SEVEN POINTLESS YEARS IN AFGHANISTAN

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY ROBERT SKILDELSKY IN THE GUARDIAN

I couldn't agree more.

America invaded out of a fit of rage and vengeance and a show of power. It never made any sense from the beginning.

Once they got there, they "won" only by exploiting the nasty pieces of work in the Northern Alliance.

But most of the Northern Alliance warlords were not any better than the Taleban in their regard for Western values.

Despite seven years of propaganda for soccer moms in America, the burqua is universally worn outside Kabul, and it is worn by many in Kabul.

The Potemkin village schools are often closed as soon as they are opened. The local warlords do not want them, and the central government cannot even pay the teachers.

You cannot change the basic attitudes and beliefs of millions in a matter of years. It's a fool's idea.

It was all an extreme over-reaction from the beginning.

The threat represented by bin Laden's people (if indeed they even were responsible for 9/11 - a point not proved to this day) could have been handled with a more intelligent set of policies.

It's an absurd nightmare to have dumped so many resources and killed so many people in this country.

And now the maniacs are trying to destabilize Pakistan with their missile attacks in the name of protecting troops who shouldn't be in Afghanistan in the first place.




American achievements in Afghanistan

WE HAVE HOPE, BUT REAL CHANGE IN AMERICA REPRESENTS AN IMMENSE TASK

November 6, 2008

WE HAVE HOPE, BUT REAL CHANGE IN AMERICA REPRESENTS AN IMMENSE TASK

John Chuckman

Already in the press there have been stories of plans to dampen the public’s expectations of Obama. The expectations are undoubtedly beyond being satisfied by any human being.

Obama’s bright face, a keen intelligence at work in every expression, represents the greatest hope for change in America since Franklin Roosevelt. Even Kennedy, with all his gifts, did not come close. After all, Kennedy was a harsh Cold Warrior, a wild risk-taker, and he was connected to some of the most unsavory subcultures in America.

But Obama is the inheritor of one of the bleakest legacies ever in a modern state: the meltdown of Wall Street and its severe international consequences, two costly unresolved wars, war crimes against other countries, and waves of ill-will towards America for its international torture gulag.

All these, plus the problems that have bedevilled the United States for decades, matters like poor health care, the dismal state of public schools, or the immense and pervading corruption of America’s politics, something to which the Bush people made their own contributions, including vote fraud and severe abuse of power, especially by the Vice President.

Bush gave Americans oppressive laws, unprecedented war profiteering, and a tax system now twisted and warped by giveaways to the wealthy. That is not a left-wing view: going back to Jefferson, it was understood that excessive accumulation and inheritance of wealth were dangerous to a republic. The United States has moved towards a society of inherited influence and entitlement, its establishment coming to resemble increasingly the ancien régime of 18th century France.

The Bush excesses largely do not upset the establishment since they were aimed at protecting that very establishment. John McCain, establishment by blood and marriage, dropped his boyish outsider stage act during the campaign, revealing himself unimaginative and unresponsive - indeed a tired, unappetizing serving of Bush leftovers.

And that was deadly to McCain’s hopes. Despite the establishment’s influence, ordinary Americans do once in a while manage to vote against it. Without eight years of Bush incompetence and abuse pushing ordinary Americans to anger and embarrassment, Obama’s victory would not have been possible.

Any effort to correct these problems is against the great weight of America’s establishment, further strengthened by eight years of abusive benefits, always the beneficiaries and keepers of America’s unacknowledged imperialism. Winning a national election is one thing, but turning that victory into a long series of Congressional votes is quite another. All those Congressmen and Senators, in both parties, need constant injections of cash to operate, and they do not get it through the populist mechanisms of Obama’s election campaign. The Congressmen will all face re-election in just two years.

And then there is a political party, Obama’s own, that has almost no genuine purpose left other than opposing Republicans for power, prestige, and patronage. It stands for nothing anymore, and some of its members could easily be interchanged with Republicans. Its voice was not heard against illegal war, against torture, against abuse, or indeed anything important in the last eight years.

Many, perhaps most, modern American presidents achieve little in altering American society, although they may do considerable damage abroad. Bush was an exception in that he did serious damage both at home and abroad, but the circumstances permitting him were unique: blind, insane fear over 9/11. The entire period since that event represents nightmarish over-reaction to a relatively minor threat.

Presidents generally achieve little domestic change because America’s Constitution was deliberately designed to make the office of the president a weak one. An American president with an opposition-filled Congress is a political eunuch, getting neither his appointments nor legislation nor treaties approved. Only in matters concerning disturbances in the empire will he invariably enjoy Congressional support.

Obama’s party will have a majority in the House and the Senate, but he will not have an overwhelming majority. Progress in the Senate can always be stopped by filibuster, and you can only stop filabusters with 60 of the 100 seats, something Obama will not have. Also some of his party’s senators, Lieberman for example, might as well be Republicans, and they will not support a truly progressive agenda.

Modern presidents are able to do damage abroad because the Founding Fathers made the president commander-in-chief of the armed forces. They thought they had effectively divided power and weakened the possibilities for adventures abroad by giving Congress the sole power to declare war, but we’ve seen over the last sixty years America’s wars are no longer declared.

The Founders also never expected the Frankenstein-monster military America maintains today because they did not expect America to become a global imperial power. But most of what the more thoughtful Founders said and wrote has been vitiated by the actual history of the United States, and today we even find a Vice President accepting the view that the President’s powers in such matters are unlimited.

I believe that a man of Obama’s particular intelligence and sensibilities deeply understands the nature of America’s great problems. They are just not subjects you can discuss in an election campaign, especially in the near-imbecile campaigns America seems cursed to fall into, with candidates barking about flag pins or accusations of “buddying up to terrorists” or suitability for military command or, indeed, “the Reds are coming.”

America’s great underlying problem is an overwhelming case of living beyond its means. It reflects the deliberate, corrupting praise of greed (in a grotesque American parody of Adam Smith) coupled with the fantasy that you can have it all and have it now plus the establishment’s arrogance that it is entitled to order the affairs of the planet for its benefit. This is all jumbled together in the advertising slogan, “the American dream.”

The slogan is rooted in America’s unique post-World War II position when no other great industrial power was left standing. America’s comparatively light damage (e.g., suffering roughly ½ of one percent of the world’s deaths and no civilian damage) and its being geared-up for immense arms manufacture allowed it to become the supplier of everything to a war-crippled world, providing economic opportunity to ordinary Americans as no country had done before.

An unskilled American worker could, for a few decades, earn a house, a car, perhaps a boat, and generous vacations. When I worked one summer in the early 1960s as a student in the Chicago steel mills, earning what seemed fabulous amounts, it was because employees with twenty years’ service received thirteen-week vacations. Those days are gone, and things have moved from bad to worse. Real wages have dropped for decades, and competition from abroad defeats industry after industry.

At the same time, American politics avoids the harsh truths of the world’s historic transition towards a place with many competitors, other centers of power, and with reduced opportunity for what Benjamin Franklin called the middling people in America. Talk about re-negotiating NAFTA is as close as we get, but much of that talk is little more than coded language for anti-Mexican racism.

America has been living in recent decades as though its dream slogan were as meaningful as it was in 1955, but much of the prosperity in the last couple of decades was purchased by borrowing to consume beyond the nation’s ability to pay.

Administration after administration has kept the economy “pumped” with borrowing, with easy credit, with unwarranted deregulation, and with doing everything possible to encourage mindless consumption. America’s balance of payments deficit just swells, decade after decade, generating massive total debt that erodes the real economy, a disease generated solely by an insatiable demand for things America cannot afford.

Wars of the kind America has generated for half a century may be seen as just another form of consumption, the most wasteful conceivable, running assembly lines flat out and printing money and enlisting young people to destroy things on a gigantic scale, generally making little meaningful change in world affairs.

So, imagine being the first black man elected president, a young man without family wealth and influence, but a man who understands problems of which a Bush is not even aware. You are faced with needed fundamental change in America, being elected out of years of sheer despair over Bush, enjoying the rare blessing of a Congress not controlled by opposition. You nevertheless are opposed by an extremely powerful establishment, hostile to most change. You are also opposed by the limited understanding of many ordinary Americans. Do you really try to do what you may have a unique opportunity to attempt?

If you do try, can you survive the assaults of America’s establishment, as dark and ruthless as the fabled Borgias of Renaissance Italy? They can make you look terrible, as they did Clinton, and they can even make you disappear, as they did Kennedy. Change is dangerous stuff in a country like America.

ON THE SUPPOSED POLITICAL WISDOM OF JOHN UPDIKE

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY OLIVER KAMM IN THE TIMES

I think you quite wrong in your regard for Updike's political patter, at least if these samples are typical (I've not been a follower of his thought, regarding him as a sophisticated entertainer rather than a great writer).

His attitudes about war are all too typical in America and fairly trivial by any standard. His comparison with sex is nothing less than slightly ridiculous, if not perverted.

He is a good writer, at least with a certain limited standard of judgment, a technician, a standard with which a master like Graham Greene would not agree.

But, in any event, being a good writer is no protection against political or other kinds of stupidity or prejudice.

John Steinbeck was a perfect example. And Ezra Pound. Martin Amis. We have the same phenomenon in all the arts. How about Wagner? And many, many others.

A RIDICULOUS BOOK ABOUT THE "BATTLE" THAT "SAVED" AFGHANISTAN

RESPONSE TO AN INTERVIEW ON THE CBC PROGRAM THE CURRENT WITH JOURNALIST CHRIS WATTIE

With no disrespect for Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan, Chris Wattie's words were foolish, inaccurate, and little more than propaganda.

First, a fight involving "hundreds" of soldiers should never be called a "battle.” The use of the word "battle" simply misrepresents and exaggerates the importance of such events.

Second, calling the Taleban "not very good" shows no understanding and a hell of a lot of American-style arrogance.

Consider the facts of the match-up.

The Taleban face soldiers with Kevlar armor, late-model automatic weapons, sophisticated artillery support, jet-fighter support, armored vehicles, radios, computers, satellite guidance, and a host of other kit. They are well-fed and fit.

Oh, yes, they may have some dud grenades and a jammed piece of artillery here and there, but they are equipped with overwhelming superiority.

The Taleban themselves typically have weapons like AK-47s (a 60-year old weapon) and rifle grenades. They have no body armor, no armored vehicles, and no support. They are poor and not well-fed. They don’t even have boots.

If you consider the facts, rather than the comic-book notions of Mr. Wattie, the Taleban are, in fact, incredible soldiers. I'm afraid most Americans, and most Canadians, wouldn't even show up for battle if equipped as these fierce men are.

As for "saving" Afghanistan, well, you do have to ask, saved for whom?

The Taleban live there and represent a substantial portion of the population. We don't like their values, but the Northern Alliance warlords America has used and put into power are no different. We are serving the interests of armed occupiers, working for American interests even Americans do not understand.

Then we have to ask, what do you mean by "saved"?

The latest study done for Bush, suppressed during the election, calls the situation in Afghanistan "grim." Senior British officers have called the effort hopeless. Former head of MI5, Dame Rimmington, has called America's entire post 9/11 operations "over-reaction." No one else in NATO wants to send military support of substance to Afghanistan. If there were a meaningful purpose there, would anyone have to preach to these countries? Of course not.

The Potemkin-village schools that are opened by us can’t even be kept open. The teachers cannot be paid. There is no effective central government. Afghanistan is not even a country in the sense that we understand. The Northern Alliance running the provinces, while glad to get some money from us, have no more interest in changing the culture than the Taleban.

And we are to spend on the order of 18 billion dollars for this?

We would have done more good just dropping the money from planes on the people. Afghanistan needs decades of economic growth before the things we don’t like about it can possibly change. Just consider how long it has taken just to change the smoking habit in our country. How much longer their centuries-old habits and culture?







Last photo: Unchanging scene through most of Afghanistan.

REFLECTIONS ON THE PALIN DEBATE

RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY CLIVE CROOK IN THE FINANCIAL TIMES

What did they do to Palin?

Why, of course, they prepared her like a goose being prepared for pate de foie gras.

She was force-fed ghost-written one-liners for days.

But all they got from her was Spam (the canned meat).

Sarah Palin is simply not capable of anything more, and I am surprised you cannot see that, Clive.

Her very tone and the things she chooses to focus on – “surrender,” for example, shades of the Alamo - tell anyone who doesn't have a tin ear that the woman is close to feeble-minded.

Unlike some, I never expected her to "melt down." She's too brassy for that.

But she cannot open her mouth in a sequence of answers without revealing what she is.

And what she is is someone utterly unfit for high office.

Selecting her is a terrible reflection, too, on McCain's character: anything to cap his career with the presidency, anything to outdo his admiral father.

Well, Obama is going to win and win big.

The Times, London, reported yesterday that McCain's operation has pulled up stakes in Michigan, stopping all advertising there.

It has to mean they have terrible private polls, and Michigan is a key state to McCain's strategy.

There is also the good news that deeply concerned Republicans are secretly meeting in Florida out of worry about tumbling polls.

It's all good news to reasonable people.

God, even America cannot elect that dud pair after 8 years of disastrous incompetence.

THE SILLY NOTION THAT SARAH PALIN MAY ACTUALLY PROVE MORE FORMIDABLE IN TONIGHT'S DEBATE THAN EXPECTED

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY MICHAEL TOMASKY IN THE GUARDIAN

Palin is said to have done fairly well in debates for governor in 2006.

But that must be taken with a few grains of salt.

Alaska has a total population about equal to the town of Charlotte, North Carolina, somewhat bigger than greater Hamilton, Ontario.

Moreover, Alaska tends to be a haven for drop-out, militia, and go-it-alone types.

And don't forget, local politics anywhere tends to draw more parochial and inadequate people than talented ones.

For all these reasons, the pool of human resources involved in local politics in a place like Alaska is extremely shallow.

Just the fact that a semi-retarded person like Sarah Palin was elected truly does say it all.

Oh, she can sure yell and growl and wave her arms - she would have reached the limits of her talents as captain of a cheerleading team - but she can't even name the newspapers she says she reads.

Is that debating? Whether it can be judged worthwhile, I guess all depends on the make-up the audience.

The trailer-park and revival-meeting crowds will see Sarah as a champion.

As for Biden, he is intelligent, but so is John Edwards.

Like Edwards, Biden has always impressed me as a syrupy phony, with the personality of an egomaniac. He is also rather chameleon-like, often changing what he supports between entering and leaving a room.

So he starts with a certain lack of sympathy for himself, and if he is not very careful with his aggressive temperament, he may actually create sympathy for the mother-type, no matter how ridiculous her words.

NONSENSE ABOUT ATTACKS ON SARAH PALIN BEING ANTI-FEMINIST

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY SIMON TISDALL IN THE GUARDIAN

This is ridiculous, taken right from the official hand-out of Republican talking points.

No one has been less sympathetic to feminism than American conservatives.

Just look at a group like the Southern Baptists, the largest denomination of Protestants in America.

Their official, published view is that the man is head of the family and the wife should obey him!

The Mormons, the Pentecostals and others have similar views. So do conservative Jews and Catholics.

And nothing has happened to change that fact.

And Palin comes right out of this tradition.

Just because she does not believe in abortion and is fortunate enough to have support resources to have a large family while pursuing politics does not make her a feminist.

And those supporting her are not feminist types either. Good God, John McCain is old skirt-chaser and a man who left his crippled wife when he came back from Vietnam.

He only picked her to cement the support of the Religious Right which knows perfectly well that he is a genuinely irreligious man.

Of course, there was the outside chance she would help him pick up disaffected Hillary supporters, but it seems there will be almost none of that.

NEW BOOK BY BIKER-GIRLFRIEND OF BERNIER TO HAVE SMALL IMPACT ON ELECTION

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY LAWRENCE MARTIN IN TORONTO'S GLOBE AND MAIL

Big, jovial wooden-head types have always been popular in rural or small-town Quebec. So, Bernier's seat would be safe in any event.

But I wouldn't go so far as you in dismissing the book's impact.

There has been a steady drip-drip, like a leaky tap, a kind of slow, mounting Chinese water torture, around the Conservatives in Quebec.

This - just as Bob Rae's revelation of Harper's purloined speech reminded voters that Harper wanted to be in Iraq - reminds Quebeckers that Bernier opposes the useless effort in Afghanistan.

Also, since the author is herself a Quebecker, her tales of his laughing at constituents and frequently expressed contempt for Harper may have some impact.





Bernier and Couillard in happier days

A RETIRED CANADIAN POLITICIAN'S VIEWS ON AMERICA'S "INVESTING MORE IN THEIR POLITICIANS"

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY PRESTON MANNING IN TORONTO'S GLOBE AND MAIL

Preston Manning sets a new record for meaningless, delusional commentary.

"Americans invest more time, energy and money than Canadians do in preparing the politicians and supporting casts for their roles and responsibilities on the political stage."

Investment in politicians in America?

Palin? Bush? Cheney? Lott? DeLay? Thurmond? Agnew? Quayle? Gingrich? Hastert? Rumsfeld? Dole?

Preston Manning just has to be kidding, or we can only conclude he's gone completely off his rocker.

The only investment these folks and scores of others have received is tons of money from right-wing lobbies to promote themselves.

They are all uninformed and parochial, but they are/were immensely well financed to promote uninformed, parochial, and even hateful views.

Mr Manning refers to America's “think tanks.” Good Lord, save Canada from that fate!

The Heritage Foundation, The American Enterprise Institute, and a number of others are nothing but well-financed propaganda mills posing as quasi-academic institutions.

Their "fellows" are mostly retired right-wing hacks having been given sinecures. They remind me of actors in white lab coats on television ads pretending to be doctors.

A while back I checked the Internet site of one of the largest of these to get an e-mail address for one of their "fellows" who had been on CBC Radio promoting hostilities towards Venezuela, in the process making an ignorant claim that Hitler was also, like Chavez, elected.

The truth is Hitler's party's high-water mark in elections was 37%. He was appointed Chancellor by the ancient President von Hindenburg in a desperate hope of restoring a civil peace that Hitler's very party helped destroy. An "historian" should know better, but not at one of these crummy joints.

My point is that in looking for an e-mail on the fancy site of this "think tank," the opening page had a big banner singing the praises of Rush Limbaugh. Yes, the poisonous frat boy who gets to spew hate year after year for millions of dollars. Some serious institution. Some investment.

WIKIPEDIA

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY DANIEL FINKELSTEIN IN THE TIMES

Wikipedia is a wonderful creation, but no thoughtful person regards it as definitive, but then no thoughtful person regards any one book or reference as definitive.

In a sense, since all of us are constantly changing or revealing hitherto unknown aspects of ourselves, the changes (discounting malicious ones) made to Wikipedia only reflect this reality.

As an avid reader of biography and history, I know there are an amazing number of errors or poor interpretations that creep into books, even prestigious books.

Also, the discovery of new material - as a stash of letters or DNA testing on remains - often changes the understanding of a previously accepted historical interpretation.

Just like the physical nature of light, behaving both as particles and waves, our history is subject to different understandings from different perspectives. And just like particles under the Uncertainty Principle, we can never fix the precise nature of an event. Merely observing it, changes its properties.

Like Einstein, my temperament would be more at ease if the Creator did not play with dice, but we know now that clearly He/She does.

POLITICS AND OLIGOPOLIES

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY DANIEL FINKELSTEIN IN THE TIMES

There will be no such era.

Most completive systems tend over time to reduce to oligarchies or oligopolies. Cars, breakfast cereal, pop, cosmetics, etc. The industries often start with a great many companies doing things very differently, but over not too many decades that changes.

Just look at the shelves of your supermarket where two or three companies make most of the products in any general category, despite all the names and packaging.

Advertising is one of the things that differentiates these products, advertising that plays on minor differences of scent or color or herbs.

We get choice, but not much in the way of extreme choices. New products are lucky to be boutique items given a tiny shelf space.

Politics is no different.

Indeed, advertising only becomes more important every year, raising the cost of politics and reducing the genuine information offered.

If you know a way to turn this around, you will be a hero to democratic values, but pardon my skepticism.

TAKING CANADA'S NDP PARTY SERIOUSLY IN THE CURRENT ELECTION

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY JEFFERY SIMPSON IN TORONTO'S GLOBE AND MAIL

Jeffery Simpson,

This is all well put and true, but you are missing something here.

People are upset with the Liberals for two reasons.

One, a totally predictable reason I pointed out long before the election, is that Dion, a thoroughly decent man, has been stubbornly determined to repeat John Tory's principled-but inappropriate stand on religious-school funding.

Dion's Don Quixote act is compounded by the fact that the immense pressures and quick pace of a political campaign is definitely not the time to bring forward a major, complex new policy.

Campaigns are about slogans, one-liners, quips, not complex analysis of policy proposals. I wish it were otherwise - then we would have meaningful public debates on important matters - but it is not, and going against that reality is truly the stuff of Don Quixote.

The other reason, and for me the more important one, is that the Liberals are responsible for keeping that living corpse, Harper, at center stage long enough for a number of people to get used to the reality. People do get used to almost anything if it is around long enough.

The Liberals cannot put this blame on the NDP, they are the opposition.

Perhaps it could not be otherwise after the fiasco of Paul Martin who tore the party apart over his personal ambition and who proved an inept figure when troubles hit. No matter what else anyone may say of Chretien, he was the most gifted politician of his era. He had a wonderful touch and, on most big questions, he stood on the right side.

There are many things about the NPD I do not like. Many of them as types remind me of earnest bird watchers or boy scouts. There is too much over-used boiler plate language from them also, striking my ears like dreary slogans from officialdom.

Jack Layton does largely manage to escape both of these unappealing NDP characteristics - shared even by his very able wife - except when he keeps repeating "the kitchen table rather than the board room table." Ugh.

I do admire Jack for his position on Afghanistan, admire him strongly. He is right, Harper and the weasel-like (on this matter) Liberals are wrong. We are killing our soldiers, and more importantly, occupying someone else’s country, for no good reason.

Just being there also begins to color our society with the tones of the ugly, divisive jingoism of America: support our troops, yellow ribbons, and other non-think about a deadly and unethical situation.

We are only there because the previous government felt “we owed one to the Pentagon.” But the Pentagon itself does not truly know why it is there nor does it have any genuine idea of when it should leave. A recent report is being kept secret until after the American election which paints the situation as “grim.”

It is grim because America is trying to do what cannot be done, change the thinking and habits of an ancient and backward society. They would have been much further ahead dropping dollar bills rather than bombs, but that just ain’t the American way.

If America insists on insane behavior – just as with their mortgage-lending structure – there is no reason Canada must follow.

Jack also has stood out on a couple of other issues, including the Conservatives’ frequently unethical behavior.

Jack offers a good place to park a protest vote, and that’s just what many are doing.




Anyone but Harper

SOME BASIC PROBLEMS IN EDUCATION

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY MARGARET WENTE IN TORONTO'S GLOBE AND MAIL

This piece demonstrates the kind of subject matter Ms. Wente should stick to.

She has written many ridiculous - indeed downright dumb and even vicious - columns, especially where international affairs or public policy on human rights are concerned.

But here she offers legitimate considerations.

I suggest it is not just "educational romanticism" that is responsible for the mediocrity and poor performance (for many) of our schools.

It is the American wish-fulfillment dream of everyone being the same, virtually interchangeable in many or most things. It derives from Puritan notions which still drive a lot of attitudes in America.

The notion also seems to be an effort at psychological compensation for the very harsh, and growing, inequalities of every kind in America - the courts, the economy, primary education, higher education, and more.

Unfortunately, these American notions have been seeping into Canada, almost imperceptibly at any time, by osmosis as it were.

Also, the public education establishment is subject to more fads and whims than almost any institution we have. One year, homework is great; another year, homework is an unnecessary burden. One year, there is zero tolerance for violence; another year, there is zero tolerance is gone.

Great sums are wasted on “programs” for ugly matters like bullying, when the only genuine solution is the people on site – teachers and administrators – taking responsibility and actively intervening in their communities, the schools.

The math curriculum is needlessly complex, yet students, even in grade five, do not know the fundamental building block of their times tables.

It is all avoidance of responsibility, buck-passing, and butt-covering, always with plenty of politically-correct words, and it is also, to a considerable extent, a comparatively recent import from the Great Land of Victims All, America.

People certainly are not the same, but they all deserve genuine, meaningful consideration from our schools and other institutions, and for many that means things like good training in trades or even good training in social behaviors. We are not doing the job.

WHOM TO BLAME FOR AMERICA'S ECONOMIC CRISIS ?

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY CLIVE CROOK IN THE FINANCIAL TIMES

Clive Crook,

You should know the answer to this.

No one is ever responsible for anything in the United States. Americans are all victims.

America's divided government has proved perfectly suited to the attitudes and ethics that have evolved there. You cannot fix responsibility on anyone for anything.

I think the perfect illustration of this is American behavior under some of its free trade treaties.

Treaties are supposedly on a higher level so that local laws do not interfere in international affairs.

But in fact the opposite happens all the time. A set of national trade laws, highly flexible to the need and thus effectively protectionist, allow local interests and politics to override international treaties regularly.

And with whom does a treaty partner deal when this happens? It is never clear, but in the end those local political interests will be satisfied before there is a resolution.

Much of the governing of the United States works this way. It is a poorly governed country because Americans are a people who essentially do not like government.

The real source of all these economic problems is a people living beyond its means, of wanting it all and wanting it now, and a set of governments which accommodate their doing exactly that.

HOW AMERICANS REACT TO CRITICISM OF THEIR ELECTIONS

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY JONATHAN FREEDLAND IN THE GUARDIAN

Yes, absolutely, Jonathan Freedland.

What is so annoying about American attitudes is the juxtaposition of two inconsistent, obnoxious attitudes at the same time.

The first obnoxious attitude is America’s easy assumption of the country's right to interfere or invade anywhere on the planet it chooses.

This “right” is always defined in the context of “defense”: after all, the world's military Frankenstein monster is called the Department of Defense.

But a long trail of sad and murderous adventures since WWII has absolutely nothing to do with what anyone else understands as defense. Quite the opposite in many cases, including the overthrow of a number of democratic governments, these are works of bullying and even tyranny.

The other attitude resting comfortably in the American mind with the above is one of: "Butt out, mind your own business about our election!"

There seems to be a complete disconnect between these two things.

The great American historian, Page Smith, wrote many times of a form of schizophrenia in American history. He was using the word in a now-outdated sense, but he was precisely right in his essential meaning.

Effectively, Americans, many of them, seem to think it is just fine for the voters of America to behave as a global aristocracy, comfortable with their own right to voting and then acting as a tyrant towards many.

Those who vote there represent something on the order of 1% of the world's population - the same percentage as the Communist party of China to its people, or as the privileged British who could vote for Parliament in the mid-eighteenth century - and they feel entitled to manage the affairs of billions of others.

Everyone in the world has the right to speak out about the anti-democratic and anti-human rights behaviors of America, a country whose government regularly pompously criticizes the state of democracy and human rights abroad, even maintaining lists of those considered most objectionable and grading them like a purse-lipped old school marm would.

Americans who resort to calling their critics anti-American are behaving exactly as the Israelis who call those who criticize Israel’s abominable record of human rights anti-Semites.

Interestingly, Israel, in all its unfair behavior, has the United States as patron.




An American Marine stepping over bodies at Fallujah

AS ROME BURNS, HOPES FOR A WEDDING IN WHITE

September 29, 2008

AS ROME BURNS, HOPES FOR A WEDDING IN WHITE

John Chuckman

It is reliably reported (The Times, London) that the McCain camp is expecting a miracle, its expectations rather resembling those of a millenarianist group camping on a hillside awaiting The Second Coming.

The anticipated miracle is the shotgun marriage of Sarah Palin’s pregnant seventeen-year old and her eighteen-year old redneck (his description, not mine) boyfriend (aka, in polite Republican circles, as her “fiancé”) coming just in time to save a faltering political campaign.

For those who don’t know America well, big white weddings with all the trimmings remain - despite the social and sexual upheavals of the last half century, despite wars and threats of wars - an important part of popular culture.

A couple may have been living together for years, may even have had kids, but when “the guy” finally gets around to “popping the question,” the world suddenly reverts to 1953, Ike and Mamie are in the White House, and Spot the dog is every child’s favorite literary character.

The couple may not have a dime to spare after trips to Disneyland and a second air-conditioned SUV, but the parents are paying (an obligation often requiring a second mortgage), so who cares? Planning begins immediately on throwing away $20,000 or more in one afternoon. After all, marriage is once-in-a-lifetime, even though at least half of all American marriages end in divorce.

Well, it is by appealing to such boiled-frosting, satin-ribbon fantasies that Republicans hope to push John McCain over the campaign finish line and into the White House.

The last week or two of the campaign would be ideal timing, surrounding John McCain and Sarah Palin in a fluffy, sugar-sprinkled haze. Imagine voting against the distinguished-looking old man in a tuxedo on the front pew with the beneficent countenance of a proud grandfather? Or the mother, gowned rather than in mukluks and hunting gear, eyes moist, watching “her baby” march to the alter?

Clearly, this is not matter on which an election anywhere should rest, much less in the world’s most powerful country, one staggering through war and financial crisis. Indeed, the Republican campaign, as it well deserves, has faltered on the merits. McCain is a tired old man with a sour temperament and a narcissistic personality who picked as his sidekick a person who would have reached the limits of her talent as captain of a cheerleading squad. Although certainly not the limits of her ambitions, but isn’t that what America is about, your reach exceeding your talent?

The hope may not be without some basis. The event, if it happens and happens in time, will of course be exploited to the limits of broadcasting and publishing and advertising. Money will flow from the same immensely rich sources that accomplished such past miracles as a nose-job for a witness against Bill Clinton. Theirs will undoubtedly be the most publicized and costly wedding in Alaska’s history.

Imagine the glamor with heads of state attending, all those with whom Sarah Palin has recently had five-minute appointments? Perhaps we’ll see Henry Kissinger himself, hobbling to his seat, resembling nothing so much as Doctor Strangelove taking faltering steps from his wheelchair, declaring to his Fuehrer that he can walk.

Perhaps there’ll be the president of that wealthy narco-state, Columbia, surrounded by bodyguards and arriving in an armored limousine.

Perhaps, too, the Mayor of Kabul, better known in America as the President of Afghanistan, will be there, exotic in his flowing robes.

And I’m sure there will be a large delegation from across the Bering Sea, Russian officials familiar with Sarah Palin, her just-over-the-backyard-fence neighbors as it were.

The sight of the nervous young woman marching up the aisle will remind many of the young Princess Diana. The swollen tummy might detract from the fantasy, but that can be artfully disguised by a good dressmaker. In the haze of dewy-eyed sentimentality, few will ask about the judgment of a mother who pushes a seventeen-year old girl into marriage and motherhood, or of just how the sweet young Diana turned out.

And the same with the spiffed-up boyfriend who only wanted to play hockey and “hang-out” and find more girls like Sarah’s daughter at parties. He will look handsome and almost iconic, shaved and showered in his tuxedo. Few will reflect on the inappropriate pressure brought to bear on this young man by the governor of his state, or, indeed, what kind of a husband someone with his attitudes might be.

But if Sarah and her daughter cannot set this event before the election date, its importance will decline considerably, the free nose-job donors fading away, the publicity evaporating, the international guests sending regrets, and the Palins in need of a second mortgage.




A romantic wedding cake "topper"

SARAH PALIN: BUSH DEJA VU ALL OVER AGAIN

September 16, 2008

SARAH PALIN: BUSH DÉJÀ VU ALL OVER AGAIN

John Chuckman

Sarah Palin is not qualified for high office, and she has proved it in two interviews, if you were listening, but it was equally clear eight years ago that George Bush was not qualified for high office, and many Americans were not listening.

The excitement generated around Palin is just as though America were again embracing George Bush – a younger, prettier version of the most incompetent person ever to hold the office of president, a judgment based on his actual achievement and not just my exceedingly low opinion of him.

She is articulate, unlike Bush, but then so are vacuum-cleaner salesman and televangelists. Being articulate is tool of leadership, but it is not the same thing as leadership. The substance of what you say matters immensely more than how smoothly you say it, especially when you might lead a powerful nation which just happens to be the center of a vast international empire.

It seemed painfully clear during the 2000 election debates that Al Gore avoided attacking Bush. I don’t mean attacking him personally, I mean attacking lame statements and explanations which sounded as though they were coming from a not especially-bright eighth-grader repeating lines from an article in Senior Scholastic.

I just could not believe Gore never pounced, and I think he lost the election then (of course, Bush was not honestly elected, but it is only in close votes that fraud works, and the vote did not have to be close). I thought at the time Gore feared looking aggressive, perhaps owing to his assessment of public opinion following the ghastly circus of the Clinton impeachment. Clinton did not deserve to be impeached, but he proved to us all that he was both sleazy and a practiced liar, and there could have been no circus without his behavior first.

I don’t know, but we have something of a repeat performance coming up. Joe Biden is an aggressive (if insincere and inconsistent) arguer, and he is going to be put up against this physically-attractive super-mom who drags along her entire extended family to political events, lined up like the world’s largest set of Russian matryoshka dolls. Does anyone believe he will dare be aggressive? He will be in an untenable position: damned if does and damned if he doesn’t.

In one of her recent interviews, Palin bragged of being the Governor of a state that produces 20% of America's energy. Well, the fact is that Alaska is responsible for less than 4% of America's energy.

That is quite a considerable difference, and it is in a subject one might think she had at least a basic grasp of facts.

Palin, like George Bush, strongly advocates offshore drilling in the sensitive environment of the North and seems to hold her belief for no other reason than that Americans use lots of energy. It is the economic/environmental perspective of a good deal suburban America where middle-class couples both work, have two- and three-car garages, and commute considerable distances to jobs that often involve more than eight hours a day, but is it a view that is sustainable in a world steeply-rising oil prices, a rapidly changing climate, and the explosive growth of competitors like China and India? The simple answer is no.

On the world controversy of Iran’s nuclear program, after some furry-mouthed generalities, Palin said that we should not be second-guessing what Israel has to do for its defense, which is nothing more than a self-serving avoidance of the crucial, central issue involved here.

The fact is that if Israel attacks Iran – something which earlier had seemed settled by an American veto but which now is less clear, especially with the just announced sale of a thousand new “bunker-busting” bombs to Israel – Iran will respond, and it has a legitimate right to do so in its own defense, almost certainly with missiles. Iran’s missiles are not Saddam’s pathetic old SCUDS but pretty accurate medium-range ballistic missiles.

Would the U.S. be instantly sucked into a war with Iran, something which is entirely against the interests of the United States, and indeed against the interests of the entire world with Iran’s ability easily to choke off the Straits of Hormuz?

And is there no issue here over Israel’s self-declared right, by invoking some vaguely-defined need to protect its existence, to do whatever it wants concerning the internal affairs of other countries, even places a thousand miles away?

Acceptance of that as a working principle in international affairs truly means an endlessly chaotic world with no accepted rules. After all, every aggressor in history believed that he was protecting his country’s existence or some other vital interest. Hitler was very good at making such points, twisting the truth, and even using eloquent words about peace.

We have the strongest possible evidence that Iran gave up its weapons program several years ago. Is Israel to be permitted to use American-supplied weapons to attack Iran (remembering these weapons come with supposedly iron-clad agreements that they are not to be used for aggression), a nation which has not engaged in any hostilities against Israel, just because Israel claims it does not believe that intelligence while not offering the world one scrap of proof for its doubt?

As to the business of Palin’s casually discussing the possible need for war with Russia, it is the stuff of nightmares. The woman has no idea what she is talking about. It very much reminded me of Dan Quayle blubbering about ICBM throw-weights, a term he memorized to toss around for impressing the weak-minded, but her talk, while equally stupid, was infinitely more dangerous.

It is not possible for anyone to take on Russia with conventional forces. Despite its relative decline, Russia still has awesome conventional armed forces, as it so clearly showed in Georgia after Georgia's foolish attack on its former province (which was conducted against confidential American advice). Russia mopped them up in a few days and could easily have rolled over the entire country despite Georgia’s American-supplied new armaments.

Even Russia’s navy, weak by American standards, nevertheless is equipped with weapons over which American admirals have nightmares: for example, the Sunfire sea-to-sea missiles against which there is no effective defense. These missiles spiral onto targets in an unpredictable fashion at speeds around Mach 3 to deliver a devastating punch. America’s entire fleet of aircraft carriers could be sunk in hours.

The Russians have also demonstrated new technologies for submarine warfare. A Chinese submarine, equipped with some of this, stunned the Pentagon not long ago, when it silently surfaced in the middle of a task force conducting exercises related to Taiwan. This was unprecedented because carrier task forces maintain electromagnetic “bubbles” around themselves with a battery of detection devices, extending far into the air and under the sea.

So what is the alternative to conventional war? It is the war in which the United States and Russia cease to exist. Russia has some of the most accurate and defense-evading capable missiles in the world. America’s primitive efforts at missile defense – not one successful test in which the incoming warhead was not marked by a strong radio homing beacon plus a number of unsuccessful tests - do not stand a chance under conditions of a full Russian attack. The sheer number and size of warheads, the many decoys, new stealth technology, plus other technologies of avoidance mean the certain destruction of the United States.

Does any clear-thinking and sane person want someone who casually talks of war with Russia anywhere near the White House?

And what of Palin’s references, more than once, to the fact that Russia is within view of some Alaskans? Is that supposed to mean she is familiar with Russian affairs? All eleven time zones of them? The observation literally is meaningless, a Dan Quayle-like observation, a complete non sequitur to any meaningful question about Russia and relations with that country.

Here's a colossally ignorant view of Palin’s: she believes in a connection between 9/11 and Iraq. Even Bush knows that is nonsense because he put forward the lies that made the war he wanted for other reasons possible.

Saddam, like all absolute rulers, had no use for terrorists or underground movements of any kind. The safest place to be with regard to terror or guerilla movements is in an absolute state, something George Bush even understands since he has greatly shifted the United States in that direction. The old Soviet Union had no problems with terrorists or guerillas, and neither did Saddam.

Saddam also was a secularist and had no use for extreme Muslims. He was known to intensely dislike Osama bin Laden. Incidentally, women were better off, freer of ancient restrictions, in Saddam’s Iraq than they were in any other part of the Arab world.

If there were even one shed of evidence of a connection between Iraq and 9/11 – not the stupidly forged documents we saw before the invasion – it would have been printed and broadcast in every corner of the earth by the Bush/Cheney government, which has spent immense amounts trying to convince people of many instances of nonsense.

After all, that’s how they were caught red-handed exposing the CIA wife of a distinguished Republican former ambassador who refused to give credibility to what he knew was forgery, Theirs was an utterly wrong act which only showed how far these ugly men would go to have their way.

Sarah Palin seems made of just such stuff. She is uninformed combined with being a control-freak, something she has demonstrated many times already in a brief career, from trying to dismiss her brother-in-law from his state police job – the e-mails released show that much even if they prove nothing further - to dragging her daughter’s poor (self-described) redneck boyfriend to the convention, a boy who (again according to his own words) wanted nothing to do with babies but was scrubbed up, dumped into a new suit, and introduced to everyone as her daughter’s “fiancé.” Imagine the pressure placed on this young man by the governor of his state?

I think one of the most revealing aspects of Palin’s experience is her education. Here again there is a strong parallel with Bush, who only managed to be accepted and graduate because of his “legacy” status from a wealthy and influential family. No thinking person believes Bush could have been accepted by Ivy League institutions on his own merit, much less graduate from them.

Palin’s experience was different as to details but leads to similar reflections on her abilities. Palin took six years in five different universities in several states to earn a bachelor’s in communications, a considerably less than intellectually-taxing subject. Her records are confidential, and the various institutions will not even discuss the reasons for her many transfers.

Palin’s comparison of herself, during her convention speech, to Harry Truman was inaccurate and deceptive. Yes, they both came from small places, but Truman, before being called as FDR’s candidate for vice president, had spent ten years in the U.S. Senate, was associated with a powerful political machine in Missouri, and had taken a very prominent role in war-related Senate Committee work. Palin was briefly mayor of a town the size of Andy Griffith’s Mayberry and has two years as Governor of a remote state whose entire population is almost identical to that of Charlotte, North Carolina.

Like Bush, Palin is a dangerous person – uninformed, poorly educated, aggressive, deeply ideological, and with extreme religious beliefs. She was placed where she is by a tired-looking man, one treated for cancer four times, who just desperately wants to cap his career with the title president, a man who has no ethical qualms about how he achieves what he wants.

MALCOLM X

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY DANIEL FINKLESTEIN IN THE TIMES

Daniel, all true but rather beside the point.

Much of what you wrote could be written of other figures, including certainly George Bush.

There is symbolism in historical figures you miss entirely, and Malcolm actually struck fear into the American establishment.

That meant a great deal to blacks at the time, a time that saw the beginnings of the black-power movement.

I remember seeing him in a live interview, and his words sent a chill through you. He was both impressive and frightening at the same time.

That fact is why he has been called by American blacks their black prince.

I am surprised you don't appreciate that historical figures often do not achieve anything but psychological impact.

Remember, in America, Billy the Kid (a psychopathic killer), John Dillinger (a bank robber), and General Custer (a mass murderer and rotten general) are all historical figures of at least some note.

I could provide quite a list, but those make the point.

FUNDAMENTALISTS ON HEAVEN

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY OLIVER KAMM IN THE TIMES

I've love the fundamentalist idea of heaven.

Imaging six trillion years of listening to the likes of Jerry Falwell, Jimmy Swaggert, and Oral Roberts blubbering and throwing beads of sweat and saliva, pleading for higher collections?

Six trillion years of Tammy Faye Bakker warbling and trembling with her make-up running down her cheeks and pee running down her legs?

Six trillion years of George Bush droning in words that make a large number of eight-year olds seem remarkably articulate?

But six trillion years would mean, in the words of a rather beautiful old hymn, that "we'd only just begun."

By the way, Sarah Palin fans, did you see her impressive first interview on television or read it?

It was a disaster. The woman displayed only ignorance and belligerence.

It might be explained by a fact few may be aware of.

Sarah took six years, at five different colleges in several states, to get her bachelor's degree.

And newsmen have found the records at these institutions closed to examination.

The world needs this after eight years of a certified moron?

LIPSTICK ON A PIG

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY CLIVE CROOK IN THE FINANCIAL TIMES

It just does not get sillier than this series of events.

"Lipstick on a pig" is an issue in the leadership race for the world's global power, a power currently engaged in two and a half wars and with elements of its economy failing?

I guess, yes, when you consider nonsense like whether or not you wear a flag pin having been an issue.

Even on its own absurdly trivial terms, this makes no sense.

Palin connected pit bulls and lipstick, but pigs and lipstick are somehow off-limits?

Did anyone see Palin's first interview, or read it?

No wonder they want to make an issue of pigs and lipstick. The woman is frighteningly uninformed.

Many of her supporters may not be aware that Sarah took six years at five different colleges in several states to a get a bachelor's degree.

Newsmen have discovered her academic records have been blocked from examination in all cases.

Now there is an issue, after eight years of government by a certified moron.

It will surely take America another century to become a civilized, sensible place.

BUSH REPORTED TO HAVE APPROVED ATTACKS BY AMERICAN GROUND TROOPS IN PAKISTAN

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN IN THE NEW YORK TIMES

This is shameful and idiotic.

America just regards the borders and laws of others as meaningless.

You have manipulated political affairs in Pakistan to get rid of Musharraf who stood in the way of this kind of thing.

Now you have a compliant leader, the third member of the Bhutto clan to rule (some democracy).

Has anyone ever just stopped and asked what you are even doing in Afghanistan, other than vengeance?

You cannot possibly re-make the customs and traditions of a country of 25 million and stuck in the 14th century. It's a mindless idea.

So now in the midst of your delusional quest - Don Quixote with cluster bombs - you are well on your way to creating another Cambodia by de-stabilizing Pakistan.

MORE ON DEMOCRATS NEEDING TO BE RESPECTFUL

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY CLIVE CROOK IN THE FINANCIAL TIMES

Well, Clive Crook, again you miss the mark, but you’ve said one definitely true thing:

“Obviously I am moving in the wrong circles, but the metropolitan liberal, in my experience, regards overt religious identity as vulgar, and evangelical Christianity as an infallible marker of mental retardation. Flag-waving patriotism is seen as a joke and an embarrassment.”

These things you regard as contemptuous views are simply truths.

But ask yourself, why is it necessary to say anything about religious beliefs in an election?

The answer is simple: because the Religious Right insists, over and over, on pushing these things before us.

Just like insisting that the brainless notion of creationism be taught in public schools. Or the old notion that the Ten Commandments should be on the walls of courthouses. Or the stuff about prayer in public schools.

There are lots of evangelical Christians in the U.S. who do not share with the fundamentalists their demands this way. There are very thoughtful ones, but we do not hear from them.

We hear from the folks who tell us homosexuals cause hurricanes. The people who say a bloody war is God’s will. The folks who just do not seem to understand that America is a pluralistic society - founded by worldly men to have freedom from religion - and that religion belongs in their tax-exempted churches, not in national politics.

The same goes for rah-rah, mindless patriotism which really is just another religion, a secular one, the American Civic Religion. Why in God’s name should a flag pin on a lapel matter? That is definitely not a good emphasis.

The American establishment likes to keep this rah-rah stuff ginned up because it makes it so easy to start new wars. It is also a form of emotional compensation for the unhappiness and anger so common on America’s streets. Having lived half my life in America, I know this is a fact.

DEMOCRATS AND LIBERALS IN AMERICA NEED TO BE MORE RESPECTFUL?

POSTED SERIES OF RESPONSES TO A COLUMN BY CLIVE CROOK IN THE FINANCIAL TIMES

Clive Crook, you are quite wide of the mark here.

First, if it's respect for the views of others that needs correcting, no clear-thinking observer can honestly say it is not Republicans who stand most in need.

For decades, Republicans - Delay, Gramm, Gingrich, Cheney, Thurmond, Robertson, Nixon, Agnew, and so many others - have specialized in quite vicious attacks on their opponents.

And was it Democrats or liberals who used to stalk the homes and offices of doctors who performed legal abortions? Or liberals who worked viciously to keep the poor boy, Elian, from being reunited with his loving father in his home were he had friends and relatives, indeed who vilified the father in front of the boy? What about the eight years of nastiness handed out to the Clintons when in the White House, a great deal of it highly personal? Was it liberals who hatefully blamed homosexuals for killer storms that were supposedly the wrath of God? Was it liberals who built entire careers calling people soft on communism?

Indeed, the basic tenet of Christian Fundamentalism that it has the only truth and if that you don’t embrace it, you are damned to hell forever, I think may fairly be characterized as a trifle vicious in nature. It is hard not to conclude only vicious people can embrace it.

I do not know the entire explanation for this phenomenon of the Right Wing. It could be that people on the Right are simply genetically mean-spirited. I do think a lot of politics is the result of basic temperament. It could be, at least in some cases, that negatives are used to overcome the inherently less popular tenets of Republicanism. Negative campaigning works, at least within limits. It’s all McCain has done so far, and it’s all Palin’s speech was. And it could be in part the need to build a coalition large enough for power requiring accommodating the most hateful and mean-spirited.

Surely, you do recognize that there are personal views or behaviors that genuinely deserve criticism?

Just one example in Sarah Palin’s case is her Creationism.

Now, the genuine stupidity of Creationism is calling it a viable theory. What possible tests or data collection could hope to disprove Creationism or even lead to serious adjustments in its statements? None, ever.

Creationism is not a theory, it is a belief, based on superstition and ancient traditions, and nothing more. You are certainly free, in a free society, to embrace it, but people like me are also free to make judgments about your attitudes and abilities if you do.

With a dozen nuclear carrier taskforces on the seas, I think it is mighty dangerous to have people with close-to delusional beliefs in positions of power. Moreover, embrace of this belief says something about flexible thinking and ability to adjust to new realities.

Creationism is a belief that goes back several thousand years, at least, and it has suffered no contradictions from testing because it cannot be tested.

Imagine going to a doctor whose knowledge reflected only and exactly what was contained in superstitious writings from 2,500 to 3,500 years ago. I believe it fair to say, if you saw a certificate framed on his office wall indicating just that qualification, you would run screaming from the office.

And just so, Creationism.

__________________


Another nasty personal behavior of Palin’s was dragging the boy - the one who fathered her daughter’s coming baby - to the convention.

I don’t care in the least about her daughter’s pregnancy. It’s certainly not an a campaign issue, although it nicely and humorously shows up the hypocrisy of Palin’s beliefs.

But dragging the boy - cleaned up and dumped in a new suit and introduced to everyone as her daughter’s “fiance” clearly displays a highly controlling and manipulative temperament.

The boy’s Internet site - now taken down - clearly showed what his own views were. No babies, pride in being a redneck, and packed with obscene and threatening language.

Truly nasty stuff.

But there he was, all polished up as though he were Jimmy Stewart dating Donna Reed.

Can you imagine the pressure brought to bear here? By the governor of his state? And he was even introduced to McCain.

That’s not my idea of acceptable behavior by a politician.

____________________


"Dear Clive, Please read John Chuckman’s post. Perhaps you could write your next article on the Canadian’s elitist view of America and why most American’s could care less what a Canadian thinks about our country or election."

Well, even on its own terms, it doesn't get more confused and muddled than that.

A column should be written, but on a subject Americans do not care about? Very sensible suggestion indeed.

And this confused writer appeals to a Brit to tell readers about Americans not caring about the views of Canadians?

And why should it matter from what country views come from? The views either have validity or not.

Putting it into that prejudiced, nationalistic context is revealing and one of the qualities which unavoidably make many Americans look so parochial and unpleasant abroad.

And indeed makes them so unfit to be leaders in world affairs.

I would be glad never to say another word about American politics were it the case that it did not so influence, and often hurt, the rest of the planet.

America is running a de facto aristocracy in which something like one or two percent of the planet's population - the rough percent to world population of Americans who vote - sets the rules and policies for everyone else.

So your government matters to others because its blundering and viciousness affect so many others, of course never raising so much as a fleeting thought from Americans of this writer's capacities.

Elitist view of America? Seems to me the only elitist views around are those who defend America's de facto aristocracy and right to do as it damn well pleases.

___________________


From his deep well of wisdom we have this from John Powers:

"Obama would still be a community organizer if he practiced clean politics."

That's just what I mean about the American Right. Always attacking, never any analysis or logic.

What an utterly ridiculous statement.

First, Mr. Powers would have us think he is possession of some convincing evidence around his flat-footed assertion.

But if that is the case, why isn't it turned over to election authorities?

The answer is simple. It exists nowhere but in Mr. Power's brain.

Second, the statement completely ignores Obama's remarkable talents.

This is the brightest, best educated, most thoughtful candidate to run for decades.

It doesn't even matter whether you agree with Obama. Recognition of his talent is essential to your being a credible commenter at all.

But the Right goes on making its extreme assertions, throwing mud, just hoping some of it will stick.

I do believe that was the technique of the late Dr. Goebbels.

IN PRAISE OF NEIGHBORHOOD SCHOOLS?

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY JIM STAFFORD, UNION ECONOMIST, IN TORONTO'S GLOBE AND MAIL

“As our school is a prized asset in our neighbourhood, so is public education in general a gift to our whole society.”

Some gift, an almost broken system that no one can reform.

Conservatives in Ontario tried and failed, making many foolish blunders. Liberals have changed nothing of substance and now do nothing but throw money at the teachers to keep peace.

The really good teachers are such motivated individuals they survive despite the many barriers against them.

Our schools in general our behind the times in almost every respect.

Neighborhood schools themselves are largely obsolete, representing as they do a step up from the rural one-room schoolhouse of a century ago with the emergence of city neighborhoods.

If we are to offer all the courses and enrichments children should have, we need the equivalent of big-box stores in our schools, and the costs are prohibitive to do this in every neighbourhood. Teachers’ salaries and benefits alone make it so.

If you want a specialty item today, you go to a big-box store with the selection, not a corner store in the neighbourhood. That is just a fact of today’s world. And our population’s embrace of the car and suburbanization and urban sprawl only greatly increase the pressures in this direction. If you want music, art, libraries, and qualified teachers in subject areas, a neighbourhood school is not the way to go.

A major fraction of our teachers cannot even use a computer, let alone teach a child about computers.

Teachers at the elementary level often are assigned to subjects for which they have absolutely no competence, and the elementary level is the foundation for all that follows.

The curriculum - confused, bloated, and unfocused on important things - is the classic result of bureaucratic compromises, resembling the work of Soviet apparatchiks.

Teachers cling to the notion of being professionals, but if you examine what they study in their year of teacher education, it is half mumbo-jumbo and pseudo-science.

Teachers are not judged according to merit, just appointed for lifetime sinecures. They are allowed to pretty much govern themselves out of politicians’ fears of strikes. Bad teachers are almost never eliminated, even though everyone knows there are many of them.

Principals and many administrative officials are just former teachers who worked their way up in a pretty slack system. It is actually fairly rare to find a principal who is impressive and decisive.

We play games with stats, as with the silly literacy test. The test has no objectivity, and both its writing and marking may easily be adjusted – and are – to suit a changed political situation.

The current government of Ontario, for example, claims credit for improvements from such meaningless scores, but they have changed nothing of substance, except pay and extra benefits.

I think the perfect symbol of our public schools is the school library. Where it hasn’t become a thing of the past, it has become a nasty little corner of the school. The teachers’ union controls this in part through the fact that so-called teacher-librarians run them. They are mostly not even competent as librarians, and if we cared we see the libraries staffed by good library technicians who know something about books. The teacher-librarians mostly spend little time in the library, too, since they are valued by principals as fillers they can stuff into any classroom missing a teacher.

At the same time, vast new resources from the province are squandered on stuff like graded literacy series – these are quickie, over-priced paperbacks churned out by publishers to make a quick buck - and “literacy closets.” Our libraries, if we are going to have them, should have lots of good books and plenty of computers plus staff qualified for using them.

Intellectual rubbish like the literacy series are a response to one of the many fads that sweep through the teachers’ union and the school bureaucracy. How better to encourage literacy than with the vast richness of our actual English literature and things like book clubs, rather than the dreary rubbish of literacy quickie books?

Our schools, too, are not providing for the needs of many students. We do have a certain percent of people with limited natural capacities, but saying so is anathema in the teaching establishment. These people need schools and classes that teach them useful skills, taught by people who have the skills.

The resources thrown at the system actually are being thrown at a union everyone is afraid to take on. They have hours and benefits like no one else. Their pension fund is so fat they own the telephone company and, yes, the newspaper you are reading, a ridiculous and a waste of precious resources.

“That children from all classes and backgrounds attend the same building, get to know each other and learn from the same teachers is nothing short of a miracle.”

Now that is largely a good thing. If you could fix everything else, they might even get some valuable education too.

THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK: SARAH PALIN'S SPEECH

September 4, 2008

THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK: SARAH PALIN’S SPEECH

John Chuckman

I’ve reassessed my view of Sarah Palin.

My first thought about her usefulness to John McCain was that she would be a draw for disaffected Hillary supporters in a close race, but then all I knew about Sarah was that she characterized herself as a soccer, or hockey, mom.

But already I’ve learned more about her than I ever would have wanted to know, and her simple, original description of herself proves disingenuous at best, and there is the proverbial snowball’s chance in hell of her appealing to Hillary supporters.

A dizzying jumble of images and anecdotes now clutters the Internet. There’s a picture of her in a bikini, with an American flag motif no less, holding a rifle, with a loony grin, poolside. There’s another picture in a black leather mini-skirt, high platform shoes, satiny blouse with revealing décolletage, standing at a bar with a wine glass. There’s the head-shot of her looking through the sight of a military weapon, a la Thatcher in her tank. Then there are the many carefully-posed pictures of her dressed demurely in family groupings, sentimental pictures as familiar to me as her flat Midwestern accent, a holdover from Idaho in her case, which just happens to be America’s favourite refuge for survivalists, private militias, and Aryan lunatics.

Then there are her statements about the bloody, illegal invasion of Iraq being “God’s will.” How would she know that? Because George Bush told her? Or does God personally whisper in her ear? If it’s God, I wonder when He (Sarah being a fundamentalist, it could not possibly be a She) takes the opportunity of speaking to her? When she’s poolside in a bikini, toting a gun, or dressed and scurrying out the door with the clan for Sunday school?

She supported Pat Buchanan, poster boy for everything that is wrong with America, in his Junior Brown Shirt march for the presidency in 2000. Before that, she was a card-carrying member of the Alaska Independence party, not exactly in keeping with Stars-and-Stripes bikinis, but definitely consistent with erratic behavior. There were denials about the Independence party, but the records are there, as is her signature.

She has five children, including her most recent, sadly afflicted with Down syndrome. In this day of certainty through tests, it does seem irresponsible to have such a child, which likely will be dependent on family and society for its entire life. Yes, her behaviour is consistent with her views on abortion – about which she once claimed she would not have an abortion even for a raped daughter – but is it sensible? Does such a decision reflect sound, realistic judgment? Our world today is full of such complex situations and judgments, not a world of simplistic rights or wrongs.

She is against gay marriage, against abortion, and against just about anything else you can find in the “anti” repertoire of religious predators along the lines of Jimmy Swaggert or Jerry Falwell. If she accepts war and mass killing as God’s will, why does she not extend that thinking to gay marriage or tests which help us prevent tragic outcomes from pregnancy?

She’s not much more consistent in her other behaviour and thinking. She’s big on commandments and rules, but that did not stop her from trying to have her brother-in-law dismissed from his job in the state police. Nor did it prevent her hacking into an opponent’s computer to get information to secure her election as mayor. And respect for proper procedures did not cause her a moment’s concern when she used paid lobbyists to land pork-barrel projects for her town.

Sarah is almost an American cartoon character, Daffy Duck waving his wings and flapping his beak madly off in all directions.

Her acceptance speech at the convention was certainly competently delivered, but what did it say? It was literally a set of one-liners, Rush Limbaugh barking away on the radio, without any sense of purpose or direction stated other than winning the election and “serving the people.” God, I would hate to be tasked with listing all the monstrous crimes committed in the name of “serving the people,” almost as many, surely, as those covered by “God’s will” in history.

Actually, there’s very little that is new about Sarah Palin. I’ve seen this act before. In tone and substance and attitude, Sarah is Newt Gingrich in drag. But then Newt was almost as irreligious as John McCain. Sarah, though, has a big fat hunk of old Bob Jones tossed in – after all, in the heady ‘60s, the old man had guards with automatic weapons at the gates of Bob Jones’ University - and that brings us to one of her main purposes in this campaign.

Sarah is there to speak to the born-again crowd, people who do not actually trust John McCain as being sympathetic to their views, and with good reason. Born-agains are roughly a fifth of the American population, and the Republicans never can win without their support. So we’ve gone from having the nuttier class of fundamentalists burrowing into every corner of America’s government under George Bush, affecting even the language used in literature at the Grand Canyon, to having one of their own placed “a heartbeat away” from the presidency, and this by a man whose heartbeat just might not last his term.

JOHN MCCAIN: A MATTER OF CHARACTER

August 30, 2008

JOHN MCCAIN: A MATTER OF CHARACTER

John Chuckman

McCain does a good job with the appearance of a boyishly honest man.

He puts on his quiet voice and uses his boyish (albeit now partially fossilized) expressions and, reminding me of Richard Nixon during his Checkers speech, sometimes glances down at his well-shined shoes, as though wordlessly to say, see what a good boy I am.

McCain’s actual record of ethics and behavior is rather dreary, and it is a subject which mysteriously eludes treatment in mainline media which seem always ready to treat trivia like flag pins. There are many parallels of insensitivity, anger, aggression, limited capacities, and grotesque humor with George Bush.

McCain was, quite simply, a nasty brat as a young man. There are many stories of the way he bullied others, including teachers, stories perhaps easy to make light of fifty years later, but not funny if you were his victim and, more importantly, all too similar to stories of his adult behavior. He was a poor student. He always took advantage of being the son and grandson of admirals to get away with his sometimes vicious antics and failures.

Despite his favorite public act as boyish fighter pilot, he apparently remains an often nasty man in private. Many fellow politicians, including Republicans, testify to his furious, spluttering temper and the use of the most obscene words to friends and work associates with whom he is unhappy. There is also the story, related by a Republican, of his sudden physical attack on a member of the government of Nicaragua during a Congressional mission.

When McCain’s being shot down in Vietnam is discussed, the fact that he was bombing civilians is almost never mentioned. He's just lucky he survived. He might well have been torn limb from limb had he been a Vietnamese pilot shot down in Texas.

How did he survive being shot down? After all, he landed in a body of water and he was hurt. A group of local villagers, and one Vietnamese man in particular, Mai Van On, left their bomb shelters and pulled McCain from the water where he would certainly have drowned otherwise.

That brave and decent Vietnamese man, whom McCain once acknowledged, died recently, a very disheartened man that McCain never showed any real sign of thanks or reciprocity. His wife has spoken to the press on this. After all, in many cultures, someone’s saving your life creates a powerful bond or debt, but apparently not for John McCain.

Apart from some fitting communication from the man who went on to become famous, imagine how even a little money order from this well-off man could have altered the lives of those who saved him?

When McCain returned home to the wife who had waited for him for the five and a half years he was in prison, he discovered his wife had been in a terrible car accident in which she was disfigured.

Instead of compassion and loyalty, McCain started a series of affairs, ending with wealthy future wife Cindy.

He left his crippled wife to marry the money. It was a pretty shabby display, reminiscent of Newt Gingrich’s telling a wife dying of cancer he was divorcing her, but it did considerably help finance his political career.

During the great savings-and-loan scandals, McCain was at the center, having got a lot of money and favors from (to-be convicted felon) Charles Keating.

McCain’s second wife, Cindy, was a drug addict, by her own admission. She also stole a large quantity of drugs from a charity for which she did volunteer work to feed her habit, an act which would earn you or me hard time in prison in Bush's America.

You do have to ask about the mental state of a woman who is said to be worth $300 million yet who steals the drugs she craves.

But Cindy got off with a slap on the wrist, thanks in part to the efforts of her husband. This law-and-order conservative, this defender of the hard line in the war on drugs, saw nothing wrong in using his influence. No insistence here that Cindy do the time that he and Bush insist on, and snigger over, for young black men caught with modest quantities of cocaine.

Cindy, in her efforts to soften her brittle Bergdorf Goodman image – or whatever expensive store it is in New York to which she regularly flies to buy racks of clothes - and connect with average Americans, also had the minor flap of being caught misrepresenting other people’s recipes as her own. Integrity does not appear to be a strong McCain family value.

Recently McCain had a hard time remembering how many houses he and Cindy owned. Does anyone believe that that is the kind of personal matter someone forgets? If he was indeed being honest, then almost certainly Alzheimer’s has set in. More likely though, he was not being honest, trying to deflect an embarrassing question. The latest count on the houses is eight.

McCain, in 2000, told us exactly what he really thinks of the Religious Right. After all, he is known as a rather irreligious, worldly man. He did endear himself to many as he lambasted the Religious Right’s nasty, inappropriate influence in American politics, but practically the next day, he was crawling around on his belly, saying he was sorry, having quickly realized what he had done to his political ambitions.

And that last pattern has been typical of McCain's entire public career. Shoot off his mouth, make big noises about being tough and honest, and then crawl back quietly shortly afterward, having achieved nothing but adding a notch to the reputation he relishes as a maverick.

Of course, there never has been a bombing run McCain did not eagerly support. He embraces enthusiastically, consistently, all war measures, no matter how weak or foolish the reasons used to support them. That’s why Lieberman, supposedly a Democrat, supports McCain so enthusiastically, Lieberman being another man who never saw a bombing run he did not like nor an excuse too flimsy to support one.

As for McCain’s humor, nothing so reveals him for the mild psychopath that he is. The sense his humor conveys, at least a good deal of it, is very much along the lines of what Bush's humor conveys.

As, for example, the time Bush made some twisted comment and facial expressions to reporters about the pitiful woman he refused to stay from execution in Texas despite her pleas as a converted Christian.

Or Bush's comment to reporters in Chicago when, not long after 9/11, he joked about having "won the trifecta" with his new-found popularity.

Or the story from an acquaintance of his youth about his favorite stunt, repeated many times over, of shoving lit firecrackers into the mouths of captured frogs and watching them blow up.

The disgusting nature of some of McCain’s jokes is summarized here:
http://timesonline.typepad.com/uselections/2008/08/to-his-supporte.html

After eight years of Bush’s incompetence and stupid brutality, are we to have another man as president reflecting many of the same qualities and views?

One recent poll showed that while nearly ninety percent of Republicans would support McCain, only seventy-three percent of Hillary Clinton’s supporters would support Obama. These disaffected voters should examine closely the character of the man for whom they may vote in protest.

John McCain is certainly well aware of them. He just picked a soccer mom from Alaska as his candidate for vice president.

He does not even know the woman. There is only one big reason for this choice, and that is to appeal to disaffected Hillary Clinton supporters in what is expected to be a close election.

How cynical that McCain dangles an unknown woman as a lure for the votes of certain women. That is the truest sexism.

Here are some facts about the stupidly brutal side of John McCain:

https://www.theburningplatform.com/2015/07/23/mccain-the-hero-nearly-sunk-an-aircraft-carrier-killed-134-sailors/