The Agonist - Miscellany

Bill Moyers on Afghanistan

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 09:59:28 -0800

Our country wonders this weekend what is on President Obama's mind. He is apparently, about to bring months of deliberation to a close and answer General Stanley McChrystal's request for more troops in Afghanistan. When he finally announces how many, why, and at what cost, he will most likely have defined his presidency, for the consequences will be far-reaching and unpredictable. As I read and listen and wait with all of you for answers, I have been thinking about the mind of another president, Lyndon B. Johnson.

...

Lyndon Johnson secretly recorded many of the phone calls and conversations he had in the White House. In this broadcast, you're going to hear excerpts that reveal how he wrestled over what to do in Vietnam. There are hours of tapes and the audio quality is not the best, but I've chosen a few to give you an insight into the mind of one president facing the choice of whether or not to send more and more American soldiers to fight in a far-away and strange place.

The show is definately worth watching or reading. Whatever The Big O's decision you can rest assured that it will be a political one..., not a moral one. Just as LBJ's decisions were.

LYNDON B. JOHNSON: And I told them, let's try to find an amendment that will-we haven't got any Congress that will go with us and we haven't got any mothers that will go with us in a war. And nine months I'm just an inherited-I'm a trustee. I've got to win an election. Or Nixon or somebody else has. And then you can make a decision. But in the meantime, let's see if we can't find enough things to do to keep them off base, and to stop these shipments that are coming in from Laos, and pick a few selected targets to upset them a little bit, without getting another Korean operation started.

Moyers sums it up...,

BILL MOYERS: Now in a different world, at a different time, and with a different president, we face the prospect of enlarging a different war. But once again we're fighting in remote provinces against an enemy who can bleed us slowly and wait us out, because he will still be there when we are gone.

Once again, we are caught between warring factions in a country where other foreign powers fail before us. Once again, every setback brings a call for more troops, although no one can say how long they will be there or what it means to win. Once again, the government we are trying to help is hopelessly corrupt and incompetent.

And once again, a President pushing for critical change at home is being pressured to stop dithering, be tough, show he's got the guts, by sending young people seven thousand miles from home to fight and die, while their own country is coming apart.

And once again, the loudest case for enlarging the war is being made by those who will not have to fight it, who will be safely in their beds while the war grinds on. And once again, a small circle of advisers debates the course of action, but one man will make the decision.

We will never know what would have happened if Lyndon Johnson had said no to more war. We know what happened because he said yes.

That's it for the Journal. I'm Bill Moyers. See you next time.

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/11202009/transcript1.html

Ten-year-old Arkansas girl Tasered by police

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 09:47:20 -0800

Ozark, Ark | November 20

Examiner - A police officer In Ozark, Arkansas could face criminal charges after he Tasered a combative ten-year-old girl last week.

According to a police report, Officer Dustin Bradshaw was responding to the girl’s home on November 11 because the girl refused to go to bed. Bradshaw reported the girl was acting violently, even hitting and kicking officers as they tried to move her.

Majority of Republicans Believe ACORN Stole the Presidential Election

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 05:52:13 -0800

Thursday, November 19, 2009 3:30 PM
Poll: Majority of Republicans Believe ACORN Stole the Presidential Election
Katie Connolly, Newsweek

As his hopes of winning the congressional election in New York's 23rd district fade, conservative candidate Doug Hoffman is clearly getting desperate. Today he's blaming his loss on "ACORN, the unions, and the Democratic party" who he alleges, without a shred of evidence, tampered with votes to rig the election against him. Never mind that ACORN told David Weigel that they didn't have volunteers in the area, or that it largely operates in poor urban communities, which NY-23 is not. For conservatives, ACORN is shorthand for the evils of the left.

On the heels of that news, Public Policy Polling released this shocking nugget on its blog: "a 52% majority of GOP voters nationally think that ACORN stole the Presidential election for Barack Obama last year, with only 27% granting that he won it legitimately." Say what? More than half of Republican respondents believe the president was elected fraudulently! That's a stunningly high number. It's disturbing, not only as a demonstrable lack of faith in America's democracy but as an expression of wanton ignorance. Worse, it illustrates the effectiveness of Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, et al., alongside a well-funded "Stop ACORN" campaign, in creating an atmosphere where unquestioned lies become received wisdom.

Barack Obama won the election by an easy margin. In the end, it wasn't even close. John McCain knew that and delivered his concession speech before 9:30 p.m. Obama didn't just win in the urban areas where ACORN could actually be seen as a force—and which would likely have voted for him regardless of ACORN's participation. He won in places like North Carolina, where ACORN had just eight staffers. There's been no formal challenge to the electoral validity of the votes.There's simply no proof to back up claims that ACORN tampered with ballots. But there is evidence of irresponsible reporting catalyzing misguided fears.

Google Chrome OS

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 03:15:43 -0800

It works but slowly.

Definitely alpha level of development.

18,000 miles to Washington

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 00:17:23 -0800

Mike Shepard |Washington Post Staff Writer |November 20
Wapo - Paulo Roberto Vieira stumbled into the Brazilian consulate on L Street NW bedraggled, nearly broke and at the end of his rope.

Dressed in a battered black leather jacket and scuffed black jeans, he told consular officials an almost unbelievable story -- that he had just ridden his motorcycle from his home town in southern Brazil to Washington, a monumental, 18,000-mile quest for official recognition of his life's proudest work, a vehicle accessory he says he invented.

Vieira's arrival that day in late October ended an odyssey that wound through 11 countries , a startling demonstration of Washington's enduring power as a magnet for ordinary people who believe the answer to their prayers can be found in the capital of the free world.

Standing next to his Honda CG-150 Titan motorcycle on L Street several days later, Vieira, gaunt and visibly weary, recounted in his native Portuguese the improbable tale of his four-month journey. How he rode alone for more than 1,900 miles on mostly unpaved roads through the Brazilian Amazon, narrowly avoiding becoming lunch for one of the rain forest's most feared carnivores. How a delay in obtaining a U.S. visa forced him to traverse Mexico three times before finally crossing into Texas. How he hoped for sweet justice in the U.S. capital, perhaps even from the president himself.

"I decided to come here because Washington is where things get done," he said. "Barack Obama is already solving so many other problems, how much more trouble would it be for him to solve mine?"

cont @ Wapo

Time for music. How about something with an international flavour?

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 17:41:41 -0800

Here's some music from the cradle of civilization - it has the core of all rhythms (according to a few commenters).

more videos in comments, add one! - ed

Harvest time

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 13:21:54 -0800

Henry Ford, for all his faults, once stated that he needed to pay his workers enough that they would be able to buy the cars they manufactured. I guess globalists thought such laws don’t apply when you ship the jobs to a foreign land.

Now I hear people say that a cheaper dollar will make American products more competitive to foreign buyers. Who exactly is going to buy these “cheaper” American goods? Some Chinese guy earning $2 a day? Now out of a job because there’s an ongoing depression in the United States?

Rather than bring the rest of the world’s workers up to some sort of decent living standard, global financial players and manufactuers raced toward the lowest common denominator: workers earning slave wages, receiving no benefits, toiling in unsafe conditions, exploited to produce a bunch of cheap disposable products then sold in our big box stores.

Then one day a new reality hit us right between the eyes; not everyone can have a job sitting on his ass, doing nothing. Our own economy imploded.

So now we’re going to devalue the dollar and start producing something to sell once again. That’s the plan.

Who are your going to sell to? Americans don’t have jobs. Meaning they can’t buy things. And those poor bastards that have been making our goods overseas have no money, (aside from a few that became fabulously wealthy, selling out their own and they can't eat much).

Better yet, what’s going to happen when the next leg of this collapse cuts off the supply of that cheap made shit, for which there are no replacement parts, or destruction of the dollar raises the price of that cheap made shit to the level of unaffordability? We already tore down and hauled off all our goddamned factories, people.

I recently read that the United States now has the greatest disparity between rich and poor of any country on earth. I have no way of verifying such a statement, but I find the fact that’s even plausible shocking and reprehensible.

Time to reap what we’ve sown.

The Real Power in Pakistan

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 10:38:24 -0800

Interesting take from Sabrina Tavernise in the NYT:

The military and intelligence establishment remains unassailable. It is both revered and feared by Pakistanis, who suspect its nationalist fringes of maneuvering behind the scenes, with help from allies in the news media, to keep civilian governments off balance.

At the same time, the news media today need little prodding, and are more diverse, powerful and nationalistic of their own accord than at any other point in the nation’s history.

“The media has a larger-than-life role,” said Maleeha Lodhi, a former Pakistani ambassador to the United States. “It’s been setting the agenda for the country.”

Pakistanis themselves are not entirely comfortable with that development. In a Gallup Pakistan poll released last Friday, nearly one-third of 2,765 Pakistanis surveyed blamed the media for political instability in the country, according to the Gilani Research Foundation, which released it.

The anti-Americanism is part of that new media explosion. “It reached a fever pitch,” said Madiha Sattar, a journalist with the monthly magazine The Herald, who wrote a cover article on the topic in October.

Pakistanis have reason to mistrust the U.S. of course. Most notably our backing of the military dictator Zia who crushed dissent and executed the elected president. That was followed by ignoring the region once the Cold War ended. Now we're suddenly concerned again. It's no wonder the local Rupert Murdochs see a play in fomenting against the Great American Satan.

Stop a moment and enjoy some spectacular photography

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 01:07:12 -0800

Extraordinary microscope images

Montreal to see terracotta warriors

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 17:40:54 -0800

Montréal, Québec | November 19

CBC - China's terracotta warriors are coming to Montreal in 2011.

The Musée des Beaux-Arts de Montréal will receive rare visit of 14 of the warriors — life-sized replicas of soldiers of the Qin dynasty — it announced on Thursday.

The 14 are among the more than 8,000 life-sized terracotta figures discovered since 1974 near Xi'an, China, and believed to date from the 3rd century B.C.

An exhibit of 20 of the warriors at the British Museum in 2008 was a huge hit.

Exhibit 1,231 In Our Creaking Infrastructure

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 08:55:34 -0800

Flying is the pits, especially in America. It's also getting worse:

A failure early Thursday morning of a system that feeds flight plans to air traffic controllers snarled thousands of flights in the eastern United States. By mid-morning the system was working again, but the backlog caused wide airport delays.

The same system failed in August 2008, but it was not clear if the cause was the same this time. The system, the National Airspace Data Interchange Network, situated in Atlanta with a backup in Salt Lake City, was a casualty of another failure in the tightly linked [system], one official at the Federal Aviation Administration said. Technicians were still trying to determine the cause of the glitch.

This is just another argument for a better, more comprehensive and expanded rail system in the United States. Sure, it's not a 'shovel-ready' infrastructure project, but it is one that will help grow the economy, create jobs and increase the quality of life for many Americans.

The airlines would surely lobby against such a thing, however, just like Southwest lobbied heavily against a high-speed regional Texas rail system several years ago.

"Catastrophic Bush Fire Warning"

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 03:54:58 -0800

For the second day in a row, the new bushfire warning system has been implemented down under.

The map shows all areas affected by the top three warning levels for Nov 20th - the first time I can recall seeing nearly 50% of Australia under immediate threat of bushfire, with almost 60% of the Aussie population living in that area. Night time temperature in Canberra today, Nov 19 is ~22C - the normal maximum November daytime temp. We are experiencing Jan/Feb daytime temps. It's going to be a long summer, and record high temps are likely to continue.

more - The heatwave is expected to extend to the weekend and early into next week, with afternoon showers providing little relief.

A Tale of Two Belles

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 14:42:28 -0800

I'm going to say right up front that I don't come to any conclusions in this post. I was simply struck the contrasting outcomes in these otherwise very similar stories.

First there is the news that the pseudonymous call-girl and author "Belle Du Jour" has revealed her true identity, as a PhD level cancer researcher named Brooke Magnanti. Check out how her illicit activities have paid off for Dr. Magnanti:

The Belle du Jour blog became a hot media property, spurring speculation about the true author, a lucrative book deal. The book was serialized on UK prime time television in 2007’s “Secret Diary of a Call Girl,” starring actress of Billie Piper, and eventually played on pay cable in the US.

When I read this story, I couldn't help but recall the sad story of Brandy Britton, an American college professor who similarly dabbled in prostitution, but with a very different outcome:

More after the jump.

With Brandy Britton's trial planned to start next week, the former University of Maryland Baltimore County professor apparently took her own life over the weekend, hanging herself in her living room, Howard County police say. A family member found the body Saturday afternoon. Police say they do not suspect foul play.

It was a grievous end to a life that friends and colleagues say was once filled with remarkable promise and ambition.

Britton, 43, was the first in her family to go to college, double-majoring in biology and sociology. Her first sociology professor, Sheila Cordray, told The Washington Post last year that Britton was "one of the brightest students I've ever had."

I'm not even going to raise the fact that Britton was swept up in the D.C. Madam scandal (which also ended with the principle, Deborah Jeane Palfrey, committing suicide) or the likelihood that both cases were related to the Bush administration crack down on high end prostitution that also brought down New York Governor Elliot Spitzer.

Admittedly, Dr Magnanti plied her trade in the UK where prostitution is not quite illegal so she didn't have to face the criminal prosecutions that destroyed Britton and Palfrey, but our societies aren't so very different. There are numerous educated American women who have worked as prostitutes, written about their experiences and profited while facing no legal consequences.

It seems to me that there is a tacit approval in our society for any kind of criminal conduct that is gotten away with and used to produce a series of media properties.

Britton and Palfrey had the misfortune to have powerful Washington D.C. political figures on their client lists which dramatically changed the tenor of their cases, but I still can't help having the nagging feeling that had they had the presence of mind and chutzpah necessary to transform their experiences into something the media-industrial complex could promote and profit from they might have survived.

This feeling is dramatically intensified by watching the documentary "Very Young Girls" whose central dilemma is summarized in this NY Sun review:

"Very Young Girls" explores a loophole in the justice system that is frequently exploited for profit. According to the law, underage girls are protected from adult men trying to have sex with them; but if money is exchanged, they are held quite accountable.

In "Very Young Girls," one mother's complaint gets to the heart of the matter: "Instead of taking her to the hospital," she laments, "they took her to the jailhouse." After her child was kidnapped and forced into prostitution, she escaped the control of her pimp only to be taken into police custody and charged with prostitution.

Our pop culture currently lionizes pimps as the apex of shrewd capitalist masculinity. But watching "Very Young Girls" exposed just what a horrifying trade pimping really is. I was first struck by the psychological brutality of pimping when I read Pimp by Iceberg Slim. I'm a certifiable crime buff who's read hundreds of true crime books at every level from pulp trash to academic studies on every aspect of crime from pick pocketing to serial murder, and I have to say that Iceberg Slim's memoir is the most chilling I've ever read.

The recent case of Jaycee Dugard, kidnapped by Phillip Garrido in 1991 and forced to endure 19 years of sexual slavery provides an interesting contrast. Garrido is rightly reviled as the most loathed kind of criminal -- a child molester. But if he had followed the much more common practice of the pimp and forced the underage Dugard into prostitution rather than simply tormenting her for his own pleasure, she would instantly have partaken of his criminality. Had she been sold to other men by her kidnapper, she would have been subject to arrest and prosecution just like the girls in "Very Young Girls". And Garrido would have instantly transformed himself from the lowest on the criminal hierarchy to the highest. No longer a child molester and pedophile he would instead be a pimp and a playa, the category of criminal whose feats are celebrated in story and song.

It reminds me of the old Cyndi Lauper song, "Money Changes Everything". If you're a call girl, you can transform the social stigma into social and financial capital by turning yourself into a media property. If you're a sexual sadist with a taste for young women, you can transform yourself into the toast of criminal and pop culture by selling your victims to others.

Denninger on China and free trade

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 08:49:36 -0800

Read and weep.

A cultural question

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 15:47:40 -0800

I have been reading The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O’Connor written over half a century ago, and have been continually struck by Flannery's use of the word nigger in a matter of fact way with no apparent underlying hint of racial bigotry.

I grew up in Australia in the late '60's and '70's and was educated to understand that nigger was a racist term used by 'rednecks'.

Can any agonistas comment on my perception that nigger was a common term in the USA, and became increasingly understood as dis-respectful only in the past fifty years?