Stephen Colbert applauds Bill O'Reilly's brilliant borderline-heresy.

Hilarious Stephen Colbert monologue from earlier this month. Merry Christmas, y'all.

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Who (or what) the hell is that?

OK, so I'm happy that Obama is going to get his treaty with Russia ratified and everything, but you'll forgive me if I'm distracted by this prominently placed photo of someone—or something—that is just begging to be put out of its misery.

Turns out it's Senator Jon Kyl, among the GOP Senators who were plotting to prevent the ratification of any treaty that might decrease the world's stockpile of nukes. Way to go, you Leering, Creepy Ogre-Faced Old Coot. You bang that table with your fist. "I DON'T WANNA LEAVE A SAFER, LESS INSANE/DANGEROUS WORLD FOR MY CHILDREN/CHILDREN'S CHILDREN." Does he even have opposable thumbs? (Maybe he's just waiting for someone to shove a big fat banana in that gruesomely shriveled ogre-mouth of his.)

According to the Times article:

Eleven Republicans joined every Democrat present to support the treaty, known as New Start, which now heads to a seemingly certain final vote of approval on Wednesday, as the Senate wraps up business before heading out of town. Voting against the treaty were 28 Republicans who argued that it could hurt national security. [...]

Republican opponents continued to hammer away at the treaty, arguing that its verification procedures were inadequate and that nonbinding language in its preamble could give Russia leverage to try to keep the United States from deploying missile defense installations in Eastern Europe. They said Russia got more out of the treaty than the United States.

“The administration did not negotiate a good treaty,” Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona, the No. 2 Republican, told reporters. “They went into negotiations, it seems to me, with the attitude with the Russians just like the guy that goes into the car dealership and says, ‘I’m not leaving here until I buy a car.’” [emphasis added....—cft]

Seriously, get a closer look at this sideshow spectacle!

Kafka couldn't have made this guy up! (OK, maybe Kafka could have, but few others.)

Journalist Dan Kennedy on Obama's "shameful" war on Wikileaks.

Boston-based journalist and blogger Dan Kennedy contributed a characteristically lucid and well-reasoned commentary to his occasional column in the UK's The Guardian last Thursday. Kennedy is a left-leaning veteran of the all-but-extinct profession of journalism.

One of the hallmarks of Kennedy's work is that his analysis of facts is always dispassionate and informed by historical context. Of particular relevance here is his knowledge of the history of journalism and the first amendment, and their relation 'state secrets'. He does a great job of articulating what is at stake in the White House's participation in, or rather, coordination of, the hysterical effort to vilify and prosecute Assange:

President Obama has decided to pursue a dangerous strategy that could cause irreparable harm to freedom of the press as we know it. According to Charlie Savage of the New York Times, Attorney General Eric Holder is investigating the possibility of prosecuting WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in connection with the 250,000 diplomatic cables stolen – according to the government – by army private Bradley Manning.

By longstanding first amendment tradition, third parties such as news organisations — even an unconventional one like WikiLeaks — are not prosecuted for publishing leaked material, even if the person who gave it to them broke the law. So, Holder is working on the theory that WikiLeaks "colluded" with Manning, acting not as a passive recipient, but as an active participant in persuading Manning to give up the goods.

The problem is that there is no meaningful distinction to be made. How did the Guardian, equally, not "collude" with WikiLeaks in obtaining the cables? How did the New York Times not "collude" with the Guardian when the Guardian gave the Times a copy following Assange's decision to cut the Times out of the latest document dump?

For that matter, I don't see how any news organisation can be said not to have colluded with a source when it receives leaked documents. Didn't the Times collude with Daniel Ellsberg when it received the Pentagon Papers from him?

[...]

Almost since his inauguration nearly two years ago, Barack Obama has been disappointing liberals, whether it's through his half-measures on the economy and healthcare, his continued pursuit of unpopular wars in Iraq and Afghanistan or his failure to close Guantánamo, the very symbol of Bush-era overreach. Some of those complaints are overwrought. Politics is the art of the possible, and Obama can justifiably claim to have done what's possible in the face of Republican intransigence and the sheer difficulties of what he has faced.

By contrast, the White House's legal war against WikiLeaks is a shameful assault on our guarantee of free speech and a free press. It's ironic that after two years of bogus claims from the right that Obama is dismantling the constitution, now that he really is, the only people who seem to care are on the left.

This is a rare sounding-of-the-alarm from an experienced and sober-minded journalist who really knows what he's talking about.

Julian Assange arrested and denied bail in UK, pens an editorial in Australian newspaper.

Well, there it is. Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has been arrested by English authorities and is being held without bail. From the UK's The Guardian:

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was remanded in custody today after appearing in court on an extradition warrant.

The 39-year-old Australian, who is wanted in Sweden over allegations he sexually assaulted two women, was refused bail on the grounds there was a risk he would fail to surrender.

Before a packed court No 1 at Westminster magistrates court, District Judge Howard Riddle said Assange was to be remanded in custody until a further hearing on December 14.

The ruling came despite Jemima Khan, film director Ken Loach and veteran journalist John Pilger standing up in court to offer to act at surety for Assange.

But the judge concluded that because of the "serious" nature of the allegations against Assange, his "comparatively weak community ties" in the UK, and that it was believed he had the financial means and the ability to abscond, there was a substantial risk he would fail to surrender.

Assange, in an editorial piece published today in the newspaper The Australian, argues: "Don't shoot the messenger! for revealing uncomfortable truths":

WIKILEAKS deserves protection, not threats and attacks.

IN 1958 a young Rupert Murdoch, then owner and editor of Adelaide's The News, wrote: "In the race between secrecy and truth, it seems inevitable that truth will always win."

His observation perhaps reflected his father Keith Murdoch's expose that Australian troops were being needlessly sacrificed by incompetent British commanders on the shores of Gallipoli. The British tried to shut him up but Keith Murdoch would not be silenced and his efforts led to the termination of the disastrous Gallipoli campaign.

Nearly a century later, WikiLeaks is also fearlessly publishing facts that need to be made public.

I grew up in a Queensland country town where people spoke their minds bluntly. They distrusted big government as something that could be corrupted if not watched carefully. The dark days of corruption in the Queensland government before the Fitzgerald inquiry are testimony to what happens when the politicians gag the media from reporting the truth.

These things have stayed with me. WikiLeaks was created around these core values. The idea, conceived in Australia, was to use internet technologies in new ways to report the truth.

WikiLeaks coined a new type of journalism: scientific journalism. We work with other media outlets to bring people the news, but also to prove it is true. Scientific journalism allows you to read a news story, then to click online to see the original document it is based on. That way you can judge for yourself: Is the story true? Did the journalist report it accurately?

Democratic societies need a strong media and WikiLeaks is part of that media. The media helps keep government honest. WikiLeaks has revealed some hard truths about the Iraq and Afghan wars, and broken stories about corporate corruption.

People have said I am anti-war: for the record, I am not. Sometimes nations need to go to war, and there are just wars. But there is nothing more wrong than a government lying to its people about those wars, then asking these same citizens to put their lives and their taxes on the line for those lies. If a war is justified, then tell the truth and the people will decide whether to support it.

If you have read any of the Afghan or Iraq war logs, any of the US embassy cables or any of the stories about the things WikiLeaks has reported, consider how important it is for all media to be able to report these things freely.

WikiLeaks is not the only publisher of the US embassy cables. Other media outlets, including Britain's The Guardian, The New York Times, El Pais in Spain and Der Spiegel in Germany have published the same redacted cables.

Yet it is WikiLeaks, as the co-ordinator of these other groups, that has copped the most vicious attacks and accusations from the US government and its acolytes. I have been accused of treason, even though I am an Australian, not a US, citizen. There have been dozens of serious calls in the US for me to be "taken out" by US special forces. Sarah Palin says I should be "hunted down like Osama bin Laden", a Republican bill sits before the US Senate seeking to have me declared a "transnational threat" and disposed of accordingly. An adviser to the Canadian Prime Minister's office has called on national television for me to be assassinated. An American blogger has called for my 20-year-old son, here in Australia, to be kidnapped and harmed for no other reason than to get at me.

And Australians should observe with no pride the disgraceful pandering to these sentiments by Julia Gillard and her government. The powers of the Australian government appear to be fully at the disposal of the US as to whether to cancel my Australian passport, or to spy on or harass WikiLeaks supporters. The Australian Attorney-General is doing everything he can to help a US investigation clearly directed at framing Australian citizens and shipping them to the US.

Prime Minister Gillard and US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have not had a word of criticism for the other media organisations. That is because The Guardian, The New York Times and Der Spiegel are old and large, while WikiLeaks is as yet young and small.

We are the underdogs. [...]

Has there been any response from the Australian government to the numerous public threats of violence against me and other WikiLeaks personnel? One might have thought an Australian prime minister would be defending her citizens against such things, but there have only been wholly unsubstantiated claims of illegality. The Prime Minister and especially the Attorney-General are meant to carry out their duties with dignity and above the fray. Rest assured, these two mean to save their own skins. They will not.

Every time WikiLeaks publishes the truth about abuses committed by US agencies, Australian politicians chant a provably false chorus with the State Department: "You'll risk lives! National security! You'll endanger troops!" Then they say there is nothing of importance in what WikiLeaks publishes. It can't be both. Which is it?

It is neither. WikiLeaks has a four-year publishing history. During that time we have changed whole governments, but not a single person, as far as anyone is aware, has been harmed. [...]US Secretary of Defence Robert Gates admitted in a letter to the US congress that no sensitive intelligence sources or methods had been compromised by the Afghan war logs disclosure. The Pentagon stated there was no evidence the WikiLeaks reports had led to anyone being harmed in Afghanistan. NATO in Kabul told CNN it couldn't find a single person who needed protecting. The Australian Department of Defence said the same. No Australian troops or sources have been hurt by anything we have published.

But our publications have been far from unimportant. The US diplomatic cables reveal some startling facts:

► The US asked its diplomats to steal personal human material and information from UN officials and human rights groups, including DNA, fingerprints, iris scans, credit card numbers, internet passwords and ID photos, in violation of international treaties. Presumably Australian UN diplomats may be targeted, too.

► King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia asked the US to attack Iran.

► Officials in Jordan and Bahrain want Iran's nuclear program stopped by any means available.

► Britain's Iraq inquiry was fixed to protect "US interests".

► Sweden is a covert member of NATO and US intelligence sharing is kept from parliament.

► The US is playing hardball to get other countries to take freed detainees from Guantanamo Bay. Barack Obama agreed to meet the Slovenian President only if Slovenia took a prisoner. Our Pacific neighbour Kiribati was offered millions of dollars to accept detainees.

In its landmark ruling in the Pentagon Papers case, the US Supreme Court said "only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government". The swirling storm around WikiLeaks today reinforces the need to defend the right of all media to reveal the truth.

For ongoing updates on the Wikileaks/Assange situation, consult this page on The Guardian's Web site. Another frequently updated page following the Wikileaks phenomenon is the blog of a certain Greg Mitchell on The Nation's Web site. Further ongoing coverage and detailed analysis regarding Wikileaks and related phenomena provided by Glenn Greenwald, of Salon.com.

Lastly, if governments can shut down Wikileaks with a few phone calls to credit card companies and Web hosting services (CS Monitor), here's an article in which a certain Paul Wallis asks: what's to stop them from doing the same to any and all other media?

Wikileaks pisses off Hillary Clinton...and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad...and Sarah Palin.

Now, let's say that I were an average American citizen, who—let's say—wants to hold democratically elected (directly or [usually very...] indirectly) figures in its government accountable for their habitual excesses and deceptions.

Let's say that I've noticed it's difficult to do this, as my government—like most governments—is a bloated, cynical, bureaucratic, militarist nightmare. So much so that it apparently has no center of gravity morally or even strategically.

Let's suppose that, furthermore, control over media—and, therefore, over public discourse—in the United States is monopolized by a handful of multinational corporations, all of whom in effect collude with governments in order to maximize the financial and political benefits that accrue to a fraction of 1 percent of the world's population—a tiny, wealthy elite with the greatest interest in maintaining the status quo, with all of its injustices and irrationalities.

Let's pretend for a moment that all of the preceding is true.

Wouldn't I be likely to conclude that a single piece of information that manages to piss off Hillary Clinton and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Sarah Palin...well, wouldn't I be likely to conclude that such a release of information is a good thing?

Wikileaks leaks more leaks!

Some of the tidbits of information that have been leaked. And other stuff. (More and better-labeled links re this to come tomorrowish, as it is late as I type.)

A writer for The Guardian (UK) asks an appropriate question: "Why do editors committed to press freedom attack Wikileaks?" Possible answer: because they aren't actually committed to press freedom. Why not? Because they're nothing but the hired stooges of the multinational business interests that own the world's mainstream media...? Just a thought.

Of course, these Wikileaks-opposing editors would argue that, as our free-press-loving government claims, the release of these documents is dangerous, and not merely embarrassing.

But, as it turns out, there's no evidence that any Wikileaks releases have hurt anyone.

GOP Congressmen to America's 65,000 Unemployed: Stop eating food.

(This item by way of the back-in-business PhuckPolitics.)

On Thursday, the newly emboldened, self-congratulatory, and Wall Street-subsidized House Republicans "torpedoed a bill to extend benefits for the long-term unemployed" (The Washington Post). Just get an eyeful of this Old Boy's (Hair) Club (For Men):

It seems that the $12 billion price tag of intervening on behalf of those teetering on the brink of total bankruptcy and ruin is too steep for these steely-eyed Protectors of Industrial/Financial Interests The American Way. Look at the determination in their, uh, gut. The sense of honor and profundity in their Latte-sipping gait.

They just saved America $12 billion. Phew! I'd be drinking me some coffee, too. It's a tough job, pulling our nation back from the brink of financial apocalypse, but somebody's gotta do it.

Of course, the Bush Tax Cuts for the ultra-wealthy cost the nation $3 trillion (Alexander Stille), and that's only over the first eight years of the cuts' existence! Were those cuts to expire on schedule, as the Dems are apparently going to be too weak-kneed to insist—which, by the way, is insane, depressing and humiliating...if ever there were an issue on which the Dems should refuse to compromise....—"the projected cost of the Bush tax cuts to the federal budget over the next ten years is $3.9 trillion, an average of 1.4 percent of the country’s total economic activity (GDP) per year" (CAP). If the Republicans and their conservative Democrat accomplices succeed in actually extending the the tax cuts for the ultra-wealthy, the resulting drain on the US deficit would be an additional $4 million!

But, like I said, the Republicans should be proud of themselves that they've once again succeeded in cynically screwing over the struggling American families that are most vulnerable by sparing the US deficit that whopping $12 billion.

Progressives should oppose the intrustive pat-downs and sketchy scanners.

You know what? I'm with those who are complaining about the intrusiveness of these these "security measures."

I disagree, however, with the neocon creeps who think that racial profiling is a better idea.

And I also disagree with advocates of phony "free markets," who are being paid off by industrial interests to make the implausible argument that "privatizing" airport security is somehow going to solve the problem. It's awfully difficult to see how. That's because it's opportunistic gibberish.

I oppose these intrusive pat-downs and radiation-emitting scanners for one reason: they—like the majority of "security measures" that have been put into practice in airports—are little more than a decoy, Orwellian in character, whose audience are not "the terrorists" to whom their purportedly "sending a signal," but, rather: the American "middle class."
The functions of these "security measures" with respect to middle-class travelers are twofold:

1) To provide people with the illusion that their safety is being guaranteed. In reality, the "safety" that these devices and "procedures" are said to provide exceeds could never honestly be guaranteed. It's impossible. Don't believe me? Read this detailed piece of reporting that exposes the "Security Theater" in our airports, published in the Atlantic Monthly back in 2008.

2) To remind people, as frequently and as concretely as possible, that they should be scared, that they should not think for themselves, and that they require the guiding hand of a benevolent, external authority.

Now, if my second point sounds like the classic right-wing/libertarian argument that "government intervention in our lives is paternalistic," that's because it's pretty much the same claim. With a couple of important differences:

First, I submit that it is obvious that it makes little difference whether the paternalistic authority is embodied in a government agency or a privately administered company, which will have inevitably owed its monopoly in a given market(s) to the congressmen to whom they have donated their millions of dollars.

The second element differentiating my argument from that of the phony free-market types is that, if anything, private industry stands to gain as much, if not more from disingenuous and arrogant administration of "security" policy than does a government agency. This is because the sole motive of private industry is to gain profits. How, then, can it be argued that they would somehow be more likely to refrain from molesting old grannies, or demanding that a cancer survivor remove her prosthetic breast?

The whole thing stinks. I think progressives should be speaking up in opposition to the intrusive and unhealthy "security procedures." Speak up, and don't let the privateering/profiteering brigade change the subject! Speak up in defense of our Constitutionally protected civil liberties.

Crib From This gets Hitched.

I know—dumb title; but who cares.

Over the years, we here at Crib From This have characterized the writings, spoken remarks, and ideas of Christopher Hitchens variously as dumb, smart, funny, and irrelevant [this is not a typo—ed.]. Through the thick and thin of these reactions to his work, it remains that Hitch is among the few commentators to appear regularly in the 'mainstream media' (whose ranks Hitchens—previously a longtime columnist for The Nation magazine—joined when he emerged as an early and ardent propagandist for prosecuting the Iraq War) to reliably possess any kind of panache or even sense of humor. So when Hitch revealed, a number of months ago, that he had been diagnosed with a life-threatening form of esophageal cancer, we, of course, felt that this was some pretty crap news.

So, in any event, when we happened accidentally upon a couple of his recent contributions to his column in Slate, we were pleasantly surprised to find that both are pithy and of a high caliber. Neither of them is—as Hitch has sometimes been perceived to be—controversial or even provocative. Rather, they both communicate successfully more-or-less obvious truths that lots of other commentators and/or media lack the clearheadedness or intellectual distance from the daily news cycle to state. This is the kind of commentary that is so thoroughly lacking right now and why 'the news', as it were, has become so unworthy of anyone's serious attention over the past six months or year-or-so.

Anyway, we link, first, to Hitchens's lucid take on the recent, bizarre, Rick Sanchez episode. Rick Sanchez is, by the way, a person I had never previously heard of and someone whose career, etc., I fail to find at all interesting. And this is precisely why Hitchens nails it: he doesn't find Sanchez or his remarks to be particularly interesting either. Part of the reason for this, Hitchens argues, is that it simply isn't controversial to "note the effectiveness of the Jewish Lobby."

And we link, second, to an article in which Hitchens reflects upon the inanities and utter lack of substance detectable in the supposed political 'debates' preceding the upcoming mid-term elections occurring across the country. A taste:

Asking my hosts in Connecticut if there was anything worth noting about the upcoming elections in their great state, I received the reply, "Well, we have a guy who wants to be senator who lied about his record of service in Vietnam, and a woman who wants to be senator who has run World Wrestling Entertainment and seems like a tough lady." Though full enough of curiosity to occupy, say, one course of lunch, that still didn't seem to furnish enough material to keep the mind focused on politics for very long.

And this dearth—of genuine topics and of convincing or even plausible candidates—appears to extend from coast to coast. In New York, a rather shopworn son of one Democratic dynasty (and ex-member by marriage of another) is "facing off," as people like to say, against a provincial thug with a line in pseudo-tough talk. In California, where the urgent question of something suspiciously like state failure is staring the electorate in the face, the Brown-Whitman contest hasn't yet risen even to the level of the trivial.

Hitch then carries this discussion in the direction of a general, broadly applicable, and yet incisive and satisfying question:

Consider: What normal person would consider risking their career and their family life in order to undergo the incessant barrage of intrusive questioning about every aspect of their lives since well before college? To face the constant pettifogging and chatter of Facebook and Twitter and have to boast of how many false friends they had made in a weird cyberland? And if only that was the least of it. Then comes the treadmill of fundraising and the unending tyranny of the opinion polls, which many media systems now use as a substitute for news and as a means of creating stories rather than reporting them. And, even if it "works," most of your time in Washington would be spent raising the dough to hang on to your job. No wonder that the best lack all conviction.

This may seem to discount or ignore the apparent flood of new political volunteers who go to make up the Tea Party movement. But how fresh and original are these faces? They come from a long and frankly somewhat boring tradition of anti-incumbency and anti-Washington rhetoric, and they are rather an insult to anyone with anything of a political memory. Since when is it truly insurgent to rail against the state of affairs in the nation's capital? How long did it take Gingrich's "rebel" forces in the mid-1990s to become soft-bottomed incumbents in their turn? Many of the cynical veterans of that moment, from Dick Armey to John Boehner, are the effective managers and controllers of the allegedly spontaneous Tea Party wave we see today.

Populism imposes its own humiliations on anyone considering a run. How many times can you stand in front of an audience and state: "I will always put the people of X first"? (Quite a lot of times, to judge by recent campaigns.) This is to say no more than that you will be a megaphone for sectional interests and regional mood swings and resentment, a confession that, to you, all politics is yokel.

I think that pieces like these—more reflective, more genial, less polemical, and yet every bit as unwavering—suit Hitchens's authorial voice just fine. It's almost as though his longtime infatuation with Orwell has begun to rub off on his style in a more direct way. I like it. Let's hope that the new, 'mature Hitchens' is able to stick around for a good while longer, because we need people to be writing like this in the midst of our present political/cultural landscape.

So, for as long as he continues to turn out work of a high caliber, we say: we'll gladly Hitch our wagons.

"How completely isolated a world the German people live in..."

I'd like to share with you an excerpt from William Shirer's famous book The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. Shirer, a newspaper reporter who lived in Berlin throughout the 1930s and into the early years of World War II, recounts how startled he had been at the ease with which German propaganda managed to fool an ever-more gullible German public. What follows is Shirer's description of the headlines of German newspapers during August, 1939, during the final days leading up to Germany's wholly unprovoked invasion of Poland:

In Berlin [...] a foreign observer could watch the way the press, under Goebbels' expert direction, was swindling the gullible German people. For six years, since the Nazi "co-ordination" of the daily newspapers, which had meant the destruction of a free press, the citizens had been cut off from the truth of what was going on in the world. For a time the Swiss German-language newspapers from Zurich and Basel could be purchased at the leading newsstands in Germany and these presented objective news. But in recent years their sale in the Reich had been either prohibited or limited to a few copies. For Germans who could read English or French, there were occasionally a few copies of the London and Paris journals available, though not enough to reach more than a handful of persons.

"How completely isolated a world the German people live in," I noted in my diary on August 10, 1939. "A glance at the newspapers yesterday and today reminds you of it." I had returned to Germany from a brief leave in Washington, New York and Paris, and coming up in the train from my home in Switzerland ten days before I had bought a batch of Berlin and Rhineland newspapers. They quickly propelled one back to the cockeyed world of Nazism, which was as unlike the world I had just left as if it had been on another planet. I noted further on August 10, after I had arrived in Berlin:

Whereas all the rest of the world considers that the peace is about to be broken by Germany, that it is Germany that is threatening to attack Poland... here in Germany, in the world the local newspapers create, the very reverse is maintained ... What the Nazi papers are proclaiming is this: that it is Poland which is disturbing the peace of Europe; Poland which is threatening Germany with armed invasion...

"Poland, Look Out!" warns the B.Z. [cft note: Berliner Arbeiterzeitung] headline, adding: Answer to Poland, the Runner-Amok [Amokläuffer] against Peace and Right in Europe!"

Or the headline in Der Fuehrer, daily paper of Karlsruhe, which I bought on the train: "Warsaw Threatens Bombardment of Danzig—Unbelievable Agitation of the Polish Archmadness [Polnischen Groessenwahsn]!"

You ask: But the German people can't possibly believe these lies? Then you talk to them. So many do.

By Saturday, August 26, the date originally set by Hitler for the attack on Poland, Goebbels' press campaign had reached its climax. I noted in my diary some of the headlines.

The B.Z.: "Complete Chaos in Poland—German Families Flee—Polish Soldiers Push to the Edge of the German Border!" The 12-Uhr Blatt: "This Playing With Fire Going Too Far—Three German Passenger Planes Shot At by Poles—In Corridor Many German Farmhouses in Flames!"

On my way to Broadcast House at midnight I picked up the Sunday edition (August 27) of the Voelkischer Beobachter. Across the whole top of the front page were inch-high headlines:

WHOLE OF POLAND IN WAR FEVER! 1,5000,000 MEN MOBILIZED! UNINTERRUPTED TROOP TRANSPORT TOWARD THE FRONTIER! CHAOS IN UPPER SILESIA!

There was no mention, of course, of any German mobilization, though, as we have seen, Germany had been mobilized for a fortnight.

The truth is a beautiful thing, even when it stings a bit. Do you suppose that the great William Shirer was spinning in his grave during the whole Weapons of Mass Destruction deception/embarrassment, which was aided and abetted by our American—putatively free, democratic—press?

I think it's fair to say that Shirer, like many in America's longstanding tradition of democratic patriots and truth-tellers, would be disappointed. He expected better of our elected leaders. We, unfortunately, have seen far too much arrogance and corruption among our leaders and their corporate handlers to reasonably hold the same expectation. But we can work hard to rebuild a genuine American republic in which future generations might reasonably expect it, just as Shirer did.

Wikileaks & Julian Assange: What to Make of Yesterday's Bizzarely Heavy–Handed Smear?

Time to get current.

Wow. Okay, now I get it. We should be paying attention to this stuff.

Yesterday, I put together a page in this blog called What is 'Crib From This'?, in which I explained that Crib From This is intended to explore the complicated and changing relationship between information and knowledge.

Well, there is no question that Julian Assange, founder of Wikileaks, is giving us no choice but to confront this issue, and, particularly, its relation to nationalism, governmental claims of 'national security', propaganda, freedom of information, and the liberty of ordinary, everyday people to pursue and share knowledge. Without a doubt, these are questions that a lot of us—maybe all of us—would feel more comfortable not confronting, or would prefer to put off confronting until another day. But it seems as though it's too late for that, now. Particularly for we American observers.

So, this post is really just to say: it's time to, as it were, bone-up. Get current with this thing, if we're not already.

Yesterday's (absurdly heavy–handed & obviously fictitious) smear. And today's quick retraction.

Well, it's not news, of course, that Julian Assange has been pissing-off lots of people in high places. But up until yesterday, the most forceful attempts to criticize Wikileaks by way of character-assassination of Assange have come from the radical/loony Right-wing. And even these figures, like Liz Cheney, back on August 2, confined their accusations against Assange to aspects of the content of leaked data.

So, to get started, here are some links to articles about this bizarre episode:

First, an AP release from less than an hour ago (by way of Yahoo News):

STOCKHOLM – Swedish prosecutors withdrew an arrest warrant for the founder of WikiLeaks on Saturday, saying less than a day after the document was issued that it was based on an unfounded accusation of rape.

The accusation had been labeled a dirty trick by Julian Assange and his group, who are preparing to release a fresh batch of classified U.S. documents from the Afghan war.

Swedish prosecutors had urged Assange — a nomadic 39-year-old Australian whose whereabouts were unclear — to turn himself in to police to face questioning in one case involving suspicions of rape and another based on an accusation of molestation.

"I don't think there is reason to suspect that he has committed rape," chief prosecutor Eva Finne said, in announcing the withdrawal of the warrant.

...

Second, today, from Al Jazeera English:

'Dirty tricks'
After Swedish tabloid Expressen,first published reports that the arrest warrant had been issued for Assange, Wikileaks responded on Twittersaying: "We were warned to expect 'dirty tricks.' Now we have the first one."

"No one here has been contacted by Swedish police. Needless to say this will prove hugely distracting."

Assange's organisation has caused much controversy recently with the release of 75,000 classified US military documents containing information surrounding the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The US government rejected the release of the documents, saying the website had "blood on its hands" for naming people who had helped its military in opposition to groups such as the Taliban and al-Qaeda, and ordered Wikileaks to return the files.

Wikileaks, meanwhile, has said that it is plans to reveal more of the remaining 15,000 classified documents it holds, possibly this month or next month.

A blogger for CNN asks Is Assange the target of a U.S. smear campaign? Uh...sure looks like it, doesn't it.

Finally, this article from BBC News says

The Swedish Prosecution Authority website said chief prosecutor Eva Finne had come to the decision that Julian Assange was not subject to arrest.

In a brief statement Eva Finne said: "I don't think there is reason to suspect that he has committed rape."

The website said there would be no further immediate comment.

Earlier, Karin Rosander, communications head at Sweden's prosecutors' office, said there were two separate allegations against Mr Assange, one of rape and the other of molestation. She gave no details of the accusations. She said that as far as she knew they related to alleged incidents that took place in Sweden.

Media reports say Mr Assange was in Sweden last week to talk about his work and defend the decision by Wikileaks to publish the Afghan war logs.

Last month, Wikileaks published more than 75,000 secret US military documents on the war in Afghanistan.

US authorities criticised the leak, saying it could put the lives of coalition soldiers and Afghans, especially informers, at risk.

Mr Assange has said that Wikileaks is intending to release a further 15,000 documents in the coming weeks.

Some idle speculation.

As my title suggests, here's the thing I don't get: why so obviously spurious a charge as rape? I mean, rape? Really? And why would Swedish prosecutors withdraw the charge after less than 24-hours? Was it because the case was really just so obviously without any merit that withdrawing it was the only way to regain some semblance of credibility? If that's the case, then how did it come to pass that the warrant was issued in the first place? Pressure from the USA?

If the latter scenario is the case, then perhaps the whole episode was little more than a (in all likelihood, successful) attempt to scare the hell out of Assange—a show of muscle, if you will.

Also, there's likely to be significance to the fact that the 'news' about Sweden's warrant for Assange broke on a Friday. People who follow things like how the 'news cycle' works always point out that, if you want to release a story but simultaneously bury it, release it on a Friday, because very few people will pay attention, and this low level of immediate interest insures that media will have forgotten all about it by the time the following Monday comes around.

The Friday release would appear to suggest that the false accusation and resulting Swedish warrant really were meant either as an attempt to scare Assange or to 'send him a message', like what evil governments do in cheesy conspiracy movies—i.e., look at how easy it would be for us to crush you like a bug if you piss us off—or as what is sometimes called a 'test balloon', as a de facto public opinion poll, whose research sample consists of the segment of the population that's paying attention to the news on Friday and Saturday?

A brief moment of moralizing.

Not to state the obvious, but shouldn't the US Government and its vast intelligence apparatus have more important things to do than picking on whistle-blowers and advocates for the freedom of information?

Remember, as I point out in What is 'Crib From This'?, the United States Constitution is among the most forceful, elegant and powerful forces for the freedoms of speech, thought, action and information. It's truly a sad day when its leaders decide—not clandestinely, but out in the open, with an obvious smear like this—to attack the world's most dedicated advocates of the very same freedoms that it is constitutionally mandated to protect.

Hyperlink: David David Petraeus Petraeus

The blog PhuckPolitics.com makes an elegant observation: at present, General David Petraeus is serving a public relations function on behalf of the Obama Administration's Afghanistan strategy that bears an uncanny resemblance to the public relations function he once served on behalf of the Bush Administration's Iraq strategy.

Read Obama’s Afghanistan full court press.

The GOP wants to repeal the 14th Ammendment?

Stop paying attention to the news for a couple of days (or months), and this is the kind of great stuff that you miss out on. Get a load of the Grand Old Party's latest coordinated, demagogic/gestural exercise in—wink, wink—double-speak: in an effort to ratchet-up the appearance of being 'tough on illegal immigrants' (and, one surmises, in order to make damn certain that the Republicans lose the Hispanic vote once and for all [The Atlantic]), Senate Republicans are embracing the idea of holding hearings to determine whether or not to repeal the 14th Amendment to our nation's Constitution (NPR report).

We turn to the commentary of the frequently hilarious Democralypse Now, who reminds us of how excruciatingly embarrassing it is to pay attention to anything John McCain gets up to these days, as he begs for the support of the Republican far-Right:

"You know, look, I know it's babies we're talking about and it's hard to be tough on babies but let's remember we're talking about illegal aliens coming to this country for the purpose of birthing a child, not because they love the kid, cause they want that child to provide them the benefits of U.S. citizenship."—Attorney Wendy Murphy arguing to repeal the 14th amendment on Fox News (where else?)

When you have to start your sentence with the words "You know, look, I know it's babies we're talking about and it's hard to be tough on babies," perhaps that's a point you shouldn't be making.

I don't know, call me old fashioned, but any way you slice it, hating on babies just doesn't seem to be a very tasteful, not to mention, winning strategy.

Oooooh, sounds like Republicans just found themselves the perfect new rallying cry to fire up the base and boot that no good Barry fellow out of the White House and back into the harsh Kenyan wilderness where he belongs. This time, in the form of wretched diaper-wearing ne'r-do-wells looking for a free lunch, bottle of formula, lactating nipple, or whatever the case may be, by committing the unforgivable crime of being born within the nation's beautiful borders (Alaska included!), or at the very least, one of its lesser "territories" like Guam or "American" Samoa. The sweetly, conservative-named "anchor babies."

No, no, we're not talking about the adorable new cartoon infants to join Dora the Explorer on her maritime adventures, but something far far more sinister: pregnant women desperately climbing barbed-wire border fences (and dodging armed gangs of trigger-happy white supremacists) all for the chance to drop a tiny brown automatic U.S. citizen out of their gross foreigner wombs onto once-pure, now-sullied American soil.

[...]

Almost as amazing as watching Republicans try to out-crazy each other with terrible, untenable ideas, aimed at those most disadvantaged and unable to defend themselves, is the comical lengths some Republicans, such as certain former Prisoners of War turned current Prisoners of Wingnuts, are willing to go to try not to have to support this crazy idea, during an otherwise ho-hum morning press conference.

“We’re talking about the stimulus right now,” John McCain said, before darting off to the elevators down the hall from the Senate studio, where he again declined to take a question. Reporters eventually caught up with McCain in the basement of the Capitol, where he was walking toward to the man-operated train connecting the Senate with the Russell office building.

TPMDC asked, “Do you support the Minority Leader’s push for hearings into the repeal of birthright citizenship?”

“Sure, why not?” McCain said briefly.

“Do you support the idea itself?”

“I support the idea of having hearings,” McCain said.

“Do you have a problem with the 14th amendment?” another reporter asked.

“You’re changing the constitution of the United States,” McCain said. “I support the concept of holding hearings.”

“I support the concept of holding hearings,” McCain repeated, turning to the rail car conductor.

“Let’s go!” he snapped. "I don't have anything to add to that."

Now, typically there is something both hilariously funny and tragically sad about witnessing a withered old man shed every last fiber of his integrity en route to becoming a soulless, brain-dead puppet of the right, dancing (err, at least attempting) slowly around an issue as clear-cut and obvious as taking away the constitutional rights of the toothless, under-1 crowd who use pacifiers and diapers, need constant 24-hour care and coddling, and can't even do anything for themselves.

Read the full article.

Magnificent speechification: Grayson does it with style.

The bill calling for the much-needed extension of unemployment benefits has finally been passed by both houses of the federal legislature—the Senate passed it on Wednesday and the House got around to doing so yesterday. So I realize that, with respect to the political issue, this post is not exactly timely.

I wish, nevertheless, to share with my enlightened readers this absolute triumph of rhetoric/oratory that was delivered by Rep. Alan Grayson, Democrat of Orlando, Florida during the House 'debate' that preceded the bill's passage. Now, we've seen previous examples of Grayson's deadpan wit, his knack for using invective to tasteful and brilliant effect, and his panache and cogency as a debater on substantive issues.

And herewith, the House doth Grayson rock.

But so rousing is the perfect little specimen of succinct speechifying that Grayson brought to the floor last Wednesday that I went and transcribed the whole damn two-minute speech for you. Now you, my readers, can never credibly question my love and devotion to you. Enjoy:

My grandfather, in the 1930s, spent several years of his life, every single day, at the dump, looking for things there that he could sell. Looking for things that he could take to the market and sell, because there was no other way for him to survive the 1930s and the Great Depression.

There was no unemployment insurance back then. There was no state benefits back then. There was no help for the people who had [no] jobs. All they could do, like my grandfather—supporting a family of seven—was to go to the dump and desperately try to find something he could sell.

And that, my friends, is the America that the Republicans are trying to revive. The America of desperate straits and, for them, cheap labor. The America where people have nothing, hope for nothing and are desperate to live for the next day. That is what the Republicans are trying to resurrect—day after day, week after week, and now month after month.

I've got news for my Republican friends: every single person who's going to receive unemployment insurance under this bill is unemployed. Every single one of them doesn't have a job. And that's why they need this money.

Now, I know what the Republicans are thinking:

"Why don't they just sell some stock? If they're in really dire straits, maybe they could take some of their art collection and send it off to the auctioneer. And if they're in deep, deep trouble, maybe these unemployed could sell one of their yachts."

That's what the Republicans are thinking right now.

But that's not the life of ordinary people—the 99 percent of America that actually has to work for a living, that doesn't just clip coupons and live off of interest and dividends, like my Republican friends do.

That's why we need this bill to pass: because of the 99 percent of America that deals with reality everyday. The people who will lose their homes if this doesn't pass. The people who will be living in their cars if this doesn't pass. That's why we need this to pass.

And I will say this to Republicans who have blocked this bill now for months and kept food out of the mouths of children. I say to them now:

May God have mercy on your souls.

I yield back.

Thanks to PhuckPolitics.com for bringing this to my attention. That blog contains a link to a video of the speech, along with its blogger's exuberant commentary.

Lookin' for a hero...

Tom "The Fourth Doctor" Baker

Maybe if the United States of America had cooler superheroes, we'd lose our appetite for demagogues in media and politics.

Consider the following remarks of Tom Baker, who was—to my mind—the greatest Doctor Who of all time, in an interview broadcast on Australian television in the mid-1970s:

ABC Television Australia: Now, with the advent of Superman coming back to the big screen, do you think there’s ever a chance that Doctor Who and Superman may run into each other?

Tom Baker: Well that’s a nice idea, but what would be the point? I mean, Superman wouldn’t be any opposition, would he, because… well…

ABC Television Australia: You both have a sort of similarity with phone boxes, though, don’t you?

Tom Baker: Ah, yes, but that’s the only way. I suppose Superman only uses a phone box because, you know, he’s rather prudish and modest, isn't he, and doesn’t want to take his knickers off in public. But I think compared to the character of Doctor Who, he’s a bit of a bonehead, Superman? I mean, he punches things out, doesn't he?

ABC Television Australia: He certainly does.

Tom Baker: Whereas the character I’m involved with tries to think it out.

Music to my ears. It's high time that someone came up with an American superhero of the caliber of Doctor Who. We ain't got nuthin'.

Let's stop acting surprised.

We're not really shocked, are we?, by instances of deceit, incompetence, greed and arrogance in the corridors of power?

Those of us who are convinced that civil liberties, free expression, free inquiry and democratic deliberation are the cornerstones of American society know quite well that lots of things are not as they should be. We know that, somehow, these essential principles and practices must be preserved, repaired and/or improved. We realize that we must continue to take these things seriously, remind one another of their importance and significance, and teach subsequent generations to preserve all that is best about the American project in republican self-governance.

We were, all of us, horrified by the self-righteous barbarity and callous disregard for the rule of law promoted, clandestinely (and then not-so-clandestinely), by former Vice President Cheney. We were dismayed to learn that various United States agencies had spied on American citizens, tortured prisoners of war (using methods borrowed from 1950s Communist China) and fabricated intelligence as a pretext for waging war. We thought the eleventh-hour first Bank Bailout, under Bush, was a bald-faced exercise in theft—that it revealed, to our dismay, the extent to which the American political system has become a fully owned subsidiary of powerful financial interests and an elite stratum of wealthy investors. And we thought that the second Bank Bailout, under Obama's watch, confirmed our suspicions about the current impotence of American democracy. To be sure, I'm not referring to its impotence in practice: we already knew all about that. No, what was confirmed was the impotence of American democracy as an idea.

So why do we act shocked when we encounter leaked footage of American soldiers in Afghanistan firing missiles at unarmed civilians? Why so surprised when Obama sells off—faster than Bush would even have dared—the American education system to a bunch of glorified loan sharks? Why are we taken off-guard when the Supreme Court overturns hundreds of centuries-old laws regulating the political spending of multinational corporations, on the basis of the notion—so argues the Court—that such laws restrict the (previously non-existent) Constitutional right of corporations to free speech?

I don't think that we are surprised by these things. I think that we are pretending to be surprised. I'm guessing that there are two (2) ways in which we pretend to be surprised, which coexist in varying degrees in any particular instance:

i. The first way in which we act surprised.
We want to be surprised by these things. Therefore, we either convince ourselves that we are surprised, or we act surprised in a semi-conscious attempt to simulate, for our own comfort, the feeling of being surprised. Or we act surprised out of sheer habit. In any of these cases—whatever our level of consciousness of our actions—we are motivated by a desire for comfort.

Why is the feeling of surprise comforting to us? Because surprise registers the phenomenon to which we are responding as something that is—as it were—beyond the pale. It's a psychological defense mechanism. We want so desperately to believe that everyone else values our Constitutional protections and civil liberties as much as we do. To us, this stuff is basic common sense, and it shatters our faith in humanity to recognize the truth: there are a substantial numbers of American citizens who would gladly give away their liberties in exchange for an illusory feeling of safety or security.

This brings us to:

ii. The second way in which we act surprised.
We hope that by expressing our outrage and shock in the face of the erosion of American civil liberties, we might be able to shock the aforementioned cadre of American citizens—a cadre that is in most other respects as heterogeneous as can be—out of its complacency and docility.

In other words, we like to believe that we are walking, talking George Orwells. That, if we talk frequently and loudly enough about how disgusted we are with our country's seemingly inexorable drift toward fear-mongering, surveillance state, that we will manage eventually to make them see the light!

The mistake we're making in this second instance is about as obvious as can be: do we really think that we can out-fear-monger the professional political-corporate-media fear-mongers?? I think this is a difficulty that faces those of us in the post-Baby Boom generations who believe that the only way in which our democracy can be repaired is through a reinvigorated civil discourse. At present, American political rhetoric is—like American political thought—beyond its moment of crisis. It is in a state of extreme fragmentation.

All I'm saying is, let's start admitting that we all know this. Let's stop acting surprised.

How does Google mean?...or: "Everything and More"

No, I'm not going to weigh in on Google's (lack of) aesthetic sense, as demonstrated by the search engine's widely panned and short-lived experiment on Thursday during which a large photograph took the place of the usual plain, white background. Because who cares, really.

No, I'm much more interested in pointing out something that I've noticed over the past month or so that appears to the left of the results of an ordinary Google search. Here's a photo I snapped of it:

Anyone?

What immediately comes to my mind, whenever I glance at this side-bar (which I've done many times) is the title of the only published piece of writing by the late David Foster Wallace that I was never able to make it all the way to the end of. I refer to 2003's Everything and More, subtitled: A Compact History of Infinity. This book-length essay, intended (naively) for the general reading public, was Wallace's audacious, gimmicky and controversial attempt to explain set theory ("multiple infinities")—created (or maybe 'discovered'?) by the 19th century German mathematician Georg Cantor—without really using any actual math.

But, more than Wallace's book, it just strikes me that the words and hyperlinks featured in the above snapshot amount to a kind of smart-ass collage or accidental poem. In other words, with your initial search, Google is providing you with "everything." Should "everything" fail to sate your appetite for page upon page of relevant* material, follow the hyperlink, for Google offers you still "more" than mere infinity.

I guess I'm really just thinking about a constellation of things. First, the fact that we don't often talk about Web pages in ways that take account of how arrangements of words, images and—for example—navigational functions impact conveyed meaning. This can encompass both "intentional" and "unintentional" meanings; it can refer to the ways in which words, images and hyperlinks function as collages of juxtapositions, oppositions and organizational schemes. Furthermore, meaning is impacted not only by what exists on the Web page but by what is left out. Finally, meaning is shaped by the sets of expectations that users bring to bear when using a Web page. This is particularly interesting in reference to search engines, in the case of which the user's attention is almost always focused upon the expectation that he or she will encounter immediately thereafter a spectrum of (categories of?) content.

And, of course, there's the Marshall McLuhan-esque question: what, after all, do I mean when I refer to the "content" with which we expect a search engine to "connect" us?

All right. Hope that makes some kind of sense. Time for bed.

ADDENDUM:
It occurs to me that there's significance as regards user-expectations to be attached to the basic function of a search engine: (i) the sheer act of typing words into Google's interface signifies the expectation/intention of obtaining information, data or some other kind of non-tangible artifact, whose 'form' and to some extent, 'content', must be fixed or predictable to you—otherwise (i.e., were results to provide inscrutable artifacts or incomprehensible information), how could you anticipate that the results might have any value to you?; and (ii) usually, the object or objects of a search are characterized simultaneously and to an equal degree by a basic lack of familiarity—otherwise, why would you need to "search" for it in the first place?

In both i and ii are to be found the complicated interplay of contradictions between 'form' and 'content', as well as between anticipated familiarity and anticipated unfamiliarity. In an Internet search, one's capacity to comprehend and derive use from unfamiliar content is conditioned by one's reasonable expectation of familiarity of form.

(Here are some more quotations and aphorisms from the late, great Marshall McLuhan, some of which deal with the form/content dyad.)

_________________
* In the sense of popular and of containing such keywords as are to be found on a given Web location, irrespective of things like context and other 'meaning'-derived metrics.

A lion in lion's clothing: Why Rand Paul's primary victory is a good thing.

I shall attempt to elucidate my view of the results of the recent Republican primary in Kentucky. It's a view that apparently is deemed to be heterodox—if not heretical—among chatterers in progressive-left circles. Specifically, I think that—despite increasingly ugly, politically motivated deviations—Rand Paul is as close to a principled libertarian as we're likely to see as a contender for national office, and that his victory in Kentucky’s May 19 Republican primary for the US Senate is a good thing.

I don't hold this view for political/strategic/operational reasons—i.e.: because Paul's ascendancy might make it easier for some Democratic Party hack to win in the general, or something like that (partly because, in fact, I'm sick of all the DP hacks)—but, rather, because Rand Paul seems for the most part to be an actual libertarian in the mold of his father, Representative Ron Paul, Republican of Texas. I mean the dude's named after Ayn Rand, for god's sake.

Rand Paul is a lion in lion's clothing, and that's a good thing. What do I mean by this? Well, let me explain. Remember George W. Bush's pre-2000 promises to the effect that he embodied something called "compassionate conservatism"? That's an example of being a lion in lamb's clothing.

See the difference? (And here's an interesting bit of reporting on the unrelated question of where the phrase "compassionate conservatism" comes from.)

Now, before we get into all sorts of metaphysical stuff about lions lying down with lambs, let me just admit up front that my metaphor/comparison doesn't really make sense, once you start thinking about it. So heed this warning and...well, don't. But, anyway.

Give me the Pauls any day. For one thing, it will make for a much better debate. I believe that the US could only benefit from an increased focus upon the tenets of libertarianism. Beyond even its potential impact upon the framing of political discussion, there is a side to libertarianism that should by no means seem to liberals to be entirely unpalatable. For example: what’s wrong with cutting back on the functions of government that exist in practice exclusively to serve the interests of big corporations? While Paul's textbook libertarianism generally causes him to oppose the placing of limitations upon the expenditures of private corporations, his consistent and clearly voiced opposition to our country's reigning, incestuous public-private oligarchy is right on.

From yesterday's Huffington Post:

For all the blaring headlines that Rand Paul (R-Ky.) has attracted for his remarks on the Civil Rights Act and his views on government interference in private enterprise, there is a strand of his libertarianism that -- on occasion -- can be alluring to progressives.

Mainly this is when the discussion turns to foreign policy matters and the Kentucky GOP candidate's skepticism with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and his opposition to the Patriot Act.

Occasionally, however, Paul's domestic politics have a bit of post-ideological resonance. And during a Monday appearance on Rush Limbaugh's radio show, that element of his candidacy was briefly on display. Asked a question about campaign finance reform, Paul offered the traditionally conservative denouncement of laws that curb the amount of money spent during an election. But from there he offered a proposal that would be of similar (if not greater) scope and reach.

"What I would do is that for every federal contract, if you sign a federal contract and we pay you, the taxpayer pays you a million dollars, I would put a clause in the contract that you voluntarily accept that you won't lobby or give contributions," he said, "because I think it galls the American people that taxpayer money is paid to contractors who take that taxpayer money and immediately lobby for more money."

This type of proposal would seemingly leave good government officials smiling. That it came from the belle of the Tea Party ball makes it all the more powerful -- not because of its unexpectedness (the Tea Party movement is quite clearly wary of the influence of lobbyists), but because Paul is symbolic for many of the future of the GOP.

Now, the question of whether and to whom Paul symbolizes the future of the GOP is open to debate, to say the least. But, isn't his stance on lobbying and government contracts absolutely correct?

Certainly it would be better if such a challenge came from populist progressives of the left, in the Bernie Sanders mold, but this is Kentucky we’re talking about. And I believe that the anti-oligarchic, anti-Fed, pro-personal privacy, anti-torture/surveillance and pro-transparency aspects of the philosophies of Father and Son Paul should be commended by left-progressives. We can still criticize the Pauls for their stances on many other subjects about which we disagree.

I feel the need to point all of this out because of the somewhat hysterical responses of some purportedly left-progressive-types to the Rand Paul phenomenon. I mean, sure, his performance on the Rachel Maddow show was ham-fisted, but, the idea that his take on the Civil Rights Act makes him a racist is really just too much. Those of us who are serious about wanting to improve political discourse should not be demonizing someone for showing intellectual honesty, however impolitic it might be for him to do so. In fact, the more straightforward and lacking in spin his stance, the greater the duty of the left opposition to express its disagreement straightforwardly.

Rand Paul's views on the Civil Rights Act can be—and are—wrong without being racist. This is the kind of debate we should be taking seriously. It's the mainstream Republicans who aren't worth the time and effort, who will misrepresent themselves to get elected and hold onto power. The notion that Rand Paul is somehow worse than the average "machine"-Republican candidate is absolute balderdash.

To the extent to which the likes of middle-aged pseudo-leftists like The Nation's obnoxious Katha Pollitt (May 22) continue to set the terms of what counts as political debate in progressive circles, we'll never get beyond the intellectual bankruptcy and gridlock of the Culture Wars and the 1960s. I'm sorry, but Baby Boomers like Pollitt just get fatter and more full of shit with each passing day.

By contrast, Robert Scheer's May 19 take on the Pauls and libertarianism I find to be coherent and useful. It is, in fact, the article to which—in the wake of Paul's stumble on the Maddow show—Pollitt's shrill statement is apparently aiming to respond. Still better is Scheer's May 26 follow-up, in which he gets down to what should be the business at hand for those of us on the progressive/left:

Where I agree with [Rand Paul] is that with freedom comes responsibility, and when the financial conglomerates abused their freedom, they, and not the victims they swindled, should have borne the consequences. Instead, they were saved by the taxpayers from their near-death experience, reaping enormous profits and bonuses while the fundamentals of the world economy they almost destroyed remain rotten, as attested by the high rates of housing foreclosures and unemployment and the tens of millions of newly poor dependent on government food handouts.

But the poor will not find much more than food crumbs from a federal government that, thanks to another one of [President Bill] Clinton’s “reforms,” ended the federal obligation to deal with the welfare of the impoverished. Yes, Clinton, not either Paul, father Ron or son. It was Clinton who campaigned to “end welfare as we know it,” and as a result the federal obligation to end poverty, once fervently embraced by even Richard Nixon, was abandoned.

Concern for the poor was devolved to the state governments, and they in turn are in no mood to honor the injunction of all of the world’s great religions that we be judged by how we treat the least among us. That would be poor children, and it is unconscionable that state governments across the nation are cutting programs as elemental as the child care required when you force single mothers to work.

“Cuts to Child Care Subsidy Thwart More Job Seekers” ran the headline in the New York Times on Sunday over a story detailing how in a dozen states there are now sharp cuts in child care for the poor who find jobs, and how there are now long lists of kids needing child care while their mothers work at low-paying jobs at places like Wal-Mart. In Arizona, there is a waiting list of 11,000 kids eligible for child care. That is what passes for success in the welfare reform saga, with mothers forced off the rolls into a workplace bereft of promised child care that the cash-strapped states no longer wish to supply.

Hear, hear. For those of us who believe that what this country desperately needs is a genuine left-populism, shouldn't we be asking: Why don't we hear Democrats articulating a similarly robust critique of ongoing—and grotesquely antidemocratic—lobbying practices?

And, more to the point: instead of playing the politics of personality (and...even ickier..."character"), let's respond to Paul's views on the evils of the welfare state with real arguments. All around us, on the local, national and international levels, we can point to massive, moral, social and practical crises directly attributable to laissez faire economics and neoliberal governance. As Scheer argues, the hullabaloo about Rand Paul is nothing but a cheap distraction from the real questions:

How in the hell can humankind be expected to survive and prosper without a social safety net to protect them against the vicissitudes of a globalized and unregulated market economy? Without such a safety net, how can Western societies ever hope to fulfill their constitutional (little c and big) aspirations of freedom, justice and equality?

And, finally: If the Democratic Party can't be counted upon to take these questions at all seriously, who can?

Poetic truth in political advertising.

Thanks to a longtime friend, a certain GSR, for sharing the link to this video. Very funny stuff from the 1990s—in many respects, a halcyon period for comedy in our beloved United States.

News fatigue?

Your humble blogger has been asked if he's suffering from "news fatigue" as an explanation for the infrequent posting that's been occurring lately on Crib From This.

The answer is: no. We've simply been attending to other things and have had limited access to our computer.

Fear not! We'll be back soon, and better.

The Charter-Schooling Racket.

There are some charter schools that are doing good work, but these are the exception, not the rule. The fact of the matter is that the charter schools movement serves first and foremost as a front for the privitization of education—the placement of educational infrastructure into the hands of profiteers, industrialists, finance capitalists and loan sharks.

This article, which appeared recently in the New York Times, describes a case in point:

When the energy executive Dennis Bakke retired with a fortune from the AES Corporation, [get a load of the AES Corporation's Web site!—cft] the company he co-founded, he and his wife, Eileen, decided to direct their attention and money to education. [E]ager to experiment with applying business strategies and discipline to public schools[, t]he Bakkes became part of the nation’s new crop of education entrepreneurs, founding a commercial charter school company called Imagine Schools[,] now the largest commercial manager of charter schools in the country.

Here's a(n ineffective) public relationsy photograph of the Bakkes 'interacting' with the low-income students in one of the schools 'managed' by Imagine Schools:

As education expert Patricia Burch states in an article on the dark and clandestine market forces that are unleashing the worldwide privatization of education and that are misleadingly portraying this widespread, government-coordinated profiteering racket in terms of the benefits of parental "consumer choice" or of the putative benefits of "market competition" upon educational quality, among the reasons that this cynical ploy works is because

we tend to equate the public sector with large bureaucracy and the private sector with more efficient, flexible and network-oriented forms of organization. In fact, the providers now “trading” in the new education market place are situated squarely in the same institutional environment as schools. In broad strokes, this institutional frame reflects embedded routines and rituals for the organization of schooling.

This institutional template for schooling can have a conservative influence on schools and keep reform ideas from becoming or achieving anything new. In this context, rather than breaking the mold, private firms in the education market can end up reproducing the worst practices of public schooling, offering low-income students “more of the same” and at significant cost.  [Access article here.]

Returning to the Times article, we see that the Bakkes epitomize the ways in which the puppet-masters of the charter-schooling racket uses this notion of 'marketization' as a means by which to justify enriching themselves—tax free—to the detriment and even ruin of the urban children they are supposed to be helping:

Because public money is used, most states grant charters to run such schools only to nonprofit groups with the expectation that they will exercise the same independent oversight that public school boards do. Some are run locally. Some bring in nonprofit management chains. And a number use commercial management companies like Imagine.

But regulators in some states have found that Imagine has elbowed the charter holders out of virtually all school decision making — hiring and firing principals and staff members, controlling and profiting from school real estate, and retaining fees under contracts that often guarantee Imagine’s management in perpetuity.

The arrangements, they say, allow Imagine to use public money with little oversight. “Under either charter law or traditional nonprofit law, there really is no way an entity should end up on both sides of business transactions,” said Marc Dean Millot, publisher of the report K-12 Leads and a former president of the National Charter Schools Alliance, a trade association, now defunct, for the charter school movement.

“Imagine works to dominate the board of the charter holder, and then it does a deal with the board it dominates — and that cannot be an arm’s length transaction,” he said.

Such concerns have thwarted efforts by Imagine to open a school in Florida, threaten to stall its push into Texas, and have ended its business with a school in Georgia and another in New York, as well as other states.

Imagine is not shy about the way it wields its power, which it calls essential to its governing philosophy. “Imagine Schools operates the entire school, and is not a consultant or management company,” its Web site says. “All principals, teachers, and staff are Imagine Schools people. The Imagine Schools culture is meant to permeate every aspect of the school’s life.”

Mrs. Bakke, who is paid $100,000 as vice president of education at Imagine, says it works in “close partnership” with the boards of the schools it manages. “The governing boards are definitely in charge, but they look to us, frankly, because as you know, nonprofit boards are well meaning but don’t always have the experience and expertise running the schools,” she said in an interview.

She said that she and her husband, who is paid $200,000 as the company’s chief executive, sank $155 million into Imagine and that they were able to run schools efficiently. “We offer a great deal for communities and for taxpayers,” Mrs. Bakke said, “because we’re providing education at less than what a traditional school is spending.”

She says the company should be judged by its educational results, not its business and financial arrangements. 

 And if that doesn't sound sketchy enough for you, read on:

Mrs. Bakke said her company “is operated as a not-for-profit.” But Imagine is not a nonprofit group, and it has so far failed to gain status as a charity from the I.R.S.

Imagine applied for federal tax exemption in 2005 and has repeatedly said approval is imminent. It typically takes four to six months for such approvals. “We’re not sure why it’s taking so long,” said Mrs. Bakke, who is 56. “We suspect it’s because we’re trailblazers in a sense, and they haven’t had an application quite like this.”

The I.R.S., as is its policy, declined to comment. 

And how about the relationship of Imagine Schools to individual schools and their boards of directors? Read on:

In Texas, parents trying to open a charter school for elementary school students thought that Imagine was going too far.

“Imagine did a few things that indicated they thought the charter belonged to them, which was not our understanding at all,” said Karelei Munn, who is part of a group working to establish a charter school in Georgetown, Tex., near Austin. “We were looking to control our board, and they were looking to control our board.”

Ms. Munn and other members of the group holding the charter broke their ties with Imagine and are trying to form a school on their own.

Regulators in Texas have been slow to approve a second Imagine school, citing concerns that include an e-mail message from Mr. Bakke to the company’s senior staff members that was reported on by The St. Louis Post-Dispatch last fall. In the message, dated Sept. 4, 2008, Mr. Bakke cautioned his executives against giving boards of schools the “misconception” that they “are responsible for making big decisions about budget matters, school policies, hiring of the principal and dozens of other matters.”

Instead, he wrote, “It is our school, our money and our risk, not theirs.”

Mr. Bakke, who is 64, suggested requiring board members to sign undated letters of resignation or limiting board terms to a single year.

In a statement after the e-mail message was disclosed, Mr. Bakke apologized to board members “who felt offended or maligned,” saying he had “overstated my personal frustration in ensuring that the dedicated, caring people who hold the seats of charter governing boards at Imagine Schools understand and support our mission and operating philosophy.”

As Texas continues its consideration, the e-mail message helped upend Imagine’s plans to open a school in the Hillsborough County School District in Florida, which encompasses Tampa.

“That e-mail was very, very bad for them,” said Jenna Hodgens, the local supervisor of charter schools. “All the things we had been questioning, things about control of the school, he answered in his own words.”

The Hillsborough school board rejected the application in December. “Charter schools are not private schools, they are public schools and are governed as such,” said Susan Valdes, who heads the board. “Some, though, are starting to forget that — and they’re getting away with it. But not here.”

And that's only the beginning. I highly recommend reading the entire article, in order to learn about the nature of the Bakkes' company and its shady investment and governance practices. Imagine Schools is basically a giant loan shark.

Let's get these sleaze-balls and hucksters away from our schools already.