(Note to literalists: the Watched column presently contains only a smattering of 'warblogs' because the facilitator of the template-change--Dr. Menlo--is not very familiar with them, and will be adding more as they are sent to him. Also, this blog may contain areas of allusion, satire, subtext, context and possibly even a dash of the surreal: wannabe lit-crits beware.)
Control
[Watch this space for: Pentagon and Petroleum, The Media is only as Liberal as the Corporations Who Own Them, Wash Down With, and Recalcify]
WARBLOGGER WATCH
Tuesday, February 25, 2003
Glenn Harlan Reynolds, employing a euphemism fashionable among the killbloggers, lets it be known that he’s “pro-liberation.” His affirmation follows a lengthy excerpt from a José Ramos-Horta Times op-ed piece. At first blush it seems curious that GHR, an avowed enemy of multilateralism who never lets pass an opportunity to deride the UN, gives several column inches to someone discussing upholding the efficacy and moral rectitude of the UN’s conduct. But, given that the exercise was successful, it’s not that surprising.
For Reynolds, the salience of the fact that intervention worked overrides the nest of inconveniences couching that fact - most notably that the actors in East Timor are not coterminous with the actors in the approaching shock and awe of the Iraqi people. A more appropriate point of comparison would have been the war in Afghanistan. As anyone reading regularly across the spectrum of pro-liberation press - from Instapuppet to the reliably martial Raines Times - soon realizes, nobody’s much interested in depicting what U.S. bomb-induced liberation looks like.
An exception is Robert Fisk. On the eve of the February 5 meeting of the UN Security Council Fisk was certain that:
Colin Powell will not be boasting to the Security Council today of America's success in the intelligence war in Afghanistan. It's one thing to claim that satellite pictures show chemicals being transported around Iraq, or that telephone intercepts prove Iraqi scientists are still at their dirty work; quite another to explain how all the "communications chatter" intercepts which the US supposedly picked up in Afghanistan proved nothing. As far as Afghanistan is concerned, you can quote Basil Fawlty: "Whatever you do, don't mention the war."
Fisk’s piece concerned itself mainly with recent American military setbacks, mentioning "the anarchy in the cities outside Kabul, the warlordism and drug trafficking and steadily increasing toll of murders" secondarily. Reynolds and his supporters don’t treat the preceding at all, nor do they treat the refugees of the Jalozai and Chaman camps whose family members perished in the bombing.
Their preference is to catalogue the boons of liberation, a novel take on which was recently provided by Human Rights Watch:
The United States blocked proposals by Afghan leaders, including President Hamid Karzai, and the United Nations, for an expanded ISAF to patrol the countryside and act as a deterrent to renewed fighting and human rights abuses by warlords and their subordinates. The solution offered by the U.S., to have warlords provide security outside of Kabul while the international community trains a future Afghan army, has proven to be a failure.
Failure in the instance of Afghanistan took the form of racist violence perpetrated by rampaging ethnic militias, of further devastation and ruin, and of the continued repression of women. Professor Reynolds, safe behind the burqa with which he shrouds his intellect, is determined not to let this obvious and inconvenient parallel dim his enthusiasm for liberation.
. . . I plan to set up a separate page to house some of the prominent pro-war sites, not least those of the warbloggers, such as www. andrewsullivan.com, www. instapundit.com and www.blogsofwar.com. (In the endlessly referential world of blogging, there is, of course, a blog that watches the warbloggers: warbloggerwatch.blogspot.com.
Watch this space for a special announcement on the fate and direction of WBW
It's causing some rather lively debate over on MetaFilter.
"This is the ceremonial, eleventh hour release of a gaudy red herring. This is unintended consequence become anthem. This is duplicity on steroids.
"Everyone is supposed to yell "Freeborn!" and start swinging a sword?
"I do love a good diversion, but does anyone really believe that, without the WTC backdrop, WMD props, and a terrorist score, the Bush administration could have sold any tickets to The War To Liberate Our Iraqi Brethren? Does anyone really think they would've even tried?
'Please. Much of this war's support rests on the naive belief that there is a mysterious-but-valuable ulterior motive driving it - no one knows exactly what that motive is, but no one seriously believes it is selfless dedication to human rights. A right-thinking hawk would realize that, and not seek to disturb the precarious status quo." - A MetaFilter poster posted by Emmanuel4:39 PM
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Sunday, February 09, 2003
The sometimes awful, sometimes better than awful Matt Welch is today, well, awful. That's what happens when you allow Andrew Sullivan to function as your assignment editor.
Welch alerts us to the "Noxious Moral Equivalence of the Day," a Guardian columnist's assertion that, "Nations that were once the vassals of the Soviet Union are now in danger of becoming vassals of the US." A large scale fit ensues, with Welch hollering, "No, they are not. They are democracies, with governments they can peacefully replace, and a free press they can bitch about."
Even a third-rate dictionary tells you that a 'democracy' is a government by the people, executing their will. Of course, governmental arrangements such as these are unavailable in America. On the score of the threatened war against Iraq, it seems that Welch's democracies are anything but. Consider that the most formidable of these countries, devastated by unemployment, recently borrowed $3.8 billion from the U.S. Congress to buy 48 F-16 jets. Never mind that, according to last week's Economist, a rival bid - submitted by a manufacturer whose product was "just as high-tech" and lower in price - "included an offer to build an assembly plant in a depressed part of Poland, with knock-on jobs for up to 50,000 people." If you trust the disreputable Raines Times - and the wagging, warblogging fingers of disapproval suggest you shouldn't - read its write-up of the deal and ask yourself if it doesn't seem if the Poles are practicing a bit of anticipatory self-defense and jockeying for better ground under America's thumb.
As an overly facile additional exercise, you might want to ask Taskmaster Sullivan, the self-professed friend of Kurds and oppressed persons everywhere to whom Welch links, how those "Eastern Europeans [who] have a better appreciation of what tyranny is" are treating their Roma populations. posted by Grady5:37 PM
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Saturday, February 08, 2003
SECRET ARRESTS COME TO AMERICA
The last thing I want to do right now is push down another great Grady post, but the following news item needs immediate and widespread attention: Plans for Patriot Act II Leaked. Although in some ways this startling (?) piece of news features some correlations with Grady's post: ironic that the warbloggers have targeted the permit-permissioners of at least several peace rallies in Washington D.C. for being "Stalinists," and by association, everyone who participated in those rallies and every peace protest across the country and world. (I, myself, was surprised to learn that anyone today respects Stalin, because everyone knows that communists aren't necessarily Bolsheviks, and vice versa . . . so if you are sympathetic to the original communist doctrines, choosing the brutal dictator Stalin as it's spokesperson who really in no way represented or encouraged actual communism is a bit of a mystery to me . . . ) Ah, but back to the irony: you see, because the warbloggers who recently so vociferously gave multiple hatchet jobs to the entire 'No War' contingent for their slight (and I do mean slight, as in Olive Oil slight) association to the 'Stalinists' by marching in a 'No War' demonstration that the 'Stalinists' happened to secure the permit to . . . also support a war being pushed by an administration who at this very moment is planning to turn America into a Stalinist state.
There's genetically-modified egg on your faces, killbloggers. Now us peacebloggers better make preparations for the police state that is no longer in question being planned for America. If you don't hear from me for a while--in addition to jumping for joy--you can also file my mysterious disappearance under 'American Secret Arrest.'
Warblogger-watching is a generally tiresome and thankless task. Note the absence of an alms bowl hereabouts. We realize no profit from the present project and actually suffer great injury in its pursuit. Listening to Bill Quick's under-informed hyperventilations tends to fray the nerves and dull the mind. Brian Lamb has provided a clinical account of the effects of prolonged exposure.
That said, the exercise is at times instructive. In the past few weeks alone I've stumbled upon data I certainly wouldn't have had a limited myself to the pedestrian world of research libraries and sane discourse. For instance, I now know Ben Shapiro's "sexual status," and have been told by Herr Professor Doktor Reynolds and his hangers-on that because a regrettable front group had secured permits for and organized attendance of a peace protest that, as someone who shares that group's presumption against war, I am a Stalinist/apologist for Stalinism/irrelevant. I'm still unsure of the formulation, but he is Professor Reynolds after all; he's probably just operating above my lowly level of comprehension.
If it is logically and intellectually defensible to depict the constituents of a growing and vast grassroots movement as endorsing the politics of its most marginal members - and GHR's frequent resort to the practice suggests that for him it is - we must assume that weighty and influential sub-groups can be substituted for marginal ones.
Quite a few of today's conservative stink tankers were stillborn of Yale's Party of the Right. Nowhere have the Party's alumni figured more prominently than at National Review, historic home of Frank Meyer and current quarters of Big Dick Brookhiser (a blogger of mass destruction favorite) and Smaller Dick Vigilante. The relevant Audit Bureau of Circulations elude me, but I'd wager National Review beats Worker's World in both paid subscriptions and newsstand sales.
Nation columnist Doug Henwood, an apostate Partyer, recently attended a POR alumni conclave, later reporting on the events:
But things really livened up once the mediocre food was cleared away and the toasting session began. A POR toasting ritual is organized around a "green cup"--a large silver cup filled with a vile green punch. The first toaster is always the current chairman (so called even though the current officeholder is a woman), who began with the traditional reading of the speech given in 1649 by the party's hero, King Charles I of England, just before his head was lopped off by an executioner. It's strange enough that American conservatives would support a monarch against the claims of Parliament, but the speech is even stranger: "I must tell you that the liberty and freedom [of the people] consists in having of Government, those laws by which their life and their goods may be most their own. It is not for having share in Government, Sir, that is nothing pertaining to them. A subject and a sovereign are clean different things." Having performed her task, the chairman passed the cup to her right (of course), to another officer, who performed the ritual recitation of the British monarchs, starting with Egbert. So much for the Declaration of Independence.
Rightward passage of the green cup continued, and the content of the toasts evolved from the odd to the repulsive. There were toasts to: the Catholic Church (inspiring some hisses from the Episcopalians); the "brotherhood" of the POR; the "possession of absolute truth," which is one of the "incidental perquisites" of party membership; to the murder of Ben Linder, the American Sandinista sympathizer who was killed by the Nicaraguan contras in 1987. The toasting was interrupted to sing an apparently well-known song, "Stomping Out the Reds." Toasts resumed: to the Crusades; to the "British empire and its American successor"; and to the prospect of building "a Basilica in Riyadh, and a cathedral in Mecca." The last prompted a call from the audience, "What about Jerusalem?"
GHR and his friends have never shied away from taking up the white man's burden or urging an imperialistic war on whoever's inconvenient at the moment. We know that from their public pronouncements. Thanks to Henwood's report and the innovations in logic pioneered by the killbloggers, why now know what they're thinking privately.
Someone tell Hitchens about the threatened Church-building spree. It sounds vaguely Thocraticfascistic.
Noted in passing: Hitchens appears to have lost his weakening grip on empirical reality, outing himself as a full-on Bush supporter. He tells an interviewer: "Is a candidate completely serious about prosecuting the war on theocratic terrorism to the fullest extent? Only Bush is." Ignore all those X-ian fundamentalists and Moonie nutters Bush surrounds himself with as well as the essentially theoligical Good v. Evil mission Bush has charged himself with. Also ignore the remoteness of the threat posed by Saddam and the historical secularism of his party.
Also, Jeff Hauser picks another fight to great success, writing of Herr Professor Doktor G. Harlan Reynolds: "InstaPundit, a self-described libertarian, wants to spend your money to facilitate his geeky love of space, which of course proves that his lack of support for helping the poor isn't a consequence of libertarianism but selfishness run wild -- although his support of an anti-civil liberties administration made that clear long ago." posted by Grady1:10 AM
• • • • •
Saturday, February 01, 2003
SPACE POLICY AND PRO IDIOTARIAN THE FIRST: I actually don't have a bunch to say about the shuttle explosion, because if you're serious about space travel you had better get used to death. Just two thoughts: While nuclear powered rockets probably would provide a faster ride, it's clear that transporting the "fuel" with current shuttle technology might not be such a safe bet. Before we go about conquering the stars perhaps we should put our efforts into research for cheap and affordable low orbit delivery. It looks like the space elevator could be the best shot. I noticed that Oliver put forward a very articulate argument for the space program. But for space proponents it's clear that we not only don't spend the money we have very wisely, but we don't spend enough. Now, of course, space will probably play second string to a United States dedicated to imperialistic occupation. It's estimated that if Iraq sets fire to its oil wells it could cost 40 billion to get those pumps up and running again. That's a cost that will be added or included to an estimated 100 billion dollar price tag for war. That's money that can't be spent on Zubrin's Mission to Mars or alt fuels or even rebuilding Afghanistan (remember them?) Two: Evil Glenn, or Pro Idiotarian the First, finds a way to make this thing political. Apparently, the Iraqis (every single one of them apparently) are happy that one of our shuttles blew up. You would think that Iraq would feel the pain of seven lost souls, six American and one Israeli. You would think they wouldn't be so selfish and wouldn't remember the estimated half million Iraqis that died because of our sanctions, the ominous gathering of a 100,000 troops at their borders and the openly aired threat that we will use nuclear weapons not in defense, but whenever our oil-addled plutocracy thinks it's a swell idea. Some nerve those Iraqis have...Of course they don't like us Glenn. It's called history, past and present.
In other links: William Gibson offers the most poetic summing up of the tragedy. He's one of the few science fiction writers who aspires to poetry with his every line. Evil Glenn, Pro Idiotarian the First, even links to it. Remember Pro Idiotarian masses: Gibson fled to Canada to avoid the Vietnam War. I'm guessing he's not wild about our new American role of Global Nuclear Terrorist. Just a hunch.
Philip Shropshire
PS: By the way, I'm offering the phrase "Pro Idiotarian" under the Creative Commons or Abbie Hoffman license, which is Steal Often and When Necessary. Look, Prospect fellas, who I suspect are the usual lot of priveleged white males who have attended private schools all of their lives, if they call you Idiotarian, then call them Pro Idiotarian. It makes about as much sense and it will go further than whinin' about namecalling from the bullies.
Judging by whom he links to, GHR, when not launching palpably silly attacks on Atrios, reads mainly warblogs. If unemployment strikes that sub-group disproportionately, I'm forced to score one each for the market and for American meritocracy. Not, of course, that I like to see anyone out of work. posted by Grady10:55 AM
Blair's tongue darts out, his eyes like saucers with excitation; meanwhile Bush swaggers around the room doing his John Wayne impression . . . he tosses a letter opener onto the carpet and Blair bounces over to it immediately, takes it into his slobbering mouth and brings it over to Bush on hands and knees.
Door opens: the servant is here with a silver platter of beer and pretzels. Bush swaggers over to the couch, sits down, turns on football and Blair curls up at his feet, preparing for sleep. What a day! Tired doggie, but good doggie.
G. Harlan Reynolds, Avatar of Idiocy, refuses to let anything like, say, the absence of substantiation prevent him from repeating the claim "that even leftie Jews are being frozen out of A.N.S.W.E.R. - organized marches if they believe that Israel has a right to exist."
That A.N.S.W.E.R.'s claim on the anti-war movement amounts to little more than having secured permits and chartered buses has been acknowledged by even the likes of M. Kaus, who likewise acknowledged that any mass movement is very much a mixed bag. This being the warbloggergarten, GHR and friends such flee facts and indulge in collective fantasy. An objectionable photo of anti-Semites marching in Davos is proof positive that the stateside anti-war movement is at base hostile to Jews. Okay, Glenn.
I have no idea how accurate the charge of leftie Jews being "frozen out" are. I defer to them on this point. I would however like some proof to substantiate the extraordinary claim that the anti-war movement as such (the equivalent of A.N.S.W.E.R., as Glenn, Andrew, and the lesser luminaries have been claiming) is hostile to the existence of Israel. posted by Grady9:46 AM
• • • • •
Sunday, January 26, 2003
Unelected President G.W. Bush is proving himself computer conversant. Below is his initial foray into the world of 419 Fraud. A warblog is no doubt in the works:
IMMEDIATE ATTENTION NEEDED : HIGHLY CONFIDENTIAL
FROM: GEORGE WALKER BUSH 202.456.1414 / 202.456.1111 FAX: 202.456.2461
DEAR SIR / MADAM,
I AM GEORGE WALKER BUSH, SON OF THE FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA GEORGE HERBERT WALKER BUSH, AND CURRENTLY SERVING AS PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. THIS LETTER MIGHT SURPRISE YOU BECAUSE WE HAVE NOT MET NEITHER IN PERSON NOR BY CORRESPONDENCE. I CAME TO KNOW OF YOU IN MY SEARCH FOR A RELIABLE AND REPUTABLE PERSON TO HANDLE A VERY CONFIDENTIAL BUSINESS TRANSACTION, WHICH INVOLVES THE TRANSFER OF A HUGE SUM OF MONEY TO AN ACCOUNT REQUIRING MAXIMUM CONFIDENCE.
I AM WRITING YOU IN ABSOLUTE CONFIDENCE PRIMARILY TO SEEK YOUR ASSISTANCE IN ACQUIRING OIL FUNDS THAT ARE PRESENTLY TRAPPED IN THE REPUBLIC OF IRAQ. MY PARTNERS AND I SOLICIT YOUR ASSISTANCE IN COMPLETING A TRANSACTION BEGUN BY MY FATHER, WHO HAS LONG BEEN ACTIVELY ENGAGED IN THE EXTRACTION OF PETROLEUM IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, AND BRAVELY SERVED HIS COUNTRY AS DIRECTOR OF THE UNITED STATES CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY.
IN THE DECADE OF THE NINETEEN-EIGHTIES, MY FATHER, THEN VICE-PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, SOUGHT TO WORK WITH THE GOOD OFFICES OF THE PRESIDENT OF THE REPUBLIC OF IRAQ TO REGAIN LOST OIL REVENUE SOURCES IN THE NEIGHBORING ISLAMIC REPUBLIC OF IRAN. THIS UNSUCCESSFUL VENTURE WAS SOON FOLLOWED BY A FALLING OUT WITH HIS IRAQI PARTNER, WHO SOUGHT TO ACQUIRE ADDITIONAL OIL REVENUE SOURCES IN THE NEIGHBORING EMIRATE OF KUWAIT, A WHOLLY-OWNED U.S.-BRITISH SUBSIDIARY.
MY FATHER RE-SECURED THE PETROLEUM ASSETS OF KUWAIT IN 1991 AT A COST OF SIXTY-ONE BILLION U.S. DOLLARS ($61,000,000,000). OUT OF THAT COST, THIRTY-SIX BILLION DOLLARS ($36,000,000,000) WERE SUPPLIED BY HIS PARTNERS IN THE KINGDOM OF SAUDI ARABIA AND OTHER PERSIAN GULF MONARCHIES, AND SIXTEEN BILLION DOLLARS ($16,000,000,000) BY GERMAN AND JAPANESE PARTNERS. BUT MY FATHER'S FORMER IRAQI BUSINESS PARTNER REMAINED IN CONTROL OF THE REPUBLIC OF IRAQ AND ITS PETROLEUM RESERVES.
MY FAMILY IS CALLING FOR YOUR URGENT ASSISTANCE IN FUNDING THE REMOVAL OF THE PRESIDENT OF THE REPUBLIC OF IRAQ AND ACQUIRING THE PETROLEUM ASSETS OF HIS COUNTRY, AS COMPENSATION FOR THE COSTS OF REMOVING HIM FROM POWER. UNFORTUNATELY, OUR PARTNERS FROM 1991 ARE NOT WILLING TO SHOULDER THE BURDEN OF THIS NEW VENTURE, WHICH IN ITS UPCOMING PHASE MAY COST THE SUM OF 100 BILLION TO 200 BILLION DOLLARS ($100,000,000,000 - $200,000,000,000), BOTH IN THE INITIAL ACQUISITION AND IN LONG-TERM MANAGEMENT.
WITHOUT THE FUNDS FROM OUR 1991 PARTNERS, WE WOULD NOT BE ABLE TO ACQUIRE THE OIL REVENUE TRAPPED WITHIN IRAQ. THAT IS WHY MY FAMILY AND OUR COLLEAGUES ARE URGENTLY SEEKING YOUR GRACIOUS ASSISTANCE. OUR DISTINGUISHED COLLEAGUES IN THIS BUSINESS TRANSACTION INCLUDE THE SITTING VICE-PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, RICHARD CHENEY, WHO IS AN ORIGINAL PARTNER IN THE IRAQ VENTURE AND FORMER HEAD OF THE HALLIBURTON OIL COMPANY, AND CONDOLEEZA RICE, WHOSE PROFESSIONAL DEDICATION TO THE VENTURE WAS DEMONSTRATED IN THE NAMING OF A CHEVRON OIL TANKER AFTER HER.
I WOULD BESEECH YOU TO TRANSFER A SUM EQUALING TEN TO TWENTY-FIVE PERCENT (10-25 %) OF YOUR YEARLY INCOME TO OUR ACCOUNT TO AID IN THIS IMPORTANT VENTURE. THE INTERNAL REVENUE SERVICE OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA WILL FUNCTION AS OUR TRUSTED INTERMEDIARY. I PROPOSE THAT YOU MAKE THIS TRANSFER BEFORE THE FIFTEENTH (15TH) OF THE MONTH OF APRIL.
I KNOW THAT A TRANSACTION OF THIS MAGNITUDE WOULD MAKE ANYONE APPREHENSIVE AND WORRIED. BUT I AM ASSURING YOU THAT ALL WILL BE WELL AT THE END OF THE DAY. A BOLD STEP TAKEN SHALL NOT BE REGRETTED, I ASSURE YOU. PLEASE DO BE INFORMED THAT THIS BUSINESS TRANSACTION IS 100% LEGAL. IF YOU DO NOT WISH TO CO-OPERATE IN THIS TRANSACTION, PLEASE CONTACT OUR INTERMEDIARY REPRESENTATIVES TO FURTHER DISCUSS THE MATTER.
I PRAY THAT YOU UNDERSTAND OUR PLIGHT. MY FAMILY AND OUR COLLEAGUES WILL BE FOREVER GRATEFUL. PLEASE REPLY IN STRICT CONFIDENCE TO THE CONTACT NUMBERS BELOW.
