The Right Kind of Anger

By Kevin Baker of The Guardian [Photos Added]:

The American right is angry again. Ever since it narrowly lost control of Congress last November, American conservatives have taken to lashing out in all directions.

Within weeks of the election, rightwing publications were vilifying the authors of the Baker-Hamilton report on Iraq as "surrender monkeys" and Israel-bashers. New books by movement intellectuals such as Dinesh D'Souza and Bruce Bawer blame jihadist successes on, respectively, American popular culture and European appeasers. No less an authority than William F Buckley Jr, the longtime dean of the modern conservative movement, fulminates against "Defeatocrats" and "Vertebrate-challenged Europeans". And then there was Ann Coulter's tirade at this weekend's CPAC conference: "I was going to have a few comments on the other Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards," Coulter said towards the end of her speech. "But it turns out you have to go into rehab if you use the word 'faggot', so I - so kind of an impasse, can't really talk about Edwards."

What is going on? The right used to be able to take a punch. Its exemplar was Ronald Reagan, who shrugged off two failed runs for the presidency and made it to the White House by inventing conservatism with a smiley face. That aw-shucks grin could stretch wide enough to cover up everything - from contra death squads to the world's largest banking scandal. Reagan fundamentally altered the way the right presented itself to the world, transforming the clench-jawed negativity of Barry Goldwater and George Wallace into a sunny, optimistic faith in rugged individualism.

Reagan's cheerful chiding of liberals morphed into a vulgar but spirited style of political taunting under the likes of Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich. Their brand of ridicule was originally so over the top that it often seemed to be satirizing itself, like professional wrestling, while still getting its core message across - a brilliantly effective way of taking down ponderous liberals in an America of all irony.

So why has the right reverted to its old, perpetually angry style of politics? I suspect the creeping disgruntlement has to do with the fact that conservatives have at last been confronted with the realities of their policies in Iraq.

Consider: For more than sixty years now, or ever since the start of the Cold War, the right has insisted that every major international dilemma could be solved merely by the application of American might and will. The Chinese Communists were to be vanquished by "unleashing" Chiang Kai-shek from the island of Formosa; the Korean War could be won by General MacArthur's suggestion to create "a belt of radioactive cobalt" between China and North Korea by dropping some fifty atomic bombs there. The Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe was to be "rolled back". Castro should have been removed by an American invasion, but failing that President Kennedy should have followed the advice of several of his Joint Chiefs of Staff and used the "opportunity" of the Cuban Missile Crisis to hit both the Soviets and the Chinese with a surprise, atomic attack. Vietnam should have been reduced to the proverbial "parking lot" or at least, according to Goldwater in the 1964 campaign, had its Ho Chi Minh trails cut with nuclear devices. Iran is once again being subjected to George W Bush's scabbard-rattling, and on and on.

Always and forever the right's response to a problem, anywhere in the world, has been to hit it with a two-by-four. This may have once been mere campaign foaming, but somewhere along the way American conservatives made the always fatal mistake of believing their own rhetoric. Under Bush, the right had the opportunity to act on its long-stated worldview for the first time, unfettered by any effective opposition. The results lie broken all around it, in the bloody chaos that is today's Iraq.

This is the end of the line for the right's free ride, for its long insistence on the application of military might, first, last, and always, without having to worry about the aftermath. As a result, the right has drifted into confusion, baffled about how to react to a world that does not, after all, respond to its bidding. In its childlike regression to the movement's early years, conservatives have once again decided simply to throw a tantrum and rail against their ever-expanding list of enemies, at home and abroad. And why not? We have all disappointed them terribly.

Conservapedia Makes World News

Not long ago I wrote a post about the conservative response to wikipedia's "liberal bias." A website called "Conservapedia." Click here to view that post. It's funny. I swear.

Anyway, despite its poor grammar and unfathomably bias and factually incorrect "information," Conservapedia has not only been a topic of numerous blogs, it has also become a world news story.

From the Guardian [Photos Added]:

It has been attacked many times in its short life, most notably by a former aide to Robert F Kennedy and the editor of Encyclopaedia Britannica. But now the online reference site Wikipedia has a new foe: evangelical Christians.

A website founded by US religious activists aims to counter what they claim is "liberal bias" on Wikipedia, the open encyclopedia which has become one of the most popular sites on the web. The founders of Conservapedia.com say their site offers a "much-needed alternative" to Wikipedia, which they say is "increasingly anti-Christian and anti-American".

Article continues
Although entries on Wikipedia are open for anyone to edit, conservative campaigners say they are unable to make changes to articles on the site because of inherent bias by its global team of volunteer editors. Instead they have chosen to build a clone which they hope will promote Christian values.

"I've tried editing Wikipedia, and found that the biased editors who dominate it censor or change facts to suit their views," Andy Schlafly, the founder of Conservapedia, told the Guardian. "In one case my factual edits were removed within 60 seconds - so editing Wikipedia is no longer a viable approach."

Among his criticisms listed on Conservapedia, Mr Schlafly explains how many Wikipedia articles often use British spelling instead of American English and says that it "refuses" to give enough credit to Christianity for the Renaissance. "Facts against the theory of evolution are almost immediately censored," he continues.

Mr Schlafly, a lawyer by day, is the son of a prominent American conservative, Phyllis Schlafly, renowned for her opposition to feminism and the Equal Rights Amendment. He says Conservapedia was created last November as a project for home-schooled children - and believes it could eventually become a reference for teachers in the US. "It is rapidly becoming one of the largest and most reliable online educational resources of its kind," he said...

Click here to read more.

In my previous post I listed the entry for "Fox News" along with its "sources." Below are some other entries, also courtesy of the Guardian:

How they compare:

Dinosaurs

Wikipedia, logo below

"Vertebrate animals that dominated terrestrial ecosystems for over 160m years, first appearing approximately 230m years ago."

Conservapedia

"They are mentioned in numerous places throughout the Good Book. For example, the behemoth in Job and the leviathan in Isaiah are almost certainly references to dinosaurs."

US Democratic party

Wikipedia

"The party advocates civil liberties, social freedoms, equal rights, equal opportunity, fiscal responsibility, and a free enterprise system tempered by government intervention."

Conservapedia "The Democrat voting record reveals a true agenda of cowering to terrorism, treasonous anti-Americanism, and contempt for America's founding principles."

Wow...

Government Interference in Protesting

My Article of the Day, by Geoffrey Stone from the Guardian [photos added]:

You've decided to participate in an anti-Iraq war demonstration. Perhaps you've never done such a thing before. But you're troubled by the way things are going in Iraq and you want to express your concern. After bundling up against the cold and marching several blocks side-by-side with your protesting comrades you come upon a platform on which a burly man wearing a dark blue FBI jacket is videotaping the event. What is your reaction?

For many, perhaps most, people, this would generate a sense of anxiety. Why is he there? What's the point of videotaping the protest? Sure, channel 6 might do this, but why the Federal Bureau of Investigation? In all likelihood, you will begin to wonder whether this might land you in a file. At this point, you might begin to second-guess your decision to march. After all, whether you protest or not will have absolutely no effect on national policy. One marcher more or less is a matter of no consequence. But what if the FBI turns this photograph over to the Internal Revenue Service, or to your employer, or to your landlord? The next time someone asks you to march in a protest, sign a petition, or attend a lecture by a government critic, you just might think twice.

Such participation is a fundamental aspect of free speech. It is easily discouraged ("chilled") because our individual act of expression is unlikely to make a difference. But if many people are individually chilled, the overall impact on public discourse can be quite dramatic. This is why courts formulating First Amendment doctrine generally pay special attention to the dangers of chilling effect.

Unfortunately, courts generally pay attention to chilling effect only when the government is actually doing something to harm an individual because of his speech - for example, criminally prosecuting him, firing him or allowing him to be sued. In such circumstances, courts try to ensure that the law protect not only the person being prosecuted, fired or sued, but also those who might be deterred from speaking by the fear of being prosecuted, fired or sued.

Note, however, that in my demonstration hypothetical, the government isn't necessarily doing anything to directly harm anyone. It's only filming the event. And, so far as we know, the government isn't using the information to do anything improper. The fear is only that the government might do so. In this situation, which is quite common, courts are usually reluctant to allow individuals to challenge the government's conduct. If they can't prove the government has misused the information against them, they have nothing to complain about. Mere chilling effect is not enough. That you might never again exercise your First Amendment right to sign a petition or march in a demonstration because of your fear that the government will misuse the videotape is not a legally cognizable harm.

This is a very bad doctrine. It is why the government can usually get away with videotaping political demonstrations, demanding that bookstores and libraries turn over information about book buyers and borrowers, recording the names of those who attend particular mosques, and wiretapping phone calls when no single individual can prove that he was wiretapped. All of these techniques have been used by the Bush administration; all of them have a serious chilling effect; and under existing law it is very difficult for anyone to challenge the constitutionality of the government's conduct. The very fact that the government keeps secret what it does with the information prevents anyone from suing, even though the information gathering can have serious consequences for First Amendment activity.

There is one ray of hope. On February 15, federal Judge Charles S Haight, Jr ruled that the New York City police cannot - in the absence of any reason to believe that unlawful activity might be afoot - constitutionally videotape individuals who are peacefully exercising their First Amendment right to demonstrate against government policy. More than thirty years ago, Attorney General Edward Levi recognized this same principle. He adopted a Justice Department guideline prohibiting any FBI investigation of a political or religious organization or activity in the absence of reasonable grounds to believe that unlawful conduct was involved. Unfortunately, the Bush administration repealed that guideline. Hopefully, Judge Haight's decision will be a significant step toward fixing this glaring deficiency in American constitutional law.

New Segmant - News from Other Countries

I love the New York Times, but even they sometimes mute themselves instead of addressing the way other countries see the US. So with that I'm going to introduce a new kind of post: News from the Newspapers of other countries. I may miss the liberal bias (reality) but who knows, maybe there will be more truth in there than our own newspapers. I'll tag it as "World Opinion." Different from World News, which is usually from American Newspapers.

From the Iran Daily:

America Intensifying Mideast Tension

TEHRAN, Jan. 27--Defense Minister Brigadier General Mostafa Mohammad Najjar said on Saturday the Untied States has adopted new policies to intensify religious and ethnic conflicts in the Middle East to compensate for it failures in the region.
Addressing a gathering of Defense Ministry personnel, Najjar said American officials are seeking to create discord among Shiites and Sunnis in Iraq and interfering in the domestic affairs of Lebanon, IRNA reported.
“They [Iraq and Lebanon] are examples of US policy for creating tension in the region. The US government believes that if it were to continue its illegitimate presence in the strategic Middle East and plunder its resources, war, conflict, tension and insecurity should be intensified in the region,“ he said.
Najjar added that the persistence of American neocons to send more troops to the region despite the opposition of the US Congress indicates that they have adopted policies to intensify tension in the Middle East.
The top military official said vigilance, self-control, non-violence, mobilization and regional unity in the Middle East are the most essential issues.
He noted that security, stability and peace in the region, in view of cooperation and constructive interaction among regional governments for preventing tension, will expedite the pullout of foreigners from the Middle East.
Najjar stressed that US moves in the region will have no result except increasing tension and hatred of nations and governments for the American warmongers.

While Iran currently poses the biggest threat to the US and the Middle East, it is interesting to note that they blame neocons and America for not only Iraq, but also the tensions between Hezbollah and the Lebanese Government. Even as a liberal hippy, I completely recognize the obvious propaganda (so no stupid emails, thanks) considering the Shi'a and the Sunni have been at war for centuries, and Hezbollah - a known terrorist organization - is organizing large protests against the government for being the government. But the efficacy in the propaganda is that Iranians, as well as most of the middle east, can easily believe that the country that invades another country and causes a civil war may have planned that from the beginning.

Apparently Iran has air pollution too. You can read about that here.

I like this article a lot:
From the Saudi Times and the Guardian Unlimited (A UK internet newspaper):

They're broken men, so don't let them take us to a new war


Presidents Bush and Ahmadinejad have lost face at home; now others must forge peaceful settlements in the Middle East

Henry Porter
Sunday January 28, 2007
The Observer

There is a striking likeness in the expressions of George W Bush and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran as they confront each other over the issues of uranium enrichment and dominance in the Middle East. It falls somewhere between the chastened and defiant playground bully.

This is unsurprising: though not political equivalents, the two are really quite similar. Both had little experience of government or international affairs before being carried to power on a tide of populist, religious conservatism. Neither travelled abroad much, but they both had certain views about the world and the destiny of their nations. They had all the answers, yet there was also a dangerous lack of seriousness in them which has now earned them both the scorn of their people and rebuffs from their elders.

We think of Bush as being the more unpopular of the two. His approval ratings are at the level of Nixon's just before he left the White House. After an unconvincing performance in the State of the Union Address, his plans for the troop surge in Iraq were rejected by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and may now be voted down by the entire Senate. Senior Republican senators such as Chuck Hagel and John Warner are furious that sensible suggestions contained in the Iraq Study Group Report have been ignored. Although the President looked receptive when the report was delivered to him by James Baker, there has been no progress in policy, no evidence of any kind of deeper thinking in the White House. Nothing except that familiar foggy, narrow-eyed truculence of Bush Junior in a tight spot.

This would be a depressing but for similar difficulties experienced by Ahmadinejad over the last few weeks. Just as the senior Republican elders have turned on Bush, so Iran's religious leaders are moving to restrain their President. They criticise his bellicose foreign policy and the exceptionally poor record on promised reforms at home. There is a sense of embarrassment among sophisticated Iranians about their President's pronouncements, which surely rings a bell with Americans.

The most important sign-off disenchantment came in Jomhouri Islami, the newspaper owned by Iran's supreme religious leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, which said in an editorial: 'Turning the nuclear issue into a propaganda issue gives the impression that to cover up the flaws in government you are exaggerating its importance.'

The paper also suggested that the President should speak about the nuclear issue less, stop provoking aggressive powers like the United States and concentrate on the daily needs of the people - 'those who voted for you on your promises'. Two weeks ago, 150 legislators sent a letter to Ahmadinejad openly attacking him for missing his budget deadline and blaming him for inflation and rising unemployment.

A loss of confidence in both men at home is important because it offers us a brief opportunity to assert diplomacy over the habits of rhetoric and escalation. Although UN nuclear experts suggest the Iranians are at least five years from developing a bomb and delivery system, the Iranians are due to open a large uranium enrichment plant within a matter of weeks. If this goes ahead, a peaceful solution will be much harder to find; to decommission this new facility will require a loss of face for Ahmadinejad.

So the hawks in the West will begin the slow drumbeat for a first strike. Indeed, it has already started. For some weeks, the Daily Telegraph has been running a series of what, in my opinion, are extremely dubious stories all attributed to mysterious 'European defence officials' and 'senior Western military sources'. A front-page story last week suggested that North Korea has offered to help Iran with a nuclear test within the year. Apart from these shadowy spokesmen, it could offer no evidence, which is why the story was only seriously picked up in Israel.

In Israel, it is believed that the Iranians may be able to launch a nuclear warhead into its territory within three, not five, years. Former Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has asked who will defend the Jews from a genocidal government in Iran if they do not themselves. Israeli historian Benny Morris contributed this chilling thought to the Jerusalem Post. 'One bright morning in five to 10 years, perhaps a regional crisis, a day or a year or five years after Iran's acquisition of the bomb, the mullahs in Qom will convene in secret session... and give President Ahmadinejad the go-ahead.'

In Iran, 38 nuclear inspectors have been barred from entering the country in retaliation for the UN resolution introducing mild sanctions, and now the Iranians have installed a missile defence system (supplied by the Russians) to defend their nuclear facilities from air attacks. The Americans have responded by moving another aircraft carrier into the region and by offering Patriot missile systems to Iran's uneasy Arab neighbours.

Make no mistake: this a much more dangerous situation than Iraq and it is unfolding on the watch of a couple of second-raters.

It is true that few nations that have been more estranged over the last quarter of a century, but with the stakes so high, it seems extraordinary that America has no representation in Tehran and almost no contact except through the Swiss embassy. As Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times reminded us last week, in 2003, America rebuffed an advance made by the Iranians through the Swiss, which, in exchange for the lifting of sanctions, suggested the two countries work together on the capture of terrorists in Iraq, stabilising the country after invasion and coming to an agreement on uranium enrichment as well as the financing of Hizbollah and Hamas.

The offer, made almost two years before Ahmadinejad was elected, was layered with insincerity and bluff, but professional diplomats are used to this. At least the two sides would have been talking and Tehran could have been held to account for some of the things that have been going on in Iraq.

But the situation is not beyond hope. The West must realise that if a first strike takes place we have lost. Whatever is destroyed in Iran, the Iranians will come back and produce a bomb that they may feel more entitled to use. The clash of civilisations predicted by neocon academics for years will have moved a step closer to dominating the 21st century at the very moment when all civilisation needs to concentrate on the multiple threats presented by climate change.

What we must hope for is a collective act of will in Europe, and among wiser heads in Washington DC, which says it doesn't have to be this way. This is not impossible. Only last week, representatives from 30 countries led by America and Saudi Arabia met in Paris to contribute to a £5bn fund to prop up Prime Minister Fouad Siniora's government in Lebanon. This was a diplomatic action taken by both Middle Eastern and Western powers to defend Lebanon against Iran's proxies in the Hizbollah terrorist organisation, and it is exactly the right way to deal with Iran.

What can the British government do about Ahmadinejad? The first thing to is to recognise his failing support at home is an advantage that will be lost if the drumbeat to war is allowed to continue. There is no reason why Tony Blair should not add to the call from the head of UN inspectors, Mohamed ElBaradei, for a time out in which sanctions would be suspended. Blair still has a voice that is heard in the US. He should consider making a speech which insists that Bush initiates direct diplomatic relations with Tehran as well as a renewed effort to create the two-state solution for Israel and Palestine. He owes something to the cause of peaceful resolution and, besides, these are hardly controversial views: both have already been expressed by James Baker's Iraq Study Group.

I like how he says "[the possible conflict with Iran] is unfolding on the watch of a couple of second raters." and that "Both had little experience of government or international affairs before being carried to power on a tide of populist, religious conservatism... They had all the answers, yet there was also a dangerous lack of seriousness in them which has now earned them both the scorn of their people and rebuffs from their elders."

Well said.