Prize Day at News Links

Reading his acceptance speech

Why did Obama accept the Nobel Peace Prize when he had already decided to take the war in Afghanistan to its ultimate consequences? Nobody forced him into an act of cynicism. Fidel Castro

David Seaton's News Links

Today the President of the United States received the Nobel Peace Prize. He read a stirring speech in which he used the Nobel Peace Prize to justify America's wars.

In my opinion this was one of the most interesting presidential statements since Bill Clinton speculated on the meaning of "is". In case you have forgotten that one, it went like this:

"It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is. If the--if he--if 'is' means is and never has been, that is not--that is one thing. If it means there is none, that was a completely true statement....Now, if someone had asked me on that day, are you having any kind of sexual relations with Ms. Lewinsky, that is, asked me a question in the present tense, I would have said no. And it would have been completely true." (footnote 1,128 in the Starr report)

In order to celebrate Obama endeavoring to reach Clinton's superb mastery of the fine American art of euphemism,  I have thought up a little contest to choose other unlikely prize winners. 

Here is my tentative list of possible awards, readers are encouraged to add to this selection by posting their own suggestions:

• Nobel Prize for Literature: Dan Brown
• Nobel Prize for Economics: Bernard Madoff
• Nobel Prize for Physics: The Diet Coke + Mentos Development Team
• Pulitzer Prize: Rush Limbaugh
• Oscar of Hollywood for Lifetime Achievement: Sonny Tufts 
• Something for poor Tiger Woods, but I haven't figured out just what yet
  

I am sure you can think up better stuff than this list and I am looking forward to reading them. DS

Up in smoke

David Seaton's News Links

We are going to change the climate...

...cause it's too hot...

...too hot...

...The climate...

...yeah...

...and we are going to organize Afghanistan too...

...like we've got to... you know...

...stay.....the ...course...

...stay on it...

...you know...

...stay as long as...

...whatever...

...and we're going to regulate the financial sector...

...cause those guys steal a lot...

...uh huh...

....a lot, yeah...

...don't laugh, this is serious shit man...

... lots of stuff to do...

...like fix the schools...

....all the dumb kids...

...fix them too...

.....and repair all the roads...

...and the bridges...

...and the trains...

...lots of busted and worn out stuff...

...lots of other stuff too...

...like change the climate...

...Did I say that before? ...

... Too hot...

...Yeah...

... Lot's a stuff...

...We're gonna do it all man...

...Well, went to to the moon once...

... really, did, no shit...

...but of course when we got there...

...there was nothing there up there...

...but we went there... ...

...stayed the course...

...like Afghanistan, nothing there either...

...the important thing...

...stay the course...

...Yeah...

...and we came back too from the moon... and that's real important too...

... stay and leave...

...come back and all...

... after going...

... uh, huh...

...isn't it?
 
...Like Afghanistan...

...we're supposed to come back from there too...

...oh....

..uh...

...Hey, you got anything to eat around here? DS

Street Musicians, Madrid, Christmas 2009

David Seaton's News Links

One of the many changes that has come over Madrid since Spain joined the European Union has been the appearance of eastern Europeans, who were rarely seen here before, and among them numerous street musicians.

Since Spain has such strong popular musical traditions itself, this might seem like taking coals to Newcastle, but in fact it has livened up the street scene considerably.

One of my favorites is a pickup group of buskers who I long ago baptized the "All Bucharest Big Band". Today was the first time I ever came across them with a movie camera in my hand, so I filmed them, which was something I had always wanted to do.

I like them  because they seem to embody hard work, cheerful suffering and the joy of music all in one little band. I wish they could become famous and  get to have groupies and trash hotel rooms too. DS

After the ball was over: America after Bush

After the ball was over
Nellie took out her glass eye
Put her false teeth in water
Corked up her bottle of dye
Put her false leg in the corner
Hung up her wig on the door
And all that is left goes to bye byes
After the ball
After The Ball Was Over

David Seaton's News Links

After reading Obama's speech and watching the video, I thought everything he said was reasonable... if he had been talking about Panama or Grenada... but Afghanistan, where every foreign invader over thousands of years has failed? At a moment when Americans are massively out of work and on food stamps?

The only ray of hope I find is that more and more Americans are beginning to ask the right questions and that consciousness is growing. Consciousness is everything in politics, it is really the force that moves mountains.

America has history's most highly developed industrial mechanisms to answer what seems to be its unquenchable thirst for irreality, but reality, that miserable son of a bitch, just wont let up.

I have a great faith in America, its fertility and capacity to produce on that day when reality finally wins its battle to emerge. That will be the day when our "Nellie" of the song, our grotesque, paralyzed oligarchical system, finally goes to "bye byes".

Right now, Obama seems bent on being Nellie's new boy-toy, giving the old girl one last thrill. It takes a hard heart to deny them their moment of magic, doesn't it? DS

Here we go again

President Obama has decided to expedite the deployment of 30,000 additional American troops to Afghanistan over the next six months, in an effort to reverse the momentum of Taliban gains and create urgency for the government in Kabul to match the American surge with one using its own forces, according to senior administration officials. New York Times

More soldiers committed suicide this year than in any year for which we have complete records. But the military is now able to meet its recruitment goals because the young men and women who are signing up can’t find jobs in civilian life. The United States is broken — school systems are deteriorating, the economy is in shambles, homelessness and poverty rates are expanding — yet we’re nation-building in Afghanistan, sending economically distressed young people over there by the tens of thousands at an annual cost of a million dollars each. Bob Herbert NYT

David Seaton's News Links

I guess finally this is just who we are and what we do: go around killing people and blowing things up. If it wasn't Afghanistan it would be somewhere else.

"Looking on the Bright Side of Life", as the song puts it, at least while pouring sand endlessly down the Afghan rat hole, the US armed forces will be too overstretched to contemplate a war with Iran and since a war with Iran might send the world economy right over the edge into the pit, I suppose it is just as well to keep them puttering uselessly around Afghanistan and out of any real trouble.

And in keeping with my Pollyanna mood, I suppose that although quite a few human beings will get killed and maimed in this thing, Afghans mostly, but Americans too, there wont be nearly as many humans killed and maimed as there would be in a war with Iran.

In short, if the US armed forces really have to be somewhere, killing somebody, better Afghanistan.

They used to say about the Bourbon royal family that they "learned nothing and forgot nothing", but it looks like the USA is going the Bourbons one better by forgetting everything and learning nothing. 

More than decadent the USA is beginning to look and act senile. DS

Abu Dabi, Dooby Dubai... Doowah

News Item: Tremors from the shock request by Dubai’s flagship government-owned holding company for a debt standstill spread through global equity markets on Friday, triggering a sell-off in Asia and heavy losses on Wall Street. Financial Times

Bye bye, Dubai by night

Got a handful of nothin'
And I watch it like a hawk
Well I'm doin' OK
I'm livin' in a great big way
Living in a Great Big Way
Dorothy Fields / Jimmy McHugh

David Seaton's News Links

The world comes unraveled in funny places sometimes, like Sarajevo in 1914 or a Polish frontier post in 1939 or in the bedroom where Mr. and Mrs. bin Laden once made Osama. Now, mostly because of the clever ways that debt has been "structured", the fickle index finger of the invisible hand may have suddenly arisen in Dubai.

I wouldn't go so far as to say that Dubai is a godforsaken place; because Dubai, being in the Middle East, probably has much more God than it can possibly digest, but certainly it is not the sort of place where you would imagine that the world would begin to unravel... However, it may turn out to be that kind of place and we will soon know.

If you don't follow finance the following random press selection will get you up to speed:

• Dubai debt move 'carefully planned': top official - AFP
  
• Castles in the sand - Guardian
• Dubai: Derivative-based hedging, loan syndication clouds ultimate exposures - MarketWatch
• Dubai, Abu Dhabi And Debt - Forbes
• Now British banks face fresh crisis after investing billions - Daily Mail

So this week we will be reading a lot about Dubai and we will find out if Abu Dabi has enough money to pay off Dubai's debt and save the world financial system from another collapse.

I have no deathless words to add to this cacophony, I simply want to be recorded as on of the passenger list when the Titanic hits the iceberg.

Mark Twain said that truth was stranger than fiction, because fiction had to make sense.

I think I'll leave it at that. DS

Thanksgiving in the White House.

"Obama is more like a cold shower."
Maureen Dowd

"Whose side is Obama on?"
Steven Pearlstein - Washington Post

David Seaton's News Links

Disenchantment seems to have set in among the formerly enchanted.

Like mushrooms sprouting after a rain, all of a sudden dozens of articles have appeared from among some of Barack Obama's most fervent supporters criticizing  the president; not just his policies, but his personality too.

That is what interests me, the disappointed supporters, I don't pay much attention to the ultra-right frothing at the mouth; I only wish that Barack Obama was half the evil socialist that the teabaggers make him out to be. I am interested in this breaking of the spell and where it may lead.

I am surrounded by the formerly enchanted, most people I know, friends, family and the people I correspond with all belong to the enchanted. I, alas, having never been enchanted  have often felt like the poor little lame boy who could not run fast enough to follow the Pied Piper of Hamlin, when, as part of his debt collection policy, the piper took away all of Hamlin's children and left the wistful little cripple alone without his dear playmates.

So I am a bit at a loss to find so many of my old chums straggling back, apparently having weighed up the piper and found him somehow wanting.

I use the word "enchanted" and talk about "pipers" because since I don't fancy myself smarter than everybody else I feel that a spell has been cast on everyone and I have somehow been mysteriously spared from its mind-clouding effects

I am still where I started with Barack Obama. I still don't know who he is. Nearly a year has past and I still find him mysterious. His actions don't give me any more clues than his words do. Things don't fit, don't fall into place.

I tend to believe that the truth is just lying there staring you in the face most of the time and that it is very  difficult just to see the obvious. To counteract this I often practice the art of "what-you-see-is-what-you-gettism" to good effect. So using that method I have come to a tentative conclusion. Nothing fantastic, it's very simple and it goes like this.

Barack Obama, in my opinion, has an almost supernatural gift which enables people to project all their fantasies on him. The teabaggers think he is Lenin cum the anti-Christ and his supporters think of him as Lincoln cum the Christ-Christ. They all see and hear exactly the same things, but up till now, at least, they all see and hear what they want to: they, not Obama, do most of the real work.

This is the essence of Obama's magic: to be a screen on which one and all can write their dreams or nightmares. Or like the clouds which seem to take shapes that different people see differently.

If we removed Obama's fabulous "gift" for a moment and imagined the same actions taken by a president without it, we would simply see a three year US senator, who spent most of that time running for president, someone who did a bit of time in a state senate, someone who, except for having lived abroad as a child, has no particular experience in foreign affairs, who has never managed any organization before in his life, who has never even worked as a junior executive in any large organizations before, whose staff is a pick-up team of individuals that come from previous administrations, not people he has discovered in long years in public office, with even the men closest to him, Axelrod and Emmanuel on loan from Chicago's Mayor Daley.

So just imagine the same presidency without the "gift".

Without the "gift", his indecisiveness and ineffectual stumbling from "historic" speech to "historic" speech with nothing achieved between speeches would be seen as perfectly normal. What would you expect?

Of course reality being as inconveniently obtrusive as it is, even the "gift" is not enough.

It doesn't surprise me that people of the left are waking up, they are supposed to be smart. I am waiting for the right to wake up too and realize that their nightmares are no more likely to materialize than the liberal's dreams. That might get him reelected.

I wonder when Obama himself will wake up. Maybe he has, maybe that is why the charm seems to be breaking. DS