Month: March 2012

Tangled Web

On By mueblespasayo1 Comment

It wasn’t so long ago that the U.S. was led by neo-conservative, imperialist adventurers.  Looking back from the vantage point of 2012, the mendacity of the Bush administration seems as if it were always a fact.  A fact is indisputable.  According to Pew Research polling, in March, 2003, 72% of the nation believed the decision to use military force in Iraq was the right decision.  Surely, 72% of the nation did not feel the “right decision” was based on a pack of lies, so how did Bush administration mendacity become an indisputable fact?  Recall that the key basis for the war was the threat of weapons of mass destruction (WMD).  A couple of months into the war, the WMD rationale started to unravel.  A moment when doubt was converted into indisputable fact arrived on May 29, 2003, with what may be one of the greatest blog posts in history.  Indeed, it is a post that makes the history of blogging, itself, important.  The post was at a place called the Whiskey Bar and the barkeep of the establishment was named Billmon.

In 2012 you don’t hear so many calls for war crimes trials or discussions of how the U.S. was led to war with a bunch of phony evidence, so it is an important exercise to understand and remember why people believed and continue to believe that such bold actions against their leaders were and are warranted.  Billmon’s writing at the Whiskey Bar is a key source to understanding where this argument arises from.  It is almost nine years later though, and the question arose of whether Billmon and the Whiskey Bar had slipped into oblivion.  Without searching the internet, it seemed possible that Billmon might be lost to the Memory Hole.  Any normal political junkie’s first thoughts turn to, 1984.  In Orwell’s 1984 there was a Memory Hole.  The following excerpt from, 1984 is taken from Wikipedia:

In the walls of the cubicle there were three orifices. To the right of the speakwrite, a small pneumatic tube for written messages, to the left, a larger one for newspapers; and in the side wall, within easy reach of Winston’s arm, a large oblong slit protected by a wire grating. This last was for the disposal of waste paper. Similar slits existed in thousands or tens of thousands throughout the building, not only in every room but at short intervals in every corridor. For some reason they were nicknamed memory holes. When one knew that any document was due for destruction, or even when one saw a scrap of waste paper lying about, it was an automatic action to lift the flap of the nearest memory hole and drop it in, whereupon it would be whirled away on a current of warm air to the enormous furnaces which were hidden somewhere in the recesses of the building.

Like everything in 1984 the Memory Hole is sinister.  The reality of the internet is probably more pernicious and insidious, but not quite so sinister.  Information is accumulating rapidly and it is difficult to find places to put it and to organize it so that it can be found again.  In an earlier era videotapes were piling up fast (and they were expensive too), so that a lot of old television recordings were destroyed.  For example, people who watched television in the 60’s sometimes have fond reminiscences about Peter Cook and Dudley Moore’s show, “Not Only . . . But Also.”  By all accounts this was a hilarious and fun show, but much of it is lost never to be seen again.  Imagine how much people would enjoy watching it now, if only it had survived long enough to be posted onto YouTube.  The following explains its tragic end.

The BBC wiped many editions of Not Only…But Also from its archives in the late 1960s and early 1970s, as it did with many other programmes, including the second series of Dad’s Army and Spike Milligan’s Q5. Cook and Moore had even allegedly offered to pay for the cost of preservation and buy new videotapes so that the old tapes would not need to be reused, but this offer was rejected.  Some telerecordings of the black and white episodes survive, but all of the videotaped footage from the colour series was wiped, so that the only surviving colour sketches are on 16mm film inserts.

The wiping of the recordings seems unjust in retrospect even if it was a sound business decision at that time (funny how often sound business decisions seem unjust).  Yet, in 1984 the destruction of information was far more sinister.  It was an effort to erase or rewrite history.  On second thought, maybe the BBC was sinister as far as Dudley Moore, Peter Cook and their fans were concerned.  However, with the internet, we face something more insidious and invevitable.  It is an inability to keep up and to remember what was important.  The mounds of information are accumulating rapidly these days.  Orwell’s Memory Hole remains a powerful symbol that spurs one to think deeply, but thankfully the internet is not a Memory Hole, but instead it is a rummaging affair, perhaps an archaeological dig.  What follows is an attempt to resurrect an important time in the history of blogging.

Billmon’s writing at the Whiskey Bar is still available.  Much of the material can be found at the Wayback Machine.  The first search at the Wayback Machine was a failure, but then things clicked and a trove of Billmon posts at the Whiskey Bar was found.  The Memory Hole metaphor was definitely too cynical, yet one has to know what to look for before starting, and so highlighting what is worthwhile is important, which brings the focus back to Billmon.

On May 29, 2003, Billmon published a post comprised entirely of quotes.  Even the Whiskey Bar itself owes its name to a 1927 song by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill (viewed here).  The title of the post reads:

 What a Tangled Web We Weave . . .

. . . when first we practice to deceive!

The title of the post is, itself, a quote from Walter Scott’s epic poem (not Shakespeare), “Marmion,” (thank goodness for Wikipedia.  Then comes quote after quote from Dick Cheney, Colin Powell, Paul Wolfowitz, George Bush, Tommy Franks, Ari Fleischer, Donald Rumsfeld, and so on.  Every quote is on the topic of weapons of mass destruction (WMD).  The quotes begin in August of 2002, when we were told the presence of WMD’s in Iraq were an indisputable fact.

Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction.

Dick Cheney Speech to VFW National Convention August 26, 2002

link

And the beat continues with official after official chiming in.  Just a couple of examples follow:

We know for a fact that there are weapons there.

Ari Fleischer Press Briefing January 9, 2003

link

We know that Saddam Hussein is determined to keep his weapons of mass destruction, is determined to make more.

Colin Powell Remarks to UN Security Council February 5, 2003

Then the troops are on the ground and the quotes evolve with the following being perhaps the greatest Alice in Wonderland statement ever given.

We know where they are. They’re in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat.

Donald Rumsfeld ABC Interview March 30, 2003

Finally, Paul Wolfowitz lets the cat out of the bag:

For bureaucratic reasons, we settled on one issue, weapons of mass destruction (as justification for invading Iraq) because it was the one reason everyone could agree on.

Paul Wolfowitz Vanity Fair interview May 28, 2003

link

The comments section at the blog is preserved too.  There are a huge number of compliments in the comments.  The effect of Billmon’s blog post was to hold a mirror up to the Emperor with no clothes.  Nothing could be more powerful then destroying them with their own words.  No laborious analysis.  Many comments ask for the quotes to be linked.  At the time this was critically important, since blogs were not considered credible unless they were linked to a primary source, yet no one, in the comments, suggests that the quotes aren’t credible.  Of course some commentator (probably a paid troll of some awful think-tank) takes pains to argue for the propriety of the war, under the latest rationale, which is audacious after the cascade of quotes that Billmon has strung together.  Here is Darwin’s first salvo:

Ok, so answer me this..

If Saddam didn’t have stuff forbidden by the UN resolutions why would he provoke a war with the US that he would obviously lose?

Also : This link from Reuters indicates that at least one lab which was forbidden by the UN resolutions has been found within Iraq.

Bush from the SOTU :

“From three Iraqi defectors we know that Iraq, in the late 1990s, had several mobile biological weapons labs. These are designed to produce germ warfare agents and can be moved from place to a place to evade inspectors. Saddam Hussein has not disclosed these facilities. He has given no evidence that he has destroyed them.”

You seem to be saying that because there are no “WMD” found that therefore the war in Iraq is somehow illegitimate wrt UN resolutions. I think it’s pretty well established that it was Saddam’s behavior in the face of inspection/etc that finally precipitated this war. .

Unless he was suicidal and/or insane, why would he go to war if he had nothing to hide?

=darwin Posted by: darwin at May 29, 2003 02:23 PM

Darwin found time to write at least 30 paragraphs of commentary on the same day of Billmon’s post and no less than 50 paragraphs within about a week.  What an astounding effort!  In the end it is helpful didactically for other commentators to react and form their thoughts in reaction Darwin, but what a waste of time to battle against a mountain of lies.  The effort to discredit the Bush administration would require much more effort, and remains an incomplete project.

When one hears some aged lefty complaining about Bush administration war crimes, it is not without a basis.  With the furious re-writing of history, it is the facts that must be preserved in order for future generations to properly judge us, since it appears there will be no contemporaneous judgment.  Foucault may have considered preservation of facts to be impossible or irrelevant, but future generations will be relieved from the burden of fearing reprisals or ostracism and won’t have to suffer like the Dixie Chicks.

Billmon’s Tangled Web post is elegant and concise.  It appears almost at the precise time when the Bush administration has damned itself with its own words.  At the time it came out, it was a serious questioning of authority and it was published at an early point in the aftermath of the Iraq invation.  Not only does it give raw historical information, but then it hosts comments.  These comments themselves contain links to insightful information, and they contain bold statements as well.  The comments are a valuable portrait of the dialogue and the relentless attack from the left against the case for the Iraq War, even if the case was only becoming unquestioningly persuasive after the War was already underway.  The comments make the point that there were voices against the war, and that those voices were deliberately unheard in the mainstream media.  The blogs, back then, were the equivalent of the information underground.  Without a doubt the mainstream media heard what it wanted to hear, and simply didn’t care to ask the difficult questions.  After all, the media had a war to cover with its embedded journalists.

While those who were deceived might be forgiven for failing to question their leaders in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks and for accepting that a land war in Iraq was the correct response to terror attacks originating from Afghanistan, it is unforgivable that the U.S. media and many U.S. leaders remained credulous after it was so obvious that war had been made simply for the sake of making war.  The Tangled Web post is a landmark showing the world exactly when it became impossible to pretend that one didn’t know better.

So, when one hears that we should only look forward and that the past should be forgotten, it must be crystal clear that what is also being heard is that one must accept that war crimes are to be tolerated in the U.S.  Billmon’s achievement may mark an American tragedy, but it is a tragedy that has been experienced and will continue to reverberate through the coming decades.  If we ever seek to understand what happened and to escape the fate that it points us to, then Tangled Web post is a good place to start.

anti-authoritarians

On By hamock myson2 Comments

Another interesting bit passed along by berkeley22.

The author first describes pressures affecting graduate students in psychology and/or psychiatry that can shape the way that they tend to view authority, and then demonstrates how these doctors’ subsequent diagnoses can be like manchurian prescriptions, if you will. The thesis:

In an earlier dark age, authoritarian monarchies partnered with authoritarian religious institutions. When the world exited from this dark age and entered the Enlightenment, there was a burst of energy. Much of this revitalization had to do with risking skepticism about authoritarian and corrupt institutions and regaining confidence in one’s own mind. We are now in another dark age, only the institutions have changed. Americans desperately need anti-authoritarians to question, challenge, and resist new illegitimate authorities and regain confidence in their own common sense.

In every generation there will be authoritarians and anti-authoritarians. While it is unusual in American history for anti-authoritarians to take the kind of effective action that inspires others to successfully revolt, every once in a while a Tom Paine, Crazy Horse, or Malcolm X come along. So authoritarians financially marginalize those who buck the system, they criminalize anti-authoritarianism, they psychopathologize anti-authoritarians, and they market drugs for their “cure.”

i’m pretty sure there is no cure…

krugman: comedian

On By hamock mysonLeave a comment

playboy interview, march 2012

playboy: “…If the Republican Party is using a not so subtle appeal to racist feelings, isn’t that a doomed long-term strategy?”

krugman: “Unless the Republicans can manage to convince both Latino voters and their white base that Latinos are actually white, then the trends are against them. But that could take a long time.”

 

channeling his inner seth meyers. nice one.

Tears For A Propagandist

On By mueblespasayo4 Comments

Andrew Breitbart died.  A New York Times reporter filed a dutifully written report.  It contains several quotes from the conservative firmament.  Included are quotes from Eric Cantor’s spokesperson, a quote from Druge’s website, a Michaelle Malkin quote, a Jonah Goldberg quote and finally an account that news of Breitbart’s death left Rick Santorum visibly shaken.  A propagandist has sailed over the horizon and left behind a sad band of villains.  It is as if the Legion of Doom were crying for the loss of Solomon Grundy.

Legion of Doom

Breitbart has left behind a legacy of propaganda that would make Lee Atwater weep, but, alas, Lee Atwater has also gone on to the eternal Legion of Doom.    Let us not forget Breitbart’s accomplishments.

In 2010 he got Shirley Sherrod fired by publishing an edited videoclip that appeared to show Ms. Sherrod talking about how she discriminated against a white farmer.  The following is from Wikipedia:

On July 19, 2010, two different video clips were posted by the conservative commentator Andrew Breitbart to his BigGovernment.com website, along with a nearly 1,000-word blog post in which he accused Sherrod of carrying out her duties “through the prism of race and class distinctions.” He says that she discriminated racially against a white farmer by referring him to a white lawyer, and notes the audience reaction of NAACP members seemed to approve of her actions.

The first video showed Sherrod describing an experience of working with a white man seeking help to save his farm. She struggled with helping him at a time when many black people were losing their land. The excerpt suggests she did just enough, especially by taking him to a white lawyer -“his own kind would take care of him.” She said she realized it was about the poor versus “those who have.”

Subsequent events showed that the posted video was an excerpt of broader comments that conveyed a very different meaning, in which Sherrod learned from her experience.

Shirley Sherrod’s suit for defamation has survived Andrew Breitbart’s motion to dismiss and will, no doubt, continue.  Breitbart had an earlier role in helping James O’Keefe as described in a different Wikipedia entry, as quote below:

Breitbart was also involved in the 2009 ACORN video controversy. Hannah Giles posed as a prostitute seeking assistance while James O’Keefe portrayed her boyfriend, and clandestinely videotaped meetings with ACORN staff. Subsequent criminal investigations by the Brooklyn District Attorney’s office and the California Attorney General found the videos were heavily edited in an attempt to make ACORN’s responses “appear more sinister”, and contributed to the group’s demise. Breitbart then provided a forum for O’Keefe on his BigGovernment.com website and defended his actions on Sean Hannity’s Fox News Channel program.

However, this episode really gets to the heart of the man.

Andrew Breitbart recently took his wife out to the beach (and a hotel) for some quality time. The busy mother and the new media professional wanted to spend some time away from everybody else, and especially from politics.

So they went to a beautiful hotel, where they would simply enjoy life and each other’s company.

Until the beautiful sunny day was ruined by anti-war protesters. “Stop forcing our children to die for your wars!” they chanted.

Breitbart tried to control himself, but failed to do so. He ran to the balcony of his room, stood next to the American flag there, and gave them, smiling of course, the middle finger. He saw photographers making photos, and envisioned seeing himself on the frontpage of the Los Angeles Times’ next day’s edition.

Until…

Satisfied by the small victory, I sat down to finish my cocktail. With my wife pretending not to be embarrassed, we went back to enjoying our midday excursion. But instead of waking up Sunday or Monday morning to see my face in the paper, I instead received an e-mail from a journalism student at a local university who recognized me from a recent debate on campus.

The e-mail began like this:

“On 4/25/09 an event hosted by the Invisible Children called ‘The Rescue’ took place in Santa Monica. I shot the event. 4,000 youth marched in solidarity for the children abducted and forced to fight for the LRA in Northern Uganda and more recently in the Congo. I had felt a sense of hope in my generation’s methods of activism at the event.”

Oh, no. It only got worse.

“I believe most people in America are in agreement that human slavery, genocide and child soldiers are a terrible thing. This event was hardly controversial. The protest marched by ‘Shutters on the Beach.’ After reviewing the photographs I was taking for the event and confirming the facts (you were in Santa Monica at the date and time) I realized you were flipping the protesters off. I am curious to why this is the case.”

In order to prevent my eternal damnation, and to end what has been three weeks of difficult REM sleep, please visit: www.invisiblechildren.com.

So, I will leave it to the Legion of Doom to mourn the loss of their master propagandist.  A man who destroys careers, aids and abets those who destroyed ACORN, and above all, flips off those trying to stop children from being killed in wars is someone who will have to be mourned by those who understand him best.