Posted 4:16 PM by Floyd

I went over to the San Francisco Indymedia site, motivated by what Andrew Ferguson calls hathos (the pleasurable sensation of despising something).

I clicked the link for "Pacifica & Indymedia Report on 2nd Persian Gulf Massacre" and saw this rather confusing paragraph:

The world protests the Second Persian Gulf Massacre by the US of poverty-striken Iraq for its oil and listener-sponsored Pacifica radio and grassroots Indymedia are there, reporting all the news from the workingclass.

The United States is going to war for oil and listener-sponsored Pacifica radio?! Oh wait, I get it. Independent media writes run-on sentences. I think I was warned that run-on sentences were bad grammar in, oh, eighth grade.

Indymedia has a comments section. Here was my contribution:

When Saddam Hussein throws dissidents into a plastic shredding machine, is that a Persian Gulf Massacre?

Just curious.

Posted 4:06 PM by Floyd

Bill Quick used to make fun of wacked-out leftoids who wrote letters to the San Francisco Chronicle. He has abandoned this effort, presumably out of fear that stupidity is catching. Thus by default I have sole control over the mocking of such weenies. Bwahahaha!

My preferred venue is the San Jose Mercury News. Today's dispatches were a bumper crop of sheer, unadulterated genius:

THERE are legitimate reasons to debate the Iraq war. We have credible concerns about ``blowback,'' unaddressed concerns about cost, and fears of getting involved in a quagmire. Opponents also question the legality of the war and the inevitable loss of innocent life.

As to innocent casualties, consider the case of Afghanistan. Shortly after the allied campaign, there was an MSNBC report that alleged 500,000 deaths under the Taliban from 1996 to the November 2001, or about 8,000 a month. After the bombing campaign, there was an unsubstantiated but widely quoted estimate that the civilian casualties in Afghanistan roughly equaled the toll on 9/11 -- say, between 3,000 and 5,000. If so, this represented an average two-week period under the Taliban.

Grim arithmetic and little consolation to the victims, but I wonder if similar logic holds here.

Alfonso Valdes
San Carlos

Valdes' casualty estimate is of course the same lie, courtesy of Marc Herold, that has been debunked all over the blogosphere. The true figure is closer to 1000 deaths. But even if we grant Valdes' casualty figures, what were the casualty figures in each of the two week periods after the bombing campaign was complete and the Taliban was overthrown?

Yeah, a number just about equal to Alfonso Valdes' IQ.


Update: Aaron Haspel commented that I was unfair to Valdes and when I went back and reread the letter I realized that I had completely misread it. I was tempted to remove my silly diatribe, but I'm leaving it here so that Haspel's comment makes sense, and to remind myself to be more careful next time.

PRESIDENT Bush says that diplomacy has failed. No, Bush's diplomacy has failed -- the United States could garner only four Security Council votes for a resolution to attack Iraq. The administration says it has support of more than 30 countries, but only Britain and possibly Australia are willing to contribute troops.

Even more telling is which countries agreed to support the United States, and why. Many of these countries are poor, either former Soviet satellites or republics that were willing to sign on in spite of overwhelming domestic opposition of their citizens. Why would they be willing to support this war? The example of my native Hungary is an illustration. Although polls show more than 80 percent of the people oppose this war, it is permitting the United States to train Iraqi dissidents on a former air base in exchange for significant financial rewards.

The arrogance of the Bush administration has made us the most hated nation in the world.

Nick Szabo
Cupertin

I don't know why Szabo thinks it would be an advantage to have military forces from 30 countries arrayed in the desert for an attack on Iraq. Just think of the cost in magic markers alone! Even the Volokh Conspiracy couldn't keep up with the color scheme.

Szabo claims that the US is a bully ... because it offers other countries enormous bribes in exchange for minor favors? That's a problem for me, because I have to help foot the tax bill. Damn if I can see how the Hungarians are being oppressed.

SAGE words from Sen. Robert Byrd: ``Instead of isolating Saddam Hussein, we seem to have isolated ourselves.'' That is exactly what this administration has succeeded in doing, waging a war of choice alone.

As much as I want Saddam Hussein eliminated, it should be his people's choice or the world's collective action that should make it happen. My fear is that with this war, we may be aiding Osama bin Laden's evil designs, promoting recruitment to Al-Qaida and making the United States a pariah.

Rameysh Ramdas
San Jose

Does Ramdas think that if all the Iraqis meditate on a Saddam-free Iraq, that Saddam and the Baath party will magically vanish?

And what is this nonsense about "the world's collective action"? The world will never take collective action on anything. There are countries ruled by tyrants for whom the extirpation of Saddam would set an unfortunate example. And there are countries set to make money off the current regime. How do the objections of these countries make the actions of the US and 30 other nations immoral?

We do not have a duty to free people from tyranny. But we have a right to. If France and Germany and Russia and China and Burma and Mozambique don't like it, too bad.

Let's wrap up with two classic shithead themes: "War is a video game" and "We have fallen into their trap":

THE war on Iraq follows a common Hollywood plot that goes like this: Find a villain whose evilness is limited only by one's imagination, and then pump up the viewer's vitriolic hatred until any retribution is justified.

Thanks go to Hollywood's Stallone, Eastwood and Schwarzenegger for appealing to the most base of human emotions, revenge, and all in the name of justice. And thanks go to President Bush for bringing these very exciting Hollywood renditions into the reality of every American's daily life -- with quotes from the Bible yet! The enjoyment of real war, from our living rooms TVs, even exceeds that of the most violent video game kids could imagine. Are snuff films next?

Duane J. Overby
San Jose

Has Overby ever seen a video game? They're incredibly violent and have amazing action and special effects. By contrast, the video and pictures that I see from the war are mostly boring and static -- shots of soldiers advancing through sandstorms, panoramic shots of things burning. Pictures of deaths -- or even dead bodies -- are very rare.

I understand that terrorists have particular goals, including creating deep fear in their victims and the general population; causing change of habits and activities; demonstrating the target population's sins, such as imperialistic tendencies, paranoia, grandiosity and greed; decreasing stability in the economy of the target population; and changing global opinion toward the target population.

It seems to me that the 9/11 terrorists have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams.

Elane O'Rourke
San Jose

Hey Elane, who's scared? Me, or Uday Hussein?

Posted 3:38 PM by Floyd

Damian Penny posted a link to this hilarious sendup of "Homeland Security" warning icons.

Posted 8:40 PM by Floyd

Lots of good stuff at ColbyCosh.com. (You can find the URL in Google.) However I do think it was unfair of Colby to call Jean Cretien "gormless". Because, if Colby had called him "gormful", would that have been a complement? Dat's just a cheap shot!

Posted 6:37 PM by Floyd

It's Commie propaganda day over at Beato-blog. The soundbitten one puzzles over the totally irrational prejudices people have against Communism:

In 1980, the United States helped thousands of Muslim rebels, including Osama Bin Laden, defend Afghanistan against a Soviet invasion, because free people should never have to wonder about the reliability of world opium supplies, and there's no telling what might have happened to Afghanistan under Communist control.

No telling at all! Of course in the existing dozen or so Communist nations there were purges, torture, millions of people worked to death, so many informants that people didn't trust their own families, war, subversion, starvation, censorship, secret police, and automobiles made of cardboard. So what can we extrapolate from this when considering the fate of a Communist Afghanistan?

Well not a fucking thing, of course! It's all just coincidence.

Beato also parrots the usual line from the tinfoil brigade:

In 1963, the CIA helped Iraq's 850-member Ba'ath party overthrow General Abdul Karim Kassem, because a world in which a small group of violent extremists is given control over an oil-rich nation is a world where free people can breathe easy.

How did the CIA "help" the Ba'ath party take control? I am constantly hearing about how the CIA overthrew this or that dictator, but what is the mechanism by which they do so? Does the CIA give them money? Well, China gave Bill Clinton money. You can call Slick Willie a lot of things, but "Beijing's puppet" is kind of stretching it. Does the CIA give the coup-makers America's "support?" Well America has been loudly proclaiming its "support" for anyone who wanted to overthrow Saddam Hussein for the last 12 years; hell of a lot of good that's done us.

I once got into a debate with some Chomsky types in a Palo Alto coffeshop. The subject of Chile came up and here it was: The CIA overthrow Allende. I reminded them that the military hated Allende and asked what assistance the CIA gave to Pinochet. "They gave him weapons."

Imagine! Augusto Pinochet is a general in the Chilean military, and the only weapon the poor guy can lay ahold of inside Chile's borders is a stick with a nail in it!

Posted 6:21 PM by Floyd

On my way to the bridge club I heard on the radio that protesters were gathering at UC Berkeley's Sproul Plaza for a noon protest. At 11 some army officers came by to pass out yellow ribbons. They claimed that they were not trying to confront the protesters and would be gone by noon.

And then there were the anti-abortion protesters. They weren't trying to provoke the peaceniks either. Carrying huge pictures of aborted fetuses is just what they do on a cool March day.

The reporter said that anti-war protesters got into screaming matches with the anti-abortion folks and "turned into abortion rights advocates." Sounds like zany fun; too bad I couldn't be there.

I turned to The Angry Clam, our local Berkeley blogger, but he didn't have anything on the protest. Just that the anti-war folks had occupied Sproul Hall, which I assume is a building in or near Sproul Plaza.

Posted 10:14 AM by Floyd

I was going to post something about how web news is the best way to get updates about the war, but people smarter and less lazy than me beat me to it. Here's Ken Layne (and Nick Denton):

Writing about the Reuters Iraq wire, Nick Denton says:
It's a lot better than cable news, which shows pictures from Baghdad about as interesting as my holiday snaps, and commentators in infinite loop.

No kidding. So far, the teevee coverage of this war is worse than a "Daily Show" segment. Dumb jabbering, malfunctioning "video phones," endless talking heads ... no wonder the networks mostly stuck to the regular prime-time shows. Hell, "Nightline" is broadcasting from Kuwait and it still couldn't get an hour. Jimmy Kimmel went on at midnight.

(The Iraq wire is here.)

I've been working on some other stuff, cable news in the background, and just an hour ago I checked on my daily blogs. Not many were posting much, not even InstaPundit. Why? Not a helluva lot to post. Unlike the cable teevee news, we're allowed to shut up when there's nothing to report.

Exactly what I had planned to say. With TV news, they say the same thing over and over; you turn on the idiot box, figure out what 500 bytes of information they are repeating, get annoyed that they have nothing else to say, and turn it off. With web news and blogs, you just hit update every so often and see if anything has been posted.

Posted 10:08 AM by Floyd

Via Drudge I found a Reuters report that the Vatican (which is to say the Pope) has warned the anti-Iraq coalition that it is "responsible before God":

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - The Vatican said on Tuesday countries that decide to wage war on Iraq without a global consensus must take responsibility before God and history -- making clear the Pope would not endorse their actions.

"Those who decide that all peaceful means that international law makes available are exhausted assume a grave responsibility before God, their conscience and history," said Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls.

This is an astonishingly immoral statement, completely at odds with what a religious institution should be saying. By demanding that the US and its allies follow "international law", the Vatican has raised the laws of man -- specific laws of specific corrupt and sinful men -- on a pedestal and proclaimed them as the works of God's mercy.

In this context "international law" means the imprimatur of the United Nations Security Council. It is true that the United States has not obtained a vote sanctioning an attack on Iraq. This was because France, China, and Russia threatened vetos. But the idea of five countries wielding veto power is not a pillar of international law; it is merely a detail of how the United Nations was set up in 1945. If there were no veto power, the resolution authoring the use of force would likely have passed 9 to 8 or 10 to 7.

Consider all of the reductio ad absurdum arguments that one can pose at this point. Suppose only China were opposed to a war and threatened to veto. Is the Pope saying that the actions of dictatorial atheists would determine whether George Bush were "responsible before God"? Suppose there were no veto and one country, say Guinea, were the swing vote. Does the Pope believe that God's attitude toward George Bush would change depending on the foreign policy of Conakry? Presumably in this scenario severe pressure would be used behind the scenes to obtain Guinea's vote. Would George Bush then be under obligation to use highest bribes or most threatening blackmail, to save his standing before the Lord?

I don't remember the Pope saying anything about Saddam Hussein's responsibility before God. What does it say about a religious leader who will criticize a politician because he is not universally admired by other politicians and by dictators -- but will not make a peep about a dictator's crimes against humanity? It is said that murder and torture "cry out to God". God may listen, but the Pope is deaf.