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politics

State Sentence

Saturday 30 December 2006

We’ve all seen the picture of the hooded executioners putting the noose around Saddam’s neck. The International Herald Tribune and the New York Times ran it on their main pages, as did al Jazeera‘s English website. The Washington Post didn’t.

What struck me about the photo was the lack of officialness about everything.

  • The executioners are wearing street clothes.
  • The room looks relatively small, and suspiciously like a randomly chosen room in a building’s basement.
  • The executioners are wearing tattered ski masks.
  • Not only are the executioners not wearing uniforms; not a single uniform is visible anywhere.

Of course, it’s difficult to tell much of anything about the room itself with such a closely cropped photo.

Still, what immediately came to mind when I first saw this was the obvious similarity to all the beheading videos released from Iraq. It hardly looks like an official state action.

“A New Way Forward”

Friday 15 December 2006

Geoff Nunberg, at Language Log, describes Bush’s new slogan “A new way forward” thusly: “it sounds like a tagline an ad agency would come up with for a railroad trying to emerge from Chapter 11.”

Short, and worth a read.

Gates Hearings

Wednesday 6 December 2006

I think many of us are fairly impressed with Robert Gates’ confirmation hearings yesterday, but I think Slate summed it up best with their headline: Enter the Grown-Up.

To Expand or Not To Expand

Friday 17 November 2006

McCain wants more troops in Iraq; the generals don’t:

Military officials and defense experts, however, said yesterday that significantly escalating the number of U.S. combat troops in Iraq is largely implausible because it would severely strain the military, would be unsustainable for more than a few months and would offer no discernable long-term benefit. (Post)

I’m no military expert — I’ve never even been in the military — but it seems to me that

  1. if things in Iraq are deteriorating;
  2. if our military is already so thinly spread that it would “severely strain the military” to add more troops;
  3. if the military says that adding more troops “would offer no discernable long-term benefit” to the operation…

If all these things are the case, then it’s hard to see how anyone in America could look at the situation, with that knowledge, and not see Iraq as the hopeless quagmire that it is.

“America’s new Vietnam!” was the cry from opponents in the States and enemies abroad, but this is so much more disastrous. Vietnam didn’t produce an army of individuals seeking revenge coupled with a culture in which individual “military” actions are the norm. Vietnam didn’t produce terrorists, in other words, and it’s difficult to foresee anything other than that coming out of Iraq.

If we stay, it’s an ever-present propaganda tool, not to mention a gigantic terrorist training camp. If we run, we “embolden” the enemy — not that they need any help with that. Still, it will prove to be a powerful recruiting device. “Look at our success with the Infidels! Imagine if we more aggressively take Jihad to their soil!”

In other words, “stay the course” and we make things worse; “cut and run” (or rather, “redeploy” or “withdraw” or any number of euphemisms) and we make things worse.

The problem is that we aren’t just fighting insurgents who want us out of Iraq. We’re also fighting insurgents whose primary goal seems to be civil war. If that’s true, we’re not trying to prevent civil war from breaking out as an unintended consequence; we’re trying to stop people from inciting civil war. It introductions a consciousness to the actions, not to mention, in this case, a perverted religious conscientiousness.

Number Two Man

Wednesday 15 November 2006

The Washington Post has an editorial about Murtha’s bid to be the majority leader, and Pelosi’s aid in the matter. In it, Ruth Marcus succinctly explains why this is such a dumb move:

If she gets her way and helps Murtha win a come-from-behind victory against Maryland’s Steny Hoyer in tomorrow’s leadership election, she’s buying herself — and the Democratic caucus — endless news stories about Murtha’s ethics. If, as he says, Hoyer has the votes, Pelosi has made herself look weak within the caucus — not a smart move for any new leader, and certainly not for the first woman in the job. Perhaps the late timing and measured phrasing of Pelosi’s endorsement were meant to ensure that it would have little impact. If so, Pelosi failed to recognize that once she weighed in, the vote for majority leader would inevitably be seen as a gauge of her clout. (Source)

Really, not the best start for the new Speaker. “The Democrats intend to lead the most honest, most open and most ethical Congress in history,” cooed Pelosi, and it seems to have lasted an entire week…

It brings to mind a famous closing line:

The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.

I had such hope for the new Congress, but Pelosi is making me think it’s just business as usual…

Kononowicz the Great

Tuesday 14 November 2006

At first I thought Krzysztof Kononowicz was a joke. “Some clever Polish YouTuber has done some video editing and acting and created an idiot,” I thought. Apparently I’m not the only one. In comments posted about the video on YouTube, someone wrote,

ENGLISH: this is a hilarious electoral TV ad of a guy running for mayor of a town in Poland. The ad, which, incredibly, is NOT a joke, contains a huge amount of unintended humor. The cheesy jingle, the studio’s awful colors, the candidate’s look, and, last but not least, his horribly mangled and heavily accented Polish plus his dumbass ideas have made this video an instant classic of political humor. I’ll be posting my translation on my profile soon.

I even said as much here, in a post that I removed as I thought about it and realized Kononowicz is not a joke, not even unintentionally.Kononowicz was a candidate for the mayor of Białystok. Elections were held Sunday, November 12. He didn’t win. Watch the video, and even non-Polish speakers would have thought there was little chance he could win. But he did garner 3.5% of the votes.

What makes Kononowicz’s candidacy seem like a joke is his naivety. His platform is simple, Catholic, and slightly nationalistic: stop underage drinking and underage smoking; get rid of crime; protect Poland’s Ukrainian border against smuggling; improve the transportation infrastructure. They are all very practical political goals, from an obviously practical man.

Unfortunately, Mr. Kononowicz is not an eloquent speaker. He mumbles as if his mouth is filled with marbles and cotton. He begins by discussing his family, touching briefly on his mother, then speaking of his father (who fought bravely in the war but no longer lives with the Kononowicz family because “he relocated. He’s in heaven now.”), he refers to him as “Daddy.”

He concludes that it’s very much worth it to vote for him because “I am person truly honest, truly fair.” He is not all talk, he assures voters:

“Other parties talk. They talk, and they do nothing. They did nothing for the city of Białystok. And what I said, I will accomplish everything. Because I am a faithful person and a practicing [Catholic]. And I know how to do it. How to fix the roads. How to do everything. How to get rid of cigarettes. How to get rid of everything!”

A simple man. With simple ideas. But necessary ideas.

There is indeed a lot of underage drinking in Poland, as everywhere. Indeed, there’s just a lot of drinking, period, in Poland. Frigid winters and a 19% unemployment rate will do that to a country.

While I’ve only passed through Białystok’s train station on my way to the northeastern corner of Poland, I’m sure the roads there are just as bad as everywhere else in Poland. Poles like to joke that their roads are so bad that even the holes in the road have holes.

I can’t comment on the smuggling on the eastern border more than to say it makes the news regularly. Having lived on the southern border, I know there was a significant amount of smuggling things to the west — cheap alcohol mainly.

These are important concerns, but I never really heard politicians talk about them as directly as Mr. Kononowicz did. And that’s why I’ve come to admire the man. Simple though he is, he decided to try to do something about the problems he sees his fellow Białystokites face. I can almost see him sitting at a table with his friends, probably over a bottle of vodka, saying, “Damn it, I’m going to do something about this! I’m going to stop sitting at this table complaining and go out and do something.”

US pastor ‘bought drugs’ but didn’t inhale

Saturday 4 November 2006

“I bought it for myself but never used it. I was tempted but I never used it,” Mr Haggard said. He said he threw it away.(BBC)

Does anyone actually believe that after Clinton’s pathetic “didn’t inhale” loophole?

Funny how everything Republicans and their supports hate and fear about sin-mongering, terrorist-supporting, drug-taking Democrats turns up in their own backyard. Odd thing, being human…

Bush v Kerry II

Tuesday 31 October 2006

Bloomberg’s take:

While campaigning in California yesterday for gubernatorial candidate Phil Angelides, Kerry said: “Education, if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. And if you don’t, you get stuck in Iraq.”

Kerry’s suggestion “that the men and women of our military are somehow uneducated is insulting and it is shameful,” Bush said at an appearance in Georgia tonight. “The members of the United States military are plenty smart. And they are plenty brave. And the senator from Massachusetts owes them an apology.”

Contrast this with a snippet of a story on NPR earlier this week:

In their living room, Carmelo Roman de Jesus and Gloria Cruz have a shrine to Alexis, a glass cabinet with his baby shoes, baby teeth, toy cars and Medals of Honor. They’re still upset with military recruiters who promised their son $20,000 to enlist.

In an economy without many options for those lacking a college degree, the military can appear to be the only real option. Particularly when recruiters are making empty promises like that.

Michael Moore makes the same point about his home city of Flint, Michigan.

Kerry’s remark could have been better phrased, but Bush’s response shows a typical lack of introspection.

Political Schizophrenia

Saturday 21 October 2006

In local elections in Jabłonka — K’s home village in southern Poland — there’s a man running for mayor as a candidate of the Prawo i Spawiedliwość (“Law and Justice”) party, a fairly right-wing party that, like many Republicans, tries to build a base out of religious conservatives. However, he’s running for a position on the county council as a candidate of the Platforma Obywatelska (“Civic Platform”) party, a centrist, left-leaning party, something slightly right of a Clintonian Democrat.

Really, I just don’t know what I could add…

“The New Polish Potatoes”

Monday 10 July 2006

Ah, those Kaczynski boys, they’re a crazy pair:

[Prime Minister] Marcinkiewicz resigned just days after President Kaczynski, 57, canceled a “Weimar Triangle” summit meeting with Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and President Jacques Chirac of France.

These summit meetings were first started 15 years ago, soon after the collapse of the Soviet Union to forge closer political, economic and security ties between the three largest countries in the European Union but also to break down decades of suspicions and tension between Warsaw and Berlin.

Kaczynski’s office canceled the meeting with very short notice, officially because Kaczysnki had become ill. But senior Polish diplomats and opposition politicians said the real reason was a satirical article published in the German daily Taz newspaper that described the Kaczynski twins as “the Polish new potatoes.”

Anna Fotyga, Poland’s foreign minister, publicly complained to the German Foreign Ministry and demanded a formal apology. After Berlin said it would not comment since it supported freedom of the press, Fogyta said the lack of response was “shocking” and compared the article to the language used in Der Stürmer, a propaganda weekly during the Nazi era. Former foreign ministers accused the government of damaging Poland’s national interests. (IHT)

I think if this had happened during recess, the Leck or Jarek would have just smacked the editor.

Maybe that would have been less damaging for Polish foreign relations.

Exodus

Saturday 6 May 2006

From The Observer:

So many young Poles are leaving to find jobs and a better life in Britain that bosses back home are desperate for them to return to keep the wheels of Polish industry turning, writes Daniel McLaughlin in Wroclaw. […]

More than half a million Poles have moved to Britain to find jobs since Poland joined the European Union two years ago. They have fled a country with 18 per cent unemployment, the highest figure in the 25-nation bloc. But now the drain of talent has speeded up to such an extent that Poland is complaining of a drastically reduced population and the lack of a suitable workforce to help the country develop. (Source)

But why would an educated twenty-something want to return to this:

Poland is still anchored in its anti-Semitic past, says Gabriele Lasser in Berlin’s die tageszietung Consider the output of Radio Maryja, one of Poland’s main radio stations and virtual house organ of the governing Law and Justice Party. (Between the hymns and prayers, ministers use it to announce policy.) This Catholic station, which spews out right-wing propaganda for the benefit of its 3 million listeners, surpassed itself last month with an anti-Semitic diatribe from the pundit Stanislaw Michalkiewicz. Polish “kikes,” he bellowed, have manufactured a “Holocaust industry,” in order to “extort” compensation from the taxpayer for property expropriated during World War II. Poland’s telecom watchdog, which recently imposed a heavy fine on another radio station for satirizing Radio Maryja and “damaging the journalistic ethic,” didn’t utter a peep of protest. But the comments incensed Pope Benedict, and the Vatican fired off a furious letter to Poland’s bishops, demanding they stop turning a blind eye to this extremist claptrap. Benedict is due on an official visit next month. If the bishops want to avoid a spanking from the pope in person, they had better do something, and soon, about Radio’s Maryja’s hateful programming. (From The Week news magazine).

And now Andrzej Lepper is Agriculture Minister and Roman Giertych is Education Minister. There’s already talk about “cleaning” homosexuals out of the education field…

“It could be worse,” Kinga and I said when PiS (Law and Justice Party) got elected in Poland last year.

It is worse…

Un-spinnable Proof

Wednesday 1 March 2006

Now that there exists video proof that W knew before Katrina that there was a serious risk to the levees, how is he going to try to spin his way out of this?

“I don’t think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees.”

That outright lie should make any thinking person sick.

Pots and Kettles and Dark Hues

Thursday 17 November 2005

The recent brouhaha over the war in Iraq has drawn Bush and his gang out of its shell of silence. Cheney has recently stepped into the fight:

Vice President Dick Cheney on Wednesday lashed out at Democrats who accused the Bush administration of manipulating intelligence in the run-up to the Iraq war, saying such critics were spreading “one of the most dishonest and reprehensible charges ever aired” in Washington.

Cheney also suggested that the Democratic attacks could undermine troop morale.

“The saddest part is that our people in uniform have been subjected to these cynical and pernicious falsehoods day in and day out,” Cheney said in a speech in Washington to a conservative think tank.

“American soldiers and Marines are out there every day in dangerous conditions and desert temperatures . . . and back home a few opportunists are suggesting they were sent into battle for a lie,” Cheney said. (L.A. Times)

In a sense, he has a point. If the administration did indeed admit to “selectively choosing” intelligence so as to make the war a little more attractive, would the average soldier be inclined to go back out, day after day risking his/her life? Probably not. In other words, troop morale would be affected were the charges admitted (and I’m not even saying here they’re true).

But Cheney’s claim that merely suggesting it, his claim that asking tough questions about the origins of the war affects troop morale, is absurd. It amounts to using the soldiers’ daily risks for political gain – a way of stifling the critics. Not the race card, but the soldier card.

And then he calls Democrats “opportunists.”

But what choice do they have?

After all, a little honesty can go a long way. So it’s better, in the end, I suppose, to shut up and die for a lie, knowing that its for the greater good, because now that we’re involved we can’t withdraw, even though our involvement was finagled by intelligence massaging…

It’s all more convoluted than that attempt at a grammatically based illustration.

If the Bush administration has nothing to hide in this matter, why is it historically tight-lipped about everything? Why is it swinging away with such panic blows?

The Balance?

Tuesday 17 May 2005

At Google’s news site, the top two headlines currently:

  • Newsweek Retracts Koran Desecration Story
  • Soldier Is Found Guilty in Abu Ghraib Abuse

Nice balance.

Elections

Sunday 30 January 2005

Relatively high voter turn-out; deaths held to double digits; dancing Iraqis.

Do they read this blog?

I stand humbly corrected.

All W’s Horses

Saturday 29 January 2005

So the Iraqi people are going to be voting in their first election. Many have pointed out the absurdity of the elections in which:

  • no one knows the candidates;
  • no one knows what the parties stand for;
  • insurgent violence will keep many away;
  • voter safety is an issue, and cannot be assured;
  • a significant portion of eligible voters has already declared, “We won’t vote”;
  • many Iraqis are arguing shouldn’t even take place.

Bush is ramming this election down their throats in an attempt to legitimate his decision to invade Iraq.

No one in Baghdad is calling the shots in Iraq’s surreal experiment with electoral politics.

The marching orders are coming from Washington. And after all the tragedies that Iraq has so far experienced, this continued direction from a distance promises even more tragedy and farce in the days to come (The Capital Times)

The elections don’t seem to differ that much from Saddam’s elections. Then, Iraqis went to the polling station to avoid retaliation from Saddam; now, Iraqis avoid the polling stations to avoid execution by the insurgents. Sunday’s election will be only slightly more legitimate than those during Saddam’s reign only in so far as the candidates don’t all represent the same agenda. In theory. But since no one really knows who the candidates are or what the parties represent (except there’s probably not any who express the _slightest_ amount of anti-US sentiment), for all the Iraqis know, they could all be voting for the same agenda, no matter whom they vote for.

Well, those that do get out and vote.

Was Bush really so blinded by his own idiocy? Did none of his advisers say, “Hey, maybe it’s not such a straightforward thing as going into the country and receiving the warm thanks of the newly-liberated Iraqis.” Did he really expect the Iraqis to start jumping up and down, clapping their hands like little girls, all saying in a unified voice, “We want elections!! We want elections!!”?

If Iraq were a chess game (and oh, that it were), Bush would play in the following method:

  1. Make an attack plan (He’d probably try the old worn out Scholar’s Mate), without giving thought to the opponent’s defense.
  2. Execute the attack plan.
  3. Ignore what the opponent is doing throughout the game and go ahead with the attack plan.
  4. When clear mistakes are made, continue with the attack plan.

The Bush administration seems to be incapable of such analytical thinking required by chess, much less required by war. Unfortunately, the pieces Bush is shuffling around live and breathe, as in Vonnegut’s short story “All the King’s Horses.”

Bush doesn’t seem to know he’s gotten the US in a no-win situation:

  • Postpone the election = cries of plans for on-going occupation
  • Let the elections continue = the mess we currently see

And the post-election reality doesn’t seem so bright either:

  • Withdraw troops = civil war in a matter of -weeks- days
  • Postpone the election = cries of plans for on-going occupation and increased “resistance”

Of course, it’s not as if people weren’t foreseeing this before the invasion. But Bush already had his mind up about

  • finding and destroying weapons of mass distruction;
  • bringing freedom and liberty to the oppressed Iraqi people;
  • shutting down Saddam’s terrorist support infastructure;
  • avenging the assination attempt on Daddy;
  • getting business for his buddies at Halliburton

and so no amount of reason could talk him out of it.

But you can’t reason with someone who has the mental ability of a turnip.

Calling the Kettle Black

Tuesday 2 November 2004

Using The Cloak I can now look at W’s web site. He writes,

Kerry politicized the Osama bin Laden tape by using it to attack the President and now his campaign surrogates are taking those attacks to a new low.

I seem to recall a scene of Bush getting off of Air Force One and saying something about bin Laden and the need for a safe America…

Apparently what’s good for the goose is not good for the mule. (Wait, I think I got my metaphors mixed up a little.)

Further, one Steve Schmidt says:

For John Kerry’s surrogates to suggest that Osama bin Laden supports President Bush’s reelection is disgusting. John Kerry politicized the tape by using it to attack the President and now his campaign surrogates are taking those attacks to a new low, even as Kerry hypocritically says it would be ‘wrong’ to politicize the tape. This just demonstrates once again that for John Kerry the War on Terror is about political opportunity, not victory.

But it’s okay for Bush’s surrogates to suggest that bin Laden would rather Kerry win because it’ll make U.S. security weaker?!

The article quotes Gov. Ed Rendell (D-PA) as saying, “Bin Laden is trying to help George Bush because George Bush is the best  recruiter that Al Qaeda has.” I’m not sure why this is so inflamatory, because in a sense, it’s true. It’s just that Bush and his handlers aren’t good at interpreting subtlities, as the uproar of Kerry’s “irritation” comment regarding terrorism.

Inexplicable stupidity

Sunday 31 October 2004

Sorry, but I had to bump this up to the top. Come on people — this is utterly ridiculous. I’m making a big deal out of a mole hill and nothing?

I live outside the US — Poland, to be exact. Surfing the net, I found a claim that people outside the US couldn’t access Bush’s official web site.

So I tried it.

I get the “Permission to view this website is forbidden for this server” message.

Just what is Bush doing? There is no justification for this, and no logical reason for it either.

Here are some articles about it:

According to the Expatia article,

Scott Stanzel, a spokesman for the Bush-Cheney campaign, was reported by the BBC on Thursday as saying: “The measure was taken for secruity [sic] reasons.” He declined to elaborate.

Security reasons?! Does al Q have the capacity to strike through IE? First Homeland Security is raiding toy stores (thanks to Thud for this info), and now Bush is shutting down his website for non-Americans? What kind of “security” is this?

There is just no logical reason for this blockage. If Bush’s team can’t “defend” his web site, what makes people think Bush and his gang can defend the country? Setting up a firewall is a lot easier than keeping out terrorists, I would imagine.

There was, in the Expatia article, some speculation as to why this was done:

Mike Prettejohn, president of Netcraft, speculated to the BBC that the decision to block usage was made to cut traffic to the site in the run-up to the 2 November poll and make sure the site remains active.

Google doesn’t seem to have this problem, and I would wager they see _a lot more traffic_ than Bush’s site. If this is really a concern, I would suggest to Bush’s technologically savvy web team that they look for a better host.

From the BBC article, further speculation, which puts the previous quote in context:

On 21 October, the George W Bush website began using the services of a company called Akamai to ensure that the pages, videos and other content on its site reaches visitors.

Mike Prettejohn, president of Netcraft, speculated that the blocking decision might have been taken to cut costs, and traffic, in the run-up to the election on 2 November.

This just doesn’t wash either. How much could this possibly cost? Besides, in addition to campaign funds, Bush has a sizable bank account himself — he could pay for this out of his own petty cash, I’m sure.

Is it a conspiracy to keep non-Americans from viewing the site? I doubt it. Expatica claims that there are ways to get to the site:

However, keen net users have shown that the site can be found at other addresses, including: https://georgewbush.com; http://65.172.163.222 and http://origin.georgewbush.com.

However, none of them worked for me.

They all produced 404 errors.

A Poll of Poles

Sunday 31 October 2004

Polish news agencies reported yesterday that according to a poll (no pun intended), 41% of Poles would vote for Bush and 31% for Kerry.

In the rest of the EU, the numbers were decidedly more, well, decided: 61% of respondents said they would vote for Kerry; 9.8% for Bush.

“Damn liberal Europeans! Kerry probably bought them with money from the oil for food program!”