The Sword of Damocles

The sword of Damocles

David Seaton's News Links
I was surprised that Maureen Dowd, of all people, led me to a encyclopedic page of virulently anti-Obama material. Was this advance damage control or just subtly presented, advance damage? Who knows.

The Internet, as I'm sure you all know by now, is buzzing with rumors of the famous Michelle Obama, "whitey" tape, of which the link of Maureen Dowd's provides this description:

For about 30 minutes, Michelle Obama launched into a rant about the evils of America, and how America is to blame for the problems of Africa. Michelle personally blamed President Clinton for the deaths of millions of Africans and said America is responsible for the genocide of the Tutsis and other ethnic groups. She then launched into an attack on "whitey", and talked about solutions to black on black crime in the realm of diverting those actions onto white America. Her rant was fueled by the crowd: they reacted strongly to what she said, so she got more passionate and enraged, and that's when she completely loses it and says things that have made the mouths drop of everyone who's seen this.

The "tape" is a DVD that Trinity United sold on its website, and possibly offered free for download up until March 2008 when Trinity's site was scrubbed and the DVDs were no longer offered for sale.

The first question is, does the "tape" actually exist?

I would imagine it does, because, strictly as a rumor, this thing would have very short legs. It certainly wouldn't affect the election if the tape never appeared.

There is a certain plausibility in Obamfile's version, if you situate yourself in July 2004, at a conference of Jesse Jackson's Rainbow/Push Coalition, when according to Obamafile, all this is supposed to have happened, then some of the things she is accusing Bill Clinton of are quite reasonable and part of progressive discourse at that time.

For example, it is true that Bill Clinton never moved a finger to stop the massacres in Rwanda. The information became known in April of 2004, and quite a few well informed black people... and not so black people, rebuked him bitterly for it.

However if the rest of what the website says is true and the tape exists, when and if it is released, then that will be the end of Barack Obama's campaign. It will all be over but the shouting.

I think the United States is certainly ready to elect an African-American, Obama's success to date proves that, but probably they are not prepared to elect one who appears to be of the radical left to boot.

And if, as the website Maureen Dowd links to says,

Her rant was fueled by the crowd: they reacted strongly to what she said, so she got more passionate and enraged, and that's when she completely loses it and says things that have made the mouths drop of everyone who's seen this.

Then middle-America will have nightmare visions of Obama's Inaugural Ball... and frankly, I don't think middle-America is ready for that yet.

Middle-America has up till now been enchanted with someone who seems to them to combine the gravitas of Colin Powell and the unthreatening charm of Will Smith, with just a dash added of Doctor King's noble rhetoric and delivery. In short someone who embodies all that white America loves in black America and none of the things they fear and loathe. Catharsis. We all live happily ever after.

That the Obama camp is taking so seriously what is only at the moment a rumor, (and a rumor that will fade and die harmlessly if no tape, in fact, exists) then it would appear that the tape's release is imminent. (For what imminent release means, see below.) Otherwise they are only giving body to baseless calumny. Some of what they are planning to do is frankly a little sinister. According to Time:

Obama is enlisting his millions of supporters to help him hunt down and quash these stories, just as those supporters helped him turn his insurgent campaign into a history-making juggernaut.

How exactly are these "millions of supporters" going to "hunt down" and "quash"? Are we talking about out and out intimidation?

Time continues:

Near each rumor will be a fight-back button, offering suggestions as to where and how Obama supporters can call or e-mail to counter the rumors. The site will also have a spot where Obama supporters can alert the campaign to any new rumors they may be seeing on the Web or in their mailboxes or hearing on the telephone.

I think the "fight-back button" is a huge mistake, this is a Skinneristic wet dream for every electronic prankster in America. This would be like an electronic version of a village bullfight, called a capea in Spain, (what they call in South America, a pachanga), with all the local boys risking their lives to lure the bull.

Assuming the tape exists, who are "they" and when would "they" release the tape?

I see four possibilities:

• Hillary: If she has it, she'll find someone to release it in time for the super-delegates to change their minds with decorum. If the tape appears very soon, shedunnit.

• McCain: If he has it, he'll release it in the fall, probably the classic "October Surprise". In time for the voters to see it and digest it, but not early enough for Obama to make a Checkers Speech.
  

• Reverend Wright: If as they say, the tape was in the Trinity Church catalog, Wright will have some copies lying around for sure. He has access and motive. If he releases it, he'll will do it either right before or during the Democratic convention. So that all hell breaks loose and he can sit back and laugh and laugh as those super-delegates tie themselves into knots.

• Some fifteen year old kid will launch it from his bedroom computer to impress his friends... Any time he and they get bored. Thus is history written.
  

As I said, either the tape exists or it doesn't... If it doesn't, the rumor itself won't hurt Obama because, as they say in Spanish, "what doesn't kill you makes you fat". DS


BTW: Now even Muammar Qaddafi is getting into the act. Here is this from the BBC website:

"The statements of our Kenyan brother of American nationality Obama on Jerusalem... show that he either ignores international politics and did not study the Middle East conflict or that it is a campaign lie," he said.

"We fear that Obama will feel that, because he is black with an inferiority complex, this will make him behave worse than the whites."

"This will be a tragedy," Qaddafi said. "We tell him to be proud of himself as a black and feel that all Africa is behind him."

How is that for perverse? Qaddafi has strange taste in clothes for sure, but he is very shrewd and I am sure he knows how his remarks will play on Fox. DS

Bush the Transfomer

(Obama) will have to embrace our national sense of uniqueness and give voice to what Ronald Reagan said of us: “You can call it mysticism if you want to, but I have always believed that there was some divine plan that placed this great continent between two oceans to be sought out by those who were possessed of an abiding love of freedom and a special kind of courage.” Dick Morris

What does he offer? First and foremost: his face. Think of it as the most effective potential re-branding of the United States since Reagan. Such a re-branding is not trivial—it’s central to an effective war strategy. Andrew Sullivan

Magical thinking is a common phase in child development. From the age of a toddler to early school age children will often link the outside world with their internal consciousness, e.g. "It is raining because I am sad".(...) Another form of magical thinking occurs when people believe that words can directly affect the world. This can mean avoiding talking about certain subjects ("speak of the devil and he'll appear"), using euphemisms instead of certain words, or believing that to know the "true name" of something gives one power over it, or that certain chants, prayers or mystical phrases will change things. More generally, it is magical thinking to take a symbol to be its referent. Wikipedia

David Seaton's News Links
For a people once known for their practical, empirical approach to problem solving, today's Americans seem eager to take comfort in evading reality. Eight years of Bush have done great damage to America's inflated image of itself... but probably not enough damage for our own good.

That's why I think it's a shame that Bush can't be president for a least eight years more. In the same way that forty years of Franco's rule was the bitter aversion therapy that finally produced the peaceful, tolerant moderate, open, liberal Spain of today... in a land that had made the word "inquisition" famous; so the Bush years seem to have planted some seeds that, properly nurtured, might actually produce a lucid, practical, American left.

But, alas, I'm afraid that the temptation to continued self-hypnosis may be too great for Americans to resist. DS

"Give us a break!", they said. So I did.

David Seaton's News Links
Studying the affairs of the world is to be reminded daily of Lord Acton's dictum that, "great men are bad men"... Earning one's bread and cheese by focusing on their struggles around the trough is a drain on the spirit.

Blessed be the happy entomologist, sprawled in the mire, devoting his life to studying the purposeful goings and comings of the dung beetle.

Nothing there that doesn't wash off with water.

Time for a pause. Sniff the flowers. Get a life.

Yesterday, the eleven year old son of a friend of mine, whose web page I was helping to put together, introduced me to the work of this Argentinian artist "Blublu", whom he considers extremely cool. The little man is right.

The piece I've inlined above is the most creative and imaginative animation I can think of. In less than seven minutes this grafitero uses up more ideas than most other artists have in years. Enjoy! DS

Take, eat this Valium

“... I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; this was the moment when we ended a war and secured our nation and restored our image as the last, best hope on earth. This was the moment — this was the time — when we came together to remake this great nation so that it may always reflect our very best selves and our highest ideals.” Barack Obama

David Seaton's News Links
I confess I cannot understand how someone who dares to use this type of language is not greeted with a shower of tomatoes -- as any horticulturist knows, it is hard to find horse manure in sufficient quantity these days -- or at least with raucous horse laughter.

To employ this tone with a straight face, one has to be either the most cynical demagogue who has ever graced our fair Republic, or bat shit crazy... or both.

People are lining up to vote for him?

No problem, we are talking about the same folks that first chose John Kerry as electable and then reelected George W. Bush.

Your honor I rest my case.

Quite logically, several of my readers have asked me, that since I think Obama is such a sinister figure, who then do I suggest voting for. I am very flattered they ask.

Look, I am just standing around here on my street corner ranting, you're on your own, but, if you really are interested in my opinion, this is how I see it.

I am always joking about my "inner Lenin" and, like Humpty Dumpty in Through a Looking Glass, "when I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less," however, one of the meanings could be the steady, unyielding pursuit of transformation and great tactical inventiveness and flexibility in designing the route to that goal.

What is the goal?

My goal, in any other country, would be as mild as sparkling rosé, but in the United States of America it is as corrosive as white lightening. What, in any other rich and highly developed country, would be only mild and natural reform, in the USA would rival the October Revolution. I am talking about creating a welfare state on the Scandinavian model on America's fair shores: womb to tomb, from sea to shining sea.

On the rocky road to that paradise of social justice, one figure, soon to be of blessed memory, has been been a true giant of transformation: George W. Bush.

People don't give President Bush enough credit... Nobody has ever gotten more Americans of all ages reading Noam Chomsky and his ilk and asking awkward questions about what the United States really is and what it is really doing, than George W. Bush.

Ugly though he is, Bush reeks of reality.

Obviously the empty and rhythmic strokes of Barack Obama's sterile, red-herring, Lampedusan rhetoric is the system's way of draining the life out of all that Chomskian curiosity, of siphoning off all that energy and of lobotomizing all that restlessness. Marcuse's word made flesh.

"Change we can believe in" bears the same resemblance to real change as Disneyland's "Main Street USA", has to the downtown of a real, American, rust belt village: it is just another shrink-wrapped, vacuum packed, pre-digested, pre-sanitized, 'just add water and stir', American "experience".

Real change in the United States will come from within the society itself or it will never come at all. People's heads have to change and only they can change them.

The system itself will never "heal" anything.

The system is corrupt and decadent... The trained seal performance of the candidates for the world's most powerful office, as they groveled before AIPAC, should erase any doubts in that respect.

The culture must transform itself, this is the time for artists, intellectuals and philosophers to step forward, not peddlers of vacuous drivel. A truly great novel, an essay or a film or the appearance of another MLK might change America much more than a hundred president Obamas.

What to do in November?

Irreparable hardship must be avoided, especially for women: in order to keep the Republicans from appointing the Supreme Court justices that would shoot down Roe vs. Wade, I recommend voting for Democrats straight down the line for the Congress and Senate.

The Democrats should have a majority sufficient to block those Supreme Court Neanderthals and to override a presidential veto and pass a true health care package, mandates and all.

For President, McCain. If he could work with Russ Feingold and Teddy Kennedy, he should be able to survive in such an environment

Since, sadly, the old fellow seems quite a sensible chap, I don't imagine he will lead so many Americans to reading Chomsky as Dubya has, but he may come close to that "third term" we need so badly in order to bring the goal of true social change just another step closer. DS

John Kass: Obama's mettle was forged in city's dubious furnace - Chicago Tribune Abstract: International change agent Barack Obama stood in Daley Plaza on Friday and paid public fealty to the political machine boss who holds this city in a wrought iron fist. Obama waxed happily about Chicago possibly hosting the 2016 Olympics and joked about finishing his second term as U.S. president and hanging out with the boss, Mayor Richard Daley, a fellow who doesn't mind great change in Washington, as long as Chicago remains impervious to reform. "In the interest of full disclosure, I only live two blocks away from where the Olympics are going to kick off in 2016, and so I am just going to be able to walk over there. I might have to rent my house," Obama said, meaning the house he bought when he was pals with Tony Rezko, not the White House where he'll be living. "I don't know how much it's going to be worth."(...) These days, with vague Orwellian slogans like "change" and polling and a national media obviously in thrall with him, there seems to be an effort to ignore Obama's Chicago political connections, to consider him as having been hatched, perhaps immaculately from a floating soap bubble, spotless and clean to the world. But Chicago was where he was boiled down and honed, where the community organizer was rendered, where the politically independent junior senator began cozying up to the Daleys and their machine and the new presidential Barack was formed. Illinois politics are dirty and slimy and known to all, but I'm sure Arizona politics aren't all that clean either, not when it comes to federal military land swaps for developer friends and fundraisers of Republican John McCain. McCain has the war hero record, but he's also got SunCor Development Co. hanging around his neck. USA Today reported that he helped secure millions in federal funds for a land acquisition program that benefited a developer whose executives were big-time political donors. If true, it sounds like a story that could have come out of Illinois politics, right out of our own state GOP, with the boss hog Republicans cutting deals with City Hall Democrats, everybody's head in the trough except for the taxpayers who fill it. READ IT ALL

Al Naqba-lite

Arab leaders and commentators reacted with anger and disbelief at Obama's speech -- the worst thing to happen to us since the 1967 Six-Day War (in which they lost the West Bank and East Jerusalem to Israel), said Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator. Arnaud de Borchgrave - UPI

David Seaton's News Links

The coming years ahead are going to be fraught with danger.

The possibility of an economic crisis rivaling the 1930s and wars of every type, in every clime loom before us.

Whatever the American dream is or ever was, in the near future it will have to "split the difference" with the "Chinese Dream"... whatever that might be.

Steadiness and predictability become cardinal virtues in the midst of such poisonous complexity.

I think the last thing that America and the world need at this moment is a content-free, US president-lite, bereft of principals or experience.

That he might also be "charismatic" would make it even worse: in fact much, much, worse...

Can you imagine how much worse it would have been if George Bush, besides being incompetent, had also been "charismatic"?

Many people in America and around the world are projecting their hopes and dreams on Barack Obama... his AIPAC performance proves that those hopes and dreams are misplaced. DS

Sandy Tolan: "Undivided" Allegiance: The Meaning of Obama's AIPAC Moment - Huffington Post Abstract: Obama's AIPAC speech sent shock waves throughout much of the Arab World, where the prospect of an African-American president with a rich international background seemed, to them, to promise a more balanced U.S. policy in the Middle East. "A slap in the face," said the Kuwaiti paper al-Watan. "An oath of allegiance by the U.S. presidency to AIPAC," declared the Lebanese opposition paper, Al-Safir. Others downplayed the remark, believing that any Democratic administration will be an improvement over eight years of Bush policy. Former Palestinian labor secretary Ghassan Khatib said Obama's speech "stressed more that anything else his intention to engage, which is the most important need." And Obama, a day after the speech, attempted to soften his remarks, saying, "Obviously it's going to be up to the parties to negotiate a range of these issues. And Jerusalem will be part of those negotiations." Yet he added that Israel has a "legitimate claim" to all of Jerusalem, a comment which will do little to tamp down Arab anxieties. Why, then, would Obama, with all the expectation of a more even-handed presidency, and the promise to help repair the U.S.'s shredded image in the Arab and Muslim worlds, seek, in the words of Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat, to be "more Israeli than the Israelis"? Part of the answer may boil down to crude electoral politics, especially in Florida, where Obama's strategists seem to be calculating that the five percent of Jewish voters there could swing the entire election for the Democrats. But in deeper ways, Obama seems to be running as fast as he can from the friendships and affinities he has developed and expressed for Arabs in the past, including his statement in Iowa early in the campaign that "no one is suffering more than the Palestinians." The senator's AIPAC "corrective" is an effort -- stay tuned for more -- to be less like the "other," and more like "us." But are "we" truly so narrow-minded as to reject the aspirations of all such "others", or to ever consider their hopes and dreams? Apparently, Obama, tacking right, thinks the answer is yes. READ IT ALL

Progressive Obamites... Sucker!

After all, he doesn't see the region much differently than President Bush does.

In the heat of the Democratic primary campaign, some on the left were inspired to believe that Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) offered a far-reaching transformation of U.S. foreign policy, "the most sweeping liberal foreign-policy critique we've heard from a serious presidential contender in decades," as one particularly breathless article in the American Prospect put it. Yet, when Mr. Obama opened his general election campaign this week with a major speech on Middle East policy, the substantive strategy he outlined was, in many respects, not very much different from that of the Bush administration -- or that of Republican Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). (emphasis mine)
Mr. Obama's Middle East - Editorial - Washington Post

David Seaton's News Links
I really can't understand how anyone can be a passionate Democrat... It's like being a devoted fan of one of those transient, itinerant American baseball and basketball teams like the Boston-Milwaukee-Atlanta Braves or the Utah "Jazz"... ("Utah"... "Jazz"?)... I've put the logo of the Brooklyn Dodgers as a symbol of betrayal... I don't think any team in the world, not even Real Madrid, Manchester United or FC-Barcelona -- to name some of the most fanatic -- ever had more loyal fans than the people of Brooklyn, but the management, flipped them the finger and moved to LA.

Like the man said,

"The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It ... has left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous “cash payment”

Nothing better than the story of the Dodgers to illustrate that paragraph.

Compared to the story of the Brooklyn Dodgers, I suppose Barack Obama's selling the Palestinian people downriver pales in comparison, but it does raise a few awkward questions about the brand, doesn't it?

"Coca Cola sells shoe polish"... the phrase jars on the ear doesn't it? A shoeshine is, or is not a "pause that refreshes"? A brand stands for something or it isn't a brand.

The Republicans are easy to figure out, the old British phrase sums up the underlying values perfectly.

Bugger you Jack, I'm alright!

To be more inclusive, things like guns and God and "the right to life" (of fetuses, not actual people) are tacked on, but basically its about possession and stinginess. Certainly you know what you're in for with the GOP. If you are "alright" they offer a coherent program and a way forward.

But what in God's name do the Democrats stand for if not for collective masturbation. DS

From Said to Likud: a change you better believe in

From left to right, Michelle Obama, then Illinois state senator Barack Obama, Columbia University Professor Edward Said and Mariam Said at a May 1998 Arab community event in Chicago at which Edward Said gave the keynote speech. (Image from archives of Ali Abunimah, Tip of hat to Mike Doyle)

David Seaton's News Links
It might be a little exaggerated to say that I worshiped Edward Said... but not much. I can't think of any contemporary intellectual that helped me more to find my feet, whose essays, articles and books, especailly "Orientalism", helped me more to structure my political views and make sense of the world I live in than those of Edward Said. I find it difficult to accept that he is dead... I miss reading him so much.

However, there certainly must be some compensations in being dead... Not having to hear Barack Obama award Jerusalem to Israel as its undivided capital, for example. Edward Said was born in Jerusalem.

In the photo above, we see Barack Obama sitting at Edward Said's right hand, literally breaking bread with him: having the honor of sitting at his table, gaining the prestige of his attention. Ten years ago Barack Obama spoke out in favor of the rights of Palestinians. These views helped give him his first constituency.

I don't think it is exaggerated to say that in some sense Barack Obama has used Edward Said to get to the AIPAC platform, in order to award Said's city of birth to the oppressors of his people in defiance of international law. This is simply betrayal. Anyone who loved and appreciated Edward Said's life and work should be mortally offended in his name.

There are many who seem to think that Barack Obama is a deep thinker, filled with principals and ideas that will lead America and the world to green pastures: personally I think he is a vile and unprincipled opportunist and, if given the chance, I am sure he will break the hearts and make fools of the young people who treat him as a savior.

In this I find him even worse than George W. Bush. Bush at least gives me the impression that he believes the garbage he spouts... he has that minimum integrity... Obama not even that.

Perhaps the gods have not yet totally abandoned America, and we will be spared the rule of this word weaving hypocrite. DS

How Barack Obama learned to love Israel - The Electronic Intifada
Abstract: Over the years since I first saw Obama speak I met him about half a dozen times, often at Palestinian and Arab-American community events in Chicago including a May 1998 community fundraiser at which Edward Said was the keynote speaker. In 2000, when Obama unsuccessfully ran for Congress I heard him speak at a campaign fundraiser hosted by a University of Chicago professor. On that occasion and others Obama was forthright in his criticism of US policy and his call for an even-handed approach to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. (...) The last time I spoke to Obama was in the winter of 2004 at a gathering in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. He was in the midst of a primary campaign to secure the Democratic nomination for the United States Senate seat he now occupies. But at that time polls showed him trailing. As he came in from the cold and took off his coat, I went up to greet him. He responded warmly, and volunteered, "Hey, I'm sorry I haven't said more about Palestine right now, but we are in a tough primary race. I'm hoping when things calm down I can be more up front." He referred to my activism, including columns I was contributing to the The Chicago Tribune critical of Israeli and US policy, "Keep up the good work!"(...) If disappointing, given his historically close relations to Palestinian-Americans, Obama's about-face is not surprising. He is merely doing what he thinks is necessary to get elected and he will continue doing it as long as it keeps him in power. Palestinian-Americans are in the same position as civil libertarians who watched with dismay as Obama voted to reauthorize the USA Patriot Act, or immigrant rights advocates who were horrified as he voted in favor of a Republican bill to authorize the construction of a 700-mile fence on the border with Mexico. Only if enough people know what Obama and his competitors stand for, and organize to compel them to pay attention to their concerns can there be any hope of altering the disastrous course of US policy in the Middle East. READ IT ALL

Obama commits to eternal war

Any agreement with the Palestinian people must preserve Israel's identity as a Jewish state, with secure, recognized and defensible borders. Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided," he said. (emphasis mine)

Israel calls the city its undivided and eternal capital, but this status has never been recognized internationally. Palestinians want East Jerusalem, captured by Israel at war in 1967, for a future capital." Barack Obama, speaking to AIPAC, June, 4th, 2008 - Reuters

David Seaton's News Links
First things first.

No Palestinian leader is ever going to sign any agreement giving an "undivided" Jerusalem to Israel, because if he did so he would be signing his own death sentence. Not only would no Palestinian ever accept it, no Muslim anywhere in the world would ever accept it either.

That means that with Barack Obama as president there is no hope for peace in the Middle East. Absolutely that simple.

One thing is to guarantee Israel's existence or threaten Iran with sanctions or even attack, and quite another is to commit the United States to a policy which mortally offends every Muslim in the world... forever and ever, amen.

By choosing to award a holy city disputed by two religions exclusively to one of the religions, Barack Obama, having no other legitimacy to make that gift than America's military force, is committing the United States of America to a role in a religious war, as a belligerent in that war. By making this commitment, Barack Obama is literally declaring jihad against Islam... forever and ever, amen.

Doing this legitimizes Islamic radicals and terrorists everywhere... forever and ever, amen.

By endorsing this position, which is totally outside international law, Barack Obama has forfeited any credibility he might have ever had to provide a new direction to American foreign policy. DS

AIPAC day in Washington

It was Christmas Day in the harem,

The eunuchs were all standing round,

With dozens of naked women

All scattered on the ground;

When in came the mighty Sultan

To gaze at his marble halls.

He said: "What do you want for Christmas lads?"

And the eunuchs they all shouted:

"TIDINGS OF COMFORT AND JOY..."

David Seaton's News Links
It was AIPAC day in Washington and all the candidates were standing round...

Rather than rant on tiresomely, I thought I would just collage the whole thing. DS

Jewish Telegraph Agency
As 5,000 AIPAC activists ascend Capitol Hill this week, they will be pushing a multifaceted agenda with a clear bottom line: It's the sanctions, stupid.

Some new wrinkles in the lobbying blitz that traditionally follows the annual American Israel Public Affairs Committee policy forum deal with the role of Arab nations in advancing Israel-Arab peace and with securing a pledged increase in U.S. assistance to Israel.(....)After two days of sessions heavily weighted toward considering the possibility of a nuclear threat, 5,000 of the 7,000 activists will head to 500 meetings on the Hill armed with talking points for a bill that has languished in the U.S. Senate since it passed overwhelmingly in the House of Representatives last year.

The Iran Counter Proliferation Act would expand existing sanctions by hitting companies and nations that deal with Iran's energy sector. It also would cut off Iran entirely from the U.S. finance system.

Bolstering that bill is a nonbinding resolution put forward last week by U.S. Reps. Gary Ackerman (D-N.Y.) and Mike Pence (R-Ind.). The resolution urges President Bush to immediately impose some of the sanctions in the Counter Proliferation Act and adds the new proposal: cut off the export of refined petroleum to Iran.

"Despite sitting on some of the largest oil reserves in the world, Iran has been forced to import 40 percent of its refined petroleum -- gasoline and diesel -- because of a lack of investment in its oil refining infrastructure," states the memo prepared for AIPAC activists. "Limiting Iran’s ability to import gasoline will severely impact Iran’s economy and could lead to dramatically greater domestic pressure on the regime to change course."

The language of the congressional resolution is sensitive to the political realities of a presidential campaign that has made the possibility of war against Iran a partisan issue: It explicitly counts out military action -- a point hammered home in the AIPAC talking points.

Asia Times
It has become relatively fashionable for some members of the Israeli lobby to deny any involvement in the build-up towards the war on Iraq. But few remember what AIPAC executive director Howard Kohr told the New York Sun in January 2003: "Quietly lobbying Congress to approve the use of force in Iraq was one of AIPAC's successes over the past year."

And in a New Yorker profile of Steven Rosen, AIPAC's policy director during the run-up to the war on Iraqi, it was stated that "AIPAC lobbied Congress in favor of the Iraqi war".

Compare it with a 2007 Gallup study based on 13 different polls, according to which 77% of American Jews were opposed to the Iraq war, compared to 52% of Americans.

The Forward
The Arizona senator received a standing ovation when he blasted Obama for not supporting a Senate resolution demanding the designation of Iranian Revolutionary Guard as a terror group.(...) On the issue of the Iraq war, McCain made an attempt to present the current situation in relation to Israel’s security, arguing that Obama’s call for a gradual troop reduction would cause a “catastrophe” that would “profoundly affect the security of the United States, Israel and our other friends.”

McCain’s reference to the possible danger a withdrawal would pose to Israel was greeted with applause from the audience. A similar case was made last year at the Aipac conference by both Vice President Dick Cheney and by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

Aipac’s annual policy conference, which is traditionally one of Washington’s biggest political events, is attracting even more media attention this year, due to the expected appearance of all three presidential candidates.

Wall Street Journal
Both Republicans and Democrats view Jewish-Americans as key swing voters in the presidential election. Jewish-Americans have leaned toward Democrats due to their liberal stances on domestic issues, such as abortion and immigration. But Sen. McCain's backers believe their candidate's hard-line approach to securing Israel could cause some Jewish-Americans to cross party lines.

The strategy to woo Jewish voters could be crucial in Florida, according to Adam Hasner, the majority leader in the state's House of Representatives, who is leading the McCain campaign's Jewish outreach there.

Joschka Fischer, Beirut Star
Although it is acknowledged in Israel that an attack on Iran's nuclear facilities would involve grave and hard-to-assess risks, the choice between acceptance of an Iranian bomb and an attempt at its military destruction, with all the attendant consequences, is clear. Israel won't stand by and wait for matters to take their course.

Arnaud De Borchgrave, Middle East Times
The Israeli air force has fine-tuned aerial bombardments of Iran's key nuclear facilities. But these number at least 27 that are widely scattered, and built underground close to population centers. Iran would then assume that such an operation could not take place without a green light from the White House. And the mullahs' formidable retaliatory capabilities with asymmetric warfare would then target the United States and its Persian Gulf allies. Oil at $400 wouldn't take long.

Nouriel Roubini
The Bush administration whose hands have been tied by the new National Intelligence Estimate (that argued that Iran had suspended its program of development of nuclear weapons) would thus be able to strike Iran – via Israel - before the end of its term. Such October surprise by Israel would also certainly lead to the election of McCain and defeat of Obama as a national security crisis of such an extent would doom the chances of Democrats to win the White House. So both Israel – that prefers McCain to Obama and is hurried to act as it is wary of the constraints that an Obama presidency may put on its ability to act against Iran – and the Bush administration would guarantee the election of McCain.

Now, it is not certain – as argued by Fischer – that Israel will strike that early; this is just a guess and a prediction by one observer even if many others think likewise. But if such action were to be taken by Israel the consequences outlined above would be the clear outcome: a major global recession, wars throughout the Middle East (Iran, Iraq, Gaza, Lebanon, Israel, etc.) and a major increase in geopolitical instability.

The Fifth Voyage of Sinbad the Sailor
When I was a little advanced into the island, I saw an old man who appeared very weak and feeble. He sat upon the bank of a stream, and at first I took him to be one who had been shipwrecked like myself. I went towards him and saluted him, but he only bowed his head a little. I asked him what he did there, but instead of answering he made a sign for me to take him upon my back and carry him over the brook, signifying that it was to gather fruit.

I believed him really to stand in need of my help, so took him upon my back, and having carried him over, bade him get down, and for that end stooped that he might get off with ease: but instead of that (which I laugh at every time I think of it), the old man, who to me had appeared very decrepit, clasped his legs nimbly about my neck, and then I perceived his skin to resemble that of a cow. He sat astride upon my shoulders, and held my throat so tight that I thought he would have strangled me, the fright of which made me faint away and fall down.

Notwithstanding my fainting, the ill-natured old fellow kept fast about my neck, but opened his legs a little to give me time to recover my breath. When I had done so, he thrust one of his feet against my stomach, and struck me so rudely on the side with the other, that he forced me to rise up against my will. Having got up, he made me walk under the trees, and forced me now and then to stop, to gather and eat fruit such as we found. He never left me all day, and when I lay down to rest by night, he laid himself down with me, always holding fast about my neck. Every morning he pushed me to make me wake, and afterwards obliged me to get up and walk, and pressed me with his feet. You may judge then what trouble I was in, to be loaded with such a burden as I could by no means rid myself of.

The swooping flight of the Oozlum

From the singing springs of an unseen bed,
To the silent velvet of an unseen box,
An errant flicker through the summer night:
Glowed, twittered and fed,
Incandescent, fluttering on the wings of a ticking clock.
The Fudd Haiku - Life

David Seaton's News Links
The great house of Dior has literally had to kowtow to China, and Sharon Stone is going to be out a huge amount of money for making her new-age, karma-babble, remarks about a disaster that has cost the lives of tens of thousands of Chinese.

Beyond the obvious, callous, stupidity of Ms. Stone's tuppenny-ha’penny, pseudo-Buddhist, blather, there lies an interesting point; an ideological fault line of ours stands exposed.

As part of our post-Cold War heritage, we have made it an article of faith that capitalism and democracy are joined together at the hip, that, in the words of Sammy Cahn, "dad was told by mother, you can't have one without the other", but to the contrary, today we are learning that in the words of Ira Gershwin, "it ain't necessarily so".

The Slovenian, philosopher-gadfly, Slavoj Zizek has written a very interesting contrarian article on the Tibetan question published in the International Herald Tribune. Here is a sample:

In recent years, the Chinese changed their strategy in Tibet: De-politicized religion is now tolerated, often even supported. The Chinese rely more on ethnic and economic colonization, rapidly transforming Lhasa into a Chinese capitalist Wild West with karaoke bars and Disney-like "Buddhist theme parks" for Western tourists.

What the media image of brutal Chinese soldiers and policemen terrorizing the Buddhist monks conceals is a far more effective American-style socioeconomic transformation. In a decade or two, Tibetans will be reduced to the status of Native Americans in the United States.

It seems the Chinese Communists finally learned the lesson: What is the oppressive power of secret police, camps and Red Guards destroying ancient monuments, compared to the power of unbridled capitalism to undermine all traditional social relations? The Chinese are doing what the West has always done, as Brazil did in the Amazon or Russia in Siberia, and the United States on its own western frontiers.

This takes us back to the Communist Manifesto:

The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It ... has left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous “cash payment” ... for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation

Zizek ends his article with these words:

There is a further paradox: What if the promised democratic second stage that follows the authoritarian valley of tears never comes? This is the most unsettling thing about China. There is the suspicion that its authoritarian capitalism is not merely a reminder of our past, the repetition of the process of capitalist accumulation, which in Europe went on from the 16th to the 18th century, but a sign of the future.

What if the "vicious combination of the Asian knout and the European stock market" proves economically more efficient than our liberal capitalism? Might it signal that democracy, as we understand it, is no longer a condition and motor of economic development, but an obstacle?

Although practically simultaneous, the "Enlightenment", the Encyclopedia, the Rights of Man and the French Revolution came before the Industrial Revolution and the advent of capitalism and although many seem to think so, there is no immovable reason to consider them of one flesh. Perhaps our age will see them all sorted out.

As to the Chinese:

People trained in Marxist-Leninism, the "36 Stratagems" and Sun Tzu as practical methods of operation and not as a way of wowing pretty young students, have no ideological "capital" invested in capitalism per se.

For them it surely nothing but a force, a "terrain of Yang" to be occupied to further their goals. Their main goal, in my opinion, is the full sovereignty of China, something which cannot coexist with American hegemony... I say "hegemony", not with American power or super power, but with American hegemony.

Knowing that capitalism is history's greatest solvent, they are inviting us to dissolve ourselves in our own invention. Sun Tzu, wherever he is, must be glowing in pride. To defeat an opponent without ever coming to battle is the height of his art.

We have confused the freedom to buy things with the freedom to say things and perhaps even to think certain things. If we are not to lose our way, we must face with sober senses, our real conditions of life, and our relations with our kind.

If, in fact, we really see Liberty as the true path to Equality and Fraternity. if we truly believe that every human being has a right to health, education and peace, then, instead of lecturing others on democracy, we had better mind our knitting. DS

We have the pressure, but where is the grace?

Laurel and Hardy - Way Out West (1937)
"Courage is grace under pressure." - Ernest Hemingway

David Seaton's News Links
The charming film clip that hovers above this post through the miracle of YouTube was made in 1937.

Grace, fun: the simple pleasure of life, preserved "forever".

Here below is a heavily edited list of other things that happened in 1937, copied and pasted from the miracle of Wikipedia:

• January 1 - Anastasio Somoza García becomes President of Nicaragua.
• January 31 - 31 people executed in the Soviet Union for alleged Trotskyism
• February 8 - Falangist troops take Málaga
• February 8-February 27, Battle of Jarama
• February 11 - A sit-down strike ends when General Motors recognizes the United Automobile Workers Union
• February 19 - During a public ceremony at the Viceregal Palace (the former Imperial residence) in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, two Eritrean nationalists attempt to kill viceroy Rodolfo Graziani with a number of grenades. The Italian security guard fire into the crowd of Ethiopian onlookers, and over the passing weeks indiscriminately slaughter native Ethiopians in reprisal.
• February 21 - The League of Nations Non-Intervention Committee ban on foreign nationals fighting in the Spanish Civil War.
• March - The first issue of the comic book Detective Comics is published in the United States. Twenty-seven issues later, Detective Comics would introduce Batman. The comic would go on to become the longest continually-published comic magazine in American history; it is still published as of 2007.
• March 10 - The Encyclical Mit brennender Sorge of pope Pius XI is published in Nazi Germany
• March 18 - In the worst school disaster in American history in terms of lives lost, the New London School in New London, Texas suffers a catastrophic natural gas explosion, killing in excess of three hundred students and teachers.
• March 26 - In Crystal City, Texas spinach growers erect a statue of the cartoon character Popeye.
• April 17 - Release of the animated short Porky's Duck Hunt, directed by Tex Avery for the Looney Tunes series, featuring the debut of Daffy Duck.
• April 26 - Spanish Civil War: Guernica, Spain is bombed. In his report of the Falangist attack on Guernica, British journalist George Steer reports that he had found German bomb casings, connecting Luftwaffe planes with the attack.
• May 6 - In United States, the German airship Hindenburg bursts into flame when mooring to a mast in Lakehurst, New Jersey.
• May 7 - Spanish Civil War: The German Condor Legion Fighter Group, equipped with Heinkel He 51 biplanes, arrives in Spain to assist Francisco Franco's forces.
• May 21 - As one of the reprisals for the attempted assassination of Italian viceroy Rodolfo Graziani, a detachment of Italian troops massacre the entire community of Debre Libanos. 297 monks and 23 laymen are killed.
• May 27 - In California, the Golden Gate Bridge opens to pedestrian traffic creating a vital link between San Francisco and Marin County.
• May 28 - Neville Chamberlain becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
• June 3 - Wallis Simpson and the former Edward VIII of the United Kingdom marry.
• July 1 - Gestapo arrests priest Martin Niemöller.
• July 2 - Amelia Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan disappear over New Guinea during Earhart's attempt to become the first woman to fly around the world.
• July 7 - Sino-Japanese War: Battle of Lugou Bridge - Japanese forces invade China. Often seen as the beginning of World War II in Asia
• July 24 - Alabama drops rape charges against the so-called "Scottsboro Boys."
• July 28 - IRA attempts bombing assassination against King George VI in Belfast.
• August 5 - Soviet Union commences one of the largest campaigns of the Great Purge, to "eliminate anti-Soviet element". Within the following year, at least 724,000 people were killed on order of troikas, many of them chosen for shooting by their ethnicity.
• August 6 - Falangist artillery bombards Madrid.
• September 2 - The Great Hong Kong Typhoon of 1937 killed an estimated 11,000 persons.
• September 5 - Spanish Civil War: The fall of Llanes.
• October 1 - Marijuana Tax Act in USA.
• October 3 - Japanese troops advance toward Nanking.
• October 13 - Germany, in a note to Brussels, guaranteed the inviolability and integrity of Belgium so long as the latter abstained from military action against Germany.
• October 15 - Ernest Hemingway's novel To Have and Have Not is first published.
• October 21 - The whole Spanish northern seaboard in the Falangists' hands.
• November 5 - Spanish Civil War - Massacre of Republican supporters in Piedrafita de Babia, near León. Possibly 35,000 executed.
• November 5 - World War II: In the Reich Chancellery, Adolf Hitler holds a secret meeting and states his plans for acquiring "living space" for the German people.
• November 6 - Italy joins Anti-Comintern Pact.
• November 9 - Japanese troops take Shanghai.
• December 11 - Italy withdraws from the League of Nations.
• December 12 - Mae West makes a risque guest appearance on the NBC Chase and Sanborn Hour that eventually results in her being banned from radio.
• December 13 - Battle of Nanjing ends and the Nanjing Massacre begins. Japanese troops would slaughter over 250,000 civilians and prisoners over three months.
• December 21 - Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the first feature-length animated cartoon, opens and becomes a smash hit.

What is the point of this juxtaposition?

First it is reminder that, no matter how bad you think this year is, that year was much, much worse.

But, it is also a reminder we aren't producing (not us, not anybody) the kind of art that was produced that year.

Athough Wikipedia's list does mention the debut of Daffy Duck, they don't get around to mentioning Pablo Picasso's painting "Guernica".

Jean Renoir made "The Grand Illusion". Over in Japan, Ozu made, "What did the Lady Forget". Tolkien published, "The Hobbit" in 1937. None on the list.

It was a busy year. DS

Unpotted Harry Potter

"The Story Teller" - Wil Cormier

David Seaton's News Links
I've had people ask me why I think the story of Stanley Anne Dunham, Barack Obama's mother, is of any general interest.

What got me started was the very human and complementary piece that Eric Stone wrote in his blog about her. What interested me most was that it was personal, first hand observation, unfiltered by the great "story teller" himself.

Since Obama is simultaneously Harry Potter and J.K. Rowling, any information about Obama that Obama hasn't already pre-chewed for us is of interest.

The interest is to check cold reality against a well told story.

"I went to school with Harry Potter and man he couldn't make himself invisible or nothing and Vernon and Petunia Dursley are real nice people and I sat next to their kid Dudley in algebra and he was the coolest kid in school."

Something like that might hurt sales.

Obama is, in fact, almost nothing more than Obama's story, Obama's words, Obama's speeches.

The other candidates (all that have contested the primaries in both parties) have public CVs not "stories", so what their mamas were like is not very relevant.... They all have obviously survived them.

The reason Stanley Anne is important is that all the buzz about Obama is from the stories Obama tells about Obama, not about the things that Obama has done publicly.

Let me remind you that someone is coming very close to getting his hands on the atomic bomb, strictly on the strength of a well told story.

Popular wisdom has it that "talk is cheap" and that "actions speak louder than words," but it seems that Hollywood has finally leached that simple common sense from the American mind. DS

The Oozlum protocol

David Seaton's News Links
Yesterday, I wrote about Stanley Anne, Barack Obama's mother.

Her life and the life of her children, which, if you have lived in expatriate communities as much as I have, are not that unusual or exotic, sadden me. Some unbreachable loneliness, some endless purging of context, of freedom as a curse more than as a blessing.

All of it is deeply familiar to me and it brings back memories of dozens of Americans: families, broken, half-families and wandering individuals that I have known over the years. Some of them, when I ever think of them, I miss. Ships that pass in the night. Many farewell dinners. Too many.

Take my true love by her hand lead her through the town
Say goodbye to everyone goodbye to everyone

She and her children are people I could have easily known; I think I would have liked Stanley Anne and I imagine she would have liked me too; intelligent, flakey people with a sense of humor often have.

Being a Celt, certain types of sadness are pleasurable for me in a way similar to the Portuguese "saudade," and I tend to nurse melancholic feelings along to see what juice they have in them.... Melancholy is like the dear pig, all of whom, except for his death screams, is either useful or delicious.

Thinking about Stanley Anne and ruminating on the sadness her story dredges out of me, I remembered something that Felipe González, the former president of Spain, and an extremely intelligent and perceptive man, once said about Americans.

I'm quoting from memory, González said something like, "Americans are sad people, I find them touching" (me enternecen). My first reaction was to find his remark condescending and offensive, but after thinking about it at length, I decided he was right.

What is this sadness, where does it come from, what is it about?

Everybody, even Thomas Friedman, has read that bit in the Communist Manifesto, describing the action of capitalism on society that goes, "All that is solid melts into air" The full paragraph goes like this:

The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It ... has left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous “cash payment” ... for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation ... Constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones ... All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses, his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind. (emphasis mine)

Taking that as my text, I would preach that as America is and always has been the absolute vanguard and the world's most enthusiastic advocate of capitalism, logically no other people have ever felt capitalism's effects half as directly or half as powerfully as Americans have. If we add to that the deracination of the process of immigration, then we also talking about people who have had all the defenses and the retarding effects of "feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations" already stripped from them when they arrived. More than even the British who invented it, Americans therefore stand naked before the forces that "melt all that is solid into air" with all that is holy profaned.

That leaves the American "at last compelled to face with sober senses, his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind". How to avoid that self-examination is the central task that Americans have set for themselves.

This has led to a frantic search for new "veils of religious and political illusions" to make all of this contemplation of "his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind" bearable.

The man and his companion whose statue grace this post are symbols of an industrial effort at distraction from the "naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation" and the "uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation" which make up the actual warp and woof of our lives.

The consolation would be that since American society has advanced far further on this road than any other, if capitalism is ever to take the path of the Oozlum Bird*, it will be in America first. DS

*The Oozlum bird, also spelled Ouzelum, is a Legendary Creature found in Australian and British folk tales and legends. Some versions have it that, when startled, the bird will take off and fly around in ever-decreasing circles until it manages to fly up itself, disappearing completely, which adds to its rarity. Other sources state that the bird flies backwards so that it can admire its own beautiful tail feathers, or because while it does not know where it is going, it likes to know where it has been.

Eric Stone's story: " ME AND OBAMA'S MAMA"

Stanley Anne Dunham Suntoro

David Seaton's News Links
The Internet is nothing if not serendipitous. My wife, who is a painter and a graphic artist, was running a search in Google images, using the string, "kitsch". An amusing photograph of a little statue of Chairman Mao accompanied by the "see no, hear no, speak no" monkeys turned up and she followed the link, which led her to the blog of a writer, Eric Stone.

"Hey, take a look", cried my better half, "you'll be interested in this, here is somebody who says he knew Obama's mother". She was right, I was interested.

The personage, the myth of Barack Obama has been so carefully stroked, stoked and crafted, that to bump into anything spontaneous, unrehearsed and untainted by manipulation anywhere around it is a real find. Like a collector of rare beetles or old 78s, I was galvanized.

Here are some quotes, if you want it uncut, you can read it here.

(snip) I met Ann Sutoro when I was working for Asian Business magazine and interviewing people for a cover story on what the private sector can do to help alleviate poverty. She was an economic anthropologist working for Bank Rakyat Indonesia, the rural development bank of the country. She was in charge of the bank's microfinance program.(snip) I liked her, a lot, the moment I met her. We became friendly and for several years, whenever I was in Jakarta I'd give her a call. We'd have a drink, a meal, hang out talking in her beautiful house in Jakarta. She had a great, quirky, sense of humor, was kind and decent to a fault and was just plain whip smart, one of the sharpest people I've ever known. I envied her her job, admired her tremendously and always looked forward to seeing her.

She died of cancer in 1995 and it was a tremendous loss. I've thought of her often over the years. Whenever the subject of great things to do with one's life comes up, I always trot out the story of Ann Sutoro.(snip) Today, I was trying to think up a subject for this blog entry and (...) I thought I'd write about a few of the world's best jobs, so Ann immediately popped into my head. Just for the hell of it, I googled her, not really expecting to find much, if anything. What I found out is that she was Barack Obama's mother.

There's much that I like and admire about Obama. But, as with all politicians, there is also much about him that makes me suspicious and nervous. But I do know one thing for sure. He comes from a very good family. At least on his mother's side.

I know nothing at all about Eric Stone so I read further. The entry preceding the eulogy to Ann Suntoro was also a eulogy, one to the late Albert Hoffmann, the inventor/discoverer/synthesizer of LSD. Mr. Stone writes:

The first time I took LSD was in September 1966 (I was fourteen), about two weeks before it became illegal in California. I had traded a UCLA professor a bag of mediocre Mexican pot for a dosed sugar cube. Over the next three and a half or so years, I probably took acid between two and three hundred times. It was easy to lose track.(...) here's what LSD did for me.

It made me, mentally, stronger. I guess in the Nietzschean sense of "what doesn't kill me, makes me stronger." I don't fully believe that. Some of the things that don't kill you, can maim you. But still, in some of my most formative years I dealt with a lot of really strange and challenging stuff in a wide variety of circumstances. No matter how bizarre the world around me got, or at least the world as I was seeing it, I learned to cope with it.(...) It helped give me a great deal of tolerance for things that might otherwise strike me as weird, strange, abnormal. I hardly think of anything as abnormal or normal anymore. When something seems weird or strange, I find it more interesting than threatening. That helps my powers of observation.(...) Who knows if I killed off a bunch of brain cells or not? Maybe I could have been smarter or saner. I don't know and I don't care. I'm smart and sane enough as I've ever needed to be. Either that or deluded enough to think that I am. And so far at least, I've escaped the attention of the nice men in the white coats.

I am a dues paying member of my generation and anything smokable I smoked in those years, but so many people I knew at that time were so badly damaged by acid that I gave it a wide berth. I would say to any kid even today, especially today, "never swallow a chemical somebody hands you in discotheque." Acid still makes me nervous after all these years.

After reading Mr. Stone's lysergic panegyric, I began to think that the eulogy to Obama's mother was a plant by the Republican National Committee. Don't think the Roves of this world aren't already circling around in sky on all of this. Attacking the Obama myth has got to be their strategy, because there is hardly any record to attack.

I wonder why there is so much myth built around Obama's father, a minor Kenyan civil servant who had seduced a 17 year old girl and hardly stayed around longer than necessary to engender the candidate, somebody Obama hardly ever knew and why on the contrary there is so little interest among the Obamites in Obama's mother, who seems a truly remarkable woman, if a huge flake. Time magazine ran a gushing cover story about her and said:

Obama's mother was a dreamer. She made risky bets that paid off only some of the time, choices that her children had to live with. She fell in love—twice—with fellow students from distant countries she knew nothing about. Both marriages failed, and she leaned on her parents and friends to help raise her two children.

"She cried a lot," says her daughter Maya Soetoro-Ng, "if she saw animals being treated cruelly or children in the news or a sad movie—or if she felt like she wasn't being understood in a conversation." And yet she was fearless, says Soetoro-Ng. "She was very capable. She went out on the back of a motorcycle and did rigorous fieldwork. Her research was responsible and penetrating. She saw the heart of a problem, and she knew whom to hold accountable."(...) Born in 1942, just five years before Hillary Clinton, Obama's mother came into an America constrained by war, segregation and a distrust of difference. Her parents named her Stanley because her father had wanted a boy. She endured the expected teasing over this indignity, but dutifully lugged the name through high school, apologizing for it each time she introduced herself in a new town.(...)In the expat community of Asia in the 1980s, single mothers were rare, and Ann stood out. She was by then a rather large woman with frizzy black hair.

She and her daughter sometimes lived in garage apartments and spare rooms of friends. She collected treasures from her travels—exquisite things with stories she understood. Antique daggers with an odd number of curves, as required by Javanese tradition; unusual batiks; rice-paddy hat(...) Before her death, Ann read a draft of her son's memoir, which is almost entirely about his father. Some of her friends were surprised at the focus, but she didn't seem obviously bothered. "She never complained about it," says Peluso. "She just said it was something he had to work out." Neither Ann nor her son knew how little time they had left.

Being a huge flake shouldn't be such a problem, if every man and woman in the United States of America who had or has a flakey mother votes for Obama he'll be a shoo-in, he'd have my vote for sure, I would enter my late mother in a contest for flakey American women and give away weight and a head start. Mind you Barack Obama's mom had real cause.

Hell of thing, name a little girl "Stanley", hell of a thing. It's no joke to do something like that to a kid. I knew a girl once, a very intelligent, very pretty girl, raven hair, crazy-blue, Celtic eyes, whose father, a rich, brutal, lace curtain, black-Irish, son of a bitch, named her "Michael".... hell of a thing, hell of a thing. Like child abuse, maybe worse.

Obama tells his story very nicely, but I think he is leaving a lot out.

Is any of this important?

Everybody has got family. you can't choose them. I hear that McCain's father was not only a distinguished admiral, but also a nasty drunk. There must have been a lot of pressure on Johnny three sticks as a kid... so what. He's done so many things: good things, bad things, that the story he tells means very little, his story is just there... yez pays yer money and yez takes yer cherse.

However Obama is his story, the story he tells, because he has never really done anything except tell his story and create his myth. The feeling I get is that Obama's mother was pretty flakey and that is his sore point, not dreams of absent Kenyans. Just another weird, unhappy American childhood. There always seems to be a nice little story to cover everything. It is his desire to push his mother's story to the background that is his weakness, not really the story itself. It is that weakness that will be explored in months to come. DS

The next President: Hood or Johnston?

Confederate Generals, John B. Hood (left) and Joseph E. Johnston

David Seaton's News Links
In his monumental history of the American Civil war, Shelby Foote memorably called General Joseph E. Johnston's defense of Atlanta, "The Red Clay Minuet": a masterpiece of defensive maneuver in the face of a superior force.

Here is how the Georgia Civil War Commission's William R. Scaife lays out the situation that Johnston faced in 1864:

In preparation for the campaigns of 1864, President Lincoln wisely appointed General Ulysses S. Grant commander-in-chief of all the Union armies in the field. Grant quickly developed a plan to take maximum advantage of his superior manpower by constantly hammering Confederate armies in Virginia and Georgia and keeping both so fully occupied it would be impossible for either to detach reinforcements to the other. If either of the badly outnumbered Confederate armies could be brought to battle and defeated, both Union armies could then unite and easily dispose of the lone remaining enemy force. In Sherman's words, "Neither Atlanta, nor Augusta nor Savannah was the objective, but the army of Joseph Johnston, go where it might.

Confederate General Joseph E. Johnston knew as Sherman advanced into Georgia he must remain near his only supply line, the Western & Atlantic Railroad to Chattanooga. Since General Johnston faced vastly superior numbers, he wisely fortified strong defensive positions along the railroad, hoping to entice Sherman to either attack him and incur heavy losses, or to expose himself to a counterattack, while attempting to maneuver around him. Johnston would preserve his army by entrenching every step he took, fighting only when attacked, and inviting battle only when conditions were heavily in his favor - refusing to commit to a major battle in which his army might be destroyed.

Sherman would counter by holding General Johnston in place with George H. Thomas' Army of the Cumberland, which was almost as large as General Johnston's entire army, and sending flanking armies under John M. Schofield and James B. McPherson right and left in attempts to cut General Johnston's line of supply and retreat, thus forcing him to come out and fight on even terms. But General Johnston repeatedly avoided Sherman's attempts to force the climactic battle, each time slipping away to fortify yet another strong position. The campaign thus became one of continuous maneuvering with Shelby Foote termed The Red Clay Minuet. On June 27th Sherman became so frustrated at his inability to trap and destroy General Johnston's army that he ordered the only all out assault of the campaign at Kennesaw Mountain, but was defeated with heavy losses and would never again attack Johnston in force.

But on July 17th, Confederate President Jefferson Davis, either not understanding General Johnston's defensive strategy or not agreeing with it, relieved the General of command and replaced him with General John B. Hood. The campaign of maneuver quickly changed as Hood did just what Sherman had been unable to entice General Johnston to do since May - come out and fight on even terms. In impetuous and mismanaged attacks at Peachtree Creek, Atlanta and Ezra Church, Hood repeatedly hurled his outnumbered forces against Sherman's advancing columns. In each case the confederates were repulsed with heavy losses, which demoralized and depleted Hood's forces to the point where their ability to successfully defend Atlanta and to cut the city's only remaining supply line, forcing Hood's evacuation of Atlanta on the night of September 1, 1864.

Another, simpler, example of this principal is light-heavyweight boxing champion, Billy Conn's legendary bout with Joe Louis, here is the Wikipedia description:

The fight became part of boxing's lore because Conn held a secure lead on the scorecards leading to round 13. According to many experts and fans who watched the fight, Conn was outmaneuvering Louis up to that point. In a move that Conn would regret for the rest of his life, he tried to go for the knockout in round 13, and instead wound up losing the fight by knockout in that same round himself. Ten minutes after the fight, Conn told reporters, "I lost my head and a million bucks,". When asked by a reporter why he went for the knockout, Conn replied famously, "What's the use of being Irish if you can't be thick (i.e. stupid)?" Later he would joke with Louis, "Why couldn't you let me hold the title for a year or so?", to which the Brown Bomber responded, "You had the title for twelve rounds and you couldn't hold on to it."

All of this is to illustrate that measuring your own strength and that of your your opponent carefully is the first step in avoiding destruction in a conflict.

The balance of power in the world is shifting in many ways and America's hegemony is much in question. It is not that power is shifting from America into the hands of another would be global hegemon, as would have been the case during the Cold War; rather, globalization has empowered so many different poles of power, even non-state actors like drug cartels and multinational corporations, that trying to grip it tightly and dominate it has become a futile exercise. An exercise that can drain, empty and hollow out the United States of America, should it persist in attempting it.

It is not that the United States is facing a superior foreign power or even a collection of hostile powers bent on its destruction -- something which would play perfectly to Washington's endless paranoias -- no, the USA is simply facing a situation that America, more than any power in history, has itself created.

This is a situation where finally, as the fella said, "All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses, his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind."

The next President of the United States can either "box clever", like Joseph E. Johnston, and live to fight another day or go on the offensive, toe to toe with the world, and end up seeing stars like General Hood or Billy Conn.

The prognosis is not that encouraging: John McCain has a crazy, impulsive, hot temper: a natural fighter. And Barack Obama is arrogant and in love with himself and his own voice: As much as bad temper, arrogance and self love in commanders have proverbially been the heralds of endless disasters through history, as "pride cometh before a fall." Where some see a messiah in Obama, I see only the luciferian pride.

Perhaps long experience in politics, the ordeal of great physical and mental suffering and humiliation in Vietnam, combined with a military education, may give McCain a more lucid and skeptical estimate of his and other's limitations ... or maybe not.

McCain might work out OK, with one important caveat and condition: an ample Democratic majority in both House and Senate. This is the closest thing to coalition politics that the USA could produce.

Unless NASA makes the unlikely discovery of life on Mars, there will be little choice for us but to hang around here on the blue planet and find out. DS

White cloth can be dyed to any color

"White cloth can be dyed to any color. Such is the way of the mind. It can assume any trait, good or bad. As such the ideal set before it should be great. God is held to be the repository of everything good. Adoration of God is therefore salutary." Swami Chidbavananda

David Seaton's News Links

A regular reader of News Links wrote in today about the usefulness of ideology, his critique was brilliantly devastating:

Ideology gives me hives and I often imagine a certain sector of hell that Dante forgot to describe where the condemned enter a restaurant, and instead of taking the order, the diners are forced to listen to interminable verbal descriptions of all the marvelous specials. This goes on for hours, and then, finally the ordering. But no dinner, not even the appetizer is even served. Then, the waiter re-emerges and the specials list is repeated, as the kitchen hasn't available what the diners ordered.

That is really good! However I don't quite agree.

What is ideology? Webster defines ideology as "visionary theorizing". Having a vision, which is embodied in a system.

I was pleased that at almost the same time the reader wrote, I came across, in truly serendipitous fashion, a "message for today" (May 25th) in an old Hindu almanac written by Swami Chidbavananda, which is pasted above.

It is interesting to note that in this passage by Swami Chidbavananda, the great Indian sage makes no actual claim that God, in fact, exists, he only states that since, "God is held to be the repository of everything good. Adoration of God is therefore salutary". What is salutary is adoring a great ideal, because, "White cloth can be dyed to any color. Such is the way of the mind": That, "the ideal set before it should be great."

In short, great ideals ennoble the mind. In the end, what is in your head is all you've really got.

It is important to have ideals even though nothing ever turns out how you first planned it. Probably no general ever planned more meticulously than Prussia's, Helmuth von Moltke the Elder, considered the greatest general in the second half of the 19th century, yet his most famous quote is the classic,

"No battle plan survives contact with the enemy"

Napoleon said,

"On s' engage, puis on vois"

Which means get started and then see what happens, but Napoleon always had before him the ideal of victory and planned for it.

When you swing at a baseball you never know if you'll actually hit it, but you try to hit through it, and follow through. If you don't do that, even if you connect with the ball, it won't go very far.

A home run is the result of "visionary theorizing".

If someone accepts the idea that nothing can be changed, be sure that nothing will be changed... especially and most importantly in that person. DS