Posts by Alex Coleman
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Mark Ames, love or hate him, makes an observation I've not seen elsewhere in pointing out that Loughner’s crime joins two American traditions together.
Saturday’s shooting in Tucson, Arizona, has been variously described as an “assassination” and a “shooting rampage”—but which one is it?
This may seem like a semantic quibble, but what occurred in that Safeway supermarket appears to be an entirely new type of American murder: a hybrid of political assassination, of the sort that plagued America in the 1960s and 70s, and a “going postal” rampage massacre, of the kind that first appeared in the mid- to late-1980s, with the rise of Reaganomics inequalities and the deterioration of workplace culture.
I studied countless rampage massacres for my book Going Postal, and this is the first instance I can think of in which the shooter—in this case, 22-year-old Jared Lee Loughner—carried out anything like a hybrid assassination-rampage: first, a planned, targeted assassination of a high-profile political figure, followed immediately by a seemingly indiscriminate shooting rampage. The first part of this hybrid assassination-rampage left a U.S. Congresswoman, Gabby Giffords, in critical condition with a serious head wound; the second part, the rampage, left six dead and another 13 wounded.
These two types of murders have little in common. In America, at least, the assassin is concerned about only one thing: taking out his target. While others may get shot in the confusion, political assassins never, to my knowledge, stick around after accomplishing their primary task just so they can keep murdering others indiscriminately.
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Hard News: Holiday Open Thread 2:…, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
2) If that doesn’t work, lie. Re-write history, no matter how recent or easily checked, until nobody (least of all Palin herself) can keep the lies straight any more.
I'd say it's more 'bullshit' than 'lies', (using the metric that says to lie implies a concern about distorting what the receiver believes to be the truth, whereas a bullshitter just wants to move away from the subject and doesn't give a monkey's what the receiver believes to be true). The point of this isn't simply to deflect any perception of blame, it's to stand by your comments in a deliberately unbelievable, but still deniable, way.
She is not backing down from the rhetoric, and she is avoiding saying the most simple thing in the world which would be something like:
"I feel terrible about what has happened, and while I certainly never intended for my imagery to be taken literally, and I don't think anyone did, in light of these shootings I agree that this sort of thing is in bad taste. We won't be using similar things again"
Instead, well, not.
I think in light of the facts that:
- Palin was warned by the Secret Service during her VP run to tone down her rhetoric due to the increase in death threat related activity. She knows that words have consequences.
- She must be aware of the right wing discourse about 'second amendment remedies', and the tree of liberty requiring blood, and the illegitimacy of Obama in particular and the Democratic Party more generally.
- Similarly she must be aware of the fact that there have been arrests, plots, and indeed other shootings from people holding the view that the Republic is under threat from domestic enemies within the Federal government.
... then it is not unreasonable to assume that she isn't particularly concerned if her messages resonate with those folks.
That's not to say that she is deliberately trying to provoke them, but she knows they are out there, she knows they listen to her messages, and she gives the messages she gives.
When confronted about potential problems with those messages, she does not resile herself from them. She just lies about it in a most transparent way.
That's strange behaviour. At best I'd say it's willful negligence about the effects her rhetoric has.
As a final point, I'll just say that I don't think you can look at the images in isolation. She knows the audience(s). It's a two way conversation. Not everyone sees the image in the same way.
Again, willful negligence is what I'm claiming. I don't think she genuinely wants to incite this sort of behaviour, but she does seem to not want to alienate those who think it may be necessary at some point in the not too distant future.
In general I don't think it's absurd to say that when rhetoric about the nation being at dire risk from domestic enemies becomes mainstreamed, and when people start making a point of showing up at political rallies armed, and when candidates for a mainstream party are talking about revolution, that more people, at the margin, will start thinking about taking part in militant action.
Politicians can either do what they can to calm that, or they can inflame it.
I don't think Palin, FOX, Limbaugh, Coulter, or their apologists have been particularly calming.
It's not 'politicising' things to point that out. The shit is already political.
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Sorry about all the long quotes, but it's interesting how the Saudi cable has all it's contextual emphasis on Iraq, and fairly strong clues that this is not a new topic of conversation.
1. (S) Summary: ... The Saudi King and senior Princes reviewed Saudi policy toward Iraq in detail, all making essentially the same points. They said that the Kingdom will not send an ambassador to Baghdad or open an embassy until the King and senior Saudi officials are satisfied that the security situation has improved and the Iraqi government has implemented policies that benefit all Iraqis, reinforce Iraq's Arab identity, and resist Iranian influence....
... 4. (S) The King also rejected the suggestion that by sending a Saudi ambassador to Baghdad he could give essential political support to the Iraqi government as it struggles to resist Iranian influence and subversion. He expressed lingering doubt on the Iraqi government's willingness to resist Iran. He also repeated his frequently voiced doubts about Iraqi Prime Minister al-Maliki himself by alluding to his "Iranian connections." The Saudi monarch stated that he does not trust al-Maliki because the Iraqi Prime Minister had "lied" to him in the past by promising to take certain actions and then failing to do so. The King did not say precisely what these allegedly broken promises might have been. He repeated his oft heard view that al-Maliki rules Iraq on behalf of his Shiite sect instead of all Iraqis....
...10. (S): The King, Foreign Minister, Prince Muqrin, and Prince Nayif all agreed that the Kingdom needs to cooperate with the US on resisting and rolling back Iranian influence and subversion in Iraq. The King was particularly adamant on this point, and it was echoed by the senior princes as well. Al-Jubeir recalled the King's frequent exhortations to the US to attack Iran and so put an end to its nuclear weapons program. "He told you to cut off the head of the snake," he recalled to the Charge', adding that working with the US to roll back Iranian influence in Iraq is a strategic priority for the King and his government.http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/us-embassy-cables-documents/150519
This Sy Hersh article (March 07) becomes even more interesting:
In the past few months, as the situation in Iraq has deteriorated, the Bush Administration, in both its public diplomacy and its covert operations, has significantly shifted its Middle East strategy. The “redirection,” as some inside the White House have called the new strategy, has brought the United States closer to an open confrontation with Iran and, in parts of the region, propelled it into a widening sectarian conflict between Shiite and Sunni Muslims.
To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Administration has coöperated with Saudi Arabia’s government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran. The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda.......from the Administration’s perspective, the most profound—and unintended—strategic consequence of the Iraq war is the empowerment of Iran. Its President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has made defiant pronouncements about the destruction of Israel and his country’s right to pursue its nuclear program, and last week its supreme religious leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said on state television that “realities in the region show that the arrogant front, headed by the U.S. and its allies, will be the principal loser in the region.”...
...A senior member of the House Appropriations Committee told me that he had heard about the new strategy, but felt that he and his colleagues had not been adequately briefed. “We haven’t got any of this,” he said. “We ask for anything going on, and they say there’s nothing. And when we ask specific questions they say, ‘We’re going to get back to you.’ It’s so frustrating.”
The key players behind the redirection are Vice-President Dick Cheney, the deputy national-security adviser Elliott Abrams, the departing Ambassador to Iraq (and nominee for United Nations Ambassador), Zalmay Khalilzad, and Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi national-security adviser. While Rice has been deeply involved in shaping the public policy, former and current officials said that the clandestine side has been guided by Cheney. (Cheney’s office and the White House declined to comment for this story; the Pentagon did not respond to specific queries but said, “The United States is not planning to go to war with Iran.”)
The policy shift has brought Saudi Arabia and Israel into a new strategic embrace, largely because both countries see Iran as an existential threat. They have been involved in direct talks, and the Saudis, who believe that greater stability in Israel and Palestine will give Iran less leverage in the region, have become more involved in Arab-Israeli negotiations.http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/03/05/070305fa_fact_hersh
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The cables don't show that the US stopped the Saudis from attacking Iran, (which is what they'd need to show for the US to have been 'moderating the situation') they show that the Saudi king is saying 'you and him should fight'.
That's usually something you suggest when you think 'you and him' are inclined to fight.
In the primaries there was a lot of talk about whether or not attacking Iran was 'on' or 'off' the 'table'.
Stupid talk, obviously, because unless the US dismantled it's capability then attacking Iran is on the table; in that is always an option the US will have and that Iran will be aware of.
The point of all that stupid talk was about whether or not Obama was going to step back and leave the threat to attack Iran a bit more implicit than the other candidates.
It looked to me like explicitly having a threat to attack Iran 'on the table' is what it took to be considered a serious candidate, in many circles, including many Democratic circles and media circles.
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Oh, so they somehow show the US in a good light.
Presumably because the US didn't immediately leap into a third war in the region, far tougher than the other two that haven't gone too well. That's a pretty low bar.
If the suggestion is that the US has absolutely no intention of attacks on Iran, and that it is madness to have ever thought otherwise, then I'll need to see more evidence. Because the Saudi King saying 'you two should have a fight', doesn't change anything.
Interestingly, the response from some US figures to the cable was that if the saudis want this done, then they should pony up some assets to help. Which while perfectly reasonable, doesn't conflict with the theory that many in the US think attacking Iran has merit.
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Saudi Arabia urging the US to bomb Iran was one of the first cables released
I'm a bit confused about why this is seen as some sort of big surprise. The only think I found remotely interesting was that Saudi bureaucrats were apparently vocal about being less keen on the idea.
The only people I've seen expressing surprise have been right wingers trying to say that this somehow means something. What it means they are less clear on.
But honestly, the Arab gulf states saying "Let's you and him fight" to the US re Iran? Of course they are. They said the same thing to Saddam back in the day, promising all sorts of support in his war with the dreaded persian menace.
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None of this was a major issue for Lange’s Government.
That's true enough. It wasn't completely without lasting effects though. Class 4a in a small provincial college abandoned its attempts at learning about how to talk about ''the pen of my uncle' in french. Text books got handed in and a strategy of dumb insolence was put in place. The campaign was ultimately successful and we got a smattering of Te Reo instead.
That latest cable is fun. I'd kind of forgotten just how special and precious the Bush administration was in its first term.
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The FT article makes the point (that has been made in a number of places) that no evidence of American grand conspiracies has come out of Wikileaks, and infact as RB commented earlier on this thread, for the most part (with a few the exceptions such as the request for credit card numbers et al, which is skuzzy rather than conspiratorial) the cables make the US diplomats look okay, if not quite good. And perhaps bored with nothing better to do if the report on the wedding in Dagestan is any indication.
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Anyone else see that opinion bit in the Dompost this morning based wholly on the idea that WL aren't responsible actors because they just dumped 250,000 docs on their site, where anyone can see them, and they didn't redact names like the responsible gatekeepers in charge of the broadsheets?
That was the completely false, and easily checked, premiss for the piece. Can't remember who wrote it, but their credentials were journalistic in that they used to have a good gig at Time.
To avoid any conspiratorial explanations for this I have to assume that both the author and whoever chose to run the piece in the Dom are just lazy and stupid.
But to expect teachable moments to be successfully developed, I think we need smarter journalisms pleez.