Afghanistan" is just as bad.

Israel and the Language of Acquiescence

When is the news no longer news but something else? Consider an article that appeared in the New York Times on Wednesday. Here's how it begins:

"Student Injury at Protest Leads to Battle in Israel
By ISABEL KERSHNER

JERUSALEM — A macabre legal wrangle is under way over who should pay the hospital bill for an American art student who lost an eye after being struck by a tear-gas canister fired by an Israeli border police officer at a Palestinian-led protest in the West Bank.

The student, Emily Henochowicz, 21, was injured on May 31 after she joined Palestinian and foreign activists protesting that morning’s deadly raid by Israeli naval commandos on a Turkish boat trying to breach the blockade of Gaza. Israeli security forces fired tear gas to disperse the demonstration after a few Palestinian youths threw rocks...."

Now here's what happened. The Israeli security forces shot Emily Henochowicz in the head with a tear-gas canister at a demonstration. She was carrying flags at the demonstration and was not throwing stones at anybody. The Israeli military blinded a young American woman by shooting her in the eye. Let's say that again: The Israeli military shot Ms. Henochowicz in the head, blinding her in one eye. The headline calls this a "student injury." That first paragraph uses a bizarrely ungainly sentence with multiple passive constructions to say a chain of three things just happened to Ms. Henochowicz, completely distancing the horror that was done to Ms. Henochowicz by the Israelis. The action in the second paragraph, again passively asserting that she "was injured," is that Ms. Henochowicz joined a demonstration...that the Israeli border police needed to disperse because Palestinians were throwing rocks. Ms. Henochowicz, it seems, has brought this injury upon herself because she joined a demonstration. It's so neat, right? You almost don't see it happening.

Israel and its armed security forces are thus absolved of responsibility. What I would like to know is why is the New York Times' Isabel Kershner writing such hasbara , the necessary official Israeli (propaganda) explanation of how reality is insufficient to describe what happened.

So it's bad enough that this story is about how the Israeli government refuses to pay Ms. Henochowicz's medical bills because it claims she was "injured" (not wounded? Not shot in the head by a police officer?) of her own free will by joining civil unrest, but the article itself begins by insinuating that premise through linguisitic slight of hand.

Let me repeat the facts in case they're still not clear: Armed Israelis shot Ms. Henochowicz in the head with a teargas canister, blinding her in one eye. Do you remember when you were small and you knocked something precious off the table, causing it to break? "I didn't do it!" You cried out. "It fell!" Chances are your own linguistic slight of hand made your parents rather angry. Chances are you were punished for, well, failing to take responsibility for your actions; in effect for lying. THIS is what the New York Times is doing here.

It's what small children say when accused of doing something bad. Not "I did it," but "It happened." But this is not what reputable newspapers say. This is not what independent media says. This is, on the contrary, how propaganda excuses the repressive force of the State of Israel.

Emily Henochowicz, a visual artist, returned from Israel and maintains a blog called Thirsty Pixels. Her self-portrait above is from her blog.

War Is Peace? Doubleplusungood!

A fascinating quote from Robert Gates, the Bush Secretary of Defense held over into the Obama administration. Gates was speaking to NATO officials, and his reference is in part to the recent fall of the Dutch government over troops in Afghanistan:

“The demilitarization of Europe — where large swaths of the general public and political class are averse to military force and the risks that go with it — has gone from a blessing in the 20th century to an impediment to achieving real security and lasting peace in the 21st.”

Apparently completely unironically the New York Times headlined this story "Gates Calls European Mood a Danger to Peace." If only more "large swaths" of the public would be averse to military force then perhaps Mr. Gates could begin his obviously long-awaited retirement.

Peace, the absence of war; what a concept!