How long must we endure the insane propaganda coming from the right-wing war mongers that have been urging on the Iraq occupation since the beginning?
When war hacks Mike O’Hanlon and Ken Pollack came back from a posh military-escorted happy tour in Iraq and declared that (a) they used to be against the war (though not the brutality of war as a geo-political strategy per se, just the tactics) [this was not previously known] and (b) they are now for the continued occupation, the best reaction was actually offered by serving soldiers.
Well no one believes that kind of story anyway, even if were true–just ask the Washington congressman who finds anger at himself from constituents because of his sudden “surge” in support for Bush’s war.
Kenneth Pollack is a longtime propagandist for the war, having written a book about the so-called case for invading Iraq and used fake-liberal outlets like Josh Marshall’s Talking Points Memo as eager dumping grounds for his swill.
But it’s not just shady Beltway propagandists making the case for more war in Iraq instead of withdrawal. Lots of Republicans have been getting one talking point after another and repeating it about how the situation in Iraq is improving. But that’s just not the case. US military deaths are up over last year, violence continues largely unabated, and core government departments like the Interior Ministry continue to spread terror among the population.
This is not progress. To the extent that things are calmer in a few pockets here and there, it’s because the fighting has lulled for a while. These lulls will happen as the civil war slowly burns itself out over the next decade. This process (or some other chain of events, maybe–who knows?) is not under the control of US forces, who are just side actors and armament suppliers to the various Iraqi factions. Getting in the middle–arming one group of Sunnis (“the tribes”) against another (Salafists, or in the media’s misnomer, “Al-Qaeda”) for example–is really just a matter of arming one gang of thugs against another. And eventually, whichever group of Sunnis we choose to arm is likely to eventually turn those weapons against our own Shia-dominated Iraqi government. Why keep picking factions and giving them weapons? They’re not going to run out of weapons that way, that’s for sure–but then we are talking about an “AK-in-every-home” kind of society.
Iraq is such a quagmire for America that it is hard to truly fathom. The corrupt contractors enriching themselves with shoddy projects; the incompetent grandees like Paul Bremer and David Patraeus who have pretended to rule Iraq; the enormous number of civilian deaths from bombing and from deprivation, well into the hundreds of thousands by now; the broken promises to military men and women about overseas time, equipment and health care; the cynical fiscal pump priming by the administration with excessive spending paired with excessive tax cuts, designed to put the real costs of the war as far into the future and as far out of the public consciousness as possible–everything about this war has been disgusting, and even some of those people willing to show their face at the Republican debate in New Hampshire tonight were cheering Ron Paul for calling out his own party about this disaster.
But many Republicans, and plenty of their servants from other corners, are still cheering the silly nonsense from most of the other candidates on stage about leaving Iraq “with honor” and finding “a way to win, and that’s victory.”
It’s just like Linus waiting for the Great Pumpkin to appear. They are going to sit there, and they believe their “victory” will appear, and their sincerity will make it happen. These people are not just obedient, or gullible–these people are blanket suckers!
Category: Uncategorized
Podcasts 8 and 9 are on video; still need some editing however
I’ve got the footage, cover screens and a rough cut done for pacificpelican.us podcast 8, which features Jessica and me at Yosemite. However our recent change in camera equipment has left me searching for the appropriate editing software for the new video format we’re recording in. For now the sound on the rough cut is the problem–way, way too much noise–and so I will keep looking for the right software before I release it, and for now rest assured that a beautiful Yosemite podcast is in the can, just waiting to be finished.
In addition, I have the footage that will comprise podcast 9 already over 90% shot. This podcast features the fallout on a San Francisco MUNI bus after a car smashes into the rear of the vehicle on Geary Boulevard. I will probably finish shooting the scenes today–all I need is a brief intro and possibly and outro–but the actual podcast will have to wait to be finished some time after number 8 is done.
Jessica and me: 5 years!
How amazing has it been for me to be with Jessica for five years now!?!
I love her so much and she is so beautiful and sweet and amazing.
We’re on our way to Yosemite this weekend to celebrate!
Gonzales gone doesn’t mean civil liberties are back
The US attorneys scandal and Alberto Gonzales were more than a side skirmish in larger political calculations, and his resignation is welcome and will lead to the end of the attorney general’s bizarre version of the “American dream,” but will probably not lead to restoration of American liberties.
This scandal was not about broad issues of separation of powers so much as defending senatorial privilege in a loosely defined system. Senators are territorial types–and they didn’t like the open defiance and lying that Alberto Gonzales displayed at their hearings. Besides that, his boss George W. Bush had sought to take away the great privilege Senators enjoy in their home states–the ability to consult on choice of U.S. attorneys–by using a new provision in a tyrannical law.
Why a majority of senators voted in favor of stripping themselves of this particular power in the “Patriot Act” reauthorization bill is a mystery only known inside the Hart Senate Office Building, if there.
But that’s all this was about. Now, for the most part, the power struggle is over and the various political parties and branches of governments can get back to colluding to deny ordinary Americans their civil liberties.
Congress just passed another absurd concession to the president in the recent “temporary” wiretapping bill. This appears a better indicator of where things are going politically–at least until the next election or for a while anyway.
No charges appear to have yet been filed for the lies Gonzales told, no impeachment proceedings have been called in the House. Just because he resigned doesn’t mean that he didn’t commit perjury. And liberals may hope for improvement in the DoJ now, but knowing the Bushies it will be another corrupt bastard so what does it matter anyway.
And what about Karl Rove and Harriet Myers? Will Congress let Bush get away with not having them testify?
Bush is extremely unpopular; he has claimed powers he simply does not have (to invalidate laws, to indefinitely imprison citizens without charge, to wiretap without a warrant, and so forth); and his administration has done a laughably bad job of leading the country.
Now is the time to open up a full-on political assault on the worst administration in the country’s history, for the purposes of avoiding more harmful mistakes like an Iran invasion and punishing the lawless and stupid president to set a precedent.
But that’s not likely to come from the Democrats, some of whom (like Hillary Clinton) are ready to collude with the Republican/media establishment once in power.
An appendix to my biography
My sister Ellen has launched a very cool new site about my family. Here is my bio on it as of now:
‘Where does he live?
He’s in San Francisco. He went to Michigan State for undergrad and then University of San Francisco for grad school. He’s currently working toward getting a CPA.
Does he play any sports?
He played soccer in high school. He also has a skate board he likes to take on the hills of San Francisco.
Does he have any pets?
No. But if he did it wouldn’t be a dolphin. He hates dolphins.
What does he like to do in his free time?
He reads a lot and has an online blog. Here’s the link:
Right on! Except, I did have a pet earlier in the year, Fishasaurus, who Jessica got for me and though he didn’t live long he was very cool and he taught me to love all aquatic creatures–even dolphins.
Ellen did a great job designing the site. Don’t forget to read all of the McKeown family profiles and browse the photo album.
The shadowy side of the food court
According to Israel, Gaza in dark for "security reasons"
‘The Israeli military has said it will open a border crossing with the Gaza Strip for a few hours on Sunday to allow fuel deliveries to the territory.
The announcement comes a day after parts of Gaza were plunged into darkness because of fuel shortages.
The territory relies on Israel for fuel but Israel says it stopped regular deliveries for security reasons.’
Oh, security reasons. That and the fact that they bombed the power infrastructure there last year.
Nothing to do with collective punishment after that coup by Hamas?
People have been warning about this building crisis. It’s all leading up to more violence.
Blame the accountants!! Even in scandal, Dell peddles "world-class" PR
Maybe it’s hard to spin the financial fraud and subsequent need to restate results over the last few years that Dell has faced due to an internal audit spurred by an SEC investigation, but Don Carty has to try a little harder than this:
‘”All of us are very proud of Dell. We believe we’re a world-class company, and we’re not terribly proud that we found one element of our company that wasn’t world class,” Carty said. “None of us at Dell like this.”‘
How much of the business is your accounting department? Those fraudulent results were reviewed by banks, investors and insurance companies and affected the perception that Dell was the clear leader in personal computers.
That’s not world class.
Now they lag HP, and as I thought might happen a major financial scandal has enveloped Dell–a major one anyway in seriousness if not with the kind of numbers that will threaten the company’s immediate solvency.
So sure. Claim it’s not really a big deal, and look for a scapegoat. Don’t blame the hard-charging corporate culture led by Mr. Dell and the “made-to-order” cult that the company had succeeded in getting into the business school texts. Don’t blame a mediocre product in an ultra-competitive market for Windows machines. Don’t blame the chronic unrealistic expectations of continued 15% growth for all tech companies on the stock market.
No. Blame the accountants. Without Michael Dell even sitting in on the conference call. That’ll work.
Except there’s one problem:
Carty is Dell’s chief financial office (CFO). The “one element of our company that wasn’t world-class,” according to him, was the one his position oversees.
They are still good at PR down there in Austin, even if they can’t pull down the growth numbers they’re supposed to anymore. They managed to spin business school professors and Tom Friedman, so why won’t they manage to spin their way out of this?
They’ll probably find a way. But I don’t know–here’s what MarketWatch says:
‘However, the company may not be out of the woods in the eyes of the Securities and Exchange Commission. Dell warned that despite the conclusion of the company’s internal review, “the SEC’s investigation is ongoing, and there can be no assurance that there will not be additional issues or matters arising from that investigation.”‘
The lonely madness of the Twitter user
New competitors like Yappd (which so far really isn’t much to speak of at all, by the way) and Pownce are moving fast on Twitter’s market.
After getting a new round of funding in the last month, however, Twitter has started going down again in the last day or two. Sometimes it will work through an app but not through the front page, sometimes nothing loads, it’s all very unpredictable. I am not very pleased about this, as I had started using the service again more.
For now, I’m this close to stopping. But I like Twitter–the bird logos are great for any aviary enthusiast such as myself and the name and constant short sharing of random thoughts, sometimes with people you know and often with others–these are custom designed for someone with my personality.
It could be said that Twitter is a time waster, but that’s not too serious a concern for anyone who could throw off 140 words of the top of his head easily and is using the 140 character text entry field that Twitter allows. It’s very convenient to post to Twitter, and messages have to be short, so normally all I would do would be just pop open a chat window in Gmail or open a widget in Netvibes, type in my quip, and go back to reading my email or checking my feeds.
Once the site stops working, though, the time wasting factor kicks in with a vengeance. I’m checking my profile page to see if it has my latest update. I’m wondering if my hordes of Gmail filters are failing to properly direct tweets from friends when the tweets just aren’t coming in by IM. I log into Facebook to see if tweets are being added to my mini-feed. I go to my web page and it loads slowly as the Twitter updates widget chokes.
None of this should really matter, but for a Twitter addict this can seem a maddening process. The economy of the Twitter message length–the text-messaging-friendly 140 character limit–also imbues those short messages with their own elevated importance in the fevered mind of the Twitter user.
I’ve been using Pownce and Jaiku a bit, and I like them fine, but instead of looking for a real replacement for Twitter I should reach back to my old posts and bring back the idea of being a Qwittr.
Pownce has some really nice features, but what it needs right away is a first-party blog widget and Facebook app, and customized home pages. (Maybe for the pro package at least? Might interest a lot more people.)
It doesn’t seem like many people use Jaiku as their main updates service anymore but it is able to accept RSS feeds from the user’s other sites and that feature seems to have become the key part of Jaiku’s formula–many people, for example, send their Twitter feed to Jaiku so people following them on either get the message, but on the Jaiku feed you might also see the user’s recent Last.fm listens and del.icio.us bookmarks or blog entries. The ongoing stream of the user’s content works much the way a tumbleblog does in practice for many–and an additional feature on Jaiku is the ability to comment and follow others.
Yappd I cannot say very good things about. I just heard about it and decided to try it, and have just found that it does not allow perma-links for individual notes. This is not a good feature, and its lack of widgets and overall Twitter-copy feel did not seem to cover much new territory. Maybe it will add some new features and take off but for now it’s definitely back in the pack.
Yappd doesn’t even allow their vaunted add-a-picture feature for web-based updates, only via email or SMS. Overall it doesn’t seem like a fully developed offering. The pictures are supposed to be their big differentiator, but then recently people like Dave Winer have started using Twitter as a “coral reef” for Flickr photos anyway, so not much at all makes Yappd stand out at the end of the day now. I’ve been looking at some of the debate about whether the market spewing out such lackluster lookalikes is a sign of a financial bubble in the web 2.0 space, and I personally still think it is.
But the latest tulip over-valuation has to come some time, cyclically speaking. The new social and economic phenomenon symbolized by Twitter, however, is generating much discussion on the future of media and telecommunications and gaining broader notice.
My take on all the talk about how shortening the message to 140 characters makes one concise is a very skeptical one, however. People who congratulate themselves for all their great writing just become more appreciative of each of their own words. Yes, in some ways Twitter seems to symbolize the isolation and narcissism that gnaws at the guts of so many titans of tech culture and their copious followers and wannabes. And it symbolizes a backlash against blogging, yes, the same way tumbleblogging does–for many seem to be relieved of the pressure of producing so many words or managing that sidebar. And it can symbolize the lonely challenge of the pioneer–many tech early adopters have jumped on Twitter but haven’t yet had many of their friends join in.
Those are all fascinating angles, but I think what Twitter symbolizes is the re-learning of basic PC tasks going on with the techie set because of the popularity of mobile devices from iPhones to Blackberries, Treos and other cell phones to PSPs. Twitter scales blogging back ten years, just as most of those devices take the user interface back about that long.
Podcast 6 featured on Webshots
Webshots, one of the photo sharing sites that I like and have written about, has a video front page that features new content.
I’ve been lucky enough to have my latest entry into the podcast album, pacificpelican.us podcast #6, picked for the video page today!
[Here’s a screenshot to show what the video front page looked like the day this was posted, as Webshots has new video coming in all the time.]
I’ve always noticed a good audience for my pictures and videos on Webshots compared to other sites, and I’m sure that this feature will really add a lot more to the numbers of views! Thanks to Jessica and the whole Webshots staff!