Speak to it, Horatio, thou art a scholar

K. Rove, front man for plutocratic restoration, turns out to be a lit’ry chap. Who knew? He claimed he was Moby Dick, the Democrats his Ahab. Full fathom five his bones don’t lie. He said he was a myth, “You know, I’m Beowulf, you know, I’m Grendel. I don't know who I am. But they're after me.” Hell, he’s probably the b’ar in Faulkner. But what about Grendel’s mother? From my own translation, the Soccer Hooligan’s Beowulf “Shite man, it’s Grendel’s mum, and she’s fookin’ pissed!” That’s a great scene when she eats Capt. Ahab and his boat the Ninapintasantamaria, with Scottie down in the coal shouting "I'm giving her all I can, Captain! She canna take much more!" As awesome as when Hester Prynne marries Jay Gatsby and they sit on the dock of the bay watching the green light in the fog waste away…

In answering a question about their belief in the power of prayer to prevent disasters like Katrina and falling bridges, only one of the Democratic candidates in the latest debate actually answered the question directly: no, he didn’t believe prayer could prevent disasters. Only one would actually say that. Stunning. What a fucked-up politics.
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A couple of years ago, I was listening to a panel discussion on this collection, when an elderly woman stood up to ask a question. It was Carolyn Goodman, whose son Andrew was murdered along with Michael Schwerner and James Chaney by the Klan in 1964 in Mississippi. It was one of those times when history reminds us that we are made of the past. She passed away the other day. Rest in peace.

Mississippi, btw, still sends Trent Lott to the U.S. Senate. I don't say much good about the Democrats, but cutting loose the crackers, even if it meant losing them to the Republicans (who were most eager to take in the racists), was great thing.

The American Gulag

There are more prisoners in the US than any other country in the world. With a mere five percent of the world’s population, we have close to a quarter of the world’s prisoners. 2.2 million behind bars, another 5 million on probation or parole. Our urge for vengeance and punishment has largely hit low-level drug users; only about a third of prisoners are in for violent crimes. And in a nation that refuses to come to grips with the issues of race, one in eight African American males between 25 and 29 are imprisoned.

What else? This all means our unemployment level is actually rather higher than the official number, since prisoners aren’t counted. What happens when these skill-less, often brutalized people get out of jail? What about all the families ripped apart? What about the future?

Additionally, in a truly sick throwback to Jim Crow, prisoners are counted in censuses, meaning their number boost often rural districts, but they are unable to vote in those districts, so essentially they are subsidizing more conservative representatives. The millions who are prevented from voting means the GOP, those perfect inheritors of Jim Crow polls, gets to win in places like Florida in 2000. No wonder the right loves “law and order” so god-damned much.

More here.

Yum, pork chops!

A chirpy English lass put it well on the Beeb this morning: you have ten pork chops. One of them is off. You can’t really sell that one, so you grind them all up together to make sausages, figuring that just a little bit of badness won’t kill anyone. Only, once the trenchers find out that the sausage is tainted, nobody wants to buy any of it. Replace mortgages for porkchops and witness the financial hysterics “correct,” in the S&M terminology of financial capital, the market.

"Mesoptn" notes

A BBC reporter was discussing the Iranian penchant for seeing the black hand of the Brits behind everything evil. The International British-Bolshevik Conspiracy? This is almost amusing, but given the history of the area, fathomable. The Brits after all, cut up the whole region after WWI finished off the Ottomans, laying the groundwork for much of the war, chaos, and misery since. Here’s Lloyd George in 1919, according to Arnold Toynbee, then in the British delegation to make the world safe for Empire, “Mesopotamia …yes … oil…irrigation…we must have Mesopotamia; Palestine… yes… the Holy Land … Zionism… we must have Palestine; Syria…h’m… what is there in Syria? Let the French have that.” The Anglo-Persian Oil Company, more recently known as British Petroleum (or, laughably, “beyond petroleum”) needed the firm hand of a “Shah,” that usual British urge for instant monarchs (cf. the Hashemites put into power in Transjordan, Syria, and Iraq). Along with the US national security state, the Brits toppled Mossaddeq and waved the usual red scare banner to return the rot of the Pahlavis to power. All-in-all, an excellent way to become a Great Satan.

There’s plenty of fevered conspiratorial nonsense in the hothouse autocracies of the Middle East, but at the same time there is history. A century of promises unkept, neocolonial rule, and monstrous surrogates, all in the name of controlling the oil. Pity we don't have any history in the US, only fantasies of sweetness and light.

Speaking of black hands, here’s Churchill, ever in the thick of it, complaining about, “this odious Mesoptn embarrassment.” Nothing a little gas attack wouldn't fix, eh Winnie?

Special ed.

Exactly. Why didn’t I ever think of this? In the September Harper’s, not yet on-line, P. Schrag in “Schoolhouse Crock” essays why education may be the most hysterical subject in the land (next to gay marriage, anyway). In America, education is in constant crisis, and has been so from Sputnik. Schools are expected to do the impossible. Needless to say, they fail. Of course they do, because schools don’t exist without the context of stable families, good jobs, childcare, wellness/health care, and social welfare, and above all, the class divide then rends America. Regardless of how much money is spent, regardless of how many tests are given in No Childhood Left, schools alone can’t get over this divide.
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Jesus Christmas, that was bile-rising: hearing Rove choke up about his close pal George as he promised more time with his family (ha-ha-ha, I always love that one). O yeah, present at the counterrevolution...

The long sham

Just another act of the "the most spectacular deception in modern diplomatic history" that is the Middle East peace process. Siegman ends this piece optimistically:

If the US and its allies were to take a stand forceful enough to persuade Israel that it will not be allowed to make changes to the pre-1967 situation except by agreement with the Palestinians in permanent status negotiations, there would be no need for complicated peace formulas or celebrity mediators to get a peace process underway. The only thing that an envoy such as Blair can do to put the peace process back on track is to speak the truth about the real impediment to peace. This would also be a historic contribution to the Jewish state, since Israel’s only hope of real long-term security is to have a successful Palestinian state as its neighbour.

But this will only happen if, a) the neoconservatives are dethroned and b) American Jews act.