dowackado

ineffable beauty, unspeakable evil, etc

Why the obsession over Assange’s hair?

By timmukyPosted on Posted in wikileaksTagged , , , No Comments on Why the obsession over Assange’s hair?
Jack and Julian, pot and kettle

Don’t get me wrong. I LOVED Jack Shafer’s Slate piece, “Why I Love WikiLeaks: For restoring distrust in our most important institutions”, and this may be a quibble … but there’s an obiter dictum that screams out for comment:

Oh, sure, he’s a pompous egomaniac sporting a series of bad haircuts and grandiose tendencies.

Juilan Assange has a lot on his plate, including a warrant for his arrest and calls for his assassination (actual crimes, by the way)–from that Canadian oaf (“feeling manly today”) and others, so let’s not make him all anxious about his hair.

It could be that this is an old picture of Mr. Shafer, and he now sports a new, more stylish coif. Or maybe Google Images has led me astray, and that isn’t even a picture of Jack Shafer. In either case, my apologies.

But otherwise … something something … glass houses … shouldn’t throw stones.

More on Iran’s parallel universe nuclear threat

By timmukyPosted on Posted in iran, war, war on terror, wikileaksTagged , , , , No Comments on More on Iran’s parallel universe nuclear threat

I like to think that I’m up to speed on the subject of Iran’s purported nuclear program, but this RealNews Network interview with former CIA  analyst Ray McGovern serves up some surprising news.

It was surprising to me, anyway, because I wouldn’t be caught dead reading the new Dubya bio, but McGovern did. Apparently even purchased the damn thing.

This entire interview is excellent. The avuncular McGovern stomps all over the Times’ ham-handed and just flat out wrong attempt to claim (over four pages in the print edition) the Iran/Saudi princes wikileak as support for their hysteria over the “sharp distress over a nuclear Iran.”

This in spite of the fact that the last word continues to be the 2007 NIE in which, as McGovern says, “sixteen intelligence agencies declared with great confidence that in 2003 Iran halted its nuclear weapons program.”

The part that surprised me was what McGovern pulled from the pages of Decision Points, Dubya’s bio (at 6:25 or so): that the young Bush threw an absolute hissy about the NIE when it came out, and promptly flew to Israel and Saudi Arabia to apologize!

Why apologize? (one might well ask). Isn’t this good news? Not for the Decider.

Ah, that explains all too well.

Oh, and as for an updated NIE, McGovern says Don’t hold your breath:

Also, an updated NIE on Iran’s nuclear program, completed earlier this year, is dead in its tracks, apparently because anti-Iran hawks inside the Obama administration are afraid it will leak. It is said to repeat pretty much the conclusions of the NIE from 2007.

Model lawsuit against Next agency: WikiLeaks for really good-looking people

By timmukyPosted on Posted in celebrity, childhood, fashionTagged , , , , No Comments on Model lawsuit against Next agency: WikiLeaks for really good-looking people
Karmen, her contract, and Terry

It doesn’t compare with the uncovering of 15,000 Iraqi corpses no one had previously acknowledged (but that is not exactly a trending Twitter topic today, is it?)  Still, there are some eye-opening revelations contained in “What Vogue really pays its models”.

I harbor no illusions about the fashion industry (two words: Terry Richardson!), but I was actually kind of shocked by Jenna Sauers’ examination of the numbers and arrangements brought to light by the $3.75 million lawsuit filed by three eastern European models against the Next Agency.

Really, the day rate for “new faces” at Vogue is $125. And for “established models” $250!

Although that is pretty hard to square with the only model quote most people remember (“We don’t wake up for less than ten thousand dollars a day”), apparently the editorial pay rate is hardly a secret.

BUT, in at least one model’s case, those modest fees still hadn’t been paid nearly a year after being incurred. And after looking over the contracts,  you could make the case that the agency in question, which is supposed to work on behalf of the models, offers something like indentured servitude for all but a few of  them.

The piece is funny/shocking, a perfect balance of outrage/bemusement (the author, Jenna Sauers, is a former model). The myriad ways agencies take advantage of their clients (typically teenagers, frequently girls with little or no English) is dizzying, to say the least.

A brief excerpt, and Sauers’ conclusion:

Next also includes in its standard contract a provision that it be permitted to keep up to $5,000 of a model’s earnings in what it calls a “Reserve Account,” just in case Next incurs any expenses on the model’s behalf at some time in the future. Pedaru isn’t subject to this clause — it’s crossed out. But in its standard form, this contract binds a model to a management agency that will first take 20% of everything that she earns, then take a bite out of the rest for miscellaneous expenses that it need not inform the model of beforehand or seek her permission for, a management company that may book her on jobs for clients that have a record of non-payment at her sole risk, and then, if she’s still in the black after all that — and a lot of newer models, especially those on the hook for the travel costs booked by the agency, and the rent at the models’ apartment the agency owns, and the grocery and phone bill money they have to borrow against their future earnings (at a 5% penalty) which agencies call “pocket money,” are most assuredly not in the black after the above calculations — if that model is in the black after all that, the first $5,000 left over is the agency’s to hold on to. Just in case. Pedaru was three months shy of her 16th birthday when she signed her contract with Next.

The lessons here? Vogue Paris pays crap, Vogue pays not much better, neither of them pays particularly quickly, and campaigns are worth a mint to everyone lucky enough to work on them. And if you are a 5’10” 15-year-old with 34″ hips who would like a job where you’ll bear all the market risks associated with your labor, be solely responsible for expenses outlayed by others on your behalf without your consent, and maybe meet nice, successful men like Terry Richardson, modeling might just be the ticket.

On Iran, just a tiny disconnect between Arab opinion and that of the princes

By timmukyPosted on Posted in iran, militarism, politics, war, wikileaksTagged , , , , , No Comments on On Iran, just a tiny disconnect between Arab opinion and that of the princes
Not exactly trembling about Iran, are they? (source: 2010 Arab public opinion poll)

I think I gave too much credit in the previous post to the dubious notion, advanced by the Times and others, that the cables vindicate U.S. and Israeli hawkishness vis à vis Iran.

I should have just cut to the chase, as Mr. Chomsky did on Democracy Now yesterday. The dictators think one thing, and their subjects think the opposite.

So Hillary Clinton and Benjamin Netanyahu surely know of the careful polls of Arab public opinion. The Brookings Institute just a few months ago released extensive polls of what Arabs think about Iran. The results are rather striking. They show the Arab opinion holds that the major threat in the region is Israel- that’s 80. The second major threat is the United States- that’s 77. Iran is listed as a threat by 10%.

With regard to nuclear weapons, rather remarkably, a majority- in fact, 57–say that the region would have a positive effect in the region if Iran had nuclear weapons. Now, these are not small numbers. 80, 77, say the U.S. and Israel are the major threat. 10 say Iran is the major threat. This may not be reported in the newspapers here- it is in England- but it’s certainly familiar to the Israeli and U.S. governments, and to the ambassadors. But there is not a word about it anywhere. What that reveals is the profound hatred for democracy on the part of our political leadership and the Israeli political leadership. These things aren’t even to be mentioned. This seeps its way all through the diplomatic service. The cables to not have any indication of that.

When they talk about Arabs, they mean the Arab dictators, not the population, which is overwhelmingly opposed to the conclusions that the analysts here- Clinton and the media- have drawn.

Here is the summary of the poll results.

The results (PDF).

And Chomsky’s larger point? That “what this reveals is the profound hatred for democracy on the part of our political leadership”? Can’t really disagree.

That should be paired with Jack Shafer’s sharp observation in Slate yesterday:

International scandals—such as the one precipitated by this week’s WikiLeaks cable dump—serve us by illustrating how our governments work. Better than any civics textbook, revisionist history, political speech, bumper sticker, or five-part investigative series, an international scandal unmasks presidents and kings, military commanders and buck privates, cabinet secretaries and diplomats, corporate leaders and bankers, and arms-makers and arms-merchants as the bunglers, liars, and double-dealers they are.

Secrets, lies, and the threat posed by those sneaky, rug-making Persians

By timmukyPosted on Posted in iran, militarism, warTagged , , , , , , 2 Comments on Secrets, lies, and the threat posed by those sneaky, rug-making Persians

Updated below:

The Pentagon Papers are a thing of the distant past, and the New York Times isn’t exactly giving Julian Assange the Ellsberg treatment. In fact, it gave its war-adoring soldier fanboy reporter the assignment of penning a hatchet job on Assange.

Still, the Times was on board (sort of, and selectively) with the latest wikileaks release, tens of thousands of cables showing the U.S. government in a most unflattering light. To my eyes, the most newsworthy were the ones where Hillary signed off on outright spying on diplomats from other countries, including the secretary general of the UN. Credit card numbers! DNA samples! Oh my  God! How low can you go? “Mr. Secretary General, I notice a stray gray hair there. One sec, I’ll just … Got it! See, that didn’t hurt, did it? Uh, no, I’ll just put it in this little plastic pouch for safekeeping…..”

Pretty shocking, right?

For the Times, not nearly as important as … drum roll, please … what the cables revealed about What a Major Threat Iran Represents! Especially now that we know Arab princes don’t like the Persians, and are afraid of them, and want America to stop them in their phantom nuclear weapon-making.

Three reporters cobbled together a compendium of Iran Threat-related snippets, and wove a narrative about just how hard it has been to convince the Russians and the Chinese and Italians to isolate and confront Iran–in the Tom Clancy-worthy phrase, to “cut off the head of the snake.”

That last quote was from King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, who has a very low opinion of Iran, for reasons the Times doesn’t quite spell out.

To its credit, the Times does actually use the phrase “Arab obsession with Iran” and briefly mentions “the uneasy sectarian division of the Muslim world, between the Shiites who rule Iran, and the Sunnis, who dominate most of the region,” but in  general takes the worries of the corrupt Gulf oligarchs at face value, as they show how RIGHT the Times has been to pursue its own obsession with Iran (which is, after all, Our Threatiest Threat.)

One would have wished for a little more context here, something like that supplied by the Guardian (bold face mine in all instances below):

Arab-Persian enmity, with a strong undercurrent of rivalry between Sunni and Shia Muslims, dates back centuries but increased markedly after the overthrow of the shah and the Islamic revolution in 1979 and is now viewed as a struggle for hegemony in the region. The conservative Sunni-ruled regimes in Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf states detect the “hidden hand” of Iranian subversion, sometimes where none exists.

Or better, like that offered by Jason Ditz at Antiwar.com:

The calls to attack are nominally presented as about Iran’s civilian nuclear program but seem to center around the king’s belief that Iran is uniquely “evil” and needs to be stopped to save the region. Given that the Saudi King and the Iranian Supreme Leader are extremely influential in two rival sects of Islam, the effort seems more aimed around getting the US involved in a Holy War of sorts than stopping Iran’s modest civilian enrichment program.

That Saudi Arabia is putting forth so much effort to start a major regional war along sectarian lines would be troubling in and of itself, but doubly so as the Obama Administration has just completed agreeing on the largest arms sale in US history to Saudi Arabia.

The $60 billion arms sale was couched as important for regional stability. Yet this is the exact same Saudi government that is pressing for the Obama Administration to start a major, region-wide war which would destroy any such stability. It seems then that the arms sale is more about enabling Saudi Arabia to potentially start this major war themselves.

Yes! You’d think a $60 billion arms sale to an Iranian rival–and the only crazier, more unstable, and religiously unhinged regime in the region–would merit a mention in the Times account, but you would be thinkin’ wrong.

Shockingly, the Times offers the last word to an appalling little piece of racist nonsense offered by Crown Prince bin Zayed of Abu Dhabi, who is quoted in one cable as saying:

“Any culture that is patient and focused enough to spend years working on a single carpet is capable of waiting years and even decades to achieve even greater goals.” His greatest worry, he said, “is not how much we know about Iran, but how much we don’t.”

Forget about the carpet weirdness, that last line is PERFECT. Team B thinking at its best.

If you don’t know about Team B, you should spend some time googling around on the subject. Basically, it boils down to this:

Not finding evidence of Something is just more proof that that Something is there, and further, the not finding it just means that the people hiding that Something are incredibly sneaky.

This little exercise in tautology is a recipe for a long and lucrative career in the government of the United States. You are never right, but never wrong!

The track record of Team B is not so good, but these clowns stay in government no matter what. With Russia: embarrassingly wrong. With Iraq. Ditto. And now with Iran.

No matter what intelligence and inspections show, the U.S. government KNOWS those sneaky, rug-making sons of bitches are up to something. And now we have the word of a Crown Prince.

Update: FAIR goes into more detail on just how much spin the Times is putting on the cables, by comparing the Times’ selective excerpting with the cables themselves (which are not available from the Times, but can be viewed at the wikileaks site itself, or the Guardian’s.)

FAIR also has a succinct description of the Times’ behavior in all of this:

WikiLeaks document dumps are largely what media want to make of them. There’s one conventional response, which goes something like this: “There’s nothing new here, but WikiLeaks is dangerous!” But there’s another option: “There’s nothing here, except for the part that confirms a storyline we’ve been pushing.”

Securitainment: the last remaining American growth industry

By timmukyPosted on Posted in civil liberties, rule of law, terrorism, war on terrorNo Comments on Securitainment: the last remaining American growth industry

Job security: The FBI shows how it’s done!

Not only did the Feds build this guy up in order to knock him down, they prevented him from taking a job that might have distracted him from their creepy entrapment campaign.

Anyway, I do sleep more soundly knowing this guy will never see the light of day again. And that the other threat to our nation’s well-being, Willie Nelson, will have to fight hard for his freedom in the coming months.

Greenwald:

But it may also just as easily be the case that the FBI — as they’ve done many times in the past — found some very young, impressionable, disaffected, hapless, aimless, inept loner; created a plot it then persuaded/manipulated/entrapped him to join, essentially turning him into a Terrorist; and then patted itself on the back once it arrested him for having thwarted a “Terrorist plot” which, from start to finish, was entirely the FBI’s own concoction.  Having stopped a plot which it itself manufactured, the FBI then publicly touts — and an uncritical media amplifies — its “success” to the world, thus proving both that domestic Terrorism from Muslims is a serious threat and the Government’s vast surveillance powers — current and future new one — are necessary.

He also dares to talk about the elephant in the room, the Why Do They Hate Us thing:

We hear the same exact thing over and over and over from accused Terrorists — that they are attempting to carry about plots in retaliation for past American violence against Muslim civilians and to deter such future acts.  Here we find one of the great mysteries in American political culture:  that the U.S. Government dispatches its military all over the world — invading, occupying, and bombing multiple Muslim countries — torturing them, imprisoning them without charges, shooting them up at checkpoints, sending remote-controlled drones to explode their homes, imposing sanctions that starve hundreds of thousands of children to death  — and Americans are then baffled when some Muslims — an amazingly small percentage — harbor anger and vengeance at them and want to return the violence.   And here we also find the greatest myth in American political discourse:  that engaging in all of that military aggression somehow constitutes Staying Safe and combating Terrorism — rather than doing more than any single other cause to provoke, sustain and fuel Terrorism.

Still more adventures in clueless farming

By timmukyPosted on Posted in farming, major farming mistakesTagged , No Comments on Still more adventures in clueless farming

On Wednesday I completely lost it with my cattle, then was charged by the bull. And it rained.

My herd–seven cows, four yearlings, seven calves, and a borrowed bull–were grazing near a field leased to a neighbor. As is often the case when they’re next to something they like, in this case fifty acres of corn stubble, a couple of calves sneaked under the electric wire. The wire’s current, supplied by a solar fence charger, had been weakened by three consecutive gray days, so the mamas thought nothing of crashing through the wire after their calves. First one, then three, and then the whole herd was out.

Usually I can lure them back with some feed on the back of the truck and indeed most of them came across the wire, which I had dropped–but then one turned around and the rest followed.

My fuse was short to being with that day, and the high winds and pelting rain didn’t help, so I started running to cut them off and turn them around, all the while shouting like a lunatic. “You fucking stupid cows” in dozens of permutations.

Well. That only succeeded in getting them a little wild. When you can see the whites of their eyes, it’s time to go inside for coffee. Instead, I decided to set out on foot after the bull, who was wandering away from the herd with a couple of cows in tow. In the past, I’d been successful in getting around him and turning him, and he has never shown any hint of aggression, but the combination of howling winds and bellowing farmer brought out the bull in him, and he turned, bucked three or four times, then charged, about five steps’ worth, which still left him fifteen feet or so from me when he skidded to a stop, tearing up deep chunks of soil.

It was a display, and not an attack, but it got my heart pounding and my brain thinking two thoughts: 1. Damn, he can MOVE! and 2. How stupid! One-on-one with a bull in slippery corn stubble, without even a stick, a hundred yards to the nearest tree line. If he had attacked … well, I don’t want to go there.

Actually, make that two thoughts and a question: How long would it take the family to come out looking for me?

Cows: not expecting the Spanish Inquisition

By timmukyPosted on Posted in farmingTagged , No Comments on Cows: not expecting the Spanish Inquisition

The large animal vet experience is medieval, yet quintessentially modern. Imagine a session with the Grand Inquisitor, all sharp, scary smoking implements of torture … assisted by a fast-talking pharmaceuticals sales rep.

I had to bring my best heifer calf in to the vet not once but twice last week. My neighbor trailered her in for me, and took the opportunity to have some work done on a couple of his cows, including one that he had dehorned. That was a singularly stomach-turning procedure. The cow’s head was tightly secured by squeeze gate and taut contorting ropes; then, without any anesthetic, a high-powered sawz all-type contraption sheers the horn off at the bud. The horn clatters to the concrete as blood spurts in all directions. And then the cauterizing fills the air with a sickening smell of singed hair, bone and blood.

Not long after that cow made it home, she miscarried.

My calf’s procedures were less nauseating. She had been in the first time because she was bloated and frothing. The vet crammed a pipe down her throat and then ran a plumber’s snake through, pushing a large chunk of a hedge apple out of the esophagus into the stomach. We thought that was the end of it, but the next day she was bloated again. The second procedure involved screwing a trochar and cannula into her side, puncturing the rumen, and letting the gas escape. She deflated like a balloon, and seems to be doing well, eating, nursing, pooping. She still has a hole in her side. She seeps and makes funny wheezing noises through it. Eventually, it is supposed to work its way out. Crossing fingers on that.

Cows are not pets, I know, but even so, having seen what I’ve seen, I would have to draw the line at dehorning. Why not just raise polled, i.e. hornless, cattle? I was however impressed by the trochar procedure, and will be even more so if it saves the life of my calf. Not so keen on the numerous medicaments suggested (and sometimes given without being requested) by the vets.

In my two years as a novice cattleman, I have yet to see my fundamental ideas disproven: that keeping cows healthy is a matter of keeping my herd apart from other cattle, moving them often when the grass is growing, feeding them exclusively grass and hay, and letting the mamas do most of the doctoring.

Having said that, I know I have learned only a tiny fraction of what I need to know. I am still a dilettante at this farming business, and will likely remain so until I’m too old to do the work.

It’s SHOW TRIAL time again!

By timmukyPosted on Posted in civil liberties, guantanomo, law, obama, politics, rule of law, terrorism, torture, war on terrorTagged , No Comments on It’s SHOW TRIAL time again!

Judge Lewis Kaplan opened the envelope with the charge sheet in it, read the verdict to himself, and then read it again. “There will be no outbursts,” he said, a statement that seemed odd given that there were no Ghailani family members present. The young foreman spoke from the raised jury box as Ghailani watched intently. Count one: not guilty. Count two, not guilty. By the time the foreman got to count four, the courtroom felt as if it had been transported to another galaxy. Count five: guilty. Counts six to 286: Not guilty. The words rang out over and over again, to no apparent reaction; far from outburst, it seemed as if no one had anything to say. By the end, the defendant stood convicted of one charge—conspiring to damage US property

Really, why does anyone even bother? The Right will throw a hissy about anything short of torturing terrorists to death on Pay Per View (even some on NPR are wringing their hands about this shameful acquittal of a terrrist!). And Obama defenders will point to this travesty as a demonstration of the return of the “rule of law” when of course, we are talking about some sort of stylized theatrical display where the disposition of the accused is never in question.

BECAUSE, as Glenn Greenwald notes, even had Ghailani been acquitted on all counts, “the Obama administration had made clear that it would simply continue to imprison him anyway under what it claims is the President’s ‘post-acquittal detention power.'”

It’s supposed to be extremely difficult for the Government to win the right to put someone in a cage for their entire lives, or to kill them. Having lived under a tyranny in which there were very few barriers impeding the leader’s desire to imprison or otherwise punish someone — and having waged a war to escape that oppression — the Founders designed it this way on purpose. And they did so with the full knowledge that clearly guilty and even extremely evil people would sometimes receive something other than the punishment they deserve. Here’s how Thomas Jefferson weighed those considerations, as expressed in a 1791 letter: “I would rather be exposed to the inconveniencies attending too much liberty than those attending too small a degree of it.”

“The inconveniencies attending too much liberty”–now there’s a notion from another time. So really, why bother? This is still about tiny distinctions between two parties who are in agreement about the Government’s absolute right to “put someone in a cage for their entire lives” regardless of what happens in their rigged courts.

Scroll to top