Wednesday, January 8, 2014
Tuesday, January 7, 2014
How to Win a Culture War
For as long social conservatives have been a force within the Republican Party, moderates and liberals have insisted that their presence hurts the GOP. There is certainly evidence Americans are becoming more socially liberal on some issues.
In May, a Gallup headline read, “Same-Sex Marriage Support Solidifies Above 50% in U.S.: Support has been 50% or above in three separate readings in last year.” In October, the same firm announced, “For First Time, Americans Favor Legalizing Marijuana: Support surged 10 percentage points in past year, to 58%.” Medical-marijuana initiatives have been widely successful, and now recreational marijuana has become legal in places like Washington and Colorado. More states may soon follow.
A poll conducted in April by the Public Religion Research Institute showed that older Americans and white evangelical Protestants were the two groups most opposed to same-sex marriage and relaxing marijuana laws. But attitudes are changing even among Christians, as a Religion News Service interview with PRRI Research Director Daniel Cox revealed:
“We see these generational differences even among certain religious communities,” said Cox. According to the poll, younger Christians, too, are twice as likely to see marijuana use as morally acceptable compared to older Christians. “It’s forecasting a future where the majority of Christians will likely also favor legalization, although they’ll likely be a little bit behind Americans overall,” Cox said.
Yet if Americans—particularly younger ones, including Christians—are increasingly embracing same-sex marriage and marijuana legalization, public opinion is tacking rightward on the issue that has long inspired conservative culture warriors the most.
Read the entire article
In May, a Gallup headline read, “Same-Sex Marriage Support Solidifies Above 50% in U.S.: Support has been 50% or above in three separate readings in last year.” In October, the same firm announced, “For First Time, Americans Favor Legalizing Marijuana: Support surged 10 percentage points in past year, to 58%.” Medical-marijuana initiatives have been widely successful, and now recreational marijuana has become legal in places like Washington and Colorado. More states may soon follow.
A poll conducted in April by the Public Religion Research Institute showed that older Americans and white evangelical Protestants were the two groups most opposed to same-sex marriage and relaxing marijuana laws. But attitudes are changing even among Christians, as a Religion News Service interview with PRRI Research Director Daniel Cox revealed:
“We see these generational differences even among certain religious communities,” said Cox. According to the poll, younger Christians, too, are twice as likely to see marijuana use as morally acceptable compared to older Christians. “It’s forecasting a future where the majority of Christians will likely also favor legalization, although they’ll likely be a little bit behind Americans overall,” Cox said.
Yet if Americans—particularly younger ones, including Christians—are increasingly embracing same-sex marriage and marijuana legalization, public opinion is tacking rightward on the issue that has long inspired conservative culture warriors the most.
Read the entire article
Monday, January 6, 2014
Friday, January 3, 2014
Demand An Unconditional Pardon for Edward Snowden
Benumbed as we are about the extent of the National Security Agency’s systematic spying on the American people, I thought nothing could surprise me anymore. I was wrong. The news that the NSA is intercepting newly-ordered computers en route to their purchasers and installing them with back doors really takes the cake: it conjures the kind of nightmare world a writer of dystopian fiction might imagine. I don’t even want to think about the possible scope of such a program, or its implications for the future. But I must: we all must.
In a rational world, there would be no question about the moral and legal status of the man responsible for exposing this treason to the Constitution: he would be hailed as a hero by every sector of society, from the political class to the working class, and given the Congressional Medal of Honor. In our sorry, sinful world, however, Edward Snowden is on the lam, charged with two counts of violating the WWI-era Espionage Act and one count of stealing "government property." Facing at least thirty years in prison, probably much more, he has been forced to seek asylum in Russia, of all places: condemned, as the New York Times put it in an editorial calling for leniency in his case, to “a life of looking over his shoulder."
In the Bizarro World that enveloped us after 9/11, all values were inverted: good became evil, war was transmuted into peace, and the very concept of liberty was erased, replaced by the false idol of security. And the nightmare continues: long after the smoke that choked Manhattan cleared, our queer condition persists. In our new world-turned-upside-down, the guilty are glorified and the innocent pursued to the ends of the earth.
Glenn Greenwald, one of the journalists contacted by Snowden to act as a conduit for his revelations, wrote a book before all of this happened that perfectly explains why and how this came to be possible. In With Liberty and Justice for Some (2012), he prefigured Snowden’s predicament with eerie accuracy:
"Those with political and financial clout are routinely allowed to break the law with no legal repercussions whatsoever. Often they need not even exploit their access to superior lawyers because they don’t see the inside of a courtroom in the first place — not even when they get caught in the most egregious criminality. The criminal justice system is now reserved almost exclusively for ordinary Americans, who are routinely subjected to harsh punishments even for the pettiest of offenses."
Read the entire article
In a rational world, there would be no question about the moral and legal status of the man responsible for exposing this treason to the Constitution: he would be hailed as a hero by every sector of society, from the political class to the working class, and given the Congressional Medal of Honor. In our sorry, sinful world, however, Edward Snowden is on the lam, charged with two counts of violating the WWI-era Espionage Act and one count of stealing "government property." Facing at least thirty years in prison, probably much more, he has been forced to seek asylum in Russia, of all places: condemned, as the New York Times put it in an editorial calling for leniency in his case, to “a life of looking over his shoulder."
In the Bizarro World that enveloped us after 9/11, all values were inverted: good became evil, war was transmuted into peace, and the very concept of liberty was erased, replaced by the false idol of security. And the nightmare continues: long after the smoke that choked Manhattan cleared, our queer condition persists. In our new world-turned-upside-down, the guilty are glorified and the innocent pursued to the ends of the earth.
Glenn Greenwald, one of the journalists contacted by Snowden to act as a conduit for his revelations, wrote a book before all of this happened that perfectly explains why and how this came to be possible. In With Liberty and Justice for Some (2012), he prefigured Snowden’s predicament with eerie accuracy:
"Those with political and financial clout are routinely allowed to break the law with no legal repercussions whatsoever. Often they need not even exploit their access to superior lawyers because they don’t see the inside of a courtroom in the first place — not even when they get caught in the most egregious criminality. The criminal justice system is now reserved almost exclusively for ordinary Americans, who are routinely subjected to harsh punishments even for the pettiest of offenses."
Read the entire article
Thursday, January 2, 2014
Wednesday, January 1, 2014
The Big Issue of 2014: Iran
There’s no question what the big foreign policy issue for the Obama administration is going to be in 2014: Iran. How the US navigates the small space between war and peace in the volatile Middle East is going to determine the fate of our overextended and nearly bankrupt empire, and Tehran – the epicenter of yet another ginned up "crisis" – is ground zero.
This drama has been playing out over the course of the past decade, starting with the Bush administration’s weird relations with the mullahs – a relationship that was openly hostile and covertly something else altogether.
Team Bush regularly denounced Tehran as the main generator of terrorism in the region, and routinely threatened them, but these were mere words. In practice, US foreign policy actually favored the Iranians: the invasion of Iraq, engineered with the help of Iranian agent Ahmed Chalabi, eliminated their old enemy Saddam and opened up a whole new sphere of influence. The anti-Saddam groups that took power after the invasion and the much vaunted elections had long been headquartered and succored in Tehran, and when they reentered Iraq in the wake of the Americans’ short-lived "victory" the long arm of the mullahs reached all the way to the southern border with Saudi Arabia. Iraq today is an Iranian ally, albeit one that is still asking the US government for aid to fight the Sunnis and keep Kurdistan from hiving off.
This covert US-Iranian collaboration ended, however, with Israeli demands that their American patrons "do something" about the alleged Iranian nuclear threat. No sooner had we declared "mission accomplished" in Iraq then Tehran became the next target in America’s ongoing Middle Eastern regime change operation. Sanctions, a propaganda war, a covert military campaign utilizing Sunni terrorist outfits like Jundullah in Iranian Baluchistan, and a sustained cyber-attack on Iran’s energy infrastructure soon followed.
The end of the Bush era did not signal any real change in US policy: the Obama administration not only continued and increased the economic sanctions, but there’s some question about whether the US is still supporting groups like Jundullah and the Mujahideen-e-Khalq (MEK), which have conducted attacks on Iranian soil. However, the election of Barack Obama signaled a sea change in the American polity: a war weariness engendered by a decade of constant military action, which was in large part responsible for propelling Obama into the White House.
Read the entire article
This drama has been playing out over the course of the past decade, starting with the Bush administration’s weird relations with the mullahs – a relationship that was openly hostile and covertly something else altogether.
Team Bush regularly denounced Tehran as the main generator of terrorism in the region, and routinely threatened them, but these were mere words. In practice, US foreign policy actually favored the Iranians: the invasion of Iraq, engineered with the help of Iranian agent Ahmed Chalabi, eliminated their old enemy Saddam and opened up a whole new sphere of influence. The anti-Saddam groups that took power after the invasion and the much vaunted elections had long been headquartered and succored in Tehran, and when they reentered Iraq in the wake of the Americans’ short-lived "victory" the long arm of the mullahs reached all the way to the southern border with Saudi Arabia. Iraq today is an Iranian ally, albeit one that is still asking the US government for aid to fight the Sunnis and keep Kurdistan from hiving off.
This covert US-Iranian collaboration ended, however, with Israeli demands that their American patrons "do something" about the alleged Iranian nuclear threat. No sooner had we declared "mission accomplished" in Iraq then Tehran became the next target in America’s ongoing Middle Eastern regime change operation. Sanctions, a propaganda war, a covert military campaign utilizing Sunni terrorist outfits like Jundullah in Iranian Baluchistan, and a sustained cyber-attack on Iran’s energy infrastructure soon followed.
The end of the Bush era did not signal any real change in US policy: the Obama administration not only continued and increased the economic sanctions, but there’s some question about whether the US is still supporting groups like Jundullah and the Mujahideen-e-Khalq (MEK), which have conducted attacks on Iranian soil. However, the election of Barack Obama signaled a sea change in the American polity: a war weariness engendered by a decade of constant military action, which was in large part responsible for propelling Obama into the White House.
Read the entire article
Tuesday, December 31, 2013
Monday, December 30, 2013
The Russian Bear steps in as the American Empire Unravels in the Middle East
US power in the Middle East is in decline, and American allies in the region are beginning to think of new alternatives to Washington.
The Cold War never ended for America’s leaders. There should be no illusions about it, the United States has strategically worked to contain and weaken both the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China. The American strategy in the Middle East and Washington’s hostilities against both the Iranians and the Syrians has been part and parcel of the American line of attack against Moscow and Beijing.
In spite of Washington’s efforts, the lines that it had a part in carving in the sands of the volatile Middle East after 1945, tortured by consistent foreign meddling and the bitter rivalries of regional dynasties and powers, are shifting yet again. The winds are erasing the old lines, while regional and global events are drawing new ones to take their places.
Pax Americana, the so-called American Peace, is dead. It was never much of a peace anyway. In context of the Middle East, the term itself signifies a period of US dominance that arose after the Second World War and reached its zenith in 1978. Then in 1979 came along the Iranian Revolution. A few decades later, the monumental blunders of the US government of George W. Bush Jr. cast the dye for the steady decline of American influence.
Read the entire article
The Cold War never ended for America’s leaders. There should be no illusions about it, the United States has strategically worked to contain and weaken both the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China. The American strategy in the Middle East and Washington’s hostilities against both the Iranians and the Syrians has been part and parcel of the American line of attack against Moscow and Beijing.
In spite of Washington’s efforts, the lines that it had a part in carving in the sands of the volatile Middle East after 1945, tortured by consistent foreign meddling and the bitter rivalries of regional dynasties and powers, are shifting yet again. The winds are erasing the old lines, while regional and global events are drawing new ones to take their places.
Pax Americana, the so-called American Peace, is dead. It was never much of a peace anyway. In context of the Middle East, the term itself signifies a period of US dominance that arose after the Second World War and reached its zenith in 1978. Then in 1979 came along the Iranian Revolution. A few decades later, the monumental blunders of the US government of George W. Bush Jr. cast the dye for the steady decline of American influence.
Steady Decline of the US in the Middle East
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was so sure in 2006 that American domination in the broader Middle East would expand. She triumphantly declared amidst Israel’s 2006 war on Lebanon that the map of the Middle East would forever change to the profit of the United States. It did not, and Israel lost the war too. US influence began eroding, while the influence of its rivals began increasing.Read the entire article
Friday, December 27, 2013
Thursday, December 26, 2013
Edward Snowden Christmas Message
Hi, and Merry Christmas.
I'm honored to have the chance to speak with you and your family this year.
Recently, we learned that our governments, working in concert, have created a system of worldwide mass surveillance, watching everything we do.
Great Britain's George Orwell warned us of the danger of this kind of information. The types of collection in the book -- microphones and video cameras, TVs that watch us -- are nothing compared to what we have available today. We have sensors in our pockets that track us everywhere we go.
Think about what this means for the privacy of the average person. A child born today will grow up with no conception of privacy at all. They'll never know what it means to have a private moment to themselves -- an unrecorded, unanalyzed thought. And that's a problem, because privacy matters. Privacy is what allows us to determine who we are and who we want to be.
The conversation occurring today will determine the amount of trust we can place both in the technology that surrounds us and the government that regulates it. Together, we can find a better balance. End mass surveillance. And remind the government that if it really wants to know how we feel, asking is always cheaper than spying.
For everyone out there listening, thank you, and Merry Christmas.
Tuesday, December 24, 2013
Monday, December 23, 2013
Iran Sanctions Bill Big Test of Israel Lobby Power
This week’s introduction by a bipartisan group of 26 senators of a new sanctions bill against Iran could result in the biggest test of the political clout of the Israel lobby here in decades.
The White House, which says the bill could well derail ongoing negotiations between Iran and the U.S. and five other powers over Tehran’s nuclear programme and destroy the international coalition behind the existing sanctions regime, has already warned that it will veto the bill if it passes Congress in its present form.
The new bill, co-sponsored by two of Congress’s biggest beneficiaries of campaign contributions by political action committees closely linked to the powerful American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), would impose sweeping new sanctions against Tehran if it fails either to comply with the interim deal it struck last month in Geneva with the P5+1 (U.S., Britain, France, Russia, China plus Germany) or reach a comprehensive accord with the great powers within one year.
To be acceptable, however, such an accord, according to the bill, would require Iran to effectively dismantle virtually its entire nuclear programme, including any enrichment of uranium on its own soil, as demanded by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The government of President Hassan Rouhani has warned repeatedly that such a demand is a deal-breaker, and even Secretary of State John Kerry has said that a zero-enrichment position is a non-starter.
Friday, December 20, 2013
Thursday, December 19, 2013
China vs US 'sea-to-shining-sea'
It happened now and it will happen again: a near-collision between an American and a Chinese naval vessel in the South China Sea.
The USS Cowpens, a 10,000-ton guided-missile cruiser, got "too close" to a drill involving the Liaoning, China's first aircraft carrier, and its carrier task force, according to the Global Times.
The US Pacific Fleet stressed that the cruiser had to take emergency measures to avoid a collision. Yet the Global Times accused the cruiser of "harassing" the Liaoning formation by taking "offensive actions".
The paper spelt it loudly; "If the American navy and air force always encroach near China's doorstep, confrontation is bound to take place."
Finally, China's Defense Ministry intervened to clarify that the vessels had "met" each other in the South China Sea but the worst was avoided via "effective and normal communication".
Communication had better be damned "effective" from now on as China asserts itself as a rising sea power and it's obviously unclear who can really do what in the South as well as the East China Sea, not to mention the oceans beyond.
It's a fact that China's still booming economy is directly dependent on its complex maritime lines of supply (and demand) - mostly over the Indian Ocean and the Western Pacific. But that does not mean that China is trying to control its surrounding seas by imposing a sino-version of the 19th century Monroe Doctrine, which was essentially a continental strategy of hemispheric domination (ask any informed Latin American about it).
Read the entire article
The USS Cowpens, a 10,000-ton guided-missile cruiser, got "too close" to a drill involving the Liaoning, China's first aircraft carrier, and its carrier task force, according to the Global Times.
The US Pacific Fleet stressed that the cruiser had to take emergency measures to avoid a collision. Yet the Global Times accused the cruiser of "harassing" the Liaoning formation by taking "offensive actions".
The paper spelt it loudly; "If the American navy and air force always encroach near China's doorstep, confrontation is bound to take place."
Finally, China's Defense Ministry intervened to clarify that the vessels had "met" each other in the South China Sea but the worst was avoided via "effective and normal communication".
Communication had better be damned "effective" from now on as China asserts itself as a rising sea power and it's obviously unclear who can really do what in the South as well as the East China Sea, not to mention the oceans beyond.
It's a fact that China's still booming economy is directly dependent on its complex maritime lines of supply (and demand) - mostly over the Indian Ocean and the Western Pacific. But that does not mean that China is trying to control its surrounding seas by imposing a sino-version of the 19th century Monroe Doctrine, which was essentially a continental strategy of hemispheric domination (ask any informed Latin American about it).
Read the entire article
Wednesday, December 18, 2013
Tuesday, December 17, 2013
Is Putin One of Us?
Is Vladimir Putin a paleoconservative?
In the culture war for mankind’s future, is he one of us?
While such a question may be blasphemous in Western circles, consider the content of the Russian president’s state of the nation address.
With America clearly in mind, Putin declared, “In many countries today, moral and ethical norms are being reconsidered.”
“They’re now requiring not only the proper acknowledgment of freedom of conscience, political views and private life, but also the mandatory acknowledgment of the equality of good and evil.”
Translation: While privacy and freedom of thought, religion and speech are cherished rights, to equate traditional marriage and same-sex marriage is to equate good with evil.
No moral confusion here, this is moral clarity, agree or disagree.
President Reagan once called the old Soviet Empire “the focus of evil in the modern world.” President Putin is implying that Barack Obama’s America may deserve the title in the 21st century.
Read the entire article
In the culture war for mankind’s future, is he one of us?
While such a question may be blasphemous in Western circles, consider the content of the Russian president’s state of the nation address.
With America clearly in mind, Putin declared, “In many countries today, moral and ethical norms are being reconsidered.”
“They’re now requiring not only the proper acknowledgment of freedom of conscience, political views and private life, but also the mandatory acknowledgment of the equality of good and evil.”
Translation: While privacy and freedom of thought, religion and speech are cherished rights, to equate traditional marriage and same-sex marriage is to equate good with evil.
No moral confusion here, this is moral clarity, agree or disagree.
President Reagan once called the old Soviet Empire “the focus of evil in the modern world.” President Putin is implying that Barack Obama’s America may deserve the title in the 21st century.
Read the entire article
Monday, December 16, 2013
Friday, December 13, 2013
Goliath: The Book That May Delegitimize Israel’s Apartheid State
Thanks to the Israel lobby’s slander campaign against Max Blumenthal and his new book, Goliath: Life and Loathing in Greater Israel, I not only learned things about the Jewish state that I never knew, I also made a wonderful discovery – but more about that later. I confess I probably wouldn’t have read Goliath if not for the controversy it has generated: those squeals of pain coming from Israel’s apologists had to mean something, I figured. Either the book was egregiously unfair to the Jewish state or else a brilliant chronicle of its depredations against ordinary human decency. I had to read it in order to find out – and what I discovered both shocked and uplifted me, furthering my understanding not only of the Jewish state and its people but also of my own philosophy of libertarianism.
Goliath is an easy read on a subject that makes many very uneasy: although it’s fairly long, it consists of many short vignettes told in the first person, chronicling Blumenthal’s travels across the length and breadth of the Holy Land – and the story it tells is alarming, especially for those who count themselves among Israel’s friends.
For years, the Israeli body politic has been moving rightward – i.e. toward militarism, ultra-nationalism, and religious fundamentalism – to such a degree that it seems unrecognizable to those of us who belong to the older generation. We remember – or think we remember – the Israel of Exodus, the brave little upstart that defied the odds and, surrounded by enemies on every side, made the desert bloom with the verdant fields of a liberal democracy.
Goliath proves that liberal democracy is now, for all intents and purpose, defunct: indeed, it may have never existed in the first place. The book demonstrates this on every page with brutal real-life firsthand reporting. Starting off slowly, Blumenthal paints a portrait of a society living in a bubble, with the Israeli Ashkenazi aristocracy on top, the Mizrahi drone-workers charged with police work and other non-elite tasks near the bottom, and the Palestinian helots on the lowest rung, eking out a problematic existence with all the legal and economic factors pointing to their eventual expulsion from Israeli society. As the rightist wave engulfs what had been the dream of socialist Zionists to build an egalitarian society, and turns it into a bastion of religious nationalism and outright racism, Blumenthal moves through this society-in-transition with the unforgiving eye of a born documentarian, mercilessly exposing the hypocrisy, mendacity, and criminality of a country that is coming unhinged.
Read the entire article
Goliath is an easy read on a subject that makes many very uneasy: although it’s fairly long, it consists of many short vignettes told in the first person, chronicling Blumenthal’s travels across the length and breadth of the Holy Land – and the story it tells is alarming, especially for those who count themselves among Israel’s friends.
For years, the Israeli body politic has been moving rightward – i.e. toward militarism, ultra-nationalism, and religious fundamentalism – to such a degree that it seems unrecognizable to those of us who belong to the older generation. We remember – or think we remember – the Israel of Exodus, the brave little upstart that defied the odds and, surrounded by enemies on every side, made the desert bloom with the verdant fields of a liberal democracy.
Goliath proves that liberal democracy is now, for all intents and purpose, defunct: indeed, it may have never existed in the first place. The book demonstrates this on every page with brutal real-life firsthand reporting. Starting off slowly, Blumenthal paints a portrait of a society living in a bubble, with the Israeli Ashkenazi aristocracy on top, the Mizrahi drone-workers charged with police work and other non-elite tasks near the bottom, and the Palestinian helots on the lowest rung, eking out a problematic existence with all the legal and economic factors pointing to their eventual expulsion from Israeli society. As the rightist wave engulfs what had been the dream of socialist Zionists to build an egalitarian society, and turns it into a bastion of religious nationalism and outright racism, Blumenthal moves through this society-in-transition with the unforgiving eye of a born documentarian, mercilessly exposing the hypocrisy, mendacity, and criminality of a country that is coming unhinged.
Read the entire article
Thursday, December 12, 2013
Wednesday, December 11, 2013
Tuesday, December 10, 2013
Monday, December 9, 2013
Conservatism Inc.’s Mandela Problem—The Grassroots Still Think It Was Right First Time. And It Was
“Conservatives have a Mandela problem” runs the headline of a December 6 Salon post by Alex Halperin. Actually, according to Halperin, [email him] conservatives—by which he means what VDARE.com calls Conservatism Inc.— have not one but two Mandela problems, rooted in its current fawning praise of the late Nelson Mandela. (To give credit where it’s due, some well-known conservatives such as Joseph Farah, David Swindle, Robert Stacy McCain, Diana West, Gateway Pundit and Tim Graham of the Media Research Center have been critical of Mandela.)
Conservatism Inc.’s first problem: the grassroots of the movement appear stoutly unreconstructed. The comment sections at most of the Conservatism Inc. websites has been overwhelmingly anti-Mandela.
The Left seems particularly fascinated by Ted Cruz’s Facebook page. Cruz gave a typical gushing statement, calling Mandela “inspiration for defenders of liberty around the globe.” But many of his supporters expressed skepticism. And these were not crazed “racist” ramblings, but the same criticisms that many Conservatism Inc. operatives themselves made in the 1980s. Of the thousands of comments left on Cruz’s page, the worst the Daily Beast’s Jamelle Bouie could point-and-splutter at were:
Conservatism Inc.’s first problem: the grassroots of the movement appear stoutly unreconstructed. The comment sections at most of the Conservatism Inc. websites has been overwhelmingly anti-Mandela.
The Left seems particularly fascinated by Ted Cruz’s Facebook page. Cruz gave a typical gushing statement, calling Mandela “inspiration for defenders of liberty around the globe.” But many of his supporters expressed skepticism. And these were not crazed “racist” ramblings, but the same criticisms that many Conservatism Inc. operatives themselves made in the 1980s. Of the thousands of comments left on Cruz’s page, the worst the Daily Beast’s Jamelle Bouie could point-and-splutter at were:
- “Let’s not forget that Mandela called Castro’s Communist revolution ‘a source of inspiration to all freedom-loving people,’”
- “Mandela was a communist trained by the KGB who sings racial hate songs…and now, the South Africa is a worst country for both whites and blacks,”
- “Ted, long before you were born, his reputation was the complete opposite. He was, in fact, a terrorist and a criminal, he persecuted and killed Zulus. All the apartheid BS you hear in today’s media is all lies.”
Friday, December 6, 2013
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