A Brief Word From The Management

You might have noticed that I keep making tweaks to my blog. I have very little experience in web design and things of that sort. I do have a rudimentary understanding of html. Mostly it's been just getting into the code and fucking with things until it doesn't look like a dozen clowns thrown into a blender.

Yes, aesthetics do count for something. If my readers are going to be blowing chunks, I'd rather it be out of disgust over what they just read, rather than the appearance.

Odd priorities, yes, but then again, I'm a bit odd myself.


2nd point. There are and will be various little errors popping up. Spelling, grammar, things of that sort. Sometimes my fingers simply will not cooperate and rebel against the signals sent by my brain. That is fine. A little bit of anarchy keeps the blood flowing and all that. I may well go back in the next day and clean things up a bit. But generally, you get the idea.

I do not use spellcheck. I hate spellcheck because it does nothing for content. Oh sure, M$ Word will correct grammar and spelling, but honestly, it's a drag training it for my salty take upon the English language. For the longest time it wanted me to hyphenate "cocksucker" and "motherfucker". No no no! Bad M$!!! I did train it but you know, you get a good rhythm going, got your swerve on, and the words are flowing like beer from a keg at a frat house on a Saturday night and then your buzz gets planed by those little M$ squigglies telling you that you fucked up. Christ on a bicycle, it just ruins the mood and the flow.

Instead, you get what you see here. Sometimes sloppy, but you can dig the spirit. I get my point across. And if there are any of you out there considering hiring me professionally, yes, I do have the capabilty to go back in and edit. But hell, if I have an editor, I don't want to cut them out of all the fun. Job security and all that.

Well, I've babbled enough here. Tomorrow, back to politics.

Few citizens have bothered to equip themselves to deal with volcanic upheaval, solar flares, or the Lord's purifying flame

Ah yes, a bit of good-natured tweaking from the fine folks over at The Onion. Hell knows we could use a good chuckle, especially after dredging up the horrors of 9/11 all over again. Between that and the Katrina anniversary, I need some coaxing out from underneath my bed.

But who knows how long it will last. Yesterday there were a few little goodies over in the Middle East.

At Saddam Hussein's trial, he lashed out against "agents of Iran and Zionism" during his trial. Yes, Iran. Remember what I posted yesterday? Saddam is a lot of things but he is not stupid. Au contraire, he is a wily bastard and you just know all hell is going to break loose during his trial when he pulls out the four aces up his sleeve- all the years of support he received from the US. He is going to name names, dates, and all the ugly details. His starting in on mentioning Iran is merely the opening gambit. He knows this will strike a chord among many of his fellow Sunnis, given the bloody war in the 80s between Iran and Iraq that some estimate resulted in a total of a million casualties.

The other event is even more intriguing. Militants attempted to storm the US embassy in Syria. Now the initial AP report made it sound like it was just a gun battle, but this morning's Boston Globe says that attempts were made to blow up the embassy. But the rub is this- the attack was turned aside by the Syrian military.

We have been on less than friendly terms with the Syrians and President Assad for many years, mainly due to their support for Hezbollah. But confounding the image of the Syrians supporting terrorism is Assad's own troubles with Al Qaeda. Assad is more secular and he has cracked down on Islamic fundamentalists in the past. But we didn't hear any of this during this summer's events in Lebanon. All we heard- at least here in the States- is how Syria supported terrorism.

Again, this is more grey that will cause heads to explode within the GOP. The American people do not like grey, it cannot be condensed into 15 second sound bites that will not interfere with the latest "reality" dreck spewed out by the networks, and by begrudginingly complimenting Syria for their actions, they could conceivably, by Karl Rove standards, be accused of being soft on terrorism.

Yes, politics is stupid and evil and brings out the worst in people. Perhaps this is why I love them so much. This is the true reality- venal craven weasels going after one anothers' throats. It's the human version of cockfighting. And to that I say, let the games begin.

Tags:

politics Al Qaeda terrorism Iran Iraq Hussein Syria Assad terrorist attack GOP sound bite

"I spent $400 billion and all I got was this lousy 'fuck you'"

There was an AP news report on Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad meeting today in Tehran to discuss border security- specifically to prevent any Al Qaeda infiltration into Iraq from Iran.

Background- Iran is and has been a Shiite country. Under Saddam Hussein, Iraq was at least nominally Sunni, although it was very much a secular society. Now the new Iraqi government is dominated by Shiites, and they are reaching out to their Shiite brothers in Iran, seeking to repair the damage to their relations caused by years of Hussein's rule. There have already been other meetings as well, including ones on possible petroleum/fuel deals, since we destroyed most of Iraqi oil production facilities when we invaded and turned them from a country with $.40/gallon gas to a country suffering horrendous fuel shortages...

Now this is where it grows interesting. Hussein has got to be laughing his fucking ass off at this, because Way Back When, the US backed Iraq- and him- as a bulwark against the religious fundamentalism of Iran. Now the US took him out of the picture, and what happens? Iraq is cozying up to one of the founding members of the Axis Of Evil.

I am wondering how this is playing in the bowels of the White House right now? I imagine Dubya's having one of his Nixonian meltdowns and is kicking the dog and leaving angry messages on Condee Rice's voicemail demanding to know who the fuck let al-Maliki off his leash. This was not in The Plan. What the hell happened to the throngs of grateful Iraqis laying down beds of rose petals for our troops and Halliburton? Instead, those ungrateful bastards are now playing footsie with Iran???

DOH!!!!

Tags:

Iran Iraq Hussein George Bush Al Qaeda

More Mush For Us (or US, if you will)

It's the morning after 9/11 and now we're left shaking off the cobwebs from a month of all the retrospectives, memorial services, remembrances, and speeches. We are now left with the rather ugly question of "what now?"

It is a sad truth that 9/11 has become politicized. Each side- Left and Right- have sought to co-op it for their own ends.

The Right uses it as justification for their neofascist crackdown upon our Constitutional rights, pulling off the incredible Orwellian doublespeak tactic of telling us they're doing this because our enemies hate freedom. They have used the events of 9/11 as justification for this "war on terror" that includes warrantless snooping, painting of critics as unAmerican Al-Qaeda dick suckers, and a whole other set of tactics whose ultimate end is allowing for the unfettered exercise of executive power.

The Left points to 9/11 as Exhibit A of the Bush Administration's incompetence; that they underestimated the threat. Bush disregarded Al-Qaeda, he didn't care, and he was off reading books about goats to schoolkids on the morning of the attack, etc etc.

I don't necessarily subscribe to that school of thought. One thing the ABC "docu-drama" did was show that 9/11 had its roots back in the early 90s and that. There were a number of points in the 90s where officials from the Clinton Administration could have taken action, but for various reasons they didn't.

We have become inured to the idea of madmen flying jets into buildings. But before the attacks, who in their right minds seriously believed someone would do such a thing? For most of us, this was the shock of 9/11- the patentedly unworldly sight of seeing a 767 purposely slammed into the WTC. Who ever heard of such a thing? Perhaps this was part of Al Qaeda's calculation- that even if the plot became known, who in their right mind would think anyone would be insane enough to carry it out?

Of course, thinking about this, such things happened in WWII with the Japanese Kamikaze pilots.... The difference then being that they flew into military targets.

President Bush is right when he says that things have changed. We are at war. But here's the rub. Those of us on the Left don't dispute that. What we dispute is the manner in which this war was undertaken and the tactics chosen.

There is a common thread running between the conduct of the war in Iraq and the WOT. In both instances, the Bush Administration has arrogantly stormed forward, ignoring outside counsel, refusing to adjust tactics, and when things go wrong, not admitting errors but instead blaming others or outside forces. In their conduct, they are playing into Al Qaeda's hands and doing all the dirty work for them.

Keith Olberman, a political commentator, has emerged as one of the more eloquent voices against the Bush Administration. Yesterday, he lit into the president about the gaping pit that still remains at the WTC site five years after the fact. But Olberman went further, giving voice to something about which I've been writing since 9/11, which can be neatly summed up as thus: out of the devastation of 9/11 we had an opportunity to move forward and seize the moral high ground in an effort to combat this radical Islamic fundamentalist movement. But Bush and his Administration screwed the pooch. They made a series of insanely stupid moves that turned the tide against us. Jesus, somebody needed to go up to El Presidente and say "You had it right in the palm of your hand, laddie, and you fooked it up." and biff him upside the head.

Seriously. It boggles the fucking mind that we went from having the sympathies of most of the world after 9/11 to being hated worse than Al Qaeda. What's the US's approval rating in Europe? 35%? How is this possible?

But back to what Olberman said:

The only positive on 9/11 and the days and weeks that so slowly and painfully followed it… was the unanimous humanity, here, and throughout the country. The government, the President in particular, was given every possible measure of support.

Those who did not belong to his party — tabled that.

Those who doubted the mechanics of his election — ignored that.

Those who wondered of his qualifications — forgot that.

History teaches us that nearly unanimous support of a government cannot be taken away from
that government, by its critics. It can only be squandered by those who use it not to heal a nation’s wounds, but to take political advantage.

Terrorists did not come and steal our newly-regained sense of being American first, and political, fiftieth. Nor did the Democrats. Nor did the media. Nor did the people.

The President — and those around him — did that.

They promised bi-partisanship, and then showed that to them, "bi-partisanship" meant that their party would rule and the rest would have to follow, or be branded, with ever-escalating hysteria, as morally or intellectually confused; as appeasers; as those who, in the Vice President’s words yesterday, "validate the strategy of the terrorists."

They promised protection, and then showed that to them "protection" meant going to war against a despot whose hand they had once shaken… a despot who we now learn from our own Senate Intelligence Committee, hated Al-Qaeda as much as we did.

The polite phrase for how so many of us were duped into supporting a war, on the false premise that it had ’something to do’ with 9/11, is "lying by implication."

The impolite phrase, is "impeachable offense."

Still, the charade continues. Now there's been some backtracking and a switch in phraseology. We are now battling "Islamic Fascism". Apparently, the Administration thought that merely tying Al Qaeda to 9/11 wasn't enough and that people were beginning to question things a little too much. Best to equate Al Qaeda to the Nazis to put an end to that nonsense.

This is what's infuriating. We have lost the battle of ideas. By tagging things in a manner consistent with that of a 5 year old- and a rather stupid one at that, we are losing the battle for the hearts and minds of people around the world. We are the ones seen as bloodthirsty and arrogant and evil. We refused to stand up to Israel when they cut off water and power to Gazans. We avenged the deaths of 3200 Americans by unleashing a war that has killed 50,000 Iraqis despite Iraq having nothing to do with 9/11. We refuse to even consider for a moment the motivations of those we paint as "terrorists", let alone come up with a strategy to counter them. No, we just call them evil and state that the only way in which we will deal with them is going John Wayne on their asses.

It is a highly infantile manner of seeing the world. You are either with us or against us, black or white, right or wrong. There is no room in Bushworld for grey. And heaven help those who stand on the "wrong" side. You will be destroyed.

This is one of the real tragedies. We are all Americans. We despise what Al Qaeda did and want to do what we can to prevent another 9/11 from happening again. We agree upon the strategy but we have serious disagreements with the tactics. Yet, when we give voice to these disagreements, Herr UberFuhrer Bush and UnterFuhrer Cheney say we hate America.

Isn't this America? Isn't that the basis of our system- debate, give and take, the marketplace of ideas?

Not any more.

And that is why, every time Bush says something about "if we do(n't) do X, then the terrorists have won" and closes off all debate, I shake my head because what that poor sorry dumb bastard doesn't realize is that by doing so, he HANDS them victory. This is not leadership- this is dictatorship. Does it really matter to us who it is that makes it so we are not free in our communications or expressions; who it is that scrutinizes us for correctness, be it to the strictures of the Patriot Act or to Sharia?

Such is the dilemma facing us in this post-9/11 world. It is no longer a question of being free, but rather one of which flavor enslavement we are being served.

Tags:

9/11 George Bush Al Qaeda terrorism Islamic fascism post-9/11 freedom Keith Olberman

Post 9/11 hangover

The anniversary of 9/11 has come and gone and now it's time for a few thoughts.

About part 2 of the ABC special... it was just plain weird. Were they drunk when they edited it? Seriously, there were strange cuts at the end of scenes which leads me to believe they were last-minute edits to avoid certain problems with the truth. And what was the deal with showing the entire hijacking scene twice? Was it a glitch in the Matrix? I sat here flashing on Yogi Berra thinking it was just like deja vu all over again.

And why were we not shown El Presidente on the morning of 9/11? And I thought it very odd that Richard Clarke was portrayed as calling the shots that morning until the ABC special after the movie, when I learned that Clarke is now ABC's security consultant.

There were a number of other things but really, my brain was a bit scrambled watching the footage of that horrible morning.

And in the middle of this we had Dubya giving a speech, and a rather odd one at that. He didn't just speak of 9/11. He also spoke of the war in Iraq and although it appears someone finally beat him over the head with a baseball bat to get him to stop linking Iraq and Hussein to 9/11, there was still this explicit link made between the War on Terror and Iraq.

To some degree I now agree with this linkage. The problem is that it was our invasion that made Iraq Al Qaeda's playground. As I mentioned in one of yesterday's post, prior to our invasion, there was no Al Qaeda in Iraq. Hussein made sure of that. We unleashed that hell and perhaps before he finally leaves office Bush might admit that. Instead, we get his tepid protest that the world is safer without Hussein in power.

He repeats this as a mantra, hoping We The People will buy into it. But no, I refuse. Hussein was contained. We had his eye on him and had him pretty well under our thumb. If he got a little weird, a few well-placed Tomahawk missiles would have sorted him out. Instead, it's now the Wild West over there and no place in the country is safe for ordinary Iraqis- or even unordinary ones. There have even been attacks in the so-called "Green Zone" that is the most heavily fortified section of Iraq.

But I will give El Presidente credit for pointing out that we are at war, even though it doesn't always seem like we are. But it is odd in that our country doesn't behave like it's at war. We're not asked to cut back or sacrifice; there's no campaign to buy war bonds. We're not being asked to conserve energy, use less oil and gas, or do any of those other things commonly done during wartime.

This, however, cuts both ways. Unfortunately, we don't seem to have a credible strategy for dealing with the threat of Islamic fundamentalism. Instead of trying to come to grips with it, understand it, and develop a counter-strategy for dealing with it, El Presidente and his team demonize it and slap simplistic tags upon it.

There was one passage in his speech that cracked me the hell up:

We have learned that they form a global network of extremists who are driven by a perverted vision of Islam -- a totalitarian ideology that hates freedom, rejects tolerance, and despises all dissent. And we have learned that their goal is to build a radical Islamic empire where women are prisoners in their homes, men are beaten for missing prayer meetings, and terrorists have a safe haven to plan and launch attacks on America and other civilized nations.

It cracked me up because this doesn't sound a hell of a lot different from what the Fundamentalist Christian Right does here in America. It also concerns me that the President does not see these things. And again, there has been little public effort to understand the enemy and their true motivation beyond the simplistic mush of "they hate freedom".

Until we can do that, we are doomed to remain at war.

Tags:

9/11 George Bush Al Qaeda Bin Ladin terrorism strategy Iraq Hussein war on terror

More thoughts on The Mouse and a remembrance of 9/11

I've been jumping a bit around the blogosphere to check the reaction to last night's show.

It seems to me that a helluva lot of people went into the show already prejudiced, convinced it would be some huge right-wing propaganda piece and refused to give it the time of day or approach it with an open mind.

My gut reaction coming away from it was similar to what I felt when the facts about 9/11 started coming out. That there were those in power who underestimated Bin Ladin and Al Qaeda. That there were those who understood them only too well and couldn't fully get their views heard, to eventual stunning consequences. That this was not a black and white issue and that we are viewing the events leading up to 9/11 through post 9/11 goggles.

Now, if we knew Bin Ladin was in a compound and there happened to be women and children there, I don't think there will be any hesitation about bombing it. But back then, when his crime was financing the first WTC attack? Yes, we wanted him captured or dead, but at the risk of inflaming the entire Muslim world?

This is the danger in black and white thinking, and again, I go back to the scene with Madeline Albright. Up until that scene, the scenes showing decisions not to get Bin Ladin were shown rather simplistically and we were told through the dialog those making the decisions "had no balls".

As I was sitting here composing this post, I took a break for a second and was going through my friends pages. I came across a link to a reporter's LJ and I read it and found myself a bit befuddled. Maybe it's just me, but a sense of fairness required that I do not merely accept the word of others, but that I watch the damn thing myself. See how ABC handled it, see what criticisms shake out over the factual content over the next several days/weeks. But for fuck's sake, to just bury my head in the sand and ignore it? For me, I just couldn't do it. I needed to watch this.

So being the dick I am, I responded to her post.

I will watch the rest of it tonight.

In the meantime, I will remember the events of those terrible days. Of waking up and getting a phonecall to put on the news and thinking at first glance that one of the towers was on fire but then seeing live the 2nd jet slam into the other tower. The brilliant clear blue sky and the surreal silence as I stood outside with Kelly, neither of us saying a word. The horrors belching forth from the TV and sitting there, transfixed, for days on end. Of my first trip to the WTC site, 8 months later, and the emotion of seeing all the tributes and the raw pit and the fire station. I will hope that our future brings us leaders who have the wisdom and courage to truly evaluate what led up to 9/11 and our role in bringing it about and to try to change those things for the greater good of us all.

We cannot change history. We can only honor it and hopefully, learn from it.

I am smiling now, because on the anniversary of this horrifying occurrance, I am hearing the sounds of the children at the school next door. It's the sounds of kids playing- balls bouncing, screeches, pleadings to "throw me the ball." The sounds of life affirmed.

Life does go on.

TAGS:

9/11 politics terrorism ABC The Mouse The Left post-9/11 perspective

The Mouse Does 9/11 and other assorted ramblings

Greetings all. Sorry for neglecting this blog for so long. Honestly, it's a pain in the fucking snards, just because of the whole html tag coding thing. You would thing the Technorati folks would get their act together and work with Google to add a keyboard shortcut. But no, I have to fire up M$ Word and do it through there. {{Joy!!! I just found a utility that I can plug in tags and it generates ready-to-paste code. Do computers rock our cocks or what?}}

But I digress.

As to the Mouse's take on 9/11 (part 1....)

It was pretty intense.

From what I understand from following the news all these years, it seems ABC did a decent job of laying out the timeline.

Of course, we have no idea as to the truth of all the dialog. We know that at least originally, there were some.... problems. Whether they were fixed in the final version, I guess we'll hear tomorrow.

Some things about the show caught my eye and my black sense of humor.

First, did Toyota pay for product placement in the film? Apparently Toyotas are the Official Trucks of Al Qaeda.

Second, apparently ABC is the only news network that covered all these events.... ;)

Third, during the capture of the bomb-maker in Pakistan, when the Pakistani military commander wanted to torture him, the US operative said something along the lines of "that's not how the US does things."

Ummmm, right. That got an out-loud laugh from me. At least that's what it was like back when Clinton was president and the Geneva Conventions weren't merely suggestions or something to wipe you ass on, but international law to which the US at least professed to follow. Now? Ummmm, not so much....

Fourth, there were a whole lot of gratuitous "this person doesn't have any balls" kinda comments and very little explanation as to the reasons why certain decisions were made and the reasoning behind them. The only episode that presented what I consider to be a fair and balanced view was when Madeline Albright told them quite testily why it was that Pakistan had to be notified about the launch of the cruise missiles that overflew their territory.

It was a surprising moment of grey in what has thus far been a whole lot of black and white.

Fifth, after Clinton launched the cruise missiles into Afghanistan and bombed the pharmaceutical/suspected chem weapon factory in (the Sudan?), the GOP jumping all over his ass saying he did it to distract from the Lewinsky thing. Yes, the same GOP that claims the Dems are soft on terrorism.

And goddamn, but the scene in the Al Qaeda training camp where they were showing a Clinton news conference and they were shooting at the screen and calling Clinton "Satan"- I had one of those giddily surreal moments where I wasn't sure if I was looking at Bin Ladin's camp or one of Karl Rove's closed-door GOP "strategy" sessions.

What the fuck was up with some of the music? Jesus, is The Mouse going to be pimping the soundtrack to this?

Those disclaimers periodically flashed across the scene were annoying as all fuck. Yes, we heard- you made shit up. Show it at the beginning and at the end. You fucked with the flow.

And I like this "no commercial" stuff. Which is what I also remember from 9/11- the news was constantly on every channel with no commercials. For once this country put aside its venal money-grubbing mentality and was operating for the greater good.

So now we wait for part 2.

Do you think NY Mayor Michael Bloomberg will invite Ann Coulter to the official memorial ceremony tomorrow?

We will also be taking bets on the over/under for pandering by the Administation and right now the opening line is 237 for the number of self-congratulatory dick sucks offered up by Bush/Cheney/Rove et al.

But just remember- it was what, 7 years between the first WTC bombing and 9/11? Just because it's been 5 years doesn't mean shit. Some of this is due to increased vigilance, but let's not fool ourselves. An unknown part of it is due to the timeline it takes for Al Qaeda to plan and train for something. We are very far from out of the woods.

And this takes me to my final point about part 1 of tonight's episode. It's all well and good that ABC has at least attempted to put together a timeline of events. But what is distinctly missing is any sort of in-depth attempt to understand and lend perspective as to why Bin Ladin and so many others around the world hate our fucking guts and want nothing more than for all of us to die violent and painful deaths. As a nation, we refuse to even consider that our actions help create these monsters and provide the fuel they desperately require to nourish their continued hatred and recruit others. Until we do so, we are doomed to continue to feed the terrorism cycle.

Now, a few other things......

Some of you may have missed the news but....

a> Those CIA gulags scattered across the world that we were told didn't exist? The Prodigal Idiot Son President came out this week and told us they do exist.

b> The dick-sucking and mutual circle-jerking between Bin Ladin/Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein that Bush told us went on? It didn't. In fact, Hussein tried to capture Al-Zarqawi.

But as recently as 8/21/06, El Presidente Del Idiota still said there was a tie between them.

But we should continue to believe they're telling us the truth even after it's been shown that they are lying sacks of camel dung.

Let's see how the American public responds in the upcoming midterm elections. Will they reconfirm that as a whole We The People are a bunch of gullible and venal idiots or will the People rise up and let it be known that we don't like to be lied to?

Right now I'm not sure which way this will go. The choices are blindingly clear. We will see.




TAGS:

9/11 George Bush politics Al Qaeda Bin Ladin terrorism ABC The Mouse Bill Clinton CIA Gulag midterm election