Pine Belt Progressive

And ominous signs in other parts of the world as well.

International Herald Tribune — Hezbollah has apparently taken control of West Beirut. More in the SF Chronicle. It’s difficult to tell what’s really going on. Looks to me like a dispute over disarming Hezbollah between pro-government forces (backed by the Sunni states, the U.S., and Israel) and Hezbollah (backed by Iran, Syria, and the Lebanese parliamentary opposition), with the Lebanese army officially neutral.

The Lebanese government is calling the violence “an armed coup.” Syria is blaming U.S. and Israeli “adventurist interferances” for the violence. Condoleeza Rice is discussing how to support the Syrian government “in the face of illegal acts, by the armed gangs” with the secretary general and her French and Saudi counterparts. Hezbollah is handing over pro-government offices to the Lebanese military and says it will maintain roadblocks and control the route to the airport until the crisis is resolved. The White House is talking about “measures which must be taken to hold those responsible for the violence in Beirut accountable.” An unnamed source who supposedly speaks for the opposition says “all issues are linked. Beirut will remain shut until there is a political solution.”

This is oversimplifying just a bit, but this seems like spillover from the ongoing power struggle between the U.S. and Iran. I don’t think U.S. or Israeli bombs dropped from several thousand feet are going to resolve this, and I’d like to know more about where the population stands and how they’re faring.

Bush is headed to the Middle East next week. WaPo is quoting an “unnamed State Department Source” accusing Iran of giving a green light to Hezbollah. That official is probably right, but who can believe what the State Department says at this point? In fact, who can give the Post the benefit of the doubt and believe they’re actually quoting someone, instead of just making stuff up? I’m wondering whether or not the “green light” quote will make the Sunday talk shows. I’m guessing it will.

Elsewhere in the world . . .

Tanks and missile launchers made a return to Red Square for the inauguration of the new Russian president, Dmitri A. Medvedev, who gave a speech:

Medvedev said the history of World War II demonstrated that military conflicts are rooted in “irresponsible ambitions which prevail over interests of nations and entire continents.”

“We must not allow contempt for the norms of international law,” he said, in what sounded like veiled criticism of the United States and its Western allies.

I wouldn’t call that criticism “veiled.”

You’ll want to read this article in the Asia Times from earlier this week about Douglas Feith’s new book (emphasis added):

WASHINGTON - Three weeks after the September 11, 2001, terror attacks, former US defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld established an official military objective of not only removing the Saddam Hussein regime by force but overturning the regime in Iran, as well as in Syria and four other countries in the Middle East, according to a document quoted extensively in then-under secretary of defense for policy Douglas Feith’s recently published account of the Iraq war decisions . . .

. . . Feith’s account further indicates that this aggressive aim of remaking the map of the Middle East by military force and the Feith’s book, War and Decision, released last month, provides excerpts of the paper Rumsfeld sent to President George W Bush on September 30, 2001, calling for the administration to focus not on taking down Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda network but on the aim of establishing “new regimes” in a series of states by “aiding local peoples to rid themselves of terrorists and to free themselves of regimes that support terrorism”. . .

. . . General Wesley Clark, who commanded the North Atlantic Treaty Organization bombing campaign in the Kosovo war, recalls in his 2003 book Winning Modern Wars being told by a friend in the Pentagon in November 2001 that the list of states that Rumsfeld and deputy secretary of defense Paul Wolfowitz wanted to take down included Iraq, Iran, Syria, Libya, Sudan and Somalia.

So, instead of focusing our efforts on apprehending the person identified as responsible for the attacks on our country, and dismantling the network that carried them out, Rumsfeld and his generals decided to make a list of countries and overturn their governments under the guise of “helping” them. That’s the real war on terror. So I guess at this point we can conclude that Iran and Syria are next, and we can probably expect the administration to take action against one or both before the election. We’ve been warned.

Sorry posting has been so light this week. It probably will be light this weekend, as well. I have lots of irons in the fire right now, and won’t have much time to write on Saturday or Sunday.

Got tied up at work today and couldn’t get away at noon, so I missed the protest.

Did anyone go, and if so, got pics?

Thinking I might just start scheduling this as a day off.

Because we can never have too much Randy Newman

Tomorrow in Hattiesburg. 49 and Hardy Street, Noon. Bring yer signs! I’m hoping to make it there  with my camera.

Sorry, not much time for blogging at the moment. Hopefully, things will ease up for me later in the week.

Andrew Cockburn has what could be a big-time scoop at Counterpunch:

Six weeks ago, President Bush signed a secret finding authorizing a covert offensive against the Iranian regime that, according to those familiar with its contents, “unprecedented in its scope.”

Bush’s secret directive covers actions across a huge geographic area – from Lebanon to Afghanistan – but is also far more sweeping in the type of actions permitted under its guidelines – up to and including the assassination of targeted officials.

(h/t Elaine Meinel Supkis)

Cockburn reports that $300 million for this covert offensive was approved quickly with bipartisan support from Congress. He also includes this detail about the naval incident between U.S. and Iranian forces in the Persian Gulf last January:

Until recently, the administration faced a serious obstacle to action against Iran in the form of Centcom commander Admiral William Fallon, who made no secret of his contempt for official determination to take us to war. In a widely publicized incident last January, Iranian patrol boats approached a U.S. ship in what the Pentagon described as a “taunting” manner. According to Centcom staff officers, the American commander on the spot was about to open fire. At that point, the U.S. was close to war. He desisted only when Fallon personally and explicitly ordered him not to shoot. The White House, according to the staff officers, was “absolutely furious” with Fallon for defusing the incident.

Fallon’s resignation cleared the way for Petraeus to be promoted to head Centcom. Cockburn appears to believe we’re planning to attack Iran before Petraeus officially moves to his new job, and says we’ve changed deployment schedules in preparation for the attack:

Though Petraeus is not due to take formal command at Centcom until late summer, there are abundant signs that something may happen before then. A Marine amphibious force, originally due to leave San Diego for the Persian Gulf in mid June, has had its sailing date abruptly moved up to May 4. A scheduled meeting in Europe between French diplomats acting as intermediaries for the U.S. and Iranian representatives has been abruptly cancelled in the last two weeks. Petraeus is said to be at work on a master briefing for congress to demonstrate conclusively that the Iranians are the source of our current troubles in Iraq, thanks to their support for the Shia militia currently under attack by U.S. forces in Baghdad.

The article is worth a read, but it isn’t well-sourced enough for me, so I thought I would check and see if anyone else is writing about this. As far as I can tell, no one is. I couldn’t find anything at all about the president authorizing a big covert operation. I did find a couple of stories from April 13 about a meeting between Iran and IAEA officials in Vienna being canceled, and it was not at all clear whether Iran or IAEA were actually responsible for the meeting being canceled.

The 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit did leave San Diego today on two amphibious assault ships, along with various helicopter units and beach assault forces, a guided missile cruiser, and two destroyers. I read several reports of this and did lots of searching, but I didn’t find anyone admitting that this is an early deployment.

Over the weekend, a delegation from the Iraq government went to Iran to discuss allegations made by the U.S. that Iran is arming militias in Iraq. Supposedly the U.S. has evidence in the form of captured weapons. Today, representatives of the Iraqi government distanced themselves from the U.S. allegations and announced they are forming their own committee to investigate the activities of foreign countries in Iraq. A little while later, the government changed their story and announced (in an interview arranged by U.S. officials) that they have “‘concrete evidence’ Iran is fomenting violence” and the purpose of the new Iraqi committee is actually to document the evidence.

Press in the U.K. is reporting that those Iranian nuclear facilities our government has been screeching about for the past few weeks are actually on the back burner, as far as military operations are concerned, and that plans are in the works to strike a “training camp” inside Iran.

Feeling the deja vu yet?

Just a couple of points here. First, I have no idea what’s really going on. The more news I read about this, the more mystified I become. Second, It’s likely that Iran is arming some Iraqis. But, I do not think the fact that a given group possesses weapons manufactured in Iran is sufficient to prove that the Iranian government armed that group. Iraq and Iran share a border. Weapons have been traveling back and forth across it for decades. And I do not think air strikes on Iran will prevent weapons from continuing to traveling across that border.

I do think attacking Iran is likely to have more negative consequences for U.S. forces in Iraq than positive ones. Especially if the we decide to attack them repeatedly or initiate an actual campaign in their territory. Considering the way we have our forces scattered out doing counterinsurgency, and their dependence on supplies from Kuwait, I think it could very well lead to a scenario like this one. (via)

And see Tom Engelhardt today on our military thinkers and their preparations for endless war.

This is a rose of some sort. I am not sure what sort, because I didn’t write the name down when I took the pic a back in April.

Busy weekend. Hopefully I’ll be able to do some posting tomorrow.

One of my favorite bands ever. I like their long instrumental stuff the best, but I’ve always had a soft spot for this one.

All Out.

I’m not spending any money today. How ’bout you?

Today is also Mission Accomplished Day

Photo via Think Progress

More at After Downing Street

I’ve been careful not to suggest that we’re actually going there up to this point, but recent development are making me think the answer is “yes.” I explain why I think so here.

VoteVets.org is urging supporters to write letters to the editor supporting the badly-needed update to the G.I. Bill, which is gaining bipartisan support in the Senate.

There’s a big fight over it going on. John McCain is refusing to support the bill and is instead shilling for an alternative bill which would cut the educational benefits provided in the new bill and is supported by the Secretary of Defense. Dday on McCain’s bill:

Put aside for a moment the fact that McCain’s bill would basically hold soldiers hostage inside the military the same way employees are held hostage at their jobs for health care benefits. Put aside that the goal of the McCain bill is not honoring the service of our veterans but making sure enough people are locked into the military to fight all the extra wars he wants to wage. And put aside that the current benefit levels, which McCain’s bill seeks to for the most part freeze, are insufficient to the task of covering the cost of higher education.

This is McCain’s shtick. He looks to control the stakes of bipartisanship and define it as “everyone agree with me,” and he’ll lie about your intentions if you dare to defy him.

President Bush is threatening to veto the good bill if it passes.

Music by Dropkick Murphys.

h/t WriteChic

That’s a lot of money for the NRCC to be putting into the First District of Mississippi — especially for ads of such poor production quality. It’s always difficult to tell how ads will be received, but in the one above, I think people are going to find the narrator condescending . The animation looks like it was done with PowerPoint.

“Groovy” is just silly. It’s a sign that whoever produced the ad believes Mississippians are still living in the 1980s. Using the hippie stereotype as a smear just doesn’t have the same effect it did 25 years ago, and there are going to be a lot of voters participating in this election who simply don’t have the emotional baggage from the Vietnam Era that’s required to make it work. “That dog won’t hunt” makes it even more obvious that the genius behind this ad thinks we’re all smoking corncob pipes and have cotton growing up to the edge of our porches.

Having donated money to John Kerry may be a good thing for Childers at this point. Kerry ran against Bush in 2004. To a lot of people, that’s all that matters, and it’s a plus. If this ad has any positive effect for Republicans at all, it’s going to come from stirring up some homophobic bigots who might otherwise stay home. I think that’s what the mention of S.F. and having Pelosi’s name in pink are really about.

This one, from the Davis campaign, is a bit more dangerous and a lot more dishonest.

It’s been thoroughly deconstructed elsewhere by now. Rev. Wright’ statement is being distorted here, and Obama wasn’t ridiculing rural people with his statement about guns and religion. This one could do some damage, though. It’s no secret that we still have lots of racism in Mississippi. However, it seems to me that the ad is preaching to the choir and could backfire. I think more people than you would expect are going to say the same thing about Rev. Wright’s speech that Buelahman said the other day in this post, which includes several minutes of video that helps to put Rev. Wright’s speech into its proper context.

The ad from the Davis campaign is, I think, designed to incite the base and get some people who would otherwise stay home to turn out. The problem I see with it is that it’s probably going to turn some people off, too. It’s fairly well-accepted that negative advertising reduces turnout in general more often than not. Since it tends to hurt the target’s turnout more than the sponsor’s, and since high turnout so often favors Democrats, I think the GOP strategy here is to depress turnout as much for possible and hope for the best.

It’s significant that the word “Republican” isn’t mentioned anywhere in the ad. That’s because the Republican brand is pretty much dead, at least for this election cycle. If someone in the Childers campaign asked for my advice, I’d tell them to brand Davis as a big-money, pro-war Republican. One who doesn’t want us to have jobs or our children to have health insurance. Just like Bush and McCain. They should also do everything possible to question his credibility as a conservative.

To me, these ads make Davis seem desperate. As nervous as that second ad makes me, I’m glad the NRCC is spending this kind of money here, and I hope it turns out to be a waste of resources for them.

Jeff Walters has a roundup on the MS-01 race over at the excellent Cotton Mouth, including a link to a post that discusses the FEC filing that the dollar figure comes from.

Will Bardwell has invented a fun new game called “Childers said Nothing.”

Here’s BuelahMan’s latest collaboration with the ultimate lefty band, Max and the Marginalized. A great song, and video about the Pentagon’s pedantic, pusillanimous, propaganda pundit-puppets. The sock puppet at the beginning of the video is excellent.

As always, you can find many more music videos at Max’s blog, and all sorts of moving pictures at BuelahMan’s YouTube channel.

A while ago, I wrote that you have to tell stories if you want to win an ideological struggle. Fake Consultant, who writes at Left in Alabama, is quickly becoming one of my favorite storytellers in the blogosphere. I find Fake Consultant’s peculiar combination of laid-back style, wit, and ability to make good points very pleasing. Over the weekend, F.C. had a great story about some goings-on at a high school during the annual Day of Silence.

In my little corner of the world, the plain fact is that it’s probably a lot easier to remain closeted than it is to deal daily with the little taunts and jabs that come your way—and of course for some, there’s the risk that they might end up like Matthew Shepard…a man who ended up out and dead.

There has been a reaction to that reality in high schools, which is why we are today visiting the public spaces just off the campus of Mt. Si High School in Snoqualmie, Washington (home of the Wildcats), where a local church group will be arriving to protest the school’s annual “Day of Silence”, an effort to acknowledge the pressures placed on the school’s gay population.

Displayed among the various protesters today was fear, ignorance, disingenuousness, and a strange mixture of self-righteousness and homoeroticism…and that was just among the people in the church group.

Were minds changed?
Did anyone make a new friend?
And how do Dr. Martin Luther King and the Pledge of Allegiance fit into the picture?
Follow along, and we shall see.

If you like the story, you can find more at of F.C.’s work here.

Bonus: PortlyDyke has a great post about an experiment ABC did in which they had gay couples display affection for one another in public. One passerby called 911and reported two men kissing on a park bench, and the police actually sent an officer to investigate!