The War Prayer

Mark Twain's posthumously published 'war prayer' -- what such a prayer would sound like if spoken honestly, with a mind toward the real consequences of what war means. Not the glory, but the tragedy. Someone put it to video.

Published in 1904 - and therefore useful supplemental for the 20thC change of heart regarding the glory of war. Fitting that it would have been so controversial (pre-1918) that his family dissuaded him from publishing. "Only the dead can tell the truth."

Hat tip: Kevin Drum.

Tenet questioned on verschaerfte Vernehmung

Youtube copy of 60 Minutes grilling amoral criminal hack -- uh, I mean former CIA Director Tenet on "enhanced interrogation techniques." (title: "Ex-CIA Director Faces Torture Questions") Notice how pissed he gets, he refuses to actually talk about it and instead just issues the blanket "we do not torture formulation." But then a lot of weasel words pop up:

• "in this program that we are talking about" -- implies there are other programs.
• "I don't talk about techniques" is another favorite used here -- to avoid revealing that we are in fact doing things that common-sense definitions count as torture.
  
• the "context of 9/11" has to come up of course -- which is an excuse, not a denial.

First few minutes of the video possible use in last lecture, or fascist lecture if want to make link there to verschaerfte Vernehmung.

ok so I guess it's torture day

Via Andrew Sullivan, download a PDF file of the 9/11 Commission executive director's thoughts on interrogation here. The crux:

[T]he substitution of detailed legal formulations for detailed moral ones is a deflection of responsibility. Such deflections, often unconscious, are too common in our modern age.

Exactly. This is the "enhanced interrogation techniques" -- originally known as verschaerfte Vernehmung. Does that tell you anything, fascists???

I may have to assign Orwell's Politics and the English Language sometime soon. The question is: first week, fascist week, or final week? Can see it useful at any of these points.

this just in: torture doesnt work

NYT: Experts in our intelligence agencies think torture is "outmoded, amateurish and unreliable". (story with the oh-so-weak headline: "Interrogation methods criticized")

Hat tip Obsidian Wings, where hilzoy has a good statement:

If it [torture] is not the most effective way of getting information, then debating whether or not we should use it is just stupid: of course we shouldn't engage in torture if some other technique is just as good, or better. Arguing about torture without asking this question is like arguing about whether you must, absolutely must, eat your children to keep yourself from starving to death without first checking to see whether you have any other food available.

Ha. Or at least, ha if it weren't so sick and sad. He has another few paragraphs equally good - about the 'seriousness debate' in which people who don't support torture are not serious about defending us against terrorists. Actually of course it's the other way around - the pro-torture side does not advocate it because it's actually effective, but because "they're in love with a fantasy of themselves as the person who is tough enough to do all those dirty things that have to be done while other people just wring their hands and whimper." (my itals)

new authoritarians

John Cole (Balloon Juice) rants about current torture debates. Why is it even a debate? One of his main ideas is that there is always a certain percentage of crazies out there, but there are moments when events allow the crazies to take over. His "conservation of craziness principle" states that if you ignore them, they go back to their dark corners.

The author includes a link to Bob Altemeyer's The Authoritarians - available here in various forms. This is possibly useful as a supplemental reading.

demographic landmark!

Nobody noticed really, but it looks like last week there was a major landmark in world history -- the earth's population is now more urban than rural! (OK, I guess nobody noticed because it's just one team of scientists' extrapolation. But still.)

For comparison's sake, the US reached its urban/rural tipping point in the 1910s.

photo juxtapositions

Cool "convergence contest" at McSweeney's -- lining up two photos from different historical eras, which makes an implicit link between the two. The best one, and saddest, is the anti-Nazi poster describing the Lidice massacre ("this is Nazi brutality") with one of the Abu Ghraib hooded inmates.

There's also this cool one of a brain and a subdivision. A lot of these are convergences of natural and man-made forms. How man mimics nature without even realizing it. These might also be good for an early lecture about building and man's alteration of environment.

UPDATE: I just can't stop with these! Contrast Goya's Saturn devouring one of his sons with a picture of Bush kissing a baby in the same position. Hilarious!

Another one converging a row of Iraqi prisoners being led away for questioning with Singer Sergeant's Gassed, one of my favorite paintings of all time. Could use this in the last lecture, as students will have seen Gassed in the WWI lecture.

Time magazine's deliberate convergence of their "X-ed out Hitler" cover of May 1945 with al-Zawahiri... As the editor notes:

The design of the more recent cover raises some interesting sets of questions:

1. Are they really comparing al-Zarqawi to Hitler? As nasty a character as he was, it seems like a bit of an overstatement to compare his death in terms of significance to that of the architect of the Holocaust, the man who sent the whole world to war. Plus, the death of Hitler, announced by the first cover, brought about Germany's surrender and the end of the war in Europe. Is Time, therefore, declaring the war in Iraq over, and victory for al-Zarqawi's opponents? Doesn't seem likely.

2. For whom was the second cover designed? Hardly anyone alive today would remember the Hitler cover, so the "historical resonance" factor is virtually nil. Only unusually dedicated followers of Time covers (Timeheads?) or Time employees—and even in that case only Time employees who have poked around the archives or who have made studies of past cover designs for their own work—would "get" this reference.

So it seems like an internal wink, then: a deliberate convergence by Time magazine for Time magazine. They would have had to wait this long, as anyone who remembered the first cover would also be pretty outraged at the comparison. It will be interesting to see who Time decides to X out 60 years from now.

This one comparing devastation in Beruit and Warsaw could be good for the lecture on cyclical theory of history (as could all of these - would be a good addition).

The works of man mirror nature -- Swedish logging site looks like a tree itself, from the air.

Trippy.

crazy cool!

Wired story about remapping the brain to process new sensory inputs. A guy wears a belt that vibrates to the north, as if he can sense the earth's magnetic field. A woman learns to see with her tongue! Might be good for an early week about the evolution of human abilities. Or the last week about the future and how human abilities are expanding. Either way, way cool :)

Oaxacans like to work bent over!

Title of a paper describing berry farm laborers in Washington state (pdf). Salon review by Andrew Leonard here. Opening pages describe harsh and even violent conditions based on racial and citizenship hierarchies in the camps... yes camps, as the Primo Levy reference makes clear. From Leonard:

Holmes loads a hefty basket of theory to explain what he means by "symbolic violence" and the project of "denaturalizing" social inequities, by which I think he means making it so that society does not see brute exploitation as a normal or accepted practice.

So an interesting potential assignment about social inequality and hierarchy, from a cultural-anthropological and economic approach. Nifty!

evolution of religion

Salon interview with Lewis Wolpert on evolution of religion: our brains are hard-wired to find cause and effect, and therefore invent gods and religions to explain the inexplicable. Sounds easy when you say it like that, but some good content in here even if it veers off into his dismissal of various supernatural things (still interesting, but not as useful as other parts). Good use in early world civ week.

Court-martial for following the law

Been on vacation, been busy. But in checking the blogs today came across this story that's as terrible as it is expected from this crew of fascists. JAG lawyer faces 36 year sentence for complying with the law.

Update: Should've hat-tipped Sullivan for that one, but now's the chance with a whole separate story on the same issue. Fascists!!

Turkish military coups

Hilzoy at Obsidian Wings has an interesting post about recent Turkish political struggles, which include the army's hints that it may mount a coup. His post has a good summary of past coups (four since 1954?), and also of course Ataturk's original one that founded the modern Turkish state. Includes some interesting observations about how the conditions of the original founding influence Turkish politics today.

There is no God but Politics

Title of an essay comparing Marx to Sayyid Qutb. The author finds commonalities in their view of historical inevitability/God's Law, their emphasis on process (and violence), their description of a lost golden age (primitive communism/first post-Mohammed generations), and their view of the perfectibility of society. An interesting take.

Fort Dix II

Wonkette: What I was saying, but funnier.

Ok. So, the plot was: six dudes from New Jersey buy some guns and storm Fort Dix. The Fort Dix that is full of lots and lots of Army reservists with way, way more guns. And, like, extensive military training and shit. Yes, thank god these terrorists have been caught and locked up before they could be killed within minutes of deciding to carry out the dumbest fucking terrorist plot we’ve ever heard of.

Rethinking the War

Sullivan's change of heart continues... this edition, based on the recent survey on how our military morals have been flushed down the crapper.

He cites a WashPost story on psychological stress in the military:

"A considerable number of Soldiers and Marines are conducting combat operations everyday of the week, 10-12 hours per day seven days a week for months on end," wrote Col. Carl Castro and Maj. Dennis McGurk, both psychologists. "At no time in our military history have Soldiers or Marines been required to serve on the front line in any war for a period of 6-7 months."

And this is what transforms ordinary soldiers into torturers and killers. As wrong as Sully was in supporting the war initially, to his credit he has come around ever since the Abu Ghraib pics laid bare how we are losing our soul in this war. And in the long term, this damages us and our security in a very real way:

This is why the Iraq war, so far, must be seen as a huge al Qaeda propaganda victory. Their narrative is that Muslims are under siege by an evil, imperialist, infidel army that tortures and abuses Muslims at will. Before Iraq, this was an absurdity. After Iraq, less so. Iraq has helped sustain al Qaeda's narrative with imagery and violence that will always stain the image of America in the Middle East.

Fort Dix terror plot foiled

Terrorists plan to attack Fort Dix and shoot up as many soldiers as possible. (CNN story) They're caught and foiled. How were they caught? They were dumbasses!

[A]n employee of a store told the FBI someone had brought a "disturbing" video to be duplicated.

The video "depicted 10 young men who appeared to be in their early twenties shooting assault weapons at a firing range in a militia-like style while calling for jihad and shouting in Arabic 'Allah Akbar,'" Arabic for 'God is Great,' the affidavit said.

I wonder if they were just fooling around and making stupid jokes. What idiots would make a tape like that and then turn it into a store so others could see it? And who would target a military base for their attack? In other words -- targets who have massive amounts of firepower!! Doesn't sound like jihadist m.o. to me. In any case, the government is treating it seriously, as they should.

As the Carpetbagger Report says (citing someone else -- my are these blog things an endless rabbit hole of links!):

[T]oday’s success was due to intelligence gathering and law-enforcement efforts — the very techniques the Bush White House has consistently ridiculed as ineffective in counterterrorism. For that matter, as Steve M. noted, “[A]pparently no warrantless wiretapping led to these arrests, no torture of suspects in overseas prisons, nothing liberals have objected to in the Patriot Act. Remember that when you’re told that these arrests prove that we can’t trust liberals and Democrats.”

The author is also not sure, citing CNN and others, that these guys were all they're cracked up to me. Great chain cite of all the former "very serious plots" that failed to pan out once they were made public.

catch those brown people!

Because they look scary. JC Christian reports on some of the many people rounded up and held for up to a year with no charges.

How the Inca Leapt Canyons

NYT article about Incan bridging technology - good backup for 1491 and early second semester readings. Cool comparison pictures on an Incan bridge and the GW Bridge in NYC.

Bros before... gardening tools?

Broadsheet informs us of a new pro-Obama t-shirt with a favorite fratboy slogan.... misspelled.

Has Don Imus taught us nothing? Sure, the Los Angeles Times uses "hoes," but according to the Associated Press (as discussed on NewsBusters), the plural of "ho" is "hos."

"It seemed he was reading it from left to right, and got the message entirely wrong."

Alastair Horne interviewed in Salon. A lot of it has to do with the embrace of his work on Algeria by people as diverse as Bush/Blair, Sharon, the PLO, and Pinochet. Needless to say, he's not sure they all got the point...

Don't wanna be an American Idiot...

Millionare $500 question.... adverbs or verbs... adverbs or verbs...

Use for writing lecture...

Passive voice: This man is an idiot. He is a waste of sperm.
Active voice: He ignored the audience. He failed to answer correctly.

American concentration camps

Looks like we've already set them up! Sweet, sweet fascism.

And it would really just be too much bother to let the UN visit them and check the conditions. (Which of course even the Nazis did at Tereseinstadt.)

Orcinus' post "Euphamisms" points out that they're not concentration camps, however. They're "family residential centers"... in which there is a double razor wire with death strip between, and the kids there get one hour of education and one hour of indoor exercise a day. Digby comments on the conditions inside.

And did they mention that these are privatized prisons run by KBR and CCA? Yes, they did. And Latina Lista has more info on that angle.

sick sad and scary

Palestinian children's show teaching them about how they will never surrender, they will destroy the Jews, they will not be humiliated, etc. All with a big plush mickey mouse!

longer tours and solderis' mental health

Firedoglake description of a Pentagon report on soldiers' mental health. (Note that the report's release was delayed from November, so that it wouldn't impact the election of Bush's surge plan.) Links to an Editor & Publisher summary of the findings, which include:

• Only 47 percent of the soldiers and 38 percent of Marines said noncombatants should be treated with dignity and respect.

• About a third of troops said they had insulted or cursed at civilians in their presence.

• About 10 percent of soldiers and Marines reported mistreating civilians or damaging property when it was not necessary. Mistreatment includes hitting or kicking a civilian.

• Forty-four percent of Marines and 41 percent of soldiers said torture should be allowed to save the life of a soldier or Marine.

• Thirty-nine percent of Marines and 36 percent of soldiers said torture should be allowed to gather important information from insurgents.

And so the once-vaunted morality of the American military takes another step down. Thanks Bush and Rummy!! You've turned us into murdering torturers like everyone else.

One of the biggest problems here is that longer tours lead to increased stress, which then warps attitudes.

The study team said shorter deployments or longer intervals between deployments would give soldiers and Marines a better chance “to reset mentally” before returning to combat. The Pentagon last month announced a policy that extends tours of duty for all active duty Army troops from a year to 15 months. Pollock acknowledged that was “going to be a stress” on troops.

Marine tours are seven months, one likely reason that soldier morale was lower than Marine morale, she said.

Pike contrasted Iraq’s campaign to World War I, saying: “The trenches were pretty stressful, but a unit would only be up at the front for a few months and then get rotated to the rear. There’s no rear in Iraq; you’re subject to combat stress for your entire tour.”

So the Iraq War is more stressful to the troops than WWI!?!? Jeezus.

more on anti-Mexican machine gunners

Orcinus update on the plot of machine gun immigrants. Turns out they did a scouting run on... April 20!

Al Gore killed the Neanderthals!

Add another theory to the list of why the Neanderthals vanished: climate change!! (Though the article seems to suggest that the 'period' in question was cold and dry -- huh? Neanderthals were cold-adapted, so I don't see why this should bother them.)

women leaders

Good Reuters story about how the US political system is biased against women candidates. This is not an ideological point, but an empirical one. Also includes good stats on worldwide women leaders, history of women leaders in various countries.

thank you!

Someone puts it all together in the Trib -- if Reagan is the father of modern conservatism and consequently Bush II, then he's to blame for its total, miserable, complete failure.

Money quote:

Each of Bush's signature failures -- the war in Iraq, Hurricane Katrina, Enron and the corporate scandals, failed tax and trade policies, the attempt to privatize Social Security, the posturing around Terri Schiavo and stem cells -- can be traced back not simply to the conservative ideology and ideologues that sired them -- but to the basic concepts that Reagan championed. The Gipper can't lead Republican candidates out of the wilderness because, to paraphrase, his conservatism is the problem, not the solution.

Mission Accomplished

Ok, so I just re-bookmarked Obsidian Wings on the new computer. This is the last link for the morning and then I have to get the hell to work.

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED! Four years later....

What is truly frightening is how the media acquitted themselves here. Chris Matthew's man-crush was in full-on erection mode, he brought Ann Coulter on to comment, and everyone from Maureen Dowd G Gordon Liddy went on and on about the Presidential Package. They basically crowned him a cross between a super hero and a huge anthropomorphic cock shooting out freedom sperm with +10 asskicking properties. "And how can the Democrats ever compete with that?", they ask!

"they should see Reagan"

From Hilzoy, again, on the Republicans' first debate:

"Giuliani said the only thing worse than an American-led military offensive against Iran would be Iran having nuclear weapons, which he called "the worst nightmare'' of the Cold War. The way to stop Iran, he said, was resolute American leadership facing down the Iranian president.

"He has to look at an American president, and he has to see Ronald Reagan,'' Giuliani said."

1. And here I thought the worst nightmare of the cold war was mutually assured destruction.
2. Hilzoy goes through Reagan's inconsistent and incomprehensible anti-terrorism and anti-Iran policies:

Maybe, instead, Giuliani thinks that when the Iranians see a US President, they should see the Ronald Reagan whose administration failed to respond at all when terrorists bombed our embassies in Beirut and Kuwait, and who did not fire his Secretary of Defense when he countermanded the President's order to strike terrorist training facilities after 241 of our troops anjd 64 other people were killed. Or perhaps he has in mind instead the Reagan who, when the marine barracks were bombed, swore that we would stay in Lebanon and then, four months later, began pulling our troops out.

That's not even the whole thing! But the Reagan myth has taken hold. The general public doesn't like it questioned because it seems like a mean attack on a nice man. The Republicans don't like it questioned because they cling to a childlike faith in Big Daddy, and Reagan is the most recent one they have to feel good about. That, and they tend not to care about logical consistency.

more on Machiavellian Mansfield

Hilzoy at Obsidian Wings has another takedown of Mansfield's pro-fascist piece in the OJ. This one concentrates on his mis-use of Machiavelli as a model for the founders, and pokes many other holes in it as well. Did you know that the founders did not want a king? Astonishing!

constitutionality of Hate Crimes Act

Marty Lederman at Balkanization has a post on the constitutionality of the newly-passed (in the House) Hate Crimes Prevention Act. He was in the DoJ in 2000 when this version was written, and defended it at the time. Good comments in the discussion too.

if you liked conservapedia...

...then have fun at Qtube! Because Youtube is dominated by liberalcommiefacsistjihadians. (ABC News story) One more example of how the internet is creating not a global community, but a series of parallel local ones. This is a very dangerous trend because it allows extremist groups to continue their avoidance of reality in favor of their own group-fantasy world.

from Abu Ghraib to the Sopranos to Va Tech

Ron Rosenbaum in Slate talking about a new documentary on Abu Ghriab that is being filmed. He also uses it as an occasion to muse on media violence and the connections between the three subjects in the title. Talks about the anesthetization of violence and its consequences.

Also references another Slate article from the time of the Military Commissions Act about how disgraceful it all is, the role the photos played in numbing Americans to torture. Article has great links on almost all aspects of the scandal.

Prince William Fells Prince Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands in Crucial Joust

The Onion.

From Russia, with regression analysis

I stole that title from Andrew Leonard. It was just too good. His summary of the article is probably better than the real thing (He recommends instead the NYRB's "Russia's Managed Democracy")

The latter article has an excellent historical summary of the foundations of Putin's presidency, the reasons it has been so successful, and then a really interesting cultural survey of present-day Russia that paints it as "retro-tsarist".

In outlook on near-future political scene, Putin's could choose to extend his term and the parliament would do it. He has evidently been reading one Ivan Ilin, "then a semi-Fascist émigré in Germany." From this the author concludes that he would not move a step closer to dictatorship ,"since this would require too great an ideological upheaval." I'm not sure why it would, nor am I sure this Ilin was 'semi-Fascist' (whatever that means!) - from his bio at the Michigan State archive of his papers, he was fired from a post in Berlin for refusing to propagandize Nazism in class. (He seems an interesting case: Lenin so admired his analysis of Hegel that he ordered him released! Counter-example to Bukharin / Rubashov in the later Purges.)

And the original article that Leonard reviews is about two classes of Russian oligarchs that emerged in the Yelstin era: old Soviet insiders and the ousider new capitalists who bought up industries (and happened to be Jewish). These latter became changed by the Soviet institutional culture (...of corruption!). When Yelstin's term ended they tried to pick a strongman-seeming puppet... but got an actual strongman.

colonial consequences

Great study (.pdf) of colonial Brazil and the consequences for its modern economic and political structures. Salon has an excellent summary that includes a comparison with Botswana, where

British indifference left local tribal institutions and power structures practically intact, allowing the lucky country to become, economically speaking, one of Africa's rare success stories (if one ignores the devastation wrought by AIDS.)

Definite use for world civ, possibly as assigned reading for the imperial 16th century lecture.

Also there are apparently consequences for present-day energy competition - "a new Great Game" as Salon put it. ("The biofuel scramble for Brazil")

Duck dongs

Best. Headline. Ever.

Hat tip to Salon's Broadsheet for relating new findings about duck genitals from the NYT. ("In Ducks, War of the Sexes Plays out in the Evolution of Genitalia" by Carl Zimmer)

Several interesting points, including the evolution of genitalia in and of itself, the fact that female ducks' complicated boxes seem to be that way in order to be able to capture and expel unwanted sperm from duck rape (1/3 of all duck sex!), and also that it was a (human) female researcher who discovered this new things about male ducks.

That last point reminds me of historical, sociological, etc. work on humans. Before the gender turn, male scholars ignored women, and discounted men as objects of study as men. Then women demanded that women be studied. Then, finally, these women prompted a study of men as well. Now of course men are in the game - but beyond some pioneers, men were largely absent from early gender work. Men's studies is still seen as a kook specialty, distrusted by both women (who see it as backward and patriarchal) and men (who see it as effeminate).

Godwin's Law. part 1

First of what will invariably be a series. Republican shill Dan Riehl has his panties in a bunch at Glen Greenwald's dissection of Mansfield's advocacy of an American Fuehrerprinzip in the Opinion Journal.

Standard ad hominem attack and invective for the first part, and then the Godwin's violation:

The tactic of mis-characterizing enlightened argument with which you may disagree is fascistic, at best. Salon should be ashamed.

Um, mis-characterizing an argument is facsist? All intellectually dishonest people do that no matter their political stripe. Dan Riehl YOU FAIL NOW.

tag clouds for first republican debate

Pollster.com had done this for the democratic debate and it was interesting. here's the republican side from last night's opening clusterfuck 2008.

I was joking last night before even seeing these that Gilmore's would show "consistent conservative" pretty prominently. Looks like I was right! (Though I overestimated his message discipline - he had too many equally weighted words for the consistent conservative message to come through as prominently as I thought. Calls into question the true utility of the tag cloud though... as while he was speaking, at least to me, these words, along with other con- words for thematic effect, came up so much as to be laughable.)

Contrast that to Rudy "Did I say I was mayor of New York" Guliani and Mitt "America and Americans" Romney. Overall, a nightmarish field of crazy and crazier, with nobody except earnest libertarian oddball Ron Paul having any kind of critique of the way things have been going. To look at them, you get only sunny optimism.

Taking the Pledge

13-min documentary about sex workers, and how to get US money they need to sign a loyalty pledge rejecting prostitution. Of course, any HIV/AIDS-prevention efforts need to address this demographic, but that would bump up against the oh so moral Bush administration. Also problems with gay communities and similar subjects of HIV education. This has created a whole litany of problems including increased police harassment even.

And did we mention that the guy the Bushies put in charge of this is heavily embroiled in DC Madam-gate? Sexual morality for thee but not for me! Yipee! (Hat tip: FDL)

media criticism

Glen Greenwald on the John Edwards' hair story and how the coverage of it lays bare the worst flaws in modern media culture. New Drudge-affiliated online political magazine The Politico is the offender here. The lead political reporter writes piously about how the story 'won't die' and is somehow catching some groundswell of interest -- as if he himself is not driving it with eight stories in the last two weeks!

Greenwald goes on to make a 3-part point about the degeneracy of the media these days:

1. reporting objectively false claims ("the American people don't want Karl Rove subpoenaed" - when polls show they do, etc.)
2. pass on government statements with no analysis or evaluation
3. focus on vapid and catty stories to the exclusion of substance

one world government

Orcinus post (Sara, not Dave) on One World Government -- how it's not a Jewish plot, but rather an expression of the Problem of the Commons. Summary quotes:

The Roaring 20s happened in no small part because the newly-emerging corporate order could profit handsomely by taking undue advantage of a virtually unregulated interstate commons. It had gotten to the point where the largest corporations were rich enough to bully state governments into giving them whatever they wanted, or threaten to go elsewhere -- a clear sign that business was now operating at a scale where state government wasn't big enough, strong enough, or organized to put a meaningful boundary around corporate behavior. Structurally, this was an underlying cause of the "tragedy of the commons" we now recall as the Great Depression.

And now:

Over the past four decades, we've begun to struggle with another quantum shift in scale. We've come to realize that oceans, arable land, aquifers and watersheds, and the entire atmosphere represent a global commons that every one of us depends on. At the same time, business roams the planet taking what it wants -- just as it roamed America in the 20s -- making unimaginable profits and creating irreversible damage (global warming, anyone?) because there's no one entity big and powerful enough to put a boundary around its activities and regulate its behavior.

Basically, its the idea that business has sought unregulated territory in order to take whatever it wants, bully local governments from a faraway position of immunity, and escape
consequences. While in turn creating bad consequences for the people in areas the abuse (global warming, etc.) Makes you actually think that it should happen, even if it won't.

who counts as a terrorist?

Firedoglake post about rightard Debbie Schlussel; she's quick to jump on the terrorist bandwagon, even when it's just some rednecks throwing homemade firecrackers. But they live in Dearborn, MI, and there are a lot of "Pakis" there.

Meanwhile, white guys are arrested for plotting to machine gun illegal immigrants. Right wing terror ftw!! (why the FoxNews link? ugh!)

I wonder if I should even keep track of these? Once you start linking to all reports of right-wing terrorism, you're going to use up all your link tokens pretty quick.

UPDATE: Sadly, No! also on the case.

Josh Marshall's bitchslap theory of politics

I've been saying this since the Swiftboating - the parallels with the Weimar electoral history I was researching at the time were just too great. But I hadn't heard JM's term for it... it's perfect. Money quote:

One way -- perhaps the best way -- to demonstrate someone's lack of toughness or strength is to attack them and show they are either unwilling or unable to defend themselves -- thus the rough slang I used above. And that I think is a big part of what is happening here. Someone who can't or won't defend themselves certainly isn't someone you can depend upon to defend you.

Demonstrating Kerry's unwillingness to defend himself (if Bush can do that) is a far more tangible sign of what he's made of than wartime experiences of thirty years ago.

As I've said for a long time, it's not (just) about knocking down his Vietnam heroism. It's about demonstrating his current weakness by his refusal to hit back. And to an ignorant American public longing for a Great Leader authoritarian daddy figure, they don't care if someone is intelligent or even right on the issues, as long as he'll act like a prick on America's behalf they're happy. Never mind that, as we've seen recently, this may not be the most effective strategy.

sick

The Claremont Review of books - conservo-fascist answer to the NYRB maybe - comes out with one of the more honest defenses of having a Fuehrer on top the American system. Because the law doesn't know how to enforce itself, and we need a Machiavellian Great Leader with "energy" to defend the rule of law. By breaking laws. Or something. Sick sick sick.

Of course, this is the organization that thinks Rumsfeld is Churchill, and has a Jonah Goldberg review of Dinesh D'Sousza's antidemocratic screed. Funny that in the review he denies that the Muslims embrace democracy - because they would rather have the very same executive power that the idiot in the previous story was touting.

[A]s he concedes, groups like the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, and Hezbollah have only called for more democracy because they know "their group can win." Embracing elections so you can gain power and keep it permanently is not quite the same thing as embracing democracy. Every party, including the Nazis, gushes about democracy when it wins an election, but constitutional government means abiding by the rules when you lose an election. One man, one vote, one time, is not democracy; it's will-to-power masquerading as ritualized lever-pulling.

Imagine that, a valid historical comparison to the Nazis! Too bad Goldberg and D'Sousza don't look in the mirror and see the will-to-power in their own party.

Hong Kong universities developing history curriculum

Just saw on the faculty listserv an annoucement that Fulbright and Hong Kong universities are offering fellowships to go and help overhaul their gen ed courses in preparation for changing to a 4-year school. From their outline it sounds like they're looking for more experience and I wouldn't have a shot. But the description from HKGEI interested me in that it prompts some good thoughts about the goals of a gen ed world civ course.

I especially liked their

The Value of Liberal Arts/General Education
HKGEI is based on the belief that the purpose of a liberal arts/general education curriculum is to:

• Provide students with knowledge and understanding of the challenges that threaten global stability, such as climate change and global warming, public health, unequal resource utilization and distribution of wealth, and religious and ethnic conflict.

• Help students to achieve target learning outcomes and competencies, skills such as communication, critical thinking, creative thinking, problem solving, entrepreneurship, information technology, and collaboration and cooperation.

• Enable students to question values that are contrary to those that promote self-responsibility, tolerance, and moral behavior; and to reinforce values and attitudes that motivate people to actively engage in activities aimed at solving personal, inter-personal, community, and global problems.

These would all be good to add in the intro lecture.

presidential literature

Really interesting blog post on bookblog the Millions - genre review of Nixon literature, others on presidential fiction. Postulates that this current administration will offer no literary possibilities -- they have to know in some small corner that what they are doing is wrong. And they don't seem to.
Closes with a great observation is that this administration has been most effective and most dangerous because they have been able to destroy sources of resistance to its desires. More than any specific goal, what they have done is permanently, or at least significantly, weaken social sources of power that can be used to check any executive. Can see this institutionally within the government, media, scientific community, etc.

As the Millions put it better:

A mark of the current administration's moral failure, and perhaps of its artistic triumph, is that it has sterilized many of the avenues for protest against itself.

new nazis stealing leftist symbols

Spiegel story Verkleidete Rechte: Tarnkappen-Nazis buhlen um junge Linke. CRAZY! But makes total sense. Looks like the Nazis are now taking Che as their own brand of icon -- a nationalist freedom fighter!

Possible uses: youth culture and fashion as political tool, totalitarianism (that the symbols can be shared by the two extremes), women in fascist movements (see included photo essay and story on "Skingirls, Renees, und braune Schwestern"

Americans used 'comfort women'

CNN/AP story about how American soldiers allowed the comfort women system to continue, and took advantage of it despite having some evidence that the women were coerced into prostitution.

"Sadly, we police had to set up sexual comfort stations for the occupation
troops," recounts the official history of the Ibaraki Prefectural Police
Department, whose jurisdiction is just northeast of Tokyo. "The strategy was,
through the special work of experienced women, to create a breakwater to protect
regular women and girls."

MacArthur stopped the practice in spring 1946. Story here.

front page gallery

Looks like the Newseum has a front-page gallery that shows papers from around the country. Unfortunately there seems to be no archive or search feature. It's just for the current day.

prison diary

American writer has a freak-out on a BA flight to London... he's arrested and spends two months in a British jail. His story discusses the climate of fear in international travel, Muslim prisoner underclass in Britain, immigration, the prison system, etc. Pretty good, especially his interactions with Muslim prisoners.