Fancy footwork… 29 March 2007

Pepe Escobar in Asia Times on the UK 15 being held in Iran…

[F]rom the Iraqi shore one can see the Iranian shore, flags aflutter. These remain extremely disputed waters. In 1975, a treaty was signed in Algiers between the shah of Iran and Saddam Hussein. The center of the river was supposed to be the border. Then Saddam invaded Iran in 1980. After the Iran-Iraq War that this sparked ended in 1988, and even after both Gulf wars, things remain perilously inconclusive: a new treaty still has not been signed.

The British are adamant that the sailors were in Iraqi waters checking for cars, not weapons, being smuggled. It’s almost laughable that the Royal Navy should be reduced to finding dangerous Toyotas in the Persian Gulf. Some reports from Tehran claim the British were actually checking Iranian military preparations ahead of a possible confrontation with the US.

Western corporate media overwhelmingly take for granted that the British were in Iraqi or “international” waters (wrong: these are disputed Iran/Iraq waters). Tehran has accused the British of “blatant aggression” and reminded world public opinion “this is not the first time that Britain commits such illegal acts” (which is true). Tehran diplomats later suggested that the British might be charged with espionage (which is actually the case in Khuzestan province in Iran, conducted by US Special Forces). […]

I think I’d take a few minutes and pay attention to Pepe, who was posting in late summer of 2001, come get him, something big is coming and if that is right, afterward you won’t be able to get him. 

Right, that was about Osama.  AT kept links to the PE 2001 articles on the front page for a long time post 9.11

There is more:

From the depths of their abysmal, recent historical experience, even the Arab world – which is not so fond of Persians – sees the US-orchestrated UN sanctions on Iran for what they are: the West, once again, trying to smash an independent nation daring to have its shot at more influence in the Middle East.

More sanctions will be useless as China and India will continue to do serious business with Iran.

Tactically, as a backgammon or, better yet, chess move – in which Iranians excel – the Shatt-al-Arab incident may be much more clever than it appears. Oil is establishing itself well above US$60 a barrel as a result of the incident, and that’s good for Iran. It’s true that from London’s point of view, the incident could have been arranged as a provocation, part of a mischievous plan to escalate the conflict with Iran and turn Western and possibly world public opinion against the regime.

Oh get ready… here it comes:

But from Tehran’s point of view, for all purposes British Prime Minister Tony Blair is a soft target. The episode has the potential to paralyze both President George W Bush and Blair. Neither can use the incident to start a war with Iran, although Blair has warned that his government is prepared to move to “a different phase” if Iran does not quickly release the sailors. [snip]

I know I pushed the extracts (mea culpa) but it’s just such a meaty look … 😉

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The Hill has an article on the Obama method with lobbyists…

[“A]nd as people have looked away in disillusionment and frustration, we know what’s filled the void,” said Obama. “The cynics, and the lobbyists, and the special interests who’ve turned our government into a game only they can afford to play. They write the checks and you get stuck with the bills, they get the access while you get to write a letter; they think they own this government, but we’re here today to take it back. The time for that politics is over. It’s time to turn the page.”

In a fundraising e-mail distributed yesterday, Obama emphasized his stance against taking money from lobbyists and PACs.
Two lobbyists who are supporting another candidate and spoke to The Hill on condition of anonymity said that Obama’s campaign contacted them asking to be put in touch with their networks of business clients and acquaintances.

One of the lobbyists, who supports Clinton, said that Shomik Dutta, a fundraiser for Obama’s campaign, called to ask if the lobbyist’s wife would be interested in making a political contribution.

“I was quite taken aback,” he said. “He was very direct in saying that you’re a lobbyist and we don’t want contributions from lobbyists. But your wife can contribute and we like your network.”

Dutta declined to discuss his work. [snip]

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In The Hill also, Code Pink just will not let up on Hillary… 😉

[O]ne of Code Pink’s co-founders, Gael Murphy, said the group has been following Clinton for almost two years and will continue to do so until she introduces legislation to bring American soldiers home from Iraq. Murphy said it was likely the group would protest Clinton and other candidates at this morning’s forum sponsored by the Building and Construction Trades Department of the AFL-CIO.

“We think it’s important to put pressure on her as one of the most important politicians in the United States,” Murphy said.
Murphy said not even an apology for the 2002 vote, like the one rival candidate and former Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.) has given, would appease the group.  [snip]

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Family bringing suit against Harper’s Magazine, loses…

OKLAHOMA CITY — An appeals court has ruled against family members of an Oklahoma National Guard member whose open casket was photographed by Harper’s Magazine.

The 2004 funeral of Sgt. Kyle Brinlee at the Pryor High School gymnasium was attended by 1,200 people, including Gov. Brad Henry, who spoke.

“While it could be argued that publication of [the photo] without prior authorization was in poor taste … it does not constitute an actionable claim under any of the theories advanced by plaintiffs,” the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on March 23 in Showler v. Harper’s Magazine.

Robert Showler, Brinlee’s biological father, and Johnny Davidson, his maternal grandfather, alleged among other things that the magazine and photographer Peter Turnley invaded their privacy, deceived them and unjustly enriched themselves by publishing the photo.  [snip]

And a summary and link to the loss in the initial court case…

Family loses suit over soldier’s open-casket photo in Harper’s

If father, grandfather wanted privacy, federal judge rules, they shouldn’t have held public funeral with reserved press section. 12.27.05

Well, that seems quite direct:  You wish privacy, guard against the loss of that privacy.  Yes, someone popped me the link to the case.  And a few others…

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UPDATE, 11:13 on the Pacific Ocean…

Madman has a good one up, words for citoyen and citoyenne.  Yes, slap me (you know they want to… )  for being “sexist”… I just happen to love the word:  citoyenne.

Back to Madman… and the mud and blood laden trenches of retail politics (and just the littlest, tiniest slice is online, as everybody knows)…

Despite what the slavish Big Box Blahgs say, despite what the horse-race-flogging tee-vee pundits say, citizens AREN’T political consultants. They AREN’T political advisors. They SHOULDN’T approach politics the way they follow sports, counting box scores and campaign fundraising numbers and gleefully concentrating on the ins-and-outs of political gamesmanship.

…

They should heckle, they should stop traffic if they feel they must. What they shouldn’t do is calculate and equivicate and dance to the self-serving tune of the politicians and their big money donors. Political parties are NOT the only avenue for political action.

Then a snip from Zinn, whom Madman quotes in the post:

I am reminded of the situation at the 1964 Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City, when the black delegation from Mississippi asked to be seated, to represent the 40 percent black population of that state.

They were offered a “compromise” – two nonvoting seats. “This is the best we can get,” some black leaders said. The Mississippians, led by Fannie Lou Hamer and Bob Moses, turned it down, and thus held on to their fighting spirit, which later brought them what they had asked for.

That mantra – “the best we can get” – is a recipe for corruption.

The party and it’s sales people are all about “the best we can get”… manufacturing consent.  Off line, online. 

Don’t settle.  Just don’t.  Make them service the constituency.  All there is to withhold is the vote.

Yes this is immense heresy, especially at one of the little sites that, for some reason, the BBBlahgers think they can control.  Won’t be happening.

Speaking of the “Mississippians”, one thing I took note of after the ’04 loss (they so expected to win) was Kennedy in interview railing that only 43% of eligible Blacks in MS are registered to vote.  I later read Manning Marable who confirmed this…

It is not as if in the intervening 43 years the Democrats cared.   Fannie Lou Hamer and Bob Moses knew:  they must be forced.  I am certain that the Democrats are no more interested in poor whites in the South than they are in poor, or otherwise, Blacks in the South… some deference in the big cities, where there are machines.  About it.  So 43% was long ago judged to be “what they could get”.

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UPDATE, 1:30 pm in San Francisco

I was reading TAPPED, a post from Lomonaco, who is listening to the hearings:

For instance, Dianne Feinstein questioned Sampson about the fact that Sampson talked about “the real problem we have right now” with U.S. attorney Carol Lam in San Diego the day after her office alerted DoJ that they would be executing search warrants in an investigation of Dusto Foggo and Brent Wilkes. (For more on the story, see here.)

Feinstein asked Sampson today, “And are you aware that on May 10 Carol Lam sent a notice to the Department of Justice saying she would be seeking a search warrant — of the CIA investigation into Dusto Foggo and Brent Wilkes?” And Sampson carefully responded, “I don’t remember ever seeing such a notice.” The obvious follow-up: “Are you saying you specifically remember that you never saw such a notice? Or are you saying it is possible you saw it and now you just don’t remember?”

…

Sampson says he doesn’t remember ever seeing such a notice. “Well,” Sampson should be asked, “did you ever learn of the substance of the notice? That is, did you ever learn, in any way or form, of the fact that Lam intended to have search warrants executed in the investigation involving Foggo and Wilkes?”

That reminded me of the Iran-Contra hearings… and Walter Karp’s book Liberty Under Siege (Franklin Sq Press, 1988, paper ed.) a sub-section called Oligarchy Restored, p 254

“In four days of questioning, the congressional committee investigating the Iran-contra affair never pinned down Robert C. McFarlane on what he told President Reagan about the White House staff’s activities in behalf of the Nicaraguan rebels.”

Senator Daniel Inouye, chairman of the Senate half of the committee, a Hawaiian Democrat, asks McFarlane whether he had “advised the President on whatever you were doing” for the contras.

“Yes, sir,” replies McFarlane and Inouye drops the subject-the subject of subjects dropped. McFarlane mentions discussing Colonel North with the President, alleged “loose cannon,” supposedly scarcely known to the President. “Once again,” notes the New York Times, “Senator Inouye dropped the subject.”

Questioned by Senator Warren Rudman, a New Hampshire Republican, McFarlane says the President had “a far more liberal interpretation” of his freedom from the laws “than I did.” And “Senator Rudman dropped the matter.”

For the people believe in the supremacy of law. Do we want them to hear over television that the President does not?

Yes, and what are we facing today?

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UPDATE,  2:25 pm

hmm IOZ has a timely post on getting your groove on, selling your religion, your angst, who you poked, selling whatever is grist for the mill, if it gets you a laying-in spot on the greasy, battered, bloodspattered clover bed that is politics.

Yes…it fits today…. and the awkward and effortful shimmy going on elsewhere…

Feelin’ on Your Booty.

Evidently, Fred Thompson isn’t a Christian. That’s according to James Dobson, although a spokesman clarifies: “We use that word–Christian–to refer to people who are evangelical Christians.” Which is fine, I suppose, just as it’s fine to call insects bugs and chimps monkeys, even though not all bugs are insects and chimps aren’t monkeys at all.

Newt Gingrich, meanwhile, wins fulsome praise after a radioland discussion of his Monica-Lewinsky-era extramarital affair. It seems that people are confused about the objects of praise and derision here, wondering how it is that “the most politically powerful evangelical figure in the country” can come out for a wife-abandoner, but there’s nothing to be confused about.

Joan Didion famously observed that everything that didn’t make sense about Reagan if you thought of him as the President made perfect sense if you thought of him as an actor.

Didion surely knew.  From an old Sacramento CA family and a long long time observer of the political scene… 

A bit more of IOZ:

Let me put it to you this way: Montel holds no moral position In Re: if he is or if he ain’t your baby dady [sic]–not so long as you’re willing to dish in front of the live studio audience. Dobson would support an Iranian hooker with every Sutra of the Koran tatooed in miniature on her backside if she’d show up to get a little weepy on his show. This game works well all across the world of Christian broadcasting. There is hardly a sentence that comes out of Pat Robertson’s mouth that couldn’t be followed by “only three easy payments of $19.95.”

This is America, friends. There is only one meaningful question: What are you selling?

Commerce, you gotta love it… It made America – and Tony the Tiger – grrrreat!

Shimmy on!

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UPDATE, 5:40 pm…

Oh yes, if people are not bored, they are tired of it.  Imagine how i feel, who lives to amuse, myself primarily…

But if they could read it would be so much better…  Of course the many manias would not be fed. 

Today at Mo Betta Meta:

[A]s for the DD situation — really? He posted a link to his blog which had his real name on it? I stand corrected. Then this whole thing about him being outed, if that is true, is UTTER NONSENSE. I shan’t say another word about it.

Now, as I remakred on BMT to Lucid, I am sorry, but for my own sanity and peace of mind, I am going to have to adopt a Do Not Engage/Do Not Acknowledge Policy as pertains to anyone who condones the horseshit that passes for dialogue at Marisacat’s site. i’ll be happy to speak to anyone who repudiates her lies and malicious obfuscations and behaviour, but as for anyone who participates at that blog and says NOTHING to indicate they do NOT approve — you are Dead to Me.

Or, in the words of the Good Witch of the North…

Begone! You have no power here! 

 February 1 at Marisacat, the day after the photo was posted with

no name,

no moniker and

no law firm listed:

UPDATE, 12:30.

The site is on full moderation.

Here, have a laugh.  And remember: when he ws fully outed, his name as well as who he was diarying as at Dkos by a DE reporter last October, he was going to GBCW and then rename himself.  He did not.  I believe it was that reporter who stated, more or less, that he supported Beau Biden for AG, tho he had failed the bar.  DE does nto even require a JD for their AGs.  And Del Dem failed the bar in DE THREE times.  Something I did not know 2 days ago.

Whoops.  As if it mattered.  He names himself at his blog, which has been carried as a link in his tag line in comments at Dkos for a year or so and he is public thru his listing at his law firm. 

I have jsut been emailed that his photo was posted at BMT during the PA elections, that may be.  I don’t read it enough to know. (Sorry.) 

And they were busy busy busy electing Patrick Murphy.  And now they are all so slightly embarrassed that he is a Blue Dog.  Well, don’t be.

Have you ever seen such wilted peacocks?  In their pin-striped suits? 

I am sorry, it is laughable.

And someone has sent the link: click on the pic and you get (as appeared at BMT on 11/7): Link. Standing in the light blue shirt.

And Opps.  Soft flanking motion incoming:  BMT  I long ago emailed him during one of his many many defenses of Armando (with blame heaped on his “community”, it ws during the suskind diaries, don’t worry suskind deleted at BMT, so many anti-Armando comments!) but I emailed Martin, What do you think they, the Boyz, say about you when you are not around.

Men are far bitchier than women.

Peacocks in a Tizzy Whizzy!  Blog Maids to All Aisles! 

Blog Maids to the Editing Room!

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just as it appeared January 30th 2007

UPDATE, 7:50 pm

hmmm.  And what if this is a mainline ”Kossack”?  One harbored close to the bosom of Daddy Kos?  An online whip…  A defender, sword drawn, of the Great Realm that is Koslandia?

Myself, I see Tammany Hall..  Bossism.   Democratic (or its early Jeffersonian incarnation) family, all the way back to Virginia and with Garvey and Brennan on one side of my family, I may speak.

What do you see?

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March 29

His many many self outings across the years were cut and pasted, linked to, enumerated and indicated.  For several days.  And subsequently…  But no, that was too hard, not fun, too truthful for them.

They loved the cuntbitchwhore merry go round DD opened up in the vaunted Dkos, MLW and BMT ”community” square.

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