Woody Allen is funny.
If you see an American abroad carrying an easel and some paints, he could be a CIA operative. And a good one, too.
I am only learning about Aaron Swartz now that he has hanged himself. I don’t know if an overzealous prosecutor is primarily responsible, but facing a long jail sentence probably didn’t help Mr. Swartz deal with his depression. Our country lost a very talented individual.
You may have heard of disturbances in Mali. Juan Cole explains what is happening.
I remember when Saddam’s regime fell, people looted all the armories. So, in Syria, I think people should be concerned about more than just the stockpiles of chemical weapons.
Wait! Hitler relaxed Germany’s gun laws? That’s not what the wingnuts told me. Also, too, Mahablog.
People like Arthur Silber are certainly necessary. I just don’t think they have really thought hard enough about two things. The first is that people differ in what animates their political activity, and making the decision to engage in electoral politics on the side of the left means that most psychic energy is going to go to winning that battle. If what you primarily want is to keep the crazy Republican Party out of power then you will behave one way. If what you primarily want is to stop the War on Terror and its attendant outrages, you will behave another way. But throwing charges of hypocrisy around willy-nilly is no more justified than it is convincing, Which leads to the second thing people like Silber need to think about. Who do they think they are talking to? Whose minds do they think they need to change? There are people who agree that Barack Obama is a serial murderer and a monster. But they aren’t the people who might actually change U.S. policy.
Mithras is making sense, although I’d rather give the Republicans pizza and soda than any kind of break on the Estate Tax.
Are you shocked that David Gregory won’t be prosecuted for violating DC’s gun laws? Yeah, me either.
What’s on your reading list?
I wasn’t aware that you read Arthur Silber. Any other radicals on your reading list?
Sure. Chris Floyd, for example.
As far as my reading list goes, I do want to pick up The Leveretts’ new book on Iran:
Going to Tehran: Why the United States Must Come to Terms with the Islamic Republic of Iran
William T. Vollman, Rise Up and Rise Down (abridged version)
Paul Bracken, The Second Nuclear Age: Strategy, Danger, and the New Power Politics (interesting analysis; dangerous recommendations; be aware it’s out there)
Frank Pearce, The Land Grabbers: The New Fight over Who Owns the Earth
Eric Rutkow, American Canopy: Trees, Forests, and the Making of a Nation
David Graeber, Debt: The First 5000 Years
David Graeber, Inventing Democracy: An Idea, A History, A Movement
Eric Foner, Forever Free: The Story of Emancipation and Reconstruction
I read the Debt book by Graeber, it’s very good.
I was impressed with him at first with his early contribution to Occupy and then was disappointed later when I heard him speak at length. Are his books rigorous?
Debt is well-footnoted and to my mind carefully argued.
I’m not sure what academics mean by “rigorous”. It seems to be one of those words like the notion of “toughness” in law enforcement. Useful as a whip to drive an argument without having to deal with the merits.
I don’t know want academics mean by rigorous, but I use it to describe arguments that are well supported by facts, well-reasoned, and deal thoroughly and fairly with counterarguments. David Graeber wrote one of the best articles I’ve read about Occupy, but I wasn’t impressed with some of his subsequent discussions about the movement.
It read to me as purely historical at least what I remember about it. There may have been an argument he was trying to make but I don’t remember what it was. It seemed to be a good complete work with lots of citations.
The basic premise is that money and debt are indelibly linked and in fact debt came first.
“Policy” and “politics” share a common etymology. Yet people who want to change the first frequently begin by rejecting the second…
Yes, “Poll” meaning head aka “the individual”.
it’s from polis, the city in classical Greek, as in democracy of the Athenian city state, Aristotles “Politics” etc
I think you’re thinking of poll with 2 Ls
Yes I am.
I’ve got another thing for the Arthur Silbers to think about. If you really think Obama is no different than Bush, try imagining what a McCain administration would have been like. It might seem obscene to grade on a curve when you’re talking about drone strikes, but I for one am glad that Obama’s approach to the war on terror at least doesn’t include the concept of invading and occupying foreign countries.
I get free HBO this weekend so gave “Too Big To Fail” a try. I hadn’t read the Sorkin book, but Hollywood sure gave the financial collapse underbelly a go. For the average non-informed or even when one knows the players and the bs they created, it’s an alarming movie.
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I put up a diary yesterday – Advocate for Open Internet Access Commits Suicide [Update].
Marie2 added a comment with excellent explanation from long-time friend, Harvard Professor Lessig: Prosecutor as bully.
What a moving post by Lessig. Thank you.
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Prof. Juan Cole is in denial. Tries to waive the comment about a link to the overthrow of Gadaffi. As I had written in many diaries about the Tuareg last year, they were the mercenaries hired by and fighting for Gadaffi. They were well equipped with heavy arms and traveled through the Algerian Sahara desert to northern Mali. Later the Ansar al-Dine Islamic movement joined the Tuareg rebels and imposed an Islamic state under Shar’a law. In addition true jihadist foreign fighters (Al-Qaeda) from all muslim countries in the region plus those escaping from the AfPak tribal areas joined. The weak democratic government of Mali went through several military coup d’etats and were unable to defend their extended state. [CIA world fact book – MALI– twice the size of countries like Afghanistan or France]
As colonial power France still has economic and military ties in the region with Niger as important French uranium mining bordering Mali.
These jihadists have joined local militias throughout North Africa, also in Libya (Benghazi attack). The problem with the western powers and the US is, these foreign jihadist fighters are the main militant force in Syria necessary for the overthrow of Assad. In Syria Prof. Juan Cole has determined to use the term “revolutionaries.” The to be ousted President Assad has used the term “terrorists”. From the many suicide car bombings in Aleppo and Damascus plus the hundreds of summary executions, Prof. Cole is in denial, very similar to the Obama administration and Hillary Clinton. In an academic manner, Prof. Cole speaks of the 60,000 deaths and counting.
Diary with two interviews – Al-Jazeera with Noam Chomsky and UK Progressive with Juan Cole. CNN International is being supported through many commercials by the Emirates, Saudi Arabia and the Qatar Foundation. CNN “journalists” have become spokespersons for these authoritarian states by producing a number of PR documentaries. I watched Al Jazeera in the past because they would provide coverage where Western media could not go. The last two years in the Arab uprising, the Qatar channel has been producing strict propaganda. Unfortunately, in sync with the BBC, Sky News, France24 and CNN. Only on a number of Internet weblogs a balanced story can be found. Russia Today (RT.com) has also deteriorated the last few years.
Just to note, a little over a year ago the head of al-Jazeera was replaced by a member of the Qatar royal family.
Syria has turned into what Western lefties were predicting in Libya. It is pretty much a stalemate at the moment.
Mali is twice the size of France in area. And 3/5 the size of Afghanistan in population. The situation among the Tuareg seems to be a resistance to the imposition of the agenda of foreign fighters in addition to the rebellion against the central government. So it’s likely to turn into to a three-way or more fight.
In the absence of responsible independent journalism, it is very difficult to figure out what is going on. Russia Today and even PressTV are good up to the point at which they are talking of something in which the sponsoring country has a foreign policy interest.
And the targeting of journalists has made the first-order reporting of information very difficult.
Thanks for keeping up with this stuff on our behalf, Oui.
The “Arab Spring” died in Libya. It gave the anti-democratic/authoritarian forces that had been stunned/kicked in Tunisia and Egypt the opening to reverse the peoples’ revolts. Ignoring who the fighters in Benghazi were and who was supplying them with arms, people like Juan Cole allowed their passionate hatred of Gaddafi to supersede their ability to think through the consequences. Or intended consequences. Drones in Yemen, Saudi troops crushing protesters in Bahrain, violent Sunni fundamentalists in Mali, Sudan, and Syria.
All of it was as easy to predict as the lack of WMD in Iraq in 2002 was. But good business for AFRICOM.
The Arab Spring in fact has not died. The anti-democratic forces in Tunisia and Egypt have changed in power and have changed their tactics. The Gulf States have effectively suppressed any dissent from any quarter. Mohammed in Morocco and Abdullah in Jordan have provided enough concessions to quite things down. Yemen is an American protectorate; so its politics is complicated by its relationship with the US and also its relationship with Saudi Arabia.
Libya is becoming complicated in ways that were not foreseeable and ways that were. For example, not foreseeable was Congress creating its own army to defend against the military controlled by the prime minister. Most militias however have been folded into the national army. Benghazi is a big city; the incidence of violence there has been overstated by the foreign media, especially those with ties to Hugo Chavez, who is still bitter about Gadhafi’s fall from power.
Sudan has been festering for two decades. Syria is a multi-party civil war. And Mali might become a three-way civil war.
Rolling out the narrative that the US was behind the Arab Spring is convenient for some authoritarians, but the US was caught flatfooted. And nothing about it was predictable nor is now predictable.
The US is not the puppetmaster of everything that happens in the world. Just some things.
And just to round it out, there are violent Muslim fundamentalists in northern Nigeria. And some sort of confused US relationship in the Uganda, Rwanda, Democratic Republic of the Congo area.
As for Islamists, no doubt we might hear Zanzibar and Tanzania pop up.
Who are these authoritarians that assert the US was behind the “Arab Spring?” The US-Saudi Arabia-Israel were totally flummoxed by the events in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen and Bahrain. But they found their footing when protests began in Libya. Allowed for the backing of the so-called rebels in Libya and cracking heads in Yemen and Bahrain.
The result to date is that Sunni religious factions have been emboldened in all those countries and to ignore that in the previously agreed to peace treaty and subsequent implementation between Sudan and S. Sudan and the factionalism in Mali sort of misses the forest.
Increase Sunni militancy has been developing independently of the Arab Spring. There has been concern for two decades about an MB government in Egypt.
Sudan and South Sudan was a three-decade struggle between the Christian-animist South and the Muslim north of Sudan. The US has been befuddled about how to deal with Sudan almost all of that time–to the point of tolerating the extensive Darfur genocide.
Mali is a side-effect of the Tuareg mercenaries returning from Libya after the revolution. The push for a Shari’a state in Mali is a separate movement and now is in conflict. But both seek to replace the central government, which France (the former colonial ruler of Mali) is now propping up. France’s foreign policy is independent of that of the US and often conflicting. President Obama has let France take the lead on issues that it is willing to commit troops to. Ivory Coast was totally a French operation. In Libya, the US responded to a French request (likely driven by the trouble additional Muslim refugees would make for Sarkozy’s election). From the European point of view, intervention in Libya was necessary to restrict the number of refugees that were flooding European countries in a time of austerity. The US seems really to have been a reluctant partner with regards to Libya. (Now, some US agencies might have had a different agenda from overall US policy.)
Others connect the dots somewhat differently from how you’ve connected them. Glenn Greenwald provides a good summary.
As has been conceded by multiple MSM reports, the Tuaregs accepted assistance from Islamic fighters who they thought they could oust as soon as they won their fight and now the tail is wagging the dog.
Then this:
Woody Allen is NOT funny.
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Is that a koan?
Is Cucurbita maxima a fruit?
In a botanical sense, you could call them fruit, but in our culture they are known as vegetables.
Somebody has wikifoo.
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Booman, I really appreciated the link to the real life story of Tony Mendez, whose character is the star of Argo. Really, really interesting life story, and his paintings are stunning.