More From the Hologram Department

   

An illusory progressive president being embattled by an illusory grass roots reaction and now... just when you think you've had enough of holograms... an illusory arrival of the dead.

Turns out that all those solemn, tear-jerking, closure-enabling ceremonies honouring our returned fallen were ... "The Big Lie" ... as it is called by the troops detailed to carry the coffins.  The Pentagon prefers to speak of "symbolism." [NBC]  [Daily Mail]

In all events, transports on the tarmac, fluttering flags in the wind, chaplains in waiting, reverent spectators at a distance, the coffins were empty.

Gee... makes one wonder.  Do you suppose the Resurrection was a "symbolic" ceremony as well? 

"The Departure" by Piandello

Who knows...

The Political Hologram

    

A friend of ours, a fairly typical Yankee liberal, was complaining about the government shutdown which he blamed on Confederate voter suppression and Tea Party activism. It was 1860 all over again and why don't they just secede.

Actually they tried that once....

But we think the MoveOn types are wrong to blame "the South" and its mentalities for the current political stalemate.  We are congenitally wired to believe in conspiraciones and will not rest until we find one. 

I am quite certain that the dough-heads in the South are incapable of organising the trash in their trailers, much less gerrymandering anything.  No.  Cherchez le banquier is what i say; and searching i come up with Ahmanson, Coors, Mellon-Scaife and Koch.  The same folks who -- strange to say -- funded the schismatic "traditionalists" within the Anglican Communion.  Why?  They were very frank about it.  They wanted to destroy (yes, hack to pieces) "liberal" institutions like the Episcopal Church USA.

Who funds the "Tea Party"?  Are those overweight, Cheez-Oh munching, flag-waving knuckle-heads capable of anything beyond finding their way to NASCAR races?  It is absurd to talk about "the Tea Party" as if it were an object in itself as opposed to a mere political hologram. 

One last example.  Who was it who just today said on Pox News that he wanted to "punish" federal employees?  None other than Stuart Varney.  And where is this fellow from?  Macon Georgia?  Yazoo City, Mississippi? Nope. London, England. And where did he go to school?  London School of Economics.  The only worse place he could have gone to was Harvard.

These people are from nowhere. They belong to the country of Capital.  They have an agenda known as Destroy the Beast and they simply use the South because it's cheap and easy.  But that does not mean that they won't, can't and haven't used California, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and New Hampshire -- reputedly "blue" states which are yeehaw red once one moves an an hour or so away from the the cities or any college town.  Nor is there anything particularly "southern" about the Anglican Communion. In fact most of the South is Baptist, not pseudo-Catholic.

The fact is -- as de Tocqueville discussed at great length -- that Anglo-Americans have certain credal and intellectual habits which make them exceptionally prone to certain types of polemical pogey bait.  It is a bait made from various flavours which boil down to self-serving, self-satisfied egotism  -- what de Tocqueville coined as individualism.  This is nothing particularly Southern, it permeates and stains the entire country.

The problem with "sensible" and "mainstream" people who don't believe in conspiracies is that they refuse to look beyond the "obvious" and  fall a-sucker for surface appearances... for the political hologram.

In fact, politics in the USA is so full of holograms fighting holograms that it might as well be described as Nightmare on the Holodeck.

Will someone please pull the plug?

©Barfo, 2013

Israel's Drummer Boy on 42d Street

       

It is always a sight to watch the New York Times slant the news to suit Israeli imperatives. 

Brazil's president Rousseff gave an important and diplomatically arresting address to the General Assembly, in which she denounced U.S. electronic snooping and called upon the world to erect electronic barriers to the overweening power of the US imperial security apparatus.

In what the Guardian characterised as a "scathing" and "blistering" speech, Rousseff denounced U.S. snooping as an affront to the Comity of Nations and a violation of international law.  She also spoke out, for the civil rights of ordinary people.

"As many other Latin Americans, I fought against authoritarianism and censorship and I cannot but defend, in an uncompromising fashion, the right to privacy of individuals and the sovereignty of my country"

 Nor was this simply a Brazilian concern.  As reported by RT News

US relations with all of Latin America have recently soured. In addition to Brazil, Mexico, Bolivia and Venezuela have all voiced anger with the US over the NSA’s surveillance of their countries this year. Bolivia has been especially bitter.

 Even the USophile BBC carried the report of Rousseff's speech on its front page

 And the Times?  On the Times... it was nowhere to be found. Not on the front page, not on the World page, 

 

not even on the America's page ... 

 

until the very bottom in small print, after stories on drug hauls and the like.

In short, the news was suppressed, albeit with the usual and tiresome buried, fine-print exception designed to give a colour of good faith to hypocricy.

Of course as the US flagship propaganda organ, it stands to reason that the Times would wish to suppress how disgusted  -- desde las pelotas hasta las cejas --  the rest of the hemisphere is with United States bullying arrogance -- or prepotencia as it is called in Spanish.

But of equal note is what the Times considers to be "fit to print" --

Iran, Iran, Iran, and more Iran.

Now Iran's alleged nuclear arms programme is certainly not not news.  It does indirectly affect U.S. interests to the extent that any proliferation of nuclear arms impacts U.S. interests and the stability of world.  As indeed, Israel's "illegal" (non-signatory) acquisition of nuclear weapons has destabilised the Middle East.

But Iran's possible acquisition of nuclear weapons is really only an urgent concern to Israel  whose destabilising and imbalanced nuclear hegemony in the region is upset by a challenge.

The true interests of the United States, from a national perspective would be to make the Middle East nuclear free and to induce Israel to destroy it's nuclear weapons.

Oh but mum on that.  Instead endless dross on Iran, Iran, Iran, Iran.

Qui bono?

The Figure of Speech

    

In an interview reported by the U.K. Guardian, Hilarity Clinton admitted that she "wrestles with running" before adding, "But I'm both a pragmatist and realistic. I think I have a pretty good idea of the political and governmental challenges that are facing our leaders..."

Huh?

"Both,  a. or pron. [OE. bothe, bae, fr. Icel. bāir; akin to Dan. baade, Sw. båda, Goth. bajs, OHG. beid, bd, G. & D. beide, also AS. begen, bā, b, Goth. bai, and Gr. , L. ambo, Lith. abà, OSlav. oba, Skr. ubha. &root; 310. Cf. Amb-.] The one and the other; the two; the pair, without exception of either.  ....   Both, as adj.:  Two, considered as distinct from others or by themselves; the one and the other.   This word is often placed before the nouns with which it is connected."

Does Clinton really think this way?  When used as an adjective, "both" presupposes a difference of kind or degree in the substantives it connects.  As in,

To judge both quick and dead.  (Milton.)
A masterpiece both for argument and style. (Goldsmith.)
To whom bothe heven and erthe and see is sene.  (Chaucer.)
He prayeth well who loveth well Both man and bird and beast. (Coleridge.)

If Clinton had wanted to emphasize with surplus redundancy that she was a hard-nosed, tough-as-nails, realistic, pragmatist she ought to have omitted the "both". Otherwise she is "dis-confusing" two things which are basically the same.  That does not bespeak a well-ordered mind.

In the interview, Clinton followed up with:

"I will just continue to weigh what the factors are that would influence me making a decision one way or another."

and

"The election is more than three years away and I just don't think it's good for the country."

Well... both for ill or good she at least has three years to decide what factors will guide her decision.

Political speech in the U.S. resembles a disordered mosaic of rough-cut, verbal chips which increasingly disconnect from one another and fail to reflect any cohering image or concept.   The vocalisations of our ruling class (oh grief!)  are incompetent to enable "decisions about the just and the unjust or the expedient and the inexpedient." (Arist. Politics, Bk I.)

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The Figure of Speech

    

In an interview reported by the U.K. Guardian, Hilarity Clinton admitted that she "wrestles with running" before adding, "But I'm both a pragmatist and realistic. I think I have a pretty good idea of the political and governmental challenges that are facing our leaders..."

Huh?

"Both,  a. or pron. [OE. bothe, bae, fr. Icel. bāir; akin to Dan. baade, Sw. båda, Goth. bajs, OHG. beid, bd, G. & D. beide, also AS. begen, bā, b, Goth. bai, and Gr. , L. ambo, Lith. abà, OSlav. oba, Skr. ubha. &root; 310. Cf. Amb-.] The one and the other; the two; the pair, without exception of either.  ....   Both, as adj.:  Two, considered as distinct from others or by themselves; the one and the other.   This word is often placed before the nouns with which it is connected."

Does Clinton really think this way?  When used as an adjective, "both" presupposes a difference of kind or degree in the substantives it connects.  As in,

To judge both quick and dead.  (Milton.)
A masterpiece both for argument and style. (Goldsmith.)
To whom bothe heven and erthe and see is sene.  (Chaucer.)
He prayeth well who loveth well Both man and bird and beast. (Coleridge.)

If Clinton had wanted to emphasize with surplus redundancy that she was a hard-nosed, tough-as-nails, realistic, pragmatist she ought to have omitted the "both". Otherwise she is "dis-confusing" two things which are basically the same.  That does not bespeak a well-ordered mind.

In the interview, Clinton followed up with:

"I will just continue to weigh what the factors are that would influence me making a decision one way or another."

and

"The election is more than three years away and I just don't think it's good for the country."

Well... both for ill or good she at least has three years to decide what factors will guide her decision.

Political speech in the U.S. resembles a disordered mosaic of rough-cut, verbal chips which increasingly disconnect from one another and fail to reflect any cohering image or concept.   The vocalisations of our ruling class (oh grief!)  are incompetent to enable "decisions about the just and the unjust or the expedient and the inexpedient." (Arist. Politics, Bk I.)

©

Unclean Tongue

The use of chemical weapons anywhere in the world is an affront to human dignity and a threat to the security of people everywhere. We have a duty to preserve a world free from the fear of chemical weapons for our children.  - Barack Obama (14 Sept. 2013)

Vietnam, 1972

 Uhuh...  Now,  Barack Obama wasn't born when the prize-wining photograph made the world news but we are not interested in Obama as a private golfer.  As president of the United States he is the official voice of the country he represents; and the country he represents is the very stuff of loathsome hypocricy.

 Nor is it relevant that other countries may also commit atrocities.  At least they do so without pretending (with "humble exceptionalism")  that they are Jesus Christ or Eternal Victims.

What Napalm Really Does

The United States argues that napalm and white phosphorus are not "asphixiating gasses" and are therfore perfectly legal.   However they are chemicals and are perfectly horrible.

Falluja, Iraq (2004)

&

Falluja, Iraq (2004)

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Glenda's Fault

The definitive story behind Obama's Syria venture will be written by diplomatic historians in years to come. It seems to us chipsters, however, that the unsung hero of the denouement is neither Putin nor Lavrov but rather Glenda Jackson,

erstwhile Elizabeth R. for Masterpiece Theatre, now MP for Hampstead and Kilburn.  For it was Ms. Jackson who, from her backbench seat, directed incisive questions at Prime Minister Cameron during the House of Commons debate on Syria on 29th August last making it rather evident that Ms. Jackson was agitating the pot against intervention while her party's leader, Ed ("Egg") Miliband was playing "all chaps together" with his opposite number who ended up calling him a "fucking cunt" when Miliband turned out not to be  quite as much the chap as he had led the Government to believe. 

In truth, Miliband had exacted a rather nominal amendment to the motion (providing for a second vote) by way of face-saving appeasement to opposition within his own party against military intervention in Syria. If he then voted against his own amended motion it could only be because he would rather Cameron suffer defeat in the House than that he should suffer defeat as leader within his own party.

But if defeat as leader was in the air, it could only have been on account of MPs outside the Shadow Cabinet and it seems to us, from her spirited questioning, that the off stage agitator has to have been the erstwhile Elizabeth R.  

If this analysis seems convoluted it is not as convoluted by half as that of those apologists who are now arguing that the Administration's pulling back from blowing Syria to smithereens was part of a ultra devious, cunning and clever strategy by the President to do exactly the opposite of what he gave every appearance of wanting to do in very earnest.

Everything the Obama Administration said and did in the week preceding the House of Commons vote indicated that it had resolved on war and counted on an Anglo-French phalanx to lend an aura of "internationality" to the aggression. 

To those of us who have seen Washington in war-woop mode, it was more than evident that the military-industrial jocks like  John McCain and the AIPACOIDS like  Barbara  Boxer were raising the roof to flatten Syria out of existence.  The biggest woop was given by the Obama himself on August 31st when he declaimed:

This attack is an assault on human dignity.  It also presents a serious danger to our national security.   ... This menace must be confronted.  ....  After careful deliberation, I have decided that the United States should take military action against Syrian regime targets.

A president simply cannot say that national security is at stake and then do nothing.  Obama's tone and language, not to mention his military orders, were the coda to the finale. Had the House of Commons joined in the wooping the crashing finale was a done deed.

Instead Her Majesty's Government politely but irrevocably  excused itself from the party.  Obama was left running in place on a mound holding a rather limp flag.  Not quite the stuff of Capitol Rotunda canvasses.

The House of Commons vote put a stumble into the rumble and forced a change of tack.  Not being able to count on the Brits to do the "democracy bit" for him, Obama had to bifurcate his war wooping with a sudden concern for constitutionalism and, given the scepticism from isolationists in the House, to modify the call for blood with assurances of pinpricks (later disavowed) and shots across the bow. 

What the nation heard on August 31st was a scrambled up Plan B or, more accurately, a Plan A-1, rev. (b); but the only really important thing here is that the scrambling interjected a pause in the events. Pause for doubts; pause for second thoughts, and time for the Russians to finally move their boats into position.

As they say, the kaleidoscope of history can change overnight.  From pushing aside all opposition, Obama now found himself crying for a horse to get him out of the mess he had got himself into.  He got one from Russia, but for the unravelling of his plans, which made the getting necessary, we have Glenda Jackson to thank.

And it was no small matter. Right-thinking people know the difference between one state protecting its client by supporting the rule of international law and another state promoting the interests of its client by degrading the rule of law.

©