Lenin has many more pictures and links to YouTube footage of yesterday’s Stop the War Demo in London, though from the virtual UK news blackout you’d’ve never known it had happened at all.
War on Iran
Bizarro Bush
I just heard George Bush’s press conference on the radio and it was a scary thing. He sounded dangerously close to total meltdown, insisting repeatedly that roadside bombs in Iraq are planted by Iranian forces and naming by deliberate omission the Iranian president as having given the order.
In press questions he came across as becoming progressively more hysterical, insisting over and over in a increasingly belligerent yet whiny rising tone that what he, the commander-in-chief, said was just plain true and they should just take it on faith.
When an obviously gobsmacked member of the press challenged him about the veracity of the intelligence and asked why he was contradicting his own commanders and that of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,, he lost his cool completely and almost shouted that he knew it was the Iranians and he would ‘ tell his commanders to hunt them down to protect American troops’.
Somehow Mark Urban, the BBC’s diplomatic correspondent, construed this deeply worrying display of emotional instability and trigger-happy aggression in a world leader as meaning that Bush is backing off war with Iran and the Korea deal could be a model for the Iran situation.
Uh? WTF? Did we hear the same broadcast?
I construe this not as some mythical rapprochement but as bloody scary. Bush sounded like a man dangerously out of even the slightest modicum of self-control, both angry and petulant, with an itch to go to war and his finger on the nuclear trigger. He’s just looking for an excuse, any excuse. He is a danger to everybody around him and a liability to his country.
If I thought it might not get me shipped off to Gitmo I’d be asking the same question Henry II asked of his knights re Thomas A Becket. In a purely satirical way, obviously.
Are You Tonkin To Me?
It’s getting so I want to turn off all the radio and tv and cut the internet connection: there is no escape from this feeling of sick inevitability that the US will launch a nuclear strike against Iran.
Any idiot with half a brain can see that the US is concocting a trumped up case for war, no matter how much they deny it and attempt to dissemble:
Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates insisted again Friday that, despite persistent reports to the contrary circulating in Washington and around the world, the United States is not planning military action against Iran.
“I don’t know how many times the president, Secretary Rice and I have had to repeat that we have no intention of attacking Iran,” an exasperated Gates told reporters at a NATO meeting in Spain. In fact, he said, the administration has consciously tried to “tone down” its rhetoric on the subject.
Does this rhetoric sound very toned down to you?
“Iran is going to have to understand that the United States will protect its interests if Iran seeks to confront us.”
Nicholas Burns, U.S. undersecretary of state for political affairs
Or this?
Comment of the Day: Oops! Apocalypse Edition
Today’s is from That American Chap following Digby’s excellent post about the US media’s suggestion that a war with Iran would somehow occur accidentally, and that the moment to act is NOW.
The Chap’s comment echoes what I’ve been saying for some time, but does so a damned sight more concisely and urgently.
It’s been clear to me for at least two years that we would be going to war (and a nuke one at that) with Iran and that nothing, not the failure in Iraq, not the clear evidence of how they lied the Iraq war into existence, would stop it.
When you say that “we’d better get ready to see our lives change in fundamental ways”, you’re spot on… but I doubt that you really grasp how dark the future is (you’d be screaming at the top of your lungs if you really knew), just how devastating our nuking of Iran will be for the US! The rest of the planet will regard us (for the next couple of hundred years) as the guys who one-upped the Nazis in the contest to see who could be the most despised villains in history.
The neo-cons (why aren’t these clowns serving life terms in prisons for the criminally insane?) still think that the best route for us is to grab up as many of the world’s oil fields as we can (yes, all of that sniping at Venezuela is a tip-off that we’ll be going there in the “cause of freedom”, aka- stealing their oil) and that all of this bullying will make us the world’s hyper-power for a thousand year reich.
The problem with this theory is that, like all neo-con thoughts, it is only “thunk” from the perspective of people who have an exceedingly incomplete picture of reality. Remember how the whole middle east was going to bow down to us and surrender when the awesome majesty of our military might was shown to them? What steaming-hot bullshit THAT turned out to be! We’ve shown them *way* too much and now they see us as a paper tiger (and outside of nuking the rest of the planet, we simply aren’t good at these long distance, long-termed wars, are we?) who can be ground down with snipers and IED’s.
They (the neo-cons) picture the rest of the world as helpless victims of our power when, in fact, *we’re* the fragile ones. Once we nuke Iran, the rest of the world will understand, without any doubt, that we’re out to grab the oil…and this will outrage them. They will band together against us and simply boycott every American product and turn in the dollars they’re holding for the currencies of China and the European Union. This will vaporize the buying power of the dollar and shatter our economy beyond repair. Martial law and civil war will occupy the American homeland and the troops that the neocons envisioned blitzing through the middle-east will be called home to patrol their own country.
Trust me on this, we’re in for a shitstorm the likes of which you only ever pictured reading about in some absurdly dark novel. If you have any brains (and I assume that your presence here is an indicator that you do), you’d better wave off the fog of “it can’t happen here” because it, in fact, IS happening here. Take whatever disposable cash you have and turn those faltering dollars into something real, canned food, shotguns, batteries, medical supplies, motor oil, anything practical that you’ll be able to use or to barter with in the future. If this sounds like hysteria to you, think again, the most powerful weapon that the rest of the world has to use against us is our own dollar, and when we make ourselves into complete monsters by nuking Iran, they will use that weapon to paralyze us, to defang us, to cause us internal agonies that will stop our aggression.
Don’t just stand there slack-jawed, watching this go down in a state of horrified fascination, get your ass in gear and do what you can to position your family and friends to be able to survive the coming nightmare as best they can!
That American Chap | 02.01.07 – 4:28 pm | #
Quite.
Oy, the number of posts I’ve written in the past, bewailing the smug complacency of the mushy middle of American left politics and warning grimly. but knowing the innefectuality of it, that although Bushco might be incompetent they are also utterly ruthless and without conscience; that America was going to be in a very bad place indeed before the populace woke up and that when they did it’d be too late; and so it’s proved.
Inside The Tent Pissing Out
Best wishes in her new job to Amanda Marcotte of Pandagon who is (like her predecessors at the blog, Ezra and Jesse) moving on to pastures new, specifically to work as web supremo for the John Edwards’ Democratic presidential; nomination campaign. The blog of course carries on – Pam continues as senior member and a new roster of writers has been added.
I’n very pleased for Amanda and that her career is going so well: it’s always nice when nice things happen to nice people and I’m sure she’ll be an asset to the Edwards team. And I’m glad she’s not working for Hillary.
But.
I’ve been very favourably inclined towards Edwards so far, because he at least had something to say for the poor, and I’ve been insisting in argument that an Edards/Obama ticket could be a real possibility and perhaps something that wouldn’t be too bad. I had thought both were the perhaps least venal possibilities of a Democratic party that really is no better than the Republicans when it comes to being beholden to big money and special interests.
Even socialists can see the pragmatic value of opting for the lesser evil.
Bur recently Edwards showed he’s right up there with Lieberman when it comes to supporting Israeli and neocon – and therefore Bush’s – interests in foreign policy.
During a speech via satellite at a security conference last week in Herzliya, Israel, Edwards joined the chorus of those threatening the Iranian government. “Iran threatens the security of Israel and the entire world,” Edwards said, echoing a line peddled by many neoconservatives. “Let me be clear: Under no circumstances can Iran be allowed to have nuclear weapons.”
A few moments later, he strongly hinted at the need for possible US military action. “To ensure that Iran never gets nuclear weapons, we need to keep ALL options on the table,” Edwards said. “Let me reiterate – ALL options must remain on the table.”
Oh. Right. So it’s fine by him if Bush attacks Iran. He’s just another corrupt chickenhawk then. But why sabotage his carefully calculated, champion-of-the-little American and the netroots-choice image like that?
Thinkprogress:
There’s a few possible explanations. One, Edwards sincerely believes in a more confrontational Iran policy. Two, he’s pandering to win the support and money of hawkish “pro-Israel” voters and donors. Three, he’s trying to impress the foreign policy intelligentsia by talking tough.
Any of those is enough to make me drop him like a hot brick. But let’s name the real reasons: greed and ambition. Self-interested politrcal triangulation and a willingness to sacrifice lives for his political career. Remind you of anyone?
How could any self-respecting leftist support such a person, let alone work for them?
This goes directly to what I was writing about yesterday, the whole shift in blogging as the presidential campaigns and lobbyists co-opt the power of bloggers:
Power is very seductive, so I’m not at all surprised by the continuing co-option of the big blogs into the political establishment. It’s the way elites always work: co-opt, absorb and neutralise. Just so long as those bloggers co-opted remember that that they are no longer outside the system but within it we’ll all get along fine.
Still, we must all make our own decisions and lets face it, other people’s career decisions are not really my business. From the little personal knowledge I have of Amanda she doesn’t strike me as someone who’d make frivolous decisions. I’ve no doubt she’ll have weighed up the pros and cons of this move before making it. On a personal level I will never wish Amanda anything but well, no matter how much we disagree on politics.
But Edwards and his campaign, after his self-exposure as yet another Democratic stalking-horse for AIPAC, are another matter entirely.
Now Shakespeare’s Sister has joined the campaign too as netroots co-ordinator. Nailing political colours to the mast, (or at least getting paid for blogging) seems to be quite the fashion. Who will be the next to put a paycheck over principle, I wonder?
And if anyone thinks that’s harsh or uncivil, I can only repeat what I said in my previous post.
Liberal blogging is already producing its own insider elites even though it’s that which brought us to this pass in the first place. Although they’re much less well-paid (if paid at all) than the right bloggers, the money is coming. With the ascendancy of the Democrats in Congress and a record-funded presidential race on the way, bloggers are no doubt already anticipating a tasty slice of the ad-spending and political-consultancy pie. The Hillary blogads are all over the place already.
I suppose they might argue that that’s the way the system works and what’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander., t’was ever thus, blah blah blah, don’t blame us, a blogger’s got to live and so on. Fine, make your living from politics if that’s what you want to do. I’ve no problem with that, it’s your choice.
But remember that the moment you start to make your living from politics you are part of the political establishment, not the counter-establishment, on the inside not the outside, and expect to be treated accordingly