A Recurring Nightmare

Deja vu all over again. Every time that a new provocation threatens to deepen the violence between Israel and the Palestinians is yet another time of anguish and despair. Why is this conflict so intractable? The reasons are many and complex.
But nobody really wants to hear them, on either side. In the now hysterical echo chamber of social media, it boils down to one thing on both sides of the divide: propaganda.
I don't trust that most people, regardless of their stance on the matter, can tell the difference between information and propaganda. Propaganda is manipulative, easy to digest and aims to inflame passions. Information, on the contrary, is hard work. It relies on facts. It's supposed to be objective and most importantly, it makes you think, consider, weigh, make up your mind. It's too much work, so people go with propaganda.
Well, I'm sick of the propaganda on both sides. I'm sick of scrolling down to rivers of  hatred unleashed upon Israel, the likes of which other terrible crises, indeed even worse crises, never manage to provoke. I don't hear such passionate outrage about Assad's ongoing genocide of his own people, or about the depredations of ISIS in Iraq, about the horrifying perennial conflicts in Africa, about America's drone attacks, or even about the humanitarian crisis of undocumented immigrant children right on our border. Such outpourings of virulent outrage are reserved exclusively for Israel because Israel is perceived to be the sole bully, the oppressor, the eternal aggressor in this conflict. Also, in many cases, because it allows antisemitism to come safely out of the woodwork. And please don't tell me that I perceive antisemitism because as a Jew, I am too sensitive. Antisemitism is like porn: I know it when I see it.
Newsflash for both Jews and non-Jews alike: being critical of the policies of the State of Israel does not make you an antisemite. Many Israelis and Jews, myself included, disagree with the continued occupation and other right wing policies of the current Israeli government. We are appalled and concerned by them. That does not mean we do not support Israel. On the contrary, we are worried that they are detrimental to Israel's survival. We want a better way.
Hating Israel, on the other hand, claiming that you are an anti-zionist, questioning Israel's right to exist, and spewing vitriol against Jews, that is a different story.
I am equally sick of Israeli propaganda about thousands of Hamas missiles (not remotely hitting anything, yet) and how the kind Israeli army sends leaflets out to warn Palestinians, and how restrained it is. And what would you do if your neighborhood was showered with rockets every day? These spiffy memes neglect a fundamental issue: they neglect to consider the occupation. They neglect to consider that the Palestinians living under it in permanent humiliation and distress, have a right to fight it, just like Israel has a right to its self-defense.
No one looks at a map. Well, here's another map:

No one cares about the geopolitics, the demographics, and the frightening political complexities of the Middle East. People are busy posting pictures. Of fizzling flying missiles, to Israel's public relations misfortune, rarely landing on top of as yet unscathed civilians; on the other side, and far more damaging in every sense, of scores of Palestinian children killed and maimed by the Israelis. You tell me what provokes more outrage.
But much worse than the propaganda are most comments. Caught between two sides of a world citizenry that, with the advent of social media, has taken it upon itself to be the bearer of bad news, defender and apologist for one cause or the other, one is at the mercy of unrestrained lunacy, bordering on idiocy, on both sides.

Israel's occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip is a rapidly spreading cancer that threatens its existence. It is morally untenable. It is fraying the fabric of civilization, let alone democracy, in Israel. In my view, it has become a grave strategic error. All it has unleashed is a threat to Israel's survival as a modern nation, from the oppression of the Palestinians to the unconscionable coddling of religious Jews in the expanding settlements. If Israel continues its path towards the extreme right, it may survive as an obscurantist theocracy, but that, my fellow Jews, should be cause for alarm and our most vocal opposition. Because if that happens, it will be the end of Israel. 
Having said this, many people see this conflict as Israel's sole responsibility. They choose to ignore the fact that the Palestinians are also oppressed by the vested, byzantine interests of the Arab world, to whom the Palestinians are a convenient tool for directing elsewhere the frustrations of their own oppressed citizens.
The only way out is to find the political will of all parties involved: of Israel, of the different Palestinian factions, of the neighboring Arab states and the rest of the Arab world, of Iran, of the US, the EU, Russia, China, etc, to sit down to serious negotiations and commit political will and economic resources to find a viable Palestinian state or some other option that ensures Israel's right to exist, preferably in peace.
Good luck with that.
Still, nobody, it seems to me, is thinking creatively. Part of my despair comes from realizing that Israel always falls right into Hamas's traps. I admire Israel's technological ingenuity and its human capital, but it amazes me that it has been unable to come up with a surprising, out of the box strategy against its enemies that does not entail a massive show of force, making Israel look like the worst villain the world has ever known. Think of something that will find its enemies off-guard. It can't be easy, but the predictability of the reaction is getting to be very depressing.
I have no solutions, but, perhaps unlike most people screaming like banshees about the conflict, I think about them. What's more, I've seen a map, and I have lived in Israel. I am not a Pollyanna (see maps). I am well aware of how a hostile Arab world in turmoil must look like from Israel's vantage point (hint: not good). But at this point, there has to be a more intelligent way to protect and defend Israel.
In the meantime, this is it. I will refrain from posting or commenting, defending or attacking, arguing and wasting my breath. If you bother with a screed for or against, don't expect an answer. I'm tuning out of this nightmare. Wake me when it's over.

Gung Ho!

I saw the martial arts film The Grandmaster yesterday and the sage philosophical musings of some of the different schools of Chinese fighting led me to ponder how is it that every time the American government wants to start a war with someone, they waste no time shouting it to the winds. What about the stealth, the element of surprise, the strategy? What about knowing your enemy? (If they did, they would think twice about it).
I do tai chi, which is not, as you may think, a gentle stretch for little old Chinese ladies, but a martial art. My teacher is always saying things like, you gotta have strong legs so the first thing you do when confronted by a possible attack is, run the hell out of there. The first rule of Chinese martial arts seems to be to avoid, deflect, defuse, and discourage confrontation. If that is not possible, however, then that swift, out-of-the-blue, lethal kick will come in handy. But if you let your enemy, (and the enemy of your enemy, which in the case of Syria is also your enemy) know two weeks in advance that you intend to kick his ass, it may not work out as well.
I just came back from France, where the national pastime seems to be to sit in cafés and talk. The French are obsessed with thought and discussion, and having as much paid vacation as possible. The Magnificent Arepa had an epiphany that the reason why there are so many French philosophers is that the French like to sit at cafés, smoke, drink coffee, and think. Like Sartre and Beauvoir at Les Deux Magots.
Americans however, are obsessed with action. No sitting at cafés in the middle of the day for us. We do shit without thinking.
This is the only way I can explain the surreal moment we are having right now about going to war with Syria. First, we don't do anything when it's the time to do it, if ever; we wait until the guy has killed 100,000 people and then, when he steps over "the red line" (which, as Jon Stewart points out, is a dick measuring tape), we bluster and threaten and announce our intentions to attack. Obama whips his dick out, and not to be outdone, many of the putrid vermin that populate Congress follow suit. This is the one issue in which Republicans all of a sudden stand behind a President they have stonewalled every step of the way. They strangle health, education, immigration, economic issues, but war? BRING IT!
Has there been a thoughtful conversation, analysis or debate about this latest hankering for infernal action? Can this President, who promised to get out of Iraq and Afghanistan now say with a straight face that we are going into Syria as well?
The problem with Americans is that ours is a lethal combination of "gotta get things done, but first we need to brag about them". We neither do them when it is advisable, if ever, nor talk or think about them enough, which should be always. So by the time we take action, we do it thoughtlessly, unleashing even bigger messes, more enmity, and more chaos.
There must be an alternate way, a way of reason and brilliance. This takes true brains, and is therefore rarely used, but this constitutes the ideal scenario: people with great strategic thinking come up with smart, complex, unfolding solutions; not gung-ho, easy as a fart, morally abject posturing that is going to get us into a whole world of trouble. Again.

Now Showing At A Theater Near You

Two very good movies opening today:

Miss Bala, by Gerardo Naranjo
...and Coriolanus, by my BF, Ralph Fiennes, and William Shakespeare. 

Mexican Memes

Mexicans have always been known for their sense of humor. Mexican culture is awash with jokes, puns, double entendres and what we call ingenio, which is something as funny as wit, but less dry. Yet I don't think anyone foresaw how much mileage Mexican humor was going to get out of new technologies like Photoshop, You Tube and social media, which are starting to make Mexico look like the capital of memes. 

About a week after 9/11, if not sooner, I get an urgent email from my friend Pancho, with the following subject: "They found Osama Bin Laden". I open it, my heart racing, and I see a picture of Osama sitting placidly in a gondola in Xochimilco, a place where Mexican families go to have Sunday picnics on the water. To this day, it's the best thing I ever saw.
Apparently, it's the gift that keeps on giving:

Same when they couldn't find Ghadaffi:

Looks like the taquero from hell to me, even though, true to his Middle Eastern roots, he is hiding behind a spit of shwarma.
Any time a Mexican public figure makes a gigantic blunder, Mexicans and their ingenio take over cyberspace. A meme was created when newsanchor Joaquín López Dóriga attempted to interview Sir Anthony Hopkins and asked him "Juay De Rito" (Why The Rite?).
More recently, the PRI's candidate for president, a pompadoured calamity called Enrique Peña Nieto, was taken to task for not being able to answer correctly what three books have most influenced him, as he made an appearance at the International Book Fair in Guadalajara, the most important event of its kind in the Spanish-speaking world. You would think he'd brush up on his reading, given the nature of the event, but true to the caste of patronizing demagogues of his party, who are used to blathering from above and are completely unable to speak off the cuff, he was taken aback by the question and proceeded to pontificate without saying absolutely anything or remembering correctly the title of at least one book (not counting the Bible, which he said he had read parts of).
The barrage of tweets and doctored photos that invaded the net show no sign of abating.
His daughter then posted a tweet saying "a greeting to the bunch of fuckheads that are part of the prole (tariat) and who only criticize who they envy".
Now all of Mexico is claiming prolehood.
Gandhi, a chain of bookstores, famous for their clever ads, did not waste any time coming up with some funny print ads. Because their ads are easy to copy, Mexicans went to work on dozens of alternate versions:

There are pictures of Peña Nieto conferring with the actual Gandhi, with the Pope, and one of him as the swaddled baby of two of the most notoriously corrupt and sinister members of the PRI, ex-president Carlos Salinas and undying PRI fixture Elba Esther Gordillo.
Among the tweets:

"Let's read something by Martin Burger King #PeñaNietoBookstore"

"What is your favorite Benedetti? The pepperoni one, of course". #PeñaNietoBookstore"

"Three books that marked me for life: 1) Los Reebook, 2) La Notebook, y 3) El Facebook. #PeñaNietoBookstore"

 There are also many hashtags for the "prole" comment.

Apparently, at the PRI's behest, which is revolting business as usual, Twitter tried to censor the PeñaNietoBookstore# hashtag after it started trending with over 60,000 tweets. There was a huge outcry and they allowed it again. One thing these lamentable politicos do not appreciate is freedom of expression. They are used to despotism, but Mexico is changing. There is no more delicious schadenfreude than to see these corrupt bozos exposed by the citizenry for the frauds they are. It may not be funny to them, but it is seriously funny for us.
Social media can change things. Hopefully this idiot will not become the President of Mexico after this.

Happy New Year

Sunrise

May this New Year 5772 be a year where people become smarter, common sense reigns, people renounce violence, we edge closer to social justice, war ends, evil bankers are prosecuted, the middle class thrives, poverty shrinks, government works, the rich are taxed, our politicians lose the stupid and craven gene, corporations stop being people, all the nasties in the Supreme Court magically retire while all the liberals stay, drugs are legalized, the mayhem in the Middle East is finally put to rest, hatred calls it a day, Republicans implode, Obama grows a pair, reality shows collapse, global warming chills, people find jobs, capital punishment is barred in the US, street fairs are banned, and I get a date with Michael Fassbender.
Not asking for much, are we? 

Eat a lot of apples and honey just in case. It can't hurt.

Occupy Wall St.

I am not participating in the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations because I don't like crowds and cheesy slogans. But they have provided me with an opportunity to express my revulsion with the New York Police Department's crowd control tactics, which are excessive and totally unnecessary, as these protesters are generally a model of good behavior. No one is throwing molotov cocktails, rocks or creating mayhem, but for the NYPD, spilling off the sidewalks is the only pretext it needs to overpower the protesters by netting them into pens, which is quite humiliating, confining them to the sidewalks, which is immensely frustrating, arresting people for resisting arrest, and even spraying them with mace, which is ridiculous. It's almost as if the police is egging on the protesters into getting violent.
Last I heard, the nature and purpose of a demonstration is precisely for people to spill out into the streets. What the hell is the purpose of hundreds of people coming together if they are going to be relegated to the sidewalks? It's a protest, not shopping day after Thanksgiving.
Before I knew any better, I participated in a couple of the protests against the Iraq war and in the first one, the NYPD prevented the swelling crowds from reaching the meeting point, did not allow the demonstrators to march and congregate in front of the UN and used mounted police to disperse the crowd, which was mostly comprised of perfectly peaceful students, families with children, old pinko hippies, and the occasional Trotskyite.
Even their crowd control on innocuous parades like the Halloween or the Gay Pride parade is reminiscent of a police state.
These current protests are disheartening because they seem to have no impact. The media barely covers them, people like me and many others can't be bothered to attend, and nobody understands the message they are sending, since it tends to be diluted by cute slogans and obnoxious chants but no discernible focus, like "tax the rich".
In the end it's a lot of progressive young people plus the old pinko hippies and the occassional Trotskyite, taking the mantle for a battered middle class and the jobless who should be out in force, but perhaps are too busy making ends meet and looking for employment. If there was someone charismatic and righteous at the helm, like a Martin Luther King, who could galvanize people to mobilize, it would be a different story.
This video sadly sums up the reality of the situation.

Bring back the Draft

I read Obama's speech at Fort Hood yesterday. Lovely, as usual, but he is starting to get on my nerves. As I've said before, this terrible tragedy is an opportunity for us to discuss why we are waging two wars and for how long we expect to do so with a volunteer army. As many have pointed out, the only people who are sacrificing anything are American soldiers. No one else is asked to share the burden and no one else seems to care as long as they can continue shopping and owing money in peace.
The reason why our anti-war movement is pathetic and ineffectual is because we don't have compulsory military service. As long as our precious American youth is  unharmed, who cares? Who cares about those who risk their lives, who for the most part are not children of privilege? The Army in many cases is their way out of poverty or into education and opportunity. So don't give me the bullshit that we are all created equal. If that was the case, all Americans of fighting age would be required to join the military.
The burden on the Army is enormous. I wonder how many people are signing up. Maybe after this incident there will be a spike of emboldened rednecks, but I'm sure it is not enough to support our increasingly costly misadventures abroad.  Our spineless, cowardly Congress prefers to keep abusing American soldiers rather than bring back the draft, surely to be an incredibly unpopular measure. Maybe they are counting on the economic crisis and all those foreclosed and unemployed people to look for Army jobs.
Bring back the draft and I can assure you that there would be ipso facto riots and demonstrations a la Vietnam war, and a surge of popular opinion against our wars.
But as long as we can fall back on the underclass, look the other way and pretend that as long as it's not happening to us, it's not happening, these wars are going to last forever.

Fort Hood

I was saddened to hear of the events at Fort Hood, a place I visited a few years ago while filming a commercial in Spanish for the US Army, and which I have fond memories of, believe it or not.  But immediately after learning the name of the psychiatrist who sprayed bullets into a medical center in the base I knew it was going to get ugly, because the guy has an Arabic name. The New York Times has not made much of his Muslim connection yet, except for a link to a CNN video that shows him wearing Arab garb at a convenience store, but Yahoo News is already out with theories about his involvement in Islamic extremism and the word terrorism is being bandied about and apparently someone at Fox News has called for investigating all the Muslims in this country. This should come as no surprise. Within this country's great tolerance for diversity also lies barely repressed racism, which becomes paranoid in times of crisis. We don't have all the facts about the killer now, but what is more troubling is whether we will ever be able to construct a measured factual picture of this man and his motives without the media (CNN, Fox News) distorting them to create panic and ratings.
Still, this tragic incident provides an opportunity for Americans to open their eyes to the two foreign wars that are killing and maiming civilians and American soldiers, far from these shores without nary a peep from society at large and no sign of improvement; on the contrary, with deterioration all around.
It is a fitting metaphor of how insufficient, to say the least, is the Army's handling of the consequences of these wars that one of their own psychiatrists is the killer. That he is a Muslim American with deep conflicts about being deployed is only a reminder that we are a diverse society. Americans have many origins and we are mostly lucky that we have many allegiances to our diverse roots. But unfortunately for some people (you know who you are, Red States), this is a perfect pretext for xenophobia.
This serves as a reminder that we are carrying on two wars, pretending they are happening too far away to notice, yet in a very small world. The chickens come home to roost in our own backyard, and instead of using this as a pretext to terrorize American Arabs, this should be an opportunity to ponder the usefulness of our military involvement where we are not welcome and where we don't seem to be making any progress.
In other words, let's get the hell out of Dodge.

Let's get outta there! NOW!

Colonel Reese, an American adviser in Iraq, is saying in no uncertain terms, (blunt is how the Times puts it) that it is time to say Adios amigous! and leave Iraq.
Hey, not a moment too soon! What took you so long?
His memo makes for great reading, even though it has the tone of a superior being who has finally ran out of patience with the pesky, stubborn natives. That is, the tone of a colonialist from the 19th century.
In a nutshell: we can't change their ways and we are not welcome anymore, plus they're bleeding us to death.
He says, let's declare victory and call it a day. I have a problem with the victory part, because it don't look like no victory to me, but just call it what you please, and let's vamoose.
Why do Americans insist that other people are going to abandon their culture and their entrenched ways and embrace, digest, and ape a totally different culture in a matter of months? Is this the height of naiveté or arrogance, or both? We can't even change our own culture HERE.
The US invades and occupies a country under false pretenses. This country is ruled by a truly evil bastard whose only way to keep the ethnic chaos in check is through a reign of utter terror. This is a deeply abused and traumatized country, but Americans think that they will "liberate" it and all of a sudden the grateful Iraqis, who would not know democracy or freedom if it bit them in the ass, have not known it and will not know it for the next thousand years, are going to all start acting like Thomas Jefferson. Instead, they start a massive bloodbath against themselves and the occupying forces.
We cannot invade a country over false pretenses, because of sheer greed and then pretend we were there to save it. And who should be held accountable for this criminal mess? To the gallows!

To clean up the mess we are leaving behind would probably require at least 50 years and too much money to count, neither of which we can afford. As many commenters say, let's bring the troops back and use the gazillions we are wasting over there for better things at home; i.e, single payer healthcare.

I quote Mr. Byron Jones from Pennsylvania:

...we spend trillions of dollars for stupid "regime changes" aka Vietnam, Nicaragua, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc. without so much as flinching. Saving lives and providing affordable medical care for our own citizens, well, that is something entirely different. Can anyone explain the logic? In other words, you can use my tax dollars to kill someone I don't know, but God forbid that you use my tax dollars to help my neighbor obtain affordable health insurance!

Bring the troops home NOW.

Fear is your best friend

Great article in the Times about intuition and how it can save lives in battle.
One would have thought it obvious, but now that they are mapping the brain they can see how this works physically.
I'm reproducing parts of the comment posted by one Tom Colton, an ex-soldier. I don't know if it's true, but it is quite compelling:

Lots of infantry platoons have a guy who can sense an ambush. The keys to knowing if you should rely on him are: Success. Does he keep you alive on a regular basis? And adjustment. Is he squared away, or a neurotic? If the latter, then his senses may be more often than not, skewed...
And something else was noted frequently in Vietnam by those who conducted combat actuarial studies:
In a firefight, Jocks are the first ones usually killed, because they never learned about fear during sports.
Thugs and Gangstas get killed next, because they have an inflated idea of their prowess.
Then the Bullies buy the farm while trying for the first time to move beyond their real cowardice.
And finally: In Combat-The four eyed pencil necked geeks rule, because they work as a team, follow orders, feel responsible for and protective of the other guys in their rifle squad and and most importantly-they paid attention during training. They advance thru their fear, surmount real terror and commit great acts of selfless heroism. And they almost never get a medal.
This country is full of dopey lookin' old guys who once confronted stark terror in extreme danger and carried out great acts of valor and sacrifice against armed enemies engaged with them in a combat zone. Most of these guys are never honored at the time and their families will most likely never know. Instead, we worship phoney war heroes like Bob Kerrey, John Kerry and John McCain who milk their hero status for power, wealth, trophy wives and adulation.
I was never a hero, but I saw regular guys do things that no Bruce Lee, Bruce Willis, Chuck Norris, Steven Segal, nor Arnold Schwarzenegger, or any other phoney Hollywood hero would ever do. Hunches about danger and escaping from it is baloney. Hunches about danger and fighting thru it to complete your mission are what really counts..."I am the Infantry... Queen of Battle...Follow ME!

As I think Mr. Colton is saying, we are the only country on Earth with an inflated and deeply distorted sense of heroism, which among other things is responsible for bullshit like saying "Mission Accomplished" at the beginning of an endless, tragic war. If we were more respectful of fear, perhaps we would not be in this predicament right now. Too much fear can of course be cowardly and paralyzing, but lack of fear is arrogance and hubris.

Department of Veteran Affairs

Why doesn't the US Army take care of its veterans?
This breaks my heart.

Obama is a Wimp: Cheney to the Gallows

He is not a wimp, as Cheney claims, because he is "soft" on terror. He is a wimp and a hypocrite and a disillusionment to those who voted him into office because he is soft on Cheney (and on real health care reform and on banks and their perks, but let's leave it at that).
Prosecute those responsible for breaking the law during the Bush Administration to the fullest extent of the law. Send these motherfuckers where they belong: behind bars.

McNamara: A timely death

The best this man could do is die right now. Actually, it would have come in handy if he died right when Dick Cheney and his team first foisted the weapons of mass destruction lie upon the American people. His death is hopefully serving to revisit with more urgency why are we still in Iraq and why we are not prosecuting that band of bastards for war crimes, incompetence, torture, lying, etc.
I am very disappointed that Obama refuses to go after them. I don't think the small potatoes who actually did the torturing should be punished first. It's the big fish who need to stand trial.
McNamara's belated contrition sheds interesting light on his successors. We all know we are never going to get that kind of soulsearching from Cheney or Rummy or any of those cowards. Dick Cheney is not going to expiate his guilt by trying to alleviate poverty like McNamara did for years at The World Bank. McNamara was perhaps an evil man, but he had more moral stature than the repugnant Cheney.
The war in Vietnam was ultimately rejected by American public opinion because in those days you could turn your TV on at 6 pm and see daily horrific footage of the savagery and the absurdity of it all right at home. The media was not in total cahoots with the government and there was a sense of deep outrage. That is totally missing today. Every single American citizen should be demanding to end this stupid Iraq war and to bring the troops back home NOW. The parties responsible for lying to the American people and starting a war under false pretext should be tried in a court of law.

Cheney: You are Pissing me OFF

Not content with leaving us to worry in peace about a worldwide pandemic of Swine Flu, the malignant, malevolent, satanic, chill-inducing ex VP (or rather ex P) is intent on discrediting the Obama Administration's efforts to restore dignity to the foreign and domestic policy of the US, and potentially save us from harm's way in an intelligent and diplomatic manner. He continues carping that Obama is making us less safe, although there is absolutely no evidence of that. He continues defending torture even though it has been amply documented that the only thing torture is good for is to manufacture more crazy lunatics hell bent on torturing us back.
If I were Obama, just to shut this fucker's trap, I would allow for impeachment proceedings against him and his underlings. Let him rant all he wants from jail.
Meanwhile, you can meet the obnoxious man who sucks Cheney's dick in this video from The Daily Show. Listening to him, now that is torture.
Here is a certifiable moron attempting to defend waterboarding. He is so unbelievably stupid that he mentions the presence of doctors, to make sure the torturee is still alive, as if this was a sign of benevolence. The presence of doctors in torture chambers is one of the most base examples of human depravity. Doctors are brought in to ensure that the prisoners withstand as much pain and suffering as possible without dying. The moment you torture, there are no humanitarian concerns.
This dickhead should be waterboarded with a pail of shit, in the presence of a doctor. Let's see then if he feels the same way.
Jon Stewart was excellent. But he should have pointed to the fact that coercive interrogation has been found to yield little of value and is a spurious argument in favor of torture. He was up against a frantic bully, who knows his argument doesn't withstand scrutiny, but who kept pointing his finger and hollering through the conversation. What an asshole. And who does he thinks he's fooling by calling his outfit something for the defense of democracy. You can't talk about the defense of democracy and advocate for torture. They are mutually exclusive.
Maybe the torturers who actually physically inflicted pain should not be prosecuted. Although I don't see why not. But their superiors? Those who gave the orders? Most certainly and all the way to the top.

In other words: impeach the bastards

It's nice to be able to rely on Frank Rich when one is just too tired for outrage. He has the goods, and commits them to paper:

THREE days after the world learned that $50 billion may have disappeared in Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme, The Times led its front page of Dec. 14 with the revelation of another $50 billion rip-off. This time the vanished loot belonged to American taxpayers. That was our collective contribution to the $117 billion spent (as of mid-2008) on Iraq reconstruction — a sinkhole of corruption, cronyism, incompetence and outright theft that epitomized Bush management at home and abroad.
The source for this news was a near-final draft of an as-yet-unpublished 513-page federal history of this nation-building fiasco. The document was assembled by the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction — led by a Bush appointee, no less. It pinpoints, among other transgressions, a governmental Ponzi scheme concocted to bamboozle Americans into believing they were accruing steady dividends on their investment in a “new” Iraq.

Now it's our duty as citizens, and I wish I could invite Mr. Obama to join us, but I doubt he'll follow through, to demand accountability and put those motherfuckers in front of the firing squad they so richly deserve.
It's funny how people are outraged about Bernie Madoff but they brush off the 8 years of unmitigated corruption and slime of the Bush administration. If they channeled a small percentage of that outrage towards Bush and Cheney, those two would be in jail.

All Points West: Fascist state

I love order and civilization. That is one of the reasons why I live here. I love the fact that you can go to a rock festival and everybody is so orderly and people are on their best behavior. I love the fact that you can put concert goers on a ferry and the boat is not going to capsize due to disorderly conduct or disorganization. The event is extremely well organized, the bands appear on time, all is lovely. Because I come from Mexico, where people have yet to understand the concept of forming an orderly line, I am always astounded at the civility of young Americans. These are the best behaved people in the world (at least in their own country).
So why are the organizers compelled to establish a host of rules that are insulting and ridiculous? To wit: Everybody gets carded for booze. 65 year-old weathered hippies have to show their id in order to get a freaking beer. Everybody gets a bracelet, like inmates in a mental institution, like newborn fucking babies in the incubator, just so that God forbid nobody who isn't 21 fucking years old (don't get me started on the minimum age) can get a sip of beer. You'd think they are selling Absinthe with a heroin chaser, for crying out loud.
Still, my fellow Americans, meek and mild and I frankly wonder if not lobotomized, politely complain, almost in a whisper, "this is ridiculous", "this is so stupid". Nobody storms the barricades. But it gets worse. Soon after buying the beer, we realize we are penned in and are not allowed to leave the premises with our beers in order to enjoy them in the grounds at large, as we listen to the music and frolic in the grass. Hell no, we need to finish the beer inside the pen and then go back to our places. This, I have to say, IS TOO MUCH.
This is why we have a president who behaves like a toddler. Because we are treated like babies.
Adults are not allowed in this fucking paranoid puritanical fascistoid country to decide how many beers they want to have and where they want to have them. Because if you must know, the bracelet has a limited number of tabs (a generous 5) so that once the tabs are gone you cannot purchase more beer. Oh, and last call is at 8:30 pm. I have never seen anything like this. Not in the first world (Europe) and not in the third world (everywhere else). A fucking baby in a crib has more freedom. Where is the concept of personal responsibility? Next thing they're going to make you have your beers at home, before you even show up. FASCISTS.
Meanwhile, everybody's smoking pot like crazy, which is allright by me. Stick it to the Man, etc, etc.
Apparently, the Nuremberg Beer Laws are applied with a zealousness not accorded to the confiscation of doobies, which is luckily non-existent. Sheer absurdity, if you ask me.
I regret to inform you that the contact high is, sadly, a myth. But I respectfully submit that the alcohol policy of All Points West is insane, stupid, inhuman and unreasonable. Card 80 year-old people with walkers, see if I care, but let people have their fun. Nobody goes there expressly to create mayhem. People are there to chill out and listen to music. We are paying not an inconsiderable sum to enjoy a music festival, not to be treated like retards who can't take care of themselves. Not to be treated like freaking adults.
I will continue because I am drowning in my own bile:
As I stood in the pen with all those meek and mild, young and old Americans, I really thought this country has gone to pot. What has happened here is a general lobotomy, with corporations and the government administering the shocks and the numbing pills in the guise of Nurse Ratched. Conformity has won. Blandness, marketing, complacency, overconsumption, too much TV, too much contentment. I know l sound like an old hippie, but man, it is beyond pathetic. It seems to be beyond repair.
We have a war going on and young Americans killed and maimed forever, and nobody utters a squeak. We have a bunch of criminals running the country, and nobody demands their execution, let alone their ouster.
The pen where I was forced to drink my beer, which has got to be the least satisfying beer I have ever had, was right behind the Statue of Liberty, who, fittingly, was turning her back on us.

By the way, Radiohead was great.

Phillip Gourevitch is my boyfriend

He doesn't know it, of course, but this shouldn't be a problem. I'm in love with his brain.
Yesterday, we heard him speak, together with Errol Morris, about Standard Operation Procedure, the book by my boyfriend and the documentary film of the same name by Morris. I have seen the movie and written about how it should be required viewing for every American citizen. I have not read the book, but I'm sure that coming from my boyfriend, it is amazing. The question is, will someone buy it? Our moral degradation is so huge that it is hard to muster the courage to read or watch these things. I saw Morris' film because I am a huge fan of his movies. I really want to read my boyfriend's book, but it is just too painful (I have yet to read his amazing book on Rwanda. After yesterday, it is next on my list).
Phillip and Morris were great, and they spoke about the differences in the two works. How Morris concentrated on the problem of the photographs and Gourevitch was taken by the language of the interviews with the Americans at Abu Ghraib. They also both seem to have enormous empathy for the soldiers who took the pictures and were prosecuted. This sparked an interesting debate about whether the taking of the photographs itself was a crime.
Unfortunately the talk was moderated by a professional idiot (as happens regularly in such events) who apparently was a British diplomat who went to Iraq. For a diplomat, he was horrifyingly vulgar, stupid and aggressive. His was the cheapest possible way to provoke argument, which is by spouting politically correct idiocies, like asking whether continuing to show the photographs, which Morris does in abundance in the film, is not continuing to dehumanize the victims. Imagine someone having this complaint about pictures of the Holocaust or other horrific human rights violations. The pictures serve a purpose, not to dehumanize, but to open our eyes and to foment the outrage that we should all be feeling. As my boyfriend said, showing the pictures is a public service. He said that taking them was a public service, even if in many cases it was not intended to be. I disagree with both Phillip and Errol in that they seem too lenient with the soldiers, but they have taken it upon themselves to enlighten us about conditions in which American soldiers are abused by their superiors and degraded to such an extent, that their human decency deserts them.
I also have to say this: the New York Public Library organizes very interesting talks. However, I don't go to most of them because they involve having to listen to that pretentious, insufferable windbag who runs the talks, Paul Holdengraber, the James Lipton of the literary set. Except he is worse. He stole 10 precious minutes of the talk by giving his unnecessary sophomoric mini lecture about what we were about to hear. For the life of me, I don't understand why he is where he is. Perhaps behind the scenes he gets the job done, but as a public speaker he is embarrassing. I tuned him out, but I did hear the word Kafka bandied about -- cheap literary namedropping, way below the level of the guests, and the audience present last night.

"One of those Hitler things"

No lighthearted posts for Easter, I'm afraid, my dears.
In preparation for the release of Standard Operating Procedure, the new Errol Morris film about Abu Ghraib, The New Yorker has an article by Morris and Philip Gourevitch, about Sabrina Herman, the soldier who took the infamous pictures at that horrid jail. This article should be required reading for every citizen of the US. It provokes, besides untenable outrage, several very interesting topics for pondering.
It's hard for me to write about this without flying into a shapeless rage, but I will attempt:
The writers concentrate on the power of the photographic images to make a larger point about this dark episode in the history of the US. When one of the national guardsmen attempts to describe the state of that jail when they first got there, he calls it "one of those Hitler things".
This is a kid who, like many others, joined the National Guard primarily to get money for college, so one supposes he had not read Hannah Arendt on the banality of evil. If it wasn't for the photographic documentation the Nazis, and later on, the liberating armies, took of the German extermination camps, this poor dude would not have a frame of reference for the hellish conditions he encountered in Abu Ghraib. This is why getting people acquainted with the infernal images of the Holocaust (or any other gross human misconduct) is essential. It opens our eyes and minds to the historical precedent of human evil. One would hope it gives us a moral compass; the images are so brutal and inhumane, one reacts with shame and disgust. One knows this is wrong. One refuses to debase oneself to that level.
But if you are soldier at war, trained to obey orders, if you are given orders that come from high levels and that nobody seems to question, what do you do? Reading the testimony of Sabrina Herman and others involved, I extrapolate that this is how many Nazi rank and file must have coped and lived with themselves after executing their daily duties of humiliation, torture and murder of other human beings. The Nazis invented a sophisticated apparatus of dehumanization to help themselves achieve their goals more efficiently, and the criminals of the US military intelligence, in their own modest way, did exactly the same thing. They deliberately sent to Abu Ghraib National Guard soldiers who were untrained in the handling of prisoners, who were not aware of the laws of the Geneva Convention, whose job description never mentioned enforcing torture in jail. They sent these poor, ignorant kids, who joined the National Guard to get ahead in life, perhaps with a sense of patriotic duty enhanced by 9/11, to do the dirty job for them. These kids paid with court martials and suspensions and demotions and the loss of their jobs and military careers, while the people who gave them the orders are still running around with not a care in the world, including Donald Rumsfeld, Satan himself (Dick Cheney) and even the president of this country, who has condoned and defended all of this.
As much as I abhor torture, I can't help wishing it, excruciatingly and until the end of eternity, on these gargoyles.
We all have been appalled by the photographs of the abuse at Abu Ghraib. The pictures Sabrina Herman took of herself smiling in front of Iraqi corpses are equally, if not more shocking. They provide an interesting parallel to the recently unearthed pictures of Nazis having a good time in Auschwitz. How can you sing songs and smile under the circumstances? What process has taken hold of your psychology that allows you to function emotionally in such conditions?
If you see the pictures without reading the article, you feel a sense of revulsion for this woman. She seems to be mocking the dead. She embodies the arrogant ignorance of America. But there is a story behind the photos. The article explains how a sane, young American woman can end up abetting torture and trying to live a "normal" life in the process. By making the conditions in Abu Ghraib commonplace, her superiors turned those kids into sadists. Into little Nazis.
So this is the other outrage of Abu Ghraib: American soldiers were brazenly abused by their own superiors (going all the way up to their Commander in Chief). They were demoralized with terrible living conditions, asked to perform orders that were not in their field, they were debased, mistreated and lied to. And then, when the scandal broke, they were publicly humiliated and disposed of.
If I were these people I would sue the Army, the government, The Axis of Weasel, God, someone.
I doubt that they have any recourse.
It is not easy to forgive someone like Sabrina Herman and her buddies. One is loath to exculpate people who perform cruelties in the line of duty, because then anything goes. "Oh, poor Nazis, they were just trying to cope". No. However, one must remember that before he even touched one Jew, Hitler abused, debased and sacrificed his own people by making them do his bidding (that many of them were happy to comply should be a warning for our own complicity and complacency).
In trying to destroy the Jews, he also destroyed the Germans. So when America engages in these criminal behaviors, under the pretext of national security, we need to remember that American soldiers and citizens, all of us, are victims too.
One would like to think that in Sabrina's shoes, one would act the Hollywood hero and refuse to follow orders, the Army be damned. But it is not so easy. Instead, these soldiers detached themselves from the prisoners, and some took their wartime frustrations out on them. Just as the prisoners were dehumanized, so were their captors, as they became numb to the humiliation and the abuse they had to mete out.
Sabrina, knowing there was something very wrong with this picture, took pictures.

New Yorker Festival

First, the rant: This festival always seems to smack of elitism. First, it is nearly impossible to get tickets. If they open the box office at Ticketmaster (do not get me started) say, at noon, by 12:01 everything is sold out. It's very suspicious. Then they have all these reserved seats that never fill up. And the fact that they use Ticketmaster, which is not only usurious but has an actually hostile interface, makes me want to tell The New Yorker to go screw itself and its stupid festival. I have a major complain about the fact that they scheduled the Simon Schama - Anthony Lane talk about history in the movies in a very small venue. They should know better. Having said this, I succumbed and got tickets for a number of events.
It did not disappoint.
1. The panel about Iraq at Town Hall. This is the first public discussion about the state of the war I've attended that was of a dignified level and that was not political but pragmatic. The panelists were super impressive. The super smart George Packer was the moderator and he did a splendid job (given that most moderators at these kinds of events are usually quite underwhelming). He asked great questions from Ali Abdul-Amir Allawi, Jon Lee Anderson, David Kilcullen, and Phebe Marr. Jon Lee Anderson provided some fascinating eye-witness reportage about what he saw there recently, Professor Marr wrote The Modern History of Iraq so she knows everything about it, Mr. Allawi is an Iraqi opposition politician who was smart and articulate and evidently exhausted from the whole thing, and David Kilcullen is one of the architects of the new strategy of counterinsurgency and, now that he works for the Pentagon, struck me as a bit of a PR man.
But the best part was that I was sitting right behind none other than NYC Police Commissioner Ray Kelly, who took copious notes. I thought either this is the safest seat in the house, or it is boobytrapped. I don't know what our Commish has in mind but I liked that he came to listen and learn, like Mini Enchiladito likes to say. I think I have said before in this blog that the Police Commisioner of N.Y. (not specifically Ray Kelly with his face fit for a Daumier portrait, but the job), reminds me of Batman. I feel like I live in Gotham and I'm Catwoman. Meow! I have to say it was fun to sit right behind one of the most powerful men in this town. I was feeling the power vibes right there.
Some people go to volcanoes to get vibes, I strongly reccommend you sit behind Ray Kelly.
2. Martin Amis and Ian Buruma on Monsters. I think I'm a bigger fan of Amis the public speaker than of Amis the writer. He is not only a riot, but incredibly smart and provocative and doesn't give a rat's ass, in fact, he probably relishes hearing the audience gasp when he is at his most politically incorrect, disparaging Islamism, and to some extent Islam with utmost honesty. It is beyond delightful to hear him speak. Only he can say things like (imagine the plummiest British accent here): "There is a charming story about Stalin's mother. She lived in a 140 room palace in Georgia, but she occuppied only one room because, and here he delivers the punch line in a devastatingly mocking tone, she didn't want to be in the way. The end of the story is Stalin visits her at the palace and asks her why did she beat him up so much when he was a child, to which she replies, but look how well you turned out!
I LOVE Martin Amis, I love his mind and his brilliant wit and his anger, and his impatience with political correctness and I want him to speak to us every night. One hour of Martin Amis speaking every night I'm sure will increase your IQ, let alone your vocabulary. Because he is funny, but he is also deeply thoughtful about our present evils and he is capable of distilling some of its reasons in incredibly clear terms. Both he and the much less intimidating Ian Buruma agreed that looking for abusive childhoods in the case of human monsters like Hitler and Stalin, is useless. Since I am fascinated with evil, I was in heaven hearing them expound psychologically, but more interestingly, philosophically, about the nature of evil leaders and those who follow them. These two writers are as clear eyed about human nature as you will find, and despite a bumbling moderator they steered themselves into hugely rewarding territory.

The Answer to Cheney's Dilemma

It's very simple. The documentary Why We Fight elucidated this for me.
The reason why Cheney was against invasion in 1994, when he was Secretary of Defense, and his change of heart today can be summarized in one word: Halliburton. He became president of Halliburton and then he became VP of the US. As someone points out in the film, this is our system of legal corruption. The country is run by a defense contractor. This is the answer.
Greed is just a simplistic explanation. It is the unstopabble machinery of American business that has created such havoc.
The film also explains the otherwise mindboggling refusal of Congress to oppose the war: it's called the military-industrial complex, to which every member of Congress is beholden because this industry provides jobs to their state.
So now you know. Do not expect anything yo change anytime soon. As long as we collude with these people, as long as no one demands accountability, nothing will change. It's just business.