I picked this off of google cache, written post election, Nov 18 2008, marcambinder.theatlantic.com/archives
Obama Wants Orszag At OMB
18 Nov 2008 03:05 pm
Barack Obama has tapped CBO director Peter Orszag to be director of the Office of Management and Budget, my collegues at National Journal report today.
He's a youngish overachiever, just 40, and subscribes to the theory of what he once called "cool-headed, warm-hearted" economic policy. Judging by his blog, Orszag has smart and interesting things to say about the intersection of psychology and economics, the long-term vs. short-term effects of climate change legislation, honest budgeting and accounting, and lots more.
OMB is the executive branch's budgetary arm and management oversight evaluator. The director serves as a key presidential adviser on the economy and is responsible for projecting the fiscal consequences of any presidential decision. OMB would figure out how much Barack Obama's health care plan will cost, for example, as it gets introduced in Congress. It'll score every bill that Congress sends to Obama. It's the repository of policy, responsible for official statements. More to the point, though, is that OMB will administer Obama's transparency agenda. Regulatory reform will originate at OMB.
This is going to be an action packed weekend in DC and around the nation. On Friday, there will be protests of Yoo. On Saturday, there will be a massive antiwar demonstration (there will also be demonstrations in Philly, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, and South Dakota, among other places). On Sunday, there will be a large march for immigration reform. And there will be other related events around the country, along with the small protests and events that happen all the time.
So join me below the fold to see how you can effect change this weekend.
John Horton Conway's game of "Life" is just about the simplest representation of organic processes which captures anything of their complexity, and it's essentially unpredictable.
No one has ever discovered a general description of the sort of structure which will generate relatively simple patterns like a "reddit alien." The folklore of "Life" evolved by trial and error over millions of hours of computer animations in math and physics and computer science departments all over the world, and the sort of people who are better at understanding this sort of thing than anybody else only slowly, slowly developed a few rules of thumb for designing simple structures whose evolution we can more or less predict, but only after observing the still unpredictable outcome of microscopic variations in initial conditions, all of them exquisitely sensitive to the alteration of even one pixel on the screen, where almost anything that you and I would call a pattern rapidly dissolves into disorder.
Now imagine a game of "Life" where the rules vary radically across the screen, external factors constantly impinge upon the game, and you don't know the rules.
This is a picture of the American "game" in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.
"People who heard what Biden said [to Israeli officials behind closed doors] were stunned," the centrist Israeli daily newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth reported. "'This is starting to get dangerous for us,' Biden castigated his interlocutors. 'What you're doing here undermines the security of our troops who are fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. That endangers us, and it endangers regional peace.'"
"In language that could only have been finalized shortly before he delivered the speech, Biden reiterated that it was Israel's perceived breach of trust that had been so galling - at a time, with the fragile proximity talks just getting under way, when trust was at a premium," Jerusalem Post editorialist David Horovitz wrote Thursday.
Ackerman:
http://attackerman.firedoglake... Today Secretary Clinton got in the act. Netanyahu is an obstructionist and it's good to see the Obama administration remind Israelis that its interests are not abstract things. The truth is it's not "starting" to get dangerous for us.
My friend Daniel Levy has forgotten more about Israeli politics than I'll know and he writes that Netanyahu may be the last best hope for the two-state solution. For the life of me I just don't understand the logic. As best as I can understand, Daniel believes Netanyahu's obstructionism, combined with statebuilding efforts from Salam Fayyad in the West bank, will strengthen international support for... what? Imposing a solution on Israel?
Catch the commenter #8 on March 14th 2010 at 11:09 am, at FDL
Roll out the sternly worded speeches.
Did Biden really say the U.S. troops are fighting in Pakistan? And there weren't headlines on that?
"undermines the security of our troops who are fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan."
Aye yup. When one pits one Muslim country after another, against another non Muslim country, one who is already small in size but mighty in power, with a history of justified paranoia because of World War II, it can get dangerous for the perpetrator. But who ever thought it would be .... us ?
In a lengthy interview on Democracy Now! with Amy Goodman, Congressman Dennis Kucinich explained why he would not vote for the present health care bill and defended his position against attacks from people on the left like Markos Moulitsas. He also spoke about the subjects of Afghanistan, campaign finance, and the passing of activist Granny D.
I mean, I have a responsibility to take a stand here on behalf of those who want a public option. There's about thirty-four members of the Senate, at least, who have signed on to saying they support a public option. If I were to just concede right now and say, "Well, you know, whatever you want. All this pressure's building. Just forget about it," actually weakens every last-minute bit of negotiations that would try to improve the bill. So I think that it's really critical to take this stand, because without it, there's no real control over premiums. Without it, we have nothing in the bill except the privatization of our healthcare system.
Four War on Terra stories for a Wednesday afternoon:
1. The House of Representatives just voted No on a resolution to direct the President to remove the United States Armed Forces from Afghanistan within 30 days, or by Dec 31, 2010 if a later date is safer. 65 to 356. H Conn RES 248 was sponsored by Dennish Kucinich of Ohio and had 19 co sponsors. http://clerk.house.gov/evs/201...
Patrick Kennedy (D, RI) is down as a NO vote inspite of this story on HuffPo where he yells at the MSM for not paying attention to this national debate. "We're talking about war and peace, $3 billion, 1,000 lives and no press! No press !" WTF? No vote, dude! http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
The Yes on withdrawal votes were as follows. We thank the 5 Republicans who also voted for this (marked with ••).
Baldwin
••Campbell, John, CA 48
Capuano
Chu
Clarke
Clay
Cleaver
Crowley
Davis (IL)
DeFazio
Doyle
••Duncan John TN- 2
Edwards (MD)
Ellison
Farr
Filner
Frank (MA)
Grayson
Grijalva
Gutierrez
Hastings (FL)
Jackson (IL)
Jackson Lee (TX)
••Johnson Timothy (IL- 15)
Johnson, E. B.
••Jones Walter NC -3
Kagen
Kucinich
Larson (CT)
Lee (CA)
Lewis (GA)
Maffei
Maloney
Markey (MA)
McDermott
McGovern
Michaud
Miller, George
Nadler (NY)
Napolitano
Neal (MA)
Obey
Olver
••Paul, Ron, TX 14
Payne
Pingree (ME)
Polis (CO)
Quigley
Rangel
Richardson
Sánchez, Linda T.
Sanchez, Loretta
Schakowsky
Serrano
Speier
Stark
Stupak
Tierney
Towns
Tsongas
Velázquez
Waters
Watson
Welch
Woolsey
Today in America there is a big and under-reported issue. There are actually people out there, some of them unbelievably in Congress, crazy enough to challenge that great American institution, the military industrial complex. Who doesn't love Halliburton? Or Dick Cheney? Or the Iraq War? Or useless projects that do nothing more than enrich and empower an already powerful and rich elite?
I'll tell you who. 65 good for nothin' Congresspeople. They're the ones who today voted against a symbolic resolution to get our troops out of Afghanistan.
Now, cutting the snark, so many of the other 356 don't even have the gall to vote against a symbolic resolution to end a war! I understand that some people honestly support it, but when less than half of the country supports the war in Afghanistan, it's a bad sign that all of these Congresspeople still do:
And not only as to those leaders who send our Military to wars of choice but also the war profiteers who reap wealth from the huge defense budgets spent and these wars!
This weekly diary takes a look at the past week's important news stories from the perspective of our leading editorial cartoonists (including a few foreign ones) with analysis and commentary added in by me.
When evaluating a cartoon, ask yourself these questions:
1. Does a cartoon add to my existing knowledge base and help crystallize my thinking about the issue depicted?
2. Does the cartoonist have any obvious biases that distort reality?
3. Is the cartoonist reflecting prevailing public opinion or trying to shape it?
The answers will help determine the effectiveness of the cartoonist's message.
:: ::
Chris Britt, Comics.com, see reader comments in the State Journal-Register
In that parallel world from the reality around them and elsewhere, you'll get some as you go down but the kicker is the last report.
This type of thought process by the hawkish must end, unless the rest of the world communities want perpetual war and criminal terrorism as we've experienced over the last decades and now the chances of even more have been greatly enhanced with the death and destruction wrought by the so called mighty who followed same thought process into the creation of greater hatreds and enemies!
Anyone looking around the United States for signs of unrepentant racism should forget about over-privileged American hustlers like Skip Gates, Eric Holder, and Barack Obama, and take a walk through the Pentagon, where our next murderous "operations" in Iraq and Afghanistan are planned, or the Congress, where endless billions are effortlessly appropriated for mass murder of Asian non-persons, even after nine long years of destruction and futility, or the White House, where a nauseating con-man and his tools promulgate ludicrous apologetics for racism and genocide.
And what does it mean that the trendiest, most up-to-the-minute excuse for the murderous and illegal American occupation of Afghanistan is now... "saving" Afghan women from the Taliban, which is exactly the same as "saving" Afghan women from Afghan men of any description whatsoever, since the only discriminator between an ordinary male citizen of Afghanistan and a Taliban militant is that whatever US soldiers kill is Taliban, and before US soldiers created the latest dead "insurgent," he looked exactly like any other male citizen.
But we have an excuse for all that killing, we stupid fucking Americans who don't speak any of the many languages of Afghanistan or understand fuck-all about any aspect of life in Afghanistan, and never took any interest in Afghanistan whatsoever until we needed a patsy for 9/11.
We have a wonderful excuse for mass murder in Afghanistan!
We're "protecting" brown women from brown men.
You might think that this pathetic and obscene racist propaganda was first dreamed up by Laura Bush or Barack Obama or some other goddamned political trash, but you would be mistaken.
In September 2002 the Columbia Professor Lila Abu-Lughod published a terribly prophetic article in American Anthropologist about a species of racist propaganda which had already served as an excuse for imperialist aggression all around the third world, way back in the glory days of so many European empires.
Do Muslim Women Really Need Saving? Anthropological Reflections on Cultural Relativism and Its Others
As Laura Bush said, "Because of our recent military gains in much of Afghanistan, women are no longer imprisoned in their homes. They can listen to music and teach their daughters without fear of punishment... The fight against terrorism is also a fight for the rights and dignity of women."
"The fight against terrorism is also a fight for the rights and dignity of women."
You heard it from Laura Bush, and would Laura Bush bullshit you? She used to be a librarian! She helped little girls check out books! (Before she became a mostly silent partner in top-down class war and genocide.)
But Professor Abu-Lughod had heard it all before.
These words have haunting resonance for anyone who has studied colonial history. Many who have worked on British colonialism in South Asia have noted the use of the "woman question" in colonial policies where intervention into sati (the practice of widows immolating themselves on their husbands funeral pyres), child marriage, and other practices was used to justify colonial rule. As Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak has cynically put it: white men saving brown women from brown men.
The historical record is full of similar cases, including in the Middle East. In Turn of the Century Egypt, what Leila Ahmed called "colonial feminism" was hard at work. This was a selective concern about the plight of Egyptian women that focused on the veil as a sign of oppression.
No one doubts that very bad things have happened to women in India and Egypt and Afghanistan, and every example of brutality in Afghanistan for the last 30 years has been carefully catalogued by apologists for our senseless invasion and murderous occupation, and sanctimoniously attributed to the contemptible medieval theology of the Taliban and traditional Islam in general...
As if the glorious lifestyle which apologists for mass murder intend to share with the women of Afghanistan didn't imply a few risks of its own.
For example, HIV.
While Americans are cursing the Taliban's evil brand of Islam, and attributing every abuse of every woman who was ever abused in Afghanistan to the Taliban, suppose the Taliban turned the tables and attributed every gruesome case of HIV in the United States to the evil American brand of "secular humanism" or "Christian capitalism" or whatever other name you may assign to the mélange of greed, stupidity, and sanctimoniousness that passes for American culture.
The point of this analogy is... that's how the Taliban see themselves, as protecting women against aspects of "modernity" like sexual promiscuity, and their "superstitious and primitive" religion may even inspire them to believe that sexual promiscuity may cause some godawful plague (like HIV) to descend upon the population!
So while "secular humanists" are bemoaning abuses in Afghanistan, the Taliban could just as well demand an answer to their questions, like...
How many lives has "secular humanism" sacrificed on the altar of "sexual freedom?"
In 2007, the CDC estimated that 583,298 people had died of AIDS so far, including 557,902 adults and adolescents, and 4,891 children.
And it's just as accurate (and includes just as much context) to claim that all those lives were sacrificed on the altar of sexual promiscuity by "secular humanism," as attributing every instance of abuse of every woman who was ever abused in Afghanistan to "primitive" Islam.
And yet this imperialist dogma excuses everything, and every time some lunatic in Afghanistan mutilates a woman, and every time Afghan children are murdered by American bombs and rockets and artillery, shit apologists for our murderous occupation smile their superior smiles and congratulate themselves for "saving" brown women from brown men.
But if you want to know what "colonial feminism" really means for the women of Afghanistan...
Note: Although I wouldn't expect shit-head apologists for genocide to comprehend simple maps and statistics which illustrate the differential prevalance of HIV in Islamic and non-Islamic countries in the third world, other readers are referred to my diary on this subject, which I posted in December, 2009.
Many today may disagree as many did back in our failed policy occupation, Vietnam, but one of the main lessons many of us did learn is to respect those fighting you, as we occupied, and what they will do and bring at you in the battles of Guerilla War, in their land. For a soldier trains to be a warrior to defend his country and you're fighting warriors defending their country!
Ever since Marjah became one of the most famous "cities" in the world, I have been scanning the internet for images of it, and although I found thousands of photos tagged "Marjah," or "Marja," almost none of them show anything that looks like so much as a village, much less a city where somewhere between 50,000 and 80,000 people are supposed to dwell, and all that my many Google image searches turned up was a few tiny photos of almost nothing at all.
For example, the caption under this image from the Indian Express says...
US Marines walk in a column as they enter Marja in Helmand province on Saturday.
It's like a joke! Entering Marjah! There's about as much evidence of human habitation as in photos that come back from Mars!
But eventually a few TV reporters entered Marjah, and since TV reporters have to stand in front of something, the BBC found something in Marjah for their reporter to stand in front of.
And that's "liberated" Marjah, insofar as I could find any representation of it on the internet.
On Sunday, Feb 21st, NATO planes fired on what they mistook for a convoy of 3 insurgent vehicles in central Afghanistan, during the biggest offensive of the war, called "Moshtarak," ("Together") near Marjah.
When the bombing was over, and the scene looked at more closely, at least 27 civilians had been mistakenly killed, including 4 women and a child, and 12 others were injured. According to another account, the dead included 2 children, a 3 year old boy and a 9 year old girl.
General Stanley McCrystal has issued an apology to the president of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai.
"We are extremely saddened by the tragic loss of innocent lives," McChrystal's statement said. "I have made it clear to our forces that we are here to protect the Afghan people, and inadvertently killing or injuring civilians undermines their trust and confidence in our mission. We will redouble our efforts to regain that trust."
http://www.miamiherald.com/201...
President Karzai had called for NATO forces to try to protect more civilians from harm on Saturday.
"We need to reach the point where there are no civilian casualties," Karzai said. "Our effort and our criticism will continue until we reach that goal."
That was the day there was another civilian death, which came after the initial NATO bombing mistake which took the lives of 12 civilians on Feb 14th, the day after the start of the Marjah operation. There was an apology for the single death also.
The civilian was killed Friday after he dropped a box which soldiers feared contained a bomb and began running toward a coalition position, NATO said. The box contained materials that could be used to make a bomb but no explosives NATO said.
"This is truly a regrettable incident, and we offer our condolences to the family," said a NATO spokeswoman, Navy Capt. Jane Campbell, said in a statement.
Per the BBC, NATO (British) Lt. Gen Nick Parker said that an investigation is underway.
video transcript (warning, advertisement before Lt Gen Parker is bizarre in context)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/sou... Lt Gen Parker:
"I have to say these are very difficult incidents. Our people are not doing this deliberately. They have to make snap judgements, and sometimes these incidents occur. General McCrystal had all his junior commanders in this morning,
and he made it absolutely clear to them, that he expects commanders on the ground to make these difficult judgements as clearly and as carefully as they possibly can, in order to minimize the risk of casualties to civilians. We're clear, if we kill the people we're trying to protect, our credibility is undermined."
On Sunday, according to McClatchy, via the WAPO today, US Army General David Petraeus said the Afghanistan Marjah operation is just the beginning of a hard effort that will last 12 to 18 months, and the level of United States casualties will be "tough to bear." http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
Nato and Afghanistan government launch inquiry after planes fire on convoy of vehicles, killing at least 33 people.
Zemeri Bashary, an Afghan interior ministry spokesman, said the airstrike hit three minibuses on a major road near the Uruzgan border with the central Day Kundi province.
Bashary said the 42 people in the vehicles were all civilians.
Last Thursday, an airstrike in the northern Kunduz province missed the insurgents it was targeting and killed seven policemen.
And so far Operation Moshtarak has killed at least 19 civilians in Marjah.
And of course NATO didn't explain how anyone could even think that you can tell the difference between civilians and insurgents inside three Afghan mini-buses, traveling down a dusty road.
This most recent massacre occurred in Daikundi Province..,
And it isn't exactly the garden spot of Afghanistan...
But the narrow valleys of Daikundi Province are full of almond groves, and sometimes life can be beautiful, even in Afghanistan, after so many years of war.
Crossposted at Daily Kos. If you choose to recommend it there, the Rec Button may have been pushed to the bottom after the last diary comment made.
THE WEEK IN EDITORIAL CARTOONS
This weekly diary takes a look at the past week's important news stories from the perspective of our leading editorial cartoonists (including a few foreign ones) with analysis and commentary added in by me.
When evaluating a cartoon, ask yourself these questions:
1. Does a cartoon add to my existing knowledge base and help crystallize my thinking about the issue depicted?
2. Does the cartoonist have any obvious biases that distort reality?
3. Is the cartoonist reflecting prevailing public opinion or trying to shape it?
The answers will help determine the effectiveness of the cartoonist's message.
:: ::
Chris Britt, see reader comments in the State Journal-Register (Springfield, IL)
Another One Bites the Dust: The Dutch Government (Parliament Coalition) Collapses over the issue of staying in Afghanistan Saturday morning.
The Dutch had been scheduled to end their participation in NATO's mission in Afghanistan in August of 2010, with their troops to be out by December, but had been asked to stay longer. Concerns over the Dutch budget deficit, which meant that either tax hikes or spending cuts were looming, doomed the coalition led by Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende's government.
"I unfortunately note that there is no longer a fruitful path for the Christian Democrats, Labor Party and Christian Union to go forward," Balkenende, who leads the center-right Christian Democrats, told reporters.
Balkenende wanted to extend the Dutch troop deployment in the NATO-led mission in Afghanistan past an August deadline, but Deputy Prime Minister Wouter Bos's Labor Party opposed any extension.
Parliamentary elections to form a new government could be held by the summer, but establishing a functional coalition between 4 or 5 parties to get a majority may take some finangling.
The Dutch have been participating in NATO's Afghanistan occupation since 2006, and have lost 21 troops out of about 2000 deployed.
"Look around," the drill sergeant said. "In a few years, or even a few months, several of you will be dead. Some of you will be severely wounded or so badly mutilated that your own mother can't stand the sight of you. And for the real unlucky ones, you will come home so emotionally disfigured that you wish you had died over there."
"I think about why I'm fighting this war and my eyes tear up. I think of all the people we've killed. I think of all the people's families - mothers, fathers, siblings - and how they'll never see them again ... I think about the war and I feel nothing. I think about life and death, mine and everyone else's, and I feel nothing. I think about myself and I don't care if I live or die. On these nights, mortars go off and I won't get out of bed. I'll lie in bed as the bombs go off. I tell myself it doesn't matter if I live or die, nothing matters - I like it when I feel nothing."
"I had a friend who didn't want to go to Iraq so he purposely failed five drug tests in a row (smoking pot and doing coke) he still got sent to Iraq. There was one guy in my unit who didn't want to go to Iraq, he told our commanders he was suicidal, they said he still had to go. The soldier then went and got a swastika tattooed on his shoulder, he told the commanders that he was racist and hated everyone except white people; commanders said he still had to go to Iraq. The next day he takes a bottle of pills and tries to kill himself - and I'm sure if he were physically capable of it, he still would have had to go to Iraq. There was a guy in my unit who was on anti-depressant medication; our commanders said they couldn't deploy him on that medication that he should stop taking it. The next day he tries to stab someone and is put in jail, he still went to Iraq with us. There are more and more of the same stories ... There's literally nothing you can do to not go to Iraq and I think that's why suicidal and homicidal patients aren't getting the care they need because before it's time to go overseas, you're going no matter what, and after you get back, the government doesn't care."
Meanwhile Fox News is screaming about "human shields" supposedly deployed by the Taliban in Afghanistan.
In an effort to create hostility between coalition troops and local Afghans, insurgents are also reportedly using civilians as human shields - deliberately trying to force coalition troops to fire upon non-combatants.
This very emotive phrase, "human shields," was even solemly echoed by some dim-witted fourth-tier bloggers on usually progressive sites like firedoglake, where the in-house "expert" about Afghanistan Jim White wrote...
New reports are now suggesting that the largest civilian casualty event so far in the offensive may not have been due to improper targeting, but instead resulted from the use of civilians as human shields by Taliban fighters.
And the miserable Mr. White also quotes this steaming pile of horseshit...
The ISAF later suggested that the coalition's initial apology (for killing 10 or 12 civilians including 6 children) had been in error. Coalition investigators now think that the rocket hit its target and two insurgents died in the strike in addition to the 12 civilians, ISAF officials said. They're trying to determine whether those Taliban were holding the civilians prisoner.
White only adds that "it should not require pointing out that the use of civilian hostages as human shields is a war crime."
So let's retract that apology, because along with 6 children and 4 other civilians, maybe we also killed 2 Taliban!
And even supposing that the Taliban really were holding thoise civilians hostage, why is it supposedly okay, inevitable, no apology required, to kill ten civilians just to take out 2 Taliban? Ordinary policemen encounter hostage situations all the time, and it's never okay, inevitable, no apology required if cops killed 10 civilians to take out 2 bank-robbers.
So what's the tremendous, all-changing difference that somehow excuses civilian casualties in combat, no apology required?
In this particular instance, instead of making do with idiotic hand-waving about the "heat of battle" from some no-combat shit-head apologist for all things Obama, we actually have a specific explanation from an honest-to-God soldier in the combat zone, General Mohiudin Ghori.
Ghori, the senior commander for Afghan troops in the area, accused the Taliban of placing civilian hostages in the line of fire. "Especially in the south of Marjah, the enemy is fighting from compounds where soldiers can very clearly see women or children on the roof or in a second-floor or third-floor window," he was quoted by Associated Press as saying. "They are trying to get us to fire on them and kill the civilians."
His forces were having to choose between not returning fire and advancing much more slowly in order to distinguish militants from civilians, Ghori said, echoing comments by British commanders in the area about Taliban tactics.
Choose between not returning fire and advancing much more slowly in order to distinguish militants from civilians!
Choose between not returning fire and advancing much more slowly in order to distinguish militants from civilians!
The fiendish Taliban might force our forces to slow down and "distinguish militants from civilians!"
Reform Immigration -
March on Washington
