Ray McGovern in Denton

This past Friday Ray McGovern came here to Denton, about 35 miles north of Dallas, to give a lecture about torture and the politicization of the CIA. As you may already know he was in Dallas(Richardson) the day before, and discussed his planning on speaking there in Counterpunch last Thursday. McGovern is a retired CIA analyst who first came to wider prominence when he publicly confronted Donald Rumsfeld a few years ago about his inconsistent statements regarding the likelihood that Saddam had WMDs.

McGovern seems like a nice enough person, but implicit in his spiel, if I'm reading it right , is that Gitmo and Bush II should be regarded as aberrations. He also said that Obama was heroic for releasing the torture memos(!), and that he regarded McNamara as a tragic figure(!!). To his credit he did criticize Panetta for not being sufficiently forthcoming, and noted that the US hasn't stopped torturing post GWB. It may be that he was being diplomatic in praising Obama, per reading his audience on Friday night as party-line rank-and-file dems who couldn't otherwise be reached unless you avoid criticizing Obama. I don't know enough about McGovern to judge. There is no video of the speech he gave here in Denton, but it was very similar to the video of the full speech he gave in Seattle in March(about 56:00, link here) which is what the 7 minute excerpt above is drawn from. At around the 8 minute mark he says "on January 20th we got rid of the Nazis" which he didn't say in Denton but seems in keeping with the tenor of the speech I heard. A goodly portion of his speech, both in the 56 minute link and last week, was about fighting the good fight, etc, etc, and the importance of resistance irrespective of the likelihood of success.

To me, fighting the good fight irrespective of the odds of success in 2008 would've meant, at the very least, voting for a third party candidate like Cynthia McKinney or Nader in order to register discontent with the corrupt prevailing political order. But my sense, sitting in the small crowd of 30-35 or so people who attended, was I surrounded by democratic party faithful, most of whom would have a hard time doing that, even here in solidly red Texas.

My sense also was that McGovern wasn't about to suggest such a strategy to the gathered group. In the brief Q and A at the end of his talk, one lady asked, "what can we do, to show our friends and neighbors who are so preoccupied with religion and believe whatever their preachers tell them about republicans and the war, how they're misguided and show them the...more enlightened view?"

Mine is a very rough paraphrase and I don't know if I'm adequately capturing her sentiment. I wanted to say, "have you tried not voting for pro-war democrats?" but felt that since I was not a regular attendee and hadn't been to one of Peace/Action/Denton's events in several years that it would have been rude. Besides, strictly speaking I don't know how the crowd that was present voted, or even that voting actually matters. Like Ray McGovern I felt they were nice people, even if they may be part of the problem. And if they are, who am I to decide that, let alone tell them?

McNamara, on the other hand, I feel more comfortable rejecting as a "tragic figure". Stephen Walt recently wrote this about him:

Some commentators see McNamara as a tragic figure; a talented, driven, and dedicated public servant who mishandled a foolish war and spent the remainder of his life trying to atone for it. The obituary in today's New York Times takes this line, describing him as having "spent the rest of his life wrestling with the war's moral consequences," and as someone who "wore the expression of a haunted man."

I see his fate differently. Unlike the American soldiers who fought in Indochina, or the millions of Indochinese who died there, McNamara did not suffer significant hardship as a result of his decisions. He lived a long and comfortable life, and he remained a respected member of the foreign policy establishment. He had no trouble getting his ideas into print, or getting the media to pay attention to his pronouncements. Not much tragedy there.

But I agree with McGovern about what he calls the "fawning corporate media", and I note that he encouraged everyone gathered to read the torture memos now that they are available, so here is the address for the ACLU's downloadable PDF of those memos.

cross-posted at Dead Horse.

Forest Hill House, 1909 postcard

via Hugh Manatee(?) at Wikipedia

Insecurity State

artist: Amanda Moeckel


Steve Gimbel in Philosopher's Playground, a new blog(well, new to me), notes that the World Health Organization recently assessed the healthcare systems of most member countries and ranked the US 37th. Behind virtually all Western European countries, but also behind Costa Rica, behind Chile, even behind Morocco and war-torn Colombia.

From his essay:

...insecurity is the most important force in shaping American society. It manifests itself in two ways. In the middle class, it is class insecurity. There is the sense that our kids will not only fail to have more than we have, but that they may fall from being middle class. This is why schools are simultaneously turned into prisons providing environments that are not conducive to learning and overburdening our kids with too much homework. If they don't get into the right pre-school they won't get into the right college and then they might not end up with a good job. The kids are so risk averse that they refuse to think interesting thoughts. Just get the B, just don't screw up. It is there in the way we create gated communities both in terms of actual gates and in terms of infrastructure. We can't build public transportation because then the wrong kind would have easy access to our homes and our stuff. It's all fear of losing our stuff and our kids not being able to get it for themselves. Look at our drug laws, look at the way we pay for schools through property taxes, look at the discussions around affirmative action. The group of voters who went for Reagan and Clinton are governed by class insecurity and both of them knew it and played them like a fiddle.

The middle class doesn't want health care reform, not because they think ours is the best system in the world, but because it is good enough for them and they are afraid that helping someone else would be a zero sum game and thereby cost them. It works for me and mine so don't mess with it. Insecurity leads to malicious, selfish inaction.

I think there's a bit more to it than that, since this is, to an extent, one of those "people are so X because of Y" arguments, when in fact our society is increasingly less homogeneous and that argument, irrespective of the particulars you replace X and Y with, gets increasingly harder to make. Maybe, as a sort of corollary to Gimbel's thesis, it would be interesting to explore the ways that popular media reinforces our more reactionary traits and deliberately avoids discussing contrasting qualities we have.


Nevertheless his blog looks like a fascinating place to visit and the essay is worth reading in full. Go read the rest here, "Insecurity as an American Social Force"

(via Helmut at Phroneisisaical.)

cross-posted at Dead Horse.

"Нехороший мальчик" Олег Ужинов

"Нехороший мальчик" Олег Ужинов

via "Pavlovich 74"

GWB n' BHO

Sanford and the Son

Mark Sanford: OK, I'm not going to say, I don't know what the big deal is, because I know it IS a big deal. Cheating is wrong, darn wrong. I let my wife down, I let my adorable children down, I let the employees of the state of South Carolina down, the voters, even the reporters who heard about the emails but were forced to behave as if they didn't know where I was. I let all of you down, and I'm sorry.

Narita Barnswell(AP): Governor, how do to intend to show the people that your no-good South American hussy meant nothing to you, and you mean to move on?

Governor Mark: Narita, I'm not going to say that, because I still love Maria. I don't want to be a hypocrite.

Bing Mathers(Fox News): Governor, are you saying you don't care what the South Carolina voters or even Fox News viewers think, that you are going to choose love over propriety and your miserable career? Is that what you're saying?

Jesus(suddenly appearing): Bing, I think the governor has spoken from the heart. Like me, he values love, and understands its transcendent quality. Mark, I love you, and if you really love your antipodean floozie, I want you to know I support you, as long as your heart is true and your kids don't have a problem with it. Have you asked them?

Gov. Mark: huh?

Jesus: I've noticed that kids from wealthy, loveless families often figure out pretty quickly if mom and dad don't love each other, and if they're good kids the hypocrisy usually gets to them. Or they grow up to have problems with booze and prescription drugs, or maybe betting on the horses. It's a toss-up.

Lori-Ann Santoro(CNBC): Jesus, if that's really you, are you saying the republican party should stick by the governor?

Jesus: Honestly Lori-Ann, I couldn't care less what the republicans do. They're mostly a bunch of soulless weasels, just like the democrats. I'm just here to support Mark, because I believe in love. Does anybody have any pertinent questions?

Dennis Perrin(suspicious layabout): Hi Jesus. Dennis Perrin here. My question is: will the Lions ever have a decent team again?

Jesus: Man, I don't know. They really ticked the Big Guy off when they refused to trade Barry Sanders, and I don't mind telling you He was hoping for a chance to see Barry play in the Super Bowl, just once. There was a time, they could have gotten an entire defensive line for him, but they decided they'd rather hold him back and sell tickets.

Gov. Mark: Wait a minute. Jesus, are you saying you couldn't care less about my career?

Jesus: Yes. Don't you already have enough money, and didn't you say this Maria is your "soul-mate"?

Gov. Mark: I'm sorry, but I'm confused. I'm doing the right thing, by sticking with my marriage. It's what the voters want.

Jesus: Oh, me. It's what this crowd of moralizing drunkards wants, because they want to scold you on the television and feel powerful when you subsequently toe the line. As far as I can see your marriage ended a long time ago, when you and the missus stopped loving each other. You don't even know or care what the voters want. Maybe you don't even care about what you want. I remember whispering in George Junior's ear a few years ago, about how he needed to take that wad of money his parents gave him and go open a video store in Houston where he could spend the rest of his days harmlessly ogling Rice co-eds renting R-rated movies, instead of running for congress. Because I knew his thwarted desire would keep screwing itself tighter and tighter, and maybe someday he'd kill thousands of people. But he didn't listen either.

Look. Some people in this world have a buffet of choices and others don't, but you seem to think you deserve some kind of credit for pretending you belong in the latter group. A waitress at the Waffle House who's boyfriend is in jail and can't get help raising her kid falls in the no choice category. You don't. Maybe you were so deliberately clumsy about ducking out of the country because you wanted to be caught, you wanted your hand forced so you could come clean and stop being a hypocrite. If that's the case, why are you back-tracking now?

Gov. Mark: I want to do what's right.

Bing Mathers: Jesus, doesn't the governor deserve credit for trying to set right his life, even under such intense media scrutiny?

Jesus: Even under-- do you hear yourself? Bing, neither you nor any of these other characters give a damn about the governor's life, let alone the well-being of his soul. You're just peeved because Fox wouldn't fly you to L.A. to cover Michael Jackson's death.


Helen Thomas(important old lady): Jesus, if we could back up just a bit please. Are you saying weasels don't have souls? What about otters?

Jesus: Hey, Helen. No,I'm not saying that, I just didn't want to call them a bunch of soulless jerkwads, because it doesn't sound like something I'd say. So I tried to put it in terms most of you could relate to. Weasels are OK, and so are otters. Anyway guys, I got other stuff to do. Let he who is without sin, etcetera etcetera. I'm outta here. (Jesus leaves.)

Gov. Mark: What about me?

(a far away clap of thunder is heard. The reporters all go "ooh" and move to the windows of the conference room to look. It starts to rain.)

cross-posted at Dead Horse.

not a twitter revolution

from the Real News.

cross-posted at Dead Horse.

Michael Jackson/Billie Jean/Sungha Jung

You and I and billions of others already know that Michael Jackson died Thursday, aged 50. But before today I hadn't heard of young guitar phenom Sungha Jung, who recorded this performance back in February(via Oyster).

losing coverage

via Christy Hardin Smith, and Avedon Carol, who writes:

It's not just the uninsured; it's the outrageous fraud that people who think they have health insurance are faced with: companies that take your money knowing they will do their damnedest not to give you what you think you are paying for.

cross-posted at Dead Horse.

not to be confused with-- oh, you know...

via Abdusalaam al-Hindi, who hasn't posted for a while.

The Real News talks to UAW retirees

Retired Auto Workers have their say, pt 1.

Part two is here;
Part three,
Part four, and
Part five.

Is TV news one-sidedly in support of Israel?

from The Real News:Is TV news one-sidedly in support of Israel?

cross-posted at Dead Horse.