Monthly Archive for June, 2007

You have to wonder if the right wing’s obsession with icons of masculinity is compensating for something we don’t know about.

Anne Coulter, who at least pretends to be a woman, holds up Pat Tillman as the epitome of American masculinity (at least until she found out he was a fan of Chomsky) while deriding John Edwards and Al Gore as being gay. She is either very brave or very tragic, depending on your point of view, had this androgynous and anemic harpy ever been seen in public with male company.

Jonah Golberg, could hardly contain his admiration for Dick Cheney, confusing Cheney’s general contempt for humanity, with masculine resolve.

In just two minutes of chatty, giggly Cheney worship, the following tough-guy cliches flew from their mouths:

* Cheney “doesn’t bother talking the talk, he just walks the walk”;

* he’s “a politician who doesn’t look at the polls. . . another Harry Truman”;

* “love to have a beer with the guy”;

* “a smart, serious man in American life”;

* “Have you ever seen Dick Cheney give a speech? I mean, the contempt for the audience is palpable” — “I know, I — see, I love that. He looks like he should be eating a sandwich while he’s doing it, eating lunch over the sink . . I love that”;

* “I can just see him yelling, hey you kids, get off my lawn. I love it.”

As always, the pulsating need among the strain of individual represented by Tucker Carlson and Johan Goldberg to search endlessly for strong, powerful, masculine figures so that they can feel those attributes and pose as one who exudes them (Jonah Goldberg: “love to have a beer with the guy”) is its own stomach-turning though vitally important topic. The same is true of the fact that the movement of which they are a part virtually always venerates as Icons of Courageous Sandwich-Eating Masculinity precisely those figures who so transparently play-act at the role but whose lives never exhibit any such attributes in reality. That, too, is its own rich and abundant topic.

Once again the irony is unavoidable. The man that Golberg idolizes for his “strength” has a history that reads like the antithesis of masculinity. Cheney not only skipped the Vietnam draft through five draft deferments, but these days has taken paranoia to macabre extremes, and spends most of his time hiding away in some bunker.

As the interview continued, Golberg gave us an all too familiar insight into mentality that has infected the far right.

GOLDBERG: And you know, but I do think that what Cheney has learned after a lifetime in Washington as a power player, is that the person who holds the secrets has power. And he is using that for what I would say, or probably what he believes to be certainly good ends. A lot of people disagree on that, but he’s trying to do best as he can and he sees holding onto power as a tool to do that.

That, of course, is the defining mentality of the Authoritarian Mind, captured in its purest essence by Jonah. Our Leaders are Good and want to protect us. Therefore, we must accept — and even be grateful — when they prevent us from knowing what they are doing. The less we know, the more powerful our Leaders are. And that is something we accept and celebrate, for our Leaders are Good and we trust that the more powerful they are, the better we all shall be.

John Dean wrote a book about this very phenomenon. His interview with Keith Olbermann last year is quite an eye opener.

Whatever you do, don’t break the law in Saudi Arabia:

Saudi authorities on Thursday beheaded a Saudi man convicted of killing a fellow national, the Interior Ministry said.

Al-Humaidi Al-Ghamdi shot Aeydh Al-Ghamdi to death after a dispute, the statement carried by the official Saudi Press Agency said. It did not explain the nature of the dispute.

Both the initial killing and the subsequent execution took place in the southern region of Aseer, the ministry said.

Saudi Arabia follows a strict interpretation of Islam under which those convicted of murder, drug trafficking, rape and armed robbery are executed in public with a sword.

Wednesday’s executions brought to 95 the number of people beheaded in the kingdom this year. Saudi Arabia beheaded 38 people last year and 83 people in 2005.

I’m keeping my hands to myself at all times.

A gem from Istaputz.

What I’ve done is going to be puzzled over and studied and followed… forever. — John Doe

Yes, I may be at 30 percent in the polls, but in 20 or 30 years, they’ll appreciate what I’ve done. — President Bush

There’s no stopping Vladimir Putin. The controversial Russian leader is seizing on a finding by Russian geologists that Russian’s northern Arctic region is directly linked to the North Pole via an underwater shelf, and decided that this piece of land should belong to Russia.

This is not an insignificant piece of land either. Putin has his sights set on 460,000 square miles of territory. That’s equal to the land mass of Italy, Germany and France, combined.

Needless to say, the prize is a bounty of natural resources, with twice as much oil as Saudi Arabia.

Even the most conservative estimates of untapped oil and mineral wealth in the currently frozen Arctic are in the range of many trillions of dollars. Unofficial estimates, the kind that oil and mining companies don’t make public, because they are usually guesstimates, think there could be tens of trillions of dollars worth of oil, gas, coal and various minerals up there.

Predictably the US has expressed outrage over the move, but given the fact that they are occupying Iraq and killing Iraqis by the thousand, no one’s really turning to them for moral leadership about stealing land and resources these days.

The Western media generally reports the non-Western world in a woefully inadequate way?

A CIA prison in Tunisia? Barely registers.

Vanity Fair’s latest edition on Africa…that hardly mentions the Africans?

Or the US role in the recent Gaza explosion?

Most corporate journalists prefer not to to ask the key questions because the answers are utterly predictable and uncomfortable for the Western powers-that-be. Besides, many reporters have no problem with the major powers conducting business as they do.

The prosecutors trying Jose Padilla want to present “evidence” that is completely unrelated to anything Padilla is charged with. What’s worse is that the judge has approved it.

Judge Cooke agreed to a prosecution request to play for the jury a 1997 CNN taped interview with Osama bin Laden. Judge Cooke excised what she said were the most inflammatory 13 minutes from the 20 minute tape, so the jury will hear only 7 minutes of this manipulative terrorist spouting his self-serving narrative. The reason for the jury to review the 7 minutes of Osama is the prosecution has taped phone conversations between two of the defendants, Adham Amin Hassoun and Kifah Wael Jayyousi, celebrating the contents of the interview, even, according to prosecutor John Shipley, rejoicing over bin Laden’s incendiary words.

This is what is driving Padiila’s attorney, Andrew Natale a tad crazy. There is no evidence, repeat, no evidence that Padilla ever heard or saw the bin Laden interview. “How the heck can we defend against something he’s never seen, never discussed, never had anything to do with?” Natale asked. Good question.

Padilla is being tried along with two other defendants, but neither of them ever met Bin Laden.

How relevant is the bin Laden tape to the trial in Miami? It’s a 1997 CNN interview with bin Laden in eastern Afghanistan in late March of 1997. Obviously Padilla is not involved in the conversation. He wasn’t even involved in discussing it with Hassoun and Jayyousi years later. Padilla never saw the interview.

The case against Padilla must be incredibly weak if this stunt is the best the prosecution can come up with.

It looks as though the investigation into corruption surrounding the dealings of BAE Systems is about to proceed.

The US Department of Justice has launched an inquiry into British arms manufacturer BAE Systems’ compliance with anti-corruption laws, including those regarding lucrative Saudi contracts, BAE revealed on Tuesday.

The question remains, will the ties to Cheney see the light of day?

One consequence of those shock waves is that Vice President Dick Cheney, according to Washington insiders, is in deep trouble with his London friends. Cheney, the sources report, was the guarantor that the story of the $80-100 billion fund would never see the light of day. And, while the American and British establishment press have attempted to bury the scandal, either through blacking it out altogether, or focusing attention on tertiary features, like the relatively small flow of cash to Prince Bandar, the EIR revelations have saturated the U.S. Congress and have been picked up around the world.

The next chapter is now being written in the scandal of the century, and that could mean the political doom of Dick Cheney. Ironically, it could come at the hands of his own political boosters in the City of London, rather than from Congressional Democrats, who remain divided on the issue of Cheney’s impeachment for high crimes and misdemeanors. Ultimately, the real powers behind the throne in London have very low tolerance for failure.

Given that Cheney has become even more toxic than normal, the timing of this could hardly be better worse for him.

What do you get when you have an Australian Murdoch newspaper trying to report on Shia attitudes towards Israel and Hizbollah?

Woeful inaccuracy and gross generalisation.