It's the New Angst, you jackass!

Wolcott quotes Katha Pollitt on what I am calling the New Angst -- that Chicken Little feeling that the World of Tomorrow just isn't working out; that looking-over-the-shoulder belief that the centre isn't holding; that fearful philosophy that every day in every way things are getting just a tiny bit worse. Pollitt writes:

...I know what you're thinking: I must be depressed or disappointed or just a curmudgeon, a crab, one of those middle-aged purists who stopped listening to music when the Beatles broke up.. . .
Still, I wasn't always like this. For a long time I thought things were getting better--uglier, yes, but more just and equal. I thought that little by little people were becoming less cruel, less stupid, less ignorant, less unfair. And they are, too--think of how much less racist white people are, how far women have come. And what about gay marriage? Ten years ago nobody'd heard of it and now half the country has already moved on to gay divorce. And yet, you don't hear people looking forward to the future in the rapturous way they did back when they believed in some big triumphant idea like science or reason or socialism or art, or even a small, cozy hope like everyone having a place to live and nobody having to eat cat food. People might be excited about their own personal future... But when they think about the future in general, they're scared.. . .
It's not as if I like being like this. People who despair after a certain age are just depressing. We don't have the looks for it, and besides, we make others uncomfortable: what if we're on to something. Sure, we're boring, always rambling on about how much better everything was in our childhoods, when there was snow, but we might just be right. Nobody wants to believe that. Once you get over your youthful intensities you're supposed to look on the bright side, like parents. You're supposed to say, There, there.

The model for our generation is Oscar Leroy, and our motto is "You Jackass!"

What is wrong with these people?

There is no other way to describe it -- the juvenile chest-beating and wild-eyed taunting that passes for American foreign policy these days is just childish beyond belief.
Here are some telling quotes from Juan Cole's most recent Salon article about Iran.
First, there is America's ridiculous demonization of Iranian president Ahmadinejad:

. . . Iran expressed sympathy with the United States in the aftermath of those attacks and Iranians held candlelight vigils for the victims. Iran felt that it and other Shiite populations had also suffered at the hands of al-Qaida, and that there might now be an opportunity for a new opening to the United States.
Instead, the U.S. State Department denounced Ahmadinejad as himself little more than a terrorist. . . . He has been depicted as a Hitler figure intent on killing Israeli Jews, even though he is not commander in chief of the Iranian armed forces, has never invaded any other country, denies he is an anti-Semite, has never called for any Israeli civilians to be killed, and allows Iran's 20,000 Jews to have representation in Parliament.
There is, in fact, remarkably little substance to the debates now raging in the United States about Ahmadinejad. His quirky personality, penchant for outrageous one-liners, and combative populism are hardly serious concerns for foreign policy.

Then there is the constant "dumb"-beat of war, war, war from Cheney and his pet neocons, none of whom have ever actually fought in a war themselves:

. . . the American right has decided the United States needs to go to war against Iran. Ahmadinejad is therefore being configured as an enemy head of state.
The neoconservatives are even claiming that the United States has been at war with Iran since 1979. As Glenn Greenwald points out, this assertion is absurd.

And some of the military leaders who have spent the last five years screwing up Afghanistan and Iraq are now trying to save their reputations by pretending that they would have "won" in Iraq if only Iran hadn't been in their way:

. . . some elements in the U.S. officer corps and the Defense Intelligence Agency are clearly spoiling for a fight with Iran because the Iranian-supported Shiite nationalists in Iraq are a major obstacle to U.S. dominance in Iraq. Although very few U.S. troops in Iraq are killed by Shiites, military spokesmen have been attempting to give the impression that Tehran is ordering hits on U.S. troops, a clear casus belli. Disinformation campaigns that accuse Iran of trying to destabilize the Shiite-dominated Iraqi government -- a government Iran actually supports -- could lay the groundwork for a war. Likewise, with the U.S. military now beginning patrols on the Iran-Iraq border, the possibility is enhanced of a hostile incident spinning out of control.

See what I mean -- they actually thought that 160,000 soldiers could "dominate" a population of 26 million - er, maybe just 25 million now -- so it must be Iran's fault that they have failed so miserably.
Its like watching a little kid get mad and hold his breath 'til he turns blue.
Unfortunately, this little kid has a lot of guns.
I thought Iran's military parade last week was pretty childish, too, but maybe it takes one to know one:

The threat to target U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan and the unveiling of the Qadr-1 were not aggressive in intent, but designed to make the point that Iran could also play by Richard M. Nixon's "madman" strategy, whereby you act so wildly as to convince your enemy you are capable of anything.

So now Ahmadinejad has become a folk hero to millions in the Middle East -- just one more addition to the record of incompetence.
Here is a summary from one of Juan Cole's blogging partners, Barnett R. Rubin:

The Bush-Cheney administration has surrendered much of Afghanistan to the Taliban and much of Pakistan to al-Qaida. They have turned most of Iraq over to Iran, creating the very danger over which they now threaten another disastrous war; they have strained the U.S. Armed Forces to the point of exhaustion, turned the Defense Department over to private contractors, the Justice Department over to the Republican National Committee, and the national debt over to foreign creditors, while leading a party whose single most basic belief is supposed to be that individuals must take personal responsibility for their actions. And they dare to lecture us on national security?

Yes. And the rest of the world, too -- except that we're not listening anymore.

Great line of the day

Canadian Cynic flags the contradiction:

. . . Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad continued to embarrass his species when he proclaimed adamantly that there were no gays in Iran.
In response, Republican presidential candidates Mike Huckabee, Sam Brownback and Tom Tancredo vowed to introduce a Congressional resolution censuring Ahmadinejad for his appalling and breathtaking ignorance, just as soon as they finished telling everyone that they don't believe in biological evolution.
Some days, the straight lines really just write themselves, don't they?

Emphasis mine.

Reality check

Alison has an important post about the Conservative government's funding cut-offs to Status of Women groups.
The argument, apparently, is that women don't need these groups anymore:

At the time of the budget cuts, Gwen Landolt of REAL Women, the traditional-values group which has spent the last 25 years fighting against equal rights for women, explained that groups (like SWAG) are no longer needed because "women are equal now".

Hmmm -- so everything's peachy, eh?
Let's just check out this claim. And here are the facts, from the Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women:

There are 2.8 million women in Canada living in poverty. That's one in five women. Fifty-six percent of the poor in Canada are women. ⁽¹⁾ . . . To be poor in Canada means to be surrounded by wealth but have no access to it. It means having to choose between paying your rent, bills, groceries, transportation, doing your laundry and buying necessary medical supplies. It means not having the money for many things other Canadians take for granted: visiting relatives, buying clothes to apply for jobs in, giving birthday or Christmas gifts to your kids. It means living in inadequate housing - often in disrepair and in overcrowded, high-crime neighbourhoods. It means that even five bucks is a big deal. It doesn't necessarily mean being on social assistance. The majority of the poor work for wages, either full- or part-time. ⁽²⁾. . .

And here's a "reality check" on Canadian women's equalityl:

* At every level of education, women in Canada earn less on average than men. For example, in 2003, women who are high school graduates earned 71.0 % of what male high school graduates earned for full-time, full-year work. Women with post-secondary degrees earned 68.9% of what their male counterparts did for full-time, full-year work. Postsecondary education does nothing at all to narrow the wage gap between women and men.
. . .
* In terms of the ratio of male to female earned income (the wage gap), Canada ranks 38th in the world. The following countries are among the many with less of a wage gap between women and men than Canada: Switzerland, Cambodia, Kenya, the Czech Republic and over 30 others.
* Canada ranks 25th in the world in terms of the representation of women in professional and technical occupations, after the United States, Barbados, Lithuania, Argentina and many other countries.
. . .
* Since the cutbacks of the 1990s, fewer women than men qualify for Employment Insurance (EI) regular benefits. . . . Women form the large majority of part-time workers in Canada, accounting for more than a quarter of the female paid labour force. Although they are forced to pay into EI, they find it difficult to qualify for EI maternity and parental leave, as well as sick and unemployment benefits. The majority of minimum wage workers in Canada are women. They find it hard to live on 55% of their salaries, which is what EI offers, when even their full salaries for a full year of work still places them below the Low-Income Cut-Offs (“poverty line”). They are also forced to pay into EI while not being able to afford to take much leave, thus subsidizing the leaves of better-off workers.
. . .
* Do women make “choices” to be economically disadvantaged, particularly by having children? If every woman decided not to have children, the human race would be wiped out in one generation. We need to recognize the value of women’s paid and unpaid work, as some other countries have done through concrete policy supports for women’s economic equality.
. . .
# It is no coincidence that the majority of social assistance recipients are women and children. In Canada half a million children with poor mothers are growing up on inadequate amounts of social assistance that do not cover basic needs. Canada has one of the highest rates of child poverty because we have less supports for women than many industrialized countries. The proportion of lone parent mothers living in poverty in Canada is a social policy choice, not an individual one.
. . .
# Child care is not a “hand out”. It is estimated that the mothers of young children contribute $53 billion of Canada’s GDP, representing 5% of the total GDP. That is taking into account the monetary value of their paid work, not the even greater value of their unpaid work as mothers of the next generation of Canadians.

For more, see the Women and The Economy website and links.

Great line of the day

TRex tells us that within a day after Bush and Congress shat on MoveOn, 12,000 supporters raised half a million dollars to run new ads.
As TRex describes it:

...every time the Bush administration demonizes an opponent, an angel gets its wings.

Dion unplugged

Well, well. Maybe the shock of losing Outremont has finally shaken Stephan Dion out of his ennui.
First he steps up and takes the blame

"...there is a perception of me that is not me, that has been a caricature developed by my opponents. … I need to tackle this problem. I have seen that on the ground in the by-elections – people are saying Mr. Dion, we don't know you, or Mr. Dion, we know who you are, and we don't like it – so I need to help my party in solving this problem and in showing to Quebeckers how much I am proud of what I am as a Quebec City kid.”

Then he goes on the offensive. Today he attacked Harper's foreign policy as mediocre, rigid, simplistic, amateurish and incompetent.
Then he got specific:

Dion accused Prime Minister Stephen Harper of slavishly following the lead of U.S. President George Bush on foreign policy - abandoning the Kyoto Protocol to reduce greenhouse gases, ramping up defence spending, and ignoring human rights violations in the pursuit of terrorists.
"Mr. Harper has given Canada a foreign policy that draws its inspiration from the American right, a foreign policy that does little to advance Canadian interests," Dion told a foreign relations think-tank. . . .
He said the government has bungled the issue of Afghan detainees, proved incapable of administering Canadian aid in the country, and sent a series of confusing mixed signals on when the combat mission will end.
"It's always worrisome when a politician constantly flip-flops, but when people's lives are at stake, it's inexcusable," Dion said . . .
Dion chided Harper for refusing to intervene in the case of Omar Khadr. . .

Dion went on to outline what a Liberal government would do instead.
It is refreshing to see Dion speak in his own voice.

Swearing out ceremony

This story describes the bizarre case of a British music professor, Nalini Ghuman, who was suddenly and inexplicably barred from re-entering the United States for some reason the State Department refuses to explain. I think its safe to assume that, like with Mahar Arar, somebody made a mistake but will never admit it -- and Condi Rice has neither the ability nor the integrity to clean up an embarrassing bureaucratic mess.
But this line at the end of the story was what struck me:

The society has invited her to lecture at its conference in November, which, “in a fortunate circumstance,” Mr. Atkinson said, is to be held in Quebec . . . she can expect Canada to let her in.

Well, maybe -- unless we've created a Fortress North America Customs Union by then.

Dion loses, but Harper can't win either

This article about the Quebec byelections describes the Liberal campaign debacle:

Last night’s three byelections were the first that Dion had to face since he became Liberal leader last December and many — both inside the Liberal party and outside of it — saw the byelections as a test of his ability to bring the Liberals back to power and to deliver Quebec. In the end, not only did the party lose one of the few safe ridings it has left in Quebec, but it polled in the single digits in the two other . . .
Fueling the discontent even more was an article published over the weekend in which unnamed Liberal supporters of Dion and Michael Ignatieff traded barbs over whether the poor campaign was the result of incompetence, or of sabotage by Ignatieff supporters trying to undermine Dion’s leadership.

Well, if they are, it won't take much.
Because there's not much Dion leadership to undermine.
Dion's leadership so far has been nothing more than the Peter Principle in action -- first, he did a great job as Environment minister in convincing Canadians about the importance of taking global warming seriously, then he demonstrated great consensus-building skills in that UN environment conference in Montreal, then he ran a great leadership campaign... but it's been almost a year, and Dion just hasn't taken it to the next level.
He become the kind of politician who opens his mouth to change feet. When he says anything at all.
Several over at Liblogs are predicting the Liberals won't want a general election until 2009, because of these by-election results. But Harper will now be itching to go this fall, and so will the NDP -- if they can find or create a winning issue.
Luckily, Senate reform isn't it.
Senate reform would win top prize as the most boring topic in the history of the world, if anyone could stay awake long enough to write up the nomination.
But Harper's position on most issues is actually going to lose him votes -- when it comes to Afghanistan, climate change, customs union, softwood lumber, security partnership, etc., a majority of Canadians tend to support the "liberal" position, whether small-l or large-l.
This makes it all the more infuriating to see the Liberals being led so poorly right now. Because all we have to defend our progressive Canada from a majority government of Harper Conservatives are the Dion Liberals.
Jesus wept.

Great line of the day

The Bush administration has tried to inflate the magnitude of the Iraq War by comparing it to every major war ever fought by America. Now, its Korea's turn.
Matthew Yglesias explains succinctly what is wrong with this comparison:

...the difference between Iraq and South Korea isn't just that post-armistice our troops stopped taking casualties in Korea. The bigger difference is that a US military presence in Korea was part of a larger strategic doctrine -- defending the anti-Communist ROK government from the Communist government in Pyongyang as part of a larger strategy of containment -- that made sense. What we're doing in the Gulf right now is driven by confusion, hubris, and vainglory.

The more apt comparison, of course, was and still this one: that Iraq is Vietnam on speed.

Blue skies

I didn't believe it at first.
Could anyone think that the colour of blue paint chosen by a landscape painter a thousand years ago would be used by a so-called scientist today to deny the reality of global warming?
But there it is, via Chet, via Richard, we find the press release that argues today's global warming is just part of a 1500-year "natural cycle", see, because there are "thousands of museum paintings that portrayed sunnier skies during the [supposed] Medieval Warming" period.
Well, their skies were not only blue, but also full of astrological symbols and chariots, so I guess they had pollution of a kind too:



Chet notes that, when indoors, medieval people also apparently played chess sideways while surrounded by little musicians:


And I found that angels supplied medieval doctors with artificial legs for easy and bloodless surgical transplants:


Makes about as much sense as Medieval Warming...

$20

Here's a story about Canadian soldiers being court-martialed for drug trafficking.
The new defense lawyer for one of the soldiers wants a delay because he has to read the 900 pages of disclosure evidence which the investigation has produced.
Over a $20 bag of marijuana.

Betray-Us

Hollywood producer Jon Robin Baitz knows good theatre when he sees it. And he liked the General Betray-Us ad:

I rather liked the MoveOn ad from the Times. It was crass, but these are crass times. It was simplistic, but these are simplistic problems, basic ones -- after all -- the American people have been treated as foolish consumers of a product -- in this case a war -- by an administration that hovers in a bipolar helix between hapless fervor and rank cynicism. Depending on the day . . . I liked the ad because it was cheap and street, and true in spirit.

And contrary to all the hype, The Man Called Petraeus (in Digby's memorable phrase) has apparently been described by his own boss as "an ass-kissing little chickenshit". Ouch!
Apparently CENTCOM commander Admiral Fallon and General Petraeus hate each other's guts. This explains the bizarre story from last week about how the Pentagon had agreed to disagree on Iraq. And may also explain why Bush was so quick to announce he would bring 30,000 US troops home next summer (which means, in reality, that he is leaving 130,000 US troops in Iraq indefinitely) -- Bush didn't want to wait for Fallon's recommendation that three-quarters of the US troops leave Iraq by 2009.
Petraeus may find he has won the battle, but lost the war.

Same old same old

Well, what have we here?
The real Tories are breaking through -- the wheeler-dealer Tories, the play-fast-and-loose-with-the-public-purse Tories, the "rules are for sissies" Tories, the Tories that Canadians have loved to hate for the last 20 years:

. . . it appears the Tories transferred money in and out of local campaigns not just to generate federal refunds, but to hide national expenses that exceed the limit.

Quel suprise! And they were doing this while Harper was raking the Liberals over the coals for corruption.

Alex the parrot

Research parrot dies
In the grander scheme of things, this is, of course, completely unimportant news. But all the same, one could argue Alex contributed more to the world than, say, Paris Hilton ever did ...

Great image of the day

From Alison at Creekside, Humpty Harper defines "consensus"


Alison notes that the "consensus among Canadians" Harper promised before extending the Afghanistan mission has now become "50 per cent plus one" in a parliamentary vote.
And I note that my little prediction back in June is coming true:

MacKay . . . predicted [Canada's] involvement in the rebuilding and redevelopment of the war-torn country will continue for a "very long time."
"That's the exit strategy," MacKay said.
"When the Afghanistan government can take care of its own interests, then we can come home . . . ."