This War Will Destabilize The Entire Mideast Region And Set Off A Global Shockwave Of Anti-Americanism

No it won't It just won't. None of that will happen.
-The Onion, March 26, 2003.

Fuck this illegal war

Not cheering

However, it might not be as simple as that.

Consider what happened in Basra last Saturday when there were air raids. The Qatari television channel al-Jazeera had a team in the city and it sent back graphic pictures of dead and wounded civilians which were widely shown in the Arab world.

But these images were all but ignored in the West, which seemed more interested in pictures of the American prisoners of war.

Pictures used in the West tend to be sanitised. The photograph with this story, taken after an air raid in Basra on Saturday, shows a wounded girl. What it doesn't show is that her foot has been blown off.

People do not take kindly to being bombed, even by "friendly forces".

Bush's Top Ten Mistakes in Iraq during the Past 4 Years

Saddam Hussein down, next...Gandhi!

Former Senator and Law & Order DA Fred Thompson has launched his not yet launched 2008 Presidential campaign with a stirring radio address exposing the truth about Mahatma Gandhi. Seriously.

Besides coolers and mattresses, protesters have brought along a giant paper mache statue of Mahatma Gandhi, who is pretty much the symbol of the anti-war movement. Code Pink was founded on his birthday, and when Saddam Hussein was being given a last chance to open Iraq to U.N. weapons inspectors, posters appeared around America asking “What would Gandhi do?”
And that’s a pretty good question. At what point is it okay to fight dictators like Saddam or the al Qaeda terrorists who want to take his place?

It turns out that the answer, according to Gandhi, is NEVER.

Okay, first of all Saddam Hussein had OPEN IRAQ TO UN INSPECTORS DURING HIS "LAST CHANCE". THEY WERE FINDING NOTHING WHEN BUSH REFUSED TO WAIT TO BOMB/INVADE. How can conservatives still point to the decision to attack Iraq as some proud, visionary moment for our glorious leader? I guess I answered my own question.

Gandhi's call for the British and Jews to "surrender willingly" to the Nazis during WWII is easy to demonize and it seems to be Thompson's whole point here. Saying Gandhi's views of non-violence is "unamerican" is both crazy (would it have REALLY been better if the US desegergated through armed insurrection?) and meaningless. Is this really what Thomspon is talking about, the removed tactical analysis more about Gandhi's political situation than the actual war in Europe over 60 years ago? This is what you are bringing? And as horrible as it sounds, as Chomsky describes in an interview, this is essentially a tactical suggestion.

Q: You know what he said to Lewis Fisher in 1938 about the Jews in Germany -- that German Jews ought to commit collective suicide, which would "have aroused the world and the people of Germany to Hitler's violence."

A: He was making a tactical proposal, not a principled one. He wasn't saying that they should have walked cheerfully into the gas chambers because that's what nonviolence dictates. He was saying, "if you do it, you may be better off."

If you divorce his proposal from any principled concern other than how many people's lives can be saved, it's conceivable that it would have aroused world concern in a way that the Nazi slaughter didn't. I don't believe it, but it's not literally impossible. On the other hand, there's nothing much that the European Jews could have done anyway under the prevailing circumstances, which were shameful everywhere.

The main point though, as Sepia Mutiny points out, Gandhi’s enemies aren’t America’s enemies. The protesters Thomspon is trying to smear with an association with GANDHI (?!) aren't advocating a "suicidal foreign policy", they are advocating a humane one. Gandhi was talking about social justice and equality, not how to maintain a global super power through arms.

But Thompson is right, you can't really learn anything through what some towel wearing freak had to say. The only visionaries are hack actors like Ronald Regan. And that guy who allowed Cole Trickle to race again at Dayton, and the dude who fired that gay ADA, but not for being gay, or that "actor" who played white supremacy huckster Knox Pooley on the 1987-90 TV show Wiseguy. Seriously.

Internet actualy is television, maybe

EV suggested blogging about this, and I'm totally doing it. So a group of six huge technology companies have delivered a device to the FCC that will be able to receive Internet access through unused television signals. A look of the six companies gives a hint at the kind of change a product like that could bring: Google, Microsoft, Dell, H-P, Intel, and Philips. Beaming the Internet as television signals would totally change how wireless connected devices work. It definitely wouldn't limit it to computers, broadband could be added to lots of smaller devices, all without hard wiring. As one of the FCC commissioners says in the Post article, Wi-Fi would be taken to the "next level". I think that's another way for saying, "BLOWING YOUR MIND"

What does this have to do with the Airbus A380 landing in the US for the first time at LAX and JFK Monday morning? As the LA Times :

"It's not going to be a revolution; it's going to be an evolution," said Bob van der Linden, chairman of the aeronautics division at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum. "You and I, and everybody else who flies, will determine whether this airplane is a hit or a flop."

To be sure, the A380, which is about 30% larger than Boeing's 747, is considered by many to be an engineering marvel. But it doesn't represent change on the scale its older cousin did. When the 747 came into service in the early 1970s, it was 2 1/2 times larger than the airplane it replaced.

The device the FCC will start testing could be the Internet's 747, forever changing individuals connection and access to the larger, mediated world. It will become TV.

Wikiworld

Friedman unit explained and demonstrated

My brackets are busted...screw the NCAA!

In retrospect, it probably wasn't a good idea to pick George Washington University to go to the Elite Eight. The first two days (so far) of the NCAA tournament have actually been kind of dull. There hasn't been any truly shocking upsets (VCU over Duke isn't exactly shocking) and only one OT game. Not so much Madness as Frazzle-ness.

Anyway, over at True Hoop Henry Abbott has a good post about the ambivalence of watching the tournament. On one hand it is undeniably fun to watch, and on the other hand its yet another showcase for the hypocrisy of the NCAA. The players aren't so much amateurs as unpaid semi-professionals, not students as much as a self-segregated group with (often) their own dorms, dining halls, courses, and grading schematics. Abbott talks about some of the common "defenses" for the NCAA, but I want to quickly mention two particularly lame aspects of college athletics:

1. The idea students are being paid through a free education at the school. Oh really? Cause I'm sure Nick Saban will understand that his starting left tackle has a paper due in class that week and won't be able to make it to practice: sorry coach! For some kids athletic scholarships are great opportunities, but in the pressure cooker of high level NCAA athletics, with the travel, the film study, the practices, the work out sessions, the games themselves, the student's educations often are dealt with as an afterthought. Think about the legions of stories that come out every year about college instructors, either willingly or through corrosion, giving athletes passing grades for lacking work. The bigger issue about this isn't the student athletes failing as it is the universities' willingness to cut corners and give breaks to insure a winning team. Often, kids aren't even getting the real college education they are supposedly getting for "free". Which leads to the second point:

2. MONEY MONEY MONEY
Everyone, EVERYONE, from the coaches, to the networks, to the merchandise sellers, to the shoe companies are literally making BILLIONS off these kids. CBS signed a 11-year, $6 billion contract for exclusive rights to the NCAA bball tournament in 1999. How much do you think that will be when the contract expires, less? Nike, Reebok, and Adidas sign contracts directly with college coaches for the exclusive right to dress their student players for 6 figures, possibly even more, but we don't know because these deals are SECRET. Ohio State this year isn't even wearing the Nike swoosh on their uniforms, but will be wearing Lebron James - Nike logo (James didn't actually attend Ohio State, but would have if he wanted to work for free). Meanwhile if Greg Oden gets a work study job or allows someone to BUY HIM LUNCH, the NCAA would launch an investigation.

The NCAA talks about greatness of amateurism and education, but most of us, athletes and viewers alike, are actually learning about the power of greed, exploitation, and corruption.

Well, I better go. If USC doesn't win this next game my chances of taking the money from the pool is gone!

Quick, before they put Friedman's incredibly wrong analysis behind a firewall again!

TimesSelect is allowing university professors and students to use the service for free. Sign up here. I think they just realized most universities have access to Lexis-Nexis and could read the selected TimesSelect article anyway if they wanted too. So, pretty much, sign up now for something that should have never been taken away from its free site, and that most of you could read any way for free!

Smush was probably updating his myspace

when he got ejected from the game on Sunday. There so much to say about Smush's myspace page, but I want to focus on three main things. One, his women "friends" scream "NBA groupie". Most of their pictures look like they double as ads in the back of the LA Weekly! Two, at the very bottom of the page he describes his time at Fordam as:

Major: Ball-ology
Minor: Women-ology

That's actually kind of funny. Third, couldn't he have found a better picture of his dad? It is kind of sweet, but there has to be a photo of his father that doesn't make him look like a drugged-out, hammer-threatening weirdo he met in the subway?

I'm sorry to say it because its not really fair, but Kobe's site is way, way, WAY better. The difference actually is akin to the difference in talent level! Realizing I could never get Kobe though, I should talk to Smush about his ideas for this blog. I can hear it now: "Blog-calade"

Willing to sell out

Television Without Pity is a great site. Its original, complete recaps of reality and serial shows lets you follow shows you don't actually want to watch (cough...24...cough) and geek out by READING over what you just WATCHED (or debate the latest dictates of the Laura Roslin administration). It was announced today that TWoP has been bought by Bravo:

"If Television Without Pity didn't exist, we would have built it," said Bravo exec VP Jason Klarman, who's at the center of Bravo's online strategy. Klarman said the purchase will change the Bravo digital suite services overnight by nearly doubling, to more than 2 million, the number of unique visitors to Bravo-owned online sites.

On one hand, good for TWoP. It's probably a lot of money, or at least to be secure and allow them to grow there site of retold primetime television and gossip about it. One the other, its kind of weird as a frequent visitor to a website that really delivers the promises of the brave new world of niche media be bought by a much larger, and often older, media entity. A similar thing happened about a month ago with the NBA blog Truehoop by sports writers Henry Abbott, another great site, bought by the "ESPN industrial media complex" (trademark pending!)

Its nearly a cliche to talk about the level of media consolidation these days, but when you read this in the Variety article about the TWoP purchase:

Bravo execs said the site will maintain complete editorial independence, despite now being a tiny division of General Electric.

It is hard not to reflect on the uniformity, reach, and pervasiveness of our current system. And how a couple of dorks on Blogger while watch BSG isn't going to change that anytime soon.

That being said, I am making plans to get THIS blog bought by a television network, cable or over the air. Top candidates include Verses, which apparently exists and covers the NHL, and Spike, which has reruns of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and those Japanese game shows with the horrible dubbing. Class all the way.

Stampy to get new, severly depressed friend

Its good to see the Mayor announce the "retirement" of the only female elephant left at the LA Zoo to a santuary in San Andreas, not unlike the one Stampy goes to at the end of episode 1F15 "Bart Gets an Elephant". While this is great news for the elephant, its important to mention how much time, effort, and suffering on the part of the animal it took to get to this point. Activists, like Bob Barker, had to pledge they would help put up the money for the transfer. Llyod Levine, an LA state rep, has a bill in the State house that would mandate every zoo have at least 5 acres of land for each elephant. Anything less then that is unnatural for the animals as it causes serious joint pains. Only one zoo in the state could qualify with those standards, and it ain't LA. Levine has a very unique view explaining why he even cares:

"I've said this about elephants repeatedly — nobody has an inherent right to see an elephant in the zoo. Nobody has an inherent right to see any animal in the zoo," said Levine, who is wading into the national controversy over whether zoos are humanely keeping elephants. "It's a privilege, and with the privilege of seeing an animal in the zoo comes the responsibility of providing it care that's appropriate."

That's a good way to put it, but I worry about State. Rep. Levine. You usually don't get far telling the American people they aren't entitled to something, unless its private phone calls and habeas corpus.

Why the Dems won't debate on Fox News

So with Edwards's withdrawal and Fox News President Roger Ailes again linking Obama with Osama (again, only as a joke!), the Nevada State Democratic Party is pulling out of their agreement with FOX News to co-sponsor a candidate debate in August. Over at Welcome to Pottersville they have gathered some of the hilarious, disturbing, and just bizarre moments that compelled Dem activists to push for this change. I had put one of the images labeling disgraced former-Congressman Mark Foley as a Democrat on this blog a few months ago.

My favorite from the Welcome to Pottersville collection is this one above. Why not just say "I want to kill those damn ragheads, I love talking about killing ragheads, but I don't want to kill ragheads"?

"We got broads out there who keep your kids from being run-over by some hard-on"

All it took was one particularly symbolically filled drive to work for this man to get the importance and necessity of unions, what will it take you!?

Daylight Saving Time's blues

Well, the Lakers lost. By 36. In a dramatic flip-flop, there no longer is even a shred of shred! Even if Lamar says he'll practice tomorrow and maybe even play in Denver on Thursday, the big worry is they don't embarrass themselves in the first round of the playoffs. If they drop lower in the West and play a Dallas-like team (or even...DALLAS!), it might turn ugly.

Still there is some good news: MY MAVERICKS ARE WINNING IT ALL BABY! With this win the Mavs tie the win streak of the 2000 Lakers, the year they won the first of three consecutive titles. Does this random connection really mean anything? Yes, yes it does.

BTW: Kwame could have started but didn't come on-time, AND didn't blame DTS? On the ESPN broadcast Jim Grey said he did blame DST AND the fact his birthday was last night. No worried if a $200 cake was destroyed during the festivities.

I hear you, Flea.

Flea has a blog on NBA.com, obviously. And in this post I think he has it right on, I guess the Lakers are not very good this year. Even the faintest bit of hope seems gone with Phil throwing some cold water on everyone by reminding us Pippen coming makes no sense and couldn't happen anyway.

Still, even with tomorrow being SELECTION SUNDAY (brought to you by the ESPN industrial complex), I'll still be watching the Lakers/Mavs game tomorrow(...which is brought by the same industrial complex). I got all week for the brackets, and, come on, Championship Week sucks. Seriously, the losing team in the Big East Final had 14 POINTS AT HALFTIME!!! Even though I have no hope, I also have to agree with Flea about empires, shreds, and such:

i honestly believed. earlier in the season, that they were at the same level with dallas and phoenix
but i was wrong
my shred of hope is nothing but a shred of hope
but great kingdoms have been built from a shred of hope

Preach on brother.

Something to get pumped for tomorrow's game: It's My Dirk in a Box

Iraq's children + basketball in the Holy Land = I needz my money!

Through my regular surfing I was directed to two amazing blog posts that demonstrate the appeal and promise of the form. The first was a post entitled Tears and Blood and Shit at Gorilla's Guides about the horrible suffering of Iraq's children today, right now. Its also a stirring denunciation of American's occupation, something that you don't see much in the newspapers or televisions in the US.

The second blog piece was about young Arab and Jewish kids playing together on a team called PeacePlayers entering the Old City of Jerusalem to play against another team. The NBA better get a hold of these guys quickly for their "Basketball without Borders" because they're doing it! As they explain:

The team walked bravely though the New Gate together and into unknown territory. For the Jewish children from Beit Shemesh it would be the first time they had ever entered an Arab dominated section of the Old City. For the Arab children they would be walking next to their Jewish teammates, not into a obscure gym, but right out in the open and in their own backyard. All this against the backdrop of the turmoil surrounding the excavation near the Temple Mount.

How hardcore are these kids? They court they played on in the Old City is walled in on two sides BY THE OLD CITY WALL!

While this is happening its nice to know others are working on how to monetize the blog form in the tried and tested way of getting people to sell out. But this is selling out with a twist: not just a few, but lots, and not with the large novelty check, but with small dollar amounts in secret, in the way that eats away at the soul. In the LA Times business section the story "Blogging for Dollars Raises Questions on Online Ethics" describes how company named PayPerPost pays bloggers to mention certain products in their blogs. It could be soap operas, wireless speakers, cruise vacations, whatever!

So it is in that spirit I ask: where's mine?! Can some pay me to hype their socially conscious media source? Not too big though, maybe something like Z Magazine. They'd pay someone like me big bucks, right? I guess I could figure out something with those sick and in danger Iraqi children. After all, our country gave them freedom and democracy, how about they do something for us (meaning me!) for once?

CBS convering the NBA....in 1975!

This is a few days old, but over on the AOL Sports blog NBA Fanhouse they dug up this amazing video of the opening of a Eastern Conference Final Game 7. Seriously a must watch, from the Schoolhouse Rock soundtrack to the warning after the opening that the NBA owns the announcers souls. On one hand its amazing how much more technologically advanced live sports coverage is today, on the other hand the music they used is way sicker than Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.

Dick Cheney Resigns

At least before the end of this year. That's the prediction/future reporting from The Crackpot Times staff. And by staff, I mean me, my prediction, but saying stuff like staff or administration or regime makes it sound much more official and considered than some loser on a laptop.

Seriously, I'm coming back for realz post-2006 midterm elections with this vision: Dick Cheney will be gone before Dec. 31, 2007, if not much much sooner. With the dismissal of Rummy, the conviction of Libby, and his increasingly deranged views, he has entered the Willy Loman era of his tenure.

Sure this sounds ridiculous and really means nothing (Cheney's defeats actually doesn't mean Al-Quaeda wins). So what's the point of this? One, to give me something to write about in saying I'm starting this thing again (for the third time). Two, so I can shove it in your faces when I'm right! In your face blog reader!

Leslie King dies

We here at The Crackpot Times don't go much for "great man" history, preferring a more "bottom-up" reading of events and significant changes. That being said, President Gerald Ford's death gives us yet another look at just how huge a jerk our current president is. And we're not talking about the pardon, but the pardonee. Check out the end of Nixon's short statement after learning Ford pardon him:

No words can describe the depths of my regret and pain at the anguish my mistakes over Watergate have caused the nation and the presidency -- a nation I so deeply love and an institution I so greatly respect.

I know many fair-minded people believe that my motivations and action in the Watergate affair were intentionally self-serving and illegal. I now understand how my own mistakes and misjudgments have contributed to that belief and seemed to support it. This burden is the heaviest one of all to bear.

That the way I tried to deal with Watergate was the wrong way is a burden I shall bear for every day of the life that is left to me.

It definitely has the elements of the self-pity party that seems to be part of Nixon's own personal psychodrama. However, to publicly announce something like that just one month after resigning in disgrace, without a corresponding sense of entitled forgiveness so common in apologizes, takes some amount of courage. At the very least, the depth of difference between the end of Watergate and today says volumes about the kind of political culture we are living in. Back then the president was ashamed at being exposed as a criminal, and people were upset at the next president who was calling for forgiveness! Today the president brags about spying on Americans, needlessly invades and occupies foreign lands, and attempts to resurrect a pre-Magna Carter legal system, while the press wonders why those who have a problem with it hate this country

Let's compare Nixon's statement to another recent high point of political rhetoric:

I hear the voices, and I read the front page, and I know the speculation. But I'm the decider, and I decide what is best.

That was from April 2006 and the very next sentence is: "And what's best is for Don Rumsfeld to remain as the secretary of defense." This is how he explained his eventual decision to get rid of the guy he was decider-ing after saying essentially the same thing a week before:

THE PRESIDENT: Right. No, you and Hunt and Keil came in the Oval Office, and Hunt asked me the question one week before the campaign, and basically it was, are you going to do something about Rumsfeld and the Vice President? And my answer was, they're going to stay on. And the reason why is I didn't want to inject a major decision about this war in the final days of a campaign. And so the only way to answer that question and to get you on to another question was to give you that answer.

Its a sad day when NIXON and FORD look like the men with integrity. You want to say it was another era, but then again, Cheney and Rumsfeld were there too...

Protecting us from non-ID carrying dark skinned people

From the Daily Bruin:

An incident late Tuesday night in which a UCLA student was stunned at least four times with a Taser has left the UCLA community questioning whether the university police officers' use of force was an appropriate response to the situation.

There's a video at the site that starts playing right away. Its pretty disturbing. By the way, the UCPD says they shocked him because he refused to leave and then "encouraged library patrons to join his resistance". Yep.

The LA Times has an article too, but whereas the Daily Bruin article has quotes from people at the scene and a description of what tasers do to people, the LA Times ends with a bunch of quotes about how the campus is so peaceful and a second year saying the cops are "really good".

The LA Times article also describes the video as "grainy". It might be poorly shot, with most of the action happening off frame, but it isn't grainy. It is actually surprisingly sharp!

Total coincidence, nothing to see here, move along…

Guess what, after three years in custody, a nine-month trial, and some three months after its end, Saddam Hussein's verdict and sentence will be announced on Sunday.

Iraq’s Defense Ministry, bracing for possible violence, announced Friday that it has canceled all military leave and placed the country’s forces on heightened alert ahead of the verdicts on Mr. Hussein and the other defendants. “We are on alert for any possible emergency,” said Maj. Gen. Ibrahim Shaker, the ministry’s spokesman.

Isn't this great news, really makes you see the Iraq invasion was a good idea. Hey, isn't something else happening next week? The New York Times article doesn't mention it, but I think there was something important...What is that crazy-ass Hussein defense team?

It has been reported that the fifth of this November will be the date of announcing the verdict in the so-called Dujail case, so that the verdict will precede the date of the U.S. Congress elections, which are scheduled to take place on 7 November 2006. ...We are sure that President Saddam Hussein is innocent and we do not accept anything less. The legal procedures to which the court should base itself to, in any decision it would take, should be perfect. The court and the trial are still going on in their gross violations to humanitarian laws and International human right laws and their applicable provisions. (The last and not the least) of these violations is that the court is still procrastinating in receiving the final defense submissions which were prepared by the defense lawyers, although these submissions were sent to the court on the 4th of October 2006. This procrastination constitutes a violation to a guaranteed right of defense in the national law, the Iraqi Constitution and international law.

Oh yeah, the US ELECTIONS! That's right. Well, these people are obviously nuts, I mean, they are defending Hussein, think he is innocent, and should get a fair trial! We don't have to acknowledge their baseless charge that the verdict date for his trial would somehow be manipulated for US political purpose. I mean, would our government be that craven to hold on to power?! Besides, if there was anything to this, we would have heard someone in the media mention the closeness of these two events. Right?

By the way, did you hear about Kerry disrespecting our troops?! I was going to vote Democratic, but after that and Micheal Fox's horrible lying, I'm going with the other guys!