Sunday, November 15, 2009

More Hunger Blogging!

Ah booooooooooooooooooo.
Bono, the lead singer of the band U2 and a co-founder of the advocacy group ONE and (Product)RED, is a contributing columnist for The Times.
What a disgrace. Anyone would be better. Give the space to Lanny Davis or Dick Morris. God damn this guy and his Serious Commitment To The Poor and his namedropping and his Bloomberg endorsements and his G-8 globetrotting and his Embrace Of Social Media and his deep respect for Angela Merkel. He no doubt hangs out with Richard Branson and they fast together For Darfur and Tweet about it together. I'm not going to fact check that, because if it isn't true it might as well be. Also, has he won the Nobel Peace Prize yet? If not, it's overdue.

I'm glad I don't have to rank the NYT's Development Boys (they're all in effect this Sunday, so look out, Global Problems) from Worst to Less Worst; deciding whether Tom Friedman or "Bono" is more terrible would be tough. Nick Kristof would get Less Worst, no contest, but he's still guilty as hell. I guess if it came down to it I could put them through a battery of tests: who has more youtube videos of themselves acting a donk somewhere in Africa, who can drop the most names in a minute, who can carry the white man's burden with the stiffest upper lip, etc.

Saturday, November 14, 2009

Saviors and Survivors the Video Game

SCENARIO
A well-armed genocidal faction in the notional city of Nradreg has surrounded a group of humanitarian aid workers and refugees, who face starvation and imminent attack. This enemy faction has rejected all diplomatic efforts to negotiate safe passage of relief supplies. As part of international relief efforts, a combined U.S. Army air, sea and ground task force has been ordered to use appropriate force to reach the remote compound. The Army will employ artillery and electronic warfare assets to suppress enemy air defenses while a Special Forces team parachutes deep into enemy territory. Then, AH64 Apache attack helicopters will destroy hostile coastal defenses to permit the entry of an Army Theater Support Vehicle (TSV) into Nradreg’s harbor. The Army ground task force, mounted in Strykers and HMMWVs, will come ashore and fight through fierce resistance to rescue the trapped aid workers and refugees, and deliver vital supplies.
One can only hope that the game itself is as excellent as this Virtual Army Propaganda, a truly beautiful, concise encapsulation of contemporary American imperialist discourse. The ugly racialized eastern-southern Otherness of "Nradreg"; the genocidal wolves preying on those supremely passive sacrificial lambs named "humanitarian aid workers and refugees"; the "reject[ion]" of "all diplomatic efforts" (we try ever so hard, but--sigh--those barbarians only understand the language of force); and of course, the U.S. warmachine's vital mission:



I suppose the author(s) could have included more about the oppression of the Nradregi women, but that might have been overkill: the gendering of "humanitarian aid workers and refugees" is not exactly too subtle: when is the last time you've seen a picture of a male refugee (particularly, a male refugee who is neither prepubescent or elderly); and is the humanitarian aid worker not the feminine to the masculine imperialist, whether soldier, scientist, or entrepreneur?



The "Army Experience" cited at the beginning of this post unfortunately exemplifies a very serious problem of contextualization--of the "framing of war"--encountered by those of us who would like to resist, or at least think critically about, the endless aggressive war that envelops us. In a sense this should not be so hard: what do we expect from actual war propaganda? Complexity? Critical analysis? The enemy is going to be presented as vicious, opaquely evil, racial Other--when has this ever not been the case? One cannot concede the framing of the question to one's opponent: the formulation of the question is infinitely more important than the answer.

I'm currently reading a recent book by Judith Butler called "Frames of War"; in an early chapter she states (p. 37):
How do these brief reflections on the perils of democracy affect our way of thinking about global responsibility in times of war? First, we be wary of invocations of "global responsibility" which assume that one country has a distinctive responsibility to bring democracy to other countries. I am sure that there are cases in which intervention is important--to forestall genocide, for instance. But it would be a mistake to conflate such an intervention with a global mission, or indeed an arrogant politics in which forms of government are forcibly implemented that are in the political and economic interests of the military power responsible for that implementation.
Butler is "sure" that there are "cases in which intervention is important." The humanitarian emergency in the city of Nradreg would undoubtedly be such a case. What is wrong here? Surely it has to be the concept "genocide" as privileged "frame of war," as master signifier of cultural anti-politics--violence that is not so much perpetrated on a racialized Other but by a racialized (irrational, savage, inhuman) Other. It is this Other (the "anal object") who is then thrust out of the human community in order to reestablish social harmony--harmony which is ahistorical and unafflicted by socioeconomic antagonism but occasionally threatened by the intrusion of violent, inhuman outsiders.

Imperialist intervention cannot be truly successfully contested from within the imperialist frame of genocide and cultural/racial oppression, because the issue is not so much that those who endorse and participate in imperialist war get the answers to their own questions wrong; it's that the questions they pose are themselves wrong, self-serving, and fantastical.

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Evidence Generally Points To Evil



David Brooks:
Most people select stories that lead toward cooperation and goodness. But over the past few decades a malevolent narrative has emerged.
That narrative has emerged on the fringes of the Muslim world. It is a narrative that sees human history as a war between Islam on the one side and Christianity and Judaism on the other. This narrative causes its adherents to shrink their circle of concern. They don’t see others as fully human. They come to believe others can be blamelessly murdered and that, in fact, it is admirable to do so.
This narrative is embraced by a small minority. But it has caused incredible amounts of suffering within the Muslim world, in Israel, in the U.S. and elsewhere. With their suicide bombings and terrorist acts, adherents to this narrative have made themselves central to global politics. They are the ones who go into crowded rooms, shout “Allahu akbar,” or “God is great,” and then start murdering.
This awful writing could have come directly from a 2002 George W. Bush speech. On second thought, I am probably being unfair to Bush and his speechwriters.
The conversation in the first few days after the massacre was well intentioned, but it suggested a willful flight from reality. It ignored the fact that the war narrative of the struggle against Islam is the central feature of American foreign policy. [Huh?  Americans have forgotten their Crusade??] It ignored the fact that this narrative can be embraced by a self-radicalizing individual in the U.S. as much as by groups in Tehran, Gaza or Kandahar.
It denied, before the evidence was in, the possibility of evil. It sought to reduce a heinous act to social maladjustment. It wasn’t the reaction of a morally or politically serious nation.
If America was a morally or politically serious nation, America would realize that the answer to questions is usually Evil. Muslim Arab Evil. America would then tent its fingers, sigh, read--or at least at least think about reading--some Edmund Burke, and maybe go to a cocktail party.




Tuesday, November 3, 2009

A Complicated Problem

I was talking to a nice liberal person at work today who said that voters are idiots, because they had approved some random hateful piece of culture-wars gay-hating legislation. Similarly, "Constitutional rights should not be left up to popular vote" is some advocacy group's phrase. Many "liberals" are technocrats at heart, as are just as many "conservatives." Any ghoul who has studied public policy will know about public choice theory and information asymmetries and the like. Perhaps the most hilarious, extreme expression of this view is the way Free Traders rationalize consistent public opposition to their policies, and the most reasonable, sensitive one is John Hart Ely's concept of "representation reinforcement." Who could have guessed that most people who hold the first view also hold the second? Anyway, since people do not have perfect information, and are "rationally ignorant" (they are busy thinking about the groceries and baseball, right?), and other freshwater economics bullshit, it is always consistent with Democracy to ignore what people think and just rule them: it is in their own best interests, which they would come to agree with you on if they just had more time. Most people probably agree with that last assertion regardless of the information they have--it is maybe the fundamental proposition of Really Existing Democracy.

Constitutional Rights

Most of the liberal-left Constitutional arguments against torture and other Terror War fascism are sad: they are implicitly predicated on the empirical assumption of no more Terrorism. Believe me, if there is more terrorism you will see fascism triumphant to an extent Cheney could have only dreamed: the Constitution is not really a suicide pact; it's more a homicide pact.

Private Justice

Repression is so very effective when privatized in this country, a country that dearly loves private power in all its forms. There are any number of rights that you can exercise without punishment from the State, but the private penal system will convict you without indictment or trial--which is why the State finds it relatively painless to not punish you. Or it will acquit you, but only on the most arbitrary of grounds.

Baruch Hashem, it's an Israel Roundup

The House of Representatives voted to "condemn" the Goldstone report by 344-36. This is a referendum on J-Street (link is NSFW), just like whatever happened in some elections today is a referendum on how much America hates Obama and his liberals. The point is, J-Street and the Democratic party will provide the murder, but not quite enough of the Gusto, and America wants Gusto. Voting BOO on this Abe Foxman crap were, among others, happy little old men Kucinich and Paul, and Barbara Lee, who gets the most respect for having been the ONLY NO VOTE for the post-Sept. 11 2001 Bush "Authorization for Use of Military Force." Where were you then, Kucinich & Paul? Speaking of Abe Foxman, AF to Goldstone: "As a Good Jew, Repudiate Report." AS A GOOD JEW you have got to be shitting me with that language, I don't care whether it is Foxman explicitly or some Haaretz English editor, even if there is subtle irony involved.


I am sick of hearing about J-Street on the internet (nevertheless I am now writing about J-Street on the internet. This is a pattern). Jewssansfrontiers has the right idea, that J-Street is just as fancy and Progressive as Obama. The analogy is really pretty good when you think about it.

Also a representative of the American Task Force for Dahlan finds a new best friend in dear old Jeffrey Goldblog. He is very happy that Representative Berman came to his gala!

Sunday, November 1, 2009

Writing About Tom Friedman

I wrote an entire post on Thomas Friedman's column in today's NYT. Then I erased it. I wrote the post in a fit of pique, as usual, directed at Friedman’s centering his column around a group of good respectable Americans he branded as "Warren Buffett centrists." Nothing pisses off a leftish internet writer like praise of "centrism" in the mainstream/corporate media--from reliable rule-of-law civil libertarian Glenn Greenwald to really the entire cast of netroots characters--and generally with good reason. Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent is maybe the classic exposition of this practice; see also the general criticism of establishment journalism practices of anonymous government sources and reliance on “experts” from biased organizations like AEI or the McKinsey Global Institute; the extreme reluctance of establishment journalists to "take sides" in even relatively simple factual disagreements, e.g., the debate over whether waterboarding is torture; anything related to Palestinians; "death panels"; and on and on to infinity. This critique is clearly all very necessary and satisfying, but at some point it leaves me feeling kind of empty. It is a reactive, negative project involving mockery of some very silly people. It lends itself to a kind of breathless, debate-team, prosecutorial writing characterized by the reckless proliferation of hyperlinked textual citations (I am taking a stand against hyperlinking in this post, even though it is crying out for it) and rampant accusations of hypocrisy. This has really grown into its own genre replete its own tropes and rhetorical forms; its best practitioners are quite fun to read and make some very good points, but it really has its limits.

Praise of Centrism in itself might have been too banal for me to notice; it was really the "Warren Buffett centrism" branding that did it. The constant veneration of Warren Buffett in elite middlebrow circles has always bothered me. I have never heard him say anything that worthwhile. His distinction seems to be that he is a very rich person and that he is Folksy, rather than speaking in the traditional pseudoscientific managerial Harvard-Business-School jargon of the ruling class: he is just like us, only better, because he dominates a large reinsurance entity. He can be counted on to tell us that whoa hey, corporate accounting practices can be self-serving, and that, if the past is any guide, the stock market tends to go up over the long term even if it looks bad now, so let's all put some money in it. And, according to Tom Friedman, Warren Buffett also says that "whatever he achieved in life was due primarily to the fact that he was born in this country -- America -- at this time, with all of its advantages and opportunities." Like the first two Buffett platitudes I paraphrased, this isn't that off the mark (though far be it from me to endorse investing money in the stock market): of course rich Americans owe their wealth to America's military/economic world domination, rather than to some kind of transhistorical divine gift for sucking money out of the rest of the world and making it stick to them. And Tom Friedman’s partially-imaginary but to a large extent all-too-real community of "Warren Buffett centrists" similarly owe their economic privilege to US domination, and their political perspective is informed by the desire to expand or at least maintain this privilege.

This is about where I erased the post I had written. I sort of didn’t want to yell into the void at this guy just for filling the heads of the NYT's readership incrementally higher with this kind of nonsense. The typical American-entrepreneurial-exceptionalist crap followed the Buffett part--the inevitable imperalist argument that whatever increases America’s power also saves the world: "I believe that without a strong America -- which, at its best, can deliver more goods and goodness to its own citizens and to the world than any other nation -- our kids and many others around the world will not have those opportunities." This is terrible, and it has been noted a million times before that it is terrible, to minimal effect. Noting it again on the internet, in the context of this silly little Tom Friedman product, is sort of useless. It's just always bothersome how resilient this propaganda line is. But it probably shouldn’t be. It is totally in the NYT readership’s self-interest--and the broader American public’s self interest--to accept this uncritically, and the American public has been bombarded by it all day every day for the last hundred years.

But since I have in fact been sucked back into commenting on Tom Friedman, I am in fact going to make fun of two things in the column:

First, this passage:
I am convinced that this kind of nation-building at home is exactly what Mr. Obama is trying to deliver, and should be his unifying call: We need universal health care because it would strengthen our social fabric and enable our businesses to better compete globally. We need to upgrade our schools because no child in 21st-century America should be left behind and because we cannot compete for the best new jobs without doing so. We need a greener economy, not just to mitigate climate change, but because a world growing from 6.7 billion people to 9.2 billion by 2050 is going to demand more and more clean energy and water, and the country that develops the most clean technologies is going to have the most energy security, national security, economic security, innovative companies and global respect.
I defy anyone to put more silly talking points into three sentences. I am actually sort of awed by its grand clattering crescendo of Mosts. If by some unholy power an Organizing For America email blast and Monsanto greenwashing arm producemoreconservemore.com were to copulate and produce an extremely hyperactive child--that child would be this paragraph made flesh. May God have mercy on our miserable souls.

Second, this Expert:
"Obama's election marked a shift -- from a politics that celebrated privatized concerns to a politics that recognized the need for effective government and larger public purposes. Across the political spectrum, people understood that national renewal requires big ambition, and a better kind of politics," said the Harvard political theorist Michael Sandel, author of the new best seller -- "Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do?" -- that calls for elevating our public discourse.
Yeah. Good job, Harvard. That’s some sweeeeeet analysis.

I vow not to devote any more text to Tom Friedman.

Friday, October 30, 2009

Angry Arab re: Jon Stewart

So I watched it. First, it was interesting that he came accompanied with a (nice) Jewish woman activist for peace. But it came across as awkward: as if the Palestinian could not be brought before the audience without the approval and blessing of an American Jewish person. As if to say: he is OK. This one is a human being. Secondly, the tension was felt as soon as Barghuti began to speak: when a member of the audience yelled: liar. And Jon Stewart, who repudiated and mocked Rep. Wilson for yelling "liar" to Obama, treated the yelling but the audience member as a healthy or normal expression of the intensity of passions on both sides. He almost sounded: as if the words of Barghuti are equal to the rude yelling but that dude. Thirdly, Barghuti was quite rude and sexist: he would interrupt the woman as soon as she would try to talk. It really bothered me. She did not have a chance to speak. Fourthly, as is the case when it comes to Israel, Jon Stewart was not himself during the segment: he was not funny or witty, and he was nervous and felt (it seemed to me) an obligation to parrot the cliches of MEMRI and AIPAC without even intelligent review of those cliches. He said that Jews were expelled from Iran in 1948. Just like that. Fifthly, Barghuti kept repeating that his "movement" stand for non-violence. Yet, another attempt to show that he--unlike other Palestinians--is a human being. Sixthly, Barthuti was dragged into giving assurances about "the security of Israel." Here was a visitor from an occupied land invited to a TV show to give assurances to the occupying state. A theater of the absurd, for sure. Seventhly, Jon Stewart (who is usually smart and well-informed about politics) sounded as ignorant and as ill-informed about the Arab-Israeli conflict as the average American. He cracked a joke about Palestinians and Israeli, implying that all Palestinians are Muslim. At least Barghuti corrected him on that one.
 - Angry Arab

I disagree on one point: Jon Stewart is neither smart nor well-informed about politics. This marks my third general disagreement. The others are

- I think The Economist is really not that great a publication

- I strongly dislike the TV show Family Guy

But all in all, these are minor disagreements. Angry Arab News Service is one of the best things on the internet.

This FUCKING GUY needs to shut up


Dear Jeffrey, this is not a good argument. You know that, right? You just are brimming with race hatred, aren't you, and you are dreaming of sweeeet sweet Blasphemy for Heroes. Really, Jeffrey? No one ever says anything bad about The Muslims, because of political correctness and cowardice and fear of "physical jeopardy"? It is so unfair, the way The Muslims have everything their way in American media? HEY JEFFREY, maybe it is not fucking funny to have a rich American Jew piss on a Koran, and maybe that is because the heroic attitude you espouse is deeply implicated in actual murder and oppression, right now. And maybe, for all his faults, Larry David understands this, and is purposely not making use of every opportunity he can think of to be a racist, hyperimperialist, blood-gargling troll.

Thursday, October 29, 2009


This should be amazing if it ever happens! If enough people watch it & realize how bad our Future Political Powerhouses are, then there will be a nice revolution, which would be the greatest gift any elves could ever give.

Wonkette is great because they hate Politico so much, and Politico is TERRIBLE, absolutely terrible.

Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Hobo Songs

One is better off listening to hobo songs than reading articles about the Financial Crisis, watching "Capitalism: A Love Story," or thinking about the Public Option.





Sunday, October 25, 2009

Walter Benn Michaels

All ruling classes are based on merit, Jack. The principle was as true of Nazi Germany as it was of Louis XIV's France. The question is, how do you define merit; of what does merit consist?
 - Lewis Lapham, The American Ruling Class (5:25-5:40)
In this speech at Harvard, Walter Benn Michaels makes the argument that "liberals" should be more concerned about income inequality/class than about race/diversity. The argument is basically that (elite) universities have been successful at achieving gender/ethnic/racial diversity but have completely ignored what some would call socioeconomic diversity: the vast majority of students at elite universities are rich, or at least not poor:

              video platform   video management   video solutions   free video player

In the Q & A from the Harvard talk, Michaels mentions that once inequality of access to elite merit-generating institutions is cured, "we" will be able to have a "conversation" about meritocracy itself; evidently meritocracy itself is off limits until the there is a reasonably legitimate version of meritocracy to challenge. This move mimics the moves left-wing class-before-race types accuse anti-racists of making to the extent that it forecloses the main issue--inequality--in favor of some kind of intra-capitalist tinkering that effectlvely operates to justify the underlying capitalist/neoliberal framework.

Michaels argues that the socioeconomic profiles of members of elite merit-recognizing/generating institutions undermines meritocracy's crucial justificatory function:
Insofar as our social arrangements are justified--as we justify them to the people who benefit from them, and we justify them to the people who don't benefit from them by saying, 'you had a chance. If you did not succeed, it is in some important sense your responsibility that you did not succeed, it's something about you.' Insofar as that serves as an important tool of justification for us--and it serves as a very important tool of justification for us--our society has to make some kind of effort to produce the equality of opportunity that now we pay lip service to but absolutely, completely ignore. (Michaels lecture, 20:00-20:41)
So if, as it appears, what is central to this project is protecting this meritocratic justification of inequality from subversion or questioning by those against whom it is deployed, I fail to see how this project is at all situated on the left. Why should those opposed to inequality be providing support to its most important justificatory mechanism? And who is the "us" for whom this "serves as a very important tool of justification"? And how is Michaels' position anything but an aesthetically-liberal reformulation of the classic right-libertarian argument for inequality exemplified by Robert Nozick in Anarchy, State, and Utopia. In perhaps the least surprising coincidence in the history of coincidences, Michaels brings out (Michaels lecture, approx. 18:00-20:00) a folksier "LBJ version" of Nozick's Wilt Chamberlain example which explains justified unequal distributions with reference to consumers being willing to pay more to watch Chamberlain play basketball because he's really good at it.

There's something particularly annoying about Michaels' ostensibly self-deprecating references to him not being able to run well, which I think has something to do with its use in the good old racist line that "the Blacks are good at sports and we white guys don't begrudge them for it, so why can't they realize the we white guys are better at thinking than them." And hey, here's our friend Pat Buchanan making this argument (in the context of this past summer's disgusting "national conversation" about affirmative action/Sonia Sotomayor/white firefighters), right around the 12:00 mark of this Rachel Maddow video:



It seems pretty obvious that his project of criticizing "diverse elites" in favor of a deserving, neglected working class has strong right-wing political coordinates; just review Buchanan's argument above, or the 2008 Democratic primary contest ("hard working white people" etc.), or really pretty much everything else anyone says in mainstream American political discourse.  

 I am getting tired of writing so I will skip to the conclusion: criticism of inequality is properly aimed at elite institutions themselves, and not at the class composition of those who enter elite institutions. Wherever they come from, the leave as elites who occupy, depending on just how elite the institution is, either the top 10%, 1%, or. 01% of the distribution of power, and if you're concerned about inequality, well, there's your inequality for you, and you are probably going to somehow have to get beyond unquestioningly accepting radical inequality so long as it conforms with whatever assessment of "merit" you idiosyncratically determine to be objectively valid.




Afterthought. The following citation of (ha) Friedrich Hayek by Slavoj Zizek (not that Zizek's thoughts on race aren't highly problematic) provides interesting contrast to Michaels' idea that social stability depends on the poor understanding that their poverty is their own responsibility.

Friedrich Hayek knew that it is much easier to accept inequalities if one can claim that they result from an impersonal blind force, so the good thing about "irrationality" of the market success or failure in capitalism (recall the old motif of market as the modern version of the imponderable Fate) is that it allows me precisely to perceive my failure (or success) as "undeserved", contingent... The fact that capitalism is not "just" is thus a key feature that makes it palpable to the majority (I can accept much more easily my failure if I know that it is not due to my inferior qualities, but to chance).
It seems to me that both these justificatory processes are going on at the same time despite their contradiction--that those who justify existing distributions of power and disability do so sometimes for Michaels' reason (most likely when meritocratic social hierarchies are operating to their benefit) and sometimes for Hayek's (vice versa). So at whom is Michaels' justification aimed? Probably at those already-privileged people who are occasionally embarrassed by thinking that their privileges were not attained by merit, and who would like to have better evidence of just how deserved their privileges are.

But really, fuck these guys.

Shepard Fairey vs. the Manhattan Institute

Today's LA Times. Ms Allen is arguing that "critics and intellectuals" should self-censor commentary on forms of artistic and cultural expression that involve vandalism or unlicensed use of intellectual property, so as to preserve law and order. From her vantage point at the Manhattan Institute, it must seem strange and outrageous that even now some "intellectuals" aren't paid by specific corporate and or ideological interests to advance authoritarian political agendas.

In itself the whole Shepard Fairey vs. AP copyright dispute is dull and tawdry, and no one comes out of it looking that great. It doesn't really merit an op-ed, except perhaps one on the ridiculous state of US intellectual property law. But Shepard Fairey is an obnoxious character, and as such is a convenient MacGuffin for the argument that

Obama & the Democrats =
Elites (Hollywood, "critics and intellectuals") =
Homos ("most arty types, never having been near a battlefield, wouldn't be able to tell the difference between a bomb cloud and a geyser"--thrown in despite being completely irrelevant, just in case your respectable homophobia wasn't triggered already) =
The Unemployed (taggers and Marxists with no respect for "the philistines who had to take the trains to work") =
Violent Black Criminals ("grimy"--you know exactly what I'm talking about--'70s & '80s  NYC).

And this is a very important, serious, and respectable point to make, all the time, in every major media outlet in the country.

Saturday, October 17, 2009

Middle East Experts, pt. 2

Ayaan Hirsi Ali today in the LA Times:
Western feminism still defines the white man as the oppressor, but right now it's the brown man, the black man, the yellow man. When you tell them, "Stop oppressing your women," they'll tell you, "Don't impose your culture on me." It would have been fantastic if, when [President] Obama went to Cairo, he [had said], "We have taught the white man that bigotry is bad and he has given it up, at least most of it. Now bigotry is committed in the name of the black man, the brown man, the yellow man, whatever color."
We [the White Man?] have taught the White Man that bigotry is bad and he has given it up. She actually gets paid to think like this (but by AEI, so you know, whatever). And since she is paid by the John M. Olin Foundation and some defense contractors to sit on panels and attend receptions, she has a few things to tell those lazy immigrants about hard work and entrepreneurship:
The United States is not a welfare state. American Muslims have to have a job. European [nations] are welfare states so you have a lot of poor people who depend on the state for their survival. That makes it very attractive for radicals. I hope that American Muslims are different. But that does not make America immune to radical Islam.
But wait: she's a radical too!
I am a radical individual freedom fighter or defender of individual freedom.
So what she's saying is, "in the United States you have a lot of rich people who depend on the state apparatus, including nominally private-sector policy-making institutions, for the maintenance of their luxurious lifestyles and aspirations to world domination. That makes it very attractive for radical individual freedom fighters." Of course it is attractive: such individuals will always find nice jobs in some quasi- governmental institution.

I had not read the LA Times before this week. It is absolutely stuffed with think tankers.

Friday, October 16, 2009

Middle East Experts, pt. I

So I was reading a some bloodthirsty oped about bombing/starving/nuking Iran in the LA Times written by some guy named John Hannah, charmingly called "Cripple Iran to Save It." And what do you know, that guy "works" at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and his big source for the essay is this other guy Karim Sadjadpour from the Middle East Policy Council.


Anyway here is the Board of Directors of the Middle East Policy Council. Note the presence of everyone's favorite conspirators: Exxon, i-bankers, the CIA, the Binladin Group, security firms, etc. Really the only thing missing is the jar with Hitler's brain in it.

All you really need to know about the Washington Institute for Near East Policy is:

- Marty "do not fuck with the Jews" Peretz is on its "board of advisors"

- One of its "scholars" is noted maniac Daniel Pipes.

And so these guys just get to source everything to each other and publish their war pornography everywhere, and no one really cares that much. There's pretty much an infinite supply of these people, since if you are willing to say this sort of thing in public, you are pretty much guaranteed a nice job in DC with great reception attendance opportunities.

Nicholas Kristof, Neoliberal Jerk

How to rescue the world's oppressed from the scourge of poverty:

1. Union busting
2. Pro-sweatshop advocacy
3. Field trip contests! ("My latest videos from around the world. Watch them and you don't have to be bitten by bedbugs or held up at militia checkpoints.....")

This is Not a Hunger Blog Yet

Youtube was promoting this amazing video:

You can:

Sell FEED bags
Add photos to Flicker
Hungrify your Facebook status
Create a Woot shirt
Add a widget to your site
Create a hunger blog
Create a hunger video
Join SocialVibe
Add a donate button to your site
Hungrify your avatar
Email this to others
Play FreeRice
Hungrify your Tweets
Blog against hunger
Add a banner to your site

While of course I am aware that "Facebook is a powerful tool in the fight against hunger," I will not hungrify my Facebook status until the Dalai Lama hungrifies his tweets.


Meanwhile at the ladies' auxiliary, these nice G8 Spouses play at ladling "nutritious corn-soya blend porridge" to some imaginary Hungries, while their husbands stay indoors and enjoy a 100 course meal of seahorses & organic lily pads or whatever.