The Raven' s Blog, Web Log of Eric Ferguson: First Half of December 2005 Archive

December 15
I guess it must be getting taken for granted that everyone knows Bush lied about the war. Polls show a majority think so, but a sizeable minority must think they own the Brooklyn Bridge. That's why when evidence comes out that Bush lied it should get more attention. In hopes of helping remedy that, here's another piece. A French intelligence official says France warned Bush as far back as 2001 that the documents indicating Iraq tried to buy uranium from Niger were forged. These are the same documents the CIA sent Joseph Wilson to investigate, and the same ones Bush used in his 2003 State of the Union address. What this specifically indicates is that Wilson wasn't the only one who reported that the documents were forged, so the notion the Bush administration didn't know becomes more implausible.

A bit of good news, thinking long term to the 2008 election. Sen. Russell Feingold, D-WI, the only senator to oppose the Patriot Act and my preference for president right now, has become a leader of the opposition to the act's renewal, and he has gained a lot of support. Enough to defeat it? I doubt it, but it must be gratifying to a man who voted alone on a bill rushed through in a successful effort to use 911 to attack our own civil liberties.

December 14
Here's an interesting quote by Chris Carney, one of the veterans of the current wars running for the US House as a Democrat: ''I don't know how we go from a country as united as it was on Sept. 12, 2001, to one as divided as we are today. That is what is propelling me in this race." The article is about veterans running for Congress, and it's interesting eight out of nine are running as Democrats, and that's without mentioning Colleen Rowley, who had a career in the FBI that gives her credibility running on national security, and Paul Hackett, running for Senate (though if he;d run for that House seat again, I have a feeling Jean Schmidt isn't the strongest candidate).

The reason that quote is interesting is a big subject but I can't resist touching upon it. It gets to why the "angry left", as Republicans like to call the left, is angry towards the acting president. It's not the only reason, maybe not even the main reason for most of us, but I believe it's the reason that underlies everything else. Like Carney said, we went from being a unified country to being divided. I doubt he was being literal when he said he didn't know how, because we all know it's the politicization of 911.

How big a change occurred after 911? After 911, the country was more united than at any time in its history except maybe right after Pearl Harbor (even then, I suspect many on the left had to bite their tongues to not say to the right "we told you so" about the threat of fascism). The acting president got his 90% approval rating based solely on being in office. If only we had seen the school video right away. So with the country behind him, giving him a mandate undreamed of by other presidents, especially those who lost their election and got placed in office by a partisan Supreme Court (I'm not holding out much hope on the Texas redistricting case), he launched the war in Afghanistan, the only war besides World War II where the public was nearly unanimous in support. Then he attacked Iraq on false premises, and the sad part was war opponents said before the war that the evidence wasn't holding up yet couldn't overcome the propaganda. Bush and the neocons pushed the Patriot Act through a credulous Congress. We had upper class tax cuts during a time of war. The result of a president abusing the willingness of Americans to rally during crisis in order to push a far right agenda, start a war on a campaign of lies, and destroy our country's reputation for respecting human rights, is the current division of the country that is not only the sharpest since the Vietnam War, but one of the sharpest divisions in our history.

OK reader, maybe you don't agree we were lied to (swampland salesmen must love you), and maybe you don't think Iraq War II was a stupid idea. Maybe you've bought the right wing myth that the right wanted to fight Hitler and the left didn't get it (please go read up on the isolationist movement), or you think the tax cuts were smart or that torture is OK if the victims are terrorists which of course they all are or they wouldn't be tortured. What I'm telling you is this is the view on the left. This is why the country is divided. If you don't want to just seethe at liberals and ignore the plain truth, but really want to put the country back together, then you need only read the proceeding to know what you must address.

December 12
There's nothing for celebrating the season like a Take a the Red Pill Award for the people who seriously believe there's a War on Christmas in progress. The people leading it are engaging in agitprop, a word I haven't used since last year. What was the occasion? Oh right, last year's imaginary War on Christmas. I expect there is a lot of cynical manipulation of credulous Christians just like Ralph Reed got caught doing. I ask the people who want to boycott any store whose ads say "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas" if they really want their religious symbols appropriated for commercial use. Beyond just using Christmas to get people to spend more and spend there, think of the possibilities if Christians have to see their beliefs reflected in their ads: "We're crucifying high prices!"; "We three kings of orient are...going mad for the great bargains!"; "O Little Town of Bethlehem Outlet Mall". So if you take the War on Christmas seriously, be sure to leave room under the tree for your Take the Red Pill Award.

December 4
This is a pattern. I'm referring most prominently to the story about the Pentagon hiring a PR firm to plant stories in the Iraqi press, but it's hardly just that. It's not that different from video press releases that posed as news stories to be planted in local TV news broadcasts. Readers remember I'm sure how the Bush campaign screened the crowd at his campaign appearances, and how it worked so well he did it on his Social Security privatization tour. Perhaps you also recall hiring pundits to shill for Bush's programs, and fake journalists to throw softball questions at press conferences. Now there's the political screening of scholars participating in State Department exchange programs. The common thread of course is the attempt to manipulate perceptions and information. It's all a piece to make sure Bush has an audience that will applaud his nonsense and let TV viewers seeing the clips think there's really a widespread opinion Bush is making sense; to have supposedly credible pundits giving what appears to be an honest opinion when it's actually paid for; to pretend propaganda is objective news; and in the last instance, to give the impression to the outside world that American scholars back Bush.

So let me put this plainly: honest people have no need to resort to these tactics. Conservatives might respond by pointing out that Reagan and Nixon did some of the same things, to which I respond "thank you for proving my point." Some apologists for the acting president are saying the Iraq propaganda operation is justified by the war, to which I have a couple responses. First, the rest of the examples of this lying were aimed at Americans or friendly countries, and in some cases selling domestic policy, not Iraq War II. Second, I heard a defense saying that the US planted articles in enemy media during World War II, but may I point out that this propaganda was aimed at people we're trying to win over as friends. It's one thing when you find your enemy has deceived you because after all, you were at war. Deceiving your friends, however, is less likely to win their support than to make them question their choice of friends.

To those who blame the messenger, claiming all would have been OK if only the operation hadn't been blown, I ask how anyone could be so stupid as to think this wouldn't come out. Then I recall that these same idiots expected to be greeted with flowers at the end of a quick war. These same idiots thought they could let the Baghdad museum could be looted of antiquities while only the oil ministry was guarded, and no one would think the war was about oil. So no wonder they didn't think they would get caught. Your mediocre burglar thinks the same thing.

If these utter fools in the pentagon or white house or wherever this decision was made can find a rational moment, they might reflect on this: never again will an Iraqi news story that puts the war or the US in a positive light be believed, even if true.

December 3
Back to politics in a moment, but first let me tell you about a neat impromptu protest yesterday, one entirely apolitical.

During my rush hour drive home, I go through a piece of freeway where US 218 blends in to eastbound Minnesota 62. Twin Cities freeways aren't as clogged as what I experienced recently in Houston or when I worked in the suburbs of Chicago, but this stretch is bad. At the point I describe, two lanes merge into one, with the left doing the merging, with signs posted stating that, and normally there's a long line of cars in the right lane. Every day, some jerks stay in the left lane and buzz to the end before cutting in, making everyone in the right stop for them which is why it moves so slow. I recently saw the vehicle ahead of me in that right lane pull into the left to block the jerks, one of whom stated honking to no effect. I held my place in the right so the blocking vehicle could move back in.

Last night, I wasn't willing to block the left because I'd rather be aggravated than bashed, but I did move part way into the left in hopes other drivers would get the message. A pickup a few vehicles ahead had the same thought and also partially blocked the left. The jerks did not get the message however, and just moved around us. However, the vehicles in between figured out what we were doing and joined in, so there were about five vehicles partially blocking the left, and we got brave enough to seriously pinch off the space. One jerk tried moving right in hopes of passing that way before seeing there was no space, and gave up. Now, I have no idea whether the jerks cutting in were conservatives or liberals. I don't have a clue how the other protesting drivers voted for president. Maybe no more than one or two cutters were blocked, but it was quite satisfying to have five drivers, in the same situation but not in communication, take a collective action to protest and impede bad behavior.

This is a similar story in a way, because it's about the value of speaking up, and it's also a little kudo to one of the local dailies, the St. Paul Pioneer Press. You may recall I wrote to the Pioneer Press to ask why they hadn't covered the stories about the 9/21/01 PDB and Bush considering bombing Al-Jazeera, and I asked readers to also contact a media outlet that hadn't covered these stories, especially the PDB story. The Pioneer Press wrote back and it was an individual response. They explained that they were going to print the Al-Jazeera story when something judged more important broke. The news judgement is arguable depending on what else could have been cut, but they apparently had that argument and their position is defensible. The individual who wrote to me hadn't heard the PDB story, so I regretted not having included a link, but I did send a reply with links to the story on the National Journal which broke it, and to MSNBC to show a mainstream outlet had picked it up. We may wish it were otherwise, but often a story is judged unimportant if other media don't carry it and the people in power don't talk about it.

I'll warrant many editors and reporters in the mainstream media still haven't heard the story. You can help them. It gets attention if you write and ask why a story wasn't covered, and in this case send the links: The National Journal; MSNBC.

"To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole."
US Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, who successfully prosecuted Nazis at Nuremberg for the crime of aggressive war, thereby establishing the precedent that starting a war is, in and of itself, a war crime.

"A refusal to look back inevitably means moving forward in blindness."
Philip Alston, the U.N. special rapporteur on extrajudicial executions, on the resistance of the Obama administration to investigating human rights abuses by the Bush administration.

"Why is it that strong women are so often called bullies and ballbreakers, while strong, opinionated men are often called, simply, Justice Scalia."
Salon editor Joan Walsh, on the bigoted attacks on Sonia Sotomayor already on the day of her announcement.

"In Minnesota, Secretary of State Mark Ritchie has made military ballot protection a key priority of his Department. The result is that twice as many military ballots are actually cast, and half as many are rejected, as the national average in 2006."
The National Defense Committee, in an article on their web site praising Minnesota's efforts to encourage absentee voting by military personnel stationed overseas.

"We're seeing massive resistance to the cramdown proposal. That's a proposal to allow bankruptcy judges to reschedule a mortgage on a primary residence. They're fighting this thing tooth and nail. Now the fact is, the people fighting it are the last people who should get the ear of anyone. And it goes to show me they haven't really learned any lessons. A lot of these folks--large banks, Wall Street firms--they have the attitude that "Heads I win, tails you lose." No matter what happens, we always get ours."
Rep. Keith Ellison, on how the bailed out banks are fighting against bankruptcy reform.

''Scores of banks failed in the Great Depression as a result of unsound banking practices, and their failure only deepened the crisis,. Glass-Steagall was intended to protect our financial system by insulating commercial banking from other forms of risk. It was one of several stabilizers designed to keep a similar tragedy from recurring. Now Congress is about to repeal that economic stabilizer without putting any comparable safeguard in its place.''
The late --- and correct --- Paul Wellstone, expressing opposition to repealing the law that prevented financial corporations from entering other types of financial business, like preventing commercial banks from becoming investment banks. This repeal was a large part of making the (collapsing) conglomerates possible.

"The facts revealed reflect the way the U.S. government has consistently tried to cover up the truth of Binyam Mohamed's torture. He was being told he would never leave Guant�namo Bay unless he promised never to discuss his torture, and never sue either the Americans or the British to force disclosure of his mistreatment."
Reprieve Director Clive Stafford Smith, speaking about a British court's ruling that the Bush administration tried to get Mohamed to plead guilty to something, anything, and keep quiet about his treatment as a condition of release.

"We spend hours and hours and hours arguing over $10 million amendments on the floor of the Senate, but there has been no discussion about who has been receiving this $3 trillion."
Sen. Bernie Sanders. I-VT, on the mostly unreported spending by the Federal Reserve to prop up the big financial corporations.

"The AIG scandal is significant and has resonated so powerfully because it is a microscope that enables the public to see what and who has wreaked the destruction that threatens their security and future and, most important of all, to realize that these practices haven't ended and the perpetrators haven't been punished. The opposite is true: those who caused the crisis continue to exert control over what happens and continue to have huge amounts of public money transferred in order to enrich them."
Glenn Greenwald, explaining why the AIG bonus scandal is both symbolic and important.

"Why are we talking about this in the White House? History will not judge this kindly."
Attorney General John Ashcroft, during a principals meeting about torture methods.

"There was no scientific consensus in the 1970s that the Earth was headed into an imminent ice age.

A review of the literature suggests that, to the contrary, greenhouse warming even then dominated scientists' thinking about the most important forces shaping Earth's climate on human time scales." Thomas Peterson of the National Climatic Data Center, who surveyed scientific research from 1965-1979 and showed that contrary to what climate change deniers keep asserting, there was no consensus on global cooling. That means the point that climate scientists must be wrong now because they were wrong then is itself based on a false assumption.

"We do not know where George Will is getting his information, but our data shows that on February 15, 1979, global sea ice area was 16.79 million sq. km and on February 15, 2009, global sea ice area was 15.45 million sq. km. Therefore, global sea ice levels are 1.34 million sq. km less in February 2009 than in February 1979. This decrease in sea ice area is roughly equal to the area of Texas, California, and Oklahoma combined.

It is disturbing that the Washington Post would publish such information without first checking the facts."
statement on the web site of University of Illinois' Arctic Climate Research Center, responding to an assertion by global warming denier George Will that they said sea ice area is the same as 1979.

"It has often and confidently been asserted, that man's origin can never be known. But ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science."
Charles Darwin, whose 200th birthday is coming up on February 12.

"The thing I like most is it says you can get these complex traits evolving by a combination of unlikely events. That's just what creationists say can't happen."
evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne, commenting on an experiment that was able to observe a mutation that changed one species into another.

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