For those of you who haven't reread Orwell lately

The always excellent This Modern World excerpts a report by a man who was interrogated by the FBI for reading an anti-Fox-news editorial in his local cafe (atlanta.creativeloafing.com). Seriously.

HE WAS READING IN A CAFE WHILE GETTING HIS COFFEE. Apparently, some of his fellow coffee drinkers are freaks, but that doesn't excuse this.

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Also featured in TMW, a link to the blog Skippy the Bush Kangaroo, which, in turn, has references to many other good blogs.

Hey, this Internet thing is becoming useful after all!

The Democratic National Committee has a new game on their website: George W. Bush Credibility Twister. Ouch!

I’ve been coming up with flawed analogies, comparing certain authorities occupying the White House with abusive husbands/fathers. It may be wrong of me to do so. But it seems like all the relatives keep trying to get him into group counseling at the UN, but he’s too convinced that everyone else’s concerns are too petty to be bothered with. He oversimplifies so that everything that benefits him is good, and anything that doesn’t is evil. He tries to make his immediate family feel frightened to justify violence against others who have not previously posed any threat. He is offended whenever his authority is questioned, even when he’s wrong. He tries to dominate his country/family through fear (and considering the Patriot Act, it’s working). He won’t admit to making mistakes: if his actions harm the innocent, he blames others for ‘making’ him do it. (Hussein ‘forcing’ us to bomb Iraqi civilians being a sadly recurring example.) Some writers have remarked that Bush treats Congress like an unwanted stepchild (prospect.org). But I’ll stray from this theme and just talk about his promotion of fear in the American people.

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The idea of Bush ruling us through fear, an idea usually used in discussions about nasty and oppressive foreign dictators, is increasingly common in web searches. The difference may be that, instead of merely making us fear HIM, he’s attempting to make us fear everyone BUT him.

A short Nation article analyzing Bush’s speeches relative to those of other presidents (truthout.org)(thanks, D!) talks about how Bush is trying to make the U.S. feel helpless, fearful, and dependent upon him.

To create a dependency dynamic between him and the electorate, Bush describes the nation as being in a perpetual state of crisis and then attempts to convince the electorate that it is powerless and that he is the only one with the strength to deal with it. He attempts to persuade people they must transfer power to him….

John Brady Kiesling’s resignation letter over Bush’s Iraq policy asked if oderint dum metuant (more or less, ‘they can hate so long as they fear [us]’), which is directed at those we are, in turn, supposed to be afraid of, and acting in preventative self defense (!!) against. Other writers have noted that fear is close enough to respect for this Administration (pigdog.org).

This can’t lead anywhere good.

The examples of previous presidents in the Nation article dwelling on the strength of the American people to overcome problems together, rather than on our immense vulnerability and helplessness, is striking.

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My favorite Get Your War On cartoon about Iraq (mnftiu.com) is about how the Iraqi people “ought to be the freest ****ing people on the face of the earth. They better be freeer than me. They better be so ****ing free they can fly.” It goes on to insist on a permanent, multi-mile long buffet line for the children of Iraq.

I have to admit that I suspect the multi-mile buffet line would go over better than the various showings of force (BBC) that U.S. and British forces have made in Iraq. The UK also made showings of force when they occuped Iraq and invented its borders to their liking years ago, and that didn't exactly turn out very well, did it? (A colleague noted that the British seem keen to repeat their past colonial mistakes, not admitting that part of the reason we're in our current situation is because of their meddling in the region previously...)

Not surprisingly, the Bush Administration and Pentagon do not like criticism they've heard from soldiers speaking to the press. So, many of those soldiers are being reprimanded by the Pentagon.(SFGate.com)

"It was the end of the world," said one officer Thursday. "It went all the way up to President Bush and back down again on top of us. At least six of us here will lose our careers."

The article goes on to note that there is the usual, recently established double standard: you have plenty of freedom to say that things are great, but no freedom to say that the Bush Administration or its policies are NOT great.

While you may be thinking, sure, but they have up their rights to have opinions when they joined the military and agreed to, um, well, fight for our right to freedom of speech, keep in mind the same speech double standard is being used against civilians. Want to be part of a rally at the airport for the arrival of Bush? You'd better be pro-Bush, or you're not allowed to speak freely, as this protester (Refuse & Resist) and others learned. Pro-Bush views can be expressed in the airport; anti-Bush views cannot.

Hmmm.

(This reminds me of the item I published earlier about how the same folks who said terrible things about Clinton think that criticizing the current president is treason. Oh, to hold them to their own standards!!)

Less than $200 million of reconstruction projects have been completed in Afghanistan (theworld.org), compared with $15 BILLION in estimated need. Western nations aren't living up to their rebuilding committments. The locals were expecting to be better off after supporting the effort to throw out the Taliban. They aren't yet, and are wondering if the promised
improvements in other aspects of their lives will ever come...

Not to bring up that pesky PREVIOUS, yesterday's news war, but the U.S. Administration's complete failure to succeed at 'nation building' there doesn't bode so well for the war-of-the-week nation.

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Spin, spin, spin! British official John Sawyers claims that the shortages now plaguing Iraq are a result of improved democracy!! (theworld.org - wma file). No, really. His spin on this is that Baghdad was hoarding power unfairly so they had a constant supply, while other areas suffered shortages, so Baghdad's shortages are now more fair, because everyone has interrupted service.

When I think of democracy and fairness, I think of widespread shortages, don't you?

His explanation for water shortages adds classism: he implies that reporters are speaking with 'privileged' people who are accustomed to a regular water supply, and so they aren't representative. What a way to deflect a question!

How dare Iraqis of any class want CLEAN WATER from their liberators! (!?!)

I'm changing the title of this blog from "War is more than the absence of peace" back to an earlier title, "Peace is more than the absence of war." Not that we are in peace time -- there are many conflicts raging around the world, even if they aren't raging just next door. But that doesn't mean we won't all ultimately be effected. Peace and war are often regional in obvious scope, but much wider in their subtle, sadder scopes.

The title switch seems appropriate in the aftermath of the premature declaration of war's end and the ongoing unhappiness of so many people, in the occupied and among the occupiers.

Ending the bombing is not enough.

There are so many articles about the Bush Administration’s attempts to deflect criticism for using knowingly false information to justify attacking Iraq, I don’t need to write about it. Other people have been mentioning it more effectively than I can.

One writer sees Bush as the CEO who keeps having to "restate" profits (Washington Post), just like in so many recent corporate scandals.

There is a great article called Core of weapons case crumbling (BBC) by correspondent Paul Reynolds, which starts with: "Of the nine main conclusions in the British government document "Iraq's weapons of mass destruction", not one has been shown to be conclusively true."

One analyst wants to know why Powell dumped the Niger evidence, when three days earlier the President chose to include it (New York Times), since it had been called into doubt months earlier.

Nicholas Kristof complains of a broader pattern of dishonesty in the Administration's announcements about intelligence, (CNN) and notes that he's not the only one. "But Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, a group of retired spooks, issued an open letter to President Bush yesterday reflecting the view of many in the intel community that the central culprit is Vice President Dick Cheney. The open letter called for Mr. Cheney's resignation."

My my.

Kristof also has been told by attendees of Defense Intelligence Agency town halls that they're being asked to dumb down their intelligence reports.

The current issue of Time Magazine has a cover story called "Untruth and Consequences: How flawed was the case for going to war against Saddam?" and wonders aloud what else was incorrect in the State of the Union.

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I'm bothered by the brazenness of it all. It's basically, 'we lied, but you can't do anything to stop us.' Where Clinton's lies about his own sex life were supposed to be a major threat to democracy, Bush's outright lies to lead our nation to war, his no-bid contracts to his campaign donors, his secret energy task force meetings, and his current scheme to expand the war are supposed to be sacrosanct and good. Unlike with Clinton, it is unpatriotic to question his actions.

I've never had more sympathy for the parties that opposed the rise of dictators, who watched their nation spiral downward in propaganda and lies while the majority was either unheard or in a blissfully ignorant state...

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An angle I hadn’t considered with the new governing council of American-picked Iraqis (Washington Post): “U.S. officials also say they believe that putting responsibility for government operations on the council could help deflect public anger over the tardy resumption of basic services from the occupation authority."

Why that hadn’t occurred to me…

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Somehow, a set of cards criticizing the Bush Administration's 'Hidden Agenda' was filed in the "offbeat news" section of CNN. But the Administration's original Iraqi most wanted cards didn't. Does that imply that the most wanted cards were NORMAL, somehow??