Cops

"Law enforcement personnel"...?

Y'know, not too long ago, most people seeing this juxtaposition of word and image would have presumed that an editor had grabbed the wrong photo. These guys sure don't look like cops to me.

Yesterday, we noted that it's hard to laugh at anti-gummint wingnuts when the authorities do things that make those nuts look not-so-nutty. Here we go again. During the Dubya era, Republicans routinely accused Democrats of treating terrorism as a criminal matter, not as a military matter. That may be a distinction without a difference.

Back in 1994, I saw cops respond to a hostage situation that erupted not many blocks away from my home. Although heavily armed officers swarmed all over the place, the scene didn't look like a frame capture from Platoon.

All of that said, the situation which caused these "cops" to show up  in their Army fatigues is, of course, extremely worrisome and depressing. We've seen a rash of recent incidents in which paranoid men have grabbed guns to commit horrors; a later post may offer summaries of these episodes. For now, consider the paradox: Jimmy Lee Dykes, a "prepper" who (presumably) despises government overreach, has created a situation designed to make his worst nightmare seem to come true.

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How black was my helicopter

Thanks to Corrente for pointing this out:

If you see military helicopters buzzing through your neighborhood sometime soon, don’t freak out. It’s probably a military training exercise.

Miami-Dade police sent out a warning Monday that multiple police agencies would be providing support for a joint military training exercise somewhere over Miami and elsewhere in the county. The exercise will include the use of military helicopters.

“This is routine training conducted by military personnel designed to ensure the military’s ability to operate in urban environments, prepare forces for upcoming overseas deployments, and meet mandatory training certification requirement,” the police statement said.

Liberals and moderates enjoy laughing at wingnuts who believe in loopy paranoid memes. It'd be a little easier to make fun of those people if the military did not contrive to make those paranoid memes real.

In 2011, a similar exercise took place in Brickell, a Miami suburb. Here's a description and here's a video.

On Tuesday, Miami police officers in Brickell said that it was all part of a planned Homeland Security exercise, but confusion about the helicopters was rampant about 6 a.m. Wednesday.

It all began about 9:15 p.m. Tuesday, when at least three large Black Hawk-like choppers landed in a parking lot of the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts on Biscayne Boulevard and 14th Street.

The choppers then charged over the Brickell and Miami river area. Men who appeared to be SWAT team members were also seen taking part in the exercise.

Witnesses were tweeting as the event unfolded.

"Three choppers just dropped a group of men on top of the Bank of America building in Brickell," tweeted a man identified as Ianik Drouin, about 9:45 p.m

I suppose we want the boys and girls of Homeland Security to be well-trained, but aren't there places away from actual cities where the choppers can practice? These days -- as opposed to ten years ago -- I'd say that there are more people who fear "the gummint" than fear the terrorists.

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Non sequitur of the day: "Second Amendment!"

You probably already know about the controversy over the incident in which a Sandy Hook father was allegedly heckled by gun control opponents when he spoke in public. Having seen the video, a Slate writer says that no heckling occurred.

But the video also shows that those who interjected were responding to a question posed by Heslin.

"Is there anybody in this room that can give me one reason or challenge this question, why anybody in this room needs to have one of these assault-style weapons or military weapons or high-capacity clips?" Heslin said before pausing and looking around the room. He then continued: "And not one person can answer that question or give me an answer." It was at that point that the cries of "Second Amendment" can be heard.

The great unaddressed point here is that the gun control opponents who shouted that phrase offered up something (arguably) worse than heckling: A non-sequitur.

The man had asked a perfectly fair question, and crying "Second Amendment!" does not answer it.

Suppose I stood in front of an audience and asked: "Why on earth would anyone feel the need to write a book which describes how to create weapons of mass destruction using easily-available materials?" I don't know what would constitute a good reply to that poser, but only a nut would respond by shouting "First Amendment!" If construed in a certain way, the First Amendment may give one the right to publish such a book. But the question was not about rights. The question was: "Why would you need to do a thing like that?"

Read it again. Heslin asked "...why anybody in this room needs to have...?"

When you ask such a question and the response is nonsense, then your opponents have, in essence, conceded defeat.

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A voting rights amendment

Salon has published an article devoted to the odd fact that our Constituion does not guarantee the right to vote. Many sections of the document imply that right, but the right is never specified.

A right-to-vote amendment would raise the standard of constitutional review for voter-identification laws and other measures that deplete the pool of voters. Currently states have to show only a “compelling interest” for their laws to pass muster. An affirmative right to vote would compel courts to apply “strict scrutiny,” the standard used to review laws that operate on the basis of race and other characteristics.

During the Republican presidential primaries, every candidate except Jon Huntsman signed a pledge to support a balanced-budget amendment in Congress. There’s no reason progressives can’t do the same with a right-to-vote amendment in the next Democratic contest.

A new amendment should, in my opinion, provide not just the right but a new mechanism for choosing our president. We should finally make an end of the electoral college, which gives unfair and disproportionate influence to the rural states, and forces presidential candidates to concentrate on a few "purple" states, instead of addressing the nation at large.

As you know, partisan manipulators in Virginia and other states have toyed with ways to rig the electoral college system. We've had enough of this nonsense. The most sensible choice would be the institution of a nation-wide popular vote.

Why are Constitutional amendments so difficult to pass nowadays? When I was a boy, the 26th amendment -- extending the vote to 18 year olds -- sailed through rapidly. At the time, proponents argued that those old enough to die in an unpopular overseas war ought to have the franchise, a line of reasoning which proved impossible to counter.

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"Blood libel"

Remember when we discussed the accusation that Israel was one of the (far too numerous) places in this world where the illegal organ trade is a serious problem? When that story hit the Swedish press in 2009, many supporters of Israel screamed that the article had resurrected the infamous "blood libel." Later, Nancy Scheper-Hughes -- who has an unassailable reputation as an investigator of the illegal organ trade (not just in Israel but also in China, Brazil, eastern Europe and elsewhere) -- confirmed the Swedish report. The confirmation came in the form of an interview with Dr Yehuda Hiss, former head of the Abu Kabir forensic institute near Tel Aviv.

Now we have another instance of the "blood libel" accusation being used in a way that is, in and of itself, libelous.

Gerald Scarfe, a cartoonist for the U.K. Sunday Times (a Murdoch paper) created a drawing Netanyahu using Palestinians as mortar in a new Israeli wall. Those offended by this image claim that Scarfe is guilty of spreading the blood libel.

Nonsense.

Is the caricature ugly and extreme? Of course. But all caricatures of politicians are ugly and extreme. This drawing of Netanyahu is no worse than others I've seen of, say, Khruschev or Reagan or Bin Laden or Nixon or Idi Amin.

Of course, many believe that you've got to be very careful when drawing caricatures of individuals who belong to groups that once were (or still are) persecuted. You can go crazy while drawing Khrushchev, but have a care when drawing Idi Amin.

Some of you will recall the time in 2008 when I offered up a few cartoon images of Barack Obama. Even though the portraits were reasonably kind, some Obama supporters would accuse me of racism. In an impressive show of pseudo-outrage, these critics acted as though Evil Racist Cannon had drawn Obama with jet black skin and huge pink lips wrapped around a slice of watermelon, and maybe a bone running through his nose. In fact, I had done no such thing -- but what I actually drew is not what some people saw, or pretended to see.

During those heated months, other cartoonists ran into the same problem. Even those bloggers who republished Obama photos taken from slightly unflattering angles would be decried as bigots.

Well, screw that.

Anyone who enters politics must understand that a cartoonist's job is to make famous people look ugly and foolish.

The whole point of a cartoon is exaggeration. In real life, Netanyahu's nose isn't that large -- but no-one would call his honker petite, and some of the photos I've seen do show some rosacea. So, by the standards of this medium, what Scarfe did is fair. Unflattering, but fair.

Does the image constitute a new version of the "blood libel"? Of course not.

Accepting that the cartoon's target is politics, not race, leads to the inevitable conclusion that Scarfe was not anywhere near committing the offence known as blood libel.

Blood libels are representations of the vile anti-semitic myth that Jews use the blood of children in religious ceremonies and rituals, even cooking it into food.

It is a medieval belief, which perhaps explains why it is so common across sections of the Middle East, but is clearly not one being expressed in the yawnworthy cartoon.

There is no young child being slain by a revoltingly-caricatured Jew, with the blood being used in a warped religious ceremony.

While blood is used as the mortar in Netanyahu's wall, this is obviously portraying a not uncommon view that Palestinian blood is being spilt by the policies of Israel's government.

It is not a difficult distinction to understand.

Equally, Nazi propaganda attacked the Jews as a race - something Scarfe's cartoon evidently does not do at all.

I'll be very amused if someone tries to defend the Danish publication which published cartoons of Mohammed while attacking the Sunday Times for publishing Scarfe.

Let's have a little exactitude of definition. The "blood libel" accusation should be reserved only for those jackasses who actually think that Jews slay children to make matzoh. Believe it or not, such jackasses still exist. Years ago, I ran across a very amateurish video titled (if memory serves) "Jewish Ritual Murder." That thing was screamingly funny. I know that one shouldn't laugh at such a video, because the history behind it is anything but amusing. But the sheer goofiness of the first scene would make even a Golem guffaw: The film shows a snarling, cackling evil rabbi dragging a tyke off into the forest -- and it's all filmed in a style that makes Birdemic look like Citizen Kane.

That's a blood libel. But not an effective one.

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David Brooks' advice to Republicans

David Brooks, a house conservative scribbling for the NYT, writes of the need for a "second GOP" -- or rather, a GOP within a GOP.

Americans are still skeptical of Washington. If you shove a big government program down their throats they will recoil. But many of their immediate problems flow from globalization, the turmoil of technological change and social decay, and they’re looking for a bit of help. Moreover, given all the antigovernment rhetoric, they will never trust these Republicans to reform cherished programs like Social Security and Medicare. You can’t be for entitlement reform and today’s G.O.P., because politically the two will never go together.

Can current Republicans change their underlying mentality to adapt to these realities? Intellectual history says no. People almost never change their underlying narratives or unconscious frameworks. Moreover, in the South and rural West, where most Republicans are from, the Encroachment Story has deep historic and psychological roots. Anti-Washington, anti-urban sentiment has characterized those cultures for decades.

It’s probably futile to try to change current Republicans. It’s smarter to build a new wing of the Republican Party, one that can compete in the Northeast, the mid-Atlantic states, in the upper Midwest and along the West Coast. It’s smarter to build a new division that is different the way the Westin is different than the Sheraton.

Brooks suggests a conservative analog to the strategy I favored a couple of years ago. When many liberals became infuriated by Obama's zeal for compromise, I argued that true Dems should create a wing dedicated to preserving the FDR legacy.

Many people (not all of them Republican ratfuckers) argued against my suggested "reformist wing of the Democratic party" tactic. No siree, the rot goes too deep; what we need is an entirely new party; nothing else will do. If you want to have that conversation, kids, have it without me. I'm a couple of decades too old to spend much time chatting about how nice life would be if the cat wore a bell and Porky got his aviator's license.

The "let's go third party" idea tempts both hard-core liberals and red-meat conservatives.

As you will recall, Romney's loss prompted many on the right to suggest splitting from the Republican party. These bizarros thought that the Mittster failed because he was too middle-of-the-road, too RINO; therefore, they argued, the answer is to leave the GOP altogether and form a new party, one which would be even wingnuttier, even more Jeezified and Glenn Beckian.

Splitting the conservative vote would, of course, make life easier for the Dems.

Nevertheless, I would suggest that the threat to split actually gives the far-rightists -- the ones assailed by Brooks -- great and destructive power within conservativeland.

My argument is akin to one I outlined earlier in reference to the Catholic Church: The arch-traditionalists, although a minority force within the Church, wield disproportionate influence because they constantly threaten to go off and form their own "more Catholic" churches. The sedevacantists (as those who have already made the split are called) may be few in number, but the idea of sedevacantism -- the possibility of a widening fissure -- frightens the Catholic hierarchy.

Better appease the conservatives or they'll pick up their marbles and leave.

The extremist-exodus scenario is the reason why David Brooks' suggestion will go nowhere. The nuts who screech about birtherism and Sharia law -- the wackos who swallow every paranoid fantasy spewed by Larry Klayman and Fox News -- will retain their power, will increase their power, within the Republican party. They remain mighty because they threaten to stomp off. Of course, if they actually do stomp off, they will instantly become as weak as kittens.

I know what you're thinking: Are you talking about the Tea Partiers, Cannon? Don't you know that the Tea Party is dead?

No, I don't know that. An actual organization calling itself "The Tea Party" may be weak or moribund, but those things come and go. The mentality is what matters. Don't tell me that the Tea Party mentality is dead and don't tell me that Grover Norquist has lost his power -- not when so many serving GOP congressmen fear being primaried if they veer even slightly from the far-right catechism.

Added note. Brooks writes "the way the Westin is different than the Sheraton." I was under the impression that Americans say "different from" while Brits say "different to." Have you ever encountered the "different than" formulation before?

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"The Untold History of the United States"

I've been reading The Untold History of the United States, by Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick. Although this work has been disparaged -- by the liberal bloggers! -- as a collection of wacky conspiracy theories, it is anything but. (I suspect that the critics who say such things have read only the byline, not the text itself.) Although I haven't completed the book, the material in the early chapters is verifiable and backed by the citation of reputable sources. Much of it is probably familiar to Cannonfire readers.

That said, we should confess that Cannonfire readers probably know about a lot about matters which remain hidden from the general population. For example, Stone and Kuznick pay much attention to America's ghastly war in the Philippines -- an adventure which prompted Mark Twain to suggest changing our flag to red, white and black, with skulls replacing the stars. To the best of my recollection, that hideous war received no mention in my high school American history text -- and I took an AP course! I doubt that this war receives much coverage in the books approved by Glenn Beck and the Fox News crowd. (As you may know, the rightists have been concocting their own appalling answers to Howard Zinn.)

Stone and Kuznick do make some errors of judgment; for example, Theodore Roosevelt deserves better treatment than he receives in these pages. TR was a complex figure, now admired by liberals -- who applaud his willingness to take on the "malefactors of great wealth" -- and by neo-cons like Karl Rove, who don't understand that TR's dreams of empire were mostly just verbal bluster, not an actual program.

Many readers may be surprised by what Stone and Kuznick have to say about that other Roosevelt, FDR:

Magazines began calling bankers “banksters.” The Nation observed, “If you steal $25, you’re a thief. If you steal $250,000, you’re an embezzler. If you steal $2,500,000, you’re a financier.”... In this climate, Roosevelt had pretty much a free hand to do what he wanted. Brain Truster Raymond Moley noted, “If ever there was a moment when things hung in the balance, it was on March 5, 1933—when unorthodoxy would have drained the last remaining strength of this capitalist system.” Senator Bronson Cutting concluded that Roosevelt could have nationalized the banks “without a word of protest.” Rexford Guy Tugwell, director of the Agricultural Adjustment Administration, and other advisors urged Roosevelt to do just that.

A run on a bank, February 1933. Between 1930 and 1932, one-fifth of U.S. banks failed. By the time Roosevelt was inaugurated, banking had been halted completely or sharply limited everywhere.

But Roosevelt chose a much more conservative course of action. He declared a four-day national bank holiday, conferred with the nation’s top bankers on his first full day in office, called a special session of Congress to pass emergency legislation, and calmed citizens’ fears with the first of his famous fireside chats. Congress passed and Roosevelt signed the Emergency Banking Act, written largely by the bankers themselves. The banking system had been restored without radical change. Congressman William Lemke remarked, “The President drove the money-changers out of the Capitol on March 4th—and they were all back on the 9th.”... Roosevelt’s solution to the banking crisis would serve as a template for how he would handle most issues. His instincts were fundamentally conservative. He would save capitalism from the capitalists. As Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins, the first female cabinet officer in the nation’s history, explained, Roosevelt “took the status quo in our economic system as much for granted as his family . . . he was content with it.”... But the means he would use to save capitalism would be bold, visionary, and humane. They would transform American life for decades. Perhaps longer.

Though clearly not a radical, Roosevelt laid out an ambitious recovery program during his first hundred days in office.

This chapter gives us some idea as to why FDR succeeded while Obama (so far) has largely failed. In part -- but only in part -- Obama has had to take a more conservative course of action because he operates against a very different political background. The financial power structure had stronger muscles in 2008 than in 1933, and the American electorate remained quite conservative as it entered the 21st century. Thirty years of neo-liberal propaganda will inevitably have an impact on which thoughts are considered permissible and which proposed solutions may be open for discussion.

The important point to take away the Stone/Kuznick account is that FDR was not a radical, not a socialist who hated capitalism. At the time, many considered Roosevelt the man who would save capitalism from itself. Quite a few people (including his own Vice President) thought that he should have gone much further.

We need to say a word or two about the Glenn Beckians who insanely try to conflate the New Deal with Hitler's fascism. These people never research the actual history of the time, and never look into what the actual followers of Hitler thought about Franklin Roosevelt.

Directly after his election, some fascists (both European and domestic) felt cautiously optimistic about FDR. But within months, they turned on him, mounting a very powerful subversive movement which prefigured the Tea Party:

Hitler, too, had more than his share of U.S. defenders. Among the more notorious was Republican Congressman Louis T. McFadden of Pennsylvania. He took to the floor of the House in May 1933 to decry the international Jewish conspiracy, reading passages from The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, an anti-Semitic screed purporting to prove a Jewish conspiracy to take over the world, into the Congressional Record and announcing that the president’s abandonment of the gold standard “had given the gold and lawful money of the country to the international money Jews of whom Franklin D. Roosevelt is the familiar.” “This country has fallen into the hands of the international money changers,” he charged. “Is it not true,” McFadden asked, “that in the United States today the Gentiles have the slips of paper while the Jews have the gold and the lawful money? And is not this repudiation bill a bill specifically designed and written by the Jewish international money changers in order to perpetuate their power?”

Not only did the New Deal reject fascist solutions, it resisted attempts to impose any unified, coherent philosophy. It was more of a hodgepodge of agencies. Raymond Moley wrote that viewing the New Deal as the product of a consistent plan “was to believe that the accumulation of stuffed snakes, baseball pictures, school flags, old tennis shoes, carpenter’s tools, geometry books, and chemistry sets in a boy’s bedroom could have been put there by an interior decorator.” Roosevelt was more pragmatic than ideological. And he was willing to allow government to play a vastly bigger role than any of his predecessors could have imagined.

Eventually, these same fascist forces within the United States tried to mount a coup against Roosevelt. The military leader they chose for that program was General Douglas McArthur -- a man later revered by the Birchers, and, later still, the Tea Partiers.

Don't decry Stone and Kusnick's work until you can prove to me that the history books being taught in today's schools give a more accurate account of that era.

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The plot against Aaron Swartz

Not to brag or anything, but it looks like my gut reaction to the Aaron Swartz affair may have been right. The government didn't really care about the JSTOR/MIT beef. That prank -- and yeah, a harmless prank is all it amounted to -- was just a gimmick. The real issue probably involved Wikileaks.

First, we learn that the guy wasn't even looking at prison until the feds took over the case...

State prosecutors who investigated the late Aaron Swartz had planned to let him off with a stern warning, but federal prosecutor Carmen Ortiz took over and chose to make an example of the Internet activist, according to a report in Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly.

Ortiz, until recently, had hopes of becoming the governor of Massachusetts. Now she is one of the most hated women in the country.

Earlier this month, less than three months before the criminal trial was set to begin, Ortiz's office formally rejected a deal that would have kept Swartz out of prison. Two days later, Swartz committed suicide.

"He was killed by the government," Swartz's father, Robert, said last week at the funeral in Highland Park, Ill., according to a report in the Chicago Sun Times.

It's misleading to argue that the letter of the law made the charges against Swartz permissible. The issue is one of choosing targets. Remember, the feds chose not to prosecute the bankers who brought you the Wall Street crisis of 2008.

As the Lawyers, Guns and Money blog puts it:

The problem here is that we have recent examples — financial fraud, torture — in which the federal government has used its discretion not to bring criminal charges in cases of people seeking to “anti-democratically” undermine public policy in ways that caused far, far more harm than Swartz.

Of all the illegal behavior that undermines public policy the state might go after, I’d have to say that “undermining firewalls that obstruct access to obscure academic articles the authors weren’t compensated for” would have to rank pretty close to the bottom.

(Side note: According to the letter of the law, aren't we all criminals in one way or another? I'm reminded of the very strict attendance rules for Walmart employees: Nearly everyone is in technical violation, which means that the bosses can fire anyone.)

Not long ago, we learned that Swartz and Wikileaks did indeed have a relationship.Wikileaks' decision to "out" this relationship was, in and of itself, rather unusual.

Techdirt argues, as I have argued in previous posts, that the real reason for going after Swartz had much to do with Wikileaks:

We've already discussed how Wikileaks bizarrely outed Aaron Swartz as a possible source, and that's leading to other speculation as well, including a question as to whether or not the grand jury investigation into Swartz was really more about the fishing expedition against Wikileaks, rather than the whole MIT/JSTOR effort.

Techdirt, in turns, draws from the important work of the incomparable Marcy Wheeler (the only person other than Dejah Thoris I've ever called "incomparable"):

If, as WikiLeaks claims, Aaron Swartz:

Assisted WikiLeaks
Communicated with Julian Assange in 2010 and 2011
May have contributed material to WikiLeaks

Then it strongly indicates the US government used the grand jury investigation into Aaron’s JSTOR downloads as a premise to investigate WikiLeaks. And they did so, apparently, only after the main grand jury investigation into WikiLeaks had stalled.

Turns out that the investigation into Swartz's dealings with the Assange operation yielded nothing prosecutable. So why did Ortiz persist? Here's where I get speculative. You tell me whether you think the speculation is well-grounded or outrageous.

Remember that episode of The Simpsons in which Homer, facing jail time over his tax problems, gets dragooned into working as an undercover operative?

That.

That's my theory of Carmen Ortiz and Aaron Swartz.

I don't think that Ortiz really wanted Swartz in prison. What good could he have done there? I think the feds wanted to turn Swartz, to pressure him into cooperation. Uncle feels confident that Assange will eventually end up in American hands, and they want witnesses to offer damning testimony against the Wikileaks founder.

(Conceivably, Assange may fear that Swartz was turned. This would explain why Wikileaks has now skirted its usual confidentiality pledges.)

Carmen and Aaron, sitting in a cell
She threatens him with life in hell.
First comes a stick and then comes a carrot:
"Wanna be free? Just squawk like a parrot."

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Which conspiracy theories have merit? Which are nonsense?

By what criteria do we determine which conspiracy theories have merit and which are nonsense? That question -- the underlying theme of many previous Cannonfire posts -- seems more germane than ever, now that we've seen the rise (and fall?) of Sandy Hook "trutherism." In fact, that question forms the basis for a couple of interviews I've conducted behind the scenes, the results of which you will soon see.

Right now, I'd like to share a follow-up communication with one of those interview subjects. Here's the message I sent him earlier today:

Last night, I watched an episode of Jesse Ventura's "Conspiracy Theory" -- the one about water. Ventura decried the fact that bottled drinking water in the U.S. is unregulated: "They could be putting ANYTHING in there!"

But in the same program, the former governor relied on Alex Jones, a self-identified Libertarian. The whole point of Libertarianism is to get rid of regulations and to trust the corporations.

Isn't there a massive contradiction here?

I decided a while back that one way of judging the potential worth of a conspiracy theory is to ferret out the political stance of the person offering it. If you have a theory to sell to me, don't expect an easy time of it unless you share my anti-Libertarian, pro-FDR economic viewpoint.

What do you think of the notion of using ideology as a quick-n-dirty way to assess the possible worth of any given parapolitical idea? Such a criterion may seem unfair at first blush -- but for me, it works.

Let's be honest: No-one can claim total freedom from bias. Any conspiracy theory originating with an admirer of Ron Paul, Ayn Rand or Milton Friedman will probably repulse me. (As you know, the Paulies are notorious CT junkies.) I might yet be turned around in favor of said theory, but only if the weight of the evidence exceeds that of the key to Superman's Fortress of Solitude.

What are your criteria (and biases)?

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Notes...

They're going after the Clintons again. The rightists pretended to be pro-Hillary in 2008, for comprehensible partisan reasons. But things have changed. Here's Larry Klayhead:

No one understands better than yours truly – except perhaps Vince Foster and scores of others (including material witnesses) who mysteriously died in and around the Clinton administration during the 1990s – the treachery of Hillary Rodham Clinton.

It became well-known during the Clinton years that while the president was a “certified” sleaze ball, the most evil partner of this Bonnie-and-Clyde duo was Hillary. She came to be seen as the “consigliore” of the couple, the one who had executed (pun intended) their dastardly plans and deeds.

And so on. What follows is a rehash of all the Clintonian pseudo-scandals that Joe Conason and Gene Lyons exposed in The Hunting of the President. That book is out of print, so conservatives feel free to repeat all of the old canards. Klayhead may be the only individual on the face of the earth who still believes that Whitewater was an evil Clinton plot, rather than a plot against the President.

In a way, I'm heartened. At least this time, the "Vince Foster!" mudslinging is coming from Republicans. Not Democrats, as in 2008. The universe has returned to its natural order.

The folks I feel sorry for are the dull blades at Hillbuzz, who entered the fray as pseudo-PUMAs, only to reveal their true natures as Republican ratfuckers. What are they gonna do now?

The filibuster: Reid's willingness to cut a bad reform deal (which offered no real reform at all) was infuriating but characteristic: He can see a day when the Republicans would once again control the Senate and the White House. Oddly, the Republicans themselves never plan for the future -- at least not the future of the country, or even their party. (I'm sure that they plan for themselves.)

Republicans remind me of that old Billy Crystal routine about the way puberty hits boys: "NOW. NOW. NOW. NOW." That's all they ever think about; the future is too abstract a concept to contemplate. "NOW. NOW. NOW. NOW."

The Republicans will demand an end the filibuster ("NOW. NOW. NOW. NOW.") when doing so suits their purpose. They want to exercise power. They want control. We will get rid of this arcane filibuster nonsense only when we stand at the brink of (at least) two years of hyper-conservative misgovernance. 

Chief of Staff: Barack Obama has glommed onto his fifth one within four years (give or take a few days). I'm not sure what that says about his presidency, but it does seem remarkable.

Added note about Palin leaving Fox: When she first came on the national stage, I sympathized with Palin, if only because the Obots went after her family -- a deplorable and unforgivable tactic. But now that Fox has apparently decided that Palin isn't even savvy enough to please the kind of people who watch O'Reilly and Hannity, I have to register both regret and satisfaction at the end of this woman's career.

Sarah Palin epitomized a phenomenon characteristic of our time -- the conviction that one can bullshit one's way through anything.

In many of her appearances, she reminded me of an old Steve Martin routine in which he attempts to sing "Mack the Knife" but forgets most of the words. So there he is, repeating "When the shark bites" over and over, smiling and bobbing his head and snapping his fingers in the jackass self-assurance that he can carry this thing off through sheer brio.

That's Palin's whole act.

Let's be honest: A lot of pols are doing the same act, including, arguably, Barack Obama. But Palin presented us with a particularly obvious case. (My apologies for referencing ancient SNL routines twice in the same post.)

So. Will we ever know whether she used hearing aid radio prompters during her debate with Biden in 2008?

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Women in combat

I'm not going to tell you her name, but I used to be on friendly terms with a rather famous woman. Well...famous in certain circles.

All right, I'll just say it: She became an adult film actress -- a career path she embarked upon some time after I met her. The choice didn't really sit well with me (she could have been a real actress), but at that point, I wasn't in a position to offer advice. When I knew her, she was a college student. Within and without, she was one of the loveliest individuals I've ever known.

Oh lord, she was gorgeous. Still is.

In the mid-1990s, she looked like Natalie Wood in her prime, albeit with a much more voluptuous figure. (The gods, not surgery, made her that way.) If you had met her then, you probably would have considered her a very "girly" girl -- not just because of her looks, but because she always seemed kind and demure and sweet.

Yet I knew something about her that her many fans never learned. Before she want back to college, she did a stint in the Army. In fact, she was an MP.

This curvaceous, charming, honey-voiced heart-breaker knew how to take control of an unruly soldier three times her size.

I've never served in the military. But if I had, I'd have trusted my life to a woman like her. No, I'm not working my way toward a dirty joke. I mean it.

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The Untouchables

I have not yet seen this Frontline documentary, but it comes highly recommended. The Untouchables attempts to explain why the Wall Street execs who engineered the great financial wreck of 2008 have never been prosecuted. And here it is, in four chapters:

Watch The Untouchables on PBS. See more from FRONTLINE.

Watch The Untouchables on PBS. See more from FRONTLINE.

Watch The Untouchables on PBS. See more from FRONTLINE.

Watch The Untouchables on PBS. See more from FRONTLINE.

Thanks to Riverdaughter for pointing this out. Her most recent piece is quite good, quite quotable...

But the pain and the sacrifice that we have had to endure for absolutely no reason whatsoever, the houses that were lost, the careers that have been blighted either at the beginning or the middle, the harshness of the society that we now live in, all that has lead to an America that is vastly different now than it was four years ago. This America has lost its shine. It’s living with what will soon be third world infrastructure. We have given exploitation and extraction of wealth of average Americans the official stamp of approval. We will now be guests at major scientific projects around the world instead of leaders. We have trashed our educational system by making it almost impossible for some of our most talented students to be able to afford it and we have jeopardized our public health system by making research a private endeavor optimized for maximum profit. Four years ago, there was a golden opportunity to set things right and it was lost.

"Comes the time, comes the man" -- or so we were told. We were told wrong. I want to believe that Obama will become the man we need for the time to come, but I doubt it.

Update: Well, I tried to watch this documentary. Got about twenty minutes into it. The production itself is quite good, but the process of watching is simply too annoying -- the video shutters and stops every two minutes. Two minutes on; two minutes off.

Even though we're paying quite a lot of money each month for what is supposed to be a robust broadband account, we can't watch streaming video in this household -- not these days. Jon Stewart and Steve Colbert, which we used to enjoy every night, have become impossible. Hulu is also too infuriating to use.

A little research reveals that many others are having the same difficulties.

Not too long ago, we would simply pause the programs and allow them to buffer. I don't mind letting the thing buffer for quite a long time, if, at the end, I can watch the show uninterrupted. But for some reason, new video streaming programs won't allow buffering. In the case of this Frontline documentary, I left the computer for twenty minutes while the show buffered. When I came back, the video was unplayable and I had to reload the page.

This problem now exists even on YouTube.

If you know someone who writes the code for streaming video apps, please ask that person a simple question: WHY CAN'T WE BUFFER THE ENTIRE VIDEO?

And some people wonder why folks download torrents. I would be overjoyed to watch television programs via official channels, commercials and all -- IF THE VIDEOS WOULD BUFFER.

I'm not going to discuss the broadband service we use; that's nunnayer business. I have checked and I know that I am not being throttled. The problem is with NOT my broadband provider or this computer. The problem is with the way these streaming video apps are written. People who make a living via streaming video have got to find ways to make the services work as they ought.

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The best conspiracy theory I've seen all day

Someone had better tell Jim Fetzer and Alex Jones about this.

By the way, Jim F has his own blog, where you can catch all the latest Sandy Hook Trutherism evidence. A true genius at work.

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Hillary, Benghazi and the Johnson Unit

Remember the disingenuous display of pseudo-outrage over "You didn't build that"? The Republicans found further excuse for disingenuous pseudo-outrage when Hillary gave her testimony. Indeed, the whole point of making her testify was to open up an opportunity for a pseudo-outrageous soundbite. No More Mister Nice Blog has it right:

But, of course, the ripped-from-context quote is "What difference, at this point, does it make?" It's already being seized on by National Review and Fox News and The Wall Street Journal and The Weekly Standard and Glenn Beck's Blaze and Michelle Malkin's Twitchy and the Free Beacon and, of course, Breitbart. There's already a popular hashtag, #whatdifferencedoesitmake...

This is an Andrew Breitbart/James O'Keefe tactic, but its use is not limited to O'Keefe and the carriers of the Breitbart torch -- this is a mainstream GOP tactic. The entire party and all its coat-holders are on board.

There's also a new conspiracy theory in town:

When Hillary Clinton postponed testifying before Congress on the Benghazi terrorist attacks due to illness, conspiracy theories popped up on the right accusing Clinton of faking a concussion and subsequent blood clot to avoid appearing before Congress.

Clinton’s testimony before the House and the Senate on Wednesday did not put those conspiracy theories to bed. Instead, it immediately gave rise to a new round of theories claiming the secretary’s show of emotion during her testimony was a ploy to dodge tough questions.

The testimony occurred around 9 AM, while Senator Ron Johnson explained his conspiracy theory to Buzzfeed at roughly 3 PM. That's six hours.

I propose that we recognize a new way to measure political time: The Johnson Unit. This unit measures the time between any given phenomenon and the creation of a conspiracy theory which explains that phenomenon as a plot by Democrats. (Even a desirable phenomenon may be conspiracized -- for example, volunteering to work in a homeless shelter should be depicted as a Stalinist plot against rugged individualism.)

Thirty minutes = 1 Johnson Unit. If (as in this case) the conspiracy theory appears six hours after the event, the Republicans have achieved 12JU conspiracization. The ideal Republican spokesperson should strive for a 1/3JU conspiracization rate in response to any given event. Conversely, a truly brilliant Democrat would be one who can write and deliver a ten-minute speech with 2JU conspiracy-resistance.

Rule 771 of the internet affirms that any statement, however innocuous, made by a Democrat is ultimately conspiracizable. Rule 771B states that any undesirable event in the physical universe (e.g., the dog throwing up on your rug) is ultimately explicable as a Democratic conspiracy.

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Zero Dark Thirty and the Al Qaeda mysteries

The film Zero Dark Thirty, about the hunt for Bin Laden, prompted historian Jim DiEugenio (who also happens to be a film buff) to write a politically-charged critique which was published on The Consortium. Perhaps foolishly, I declined the opportunity to publish the same piece on this blog. Every time "the Al Qaeda mysteries" (as I have been calling them recently) receive mention here, the 9/11 "controlled demolition" clowns try to get their big clown shoes into the great Cannonfire doorway, and I just didn't want to rehash that nonsense.

Last night, however, I re-watched the superb documentary 9/11: Press For Truth, which may be the only recommendable full-length video on this topic. This film reminded me of the many unanswered questions that still surround Osama Bin Laden. It seems odd, for example, that we never had a proper inquiry into the many reports of links between the hijackers and Pakistani intelligence chief Mehmood Ahmad Mehmood, a man discussed in a number of previous posts (here and here, for example). Granted, some of those accusations originated in the Indian press, and thus may constitute disinformation by a regional foe. But does that idea explain everything we've heard...?

Actually, most of us didn't hear about the Pakistani connection. I find this selective ignorance infuriating. The average person knows all about Alex Jones' "bombs in the buildings" inanity, yet very few Americans understand that the head of an allied intelligence service has been credibly accused of paying the hijackers. If I were more cynical, I might suggest that bullshit conspiracy theories get pushed to the forefront in order to distract people from asking the truly important questions.

Long story short: I've changed my mind about publishing Jim's piece.

However, I have not changed my mind about forbidding any comments about controlled demolition and similar malarky. If you insist on sending such words anyways, and if I censor you, feel free to tell one and all that Cannon must be getting a handsome payment from his evil CIA paymasters. Believe it or not, I reserve the right to harbor similar suspicions about you. Ain't paranoia fun?

All the words below the asterisks were written by Jim DiEugenio (whose completely-revised version of Destiny Betrayed is available right now; a must-read.)

*  *  *

An Incurious ‘Zero Dark Thirty’

On May 2, 2011, under cover of darkness, which is where the film’s title Zero Dark Thirty comes from, a platoon of Navy Seals was airlifted by two Black Hawk helicopters from Jalalabad in eastern Afghanistan to Abbottabad, Pakistan.

A modified version of the Black Hawk was used because it employed “stealth” technology, i.e., it flew very quietly while being harder to detect on radar than the conventional model. To further evade Pakistani radar, the helicopters flew very low to the ground and deliberately navigated over hilly terrain.

The mission was codenamed Neptune Spear. And it was timed to consume precisely 40 minutes. The Seals operated under the aegis of the CIA and were working from information primarily garnered by the Agency.

Landing near their target in Abbottabad, the Seals cut the power to the large three-story home. They then broke in by detonating explosive charges around the doors and walls. One of the occupants began to fire at the Seals from inside. This man, Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti, was killed after a brief firefight. His wife was shot and wounded. His brother, Abrar, was also shot and killed.

As the Seals progressed through the house, a young man named Khalid was shot on the staircase. Finally, on the third floor of the home, one of the Seals found the ultimate target of the raid: Osama bin Laden. As bin Laden ran to his room, he was shot in the head and collapsed. Two women tried to shield his body. One of them was shot in the leg.

Bin Laden was shot two more times. His body was wrapped in a body bag and carried on board one of the helicopters. One Black Hawk had been damaged upon landing, so the Seals destroyed it. A back-up Chinook helicopter was called in from nearby to effect the escape. Thus ended a nearly ten-year manhunt for al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

Almost immediately after bin Laden’s death was announced by President Barack Obama, screenwriter Mark Boal and director Kathryn Bigelow announced their intent to make a film about the manhunt and the Seals mission. That July, just two months after the raid, a high-level Pentagon intelligence officer named Mike Vickers told Boal and Bigelow they would allow a Seal involved in the planning of Neptune Spear to provide them information for Boal’s script. According to declassified documents of the meeting, Boal and Bigelow were overjoyed at this opportunity. (Josh Gerstein, Politico, May 23, 2012)

Boal said, “That’s dynamite!” With equal elation, Bigelow chimed in with “That’s incredible.”

Boal was also welcomed at CIA headquarters where he was allowed access to a mock-up of bin Laden’s Abbottabad compound. Boal was even invited to a CIA ceremony honoring the Seals involved. (New York Times, Aug. 6, 2011)

And Boal met with two members of the staff of the National Security Council: Chief of Staff Denis McDonough and Adviser on Counterterrorism John Brennan. But an e-mail from Marie Harf of the CIA revealed that the Agency was trying to keep Boal’s visits to Langley quiet. (Politico, May 23, 2012)

This privileged access to secret information is troubling. As many have noted, it is ironic that Boal should be allowed this access by the same administration that has made a habit of threatening with indictments anyone who divulges national security secrets.

The Movie Version

Zero Dark Thirty is a long movie, running for two hours and 37 minutes, with the raid on bin Laden’s compound the penultimate scene taking up about the last 20 minutes of the picture, along with a kind of coda at the end in which the main character, a female CIA analyst on the bin Laden team, identifies the body and is then flown out of Afghanistan.

So, the much longer part of the film involves the tracing of where bin Laden is hiding and convincing the CIA Director and the White House that this intelligence is correct. Yet, one of the problems with the film is that it’s a straight detective film. And since we know how it will end, there is virtually no suspense or surprise along the way. The little that there is comes from the actual intricacy of how bin Laden was tracked down. But these are simply little bits of human-interest angles.

For instance, a well-off Arab living in Kuwait is bribed for information by the CIA. The bribe consists of buying him a brand new Lamborghini late one night. The CIA agent makes a car dealer open after hours so his informant can pick the model he wants. In another segment, Maya, the female lead character, has to talk a phone-intercept specialist who is short of men and resources into tracing a suspect’s cell phone so she can know where he is. A cohort of hers helps her win the technician over and she ends up being able to monitor the man.

But besides these sidelights, the story as it unfolds is pretty much straightforward and linear. In that sense, it’s pretty much a police story. Except that, in this instance, the police are allowed to use questionable ends to justify the result, bringing us to the most controversial aspect of the film – its depiction of torture.

And although the film’s defenders – mostly the movie reviewers who have praised the film – have tried to smudge this point, there is little sense in denying it. As Greg Mitchell wrote in The Nation on Dec. 12, the film undoubtedly shows that torture played a key role in tracing bin Laden to his compound.

Toward the end, the supervisor of the torturing admits at a meeting with the CIA Director that the key information in the manhunt came from a detainee. The viewer should recall that in the beginning of the film it was this man who was being tortured at a CIA black site and who was the first one to give the CIA a lead on bin Laden’s courier, who Maya eventually tracks down.

And as Mitchell adds, “While some of those defending the film have claimed that it shows that torture does not work, or is counterproductive, you don’t really see that on the screen.” He then adds, commenting on these film reviewers, “From their comments, I expected at least a brief scene where one of the CIA types admits this. No such luck.”

Mitchell’s comment is accurate. In fact, it is hard not to conclude that the filmmakers endorse these “enhanced interrogation techniques” as justified by controversial law professor John Yoo. I would go as far as to say that Dick Cheney would like this film’s attitude toward the subject.

In one clip, Sen. Obama, then a candidate for President, is seen declaring his opposition to the process. One of the CIA agents involved in the manhunt shakes her head in disapproval. Near the end, exposés of the techniques used at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib are mentioned, but are presented as bad since now detainees all have lawyers. The chief torturer (played by Jason Clarke) says early on to one of his subjects, “Everybody breaks. It’s simple biology.”

Maya is at first seen to be squeamish about the water-boarding of a subject. But as the film goes on, she becomes a hard-bitten professional about the task. The subliminal message being that, if a slightly built young woman can learn to like it, anyone can.

As the reviewer for The Nation, Stuart Klawans wrote, “As for the torture … the movie revels in it. … Arguments that the film exposes torture as abhorrent are absurd. The movie juices the audience on … these physical confrontations.” (To this author, this might be slightly overstated, but only slightly.)

Klawans then went on to address the other issue: “Does the film present torture as the necessary tool for taking down bin Laden? Absolutely.” After agreeing with Mitchell about the subject being tortured at the beginning being the source for the name of the courier, Klawans concludes that although Bigelow and Boal have denied giving “the audience the impression that the use of torture was integral” to the goal, he finds this disingenuous on their part.

Tolerating Torture

There are at least two serious problems that Boal and Bigleow should have understood by making this type of presentation about this controversial issue. First, the opinions on these techniques inside the government were not nearly as unanimous as the film denotes.

As Jane Mayer has written, the program “was deemed so illegal, and so immoral, that the Director of the FBI withdrew his personnel rather than have them collaborate with it.” But further, even the top lawyer at the Pentagon resisted it so that it would not spread throughout the armed forces. (Jane Mayer, The New Yorker, 12/14/2012)

As Mayer notes, this important debate, which reached the highest levels of government, is simply not echoed in the film. Bigelow has responded that “The film does not have an agenda, and it doesn’t judge.” (ibid) But by not showing the other side of the story, while saying that torture helped nail bin Laden, she is expressing a point of view, since her film does not reflect the true circumstances of the situation. Boal was even worse on this point. He actually said the film showed the complexity of the debate over the issue. It does not.

But further, Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Carl Levin of, respectively the Senate Intelligence Committee and the Armed Service Committee, have written that, “The original lead information had no connection to CIA detainees.” They added that a detainee in CIA custody did provide information on the courier but that “he did so the day before he was interrogated by the CIA using their coercive interrogation techniques.” (ibid)

It’s almost as if Boal and Bigelow took the line they did because they became enamored by the access the CIA had given them. Was this part of a quid pro quo arrangement or were they simply the latest “embedded” media personalities to be seduced by the surrounding culture?

One has to pose that question because their depiction is so one-sided. For instance, unlike what Clarke says in the film, everyone does not break in the end. As Mayer wrote, many prisoners were tortured to death while never revealing secrets. And many others simply created disinformation stories to avoid further duress. And some of that disinformation managed to lead America into the war in Iraq.

But perhaps the worst of all, in the ends-justifies-the-means ethos of the film, this question is never asked: What about those who were swept up by the CIA and sent to a black site yet were totally innocent? There were many of these innocent victims. Mayer mentions one: Khaled El-Masri, who was kidnapped and held in detention for four months. He was beaten up, sodomized, chained and hooded. He could barely speak about the experience without weeping.

As hinted at above, many of the early reviewers were very impressed by the dexterous way the film was made. They therefore ignored this key issue, which seems to me to be an important one. But there are other issues in the story besides this one that seem to me to be important, too. Yet the commentators I have read have not dealt with them at all.

First, when the story about the raid first broke, the message conveyed by official spokesmen was that it was a “kill or capture” operation. As time has gone on, this fig leaf has fallen by the wayside. The film does not cavil about the mission’s intent: It was a kill operation all the way.

And keeping with the CIA’s single-mindedness, there is never any question as to whether or not killing bin Laden was the wisest thing to do. I posed that question to longtime CIA intelligence analyst Ray McGovern: “Why was he murdered? Would it not have been more productive to capture and interrogate him?”

McGovern replied that he had always felt bin Laden would have been more valuable alive than dead, but McGovern said that as time has gone on in this battle against terrorists, the ethos has changed. “It would have been a tough decision as to what to do with him if he were taken alive,” he said.

McGovern added, “There are grounds for suspicion that he was murdered because he knew too much … not just about past U. S. support for him, but relative to 9/11 itself.”

Simplistic Account

Again, these two points are of the utmost interest to this subject. In Adam Curtis’s excellent documentary, The Power of Nightmares, these questions are addressed. And therefore al-Qaeda and bin Laden come off in a much fuller and detailed way than the ciphers they are in this film. Curtis’s film is much more complex and compelling than this new docu-drama – even though it’s a documentary and could not use the narrative techniques of a feature film.

And beyond that, the Curtis film is much more provocative than this one. In the Curtis film, one comes away feeling empowered since the viewer now knows something more about how al-Qaeda and bin Laden began and how those origins were intertwined with the CIA’s war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan.

This “blowback” factor, well elucidated by Curtis, is completely missing in this simplistic film, Zero Dark Thirty. And it tells us much about the distribution of films in America today, and our growing propagandistic culture, that the Bigelow film is playing in first-run theaters with a large ad campaign behind it, while the Curtis film – which was made eight years ago – has yet to find a TV or film distributor in this country.

McGovern’s second point is also ignored in the film. Namely, was bin Laden the main force and sole originator of the 9-11 attacks? One would certainly get that message from this film. But again, when I asked McGovern about this issue he replied with something less than complete certainty. He first said that, by admission of almost everyone, including its co-chairs, the 9/11 Commission was “woefully inadequate.”

But to me, there may be something even more egregiously wrong with this much-ballyhooed film. It leaves out the fuller history of the pursuit for bin Laden, which began at least five years before the 9/11 attacks. (Lawrence Wright, The Looming Tower, p. 3) At its inception, the investigation was part of the CIA’s Counterterrorist Center and it had a nondescriptive name, “but in practice it was devoted to tracking the activities of a single man, Osama bin Laden.”

As early as 1993, he had been fingered as an important financier of terror. In 1996, Daniel Coleman of the FBI was sent to a CIA station in Tysons Corner, Virginia, to review the information the Agency had on bin Laden. He was surprised to find out that they had already built a library of 35 volumes of material on the man. (ibid) On the strength of this file, plus the fatwa (declaration of war) issued by bin Laden that year, Coleman opened a criminal case on him. (ibid, p. 5)

Later in 1996, Coleman met at a safehouse with a Sudanese informer named Jamal al-Fadl. This man claimed to have worked with bin Laden in Khartoum. When shown photos of his associates, Fadl identified most of them. Coleman later found out that Fadl was hiding the fact that he was in America because he had embezzled $100,000 from bin Laden. (ibid) But beyond that, Fadl informed Coleman about an organization called al-Qaeda, which was operating training camps and sleeper cells and was already quite active, having trained operatives who had performed a bombing in Yemen in 1992 and tutored the insurgents who had downed helicopters in Somalia that year. (ibid)

Fadl went further. He gave Coleman names of the members and drew up their organizational charts. For two weeks, Coleman tested Fadl to see if he could cross him up. The informant never varied his responses. On his own Coleman built up his knowledge of the group, concluding that al-Qaeda was a worldwide network stretching across the Middle East, Africa, Europe and Central Asia. He was especially worried to find out that many of its associates had ties to the U.S. He then concluded that one of its targets was America.

But Coleman’s problem was the same as faced by White House counterterrorism adviser Richard Clarke: Almost no one in power took the threat seriously, especially after George W. Bush entered the White House in 2001. Even though Coleman’s information grew more refined and precise, the subject was too exotic and bizarre for many other officials to focus on.

Wright’s book, which was published in 2006, changes the portrait of the manhunt drawn in the film, which leads viewers to believe that the search began after 9/11 and made its first breakthrough with the torture of bin Laden’s followers.

By framing their movie as they do – as simply a manhunt for a madman – Bigelow and Boal make their film reductive of its materials, failing to address the complex history and the many enduring questions. The shamefully ebullient early reviewers were happy with that, praising the film as taut and “riveting” and “pulse-pounding” displaying what Bigelow likes to call her “boots on the ground” experience.

There is no doubt that the cinematography and editing of the film are well done. But there is nothing really exceptional about the making of this film. Any number of directors — Jonathan Demme, Ed Zwick and many others — could have done just as well.

And Bigelow really blew it in the casting of Jessica Chastain as Maya. Bigelow has never really been all that interested in acting. (She came to film directing out of painting and therefore is more interested in the visual aspect.) To be kind, Chastain is simply not up to this role. She is an actress who can only deliver the primary colors with little in the way of subtlety and resourcefulness.

If you can imagine what a young Vanessa Redgrave could have done with Maya — in voice inflection, in pattern of facial inquiry and response, in body carriage — you can see how inadequate Chastain really is. But a director who truly understood the demands of the part would not have settled for Chastain in the first place.

Because of all these limitations, all these shortcomings, the film has no overtones, not even any reverberations. When it’s over, it’s over. And that is really bad considering the enormity of the subject.

To make one apt comparison: Oliver Stone’s JFK was not simply about whether or not Lee Harvey Oswald shot President Kennedy. It posed an array of other questions about the event: Was the Warren Commission really looking for the truth at all? Did the FBI actually investigate the case? Was Jim Garrison’s office wired and infiltrated to prevent him from discovering the real facts about the case? Was President Kennedy killed because he was effecting a withdrawal of American forces from Vietnam?

But Stone didn’t ask for help from Washington in making his movie. And he was interested in a lot more than just if Oswald was guilty. Thus, JFK was a much richer and thought-provoking film than Zero Dark Thirty.

When a film shrinks its canvas instead of enlarging it, it’s a good sign that the ambition is simply to chronicle. That is what this film does. And it delivers that chronicling from a dubious and expurgated point of view.

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A story about guns

A few days ago, during the inevitable debate about gun regulation, I received the following from a reader named Dan. with his permission, I would like to share it with you. He wrote in response to a tragic story published in TPM, written by a reader known only as PH. (Many of you will recall the terrible details.)

All the words below the asterisks are Dan's...

*  *  *

I grew up hunting and knowing all about guns and having guns all over our house in Tulsa, Oklahoma in the '60s, and yeah we were free.

Us kids sometimes got to ride on the package shelf of the car on trips. That's how free we were. Our old '56 Plymouth Savoy didn't have no stinking seatbelts because it didn't have to and nobody thought anything about it.

One day when I was in 8th grade, my best friend JD and I were hanging out in my room and I was showing him our Colt 38 Super. I loved that gun. It was almost as sweet as the M1 Carbine we had.

At some point, leaving JD alone in my room, I went into the living room to say something to my Dad and all of a sudden a BOOM comes from my room.

My Dad and I thought, "Oh shit."

It kind of passed through my mind that JD had shot himself as JD had seen his Dad shoot himself because JD's Mom was divorcing him. (Ended up two of his Brothers who also witnessed that event killed themselves with guns over women leaving them, but that's another story.)

Turns out JD had not shot himself, thank God.

JD, not knowing much about guns and assuming the 38 Super wasn't loaded even though I told him it was loaded had aimed it at the light switch in my room and pulled the trigger. He must have cocked the hammer on the gun otherwise it would not have fired.

(We always kept our guns loaded because my Dad always said an unloaded gun is worthless.)

Anyway, for a novice JD's aim was pretty good as the bullet went dead center through the metal light switch box, through the bathroom wall, through the bathroom door, through another door, and through half of another wall before it stopped no less than 10 feet from where I was standing talking to my Dad.

But for circumstances, the outcome could have been like PH's. All in all guns went off three times in our house at 4252 back in the day. Twice by accident, and once on purpose.

Dad had a hell of a temper and late one night he got into a fight with my Mom because she objected to the fact that he wanted to shoot a neighbors' dog because said dog was barking and keeping him awake. Well, when he accidently smacked the crap out of my Mom while she was trying to get the shotgun away from him, resulting in her receiving a bad cut over her eye, the fight was over, but his anger persisted.

My Mom when to bed and my Dad sat on the living room couch. After ten minutes or so, my Dad, in order to excise his pent up rage, sent a double barrel 12 gauge shotgun blast through the living room wall into the bedroom where my brother and I were sleeping. He aimed high, so we were only subjected to lots of noise and hot pellets ricocheting off the ceiling. Of course we had pretty much pulled our sheets over our heads out of fear from the fight prior to the blast, so no harm no foul.

One Morning while we were getting ready to go to school my Mother and I were talking in the living room when we heard a gunshot in the room my Brother and I shared.

Turns out my Brother, while kind of looking down the barrel of our Colt 38 Police Special had pulled the trigger blowing a hole in the ceiling. Why? I don't know. He knew better. You could see daylight through the hole in the ceiling, but thankfully not through my Brother's head. (Even though I think you can see daylight through his ears these days - RW conservative that he is. And yes, he has lots of guns, nice guns, that I like to shoot whenever I'm back in Oklahoma.)

(Despite what my story might indicate I really did have a happy childhood We were free and roamed from dusk till dawn.)

I did, and still do know a lot about guns. Gun safety was drilled into us at an early age, but people are people, and shit happens. Even if you are trying to be careful. Even if you do know what you are doing.

Hell, a couple of months ago while up in Tennessee shooting with a bunch of Marines just back from Afghanistan I accidently pulled, heck touched, the trigger on a friend's AK 47 he was letting me shoot and it went off. Had it been pointing anywhere other than towards the ground I could be PH.

So, not only have I almost been shot accidently shot, I have almost accidently shot someone else, and I know all about guns and gun safety.

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Obama's inaugural poem (updated)

On Medicare and benefits
My plan will rob you less than Mitt’s.

I may still favor Goldman Sachs
But I’ll nudge up the fat cat tax.

And when the weather’s weirdly hot
I’ll talk about it. Not a lot.

I will insure that spooks can find
Your texts and emails – datamined.

About your guns: Don’t worry, folks --
You still can give them nice long strokes.

I will insure that all will call us
The butler of Israel ueber alles.

That said, I’ll try for four years more
To dodge that planned Iranian war.

I won’t invade but I like drones
Purchased with those T-bill loans.

I come to bring you peace and love
Don’t get me mad or DEATH FROM ABOVE.

And yet Fox News will tell you that
I am -- get this -- a Democrat!

Update: Okay, the truth is that I didn't watch much of Obama's speech, since the parts I heard seemed like ad copy. Even though he lip-serviced some stuff I liked, there's a difference between liking and believing what that man says.

What bugs me is the media's reaction. Here's a right-wing blogger pretending that he heard Obama deliver an "ode to big government and collectivism," as though the President had come up with a rap version of the Internationale. The Breitbarters think that Obama praised "the collective" and "attempted nothing less than an assault on the timeless notion of liberty itself." Prepare to be assimilated...!

Meanwhile, here's James Fallows pretending that he finally heard the Real Liberal Thing from Obama's lips.

...well, it's almost as if he has won re-election and knows he will never have to run again and hears the clock ticking on his last chance to use the power of the presidency on the causes he cares about. If anyone were wondering whether Obama wanted to lower expectations for his second term ... no, he apparently does not.

And here's Politico proclaiming that there's a new Obama in town -- an old-school New Dealer, this time for sure, no foolin'.

To all of this, Digby wisely retorts:

There was a time when I paid close attention to President Obama's speeches and searched for clues as to how he would tie his policies in with the values stated within it. I have since been schooled by all the smart people of all political and ideological stripes that nothing the president says matters and that the presidency is a largely ceremonial post so I no longer take much time to parse the words.

The bit about the presidency being a ceremonial post is too cynical even for me, but other than that I like what Digby has said. We've done the Lucy-and-the-football thing too often.

Nevertheless, I don't regret asking readers to vote against Romney in 2012. Two reasons: 1. Iran, and 2. The Supreme Court. If you need a third reason -- well, the candidate was Mitt Freakin' Romney, for crying out loud. I may have hated Obama, but I fell in hate with Romney.

A final note. I'm not the only who kept an eye on Joe Biden today. What I love about Biden is the fact that his face has rubberized with age. There's a lot to be said for a politician with a rubber face. The emotions always show -- which means that such a man can't easily lie.

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"If someone says we have to talk peace, he’s considered extreme left."

Israeli broadcaster Shlomi Eldar gave Ha'aretz an important interview, in which he talked about some things that Americans are not allowed to discuss:

A few days after the end of Operation Pillar of Defense, I gave a talk at a Herzliya high school. The children, who said they came from good homes, told me we have to kill all the Arabs, including the Israeli Arabs, because where do they get off thinking they will get control of the country. Their ideal is to go into the army and kill as many Arabs as possible. That’s one side of the picture, Israeli youth, the new generation, living in an atmosphere of demonizing the Palestinians − which is something the Israeli media are responsible for in no small measure. The other side of the picture is the young generation in Gaza, a child of five or nine. Let’s say he is not wounded, but a four-ton bomb landed next to his house. Do you know that in Operation Pillar of Defense, not one pane of glass remained intact in the whole of Gaza? It’s a tactic of creating sonic booms to frighten people without hurting them. A child who has a bomb like that land next to him can’t hear anything for the next three days. What does he think about the Jews afterward? And where will we end up, if this is how Jewish youngsters think about Arabs?

Nowhere good.

We are on a nothing-to-lose track. Which is why I say there is no future. When I told the high school class that we have to look at them as human beings, one boy jumped up and said, “Who do you vote for? You’re extreme left, no?” I replied, “It would surprise you to know who I vote for.” But that’s not the point. The point is that we in Israel have reached a situation in which if someone says we have to talk peace, he’s considered extreme left.

Lately, I've been reading the work of Gershom Scholem, the brilliant historian of Jewish mysticism. Born in Germany in 1897 to parents who were very assimilated Jews, young Gershom -- then called Gerhardt -- rebelled against his father by becoming an ardent Zionist at the age of 14. He signaled his conversion to Zionism by hanging a picture of Theodore Herzl on the family Christmas tree, an image which I find amusing.

His brothers also rebelled -- one by becoming a far right thug, the other by becoming a Marxist.

Scholem moved to the land now called Israel, where his academic pursuits gained him an international following. Despite his expertise in Kabbalah (and, as many now forget, Gnosticism), he never became an observant Jew and seems to have held no personal belief in the supernatural. His meticulous, logical approach to fundamentally irrational material may explain my interest in his work.

Professor Scholem always favored equal rights for the native Arabs. He always favored peace. If he were alive today, many in Israel would label him "extreme left."

I doubt that he would continue to live there. I doubt that he would consider Zionism a success.

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The Second Amendment isn't in danger -- it's all the other ones

God DAMN but Bill Maher got it right this time.

I don't care how you feel about Maher: This is the Truth with a capital T.

What Obama proposes in terms of gun legislation is not terribly significant, even if he gets all he wants, which he won't. What Obama and Bush have done to our privacy is the real crime.

Gun control opponents talk about the Constitution, but that's a lie. They are exercised about the right to bear arms for one reason only: Guns give them a boner.

If they cared about the Constitution, they'd have complained earlier -- when the NSA instituted an automated system of collecting all of your private emails without a warrant and storing them in that massive new computer complex in New Mexico. The government also snoops on your cell phone calls, tracks your location via GPS, tracks the RFID chips in your credit cards and driver's licenses -- and reserves the right to kill you without trial if a secret conclave determines that you have advocated terror.

Unless you are provably on record as an opponent of all of that -- unless you can demonstrate that you opposed both Bush and Obama for encroaching on your liberties -- you have no right now to talk about how much you love the Constitution. The majority of Americans advocate background checks for gun owners because they know that the Second Amendment will survive just fine even if we keep schizophrenics disarmed. Your First and Fourth Amendment rights are the real issue.

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The Sandy Hook Pseudotruthers

I never thought I would encounter a conspiracy meme more infuriating than the 9/11 controlled demolition nonsense, but Sandy Hook "trutherism" is the single most vile exercise in collective unreason ever to hit the internet. There is no truth in trutherism. This may be the first time an idea -- not a film, book, image or essay but an idea -- has made me come close to vomiting.

And yet I must take a stand against many of the "rational" responses to Sandy Hook Psuedotrutherism now being published. These responses locate this movement within the grand scheme of America's culture of mistrust. Example:

Yet for some people, conspiracy theories can serve an important purpose, says Pasley, who has taught and studied such claims off and on since 1997.

“Conspiracy theories do have a function,” he says. “They are an explanation of the inexplicable, a sort of explanation that neatly puts into a box events that are extremely disturbing or tragic.”

They may be a way of "neutralizing" tragic events in the minds of theorists, Pasley adds.

And so on. Naturally, you'll see the mandatory references to Richard Hofstadter. The bottom line: Conspiratorial beliefs arise spontaneously and are the products of aberrant mass psychology.

As Sherlock once said: "Bleat, Watson -- pure bleat!" This kind of pop-psychological blather is so familiar you can write it yourself; you don't need to consult "experts." Frankly, when it comes to the history of American conspiracy theory, one of the few experts I really trust is me. (I read Hofstadter before some of these "experts" were born, thank you very much.)

I'm going to propose a more radical possibility, one that goes beyond the utterly predictable grade-school sociology offered by the bloviators who get quoted in pieces like these. There really is a conspiracy -- and the conspiracy theorists are part of it.

If that idea sounds outlandish, consider the most infamous conspiracy document of all: The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion. The pop sociologists quoted in all of these recent stories would have you think that paranoid artifacts inevitably blanket the culture as part of a natural process, the way frost covers the lawn after a cold night. But the Protocols disprove that notion.

The Protocols did not write themselves. You must understand that simple point, because it is key. The Protocols did not write themselves.

They were a hoax -- the culmination of a series of anti-Semitic hoaxes which you can read about in Umberto Eco's lightly fictionalized The Prague Cemetery. Similarly, none of those other hoaxes "just happened;" they were all the work of men who had low motives to spread lies.

Identifying the originator of the Protocols hoax is one of the greatest literary puzzles of all time. Norman Cohn's highly esteemed Warrant for Genocide, which took the quest as far as it could then go, did not name a suspect. More recently, we have the theory -- which I find persuasive, although some have disputed it -- that the hoaxer was one Mathieu Golovinski, who later became the father of Soviet sports medicine. This theory first appeared in an as-yet untranslated (except by me) article in l'Espress, published on November 18, 1999. To the best of my knowledge, the first English-language work to speak of Golovinski was, oddly enough, a graphic novel by the great Will Eisner.

Now is not the place to go into the full story of Golovinski. Suffice it to say that the man belonged to a class of  literary bomb-throwers called the "publicistes." I've struggled, unsuccessfully, to come up with a translation of that term which conveys the full meaning it held at the time. In short and in sum, these guys were underground journalists, operating in both Russia and in the expatriate Russian communities throughout Europe, who worked with the secret services and with various political factions. Their intent was to stir up fear and paranoia -- to defame and to deceive.

If you've read Eco, you'll know how they operated. In certain ways, Fox News and the Alex Jonesians may be considered modern day analogs to les publicistes, although I doubt that either Roger Ailes or AJ would stoop so low as to create a fraudulent document out of whole cloth.

The Protocols were composed as part of a conspiracy. The exact relationship between Golovinski and Peter Ratchkovski (Russia's chief spook at the time) is not easy to trace, but we can definitively state that Golovinski was no "lone nut." He was paid. He worked for others. Those others had a political agenda.

Much the same could be said of the other great conspiracy hoaxes: Report From Iron Mountain, Silent Weapons, Psychopolitics, etc. In the internet age, we have the copious productions of Gregory Douglas and Henry Makow. These works did not and do not make themselves. They do not arise naturally or spontaneously. They are not the product of abstract cultural forces. They are the products of devious minds intent on deception.

The literature of Holocaust revisionism -- which posits massive Cold War collusion between the superpowers -- was created by people who were not simply mistaken, not self-deceived: They knew what happened in the camps, and chose to lie about it.

To me, Sandy Hook "trutherism" is a phenomenon of an exactly similar nature. In my opinion, the videos "exposing" the Sandy Hook massacre are simply the latest variant of the Protocols.

At this time, nobody knows the actual names of the fiends who created the Sandy Hook videos. Well, I'll tell you who they are: They're all Mathieu Golovinski.

The disingenuous rascals behind these productions know full well that they are lying. They have a political agenda, one not so terribly distinct from that which motivated the publicistes of a hundred years ago. They hope to energize the right by spreading fear and deception.

Thus, Sandy Hook Trutherism, odious as it is, should not be viewed as a reason to disparage all talk of conspiracy. Quite the contrary.

There really is a conspiracy. The right-wing conspiracy theorists are the conspirators.

You won't hear a statement like that from the pop psychologists or from the intellectually lazy gits at the Skeptical Inquirer who spew easy soundbites for reporters. But those of us who have studied the way the fringe right operates -- those of us who really have actually read Hofstadter (as opposed to merely keeping his book on the shelf and pointing to the spine from time to time) along with many similar works by other authors (Thayer, Kominsky, Trauber, Webb, Johnson, etc.) -- know the true nature of the beast.

I'll have much more to say about all of this soon.

Right now, let me offer a word of warning to Sandy Hook theorists: I suspect that some of you will make an attempt to "turn" me -- just as, not many years ago, the 9/11 "CD" jackals tried to take over this blog. You will never succeed. We are enemies forever, and that is final.

Postscript: Most of my readers have no interest in the history of the hunt for the author of the Protocols, so I'll spare you a post on that subject. (Besides, I lost much of my collection of research materials.) But perhaps I should point out that the Golovinski identification -- which was first offered by a Russian specialist named Lepekhine -- has been challenged by an Italian professor named Cesare G. De Michelis.

A few years ago, I tried to read De Michelis' book, The Non-Existent Manuscript. To be frank, the man's writing style is so convoluted as to be impenetrable. I gathered, however, that De Michelis summarily dismisses Du Chayla's seminal account of his meetings with Nilus. The professor offers no sensible reason for disparaging a work which all previous (non-Nazi) historians have considered invaluable. At the same time, the professor seems to take seriously the possibility that the Protocols might be based on something that actual Jews might have said at an actual secret gathering. Since both of these positions are redolent of the kind of crap one expects to hear from fascist propagandists -- and since I have zero toleration for academics who can't write -- I see no reason to take Professor De Michelis seriously. (However, see here; Taguieff is worth taking seriously.)

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