02/10/2011

Ten Thousand and One Arabian Nights

I’ve been procrastinating all day. This is partially because, well, it’s what I do. This week’s excuse is that I’ve been waiting to see what happens in Egypt.

As I wrote last week, the Obama administration can’t seem to get its head out of the desert sand and make a decision about Egypt. Or make a good decision. We did send Frank Wisner over, but he’s passing out the predictable bad advice: hunker down, back newly-appointed Egyptian Vice President Omar Suleiman, wait until September for elections, so the civil society Hosni Mubarak suppressed for ten thousand and one Arabian nights can actually form political parties other than the Muslim Brotherhood.

How is it possible that these boneheads rise to the top of the American policy establishment? I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised; half the politicians in Washington say they don’t believe in evolution or global warming. Our capacity for wooden-headed ignorance of the obvious is astounding.
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By floegel | Posted in Civil Liberty, Commentary | Tagged , , , , | Comments (0)
02/03/2011

What Were We Thinking?

I was walking across campus that October afternoon when I heard the news. I rushed to the Journalism Department where the Associated Press Teletype was clattering in its insulated booth. Other J-students and professors were gathered around, tearing off the reports as they came in and silently passing them around.

Anwar Sadat was dead, assassinated by Islamic fundamentalists in the Egyptian Army. His vice president, a man I’d never heard of named Hosni Mubarak, was Egypt’s new president.

That was long ago and Mr. Mubarak is still around. In one sense, that’s none of my business. I’m not an Egyptian, although it’s clear Egyptians haven’t wanted Mr. Mubarak around for a long time. So why is he still there?

For one thing, he rules in a part of the world where democracy is lightly regarded. Strong men take power and hold it as long as they can. A large part of Mr. Mubarak’s power-holding, however, has relied on the support of the United States, under the last five presidential administrations.
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01/27/2011

Mafia States

This week’s paper edition of Newsweek (I can’t find it online) has a story about Tunisia and carries this subhead: “Ben Ali’s fall has exposed the rotten truth of every regime in the Arab world: they’re all, in effect, mafia states, each operating as a lucrative family business.”

Pretty harsh, but a) probably true b) slagging off Arabs is still (regrettably) accepted in the US and c) Newsweek is a dying enterprise, what has it got to lose? The revolutionary virus is spreading to Egypt and Yemen and it looks as if 2011 may be a year of great change.

Not here, though. The order in this nation’s authoritarian regime remains unchallenged. The front page of Wednesday’s New York Times drove that message home.

“Financial Crisis Was Avoidable, Inquiry Finds,” read one headline. A federal panel charged with studying the 2008 financial meltdown reported that a combustible mixture of risk-taking and deceit by Wall Street and lax oversight by public officials, both Democrat and Republican led to the catastrophe.
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01/20/2011

It Wasn’t Always a Tiger

“Eeny, meeny, miney, moe. Catch a tiger by the toe.”

That’s the rhyme we used as six-year-olds trying to settle the important issue of Who Should Go First. I knew from my parents that the individual caught by the toe had not always been a tiger. The euphemistic tiger was substituted sometime, I imagine, in the 1950s, at least in the north where I grew up. The word “tiger” mitigated the phrase for my generation, but the lore around it was still fresh enough that I was informed of the tiger’s prior identity.

The tiger rhyme was only one of several ditties – some mitigated, some not – I learned as a child. Some were racist, some sexist, some anti-Semitic; none homophobic. I don’t think that indicates a window of enlightenment, it just means the existence of gays and lesbians was not even derisively acknowledged.

These biases existed and I’m glad transitions were under way, that the tiger was found as an inoffensive replacement. The transition was (and is) slow. Twenty years after I stopped playing “Eeny, meeny, miney moe” I stood in a New York state police barracks the week after Thanksgiving, listening to a white trooper explain to a black trooper the pejorative name white people assign to Brazil nuts. Incredulous, the black trooper appealed to a bi-racial trooper. “Yes, it’s true,” he said, “as my father always reminds me.” (The fact that the black trooper had doubts white people could be so insensitive may have been a hopeful sign.)
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By floegel | Posted in Civil Liberty, Commentary | Tagged , | Comments (0)
01/13/2011

Farewell, Sally Bowles

Jill Haworth died January 3 in Manhattan at age 65. The British-born actress originated the role of Sally Bowles in the musical “Cabaret” in 1966

On January 8, I read the news to see five people connected to WikiLeaks had their Twitter accounts subpoenaed by a grand jury that had previously been operating in secret. Among the Twitter accounts subpoenaed was that of an American, Jacob Appelbaum, someone I’ve never met, but have spoken with on the telephone once or twice.

“Cabaret” takes place in 1931 Berlin. Times are hard, economically. Violence is rising, in the political discourse and the streets. Much of the action takes place at the Kit Kat Klub, a down-at-the-heels nightclub tolerant in way much of Germany – and the rest of Europe – was not.

Mr. Appelbaum, who has at times been the public face of WikiLeaks in the US, was stopped at customs last summer, returning from the Netherlands. His computer was searched, receipts he had with him were copied. Three cell phones were taken away and not returned.
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01/06/2011

Numbers, Large and Small

“As the days lengthen, the cold strengthens.”

It’s an old Vermont weather proverb and reads like one, too. I can see the crusty old dude by the potbellied stove with the gumboots and plaid mackinaw draped over the back of his chair.

Alert readers will remember I referred to the proverb a year ago this week, writing how the cold ain’t so strong as it used to be. (Forgive the use of “ain’t,” but I’m in Vermont geezer mode now.) As I wrote last year, the season for below zero temperatures in Vermont runs roughly from New Year’s Eve through Valentine’s Day. So far, not only are we not below zero on the Fahrenheit scale, we’re not achieving it often on the Celsius scale (32 degrees F for those stuck in the ‘70s). It snowed for Christmas, then it melted, then it snowed again and now it’s melting again.

I’m eccentric; I know that, but just as I feel I haven’t had my summer without a few scorching days and sleepless, humid nights (no problem there the last few years), so I also don’t feel I’ve had a winter absent a week or so of bone-numbing cold. Also good for keeping down the population of northward-migrating insects.

Same week, different number. Wednesday, President Obama was quoted by the New York Times saying departing spokesman Robert Gibbs has served long hours for “relatively modest pay.” I think the key word here is “relatively.” Mr. Gibbs makes $172,000 a year. The census bureau says median household income for the District of Columbia (what a coincidence!) is right in the middle of the American scale. That number is $53,685 per year, which means Mr. Gibbs has three households?
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By floegel | Posted in Civil Liberty, Commentary | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments (0)
12/30/2010

You Can’t Lose Them All

Michael Ruppert came through town last May. Not familiar with him? Mr. Ruppert is a former Los Angeles police detective, who in 1996 famously confronted then-CIA Director John Deutch with allegations that the CIA was heavily involved in drug trafficking in the United States.

From there he became something of a prophet. He doesn’t claim any extraordinary powers to predict the future, but says his cold-eyed reading of available facts gives him insight into events he says are inevitable. A documentary about him, “Collapse,” was released in 2009.

Mr. Ruppert has been in the doom and gloom business for a long time now and given what’s happened in the past decade, any such merchant is going to look pretty smart. Just about any unhappy event, from terrorist attack to economic bust to environmental disaster has occurred. (All we seem to be missing is a lightning fast pandemic that kills a few million people – or at least turns them into zombies.)
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By floegel | Posted in Commentary, Economy, Energy, Oil | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments (0)