Palin's Critics Refudiated

Well gosh-darn... turns out Sarah Palin wasn't the first to coin the term "to refudiate". Reading Alan Moore's excellent Watchmen (written 1986-1987), this is what I found:

This is at the end of Chapter 4, in the excerpt from "Dr. Manhattan: Super-Powers and the Superpowers" by Professor Milton Glass. A quick reminder: In an interview with douchnozzle Sean Hannity, the half-term quitter from Wasilla had called on Barack Obama to "refudiate" the NAACP's statement of the obvious, namely, that the Republican Tea Party is a bunch of racist halfwits.

Note to Palin: Read Watchmen, you might like it and would certainly benefit from reading it. There are some interesting points there about the dangers of a black-and-white worldview and how that Manichaean mindset can quickly bleed over into cryptofascism.

Also: Unlike you, Dr. Manhattan really can see Russia from his backyard. Regardless of where his house is.

Thought for the Day

"I have been too much of an idealist about America, had set my hopes too high, had formed too fair an image of what she might become. Never had a nation such an opportunity; she was the hope of the world. Never again will any nation have her chance to raise the standard of civilization."

- Charles Eliot Norton

My name is Phil Davison and I'm MAD AS HELL

Sarah Palin hasn't said yet whether she will be running in 2012, but if so, her running mate should be Republican Councilman Phil Davison of Minerva, OH. Here he is trying to convince his audience that he is the right choice for Stark County treasurer. It is the funniest (unintentionally) speech I have ever come across, and I immediately switched by party affiliation to "(R)".



As Davidson rightly says, politics is about winning, or rather: "POLITICS IS ABOUT WINNING!!" The kicker: he has a masters' degree in communication - as one commenter said, probably from the University of Mordor...

BBC Apostrophe 'A Cheap Cop-Out'

Hear ye, hear ye: Unto us a young hippo is born!

Verily, a Happy Little Hippo. Which goes some way towards explaining why we have not been posting, and also why this is going to be a short post.

The emergence of a next generation always tends to put all experiences into perspective. Also, in very real terms, we realize that this mudflat is doomed; thus, we are biased as to posting comments on the world in general and the world of security policy specifically that might be read, if not by anyone now, then possibly 25 years hence by a bright young lady in the throes of a struggle with her parents, in a world much worse than the present one.

Having framed the matter in terms of generations and eons to come, it seems frivolous now to comment on punctuation. Nevertheless, on this Friday night of our Lord 2010, I would like to say why I am bothered by quotation marks in headlines, especially RSS feeds. First, some examples, all culled from the BBC:

• Germany in 'record' 2.2% growth
• Plea for 'blood diamonds' return
• Israeli 'agent' freed in Germany
• Meteors set for 'good show'
• Iraq 'not ready' for US pull-out
• Iran stoning woman 'confesses'
• Afghan army offensive 'ambushed'
• Fox outlines 'leaner' MoD plan

Writing headlines is a difficult and delicate matter, subject to the dictate of pithiness - accuracy and brevity. Not everybody can do it. Nevertheless, we would like to think that the legions of highly trained hacks at the Beeb would be the masters of this art. Not so.

There are basically three reasons for placing apostrophes in a news headline. The first is when the headline consists of a direct, highly relevant quote by somebody cited in the article (Defense Minister: Trident 'Not Needed'). The second is when the information cited in the headline is attributed to a source considered unreliable, and the authors wish to distance themselves from the claims stated therein (Iraq Had 'Flying Saucers', Said Curveball). The third is when the author chooses to highlight a specific phrase used by somebody in the article because the wording, rather than the substance, of the citation is highly unusual (British Economy 'Fucked', Says UK Treasury). Let us consider the examples cited above - all picked at random on a slow Friday news night in the midst of a summer slump on 13 August 2010. They account for eight out of 27 headlines tonight, just under 30% of the top RSS feeds on the BBC website.

The first, Germany in 'record' 2.2% growth, refers to the latest GDP figures in the German economy, based on official figures. Why the quotation marks? When we look at the article in question, we see that the stats are attributed "to the national statistics office, Destatis". Destatis is the Deutsches Statistisches Bundesamt, or the German Federal Office of Statistics, so the source is prima facie a credible authority. Is the author questioning the legitimacy of the source? If so, we are not told so, or why.

The second headline is Plea for 'blood diamonds' return. One might think that the author disagrees with the term "blood diamond" or wishes to make clear that this is a non-scientific term. Such a view would seem to be supported by the fact that the phrase is once again placed in quotation marks in the article itself:

The war crimes trial of Liberian ex-President Charles Taylor has heard claims he gave [supermodel Naomi Campbell] "blood diamonds" thought to originate in Sierra Leone.

But why use the quotation marks in the headline? The term itself has entered common parlance, and if anywhere, a condensed headline would be the appropriate place to use it without punctuation, while the body of the text could make clear that questions remain over the assertion that the diamonds were given to Campbell. The term blood diamonds per se is uncontested. Further complicating matters, the headline should have a possessive plural apostrophe (diamonds' return). Did a junior copy editor make a mistake here?

Headline number three is a simple cop-out: Israeli 'agent' freed in Germany. The BBC has so far not made up its mind, and failed to research, whether the person in question is an agent or not. Some say yes, others say no: how would the Beeb know? This would be fair enough if the story were breaking news and all other news outlets apart from the one that published the scoop were following up on the first report. But the Dubai assassination story has been public knowledge since January of this year. Should the BBC not at this point have determined whether or not there is any substance to the "agent" angle of this story? Also, if we are giving Israel the benefit of the doubt in this report, why not say 'Israeli agent' rather than Israeli 'agent'? It's a small, but essential difference.

The next headline is simply a lame attempt at humour, with "good show" being a direct quote attributed to the BAA...

John Mason from the British Astronomical Association (BAA) told BBC News: "Weather-permitting, we should be in for a very good show across the UK.

... as well as a common phrase suggesting gentlemen at the races at Ascot or at a pugilistic competition under the Marquess of Queensberry's rules. "Good show, old boy," indeed, but the implied bathos does not do the story, or the BBC, justice; that is, unless Pimm's and strawberries with cream be served during observation of the Perseid shower.

Iraq 'not ready' for US pull-out is a difficult one. On the one hand, this story is based on a specific accusation of coitus interruptus made by an Iraqi general, as the full headline (Iraqi general says planned US troop pull-out 'too soon') on the BBC website makes clear. However, the story again fails to take a stance on what is actually happening in Iraq. All three subheaders in the story also have quotation marks, seemingly absolving the unnamed reporter of the responsibility to establish the truth for the benefit of his/her readers:
Security 'void'
(according to Iraqi top army officer Lt Gen Babaker Zebari)

'Significant improvements'
(according to US Gen Ray Odierno)

'Wrong signals'
(according to Faleh Abdul-Jabbar, the director of the Baghdad-based Iraq Institute for Strategic Studies).

Who is right? Well, the BBC won't tell you.

Even more ridiculous, misleading, and uninformative is the headline Iran stoning woman 'confesses'. Here, the quotation marks serve as a "wink, wink" to the reader, so that the BBC journalist can infer, without saying it in so many words, that the confession was obtained under duress. But apparently it is too much to ask for the journalist to stake out a position on whether or not the confession - sorry, 'confession' - was legitimate. Most laughable is this section:

The woman, whose face was pixelated, admitted her part in the 2005 killing, despite Ms Ashtiani having earlier told Western media that she had been acquitted of the charge.

The accompanying footage shows a pixelated person (woman?) wearing a chador, speaking in Azeri, dubbed into Persian, allegedly confessing complicity in her husband's killing. Also, the accused (who may or may not be the person in the video) has since reportedly denied any part in the murder; she now accuses her lawyer, who has fled to Norway, of releasing the video against her wishes; she now may be hanged, according to the report, which further calls into question the already outrageously stupid epithet Iran stoning woman. Thus, considering all the uncertainties involved here, a slightly less misleading headline might be 'Iranian' 'woman' 'retracts' 'confession'.

Did I say this was going to be a short post? Let's leave the other headlines for now and conclude that the quotation mark is grotesquely misused by the BBC and other news outlets (yes, I'm looking at you, Guardian: Gulf oil spill 'may be over' and Telegraph 'Dead girl' [i.e., not-dead girl] sparks panic after photographed lying down). First of all, journalists: Do your job and research what happened. Then tell us what really transpired, not what somebody may have said or thought they had seen. Is that too much to ask? Thanks.

UPDATE: While I was writing this, the BBC outdid itself with this cretinous headline: Obama backs 'Ground Zero mosque'. Referring to Obama's backing for religious freedom, in the case of the not-exactly-mosque, to be built on the hallowed ground of the former Burlington Coat Factory. Thanks for pointing that out, Beeb!

Money Talks: The Riyal Truth

Ingenious Iranian opposition members are apparently using paper money to disseminate anti-regime propaganda and challenge the authority of the state on its very own symbol of power, the national currency. According to the Iranian exile website Payvand.com, run from Mountain View in California, opposition activists

"have taken their expressions to another high circulation mass-medium, banknotes. The Central Bank of Iran has tried to take these banknotes out of circulation, but there are just too many of them, and gave up. For the activists’ people it’s a way of saying “We are here, and the green movement is going on”.

In times like these, the "green movement" idea of letting the money do the talking might be worth a try in other countries too. Certainly, this type of free speech is a most felicitous marriage of form and substance - the medium is the message.

Assuming that these sample images are genuine and represent a sense of what a significant part of the Iranian public think, it is particularly interesting to see that the regime is being challenged on the basis of its deals with other countries. Khamenei is accused of being a "servant of Putin" and the government is charged with having passed on the nation's oil revenues to Chavez. The government's relations with China (from where it imports garbage) and India (to where it exports gas) are also slammed.


But the slogans also hit pretty close to home on domestic policy issues. Particularly irksome must be this quote from Ali Shariati, the chief ideologue of the 1979 revolution (all quotes based on the info provided by Payvand.com - I don't claim to know any Farsi):

"Don’t believe what a government says if that government is the only entity that has the right of expression."

Ouch... it's got to hurt for any corrupt, violent, fundamentalist regime that draws its legitimacy from a revolutionary heritage when it is reminded by its own population of its long-lost ideals from 30 years ago. Meanwhile, in my own neighborhood, I will be looking out for Swiss franc banknotes with hand-scribbled demands for nationalization of UBS and Credit Suisse, and calling for the head of Marcel Ospel.

In other news from the Siamese twins of crime and politics (conjoined at the head), The Observer reports that over US$350 billion of drug money were injected into legal circulation (read: laundered) at the height of the financial crisis last year when no other liquid assets were available, keeping several unnamed banks afloat; and last night, somebody wiped that smirk off Silvio Berlusconi's face - throwing shoes is so 2008:


Not that I endorse that kind of behavior. Pronta guarigione, Silvio!

Mine/Thine

What can I say... this kind of thing wouldn't fly back in the old country... but I am currently in Switzerland, where people still juxtapose words like "Lebensraum" and "Heimat" quite innocuously - in the Migros supermarket.

Back in Germany, the store would be considered to have gotten off lightly if it was only subjected to a boycott and occasional firebombing. I guess I'm not in Kansas anymore. Incidentally, these plastic bars are known in German variously as

• Transportbandwarentrennleiste
• Kundenseperator
• Warenabtrennhölzchen (according to Max Goldt)
• NäKuBi (short for "nächster Kunde, bitte" - "next customer please")
• Miendientje ("mine-thine-let", in East Frisia)

Aoristed Development

Wait... huh?

France has arrested a researcher at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (Cern) for suspected links with al-Qaeda, officials have said.

"He was not a Cern employee and performed his research under a contract with an outside institute. His work did not bring him into contact with anything that could be used for terrorism".

So: will he, or will he not, have been being bringing about the end of the world as we will have been knowing it? I'm confused. Everything will have been being changed after 9/11! Or does that not apply where aorist is invalid?

What can a terrorist not do?

While doing research on cybersecurity I came across an article in the Guardian that discussed a study revealing how "terrorists could soon use the internet to help set off a devastating nuclear attack". This study, commissioned by the International Commission on Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament (ICNND), basically warned that without greater efforts to secure global information infrastructure, these so-called terrorists could hack into computer systems and create havoc in the form of a mushroom cloud.

That's right, according to this study there is no longer the need to acquire the nuclear materials when you can simply find the right whiz-kid to hack, hack, and hack away.

Interesting - and yet this study does what so many have done before it... it presents yet another potential, catastrophic way that 'terrorists' could circumvent the system and carry out some asymmetric, dramatic, Hollywood-style attack that would significantly disrupt our world as we know it... well, that is until Arnold Schwarzenegger comes in to save the day. Meanwhile, most groups are relying on classic bombing campaigns (IEDs, roadside bombs, suicide bombing, grenades, etc.) and the more recent swarm-based tactics that we've seen in Mumbai and elsewhere. While the Western world continues to develop more fantastical ideas on what these individuals could do, at this point I'm wondering: what can terrorists not do? A quick internet search of "what could terrorists do" rendered all types of fantastic things; for instance, they could, of course, carry out a nuclear attack (this was the most popular), use insects to carry out biological attacks, employ killer robots, launch satellite attacks, poison our food or drinking water, breed new types of pox, and the list goes on.

Not bad.

Another thing that this article, or rather study, manages to do is follow a much deeper tradition of scenario-construction and 'what ifs' in the world of counter-terrorism that will likely never be held accountable. Like the killer robots or insects, the potential that 'terrorists' could hack into government computers and hit the nuke button continue to feed into a threat-spectrum that grows by the day. However, like most scenarios, they never come true. What they manage to do is construct and distort the capabilities of what a non-state actor is able or even willing to do to communicate a political message. I'm not saying that scenario building is necessarily bad or that we should not look at how dual-use technologies can be exploited, but that we should be tempered in our analysis and look deeper into what today's violent non-state actor is doing and how they're leveraging their environment to achieve their objectives.

Sworn Statements on Murky Blackwater Deeds

According to two affidavits deposited in a federal court in Virginia on 3 August, the then-CEO of the mercenary company formerly known as Blackwater and now rebranded as "Xe", Erik Prince, "murdered or had murdered" Blackwater employees who were cooperating with a government inquiry about the company's criminal conduct in Iraq. Both sworn statements, posted as part of an article in The Nation by Jeremy Scahill, were given by former employees of Blackwater named only as "John Doe One" and "John Doe Two" for their own protection. The second affidavit also says that Prince "views himself as a Christian crusader tasked with eliminating Muslims and the Islamic faith from the globe" and intentionally deployed mercenaries to Iraq who "shared his vision of Christian supremacy, knowing and wanting these men to take every available opportunity to murder Iraqis."

Among the other charges cited in the affidavits and in the article by Scahill - who has written a book on Blackwater's activities - are the following:

• Erik Prince smuggled illegal weapons ("sawed off semi-automatic machine guns with silencers") and ammunition ("designed to explode after penetrating within the human body") into Iraq in bags of dog food.
• Blackwater knew some of its staff intentionally used excessive force to injure and murder innocent bystanders, and did nothing about it. Both John Does cite numerous cases where innocent passersby were killed apparently "as a sport or game".
  
• Some of its mercenaries used M249 Squad Automatic Weapon ("SAW") machine guns in violation of State Department rules, which only allowed them to use pistols or M4 automatic carbines.
• Against the advice of other company executives, Prince insisted on deploying to Iraq men who were patently unfit to serve, due to their stated intention to rack up "body counts" of "ragheads", due to alcohol and steroid abuse, or because they ignored safety regulations in operating weapons.
• Prince also ignored the advice of mental health experts who warned him against deploying mercenaries who were psychologically unfit to serve.
• He "knowingly hired two persons who were previously involved in the Kosovo sex trafficking ring to serve at relatively high-levels [sic] within his companies."
• Blackwater ran a "Man Camp" where employees were supplied with prostitutes, including child prostitutes. Prince, the "Christian crusader", also visited the camp.
• Many top Blackwater executives in the company's North Carolina headquarters took part in an "ongoing wife-swapping and sex ring", which caused so much trouble among the top management that a special investigation was undertaken.

Needless to say, Prince is a generous financial backer of fundamentalist Christian groups, having donated millions of dollars to causes such as The Family Research Council, Focus on the Family, the Council for National Policy, and Watergate conspirator Chuck Colson's Prison Fellowship Ministries. Naturally, he is also a large donor to the American Enterprise Institute and the Republican Party. The company's excellent relations to the Bush administration are further illustrated by the fact that the former director of the CIA Counterterrorist Center and the State Department's counterterrorism coordinator, Cofer "Flies on their Eyeballs" Black, has been a vice chairman of Blackwater/Xe since 2005.

The company has won government contracts worth at least hundreds of millions of dollars since 2001.

Arrested for Watching the Watchers

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? The British police officer used to be regarded worldwide as the epitome of fairness and the protector of the public peace. That was rubbish even back in the old days of course. But, as they say (all together now): EVERYTHING CHANGED AFTER 9/11... Looking at this footage of women being arrested for monitoring the police at Kingsnorth climate camp, I am a lot less enthusiastic at the thought of travelling to the UK next month... welcome to the authoritarians' paradise created by New Labour. The two ladies in question were involved with Fit Watch, the organization that watches the British police's Forward Intelligence Teams (whose job is to harass demonstrators at protests in the UK). More information about the cops in this video and their identities (they are required to provide badge numbers if requested by members of the public) is available at The Guardian and at this Fit Watch blog entry. Oh... need I add that the women were of course cleared of all charges in court, having spent a total of four days in prison without bail or access to their lawyers - just for asking the cops for their badge numbers?

Did Nokia Siemens Network Give Iran Surveillance Technology?

The Wall Street Journal and WIRED magazine are reporting that Nokia Siemens Network, a subsidiary of the German and Finnish telecom companies, supplied technology for monitoring and censoring communications as part of a larger deal for a mobile phone network with the Iranian government late in 2008. According to the WSJ, the deal included provisions for "deep packet inspection", which involves not only the ability to block or restrict access to specific websites, but also the capability to inspect the content of individual communications. The company confirms the deal, but denies that the technology provided allows deep packet inspection, instead claiming that the contract included what it refers to in lovely newspeak as "provision of Lawful Intercept capability":

In most countries around the world, including all EU member states and the U.S., telecommunications networks are legally required to have the capability for Lawful Intercept and this is also the case in Iran.

Whether the requirement by EU and US bureaucrats to include spying/censorship backdoors for law enforcement in telecommunications software is itself legitimate and commensurate to democratic standards relating to the rule of law is of course highly questionable (for the record, I say no). Another matter is whether a European company should sell such equipment to a regime with a record like that of the Islamic Republic, which suppresses free speech (and may have manipulated the elections of last week) as a matter of course. Yet the two issues are closely related. Had the European and US governments decided to defend democratic/civil-rights principles even under pressure from "security experts", it would be much more difficult for companies like Nokia Siemens Networks to defend their decision to trade integrity for profit.

I found this an interesting question to consider in the context of the important role of mobile communications technology for documenting eand coordinating events during the current unrest in Iran.

N.b., not to unfairly single out Iran for violations of privacy, whether clandestine or "legal": It turns out that the NSA, which is able to read the e-mails of all US citizens without court orders using the Pinwale software, has also been accessing the personal communications of former US president Bill Clinton.

Feel free to communicate with Nokia Siemens Networks and their damage control man Ben Roome at this address or via e-mail at ben.roome@nsn.com. They will certainly be delighted to hear from you provided you state your opinion respectfully.

Fox News Obliquely Smears Obama as Jew-Hater

FoxNews.com accompanied its coverage of the speech by Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu with one stock picture of Netanyahu at Bar-Ilan University, and one picture of US President Barack Obama wearing a keffiyah. The latter image was obviously photoshopped; what is interesting is the provenance of this not-very-subtle smear, with its blatant overtones of Obama being a "secret Muslim" and similar debunked nonsense: It is cropped from this picture of a poster seen in Israel, which proclaims "Barack Hussein Obama" (of course!) to be an "Anti-Semitic Jew-Hater":

Now, this is clearly not an error; somebody in the FoxNews.com newsroom intentionally selected this picture of Obama to accompany the report on Netanyahu's comments, in which he stipulated that any future Palestinian state would have to be demilitarized and accompanied by security guarantees for Israel. (While it goes without saying that the second of these demands is perfectly reasonable, the first will be unacceptable to the Palestinians and at this point constitutes a de-facto rejection of real Palestinian statehood in the occupied territories.)

The picture was pointed out by a commenter on the extreme right-wing discussion board Free Republic, who called the choice of image "pretty stunning" and said quite rightly that it "seems to be an editorial decision". The next commenter asks "Is there a FReeper working for Fox? I nearly fell off my chair seeing that!", while others gleefully respond with "Wow...is that a real picture? I like it!" and "Whoa! At first I thought you were pulling my leg but the picture really is on Fox’s site! I wonder how long it’ll be there?".

At the time of writing, the picture was still there, cf. the following screenshot:

By promoting the idea that Obama is a "Jew-Hater" and antisemite, FoxNews.com is further stoking the fire of those nutjobs who already feel tempted to take the law into their own hands. Without going into the details of the delicate relationship between right-wing extremists and philosemites (among many militant conservatives in the US, philosemitism frequently appears to be constantly on the verge of tipping over into prejudice against Jews), suffice it to say that casting Obama as a new Hitler, while obviously completely crazy, will egg on those who believe any means are justified in stopping him. FoxNews knows no shame, of course, but they should be called out on this.

File under: Misheard Lyrics

Charles Manson asks the question that's been bugging me for some time now:





Easy to see how he might have misunderstood some of the lyrics on the Beatles' White Album.

A Hollow Man in the White House: The Lost Bush Decade

Just before New Year’s Eve, I began reading “The Final Days” by Woodward and Bernstein on the last weeks of the Nixon administration. Not because of any conscious awareness of the imminent end of the Bush era, but simply because it was the first book that jumped out at me from the bookcase in my brother’s spare bedroom in Malta where we were spending ten days escaping from the icy winds that tore across the continent in late December and early January.

The impression one gains from this account and other descriptions of Nixon is that, though he was a crook, he was also a complex person with deep-seated neuroses and obsessions that he was able to harness as vehicles to advance his political career. Even Hunter S. Thompson, probably the most outspoken critic that Nixon ever had, acknowledged in the summer of 1973 that the true loathsomeness of Watergate was to be found not in the person of the president, but in the broader implications for the nation as a whole:

The slow-rising central horror of “Watergate” is not that it might grind down to the reluctant impeachment of a vengeful thug of a president whose entire political career has been a monument to the same kind of cheap shots and treachery he finally got nailed for, but that we might somehow fail to learn something from it.

Only 27 years later, George W. Bush was elected the 43rd president of the United States. It is already clear that his sole lasting achievement and bequest to the Republican Party will be the rehabilitation of Richard Milhous Nixon. And while the legal and moral corruption of the Bush administration is immeasurably greater, making Tricky Dicky’s many crimes seem almost petty by comparison, Nixon himself now comes across as a larger-than-life figure – a tragic character in the full sense of the word, brought down by his own hubris and destroyed by the same traits of personality that made possible his ascent to power. Bush by comparison is a hollow man, a cardboard cutout, a two-bit tinhorn gambler who bet the ranch and lost. His legacy will be that of an idiot child who was somehow hoisted onto the throne and spent his days cycling, playing with his train set, and invading other countries in wars of aggression, ending in failure on an epic scale that was previously inconceivable.

I like children, but they can be stupid and cruel, as Bion of Borysthenes knew well:

It was the saying of Bion, that, though boys throw stones at frogs in sport, yet the frogs do not die in sport but in earnest.

Ultimately, Bush remains a mystery to us; maybe the only ones who can fathom him are those of us who have stared down the drooling, vacant-eyed monster inside of us that occasionally returns our gaze in the mirror at 3am. If so – and we would do well never to forget that Bush was re-elected in 2004, despite all the information that was publicly available at the time already – he represents not the most evil aspects of our political system and ultimately of our nature as political beings (that honor would have to be reserved for criminals of Nixon’s stature), but the most bland, careless, unthinking manifestation of human interaction. Could this be because Nixon came from a poor farming family of Quakers and had to claw his way to power and infamy, while Bush is a Fortunate Son of the establishment and was handed the keys to the White House by a coalition of the super-rich, the foreign-policy hawks, and the Christian Right?



Possibly the worst aspect of the Bush years has been not the political shit sandwich that he has tried to force-feed to all of mankind, but the way in which he has made cretinism and mediocrity fashionable, or at least acceptable in polite society. On the other hand, this development is already beginning to be reversed by the current economic devastation, which has disabused the world of the notion that the emperor’s new clothes are oh so pretty. Thus it is that in the run-up to Barack Obama’s inauguration, the residents of Washington, D.C. were throwing shoes at a blow-up doll of Bush/Pinocchio, even as the jailers guarding “shoe assassin” Muntadhar al-Zeidi in Baghdad threw a birthday party for him (after severely beating and torturing him, it should be added).

“So for him it does not matter for how long he would be imprisoned,” his brother said, “because the important thing is that he restored the honor of the Iraqi people.”

As for Bush, he can take solace in two deserved awards recently bestowed upon him: The Bishop John T. Walker Service Award, which he earned (in all fairness – though it is a shame he did not muster the same level of dedication when New Orleans was drowning) for his efforts to improve the lives of Africans, and a well-deserved label devised especially for Dubya by the esteemed Sean Bedlam:

“He is the Swiss army knife of being a fuckhead”

Celebrating Victory With Barack Obama

It was a long night on Tuesday, but worth the wait. We went to the Democrats Abroad pre-election party and had a few beers to loosen up nerves that were tense even though we were all pretty confident about the outcome of the vote. Comrade Jen G. had to take it easy because she had been selected to debate the head of Republicans Abroad later in the evening. The debate took place at GZ Riesbach here in Zurich, at an SP election night party. The Republican dude was let off easy because everybody knew his sorry ass was going down anyway, and the other panelists were (unnecessarily) gracious, leaving the booing and ridicule to an audience of 99% Obama supporters. Jen turned on her considerable charm while the Republican became increasingly irritated, ending up with a beet-root red face (tsk, tsk, those angry white men).

I went home at 4:30am local time, when Pennsylvania and Ohio were called for Obama and it was increasingly clear that McCain was not just going to lose, but was losing in a landslide. Walking home along the lake in the cold November morning, I felt very tired but cheerful - not necessarily elated... but as I came home, my dear lady (who had left the party early and nodded off watching the election coverage on the sofa) told me that CNN had just officially declared Obama the President-Elect.

John McCain gave a remarkably graceful concession speech before a crowd that was visibly reeling between shock and anger that the impossible had happened - enraged bellows were heard as McCain said he had called Obama "to congratulate him on being elected the next president of the country we both love". Buh-buh-but... isn't he a Muslim communist?! Like many others, I felt that the race would have been a much closer one had McCain not pandered to the lunatic base of his party by insinuating that Obama was some kind of strange, radical alien - and nominating a dumb Pentecostal gasbag for VP, of course.

Obama's acceptance speech was tremendous in form and delivery. It allowed even me, a cynical political junkie, to set aside for a few minutes the terrible disappointments, shortcomings, and mistakes that the next four years will undoubtedly bring, and to imagine for a brief moment that change for the better is possible - that the problems we are currently facing can be resolved with intelligence and goodwill, and that as both Abraham Lincoln and Bob Marley have observed:

It is true that you may fool all of the people some of the time;
you can even fool some of the people all of the time;
but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.

Anyway, on Wednesday morning or rather around noon, I woke up feeling quite good about the world I live in, and after work, Jen (who hadn't slept all night), Manu, and I decided the time was right for a glass or two of celebratory prosecco at Safari... and since Obama deserved a few beers after two years of hard campaigning, we thought it would be a nice gesture of our appreciation to ask him to come along. Imagine our surprise when Barry said he was going to leave the nomination of his chief of staff for another day and hit the bar with us.

It didn't take long before old Barack was more than a little sozzled and started mumbling into his beer about how "that honky bastard Dubya" had stuck him with a country in tatters, a divided society, and an economy that was "totally roached", and how once again it was the black man who was going to have to "clean up their shit after them". Fortunately, he soon cheered up and started flirting with Comrade Jen, who was not completely averse to his advances (she likes tall dark guys, which is why George Clooney didn't stand a chance with her at the Geneva fundraiser held by the Democrats Abroad).

After we had left the Safari Bar, Barry wanted to go to a strip club, but we convinced him this was probably not a good idea (though part of me was screaming at myself that we could take photos and sell them to Fox News for a fee that would put not just our children, but our grandchildren through university).

Instead, we went to the Kon-Tiki Bar, where Obama has some fans too. While the Safari bartender had offered him a beer on the house, the pierced/tatooed/redheaded lady behind the Kon-Tiki bar stood us a round of suspicious-looking red drinks that seemed to be vodka-based. By this time, Barack was totally relaxed and decided he wanted to play some good music on the jukebox. He put on "Paint the White House Black" by George Clinton and started laughing hysterically, shouting something about how he would have liked to "buy that crazy-ass bitch Hillary a quart of rye whiskey if she were here right now."

Afterwards, we went to the Regenbogen Bar, where the election night warm-up party had taken place. All night long, we had been making new friends and getting big smiles from absolute strangers. In this bar, we got into an argument with a belligerent jerk who took the whole thing a little too seriously. The less said about that conversation, the better - all I want to add is that apparently you can hang out in a chic gay bar and still be a nasty, uptight, angry asshole. Who knew.

In traditional continental European style, we wrapped up the night in a kebab shop, where the döner jockey announced that Obama was "far too thin" and needed to "get some meat on that skinny frame". By this point, Barack seemed to be getting a little bleary-eyed (he had taken off his glasses, as you can see) and his grin was starting to look unnaturally fixed, so we decided to head home after one more round of beers. Outside, another group of complete strangers (they looked decidedly Middle Eastern) begged him to have their picture taken with him.

All in all, it was a very enjoyable night out with Barack (or "Hussein", as we, his friends, call him), and to paraphrase his already legendary acceptance speech in Grant Park on the night of 4 November... if there is anyone out there who still doubts that this is a president you would like to have a beer with, tonight was your answer!

The 35 Articles of Impeachment

... and the Case for Prosecuting George W. Bush, by Dennis Kuchinich with David Swanson and Elizabeth de la Vega, available as a paperback from Feral House and available for free download as a PDF from the same publisher. Read it and pass it on, then lobby your local Democratic Party to push for impeaching the Chimp when Obama takes office in January.

In the best case, we will see GWB and his coterie sentenced to long prison sentences. Do I believe this? No, because even though I am supporting Obama, I think he is an establishment candidate and will not violate the unwritten rule that incoming administrations let sleeping dogs lie. But even in the worst case, you will be able to tell your grandchildren that it was through no fault of your own that Bush got away with murder.

"Kärntens 9/11" - Zum Tod von Jörg Haider

Heute ausnahmsweise mal in meiner Mutter- statt Vatersprache, denn es geht um ein Thema, das primär den deutschsprachigen Raum betrifft. De mortuis nihil nisi bene, sagt man, und meint damit, dass man von den Toten nicht sprechen soll, wenn man nichts Nettes über sie zu sagen hat. Nun dürfte es vielen schwerfallen, etwas Gutes über Jörg Haider zu sagen, und selbst seinen unterbelichteten Anhängern fällt laut Basler Zeitung nichts wirklich Eloquentes ein. Sprüche an der Unfallstelle wie "Wir leben durch dich!" oder "Danke, dass du mir einmal die Hand gereicht hast" bringen den Schmalspur-Führerkult des dauergrinsenden Caudillo von Kärnten noch einmal auf den Punkt, während das flehentliche "Bitte Jörg, du musst noch einmal vorbeikommen" ein frommer Wunsch bleiben dürfte.

Die Umstände von Haiders Tod - als Raser auf der Überholspur - sind von einigen Kommentatoren als bezeichnend für seine politische Karriere gedeutet worden: "Bevor er sich mehrmals überschlug, rammte der VW Phaeton ein Schild mit Tempolimit 50", heisst es in dem obigen Artikel, und wenn man des weiteren darauf hinweist, dass der Jörgl mit 142 km/h unterwegs war, werden wir mal wieder daran erinnert, dass gerade für Law-and-Order-Politiker der Grundsatz gilt: "Do as I say, not as I do," was auch die CSU-Politiker im benachbarten Bayern ein ums andere Mal demonstriert haben - siehe die zahllosen Titanic-"Briefe an die Leser", die sich mit diesem Thema über die Jahre beschäftigt haben.

Apropos Titanic: Natürlich hat sich das Pflichtblatt für Rechtsabbieger auch mit dem Haider-Exitus in gewohnt pietätvoller Manier beschäftigt. "Rechtsruck in Österreich" war die Schlagzeile bereits am Sonntag, während die folgende Meldung unter dem Titel "Wie Jörg Haider vom rechten Weg abkam" eine Grafik präsentiert, wie wir sie bereits vom Tod der Prinzessin Diana kennen ("1.: Haider blinkt auf der Überholspur mehrere Jahre lang rechts. ... 3.: Haider versucht, das Steuer in Österreich herumzureissen...").

Als ich die erste Meldung von seinem Crash gelesen hatte, war ich zunächst verwirrt, weil ich dachte, es sei dies wieder ein Haiderscher PR-Stunt, genauer: eine neue Runde im Streit über slowenisch- und deutschsprachige Strassenschilder gewesen, mit dem der Landeshauptmann immer wieder bei den Deppen und Arschgeigen unter den Wählern in seinem Bundesland zu punkten wusste:

Mit dem Umsetzen des Schildes will Haider erreichen, dass das Verfahren vor dem Verfassungsgericht neu aufgerollt werden muss (...) Ausgelöst hatte das Verfahren in Wien ein Anwalt aus Klagenfurt. Der bekennende Slowene war mit überhöhter Geschwindigkeit durch eine geschlossene Ortschaft gefahren, wurde geblitzt und bezahlte sein Strafmandat nicht. Das Ortsschild, das auch in Österreich "Tempo 50" bedeutet, sei, weil einsprachig, nicht korrekt und das Tempo-Limit somit nicht rechtmäßig gewesen.

Dies schien mir dann aber eher nicht plausibel, zumal Populisten vom Schlage eines J.H. solche Kampagnen ja meistens eher auf dem Rücken anderer austragen, anstatt selber mit gutem Beispiel voranzugehen bzw. zu -fahren.

So bleibt Haiders Tod letzlich komplett sinnfrei und schliesst auch in dieser Hinsicht nahtlos an sein Leben an. Nur eines blieb mir in der ganzen Berichterstattung völlig unerklärlich: "Öfters fällt das Schlagwort von 'Kärntens 9/11'", so die BAZ - wieso? Erstens war Haider kein Muslim, und zweitens ist er nur in die Leitplanke und nicht in ein Hochhaus gebrettert.

Rensselaer County "Mistakenly" Mislabels Election Ballot For "Osama"

I have just voted for Obama as an overseas voter, and am happy to have done so. Now this... does anybody believe the "Barack Osama" ballot handed out by Rensselaer County was the result of an honest mistake? Yeah, right, just one of those mistakes that happen from time to time. I'm sure the good people administering Rensselaer County will appreciate your honest and respectful criticism at this address.

McCain Must Really Hate America

Last night, watching the presidential debate between Barack Obama and John McCain, I was disturbed to note that while Obama displayed a US flag lapel pin, his opponent did not. Apparently, McCain's brazen rejection of all the values America stands for went unnoticed by Fox News, which had previously spoken out on behalf of all red-blooded freedom-lovers thusly:

Some Americans, however, say they question the patriotism of a candidate who makes such a choice, a sentiment that shows up in polls.

Perhaps McCain could have borrowed US$2,500 from his beer heiress wife to purchase one of the lapel pins on sale by his own campaign management. Surely, that would not be too steep a price to show a little pride in the country he wants to lead.

Update: Raquel Laneri of Forbes magazine noticed, too.

Dear Boy

Keith Moon died 30 years ago yesterday. Besides being the greatest drummer of all times with The Who, he also earned a reputation for inventing the rock-star cliche of smashing up hotel rooms on an epic scale. I remember when I was about 11 years old visiting my family in Scotland, I stayed in the room of my older cousin. Every inch of this room was completely covered in Who memorabilia, and what particularly impressed me were the clippings from The Sun and other tabloids describing the various exploits of Moon the Loon - how he had crashed his Rolls into the pool of a Holiday Inn hotel, how he habitually destroyed his drum kit on stage, and - most memorably in the mind of this pre-pubescent kid - how a naked stripper had emerged from his birthday cake (I was almost as impressed by the fact that my cousin was allowed to have the article, with photo of the lady in question, up on his wall; my mom would have had my head on a stake had I suggested redecorating my room in similar fashion).

When, several years later, I started getting seriously into the music of The Who myself, it was Moon's drumming that convinced me this was the best band ever. Especially in recordings of live concerts, his power and speed are unreal (just listen to his drumming on I Can See For Miles - and I still consider Live at Leeds the best live album ever recorded by any band).

On a trip to the UK, my buddy Felix (if at all possible, an even bigger Who fan than myself) bought Full Moon, a biography of Keith by his driver, bodyguard, and drug purchaser Dougal Butler. In addition to introducing me to the concept of cockney rhyming slang, this account of life as a rock star also made clear that besides Moonie's charming and comical personality, he also had a vicious Mr Hyde side to him that came out when he was drunk, i.e., near-permanently as his career evolved. After hurling a bottle of champagne at his wife, which thankfully missed and became embedded intact in the wall of their living room, he framed the corpus delicti, turning violence simultaneously into a joke and into a work of art, perfectly encapsulating his approach to life and the two sides of his increasingly psychotic personality.

A 1970s cartoon showed a hotel lobby with what looks like a fire alarm and the notice, "In Case of Keith Moon, Break Glass". The Wikipedia entry on Moonie contains the following anecdote:

According to Townshend, Moon's reputation for erratic behaviour was something he cultivated. Once, on the way to an airport, Moon insisted they return to their hotel, saying , "I forgot something. We've got to go back!" When the limo returned, Moon ran to his room, grabbed the TV while it was plugged in, threw it out the window and into the pool. He then jumped back into the limousine, sighing "I nearly forgot."

Another nice story is recounted by Graham Chapman:

"He had a little bit of a problem in a hotel in Los Angeles, in the Hyatt House on Sunset Strip in fact it was, he was returning home one afternoon after rehearsing with the band, and was walking through the lobby at the hotel listening to this old cassette recorder - listening to the rehearsal of the band that morning, in fact, and evidently there was some kind of complaint about this, because the manager approached him and told him to turn that noise off, please. Well, Keith immediately complied, turned it off, and went up to his room, where he happened to have a large supply of detonator caps. He'd been saving these up for the acts later on in the week. And he spent the next 20 minutes meticulously wiring these up to the back of his door. He then rang down to the manager's office and told the man that he wanted to see him immediately. He popped his head out of the door to check that the manager had indeed got out of the elevator, popped back in again, and the manager subsequently arrived just outside of Keith's door to see the whole thing blown off its hinges in front of his eyes, and Keith, stepping out of the rubble and smoke, holding up this little cassette recorder, saying: 'That was noise, mate; this was The Who.' He certainly had a way with authority".

Not the kind of person you would wish to married to, then; but certainly if I had the choice of which resurrected dead rock star I could spend a night of drinking with, I would have to go with Keith, no contest. If you are unfamiliar with his drumming style, the difference between noise and The Who is showcased in Cobwebs and Strange on the album "A Quick One", and this video gives a good impression of both his mastery of the drums and of the charming part of his personality (with a cameo appearance by Steve Martin, from the movie The Kids Are Alright). The other side of the Moon, the bombastic stadium rock power drumming, can be seen in the final scene of the aforementioned movie as The Who give a monster performance of Won't Get Fooled Again. At 7:37 minutes, Moonie breaks into the synthesizer track with a fantastic extended drum roll that still gives me goosebumps every time I hear it.

But there can be no better way to honor his memory than with this clip of Moon the Loon performing his beloved surf music: a lovely smile, terrific drumming, and atrocious singing (though his version of Barbara Ann still better than John McCain's obscenity)... we shall not see his like again.

Recommended reading: Tony Fletcher, Dear Boy - The Life Of Keith Moon, London: Omnibus Press, 1998.