brainiac conspiracy

Why We Fight

There might have been a time---WWII, for sure---when we fought wars for legitimate reasons, but in my lifetime, I can't think of a single one our nation has waged (with the provisional exception of Afghanistan; was probably justifiable 12 years ago, but not anymore) that was even remotely defensible on national-security grounds. Then again, when war-toy manufacturing is among your political leaders' preferred government make-work programs, you've got to keep buying all the shiny toys those people make, and what's the use in buying them of you're never going to use them? So perpetual war, at this point, is essentially baked into America Inc.'s business model.

---Baron V

Dead Horse, Flogged

Yeah, I know I do this a lot of it on this stupid blog, but it bears repeating that there has always been---and always will be---a strong moral imperative for convening that Truth & Reconciliation Commission. Because Iraq is a gift that keeps on giving:

[T]he Iraqi government is poised to legalize child marriage for the nation’s majority Shiite Muslim population. But the law, which some expect to pass before this month’s parliamentary elections, would do significantly more than that.

Called the Jaafari Personal Status Law, it would prohibit Muslim men from marrying non-Muslims, prevent women from leaving the house without their husband’s consent, automatically grant custody of children older than two to their father in divorce cases and legalize marital rape.

The law, which proponents say will save women’s “rights and dignity,” would also permit boys to marry as young as 15 and girls to marry as young as nine. Girls younger than nine would be permitted to marry with a parent’s approval.

These practices were banned under the tyrant Saddam. They are being reintroduced by our Friends in Freedom. When you think about the millions of people in the Middle East whose lives we have permanently fucked over, it really is amazing that we don't see truck bombs detonating every day in cities across America, now, isn't it?

---Baron V

Nothing We Won't Do to Help Them

I don't know if this article is true or if it's just another attempt by some horrible people in our foreign-policy establishment to gin up another war in central Asia, but either way, it disabuses us of the notion that the people who govern us are, in the aggregate, anything other than a protection racket for a bunch of incompetently managed banks. Glad we're clear on that.

---Baron V

Truth, Reconciliation, War Hawks, Etc.

Okay, it's likely to never happen, but yet another compelling reason to convene such a commission is to call out for public shaming all the serious persons in our national news media who bought into the bullshit and cheered on the slaughter of thousands. Not only were these sociopaths wrong about everything, but because they have never been publicly embarrassed, they are still pontificating on the awesomeness of war and the treachery of the hippies who happened to be right about Iraq.

Another good reason: It would make for great television! Just think of the prospect of Richard Cohen being forced to listen to his Fools & Frenchmen column being read aloud in open testimony, or Tommy Friedman forced to watch Suck On This under subpoena while video screens suspended overhead projected images of dead and disfigured Iraqis. A nonstop laff riot! Yeah, I know it'll never happen, but a cranky old lefty blogger can dream.

---Baron V

Credit Where Due

It's not as comprehensive as convening a Truth & Reconciliation Commission, but it's at least a start in the right direction. The real key will be how heavily they redact the thing. But hey, baby steps.

---Baron V

The Company We Keep

In our quest to spread American values 'round the world, it never helps our cause when we denounce corrupt and despotic governments at the same time we cozy up to some of the world's worst offenders. I mean, these were the people behind the 9/11 assassins and whom we should have rightly bombed on September 12. Yeah, I know, we need their oil, they're a bulwark against the expansion of Iranian influence, and all the usual Machiavellian crap. But it shoots our credibility to hell all the same.

---Baron V

Can't Keep Going Down This Road Forever

We are running out of water, and overheating the planet, so the people who govern us can have their wars. More to the point, besides diverting money away from necessary improvements---health care, infrastructure, poverty relief---it's hideously wasteful and destructive of our environment. Unfortunately, so many of our job creators have got their tentacles in the Pentagon gravy boat at this point, it's hard to imagine how we will ever reverse the growth of these institutions that not only threaten our liberty but also our viability as a species. Guess the best thing we can do for now is elect leaders who understand that major systemic changes need to be made in the way we run our society, and that will require equally far-reaching changes in the collective consciousness of America's leadership class. All great military empires eventually crumble under their own weight. This time around, though, our collapse could possibly take the rest of the world down with it.

---Baron V

Why We Fought Then

No good reason.

Actually, there were a bunch of reasons---all terrible, of course---that the various cliques within the administration had for invading Iraq: Payback to Saddam for trying to off Poppy; establishing an American garrison state, i.e., access to oil, in the Middle East; the opportunity to test out some shiny new war toys and fighting stratagems; and making the Middle East safer for Israel. None of these were the actual stated reason(s), but they're likely what animated their decision-making in those days. It's still amazing in retrospect that the entire D.C. media and policy establishments fell so readily for the easily disprovable WMD buncombe. Fools and Frenchmen! But fall they did and, you know, thousands died.

---Baron V

Tens of Thousands Were Needlessly Slaughtered

But our intentions were good, so, bygones.

Thanks for reminding me---again---why I left Team Democrat. Up to now, no regrets!

---Baron V

Barack Obama: Accessory to War Crimes

Sorry to be so impolitic, but that's just the way it is.

We have no moral authority on the global stage anymore, and we will continue to have none until the Iraq war's architects are brought before the bar of justice. Some things really are that simple.

---Baron V

Surveillance States

Okay, so the Twittersphere is bursting with quips to the effect of "So I need 2 know about NSA spying on Huawei for why exactly?" as if this is just gratuitous salt-rubbing on the part of Snowden and Greenwald, and only meant to embarrass the Surveillor-in-Chief. Perhaps, but I think it's important that we get these subjects out in the open because (1) it's our money they're spending on this shit, (2) it's another indicator that a regime that was created to catch terrorists has spiraled out of control, and (3) spying, in general, is a necessary evil at best; it should only be done sparingly, and should never be standard operating policy. That's because spying sews seeds of distrust, and that in turn threatens to unravel the fabric that binds societies together. In other words, you simply cannot have an umbrella surveillance state and a thriving liberal democracy. They are utterly incompatible forms of self-governance.

---Baron V

Why We Can Never Have Nice Things

Regular readers of this stupid blog know that only a deranged Marxist would believe that our government is, essentially, a protection racket for America's job creators, and that our gigantic military-security-surveillance regime provides the muscle for the racketeers. Even though, you know, that's exactly what they do:

The American government conducted a major intelligence offensive against China, with targets including the Chinese government and networking company Huawei, according to documents from former NSA worker Edward Snowden that have been viewed by SPIEGEL. Among the American intelligence service's targets were former Chinese President Hu Jintao, the Chinese Trade Ministry, banks, as well as telecommunications companies.

But the NSA made a special effort to target Huawei. With 150,000 employees and €28 billion ($38.6 billion) in annual revenues, the company is the world's second largest network equipment supplier. At the beginning of 2009, the NSA began an extensive operation, referred to internally as "Shotgiant," against the company, which is considered a major competitor to US-based Cisco. The company produces smartphones and tablets, but also mobile phone infrastructure, WLAN routers and fiber optic cable---the kind of technology that is decisive in the NSA's battle for data supremacy.

Not to overlook Chinese hackery against us---they've been known to do it, too---but it would be nice if we were spending our money on something more productive than rigging the global wireless market on behalf of Silicon Valley. it certainly doesn't help to improve relations between the nations!

---Baron V

Stuff Happens

Because, you know, democracy can be messy:

Sunni politician Hamid al-Mutlaq says the country can only go downhill if Shiites like Maliki remain in power. Mutlaq, a member of the alliance of parties headed by secular Shiite and former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, is the chairman of the defense and security committee in parliament.

Mutlaq, who doesn't make a particularly delicate impression, hasn't returned home to Fallujah for almost two months, ever since a bomb struck his house there. He says that there are "special troops who are burning down the houses of the Sunnis," and that "half a million people have fled." According to Mutlaq, the Shiite government is promoting "religious racism" and hunting down Sunnis "the way the Nazis once hunted the Jews in Germany." Is he serious? Completely. The true culprit, he adds, is neighboring "Iran with its sectarianism." The mullahs in Tehran, says Mutlaq, are literally "part of our government; they have driven a wedge into our nation."

Wonderful. Tens of thousands were slaughtered. Tens of thousands more are still being slaughtered. And no one in this country has had to account for any of it, even though none of the slaughter would have happened if not for our involvement. When I say "our" involvement, I'm not only referring to the White House and the D.C. policy establishment but to all the media and think-tank apparatchiks who took to the airwaves to cheer on the invasion while the fraud being perpetrated was hiding in plain sight. And by "our" involvement, I'm also referring to the people in Washington today who are running a protection racket for the serial liars, mass murderers and war criminals. They're equally culpable at this point in our history, and so long as there's no accounting for what was done in our name in Iraq, it virtually guarantees that sometime, somewhere, these atrocities will happen again. They may even be visited one day upon us!

---Baron V

Priorities

You'd never know that our Western states are running out of water:

Estimates have ballparked the water usage of the agency’s new Bluffdale facility around 1.2 to 1.7 million gallons every day to cool an approximate 100,000 square feet of computer equipment [...]

Bluffdale is giving the NSA a massive discount on its utilities, allowing the facility to use essentially as much water as it wants without facing higher rates. Meanwhile, Utah is facing one of the worst droughts in recent history. The vast majority of the state is in a moderate drought or at least abnormally dry, and water reservoir levels are below normal for the third year in a row.

A couple of million years from now, when explorers from the planet Remulak are surveying our barren and uninhabitable world, they will surely wonder who these creatures were who behaved so insanely, and how they ever managed to ascend to the top of the food chain.

---Baron V

Today's Worst Persons

The U.S. Army persons.

No woman of conscience should ever enlist in our military, or date/marry any enlisted man, officer, Pentagon civilian employee, etc. Appointing a female Secretary of Defense might help, though!

---Baron V

Anniversaries

I really think we should rename St. Patrick's Day. Liberators Day works for me.

It's like what Pierce wrote the other day: We've had absolution without atonement for Iraq. It's a huge scar on our national psyche that we've already forgotten about and moved beyond. But Iraq will be unfinished business until and unless some kind of atonement is made, e.g., a Truth & Reconciliation Commission at the very least. Because if we don't atone for Iraq, somebody, somewhere, will force atonement upon us one day, and we're not going to like it one bit. But we'll deserve it all the same.

---Baron V

Believe Nothing 'Til They Prove It

One thing I've learned over the years is that whatever our media tells us is happening on the other side of the world is, generally, the diametric opposite of the reality on the ground. It has been that way, more or less, ever since Vietnam, and I am guessing it is still the same now, in Ukraine or Venezuela or any other country that is governed by people who are not willing vassals of Washington. If we don't get to call the shots, the other side's illegitimate---even though many of our "legitimate" allies have been some of the world's most awful people.

---Baron V

She Can't Be That Stupid

Or, maybe she is:

The chairwoman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence charged Tuesday that the CIA may have broken the law and violated the Constitution by secretly infiltrating computers used by her staff to assemble a scathing report on the spy agency’s now-defunct detention and interrogation program [...]

“The CIA’s search may well have violated the separation of powers principles embodied in the United States Constitution,” Feinstein said. “It may have undermined the constitutional framework essential to effective congressional oversight of intelligence activities.”

Annnnnnnd . . . so?

It may come as a shock to our senior Senator, but that's what the agency is. That's what it does. It can't fulfill its mission, i.e., destabilizing unfriendly governments and sabotaging leftist political movements, within the constraints imposed on it by both the Constitution and federal statute law. That's what the Church and Pike Committees found out. The only 100-percent effective remedy for this is to abolish the agency because secrecy and lies are generally not compatible with a healthy liberal democracy. But it's another compelling reason for that Truth & Reconciliation Commission, though!

---Baron V

Shocked, I Tell You

To learn that espionage has been going on in this establishment.

Snark aside, this silly sandbox spat should remind us all that people like Greenwald and Snowden, and Manning and Assange, are absolutely essential to a properly functioning liberal democracy. Sure, we will always need to keep some state secrets, but our history teaches us---even if Dianne Feinstein is just figuring it out---that when government arrogates unto itself the power to spy on anyone, any time, for any reason whatsoever, that power will inevitably be abused, and people will be harmed by it.

---Baron V

Dick-Swinging Contests

It's a feature of our politics, and nowhere is the wanking more fevered than in the realm of foreign policy. This has been going on for as long as I've been alive, and even though we keep blundering into places we don't belong---Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan---we never seem to learn the lesson. Well, some of us have, but too many people in our nation's foreign-policy establishment see any aggressive action by any other country as a direct provocation that is testing our toughness and our mettle, etc., and that's why we must have the most gigantic military appendage of anyone in the world. It's utterly wrong-headed, of course, but that alone doesn't disqualify you from being taken seriously in official Washington.

---Baron V