A 'vast carelessness' - the president's and ours
The year-end debate about the Iraq Study Group's unequivocal diagnosis of failure and its grim list of uncertain remedies is the real measure of the hopelessness of the mess America made. The ISG's 79 recommendations - some wise, some impolitic, some impossible - is itself a confession that all the choices are bad.
That's not the commission's fault: No one else has a persuasive idea either, least of all the president - the self-proclaimed decider - who started and ran this misbegotten war.
As Nick Carraway says about the privileged and insouciant Tom and Daisy at the end of "The Great Gatsby":
"They were careless people ... they smashed up things and creatures and then they retreated back to their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made ...."
That's not the commission's fault: No one else has a persuasive idea either, least of all the president - the self-proclaimed decider - who started and ran this misbegotten war.
As Nick Carraway says about the privileged and insouciant Tom and Daisy at the end of "The Great Gatsby":
"They were careless people ... they smashed up things and creatures and then they retreated back to their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made ...."
And the Empire Mourned . . . Dissecting the Big Lie
"If we ever pass out as a great nation we ought to put on our tombstone 'America died from a delusion that she had moral leadership'."
---Will Rogers
"It is only in folk tales, children's stories, and the journals of intellectual opinion that power is used wisely and well to destroy evil. The real world teaches very different lessons, and it takes willful and dedicated ignorance to fail to perceive them."
--Noam Chomsky
With the intensity of Dale Earnhardt, Jr vying for victory in the Daytona 500, America’s mainstream media outlets have been racing furiously to imbue the citizenry of the Empire with unusually large doses of heavily choreographed agitprop.
Another unindicted US war criminal has casually ridden off into a peaceful crimson sunset. In response, pundits, talking heads, reporters and various other infotainment personnel are working feverishly to perpetuate America’s collective delusion that we embody integrity, decency, and enlightened values.
---Will Rogers
"It is only in folk tales, children's stories, and the journals of intellectual opinion that power is used wisely and well to destroy evil. The real world teaches very different lessons, and it takes willful and dedicated ignorance to fail to perceive them."
--Noam Chomsky
With the intensity of Dale Earnhardt, Jr vying for victory in the Daytona 500, America’s mainstream media outlets have been racing furiously to imbue the citizenry of the Empire with unusually large doses of heavily choreographed agitprop.
Another unindicted US war criminal has casually ridden off into a peaceful crimson sunset. In response, pundits, talking heads, reporters and various other infotainment personnel are working feverishly to perpetuate America’s collective delusion that we embody integrity, decency, and enlightened values.
The press's worst failure this year
No task is more important for any newspaper than to impart the news convincingly to the people and their government that a war is wrong, futile or, ultimately, lost. The United States has been militarily defeated in Iraq. It has no sane options left. All talk of troop "surges," of the need for a "continuing presence," of the feasibility of training an Iraqi army, of any constructive capacities for the central Iraqi "government" is as hollow as kindred talk in Vietnam in the early 1970s. There is no light, of any sort, at the end of the tunnel. The failure of the major newspapers in 2005 and 2006 to disclose the United States's defeat in Iraq has been as disastrous as the earlier failure to challenge the claims of the Bush administration on Iraq's supposed weapons of mass destruction.
Farewell to our greatest president
Adieu, Gerald Ford! It has always been my view that he was America's greatest president. Transferring the Hippocratic injunction from the medical to the political realm, he did the least possible harm. Under Ford's tranquil hand the nation relaxed after the hectic fevers of the Nixon years. He finally pulled the United States out of Vietnam.
As a visit to the Ford Presidential Library discloses, the largest military adventure available for display was the foolish U.S. response to the capture of the U.S. container ship Mayaguez by the Khmer Rouge on May 12, 1975. As imperial adventures go, and next to the vast graveyards across the planet left by Ford's predecessors and successors, it was small potatoes.
As a visit to the Ford Presidential Library discloses, the largest military adventure available for display was the foolish U.S. response to the capture of the U.S. container ship Mayaguez by the Khmer Rouge on May 12, 1975. As imperial adventures go, and next to the vast graveyards across the planet left by Ford's predecessors and successors, it was small potatoes.
Obama scores as exotic who says nothing
To fully grasp the allure of Barack Obama -- Democrat from Illinois and media sensation -- it helps to start with his two fellow senators from neighboring Indiana.
In 1996, Richard Lugar ran for president as a brainy, issue-oriented moderate and all around decent guy. He said back then that the voters had tired of the mud-throwing and cheap sound bites in Washington. "If they really want shouters and screamers," the dark-suited Lugar said, "then they'll vote for someone else."
Lugar lost the Republican nomination to Bob Dole, who then lost the election to Bill Clinton.
Indiana's junior senator, Democrat Evan Bayh, recently visited New Hampshire to weigh his prospects for a 2008 presidential run. He was flattened by crowds running to see Obama, and dropped out.
What was Obama saying that other centrists would not have? Absolutely nothing.
Obama talked about ending the nastiness in Washington and taking personal responsibility, and that government can't solve all problems -- platitudes emptied of all controversy. If anything, his colleagues from Indiana would surely have offered more exciting commentary.
In 1996, Richard Lugar ran for president as a brainy, issue-oriented moderate and all around decent guy. He said back then that the voters had tired of the mud-throwing and cheap sound bites in Washington. "If they really want shouters and screamers," the dark-suited Lugar said, "then they'll vote for someone else."
Lugar lost the Republican nomination to Bob Dole, who then lost the election to Bill Clinton.
Indiana's junior senator, Democrat Evan Bayh, recently visited New Hampshire to weigh his prospects for a 2008 presidential run. He was flattened by crowds running to see Obama, and dropped out.
What was Obama saying that other centrists would not have? Absolutely nothing.
Obama talked about ending the nastiness in Washington and taking personal responsibility, and that government can't solve all problems -- platitudes emptied of all controversy. If anything, his colleagues from Indiana would surely have offered more exciting commentary.
Announcing the P.U.-litzer Prizes for 2006
Competition has been fierce for the fifteenth annual P.U.-litzer
Prizes.
Many can plausibly lay claim to stinky media performances, but only a few can win a P.U.-litzer. As the judges for this un-coveted award, Jeff Cohen and I have deliberated with due care. (Jeff is the founder of the media watch group FAIR and author of the superb new book “Cable News Confidential: My Misadventures in Corporate Media.”)
And now, the winners of the P.U.-litzer Prizes for 2006:
* “FACT-FREE TRADE” AWARD -- New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman
Many can plausibly lay claim to stinky media performances, but only a few can win a P.U.-litzer. As the judges for this un-coveted award, Jeff Cohen and I have deliberated with due care. (Jeff is the founder of the media watch group FAIR and author of the superb new book “Cable News Confidential: My Misadventures in Corporate Media.”)
And now, the winners of the P.U.-litzer Prizes for 2006:
* “FACT-FREE TRADE” AWARD -- New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman
Ignorant armies
"If somebody proposes that additional troops be sent, if I was still chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, my first question . . . is what mission is it these troops are supposed to accomplish?"
We've been in Iraq how long? Spilled how much blood? Squandered how much treasure? Spread how much toxic waste? Alienated how much of the planet? And even the former secretary of state, who lent his name and dignity to the trumped-up intelligence that made this war possible, doesn't know why we're there.
". . . And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night."
A strain of humanity has been crying out against the cosmic foolishness of war, articulately and futilely, for as long as there have been art and poetry, with the cries increasing in volume and intensity in recent centuries (e.g., Matthew Arnold's "Dover Beach," above, written in 1851) - yet we keep waging slaughter on the same tired, transparent pretexts, mobilizing for short-term advantages and trapping the future in the aftermath.
We've been in Iraq how long? Spilled how much blood? Squandered how much treasure? Spread how much toxic waste? Alienated how much of the planet? And even the former secretary of state, who lent his name and dignity to the trumped-up intelligence that made this war possible, doesn't know why we're there.
". . . And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night."
A strain of humanity has been crying out against the cosmic foolishness of war, articulately and futilely, for as long as there have been art and poetry, with the cries increasing in volume and intensity in recent centuries (e.g., Matthew Arnold's "Dover Beach," above, written in 1851) - yet we keep waging slaughter on the same tired, transparent pretexts, mobilizing for short-term advantages and trapping the future in the aftermath.
Shouting truth to depraved power (and its unwitting accomplices): Stephen Lendman sounds off
I recently had the privilege of conducting a “cyber interview” with one of the preeminent domestic critics of the American Empire. Despite his relatively recent start, Stephen Lendman has rapidly become one of the most ubiquitous and well-respected chroniclers of truth in the alternative media community. Asserting unflinching support for social democracy, Hugo Chavez, and the countless victims of US foreign and domestic policy, Lendman has penned a growing stack of essays assailing the brutality of American Capitalism and the genocidal crimes of unbridled United States militarism.
Recently receiving a well-deserved page on Third World Traveler (1), Stephen Lendman is taking his place amongst the likes of Petras and Chomsky, men he cites as his inspirations.
Here is a glimpse of Stephen and his worldview:
What is your educational background and what type of work did you do in your “former life”?
Recently receiving a well-deserved page on Third World Traveler (1), Stephen Lendman is taking his place amongst the likes of Petras and Chomsky, men he cites as his inspirations.
Here is a glimpse of Stephen and his worldview:
What is your educational background and what type of work did you do in your “former life”?
The GOP, butterflies' wings and the withering of empire: could your climax be the decider? If you don't try, you'll never know
A Global Come-As-You-Are Party
History's Law is that once an empire has shot it's wad, no amount of geo-political Viagra can keep it puissant. Can the GOP help trigger the termination of America's teetering global empire? [ Er, that's Global Orgasm for Peace, not Grand Old Party...although, come to think about it, the G.O.P.'s jingoistic overreach may ironically be accomplishing just that. ] Anyway, you're invited to participate, and this GOP really could be a grand ol' planetary party. Here's why:
History's Law is that once an empire has shot it's wad, no amount of geo-political Viagra can keep it puissant. Can the GOP help trigger the termination of America's teetering global empire? [ Er, that's Global Orgasm for Peace, not Grand Old Party...although, come to think about it, the G.O.P.'s jingoistic overreach may ironically be accomplishing just that. ] Anyway, you're invited to participate, and this GOP really could be a grand ol' planetary party. Here's why: