Day: August 14, 2006

Will Rice Suffer the Same Fate as Powell in Middle East Politics?

Buck Banks

Critical mess: According to Inter Press Service, an all-star lineup of ex-advisors has been imploring the Bush administration to act strategically, not just tactically in the Israel-Lebanon war to avoid setting off a chain reaction through the volatile region. Chief among them is former ambassador Richard Holbrooke, who characterizes the state of the region in chilling starkness:

“A chain reaction could spread quickly almost anywhere between Cairo and Bombay,” Holbrooke warned. “…The combination of combustible elements poses the greatest threat to global stability since the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, history’s only nuclear superpower confrontation.”

‘That this entire affair was ginned up by Bush/Cheney and certain political leaders in Tel Aviv to give cover for the eventual attack by the U.S. on Iran. At first, I refused to believe what seemed to be such insanity. But I am not so certain any longer.’
— Lawrence Wilkerson

Among other things, noted Holbrooke, a top candidate for secretary of state if Democrats had won the presidency in 2000 or 2004, Turkey is threatening to invade northern Iraq; the world’s largest anti-Israel demonstrations are taking place in downtown Baghdad; Syria may yet be pulled into the Lebanon war; Afghanistan is under growing threat from a resurgent Taliban; and India is threatening about punitive action against Pakistan for its alleged involvement in the recent train bombings in Bombay.

The apparent complacency of the Bush administration in the face of these events has inspired a succession of former top Republican policy-makers including Brent Scowcroft, the national security adviser to former presidents Gerald Ford and George H.W. Bush; George W. Bush’s former deputy secretary of state, Richard Armitage; and Council on Foreign Relations President Richard Haass to publicly call for a major reassessment of U.S. Middle East policy and its conduct of the “global war on terror.” Leading Democrats, including former President Jimmy Carter and his national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, and former secretaries of state Warren Christopher and Madeleine Albright, have joined the chorus.

The lone exception to the administration’s complacency has been Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice whose State Department has been under attack since the outset of the Lebanon crisis by the same coalition of neo-conservatives, assertive nationalists and Christian rightists led by Vice President Dick Cheney that pushed for war in Iraq.
[…]

Survey: Americans Alternately Lie, Tell the Truth

Buck Banks

Poll dancing: In his latest survey, Christian pollster George Barna actually uncovered information that helps explain recent findings by other pollsters that more Americans today believe that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction than believed it in 2003. Barna found out that Americans are liars and atheists make better activists.

Barna set out to see how Americans perceive themselves — always a tricky topic, if you ask me. Americans are notorious liars and generally want to appear to be better than we are. We want people to like us and we are willing to dissemble in order to cover up the fact that we are reprehensible boors.

Here are some of Barna’s findings:

Most adults hold a generally favorable impression of themselves. At least nine out of 10 said they are “a good citizen” (97 percent), “friendly” (94 percent) and “generous” (90 percent). At least eight out of 10 claimed to “feel at peace” (83 percent), to be “clear about the meaning and purpose of your life” (81 percent), and to be “making a positive difference in the world” (80 percent). Nearly seven out of 10 who have children in their home said they are “an effective parent” (69 percent).

See what I mean? I don’t have a problem with the first three attributes (well, maybe “generous”), but when more than 80 percent of respondents are at peace, clear about their life’s meaning and purpose, and claim to be making a positive difference in the world, we’ve moved into downtown Liarville. I don’t know what Barna meant by “effective parent,” but the 69 percent figure probably jibes with the percentage of the general population of parents whose children are not in jail.

Amazingly, more than eight out of 10 Americans (82 percent) believe that they ‘live a simple life.’

But when Barna started in with negative self-describing adjectives, any pretense of telling the truth went out the window.

Only 13 percent said they are “in serious debt” and only one out of every five (21 percent) are “feeling unfulfilled.” One out of three (34 percent) admitted to feeling stressed out – the highest level recorded for that descriptor in the past five years. And four out of every ten adults (40 percent) admitted to being overweight.

I don’t know how you define “serious debt,” but the Federal Reserve just issued a report that Americans owe $2.19 TRILLION in consumer debt, which doesn’t count mortgage debt. The unfulfilled 20 percent were the only ones who didn’t lie about being clear about the meaning and purpose of their life, and there is definitely some overlap between the 34 percent of stressed-out individuals and the lying 83 percent who claim to be at peace (about 17 percent, by my calculations, but probably more). And if only four in 10 Americans is overweight, I’ll eat your Big Mac.

Respondents’ flirtation with “truthiness” continues:
[…]

Quote du Jour

Buck Banks

To be governed is to have every opinion, every transaction, every movement noted, registered, counted, rated, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, refused, authorized, endorsed, admonished, prevented, reformed, redressed, corrected.

— Pierre Joseph Proudhon (1809-1865), Socialist, spiritual founder French Labor Movement

Men Have Set the World on Fire – Can Women Put It Out?

Pensito Editors

Women should never allow themselves to remain uneducated, and we should fight like rabid tigers to see that our daughters do not face the same fate. When the Taliban burns a girls’ school we should all rise up in outrage.

There is a problem in our global community — and it is women. I am not talking politics or women in politics, they are an unknown gender having become like their male cohorts: What they say today, they won’t repeat or recall tomorrow. Let’s just say that today’s politicians deal in illusions. It is done with smoke and mirrors. Polls, all askew and slanted, make their minds see-saw. Politicians have become the mythical shape shifters you read about in science fiction. Politics today deal in illusions. It is done with smoke and mirrors.

I am talking about personal power. Women have forgotten that we shape the world. Women are the hearth; women create the home, women nurture. History down through the ages has proven that if man is left to his own devices he will destroy himself. Enlightenment comes from women. Women must stand beside men and whisper wisdom into their ears. According to the ancient Kabbalah, women are the spiritual centers of marriages.

We birth the babies — we populate the world — we can and should shape the world. The world is on fire and women can help put it out. We can steer the men of the world to “Seek another way.” Women can shift the world back to reason and compassion. All women are responsible for shaping the world: “The hand that rocks the cradle shapes the world.” There are so many ways to nurture and support. Men are destroying themselves and our world. It is their nature to fight. Men must be shown another way for our survival on this planet. It is up to peace and it is up to women to change the world and restore order.

[…]

Arianna: CNN Newser Should Be Held Accountable for Calling Lamont ‘Al Qaeda Candidate’

Jon Ponder

Arianna Huffington was on CNN’s “Reliable Sources” with Howard Kurtz yesterday. The topic was a rightwing blog’s revelation that news photos from the Israel-Hezbollah war were doctored but Arianna turned the tables on Howie by bringing up a rather egregious bit of wordsmithing by CNN newsreader Chuck Roberts:

HUFFINGTON: I mean, you had your own headline anchorman, Chuck Roberts, describe Lamont as the al Qaeda candidate. This is an equally deceitful, fraudulent, fabricated statement. There should be zero tolerance for all those deceits, whether in images or words.

KURTZ: Well, what Chuck Roberts said, according to the transcript, was that some are calling Ned Lamont the al Qaeda candidate. But it’s certainly not a formulation I would have used.

HUFFINGTON: You cannot find a single person who called Lamont the al Qaeda candidate, except Chuck Roberts. And what have been the consequences when it comes to Chuck Roberts? Has he been demoted to be covering Paris Hilton or entertainment news? … It’s about time that there is that same kind of accountability that Charles is demanding from photojournalists from journalists, as well.

Had anyone in the media ever called Lamont “the al Qaeda candidate?” Arianna says, no:

Indeed, an exhaustive Lexis Nexis search confirms that no one has called Lamont “the Al Qaeda candidate.” Except for Chuck Roberts. In fact, you know what you find if you Google “Al Qaeda candidate”? A lot of references to John Kerry being smeared by the RNC and its cronies during the 2004 election. Clearly, Lamont as “tha Al Qaeda candidate” is the latest rendition of an old G.O.P. tune.

Republicans have flourished under Bush because they have been able to elide in the public mind the 9/11 terrorist attacks by al Qaeda and their phony war in Iraq. Now that 60 percent of Americans view Bush’s war in Iraq as a mistake, the challenge for Democrats is to drive a wedge between the so-called War on Terror and the civil war caused by Bush’s bloodlust for Saddam Hussein.

What is clear is the “liberal” media will not be of any service in helping to separate our need for security against terrorism from the Iraq civil war.