I dialed in comments specifically to (if not refute, at least to) harp on Blix' specific disagreement with the WMD charge. Is there a language problem here?
Big difference between IAEA and the outfit Blix worked for: IAEA owns a reputation for being an industrial corrollary. Blix was/is just UN. This article takes on a poorly thought-out odor due to the lumping of Blix in with the late push by neo-cons/Obama/Likudniks regarding Iran.
Putting Blix into the frame of the Iraq war build-up is like blame for the passers-by for a traffic accident.
Aljazeera English listeners may have noted a passing reference to the death of Younes. It was cast as a 'possible' turning point in this campaign to liberate Libya. Professor Cole, do you think that this can be so? I would be fascinated with your thoughts on this matter.
which leaves the question: what rock have you been under over the past (oh, say) ten years? I am certain you have not been paying attention to the good Professor Cole.
1. the war-cabalistic dudes find little, if any, resistance to their fearsome imaginations' product among political circles (in Israel or stateside)
2. their crazy rantings arise from pathological tendencies
I speculate that many of the 'planners' (how hard is it to plan if you have no morality?) never engaged in combat in any appreciable sense besides shooting missiles from afar (or indeed by engaging other ruthless, amoral, assassins to do the same).
You beat me to it. I agree with the notion of 'precious'-ness built into the cutesy slogans and sentimentality that filter out to those of us not present at the 'rally to restore sanity.'
With the class war raging all around us, there are those in the media not willing to intuit the domineering qualities being mastered by the Right today.
Would Stewart have people show up to a class war armed with a copy of his (rather dull if droll) new book?
But seriously, do we really think this offer of $2 mil came up right AFTER the NPR firing? Not a chance. That is not how these things are done. Williams just wanted a splash before making his permanent move. He abused his defenders and NPR--the network that gave him his break--and jumped for the long green.
I think the most important context here is the cultural war complex of which Faux is a hub. The themes that Williams touched upon and from which his comments were informed came from that pool. His firing comes as he was ready to ink a long-green deal with Faux, so he kinda knew the chips were falling this way anyhow.
My impression: Williams wanted a splash, Faux wanted to reignite the culture war front on NPR, and the former stabbed his original employer in the back.
Your final speculation sets Stewart up for a fall, but I have seen him make definite statements against the kind of expansion and expulsion and ethnic cleansing you mention. Now, he is not Noam Chomsky, Michael Lerner, or Norman Finkelstein, but at least don't take a shot without knowing your target. I think that is the problem most of us are having with the Af/Pak campaign at this time.
I'm NOT an Jon Stewart apologist, and his brand of intellectual integrity bends towards the marketable mass media in just the way that lends itself to being misconstrued as silent conformity on this issue. But he wants to stay on the air. Now, Colbert had Jeffery Goldberg on and did not challenge him in the least on his guest's affiliation and professional conflict of interest. But these are not the sources of significant resistance.
One must simply understand that the mass media is mum on the important questions of peace and security. Fake news still carries the moniker NEWS that one should associate at all times with bias, apologia, and corporate-socialist oligarchy. No?
I am continually stunned by the callous negligence of the so-called Free World. Clearly, due to the indulgence our local society affords these settler-types makes them non-other-than us (as galling as that thought might be). More than that, I wonder at the order of this world that allows the 'pain at the margins' to flourish.
The settler's (The names you give, Professor Cole, are apropos, but what of the sponsors of this slow-motion massacre?) actions do not shock me any longer, though I know somehow I should expect more from humanity. All this focus on the afterlife seems to absolve the harm and sadistic fervor of these utter miscreants' actions.
So there we have it: We live in a society that countenances injustice as long as no elites are harmed. Heaven forbid someone should harm the elites. Yet the targets of choice and of opportunity will be selected from amongst those of us not 'blessed' with life behind a gated person-filter. Our soldiers and the many innocent citizens whom they cull(ed) abroad, for example, were to Bush II (he even said as much, and the media said nothing) the blood offering for the absolution of our 'Way of Life.'
So where are we now? Are we to play Tsarist Russia to Israel's Serbia? Is that the net effect of the isolation and intransigence our "ally" draws us all into?
Sorry deary, that sounds like blaming the victims. Besides, I am not at all trying to suggest that the most healthy bee populations are kept-bees. Probably bees, like any portion of the wild planet, deserve thorough-ways that do not cloister and thus endanger the populations through lack of heterogeneity (which could also be a problem-point for the populations under study).
Unfortunately, these fungi/viral agents may arise due to the toxic background of the pesticides. Pollen, like the bee, does not obey the property line nor the ORGANIC sign at the front gate.
Systemic poisons and toxins of all stripes must impact the bees immune systems. Just try to get funding for that study.
One does not find dead bees where no pesticides are being employed. At a particular park, near a certain yard, anywhere where these agents are residual one finds the carcasses of bumble and honey bees.
Another tragic consequence of the political inertia formed by the lobby-blockade of the petro-chemical mega-complex against sane regulation and measured safety protocols.
If money is the crack-cocaine of today's politics, and our political centers have become the crack-houses of same, then what does that make (so many of) our politicians?
It must be said that while the US does not do a skillful job of bridging the divide between Pakistan, Afghanistan and we might as well include Iran in this, the violence simply barricades future progress in the vast region mentioned.
Recall that we had Iran offering help in this area as recently as nine years ago. Partnership could have born fruit if we could place more trust in potential allies in this most difficult of regions to navigate (i.e., forget domination.
While I am as far from a doctor as one could imagine, I think I can offer two diagnoses for our Pakistani allies: Drapetomia (the US-slave disorder causing a wish to run away) Dysaethesia Aethiopica ("rascality" of same) to name just two.
As soon as he felt like he lost the message, he started filibustering the host. After a while he repeated his string of oaths towards her and I realized he had a practiced battery with which to deflect. She did well to not shut off his mic.
Still you neglect the aerial bombardment that became the hallmark (card?) of US-led military projection? What was shock and awe but the Blitz of Baghdad?
Nevertheless, DWTV does decry the extremists every major election cycle (by my extremely unofficial tally;-).
In any case, the broad generalization that Germans are as one in a peace loving state of mind is clearly false. Clearly the majority celebrate what is to my mind an educated and enlightened world view.
That is a historical bone one could pick with the 'genius' types who, marveling at NAZI fear-mongering and terrorism, devised carpet-bombing and other forms of collective punishment.
I suppose if one goes in for such things then one SHOULD thank the NAZI scourge. There are those of us who do not think highly of such tactics. But don't follow me, follow history: Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan. Where popular hostility to our military exists, these modern tactics merely crystallize and mobilize that hostility.
Of course, the War-complex treats this resistance (think Britain during The Blitz) as hatred of our Way of Life. Hmmm...I guess the NAZI scourge DID write the book.
You neglect of Germany's many right-wing and worse citizens (yes, even today the NAZIs are threatening to rule in Bavaria or in several such states within the German federal system. Look it up. Every election cycle DW TV is filled with rumors of right-wing gains. Okay, so maybe these are just chauvinist-'enthusiasts' pining for the Hitlerian Fjords (as it were), but their rhetoric certainly fits the mold.
Thank you for those interesting words about Prussia. That reminds me of another nation with a proud militaristic history. Perhaps we don't wear the pointy hats, but you could certainly say we are 60-90 % military and dropping to 15% social and political fabric USA.
Okay, so many of our generals are uncouth goons who do not compare to the military geniuses of the Prussian history. Those Prussians wouldn't know a smart bomb if it bit them on the arse.
Alas, you mention the islam-ophobic nature of certain persons. You mention what a superb opportunity we lose when our policy makers choose not to 'show up' and lend a very obvious helping hand.
That sad set of truths lead me to believe that we have an islamophobia problem in the highest reaches of our government. Subtle in the ways we neglect people in dire straights (see: Katrina, New Orleans), and direct in the assaults via drone (that most impersonal of terrorist devices) easily released willy-nilly in an almost collective-punishment mindset.
What are we to infer from these realities? How can we rationally believe that the milk of human kindness flows from our halls of power to the people of a country to which we bestow multi-billions of $$? What does this say about our persistent neglect of this relationship?
So we have some military bosses and some politicos in our pocket in Pakistan? How Cold War of us to leave it at that. Are we certain that Condoleeza Rice and other minions of the NeoConicHeads are not still administering the policy here?
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So: absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Nor is absence of evidence evidence of a crime.
I dialed in comments specifically to (if not refute, at least to) harp on Blix' specific disagreement with the WMD charge. Is there a language problem here?
Big difference between IAEA and the outfit Blix worked for: IAEA owns a reputation for being an industrial corrollary. Blix was/is just UN. This article takes on a poorly thought-out odor due to the lumping of Blix in with the late push by neo-cons/Obama/Likudniks regarding Iran.
Putting Blix into the frame of the Iraq war build-up is like blame for the passers-by for a traffic accident.
Ah, then the awkward reading is on me. Mr Metzler: my apologies. I must have been reading the 'french' translation.
Aljazeera English listeners may have noted a passing reference to the death of Younes. It was cast as a 'possible' turning point in this campaign to liberate Libya. Professor Cole, do you think that this can be so? I would be fascinated with your thoughts on this matter.
The time-frame seems to coincide.
"... prescient atypical (for you)..."
which leaves the question: what rock have you been under over the past (oh, say) ten years? I am certain you have not been paying attention to the good Professor Cole.
I think that we can firmly conclude two things:
1. the war-cabalistic dudes find little, if any, resistance to their fearsome imaginations' product among political circles (in Israel or stateside)
2. their crazy rantings arise from pathological tendencies
I speculate that many of the 'planners' (how hard is it to plan if you have no morality?) never engaged in combat in any appreciable sense besides shooting missiles from afar (or indeed by engaging other ruthless, amoral, assassins to do the same).
I hope the previous commenters were joking. We hear such terrible things about geographic knowledge these days. And you left such a hint!
Pakistan can now meet-up with the Democratic base and with MoveOn in the OFsA (Obama's Feckless sense of Association) club.
Juan,
You beat me to it. I agree with the notion of 'precious'-ness built into the cutesy slogans and sentimentality that filter out to those of us not present at the 'rally to restore sanity.'
With the class war raging all around us, there are those in the media not willing to intuit the domineering qualities being mastered by the Right today.
Would Stewart have people show up to a class war armed with a copy of his (rather dull if droll) new book?
But seriously, do we really think this offer of $2 mil came up right AFTER the NPR firing? Not a chance. That is not how these things are done. Williams just wanted a splash before making his permanent move. He abused his defenders and NPR--the network that gave him his break--and jumped for the long green.
I think the most important context here is the cultural war complex of which Faux is a hub. The themes that Williams touched upon and from which his comments were informed came from that pool. His firing comes as he was ready to ink a long-green deal with Faux, so he kinda knew the chips were falling this way anyhow.
My impression: Williams wanted a splash, Faux wanted to reignite the culture war front on NPR, and the former stabbed his original employer in the back.
Your final speculation sets Stewart up for a fall, but I have seen him make definite statements against the kind of expansion and expulsion and ethnic cleansing you mention. Now, he is not Noam Chomsky, Michael Lerner, or Norman Finkelstein, but at least don't take a shot without knowing your target. I think that is the problem most of us are having with the Af/Pak campaign at this time.
I'm NOT an Jon Stewart apologist, and his brand of intellectual integrity bends towards the marketable mass media in just the way that lends itself to being misconstrued as silent conformity on this issue. But he wants to stay on the air. Now, Colbert had Jeffery Goldberg on and did not challenge him in the least on his guest's affiliation and professional conflict of interest. But these are not the sources of significant resistance.
One must simply understand that the mass media is mum on the important questions of peace and security. Fake news still carries the moniker NEWS that one should associate at all times with bias, apologia, and corporate-socialist oligarchy. No?
I am continually stunned by the callous negligence of the so-called Free World. Clearly, due to the indulgence our local society affords these settler-types makes them non-other-than us (as galling as that thought might be). More than that, I wonder at the order of this world that allows the 'pain at the margins' to flourish.
The settler's (The names you give, Professor Cole, are apropos, but what of the sponsors of this slow-motion massacre?) actions do not shock me any longer, though I know somehow I should expect more from humanity. All this focus on the afterlife seems to absolve the harm and sadistic fervor of these utter miscreants' actions.
So there we have it: We live in a society that countenances injustice as long as no elites are harmed. Heaven forbid someone should harm the elites. Yet the targets of choice and of opportunity will be selected from amongst those of us not 'blessed' with life behind a gated person-filter. Our soldiers and the many innocent citizens whom they cull(ed) abroad, for example, were to Bush II (he even said as much, and the media said nothing) the blood offering for the absolution of our 'Way of Life.'
So where are we now? Are we to play Tsarist Russia to Israel's Serbia? Is that the net effect of the isolation and intransigence our "ally" draws us all into?
Oh, yes, and you and I and the world at work knows that causation is very different from the immune-suppressant effect to which I refer.
Sorry deary, that sounds like blaming the victims. Besides, I am not at all trying to suggest that the most healthy bee populations are kept-bees. Probably bees, like any portion of the wild planet, deserve thorough-ways that do not cloister and thus endanger the populations through lack of heterogeneity (which could also be a problem-point for the populations under study).
Unfortunately, these fungi/viral agents may arise due to the toxic background of the pesticides. Pollen, like the bee, does not obey the property line nor the ORGANIC sign at the front gate.
Systemic poisons and toxins of all stripes must impact the bees immune systems. Just try to get funding for that study.
One does not find dead bees where no pesticides are being employed. At a particular park, near a certain yard, anywhere where these agents are residual one finds the carcasses of bumble and honey bees.
Another tragic consequence of the political inertia formed by the lobby-blockade of the petro-chemical mega-complex against sane regulation and measured safety protocols.
If money is the crack-cocaine of today's politics, and our political centers have become the crack-houses of same, then what does that make (so many of) our politicians?
I appreciate and endorse your preface.
It must be said that while the US does not do a skillful job of bridging the divide between Pakistan, Afghanistan and we might as well include Iran in this, the violence simply barricades future progress in the vast region mentioned.
Recall that we had Iran offering help in this area as recently as nine years ago. Partnership could have born fruit if we could place more trust in potential allies in this most difficult of regions to navigate (i.e., forget domination.
While I am as far from a doctor as one could imagine, I think I can offer two diagnoses for our Pakistani allies: Drapetomia (the US-slave disorder causing a wish to run away) Dysaethesia Aethiopica ("rascality" of same) to name just two.
What does our money buy there anyway?
As soon as he felt like he lost the message, he started filibustering the host. After a while he repeated his string of oaths towards her and I realized he had a practiced battery with which to deflect. She did well to not shut off his mic.
I suppose they performed a 'fighting retreat' so as to be tried by the Western Allies (as opposed to Uncle Joe)?
Still you neglect the aerial bombardment that became the hallmark (card?) of US-led military projection? What was shock and awe but the Blitz of Baghdad?
Nevertheless, DWTV does decry the extremists every major election cycle (by my extremely unofficial tally;-).
In any case, the broad generalization that Germans are as one in a peace loving state of mind is clearly false. Clearly the majority celebrate what is to my mind an educated and enlightened world view.
That is a historical bone one could pick with the 'genius' types who, marveling at NAZI fear-mongering and terrorism, devised carpet-bombing and other forms of collective punishment.
I suppose if one goes in for such things then one SHOULD thank the NAZI scourge. There are those of us who do not think highly of such tactics. But don't follow me, follow history: Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan. Where popular hostility to our military exists, these modern tactics merely crystallize and mobilize that hostility.
Of course, the War-complex treats this resistance (think Britain during The Blitz) as hatred of our Way of Life. Hmmm...I guess the NAZI scourge DID write the book.
You neglect of Germany's many right-wing and worse citizens (yes, even today the NAZIs are threatening to rule in Bavaria or in several such states within the German federal system. Look it up. Every election cycle DW TV is filled with rumors of right-wing gains. Okay, so maybe these are just chauvinist-'enthusiasts' pining for the Hitlerian Fjords (as it were), but their rhetoric certainly fits the mold.
Thank you for those interesting words about Prussia. That reminds me of another nation with a proud militaristic history. Perhaps we don't wear the pointy hats, but you could certainly say we are 60-90 % military and dropping to 15% social and political fabric USA.
Okay, so many of our generals are uncouth goons who do not compare to the military geniuses of the Prussian history. Those Prussians wouldn't know a smart bomb if it bit them on the arse.
Alas, you mention the islam-ophobic nature of certain persons. You mention what a superb opportunity we lose when our policy makers choose not to 'show up' and lend a very obvious helping hand.
That sad set of truths lead me to believe that we have an islamophobia problem in the highest reaches of our government. Subtle in the ways we neglect people in dire straights (see: Katrina, New Orleans), and direct in the assaults via drone (that most impersonal of terrorist devices) easily released willy-nilly in an almost collective-punishment mindset.
What are we to infer from these realities? How can we rationally believe that the milk of human kindness flows from our halls of power to the people of a country to which we bestow multi-billions of $$? What does this say about our persistent neglect of this relationship?
So we have some military bosses and some politicos in our pocket in Pakistan? How Cold War of us to leave it at that. Are we certain that Condoleeza Rice and other minions of the NeoConicHeads are not still administering the policy here?