Mondo Washington

James Ridgeway's Village Voice column, Mondo Washington is a stellar weekly (and sometimes more frequent) unspinning of stories that the mainstream press cover only in mainstream ways, i.e., by giving us only the "official" story rather than what that official story is attempting to hide. The latest installment is no exception, covering several little gems, including the current plan to fire more missiles on Baghdad than were used in the entirety of Gulf War I.

"There will not be a safe place in Baghdad," one Pentagon official told CBS. There are 4 million civilians in Baghdad, of whom 2 million are children.

The Pentagon likes A-Day because it supposedly concentrates on the psychological destruction of the enemy's will to fight, rather than on the physical destruction of his military forces. They won't admit it, but this is another horrible policy shift. This is what Hitler did to London in World War II. What Bush proposes is not collateral damage, but a level of civilian destruction not seen since the Second World War, with tens of thousands of intended civilian casualties.

Ridgeway also covers the frightening fact that the Bush Administration seems to have fewer qualms than any previous administration about using nuclear weapons. William Arkin provided some good detail on this in the LA Times a couple of days ago. After detailing the many ways in which the Administration has moved nukes out of their "special" place as weapons that were really too awful to use, and onto the shelf with conventional weapons, Arkin concludes:

What worries many senior officials in the armed forces is not that the United States has a vast array of weapons or contingency plans for using them. The danger is that nuclear weapons -- locked away in a Pandora's box for more than half a century -- are being taken out of that lockbox and put on the shelf with everything else. While Pentagon leaders insist that does not mean they take nuclear weapons lightly, critics fear that removing the firewall and adding nuclear weapons to the normal option ladder makes their use more likely -- especially under a policy of preemption that says Washington alone will decide when to strike.

To make such a doctrine encompass nuclear weapons is to embrace a view that, sooner or later, will spread beyond the moral capitals of Washington and London to New Delhi and Islamabad, to Pyongyang and Baghdad, Beijing, Tel Aviv and to every nuclear nation of the future.

If that happens, the world will have become infinitely more dangerous than it was two years ago, when George W. Bush took the presidential oath of office.

No kidding. But, as Ridgeway reminds us:

As [Bush] told Bob Woodward in Bush at War , the president sees no reason to explain his actions: "I'm the commander—see, I don't need to explain—I do not need to explain why I say things. That's the interesting thing about being the president. Maybe somebody needs to explain to me why they say something, but I don't feel like I owe anybody an explanation."

Gee, that's right, Mr. President: Why would you possibly need to explain any of your statements or actions to the American people? You're not a public servant or anything, are you? You don't serve at the behest of millions of voters, do you? Shall we take this as an admission that Bush thinks of himself as an appointed President (thanks to the Supreme Court), rather than an elected one?

Come to think of it, why even bother with a State of the Union address tonight? It's not like Bush has any responsibility to tell any of us anything, right? *grrrr*

Posted 02:24 PM | general politics

We're Waaaiiiting!

As I wait to hear if any law school is going to let me in, I've got to say it's not a lot of fun watching JCA go through a similar apply-and-hope-and-wait process trying to line up a good job for the summer after her first year as a law student. Is this what every spring is going to be like for the next three or four years (until I get a "real" legal job)? Probably. But then, a lot of law is probably like that—aren't you always filing papers of some kind, then waiting to see what people (i.e.: judges, juries, other lawyers) think of them? If so, I guess I should just get used to it. And anyway, here's where a desire to do something outside the mainstream of law might come in handy—perhaps when it comes time to look for jobs, I'll like the sound of the kinds of things that other people dread, which would, maybe, increase my chances of actually getting those jobs. Maybe.

Anyway, this latest chapter in JCA's law school odyssey attracted this comment from Sue, who appears to be in the same boat as me right now—just wishin', and hopin', and thinkin', plannin', dreamin', and prayin' ... that we get into law school. Good luck, Sue! Perhaps we should start some sort of blog-ring of our own—the lawyers and law students have their "blawgs," so maybe we should call ours "p-blawgs," for "pre-law-blogs"? Yeah, I'll get right on that. ;-)

(But seriously, if there's anyone else out there like Sue and myself who is currently waiting to hear from law schools and blogging about it, I'd love to hear from you. And good luck to you, too!)

Posted 10:08 AM | Comments (2) | life generally

LOTR Luddism?

Here's a morsel for the casual LOTR fans out there. I know there are countless Lord of the Rings fans, and I know from a few of my friends that a lot of you have spent obscene amounts of time amassing almost unfathomable amounts of information about Tolkien, Middle Earth, hobbits, etc. If you have read the Silmarillion, this probably won't be news to you so please don't flame my ignorance, but... For those of you who, like me, read the books years ago and have been enjoying the movies in a pretty casual way—as in, so casual you're never really sure when the films depart from the books and your ignorance doesn't really bother you—you might enjoy The Engineer Guy's short discussion of the role of technology in the books. Now why would a trilogy that demonizes technology and celebrates the simple agrarian life have so much appeal in a world of smart bombs and modern bureaucratic systems of surveillance and control (hello TIA)? Hmm... I wonder. (Note: The TIA program has a new logo. What a shame! The logo was the best part of the whole concept! Oh well. You can still see the old one here.)

Posted 09:39 AM | ai movies