Cheap Blogging Crutch 01.05

Serial Catastrophes in Afghanistan threaten Obama Policy
Juan Cole runs down the problems facing the Obama Administration in Afghanistan. They are not limited to killing schoolchildren a few too many times, enraging the Afghan public, provoking a student protest movement, double agents betraying us, the Afghan army not effectively existing/being dependable/not showing up to anything important/taking potshots at US troops, and the fact that the Afghan government barely functions if at all. But on the bright side, the law of averages states that a sometime somewhere something in that country has to go right and if we stick around long enough the chances are that it'll be a big and important thing. So... fingers crossed.

C.I.A. Is Sharing Data With Climate Scientists
That's right, the CIA is using spy satellites and specialized sensors to collect advanced data and assess "hidden complexities" in climate change in collaboration with scientists and universities. In addition they've been waterboarding polar bears three at a time to get them to spill the beans on glacier melting and they've rendered a few arctic foxes to Egypt for some "enhanced interrogation" about temperature data. Finally we're putting some government hardasses on the climate change front. A few targeted assassinations, a few rigged elections and we might finally get this problem licked.

New scanners break child porn laws
In the aftermath of the flight 253 flaming underwear bombing there have been renewed calls for the use of full body optical scanners to ferret out bombs, knives, and average genitalia size of your bog standard air passenger. But instead of merely whining about personal freedoms, police states, encroaching fascism, or civil liberties, opponents in the UK have opted for a different track: they say if you use it on a kid it's legally defined as child pornography. It seems all the civil liberties people have finally learned how to do battle. When it's security vs. civil liberties, civil liberties always gets handcuffed, beat up, and tased. But security vs. child pornography? That's a whole new ballgame. Who says hippies can't learn?

Hell Freezes Over: Rush Limbaugh Loves Union Hospitals and Socialized Medicine
Among the many thing that were hilarious about Rush Limbaugh's heart almost exploding were the fact that his heart nearly exploded, he was treated in the hospital at the center of the Obama birth certificate conspiracy, and that after months of railing against socialism, unions, and health care, he was subjected to all three and liked them without understanding that the hospital was the evil hotbed of socialism, unions, and Kenyan birth certificate fraud that it was. I know, I know "Rush Limbaugh doesn't understand something, gets facts wrong" isn't as much of a headline as it is a fact of daily existence. But it did give the SEIU a nice chance to tee off on him. Plus, as I've previously mentioned: his heart almost exploded. We're getting closer and closer to the day when the rotten fuck finally shuffles off this mortal coil.

Knut Haugland, Sailor on Kon-Tiki, Dies at 92
An obituary worth reading. Know that you will never accomplish anything this great or worthwhile or heroic or manly if you were given two lifetimes. A tip of the cap and raise of the glass to Mr. Knut Haugland.

This'll learn 'em

The United States has standards, people. If you rig an election (in a way we don't want) and then brutally suppress the uprising, well, you'll just get a few cryptic statements about legitimacy followed by a few timid remarks about how you're treating all the people you're arresting under false pretenses. But build a reactor? Strike that. Find out that the US has known about the reactor you built for a good long time but that they didn't know that you knew that they knew? That's a paddlin'.

The Obama administration is scrambling to assemble a package of harsher economic sanctions against Iran over its nuclear program that could include a cutoff of investments to the country’s oil-and-gas industry and restrictions on many more Iranian banks than those currently blacklisted, senior administration officials said Sunday.

The administration also is seeking to build a broader coalition of partners for sanctions so that it may still be able to act against Iran even if China and Russia were to veto harsher measures proposed in the United Nations Security Council.

This combined with all those sanctions the world enacting for stealing an election and killing, beating, and arresting anyone who thought that maybe votes should be counted, really ought to put a serious damper on Iranian plans. Oh, they didn't get sanctioned for that coup/suppression thing? My bad. Well, at least these new theoretical sanctions that won't get past the UN Security Council, really ought to make Ahmadinejad's non-Jew rhetoric a lot more interesting.

But let that be a lesson to future Ahmadinejads. You say "democracy shemocracy" and we will stifle a yawn with the full brunt of America's might. But you find out we've been reading your diary, perhaps even writing "I know you're reading this America" into its pages, then we will try to place sanctions that will affect everyone but the leadership of the country. Why not? Those people have had a rough few months, they'll barely notice the extra hardship. If they didn't want it, they shouldn't have not elected Ahmadinejad and Khamenei.

My God.....have they finally learned?

I'm about to blow your mind here, so sit down. On the first time in decades on an issue of any importance, it seems that Democrats are finally tired of playing the eager Charlie Brown to the GOP's football holding Lucy, and are willing to go it alone on an issue. As squadrons of pigs take to the skies, Democrats may have decided they're moving towards using their own numbers and ideas to pass a health care bill. To go it alone.

Given hardening Republican opposition to Congressional health care proposals, Democrats now say they see little chance of the minority’s cooperation in approving any overhaul, and are increasingly focused on drawing support for a final plan from within their own ranks.

Top Democrats said Tuesday that their go-it-alone view was being shaped by what they saw as Republicans’ purposely strident tone against health care legislation during this month’s Congressional recess, as well as remarks by leading Republicans that current proposals were flawed beyond repair.

Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff, said the heated opposition was evidence that Republicans had made a political calculation to draw a line against any health care changes, the latest in a string of major administration proposals that Republicans have opposed.

Really Rahm? You're just coming to that conclusion now? I think anyone who reasonably pays attention to politics could have told you Republicans were going to oppose any and everything you came up with. But then again, we don't get paid hundreds of thousands of millions of dollars for our supposed political acumen.

But before we get too excited, let's just observe that all this does is set us up for a new kind of disappointment. Instead of the GOP killing a bill or making it worse, now we all get to contend with Ben Nelson, Evan Bayh, Kent Conrad, and House Blue Dogs making the bill worse or eventually killing it if they don't get to make it worse. SO instead of shrugging our shoulders and saying "well at least they tried, but the GOP killed it", we just get to rage at the Democratic party as a whole once again as we wonder why Rahm Emanuel didn't bayonet Blanche Lincoln to show Arlen Specter the White House means business on health care. Have we just traded one bad outcome for another bad outcome? Say, a flupocalypse for a nuclear apocalypse? Possibly. But at least Democrats are going to make the attempt. Maybe. They might recant all this tomorrow.

EDIT: Like clockwork...

The new golden age of supression

If you heard about it yesterday, China is having some sort of uprising/conflict somewhere over something and score of people are being wounded and injured. It's between Uighurs and the Han, over specifically what no one really knows, but broadly about ethnic and religious divides. And....that's about it. That's pretty much the extent of the knowledge of what's going on. Why is that? Because it's the new age of media and information suppression. Thought Iran tried some innovative ideas on squashing information? They were just field testing ideas China had perfected and Iran couldn't have even dreamed of China's strategies for spinning the West.

In the wake of Sunday’s deadly riots in its western region of Xinjiang, China’s central government took all the usual steps to enshrine its version of events as received wisdom: it crippled Internet service, blocked Twitter’s micro-blogs, purged search engines of unapproved references to the violence, saturated the Chinese media with the state-sanctioned story.

It also took one most unusual step: Hours after troops quelled the protests, in which 156 people were reported killed, the state invited foreign journalists on an official trip to Urumqi, Xinjiang’s capital and the site of the unrest, “to know better about the riots.” Indeed, it set up a media center at a downtown hotel — with a hefty discount on rooms — to keep arriving reporters abreast of events.
...
As the Internet and other media raise new challenges to China’s version of the truth, China is finding new ways not just to suppress bad news at the source, but also to spin whatever unflattering tidbits escape its control.

Two reason for this. First, they get better blocking technology from the telcoms. Hey Iran, you get what you pay for. Second, they studied various color revolutions, including Iran's, and learned how to best shut down communication, internet, phones, TV, and social networking. Well goodie, at least someone benefited and learned from those revolutions. But what's really nice is to see those ideas applied and field tested so quickly. Iran isn't even done with it's uprising and China has already learned from the Guardian Council's Oppression Bloopers and Suppression Gaffes highlight reel. China actually learned the first lesson decades ago: don't allow elections.

What's really great about this is that it isn't some extra-special Chinese suppression technology. Or sure they sprung for some extra bells and whistles, but this basic package essentially exists in every country that has moved beyond carrier pigeon and pony based communications. So pay attention, you're seeing the new playbook being written on suppressing any level of uprising or revolution. Remember to thank your telcoms for making it it jut that easy.

The Bush Legacy

Vladimir Putin 'wanted to hang Georgian President Saakashvili by the balls'

With Russian tanks only 30 miles from Tbilisi on August 12, Mr Sarkozy told Mr Putin that the world would not accept the overthrow of Georgia’s Government. According to Mr Levitte, the Russian seemed unconcerned by international reaction. “I am going to hang Saakashvili by the balls,” Mr Putin declared.

Mr Sarkozy thought he had misheard. “Hang him?” — he asked. “Why not?” Mr Putin replied. “The Americans hanged Saddam Hussein.”

Mr Sarkozy, using the familiar tu, tried to reason with him: “Yes but do you want to end up like [President] Bush?” Mr Putin was briefly lost for words, then said: “Ah — you have scored a point there.”

There we go George, your legacy. You are now the diplomatic equivalent of "FACE!!!!!", brought up only to rub someone else's nose in shit, and are your policies are viewed as so toxic that it even gives men like Vladimir Putin pause. "You don't want to end up like Bush" is now a cautionary tale people use to strike at the vanity of politicians who want to get a little frisky with the military and laws of their country.

I'm glad someone learned something from these eight years, even if it is "You'll be severely unpopular if you do these things" and not "These things are morally and ethically wrong." Glad to have been a help.