Friday Reads
Posted: December 16, 2011 Filed under: just because, morning reads 30 Comments
Good Morning!
We’re finally out of Iraq and it’s based on terms set by Dubya Bush. Have we learned anything at all?
The war that was waged – yes, for oil, and yes, also for Israel – was waged above all to terrify the world (especially China) with American power. It turned into the largest boomerang in history. For what has been demonstrated instead are the limits of near-bankrupt America’s power. Far from being cowed, America’s adversaries – and its enemies – have been emboldened. With shock and awe the empire soon dominated the skies over Iraq to be sure. But they never controlled a single street in the country from the day they invaded until this day of retreat. One street alone – Haifa Street in Baghdad – became the graveyard of scores, maybe hundreds of Americans.
Fortresses like Fallujah entered history alongside Stalingrad as symbols of the unvanquishable power of popular resistance to foreign invasion. Crimes like Abu Ghraib prison – where Iraqis were stripped naked and humiliated, forced to perform indecent acts upon each other and videotaped doing so for the entertainment of their torturers in the barracks afterwards – entered the lexicon of the barbarism of those who invade others, flying the colours of their “civilising” mission. As Chairman Mao once put it: “Sometimes the enemy struggles mightily to lift a huge stone; only to drop it on its own foot.” In an America where a third of the population are living in poverty or terrifyingly near it, and where imperial hubris met its nemesis on Haifa Street, China now knows it has nothing to fear from this paper tiger.
The NYT mentions that we’ve left them with a lot of challenges.
Iraq faces a multitude of vexing problems the Americans tried and failed to resolve, from how to divide the country’s oil wealth to sectarian reconciliation to the establishment of an impartial justice system. A long-standing dispute festers in the north over how to share power in Kirkuk between Arabs, Kurds and Turkmen, an ominous harbinger for power struggles that may ensue in a post-America Iraq. A recent deal between Exxon Mobil and the Kurdistan government has been deemed illegal by Baghdad in the absence of procedures for sharing the country’s oil resources.
“We are in a standstill and things are paralyzed,” said Adel Abdul Mahdi, a prominent Shiite politician and former vice president of Iraq, describing the process of political reconciliation between Iraq’s three main factions, Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds. “We are going from bad to worse.”
After 9 years and a few trillion dollars, you would hope something was resolved.
Pew Research released the results of an extensive survey of US voters. There’s a lot of support for Occupy–although not their protests–and a lot of dislike of Congress. Some of the results should trouble both parties but especially Republicans.
Public discontent with Congress has reached record levels, and the implications for incumbents in next year’s elections could be stark. Two-in-three voters say most members of Congress should be voted out of office in 2012 – the highest on record. And the number who say their own member should be replaced matches the all-time high recorded in 2010, when fully 58 members of Congress lost reelection bids – the most in any election since 1948.
The Republican Party is taking more of the blame than the Democrats for a do-nothing Congress. A record-high 50% say that the current Congress has accomplished less than other recent Congresses, and by nearly two-to-one (40% to 23%) more blame Republican leaders than Democratic leaders for this. By wide margins, the GOP is seen as the party that is more extreme in its positions, less willing to work with the other side to get things done, and less honest and ethical in the way it governs. And for the first time in over two years, the Democratic Party has gained the edge as the party better able to manage the federal government.
Christine Lagarde of the IMF is liking the current Eurozone crisis to the 1930s.
Lagarde said that if countries don’t work together, the world will face a situation similar to the 1930s, before the world slid into World War II.
“There is no economy in the world, whether low-income countries, emerging markets, middle-income countries or super- advanced economies that will be immune to the crisis that we see not only unfolding, but escalating at a point where everybody would actually have to focus on what it can do,” Lagarde said.
If the international community doesn’t work together, “the risk from an economic point of view is that of retraction, rising protectionism, isolation,” Lagarde said. “This is exactly the description of what happened in the ‘30s and what followed is not something we are looking forward to.”
Lagarde said the world economic outlook “is quite gloomy” with pervasive downside risk, downward revisions, slower growth than expected, higher deficits than predicted and public finances in shaky condition. “And that is pretty much true the world over,” Lagarde said.
The one exception, she said, is emerging markets and the Asian economies most badly hit during the 1990s economic crisis. They, too, will have to help manage the current crisis if the world is to weather the risk, she said. Leadership has to rest with Europe, she said.
EmptyWheel is keeping track of the battle over subjecting US citizens to indefinite detention and violations of due process.
Kudos to Dianne Feinstein for trying to eliminate the President’s ability to indefinitely detain (and kill?) American citizens. This time, she’s trying a free-standing bill titled the Due Process Guarantee Act of 2011. It says,
(1) An authorization to use military force, a declaration of war, or any similar authority shall not authorize the detention without charge or trial of a citizen or lawful permanent resident of the United States apprehended in the United States, unless an Act of Congress expressly authorizes such detention.
(2) Paragraph (1) applies to an authorization to use military force, a declaration of war, or any similar authority enacted before, on, or after the date of the enactment of the Due Process Guarantee Act of 2011.
The language seems sound enough to me. And given that this wouldn’t constrain the President’s ability to detain (or kill) Americans in Yemen, the Obama Administration might not put up as big of a fight as it did with the detainee provisions (though I suspect they would fight it, because of all the other things that rely on detention language–they’d have to rewrite a bunch of OLC memos).
So, those are the things that caught my eye today. What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
peej
Carissa
ecocatwoman
mablue2
peggysue22
quixote
skydancingguestblogger
Mona (aka Wonk the Vote)
Sky Dancing 
I woke up with a terrible thought this morning: one of these people will be elected to the WH in 2012 and none of them have a clue. Or perhaps it is as simple as they just don’t give a damn one way or the other.
Obama? Newt? Mittens? Really?
Stupid people with stupid ideas and stupid resolutions to issues that require commonsense but are devoted to protecting and defending the wealthiest 1% and casting the problems faced by the rest to the curb.
Today’s headlines report that many more of us are now inching downwards into below or just above the poverty level and they are talking sheer and utter nonsense about conferring personhood on an embryo and advancing another call to war in the mideast.
Income levels are shrinking, the buying power of the average citizen is dissolving, jobs are being sent overseas, the enviroment is slowly being eroded, local tax rates are strangling us, the infrastructure is crumbling, collective bargaining is being attacked, and these idiots are discussing “family values” and the definition of marriage.
It is the most demoralized I have felt in a long time as the horizon appears pretty bleak from this distance when all we have is Obama or a member of the Republican opposition who have no intention of serving the public at any level.
Unimaginable that we have arrived at this.
Unimaginable yes. But when the times are most tough is when the demagogues rise up to take advantage of the weak.
Oh yes, and that is what bothers me the most about all this Dak…
Lots of tributes to Christopher Hitchins, who died last night. He was only 62.
Vanity Fair:
http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2011/12/In-Memoriam-Christopher-Hitchens-19492011
NYT likens him to George Orwell and Thomas Paine:
BB, Hitch the Snitch hated both Clintons with a white hot passion and he loved Bush and the Iraq Invasion/Occupation.
That’s all I need to know about him. I’m sorry that he died-and in such a shitty way-but a great talent in the service of evil is an evil unto itself.
When he wasn’t on the subject of Clintons (or sexism generally, for that matter), he did write some brilliant things.
Here is a great read on Hitch…that is not the typical obit: Ave et vale, Hitch; it served. — Got Medieval
I kinda feel the same as you SS
Yeah, uh…unless I have missed some great tome of Hitchens’, somehow I don’t think people will be reading any of his work in 250 years.
People have lost all sense of what makes a person truly great and/or talented. But then, we live in an age where the Kardashians are “stars.”
here’s a little fun gossip:
All Your Rick Perry Gay Sex Rumors Collected in One Handy Book
http://gawker.com/5868489/
Glen Maxey, the author, is a real hoot but I’m not sure I would believe his “investigation”. Used to be my state rep and was really good. He became a huge Obot in ’08 though. 🙂
😆
This is an interesting blurb:
http://story.japanherald.com/index.php/ct/9/cid/c4f2dd8ca8c78044/id/201904460/cs/1/ht/Japanto%20hail%20Fukushima%20nuke%20plant%20Cold%20Shutdown%20state/
I read yesterday where China’s real estate bubble has finally popped and it sounded worse than our own. They are putting large tariffs on imports of GM vehicles, I guess as opposed to those manufactured in China. The economy in India is also slowing like mad with some of the same issues. Of course I don’t know how reliable that information is since it’s hard to get data from China etc?
That’s my understanding, ralphb.
The hong kong herald alludes to it, and refers to:
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/research-markets-hong-kong-food-082200011.html
Here is another:
http://www.fda.gov/Safety/Recalls/ucm283879.htm
It’s for Riata® and Riata® ST Silicone Defibrillation Leads, as a Class I Recall.
From the ever-brilliant Andrew Bacevich on Iraq (http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com/2011/12/16/bacevich-after-iraq-war-is-u-s/):
He goes on to say:
A brief but scathing epitaph on the war’s “end”–well worth reading.
Have we heard one GOP candidate mention the obsenity of this war? Nope. The unnecessary waste of life and treasure? The bombing to hell of the infrastructure? Abu Ghareib? No, no and no.
But let’s discuss gay marriage and the right to choose because, as we all know, it’s the two leading issues that will “bring the economy back”. That and the numerous mentions of Ronnie Raygun.
thump, thump, thump (Banging head on desk.)
Nope, we’ve heard the GOP talking about how we shouldn’t be leaving. They all seem to agree with the pathetic John McCain that we should stay in Iraq forever. McCain and the odious Lindsey Graham should be ran out of office on a rail.
Ahem, I think the answer to that question is actually yes.
Lol. If only Ron Paul was non-interventionist when it came to women and their uteruses.
This will be interesting to pick at. Alternet is reporting that the FED gave 29 trillion in bailout money over three years:
http://www.alternet.org/story/153462/bail-out_bombshell%3A_fed_%22emergency%22_bank_rescue_totaled_%2429_trillion_over_three_years?akid=8002.278326.RgG8GG&rd=1&t=3
Dylan Ratigan did a call out of this tidy sum–$29 trillion–a couple of days ago on his show. 29 trillion = two times US GDP.
We’re being run into the ditch by maniacs!
But we don’t have money to prime the economy on Main St. National debt, hah
So I remember that, for example, Saudi Arabia and Yemen were at one point holding together more than a third of Goldman Sachs ownership during the height of the crisis. I think another country was in there too. (China?) I can’t help but think that this partly was a back door way to help finance the dregs of a war. Something like when we made the UK pay for the equipment we produced. That loan was just paid off a few years ago – about the time we started on the downhill slope.
Americans Elect in the NYT. Group Clears Path for a Third-Party Ticket
Go Buddy!
Go Buddy! 🙂
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/dec/16/lovers-undercover-officers-sue-police
Manwhores used my UK police.
Manwhore are the undercover police who apparently worked “undercover”. Some of these manwhores had wives in their other lives.
I’m wondering how many manwhore spies are “undercover” in the OWS the peaceful protests?
Will the used and discarded women sue the spies — at some point in the future?? Can we expect a lot of secrets to emerge — especially about the psyops used by the government manwhore?
Northwestrain:
Hey, I’m interested in another post you had about the S/M lifestyle creating more stable bonded pairs. Can you email me directly so I can talk about this with you? I’ve got some concerns about this due to some recent personal experiences. I want to know what kind of research you may have uncovered on power and control and its effect on romantic relationships. (Susan Brooks is a pseudonym, for all the Susan Brooks’ out there.)
susanbrooks009@gmail.com