"Undermining my electoral viability since 2001."

The Insurgency

FRONTLINE: the insurgency: watch the full program.

The Austrailian guy with the copyrights all over everything (Michael Ware) seems like a bit of a boaster, but given the situation for journalists over there it wasn't as though Frontline had a plethora of sources to pick from.

The report tries to be positive, and it would be great if Col. McMaster's point of view had been shared up and down the chain of command from day 1, but given recent events, I don't think we're going to get a happy ending. Even if we dodge the rumbling civil war for another year, the occupation can go on and on for a lot longer and still not work out. The British occupied/created Iraq over a period of 35 years, and they were left with nothing.

I honestly don't see how we can hope to do any better, especially given our occupation's lack of sustainablility. In large part because the war was concieved with a level of due dilligance and objectivity that rivals the planners behind pets.com, and in large part because it's simply a terrifically bad idea to go and invade countries that didn't invade you first, the strategic position we're in is a big-time loser. We're $250B in the hole so far, and the total human toll -- the effects of death, attrition, and future medical care for the wounded --- is going to push that much higher, two to four times higher, even if we could magically pull out right this second.

We simply cannot affort to keep this show running for much longer, and stubbornly pursuing the Tinkerbell Strategy (Clap louder! It'll work out!) is fucking ignorant, not to mention cruel. It's not as morally monsterous as when palace-dwelling generals in Europe fed millions into the trench-war meat grinder in WWI, but it's just about as stupid.

We should be looking at how to bring our occupation of Iraq -- and I would argue the majority of our military presence in the entire region -- to an end. It's going to happen. Empire isn't sustainable over time, and it's not really even the right idea to pursue. The question is whether we redeploy on our own terms or whether we continue burning our future prospects in pursuit of some spectre of Pax Americana.

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Oh My

When arming people for civil war, America strives for balance. If this is an accurate description of our strategy at the moment, we're in for more bad news.

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Hoaxy Conspires

Heard from some folks at the Oscars that there's an email/forward going around claiming an 9/11 connection with verse 9:11 in the Koran. I want you to just take s guess whether or not it's true.

The answer.

Come on, people. Looking for conspiracies is a fundimentally disempowering way to analyze reality. It's a cop-out. Yeah, the odds are stacked; but that's not exactly a fucking secret, now is it?

And also, while we're at it, although it's clear that there are some unanswered questions about what exactly happened on 9/11, the idea that those events were part of a deliberate plan which was orchestrated by the power-elite of this country is one without a factual basis. Making that accusation, even by inference, without some kind of real evidence is, in my opinion, the height of counterproductivity.

I understand the allure of drama and intrigue (fnord) but this isn't an ok thing to jerk around about. Even Oliver Stone realizes that, you dig?

So give the conspiracy a rest. If you need something to do, get to work on that biodesil algae pond.

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Net Freedom: Merger Madness

UPDATE: Free Press has a petition to protest the merger on the grounds that it's a return to the Ma Bell Monopoly. I recommend signing.

So that thing with five CEOs with devil horns who want to privatize the internet by violating the principle of network neutrality and breaking the end-to-end nature of TCP/IP... well, now it's four companies, if the fatbacks get their way.

Mergers are often how the greedheads respond to competition. Ganging up. It's worked since grade school so why stop now?

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SexBlogging

The debate about Abortion is really about sex, generally. Especially when a core part of the anti-choice argument basically goes, "Don't want a baby? Close your legs, slut."

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The Life

Saturday is this: woken up by the sun, manage to dodge that for a couple hours, get dressed and share brunch at the corner diner with the belle du mois after which she heads home. Return, sleepy from pancakes, work for a bit on a project with Zack, get burned out, decide I'm staying in and resting up. Reconsider. Decide I've got to go out to pay homage for Kristi's birthday. Get a little high and load up the iPod for the subway and subsequent walk through the East Village.

Listening to this John Henry song on the elevated part of the F-train is good. Logjam getting out because there's a Little Person (or midget, if you prefer) Woman making out with someone on the 2nd ave stairwell. Queens of the Stone Age kicks in, which is good for clopping through the Village. Old places I used to go.

Drink whiskey and eat fancy cheese at the bar with Jeremy, Wes, Alex and Laura while other people we know (and don't) trickle though. Will the Easter-European hostess let us into the back room? Something organized going on. Lots of guys, possibly in finance. A fratty feel. Attention paid to the Duke/UNC basketball game (UNC wins!). Yeah, we can go on back there, she supposes, and really there's plenty of room. A lot of couches. Some other random girls I knew from Tisch there -- Strokes concert afterparty -- with a friendly man with gigantic hands. Remembering a more innocent time; I used to have a crush. It gets too crowded, our party breaking up.

Around the bend and across the park to a place called Hop Devil, used to be Lucky Changs (trannie waitresses, let you drink underage sometimes) and Kristi's chef boy has unwrapped a Peking Duck. Tasty. It's about 1:30am, two hours later than I planned on staying out, but Jeremy wants to drink some Pabst, so there I am for a little bit longer. Blur my way home and fall asleep trying to watch an episode of Carnivale.

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Net Freedom Heating Up

Net Freedom Now

This is important stuff. I've previously linked to Net Freedom Now, which has some good background, but doesn't necessarily seem all that active. Common Cause has been a little iffy when it comes to the regulation of political blogging, but it looks like they're trying to make up for it by taking a stand here.

Check it out, get informed, spread the word. I'll be monitoring this and ramping things up.

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V is for Vendetta

James Wolcott Gives it Two Fists in the Air (mild spoilers behind link):

...when it was over I knew it was the movie our post 9-11 minds craved and unconsciously had been working towards, a movie that conjured the fear of terrorism and repression and didn’t just tell us how we got into the Orwellian predicament we’re in (terrain already attacked by Fahrenheit 9-11, Syriana, Why We Fight), but made the imaginative leap that would lift us out of the news, out of the political present, and stand up to that fear—face it with fury and compassion.

...

And make no mistake V for Vendetta is fun, dangerous fun, percussive with brutality and laced with ironic ambiguity and satirical slapstick (a Benny Hill homage, no less!). But gives the movie its rebel power is the moral seriousnessthat drives the action, emotion, and allegory. That’s what I didn’t expect from the Wachowski brothers (The Matrix), this angry, summoning Tom Paine moral dispatch that puts our pundits, politicians, and cable news hosts to shame. V for Vendetta instills force into the very essence of four-letter words like hate, love, and (especially) fear, and releases that force like a fist. Off come the masks, and the faces are revealed.

I wanna see it.

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Lawful

Don't know why, but this just hit me as I whipped up my morning coffee.

There's a kind of ying-yang of rule-following and rule-breaking etched into the American soul. We have deep traditions and ingraned respect for both the straight-shooter and the outlaw. There's a good and bad side to both these traditions. Allow me to break it down:

You have good rule-breakers, from the original Revolutionary roots of the nation through Thereau and the latter-day heroes of civil disobedience. You have the essentially healthy mistrust of authority. You have the honesty of the outlaw, those who understand that living by your own law requires a higher standard. Clearly, this is where my heart lies.

And then you have the bad rule-breakers: criminals, thugs, and abusers of power. You have Sen. George McCarthy and a host of lesser figures (like Dick Cheney) who build their position in life by breaking the rules and breaking others down in doing so. These people are few and far between, but they're really destructive.

On the flip side, you have the good rule-followers. You've got a whole mess of right-thinking preachers, FDR, an honest sherrif, and all the other the collected stars of Law and Order. You've got the constitution and it's fans, Young Ralph Nader, and even some members of the Press. These folks are the bedrock of a stable society.

Finally, you have the bad rule-followers. These folks are the worst in my opinion. They break down into two sub-camps: people who are blindly authoritarian (the loyal base for the Daddy State) and people who use legalistic means to achieve what are ultimately immoral ends. For instance -- just gonna throw this out there -- using the Supreme Court to stop people from counting votes.

The problem we face right now is we have a bunch of bad people in positions of power, and a bunch of reflexively pro-authority people all around them. It's like when Nixon won by thundering on that the US was a country of Law and Order, while simultaniously ordering the illegal/inhumane bombing of Cambodia and using the FBI to compile damaging information about those he deemed his "enemies" here in the US. That he eventually went down for a botched burglery is tragicomic.

At some point soon there should be a backlash. I for one can't wait.

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