micah holmquist's irregular thoughts and links |
|
|
Welcome to the musings and notes of a Cadillac, Michigan based writer named Micah Holmquist, who is bothered by his own sarcasm. Please send him email at micahth@chartermi.net. Holmquist's full archives are listed here.
Archives
Sites Holmquist trys, and often fails, to go no more than a couple of days without visiting (some of which Holmquist regularly swipes links from without attribution) Aljazeera.Net English Blogs that for one reason or another Holmquist would like to read on at least something of a regular basis (always in development) Thivai Abhor |
Wednesday, January 14, 2004
Bush says he is an idiot and links and things I didn't go with this yesterday because I thought it was something of a cheap shot but fuck it... On Monday American Lord and Savior George C.W. Bush said, "September the 11th... changed how I viewed the world. September the 11th made me realize that America was no longer protected by oceans." If Bush is being honest here, and I doubt he is, what he is effectively saying is that he was completely oblivious to the fact that there were a number of people who might want to attack the U.S. of A. before September 11, 2001 and that they could do so with a fair amount of ease. (If anything the attacks of "September the 11th" were more complex than more deadly attacks involving bombs likely could have been.) Moreover Bush is saying that he was unaware of the events of December 7, 1941. [Cue to Bush family living room Kennebunkport, Maine around 1985 where C.W. and H.W. have just finished watching Tora! Tora! Tora! (Richard Fleischer, Kinji Fukasaku, Toshio Masuda and Akira Kurosawa, 1970) on a Sony VCR] "Wow what a great story," C.W. says. H.W. responds, "son, you know..." "I mean I understand a movie like a Red Dawn [John Milius, 1984] about the Cubans and Sandinistas taking over since they are as dangerous now as that Saddam guy would be if he turned on us or we turned on him," C.W. blurts out. "But Japan? Now why would those electronic geeks who make our VCRs and video games want to attack us?" H.W. shakes his head while thinking, "good thing I have Jeb." *** It is nice to know Bush is keeping us safe from by standing up to Cuba, Bolivia and Venezuela. (Here is the transcript of our King's speech.) In all seriousness, there might be a justifiable argument for isolating Cuba if the U.S. itself had a better bill of health wasn't partners with the governments of China, Colombia, Egypt and Turkey. Bolivia and Venezuela, whatever their faults, would hardly stack up their with Cuba unless the real criteria for exclusion (or, depending on how you want to look at it, inclusion) is not getting in line with what Uncle Sam wants, which of course is the real criteria. Maybe a good rule of thumb is that when the President of the United States of America talks about human rights in another country, one is advised to always look to independent evidence to substantiate the charges and never believe that the Prez actually gives a shit. *** Tom Regan of csmonitor.com looks at Richard Perle and David Frum's new book on Monday as does Jim Lobe in a Inter Press Service column from yesterday. Go to them for more details on the text; I just want to focus on the fact that the book is entitled An End to Evil: How to Win the War on Terror. That's right, they are suggesting that "evil" can come to an "end." This is utopianism worthy of Marx and something that I wished I could share on even some small level. But as it is, I can't help but laugh. *** Democracy and self-rule in Iraq? *** "U.S. military forces in Iraq appear to have violated the laws of war by demolishing the homes of relatives of suspected insurgents or wanted former officals, Human Rights Watch said today," Human Rights Watch writes in a statement from yesterday. "In a letter to U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Human Rights Watch said that at least four house demolitions over the past two months appeared to be for purposes of punishing families of suspected insurgents or compelling their cooperation. Destroying civilian property as a reprisal or deterrent amounts to collective punishment, which is prohibited by the 1949 Geneva Conventions." *** Luke Harding of The Guardian writes: The international news agency Reuters has made a formal complaint to the Pentagon following the "wrongful" arrest and apparent "brutalisation" of three of its staff this month by US troops in Iraq.*** "More than 240,000 soldiers and marines are to move into and out of Iraq from now to May, testing the military's ability to handle a major logistical feat while battling the Iraqi insurgency. From remote camps in northern Iraq to the port here, this swapping of forces amounts to the United States military's largest troop rotation since World War II," Eric Schmitt writes in a January 11 New York Times story. *** "For me, there is no escaping the fact that the prewar intelligence estimates regarding Iraq's WMD programs—and particularly its nuclear program—were wrong. Iraq was not 4-5 years away from having a nuclear weapon, as I and the rest of the Clinton administration had been led to believe," Kenneth Pollack writes in a Slate dialogue. In the same exchange, Paul Berman writes: What was the reason for the war in Iraq? Sept. 11 was the reason. At least to my mind it was. Sept. 11 showed that totalitarianism in its modern Muslim version was not going to stop at slaughtering millions of Muslims, and hundreds of Israelis, and attacking the Indian government, and blowing up American embassies. The totalitarian manias were rising, and the United States itself was now in danger. A lot of people wanted to respond, as any mayor would do, by rounding up a single Bad Guy, Osama.This argument is problematic even when taken on its own terms is that it suggests doing something, in part, for "the other" while at the same time explicitly stating that so long as "the other" was not a threat to "us" then any damage to "the other" would be something that could be tolerated. In effect, it says that the lives of those in Muslim countries and even Israel are only important to the extent that those lives impact those of us who live in the United States. It thus follows that if doing damage to such people would benefit the people of the U.S., then doing damage to them would be worth it. *** *** "President Bush ordered the Pentagon to explore the possibility of a ground invasion of Iraq well before the United States was attacked on Sept. 11, 2001, an official told ABCNEWS, confirming the account former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill gives in his new book," John Cochran ABC News writes. Nothing is mentioned about whether or not this official -"The official, who asked not to be identified, was present in the same National Security Council meetings as O'Neill immediately after Bush's inauguration in January and February of 2001"- said he had been made aware of any evidence that Saddam's regime had weapons of mass destruction or even whether ABC News asked him about this. *** Via antiwar.com (as are many of the links I throw out), Linda Diebel of The Toronto Star writes about "Surreal times at the Pentagon" in this December 28 piece: We never learned the identity of the little boy killed by a 900-kilogram bomb on a Monday afternoon in Baghdad during the "shock-and-awe" stage of Operation Iraqi Freedom.All of column is worth reading. *** From the "[e]ither you are with us, or you are with the terrorists" file, Scotsman.com writes: ALMOST 100 countries have failed to enforce United Nations sanctions against the al-Qaeda terror network and Afghanistan’s ousted Taleban.BOMB THEM ALL TO HELL AND THEN BACK AGAIN AND THEN AROUND PURGATORY AND THEN UP TO EDGE OF HEAVEN SO THAT THE FALL BACK TO HELL (and the "everlasting fire" that makes hell an "eternal" "place of torment") IS AS GREAT AS IT POSSIBLY COULD BE!!! *** *** The email headline for this American Forces Press Service story was "Myers Thanks Mongols for Iraqi Freedom Help." *** "North Korean officials told an unofficial U.S. delegation last week that many claims about their nuclear program were exaggerated and that they did not have a nuclear warhead or a program to secretly enrich uranium for such a weapon, said sources familiar with the trip," Barbara Demick of The Los Angeles Times writes. *** " President Bush pledged yesterday to help India with its nuclear energy and space technology in return for India's promise to use the assistance for peaceful purposes and to help block the spread of dangerous weapons," writes Peter Slevin in yesterday's Washington Post "A series of reciprocal steps is designed to produce stricter Indian controls over the spread of weapons and technology, in return for expertise and supplies India has long sought from the United States, where a succession of wary U.S. administrations has refused to approve sales." *** Matt Drudge has posted a "partial transcript" of comments by celebs at a moveon.org event held in New York City on Monday. Predictably some bloggers have deried these comments as being out of line, but what struck me is how moderate these comments are. Of course my idea of "moderate" would certainly be different if I thought Margaret Cho was "washed up has been comedienne," believed that having "contempt" for Bush made one a "moonbat" and thought of war as a fun activity. And for those who think someone like Julia Stiles goes too far when she says, "I was afraid that Bill O'Reilly would come and, with a shotgun at my front door and shoot me for being unpatriotic" if she criticized Operation Iraqi Freedom while it was going on, I say just think of it as using exaggeration to get across a point about how certain segments of society saw -some still do see- any criticism of U.S. foreign policy that doesn't advocate the use of more force as treasonous and deserving of punishment. It is a lot like how in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq Team Bush said Saddam could attack the U.S. with biological and/or chemical weapons on any day when what they really meant was that they had not eliminated the possibility that at some point Saddam may have a notion to once again attempt to develop some weapons with which it would be possible for either him or allies that he might develop at some point to attack the U.S. *** "The Supreme Court refused Monday to consider whether the government properly withheld names and other details about hundreds of foreigners detained in the months after the Sept. 11 terror attacks," the AP writes. *** "The Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that police may set up roadblocks to collect tips about crimes, rejecting concerns that authorities might use the checkpoints to fish for unrelated suspicious activity," Gina Holland of the AP writes. *** Bruce Schneier's January 9 salon.com piece "Homeland insecurity" is very much worth reading as is this MetaFilter post. *** Scott McPherson on "Enola Gay, Just War, and Mass Murder." In high school debate and forensics I was often judged by a guy named Scott McPherson, although judging by politics, they are too completely different people. *** BBC News writes: A new law has been passed in Cuba which will make access to the internet more difficult for Cubans.Yeah that makes sense. *** "Many plant and animal species are unlikely to survive climate change. New analyses suggest that 15–37% of a sample of 1,103 land plants and animals would eventually become extinct as a result of climate changes expected by 2050. For some of these species there will no longer be anywhere suitable to live. Others will be unable to reach places where the climate is suitable. A rapid shift to technologies that do not produce greenhouse gases, combined with carbon sequestration, could save 15–20% of species from extinction," says Nature *** Michael Hopkin of Nature writes: Have you ever given a friend part of your dessert just so they will stop bugging you for some? You're not alone - chimpanzees and monkeys share their food with others to avoid hassle too.Stupid human. *** *** *** *** "America's Christian conservatives... are more American than they are Christian or conservative," says Alan Wolfe in this month's issue of Prospect. Much of the confusion that Wolfe alleviates -although he does not give this explanation- I believe is caused by the perception of "fundamentalist" practitioners of a religion being set apart and not impacted by the current epoch. (In part, if not primarily, this happens because such "fundamentalists" often see themselves in such terms.) Tariq Ali and others have argued that although such a belief is common about Islam that in fact "fundamentalist Islam" is a product of "modernity." (Arguably it is more the product of "postmodernity" but such a description is problematized by the fact that outlook of such practitioners is hardly postmodern. To be more precise, the "fundamentalist Islam" of today holds to a set of beliefs that is not postmodern but rather premodern. At the same time, the ideology of "fundamentalist Islam" is the result of a factors that largely stem from the unipolar world of the current and recent segments of the postmodern period.) Similarly, I would contend, "Christian fundamentalism" in the U.S. is shaped by broader sacred and secular currents as evidenced by the fact that no matter how "fundamentalist" a church is, there is almost certainly another one that would condemn it for not staying true to their preferred interpretation of their preferred translation of the Bible. With this in mind, it should come as no surprise that "Christian fundamentalism" in the U.S. has the face of Uncle Sam and that "Americanness" will be at the center of any even moderately popular movement for increasing the influence of Christianity on the U.S. Speaking of Christian fundamentalism in the Land of the Free, in their little talked about book Empire (Harvard University Press, 2000), Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri write, "Christian fundamentalisms in the United States have also continuously been oriented (in different times and different regions more or less overtly) toward a project of white supremacy and racial purity. The new Jerusalem has almost always been imagined as a white and patriarchal Jerusalem." While Christian fundamentalism in the U.S. has a long history of racism and no doubt still have connections -the Bible arguably justifies slavery so this should come as no surprise- but I think Hardt and Negri go too far. They ignore Christian fundamentalism amongst non-whites -most notably blacks- and discount that, for whatever reason, many of even the "most fundamentalist" of Christian fundamentalists in the U.S. are not explicitly racist and largely seek neither to lessen racism and the effects of racism nor to strengthen racism or the effects of racism. *** Leslie Camhi of The Village Voice profiles Saadi Yacef. *** increasingly realistic outlook *** "Many teen blogs are short-lived experiments. But for a significant number, they become a way of life, a daily record of a community's private thoughts -- a kind of invisible high school that floats above the daily life of teenagers," Emily Nussbaum writes in a fascinating piece from this past Sunday's New York Times Magazine. Key graf: For many in the generation that has grown up online, the solution is not to fight this technological loss of privacy, but to give in and embrace it: to stop worrying and learn to love the Web. It's a generational shift that has multiple roots, from Ricki Lake to the memoir boom to the A.A. confessional, not to mention 13 seasons of ''The Real World.'' The teenagers who post journals have (depending on your perspective) a degraded or a relaxed sense of privacy; their experiences may be personal, but there's no shame in sharing. As the reality-television stars put it, exposure may be painful at times, but it's all part of the process of ''putting it out there,'' risking judgment and letting people in. If teen bloggers give something up by sloughing off a self-protective layer, they get something back too -- a new kind of intimacy, a sense that they are known and listened to. This is their life, for anyone to read. As long as their parents don't find out.Although I don't write much about my personal life anymore, I am once again thinking that perhaps I spend way too much time blogging and that I do so because I tend towards compulsive behavoir and blogging isn't particularly destructive. The "damage" that it does really amounts to the time that I take to blog is time that I potentially could be spending on other things. The thing about blogging is that the risks involved with it are small but so are the rewards. |