Joementum.
 

Dude, come on. You know I have a fairly dim view of protesters and little tolerance for the stupid (the latter I recognize often painting me as a hypocrite due to the quality/coherence of my posts). I'm not saying she deserved what she got, and you know me better than to twist me words that way. I'm just saying, as icily as I think is deserved for a person who does something as dumb as that girl did, and is as naive as that girl was, caveat emptor. And she wasn't protecting her house. She was on a moral crusade to save the world. As laudable as that may be, it doesn't exempt you from the pitfalls of stupidity, one of which is getting run over by a bulldozer you lay in front of.

ETA: I also admit a distaste for white suburban kids on crusades like hers. I don't think anyone at her age has the full understanding of issues to be doing what she did. You could say her foray into world saving was as ill advised and poorly executed as Bush's foray into nation building overseas. Two people doing something they don't know a hell of a lot about. I guess I'd have to give her more credit, for putting her money where her mouth was, instead of havin others pay with their blood. But I'm not going to accept some revisionist view of her as a felled victim. She wanted high risk; she got it. There are other, smarter ways to protest. Being a zealot'll kill ya.

Joementum.
 

And are ye sayin' I'm after twistin' your words, boyo? This is the Politics Board and twisting is the new spin. Plus I reject the conventional wisdom that says only neocons can be glib, insincere and ill-informed when talking about politics.

But. We are in agreement about the putting money where mouth is part. And with regard to participating in other peoples' wars, a question: Abraham Lincoln Brigade: imbeciles?

Joementum.
 

spanish civil war posts? why not just PM me and ask for a new Guernica post? I mean Shape shifter has practically given me a macro and all.

Joementum.
 

You have no Iberian monopoly. Plus it's retro day on the boards. Pony posted something from 2002 on the FB, and 4 years there is like 80 in Politics years.

Lieberman
 

The question is if he wins who does he organize with?

Joementum.
 

My apologies. You know me. I never read the updates in the Rule Book.

There's a fuzzy border between taking a righteous moral stance and doing something because you "need to have a cause." I've known so many professional protesters, and the majority struck me as needy types. Like the hyper-religious, they wanted direction. I can't respect that. My feeling was, the Corrie was of that ilk. There's a point where "true believer" gives way to "deranged and unthinking zealot." If we accept the position that one's certiainty of rightness of a thing makes the doing of it, no matter how wrongheaded or stupid it might be, valid and worthy of praise, then why not applaud suicide bombers? A zealot's a zealot, right?

Joementum.
 

Right. And I don't accept that position. I don't know the girl any better than you did. Maybe she was a fruitcake. Maybe we wouldn't enjoy having a drink with her. But the difference between her and suicide bombers is pretty clear. Suicide bombers (try to) kill people.

And it doesn't matter whether she or anyone else puts themselves in danger because they have a "truly righteous moral stance" or because they "need to have a cause." Maybe the Americans who joined the 15th International were emotionally needy, misguided, or just assholes with nothing to do. The point is they were fighting fascism. You can agree with the cause or not (I deliberately picked one I think most of us can agree was a Good Thing), but their individual motivations don't make the cause any better or worse.

You either think bulldozing Palestinian houses is a Good Thing or you don't. But whether Carrie was the kind of person who Really Meant It, or was Just There For Shits And Giggles, or Really Really Hated America, the fact remains that she was protesting peacefully and died for it.

Joementum.
 

if the bulldozered houses were hiding tunnels into Egypt (or whereever) or if the houses were the homes of homicide bombers being removed as a penalty, then Israel was acting pretty rationally. If people stand in the way of those bulldozers then they should get squashed. You want to call them brave soldiers- god bless. This isn't like a Dennis the Menace episode where Dennis is trying to save the old oak tree in the park from going under for a parking lot.

Echo Chamber
 

Here's a recent review of that Suskind book, if anyone cares:

• History as a Cartoon
  Books
  BY ANDREW C. MCCARTHY
  July 6, 2006
  URL: http://www.nysun.com/article/35523
  
  It is no secret that the attacks of September 11, 2001, resulted in two wars. The first was the one in which the United States finally engaged with Islamic terrorists, who had declared war when they bombed the World Trade Center in 1993. The second is the war against the war.
  
  This latter is an internecine executive branch struggle, pitting insurgent factions of the intelligence community and veterans of the foreign service bureaucracy against Bush administration policy-makers. So sordid has it become that strategic leaks were a staple of the 2004 presidential campaign. Failing their transparent design to topple a sitting president, the renegades have nonetheless continued apace, recently exposing key programs aimed at penetrating Al Qaeda's international communications and money movements.
  
  The insurgency thrives due to its ideological soul mates in the mainstream press. One of the brightest stars in its firmament is Ron Suskind. A past winner of the club's coveted Pulitzer Prize, which is now awarded annually for the best leaking of national security information, Mr. Suskind in 2004 authored "The Price of Loyalty," which, courtesy of a disgruntled cat's paw (a former treasury Secretary, Paul O'Neill), painted an election-year portrait of President Bush as a dimwit whose strings were pulled by dark forces: principally, Karl Rove and Vice President Cheney.
  
  Mr. Suskind is back again with "The One Percent Doctrine: Deep Inside America's Pursuit of Its Enemies Since 9/11" (Simon & Schuster, 367 pages, $27), another explosive best seller on the same overarching theme. If the far-left anthem "Bush lied and people died" is where you're coming from, if you think your country and its "visceral, emotive, non-substantive and faith based" president have been hijacked by wild-eyed neocons bent on an American empire that serves Israel's interests, this is the book for you.
  
  While today's politicized press has embraced Mr. Suskind's Bush-bashing, the press of a bygone day, one more objectively critical, might instead have asked whether one can ever arrive at a semblance of truth by only talking to one side of a heated historic dispute. In this regard, Mr. Suskind's book, however unintentionally, is hilarious.
  
  In an "author's note" at the very end, Mr. Suskind thanks the "nearly one hundred well-placed" sources whom he has chosen to accommodate by not identifying. Let's leave aside the broad license to mutilate that this confers on the author, who vents his own considerable prejudices through seemingly authoritative accounts from raconteurs whose anonymity renders them conveniently unimpeachable. There is not, here, even a fig leaf of objectivity. It is pluperfectly obvious whose versions of events Mr. Suskind values, and whose - no matter how central to the story - were readily substituted by caricature.
  
  So we learn in lush detail, including extensive quotations from private conversations, of the thoughtful, agonizing, nuanced deliberations and frustrations of such luminaries as a former CIA director, George Tenet (likable, passionate, and able ... but compromised because he owes Mr. Bush, who did not fire him despite the CIA's abysmal performance prior to September 11), Brent Scowcroft (a former national security adviser and still confidant of President George H.W. Bush who, we learn through Mr. Scowcroft, has a cold and distant relationship with his less able son), various CIA upper and middle managers, and even some FBI grunts. Their conversations are rendered in rich, frequently self-serving detail.
  
  To the contrary, the powers to whom they valiantly try to speak truth are metaphors, not people: "Imperial America" is fighting a "so-called 'war on terror.'" (In case you miss the point that Mr. Suskind doesn't believe we're in a real war, he helps you by repeating it every few paragraphs.) It is ruled by Mr. Bush, a barely literate Bible thumper whose refusal to read even short memos has created an "evidence-free realm" that he rules by drawing on "the deep well of faith." His then-national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, is "a fierce academic-bred achiever, alone at 46, bemused and appraising, cool and sealed each morning in a snug Oscar de la Renta." Defense Secretary Rumsfeld is the sharp-elbowed, Machiavellian infighter, singularly responsible for the failure to capture Osama bin Laden out of petty resistance to playing second fiddle to the CIA. Mr. Suskind reports that Mr. Rumsfeld has allegedly told the Joint Chiefs, "Every CIA success is a DoD failure." In all manner of machinations, "Don" is joined at the hip with "Dick." That would be Mr. Cheney, of course, the villain of the book. Indeed, when Mr. Suskind wants to convey how effective Al Qaeda's ruthless no. 2 terrorist, Ayman al-Zawahri, is, he can't resist describing him as "bin Laden's Cheney."
  
  Mr. Cheney is the father of the book's gravamen, the "one-percent doctrine." This is the device by which the administration has supposedly dispensed with evidence-based decision making, the mooring that, for Mr. Suskind, made President Clinton's America a nation of laws, not men. It is, for Mr. Suskind, the colossal blunder that has led to the misadventure in Iraq and a national hysteria over terrorism. According to Mr. Suskind, Mr. Cheney has decreed that if a situation presents a 1% risk of a "high-impact" event, the government must treat the threat as if it were a certainty and move to preventive measures rather than dawdling over such niceties as, well, proof.
  
  The notion is absurd, and it is manifestly false that anything close to it has ever been an operating principle. There can be no gainsaying that the attacks of September 11 shifted the nation's priorities. Though Mr. Suskind chooses not to dwell on it, when terrorism was treated as he prefers - i.e., like a crime rather than the "war" he ceaselessly belittles - the United States managed to convict less than three dozen operatives (mostly low-level) while the nation was attacked repeatedly and Al Qaeda's ranks swelled. Plainly, with a committed enemy and righteous fears about weapons of incalculably destructive power, the focus had to shift to prevention rather than prosecution. But the thought that an obsession over prevention has meant the death knell of reason, and that error in high-pressure judgment is the tell-tale sign of deceit, is a nearly libelous oversimplification.
  
  For all his repetitive snipes at the president's supposed lack of sophistication, the irony is that Mr. Suskind has given us history as a cartoon.

Joementum.
 

No doubt. Your description is correct. As I said, my criticism is with the wisdom of the thing. I agree bulldozing a house is bad, but I'm not sure lying in front of the bulldower when you don't know if the driver can see you is the way to do it.

But do think the Why is an important consideration. You know as many people as I do who join protests sheerly to belong. I have sort of a gut dislike for that. And I think I have a right to maintain that dislike. Doing something out of need, rather than true commitment, is creepy. Reminds me of those kids at Phish shows who just needed to belong to something...

Joementum.
 

If your auntie had balls she'd be your uncle. I like the Dennis the Menace reference, though. Have you seen Red Dawn?

Joementum.
 

Don't worry. No one is saying you have to stop hating dirty hippies or Phish.

Joementum. Imagine it is America.
 

Imagine it is America.

In 1964 a "Mexican Liberation Organization for Independence of the South-West states of the USA" - MLO - was created with the help of the Mexican government.

In 1972 the MLO murdered the members of US wrestling team at Olympic Games of Munich.

Since then, the citizens of the United States have been subjected to random acts of terror by the members of various factions of the MLO.

1993: Mexican and US representatives met in Oslo and signed a breakthrough agreement of mutual recognition between the USA and the MLO Organization, which began the US-Mexican peace process.

The chain of agreements that followed, were facilitated by Panama - Wye River Memorandum, Camp David, summit at Sharm El Sheikh, Tenet Plan, Road Map.

During all this time the MLO organization continued terror activity against the USA and ignored all agreements it had signed.

The UN and EU observed the suicide bombings, kidnappings and home made rockets fired across the border by the MLO, but financially, politically and morally supported the MLO and the Mexican government struggle against the USA.

10 months ago the US government announced its decision to withdraw from New Mexico and transferred full control of the territory to the MLO.

6 month ago, US government ignored the protest of its people and deported the non-Mexican American population from New Mexico, hoping to save lives and reduce the cost of the conflict.

The MLO responded with an escalation of the terror. Katusha rockets from the recently left territories landed on the US. Suicide bombings and kidnappings never stopped.

A week ago MLO members used a tunnel to attack a US military border post. Two US solders were killed, 4 wounded and one kidnapped.

The MLO made a demand to release Mexican terrorists from US jails.

The US army in order to free the kidnapped solder and punish the MLO entered New Mexico. A Power station, bridges and the Interior ministry building was bombed.

A Panama Foreign Ministry spokesman called for restraint and advised that diplomacy is a viable option.

The President of Mexico has asked the United Nations for help in freeing the MLO members. The UN special envoy, Alvaro de Soto, says he will discuss the issue with the US government.

The US's 4-day military offensive in New Mexico has prompted recriminations during a UN Security Council debate sought by Spanish speeking countries.

For how long would the United States tolerate this -- just curious? :confused:

Echo Chamber
 

Wow. The New York Sun doesn't like the book. Whatever will be next, maybe unflattering pictures of Hillary in The Post?

Joementum. Imagine it is America.
 

if you're asking wonk or Ty or panda or panda-lite- that's easy. the US is at fault, and should put up with it- oh and stop searching them Mexicans at check points it's degrading.