micah holmquist's irregular thoughts and links |
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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.
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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 |
Sunday, January 25, 2004
Giving up the ghost and other notes for January 25 "Pentagon and CIA officials appear to have accepted that there is little point in searching for weapons stockpiles in Iraq, and will now concentrate on auditing Iraqi claims of their destruction," Peter Beaumont writes in today's Observer: [Charles] Duelfer has already laid out his stall, in the Washington Post in the autumn when he remarked on 'the apparent absence of existing weapons stocks'.It seems like I've said this before, but if it is determined that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq at the point of the invasion, the questions that need to be asked are: -What did Saddam's regime have in the way of weapons of mass destruction after they got done with his massacres? If he had some at that point, when were the weapons of mass destruction destroyed? -What did the W. Bush Administration, the Clinton Administration and the H.W. Bush Administration Know about weapons of mass destruction? What did they believe that they knew? What did they believe? How did their public statements match up with these answers? If there was a dichotomy, what is the explanation? If it comes to this, who orchestrated the deceptive or dishonest statements and what was/were the motive or motives? -What efforts were made to find weapons of mass destruction? -The U.S. government has of course said on numerous occasions that other countries are developing weapons of mass destruction. Are mendaciousness and/or the similar mistakes be behind these statements? *** This quote from Slavoj Zizek's The Fragile Absolute Or, Why is the Christian legacy worth fighting for? (Verso, 2000) seems appropriate for the times: The notorious Iraqi 'weapons of mass destruction' offer [an] example of the objet petit a: they are an elusive entity, never empirically specified, a kind of Hitchcockian MacGuffin, expected to be hidden in the most disparate and improbable places... allegedly present in large quantities, yet magically moved around all the time by workers; and the more they are destroyed, the more all-present and all-powerful they are in their threat, as if the removal of the greater part of them magically heightens the destructive power of the remainder - as such, by definition they can never be found, and are therefore all the more dangerous...Fitting in a most ironic way, that is. *** Bush is once again wasting more taxpayer money that he says they could spend better than government. *** Sasha Frere-Jones and Jeff Chang on Dizzee Rascal. I do want to check this guy out. *** *** A number of films at the recent Sundance Film Festival mixed fact and fiction, reports Anthony Kaufman of indiewire.com. *** Kevin Willmott's CSA: Confederate States of America (2004) looks like an interesting film. *** *** I don't really care if U.S. military actions are unilateral or multilateral but those using the terms and making arguments about them should avoid what Andrew Sullivan has done -thinking that the U.S. saying it is going to do something and everyone else is free to join in and there might be some goodies if you do- is multilateral. *** (Thanks to Avedon Carol for the link.) *** *** *** Yes. *** We love President Bush because he fights against evil or something. *** I wish I could understand those who shill for Bush. *** "Japanese telecom carriers, pioneers of internet-capable and picture-snapping handsets, have now come up with the world's first mobile phone that enables users to listen to calls inside their heads - by conducting sound through bone," AFP writes in a January 21 story. "The new phone is equipped with a 'Sonic Speaker' which transmits sounds through vibrations that move from the skull to the cochlea in the inner ear, instead of relying on the usual method of sound hitting the outer eardrum." *** *** "Heil Hit-Slur!" by Terry Krepel. *** *** *** If the War State says it, and we want to believe, it must be true. *** disgusting anti-Arab and anti-Muslim post by hootinan.com *** Glenn Reynolds all but says, "I am not hip." *** The U.S. of course should be allowed to do what should not be tolerated in the lesser countries. *** In the hopefully immortal words of Seymour Paine: The only way to rid the world and keep us safe is to eliminate, i.e., kill, everyone involved wherever they are. Why our government does not do this is, to me, criminal.*** Those Goddamn Army pinkos need to stop bashing the Army. UPDATE: Purdue beat my beloved Spartans 76-70 in overtime today in West LaFayette. MSU couldn't quite seal the win in regulation and then got beat in the extra minutes. Very tough loss: "It's one of the more disappointing losses I've had in my career here because I know what this win would've meant," Michigan State coach Tom Izzo said. "If we play that well, we'll win a lot of games."Michigan State finishes up this road swing Wednesday against Minnesota. *** *** From his NATO headquarters in Brussels, Clark wanted to wage the war more aggressively, but back in the Pentagon, Cohen and Shelton were more cautious. They would give Clark instructions on, for instance, the scale of the bombing campaign. "Clark would say, 'Uh-huh, gotcha'," says NEWSWEEK's source. But then he would pick up the phone and call [British Prime Minister] Tony Blair and [Secretary of State] Madeleine [Albright]." As Clark knew full well, Blair and Albright were more hawkish than Shelton and Cohen. After talking to the State Department and NATO allies, Clark would have a different set of marching orders, says the source, who has spoken about the matter with both Cohen and Clark. "Then, about 1 o'clock, the Defense Department would hear what Clark was up to, and Cohen and Shelton would be furious."Sounds to me like something that shouldn't be a big deal but could be if opponents of Clark decide to believe it is. *** The The Library of Congress' Voices from the Days of Slavery: Former Slaves Tell Their Stories is fascinating and troubling. (Thanks to profwhat/metafilter for the link.) Whenever I hear/read things like "We have always stood up for freedom," I think of slavery and feel like shouting, "DO A LITTLE HOMEWORK!" I mean slavery in the history of the United States certainly doesn't mean that the U.S. is always wrong and that there were no good things in the country before the abolition of slavery, but it does mean that if you believe that the U.S. is always right and just, you are fucking idiot and it wouldn't bother me that much if you are treated that way. 9:48 p.m. 01/25/04 |