Month: March 2008

Even if you have no problem with Barack Obama and his associations with his south Chicago church, you should educate yourself about the history of black Christianity, including (especially in Chicago) it’s efforts to compete with the Nation of Islam, Marxism, the Black Nationalism/Separatist Movement, and just general apathy. Kalefa Sanneh’s big New Yorker piece on Trinity Church is a good place to start. I’d recommend sending it to some of your friends, family, and co-workers who you’ve noticed reacting negatively to the Pastor Wright news coverage. Consider it part of what Barack Obama called us all to do in his speech on race in Philadelphia.

Some people will never be reachable. There are a lot of people like Lou Dobbs who don’t want ‘cotton-pickin’ black people (in this case, Condi Rice) reminding them of the sins of the past. But it’s not our job to do the impossible. What we want to do is educate ourselves and those that are reachable. There’s no question that Barack Obama will have to overcome a politically motivated smear campaign that attempts to drive a wedge between the majority non-urban white community in this country and the black and urban people that are constituents of Trinity Church.

It might be a minor consideration in the greater scheme of things, but the people of Trinity Church are hurting badly from the way they are being portrayed. To give an example, here’s is a clip from Rev. Wright’s replacement, Otis Moss’s Easter sermon.

Moss is also given to rambling displays of erudition, sometimes with an ironic flourish; he’ll choose big words to make the congregation chuckle at his sesquipedalian flair. He started with a long riff on his love of literature—he emphasized all four syllables of the word—and, after listing favorite authors ranging from Wole Soyinka to Colson Whitehead, found his way to William Faulkner’s short story about a lynch mob, “Dry September,” which he called “a mythic but truthful novel of American life in the South.” Then, paying tribute to McKissick’s Good Friday sermon, he talked about how the ministry of Jesus ended not with a celebration but with a crucifixion—a lynching, in other words. And he paid particular attention to the plight of the apostles, who knew that this grisly spectacle was only the beginning. “No one should start their ministry with a lynching,” he said, drawing cheers of agreement and encouragement and maybe also sympathy.

Rev. Moss is beginning his ministry at Trinity with a metaphorical lynching. Even many liberals are engaging in oneupmanship to distance themselves from the church. It’s one of the most shameful things I’ve seen (on our side) in politics, but I know a lot of it is born out of fear and misunderstanding.

The more people know about Trinity Church the less they will fear or despise it and the more they will respect it. I believe that, because I believe most people in this day and age are fair-minded. There’s no helping some people that have bigotry indelibly imprinted in their character, but we can’t worry about them. The people of Trinity are good America-loving patriotic warm-hearted folks. When people attack them, they attack church-going black people all over the country, whether they intend to do it or not.

If Obama is going to be the president he will need people to defend his congregation against overly simplified distortions. It starts by educating ourselves so we can help educate others.

Below the fold – The text of my
Letter to the Editor of the Irish Times (hidden behind a subscription firewall) arguing the larger European case for the Lisbon Treaty.  (Cross-posted from the European Tribune in the hope that some of you guys have time to take an interest in what is going on on the other side of the pond!)

The text below includes the sentences edited out by the Irish Times in parentheses[]

Madam – Letters both for and against the Lisbon Treaty have become a regular feature of your columns, but almost all are couched in purely nationalistic terms, eg, will the Treaty effect Ireland’s economic prospects, political influence, independence, neutrality, etc. or indeed will voting for it give aid and comfort to a discredited Irish Government.  But surely the much bigger question is whether the Treaty will help the EU become a much more effective and influential decision making body in the world as a whole?

We live in a world dominated by the USA and its self perceived political and economic interests and its preferred means of pursuing them [– often resorting to war, engaging in torture, ignoring Treaty obligations, failing to ratify Treaties signed by almost every other nation, and refusing to recognise the jurisdiction of the International Courts of Justice]. The fall from grace of the US from its high water mark role as the moral leader of the world post World War 2, the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the rise of a China with a very dubious record on a whole range of human rights issues have all contributed to a vacuum of leadership, moral and otherwise, in the world today.  

Ireland has a small yet proud record of contributing to third world development, UN Peace Keeping, and the resolution and transformation of conflicts on our own island.  

Surely we should be looking to the EU, post enlargement, to become a much more effective and influential leadership force for good in the increasing dangerous and uncertain world in which we live?  There isn’t much new in the Lisbon Treaty that hasn’t already been included in previous EU Treaties, but it does include a legally binding European Charter of Fundamental Rights, a more transparent leadership structure, and a more rationalised decision making process.

[The EU has an extraordinary record of peace making in western Europe, but grossly underperforms on the world stage when compared to its relative economic importance. ] It is in all our interests, as citizens of both Europe and the world, to ensure that the EU becomes much more influential in European and world affairs.  The Lisbon Treaty is a small step towards that.  [It is time we stopped looking out for just nationalistic interests, narrowly defined, and continued our proud tradition of making a greater contribution to Europe and the world as a whole.]

Yours etc.

—–

I wrote the letter because I felt that supporters of the Treaty were increasingly being put on the defensive by simplistic (and often just plain wrong) arguments to the effect that Ireland’s national interest will be disadvantaged  by the Treaty and taking no cognizance of the fact that it is also in Ireland’s interest that the EU itself should become more influential in world affairs.  This isn’t just a zero-sum game where Ireland’s relative position is diminished within a much larger EU.  The EU itself is becoming a much bigger player in the world.

There is also a groundswell of opinion that the referendum affords the electorate a timely opportunity to deliver a vote of no confidence in the Government of Taoiseach Bertie Ahern who is increasing embattled because of his personal finances and the manner in which he has accepted considerable “loans” and “political contributions” from private individuals and companies which he has put to personal use.

Bertie Ahern has said he will step down before the next election in any case (not due until 2012) and there has been speculation that he would be interested in a prominent EU role (probably the new Presidency of the Council) which is due to be filled next year should Ireland ratify the Treaty.  Some would argue that the prospect of him leaving Office in Ireland as soon as next year would therefore be a good reason for ratifying the Treaty!  

However it is important that the Referendum debate itself should focus on the larger issues facing the EU and the world – hence my LTE.  There hasn’t been any recent opinion poll indicating how the campaign is going, and everything hinges on the turnout.   A low poll could well result in the Treaty Referendum being defeated (as happened with the Nice Treaty – when a second referendum had to be held on a marginally revised Treaty).  Given that the Lisbon Treaty has already been defeated by popular vote in France and the Netherlands (when it was framed as a new Constitution for the EU) a third popular rejection by a national electorate could be fatal for the prospects of institutional reform within the EU for quite some time to come.

It was mighty Christian of Shiite Muslim cleric Moqtada Al-Sadr to tell his Mahdi Army to stop fighting in Basra.  I’m afraid I would have taken a far more Old Testament approach to the recent violence in Iraq.

It’s not, after all, like al-Sadr and his followers were the ones who started this latest round of bang-bang.  It was, in fact, al-Sadr’s self imposed moratorium on violence that gave President Bush’s “main man” General David Petraeus grist for his claim that the surge was “working.”  You’d think maybe Petraeus would have wanted to leave the hornet’s nest alone; but no.  He decided to target “criminal” and “rogue” elements within the Sadr organization.  

U.S. forces and the Badr Organization, a rival Shiite group, conducted raids for months on Sadr’s people.  The Mahdis warned repeatedly that they would fight back, and they finally did.  Shocking.
Predictably, Petraeus reacted to the March 31 rocket attacks on the Green Zone in Baghdad by blaming them on the Iranians.  Blaming Iran for Shiite violence is his favorite method of trying to cover up the fact that he’s the one who armed the Shiite militias back in 2004 and 05 when, while in charge of training Iraqi security forces largely consisting of Shiites, he handed out Kalishnikovs like they were Hershey bars.  (As overall commander in Iraq, he compensated for his earlier gaffe by establishing his Awakening program in which he armed Sunni militias.)

Somebody in what we laughingly refer to as the “chain of command” in Iraq decided that President Nuri al-Maliki would lead an offensive against the Sadrists in Basra.  On March 27, Mr. Bush called Maliki’s operation “bold” and said that it showed the growing capability of Iraq’s security forces.  Heh.

Al-Maliki gave the militants in Basra an ultimatum; if they didn’t surrender in 72 hours, they would face “severe penalties.”  At the end of 72 hours, he extended the deadline.  I guess that showed those pesky Sadrists.  (I’m going to count to three.  Then I’m going to count to ten.  Then I’m going to count to a hundred.  If I have to count to a million, I’m going to become very cross with you.)

Some of Malaki’s forces refused to fight or changed sides.  One officer in an Iraqi commando unit said, “We did not expect the fight to be this intense.”  Four of his men were killed and 15 were wounded. “Some of the men told me that they did not want to go back to the fight until they have better support and more protection.”

It must be nice to be in an Iraqi commando unit and have the choice not to go back to fighting until you get the support and protection you want.  It’s too bad the troops providing the support and protection didn’t have that option, because those troops were U.S. troops who flew in air strikes on Basra positions and fought militiamen in the streets in Baghdad.  I bet those guys are completely thrilled that their boss Petraeus let Maliki go off half cocked on an operation that they had to step in and bail him out of.  

I also bet those U.S. troops were relieved to hear from neoconservative luminary and father of the surge strategy Fred Kagan that “The Civil War in Iraq is over.”  Yep, Freddie the Freebaser really said that, on Monday March 24 at an American Enterprise Institute event titled “Iraq: The Way Ahead.”  Less than 24 hours later, Maliki went ahead and launched the growing capability of his troops into the bold operation that, apparently, only al-Sadr can put an end to.  

Ali al-Dabbagh, an al-Maliki spokesman, said on the television channel Iraqia that the government welcomed al-Sadr’s call for a ceasefire.  I guess so.  It’s always a good thing when the guy who’s kicking your teeth in stops it.  Whether or not the ceasefire continues depends on whether the government is grateful enough to al-Sadr to accept his terms, which include amnesty for Mahdi Army fighters.  

One wonders how long al-Maliki will consider al-Sadr’s amnesty request, especially considering that al-Maliki first proposed amnesty for militia members in September of 2006.

Isn’t it simply lovely that the more corners we turn in Iraq, the more we paint ourselves into the same corners?  

Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) writes at Pen and Sword.

Jeff’s novel Bathtub Admirals (Kunati Books) is on sale now.

“Populated by outrageous characters and fueled with pompous outrage, Huber’s irreverent broadside will pummel the funny bone of anyone who’s served.” — Publishers Weekly

“A remarkably accomplished book, striking just the right balance between ridicule and insight.” — Booklist

View the trailer here.

From the abstract of Darby Southgate’s Gangsta Rap: Cultural Capital, Community Cohesion and Political Resistance – Meaning Making in Music Production.

There exists a dialectic response due to the exploitation of African American music by non-whites throughout U.S. history. The response of the Black musical community has been to produce new codes – exclusive to the community – which are soon routinized by the dominant group. I use participant observations over five years at a professional recording studio in Los Angeles, California, coupled with interviews of workers and owners (artists and producers) of the Hip-Hop genre Gangsta Rap to show that the response to the expropriation of black music by non-blacks results in the conscious production of codes to signal political resistance, and that these codes also function as community cohesion. I further show that receivers of these codes who are not in-group members react to the associations of the codes, and not their organic meanings; and this response is how cultural boundaries are made.

The full paper is not available online, which is too bad because it is probably quite interesting. The language in the abstract may seem like academic gobblygook, but you can see the main point. Gangsta rap includes in-group code language (cultural resistance) that is misinterpreted and then misappropriated (exploited) by out-group consumers. Gangsta rap is not alone. This has been a recurring feature with the black music scene throughout our history.

When considering the genre of Gangsta Rap, the exploitation phase occurred almost immediately after the first phase of authentic resistance. I am not going to write a history of rap here…instead I’ll show an example of real early gangsta rap. This is from Oakland rapper Paris’s The Devil Made Me Do It, and it is called Break the Grip of Shame.

Powerful images, right? It wasn’t designed to make white folk feel comfortable. It isn’t ‘mainstream’ and was never intended to be mainstream. ‘Shock’ was an elemental part of the art-form. This music was being made in 1989-1991, in the era directly prior to the Rodney King beatings and then the OJ Trial. No one was talking about police brutality and the planting of evidence by police officers. There was a war on in the cities and Gangsta Rap arose in response.

A group named N.W.A. (Niggers With Attitudes) created the early anthem with a rap named Fuck the Police. Their leader, Ice Cube spelled out what he saw going on in the cities.

Fuck the police
Comin’ straight from the underground
Young nigga got it bad cause I’m brown
And not the other color so police think
They have the authority to kill a minority
Fuck that shit, cause I ain’t the one
For a punk mother fucker with a badge and a gun
To be beatin’ on, and throw in jail
We could go toe to toe in the middle of a cell
Fuckin with me cause I’m a teenager
With a little bit of gold and a pager
Searching my car, looking for the product
Thinking every nigga is selling narcotics

This introduction is instructive. Ice Cube isn’t celebrating gangsta life, he’s protesting police brutality and harassment. The police think they have the right to search his car just because he’s black, or because he has a some gold and a pager. They even think they have the right to beat, jail, and kill him without evidence. As we later found out, the LAPD was guilty of all of those things during this time period.

Why did Ice Cube create this song? The motive is multi-faceted. It’s an effort to educate white people about what is going on in the city, to rally black resistance, to show some (mostly false) bravado, and to make some money.

That last point (money) was what ruined the genre of Gangsta Rap almost immediately. White record executives and Black Entertainment Television president Robert Johnson quickly realized that there was money to made by selling the ‘gangsta/pimp’ look and message. Within a year or two, Ice Cube went solo and came out with less politically meaningful material.

I am friends with Larry Johnson, but I don’t think he’s qualified to do exigesis of Ice Cube’s lyrics, let alone tar Barack Obama with their meaning. If his point is that it is hard to get elected in America if you are associate yourself with Gangsta Rap, then he’s correct. That’s a political insight, but it’s also a cheap shot. Larry should attend services at Trinity Church. I think he’ll discover it’s a wonderful place that isn’t anti-American at all. I’ll bet he’ll also discover that they know a lot more about police brutality and harassment than he does. And they reserve the right to speak out about it. Maybe they’ll even try to ‘shock’ him into doing something about it.

If by now you’re still not convinced of the magnitude of the financial crisis before us, consider this:  In Europe, the Helicopter Ben Bernanke equivalents of the Bank of England and the European Union are expected to now come to the rescue of the US Fed.

With the credit crisis entering its ninth month, Bank of England Governor Mervyn King and European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet are on the verge of new steps to spur lending and increase liquidity, say economists at Lloyds TSB Group Plc and Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc. Interest-rate cuts may be next if the crisis persists.

“We’re inching closer to the great global monetary easing,” says Joachim Fels, co-chief economist at Morgan Stanley in London.

It’s a brutally nasty reminder that the problem facing our economy is by no means limited to just our economy.  The banks and investment houses that played it fast and loose with derivatives are global companies, not just US ones.  European and Asian companies too have exposure to trillions in toxic debt.  It’s clear that the US can no longer fix this problem alone.

Lloyds predicts King’s next step will be to accept more types of collateral for loans. Trichet will pump more money into banks, RBS forecasts. Such measures would take Europe’s two biggest central banks further down the path laid out by Bernanke this month.

The Fed chairman needs all the help he can get. In addition to lowering interest rates at the fastest pace in two decades, Bernanke has committed as much as 60 percent of the $700 billion in Treasury securities on his balance sheet to expand lending. The Fed has also offered a $29 billion loan against illiquid securities to assist the buyout of failing securities firm Bear Stearns Cos.

That of course would be unprecedented.  European central bankers are scared out of their mind.  They see themselves having to pull the same sort of lending legerdemain that we’ve had to do just to stay afloat, and furthermore they know the US Fed is now running dangerously low on cash on its balanace sheet.

“There is a barrier in terms of the size of the Fed’s balance sheet as to how much it can do” short of printing more dollars, says Neil Mackinnon, chief economist at London-based hedge-fund ECU Group Plc, which manages about $1.5 billion. “If the European central banks were to adopt more Fed-style measures, it would go a long way to helping the Fed tackle the crisis. This is not only a problem for the U.S. to resolve.”

The ECB and Bank of England have so far failed to restore order to money markets. The cost of borrowing in euros and pounds last week rose to highs for the year. The three-month London interbank offered rate for euros climbed 5 basis points to 4.73 percent, the highest level since Dec. 27. It fell today for the first time since March 3, according to the European Banking Federation.

Deutsche Bank AG, Germany’s biggest bank, said last week that “very challenging” market conditions will make it harder to meet its profit goal. The Bank of England was forced on March 19 to deny speculation that HBOS Plc, the U.K.’s largest mortgage lender, faced a cash shortage as interest rates surged.

But as I’ve said time and time again throwing more money at the problem will not solve it.  Confidence and trust cannot be bought with mere billions when these same banks know they are counterparty creditors…and debtors…to hundreds of trillions in leveraged derivative time bombs.  If even one of these major global banks goes down with these trillions on their books and unable to pay it, it’s over.  Everybody in the game owes everybody else, and that debt has been leveraged in order to keep these insolvent companies afloat.  If these debts go bad at once, if another major bank goes the way of Bear Stearns, who knows.

With Eurozone core inflation approaching 3.5%, these banks are being screamed at to cut interest rates.  Remember, Europe isn’t having a massive deflationary housing depression right now.  They still face the same problems we do, on several fronts, they have to buy oil in US dollars, and the price of oil is going through the roof.  We would be seeing much worse inflation here if ironically the housing crash wasn’t as bad as it is now!

And keep in mind today’s the last day of the first quarter, March 31.  Earnings for the first quarter will start to come in over the next few weeks, and those outlooks are nothing short of dismal.

Wall Street analysts have cut their first-quarter earnings forecasts for U.S. companies and are now projecting a sharper decline, figures from Reuters Estimates showed on Monday.

Earnings for Standard & Poor’s 500 companies are now expected to fall 8.1 percent in the first quarter, compared with the 5.5 percent decline projected last week.

At the beginning of the quarter, analysts projected 4.7 percent earnings growth during the period.

Nice call there boys.

The worsening global credit crisis has significantly damaged the outlook for many major U.S. companies, particularly in the finance sector.

Financial companies are expected to take the hardest hit, with Reuters Estimates predicting the sector will suffer a 49 percent decline in quarterly earnings.

Consumer companies are expected to see their earnings decline 10 percent, as consumers continue to be pinched by rising food and energy costs and declining home values.

Earnings slashed in half for the finance companies, meaning more stock problems, layoffs, and more balance sheet problems.  And these problems will continue because the long-term trend is that the smart money is leaving US and European stock markets.

Investors worldwide pulled close to $100bn (€63.3bn) out of equity funds in the first three months of this year – a record shift that accelerates a longer-term trend away from US and western European stock markets.

Equity funds suffered outflows of $98bn in the quarter ending March 28, according to Emerging Portfolio Fund Research, which tracks retail and institutional flows. The funds had inflows of $19bn during the same period last year and inflows of $49bn in the same period for 2006.

EPFR said the outflows were because “the credit squeeze linked to the US subprime debt mess weighed on investor confidence and global growth”.

The outflows also accelerate a trend for investors to put their money either in ultra-safe cash options such as money market funds, or into riskier markets and high-fee products such as hedge funds. They are abandoning the middle ground of mainstream equity and fixed income funds, especially in the developed markets.

Investors pulled $70bn from US, Japan and Western Europe funds during the quarter, compared with inflows last year and in most previous years.

Funds enjoying inflows were nearly all focused on Taiwan, Russia, the Middle East and Africa. Emerging markets funds as a group had outflows of $20bn, compared with a small outflow of $1.6bn in the same period last year.

Things have gotten so bad that Africa, the Middle East, and Russia are now seen as safer and better investment opportunities than the US and Europe.  What does that tell you about where we’re headed?

Without foreign investors buying US debt and investing in US markets, we’re in massive trouble.  The market money is either on the sidelines or being invested in these developing markets, not here.  Can central bank divestment of the dollar be far away?  As the global problems keep getting worse (keep in mind it’s only been about nine weeks since I started really writing about the markets now in this series) and the pace of the problems keep accelerating, something’s going to give.  Eventually, some major player is going to say “We can no longer afford to prop up the US economy.  We’re getting out.”

When that happens, what then?  I’m betting we’ll find out sooner rather than later.

Be prepared.

April is the cruelest month, but right now I bet the folks living in the Green Zone just want to get out of March:

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – A mortar barrage hit Baghdad’s heavily fortified Green Zone, which houses Iraq’s government and the U.S. embassy, police said, a day after Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr ordered his fighters to stand down.

The Green Zone has come under intense mortar and rocket attack over the past week as Mehdi Army fighters loyal to Sadr have battled Iraqi and U.S. security forces in the capital and in southern Iraq.[…]

A siren wailed inside the U.S.-protected compound in central Baghdad and a recorded voice warned people to take cover amid the sound of explosions, Reuters witnesses said.

A dust storm enveloping the city made it difficult to see where the missiles were landing, but police said a volley of at least six mortars had hit the Green Zone. They had no details of any casualties.

You know, maybe Senator Clinton should schedule a trip to Baghdad now. Then she could credibly claim some of that “I’ve been under fire” experience that seems to be so essential to Commander in Chief stature. Then again, it never hurt Bush or Cheney to have avoided combat. Maybe she should just sneer a bit in front of Tim Russert and claim the Mahdi Army is in its “last throes.” That ought to show America she’s got the both the requisite “good judgment” and “intestinal fortitude” to keep our military bogged down in an ever more senseless slaughter in Iraq.

Which reminds me, speaking of last throes, did you see this? Guess who’s best buds with Mrs. Clinton now: it’s the founding member of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy himself, Richard Mellon Scaife. Who knew that Spring would bring such an unlikely romance?

(cont.)

More than most modern political figures, Sen. Clinton has been criticized regularly, often harshly, by the Trib [Scaife’s paper in Pittsburgh]. We disagreed with many of her policies and her actions in the past. We still disagree with some of her proposals. […]

Sen. Clinton came to the Trib anyway and, for 90 minutes, answered questions.

Her meeting and her remarks during it changed my mind about her.

Walking into our conference room, not knowing what to expect (or even, perhaps, expecting the worst), took courage and confidence. Not many politicians have political or personal courage today, so it was refreshing to see her exhibit both. […]

. . . I have a very different impression of Hillary Clinton today than before last Tuesday’s meeting — and it’s a very favorable one indeed.

I imagine being a black man who has a chance to beat St. McCain trumps all of Mrs. Clinton’s alleged misdeeds, like the Mafia style murder of her law partner and former lover, Vince Foster, she allegedly ordered, her acceptance of $50,000 from a Chinese spy “probably in exchange for space weapons research” (I didn’t know Hillary would sell out her country for so little, did you? I thought her asking price was at least $100,000), and stealing the White House silverware (among other crimes). Suddenly Senator Clinton and Richard Mellon Scaife are an item, but in a purely platonic sense I’m sure. All it took was an anti-semetic, America hating “mulatto” running for President to bring about this stunning rapprochement. Will wonders never cease this election cycle?

At least we can take heart in the one constant in our political life this year: Our Dear Leader is still hated by the vast left wing conspiracy, which includes — Baseball fans!

President George W. Bush was greeted Sunday by thousands of resounding boo’s while being introduced at the Nationals Park in Washington, DC. Walking to the field from the tunnel, the booing did not let up. With a wave a and an un-acknowledging smile, he walked to the mound, threw a pitch to the catcher and quickly left the field.

Here’s the video:

Thank god for small favors, eh?

Well, “movie” is stretching it, in that it’s about 1.5 minutes. But if you knew all that went into the making of this, movie is the correct term.

As you will recall, Omir here posted a hilarious sketch about “Mrs. C”. I loved it and couldn’t get it out of my head.

I talked to two people I had met in a screenwriting class, one of whom just completed his first film, and another who was dying to get a project under her belt. Between the two of them, aided by some generous donations from several people, we managed to get this video, birthed right here on Booman, up and running!

Please send this to all your friends!!

Everyone involved donated massive amounts of time and goodwill to make this happen. Please let me know what you think so I can share it with the team!

In the wake of Cheney’s visit, the Saudis have announced through their tightly controlled media that they are preparing to deal with “any sudden nuclear and radioactive hazards” arising from an attack on Iran.

http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_richard__080328_saudi_newspaper_3a__pr.htm

Firstly, let me preface my following comments by admitting that I’m not an expert on nuclear technical issues. Despite that limitation, I’m usually quite good at comprehending scientific issues.

The main point I see as relevant here is this — fallout from attacks on Iran’s enrichment facilities would be a moderate to minor health concern. The amount of radioactive material that would be released is very small, and it’s highly doubtful that it would travel a great distance. Therefore, the Saudis would not need to be overly concerned with the health hazards stemming from a bombing of Iran’s nuclear enrichment facilities.

However, a tactical nuclear strike on Iran would present a serious health hazard for Saudi Arabia.

It’s hard to evaluate whether these reports are saber rattling or genuine threats to attack Iran, and both appear to be true. Most analysts see Cheney as genuinely desiring war with Iran, but there’s also a saber rattling element, too. A better question might be what saber rattling actually accomplishes, since there isn’t a clearly defined objective that’s achieved by this action — although gratuitous threatening is consistent with the neocon philosophy.

I won’t attempt to recap all of Cheney’s attempts to foment war with Iran, but they are numerous. One pertinent one here is his tasking of STRATCOM to draw up contingency plans in 2005 for a tactical nuclear attack on Iran, which, quite remarkably, wasn’t based on hostile actions from Iran.

     “-The Pentagon, acting under instructions from Vice President Dick Cheney’s office, has tasked the United States Strategic Command (STRATCOM) with drawing up a contingency plan to be employed in response to another 9/11-type terrorist attack on the United States. The plan includes a large-scale air assault on Iran employing both conventional and tactical nuclear weapons. Within Iran there are more than 450 major strategic targets, including numerous suspected nuclear-weapons-program development sites.” — American Conservative

     “-..the response is not conditional on Iran actually being involved in the act of terrorism directed against the United States.” — ibid.

Although it would be easy to regard contingency planning as an innocuous event, please note that this is contingency planning for an unprovoked nuclear strike on Iran. And that distinction wasn’t lost on the military officers doing the planning, as shown in the following:

     “-Several senior Air Force officers involved in the planning are reportedly appalled at the implications of what they are doing–that Iran is being set up for an unprovoked nuclear attack–but no one is prepared to damage his career by posing any objections.” — ibid.

http://www.amconmag.com/2005_08_01/article3.html

I think the best way to view this latest news is as a ‘stepping stone approach’ to fomenting war. Even though the news appears to be aimed at a foreign audience, one of the objectives behind its dissemination is to condition the American audience to the idea of an Iranian threat. As such, this technique parallels the method that was used to inculcate Americans to the idea of an Iraqi threat before the war.

Another obvious objective would be to embellish the idea of an Iranian threat to the Saudi people. Much like in the US, vilification of foreign threats serves the interests of the Saud monarchy, a la Diversionary theory.

A final objective should also be noted — the overlap between the Israeli Likud party and the neocons means that much of the far right foreign policy we’ve come to associate with the Cheney cabal is also the policy of the Likud-niks. US foreign policy is usually a proxy for Likud foreign policy.

Here are two readings on the uses of propaganda to foment war.

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?itemid=9910

http://www.bigeye.com/warstate.htm

I don’t often diary because I seldom have any topic that I want to rant about at length, at least not without provocation. (Today is actually an exception, but that topic is a guaranteed flamewar, so I’m letting it pass.) But I do often have some simple thing that’s bugging me, so I’m going to start posting the one that bugs me most every Sunday.
Primaries. There are a lot of problems with primaries, but the one that seems to be most topical right now is that states that hold their primaries early in the season have a disproportional influence on the process, while the states that have late primaries may as well not hold them at all. There are two obvious simple solutions to this problem:

1. Hold the primaries in all fifty states on the same day.
2. Randomize the order of the states.

Both solutions have some equally obvious drawbacks, #1 being that candidates with big war chests at the start of the season would have an even larger advantage than they do already, and #2 being that it doesn’t really solve the problem and might in fact make it worse.

But as Republican voters are always slow to grasp, if the problems are the world were simple, simpletons like them would have solved them already.

So how would you make the primary system fairer, more representative, and harder to game?

Shailagh Murray:

STATE COLLEGE, Pa. — Hopefully Ted Kennedy isn’t the jealous type, because it looks like Barack Obama has a new best friend: Sen. Bob Casey of Pennsylvania.

Their weekend road show across the Keystone State stopped at factories, hot dog stands, sports bars and bowling alleys, where the two kept score as “Bar” and “Bob.” The freshmen senators played basketball, milked cows in matching new Timberland boots, and shared the stage here Sunday at Penn State University before 22,000 cheering fans.

Something about the image of Bob Casey and Barack Obama milking cows in matching Timberland boots just cracks me up.