High water… rather than underwater… ;)

Women sit on a table while water rises in their shoe shop [Photograph: Andrea Pattaro/AFP/Getty Images]

Venice, it seems, has its worst case of acqua alta in 22 years.  But!  High water is not underwater…

So I am looking out of my second floor window at the Hotel Monaco & Grand Canal – normally seeing a street, but today a canal – watching carrier bags float past. Ah, Venice! City of Casanova, Titian and the floating carrier bag. Some of the designer shops on the alley are actually open, although they all have high metal boards at the entrances, keeping the water out. Pucci and Gucci are open. Harry’s Bar is sort of open. I watch, amazed, as a woman in waders stops outside a handbag shop and demands to be shown a handbag. The shop girl shows it to her across the board. She touches it, debates with the seller, and eventually buys it. Three foot of floodwater, and still she shops. She must be Italian.

The Venetians are cheerful. I can spot them from my window because they seem so happy. Because they do this with more panache than anyone else on earth. Three foot of water! Pah! They are all wearing green waders and they are not crying. They are standing in their shops, smoking and talking on their mobile telephones. Or they are stalking down the street, with their briefcases over their heads, looking completely normal.

It’s a silly little conceit, the piece, but not boring in dry (ha!) details.. and pretty much the way a cold, wet, high water day would roll out.. with the added fun the vaporetto / water buses were/are on strike.  LOL The commenters pretty much hated the little report.

Back on dry land, war land, Obama land… (not that it matters) Weissman has a few comments on Jim Jones…

“We believe that success in Afghanistan remains a critical national security imperative for the United States and the international community.”

That’s quite a mouthful, I know, and the awkward syntax should alert readers to what a gargantuan task General Jones has in mind for the incoming administration.

In part, he worries that failure in Afghanistan would send a message to terrorist organizations that we and our allies can be defeated. It would. But, to use the new buzzword, let’s be pragmatic. Wouldn’t it be better to send that message at a time when a new American president offers the world new hope rather than after we follow the British and Soviets into a deadly Afghan quagmire?

The answer could determine the success of Obama’s domestic dreams, and whether he will be a one-term president. Lest he actually believes in the possibility of winning even a half-baked victory, he should read Rudyard Kipling or call Mikhail Gorbachev.

I don’t take such a critical warning for Ob’s second go round… if media keeps being the truss he needs and the critical pro-Israel pro-war pro USA! USA! conservative Dems (is there any other kind?) don’t abandon him, he should do fine.  Would we turn out history?  LOL I kinda of doubt it.

But, I hand it to the imperial state, they have worn me out.  I am not that old and all I can say is, cue the music.  Whatever the elevator plays out of the can when it is going down.  However slowly.  The long arc will not play out well.  Not for ordinary humans, anyway.

As the chorus chants, Too Big To Fail!! .. that would be NATO:

The problem with Jones goes even further. The vision offered by his Afghanistan Study Group draws heavily on his experience with NATO, as one can see in this recently released letter to the Washington Post that he co-authored with Harlan Ullman, the civilian architect of the Pentagon’s Rapid Dominance Strategy, or Shock and Awe.

“For the first time in its history, NATO is engaged in a ground war, not against a massive Soviet attack across the northern plains of Germany or in Iraq against insurgents and al Qaeda, but in Afghanistan,” they wrote. “In committing the alliance to sustained ground combat operations in Afghanistan (unlike Kosovo in 1999), NATO has bet its future. If NATO fails, alliance cohesion will be at grave risk. A moribund or unraveled NATO will have profoundly negative geostrategic impact.”

”Historic” president will be painted, no matter what and at the very least, a qualified success.  Stay the course, Bail Out, too big to fail, first, historic…. yada yada yada yayayayayay.  What a cage we are in.  How we have caged so much of the world..

The words echo the rhetoric of the cold war, only now General Jones and so many other “foreign policy realists” see the big threat as radical Islam and other forces that threaten Western control of the oil and natural gas resources from Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf into Central Asia. Jones views this threat not only as a 40-year marine, but also as a director of both Boeing and Chevron, and to counter it, he has helped Washington push the Europeans to increase their defense spending and join the United States in a multi-national military force to defend Western interests wherever threats appear.

Afghanistan is just the beginning, and many Europeans are already dragging their feet, seeing Washington’s view of NATO as too close to their own imperial past. Just as with the occupation of Iraq, they don’t think it will work any better this time. General Jones may hope that Obama’s charm can win them over, but I doubt they’ll drink the Kool-Aid.

Well… who knows… possibly a spoonful of charm does not make the poison go down..

In March, local authorities confirmed they were looking at a scheme to raise the city’s buildings to meet the problem [Picture: AP]