DIGBY!!!!

For the love of God! Digby breathes fire! Please read him... Every day...

Lameness and Andy

Andy, Andy, Andy, just how is one supposed to respond to this:

"The striking thing about this piece of video propaganda for the insurgency in Iraq is how Western-left it appears. From the British accent narrating the talking points to the weird challenge to "use the euro!", it's an interesting mesh of the anti-globalist, anti-American ideology in Europe and the murderous, Jihadist creed. The merger of the anti-globalist left and the anti-Semitic Jihadist right was always possible. Maybe this tape is evidence of its progress." [Emphasis mine - cj]

Maybe this necessitates me using the nuclear option. Yep, a close reading is indeed called for. "From the British accent...." Okay, Andy. So, because the chap that's reading this bit of propaganda is English, this clearly gives it the appearance of being "Western-left"? Is that so? Yes, whenever I hear a British narrator, that's the first thing that pops in my mind, too. Western-left. Never mind that you're English, Mr. Sullivan. And never mind that this is the title of the piece: "A Message From The Iraq Resistance Islamic Jihad Army - A message in English." [Again, my emphasis] I suppose if the narrator had, say, a Texas drawl, then you wouldn't have felt the need to bloviate so inanely about such a triviality. But this I excuse, as you're only getting warmed up.

It's the next statement where you really reach your stride: "...to the weird challenge to 'use the euro!', it's an interesting mesh of the anti-globalist, anti-American ideology in Europe and the murderous, Jihadist creed." Yes, "Use the euro!" was the rousing call to arms in Seattle, in Bombay, in Rio, in Toronto, and in every other city that was host to an anti-globalization demonstration. They used to chant vociferously, "Buy Nike!", but with Michael Jordan's retirement and the dollar plunging, they thought they could use a new slogan. Also, many of their murderous, Jihadist comrades had tons invested in the euro, so changing the slogan was really the least they could do. Recall also that it was the anti-globalization yahoos who first flocked to the malls in droves upon the president's urging to "go shopping" in the wake of 9/11. Some of the money spent could surely have been in euros-- a further indication of the creeping anti-globalist/jihadist alliance.

But, alas, maybe Andy is on to something. And when you're whipped, you're whipped.

Everybody! Together, now:

"We're here! We're queer! We're anti-globalists! And we're anti-Semitic jihadists! Use the euro or we'll decapitate the fuck out of you!"

You've ensnared us with your trenchant sleuthing, Mr. Sullivan. For this, I salute you.

You Have To Learn How To Die

I'm glad to see that Jesus' General, in typically perverse fashion, has called upon Tom Delay and the rest of the war trumpeters to put up or shut up. This is something that has really been rankling me lately. How many of the folks "who demanded this war" have made any sort of even cursory sacrifice in its name. How many have lost limbs, mental capacity, friends, relatives-- their lives? I'm fairly certain that the very same crowd of racist, fear-mongering, homophobic micro-genitiliites who protested Nightline's hour-long tribute to the American fallen are the last people who would look at these pictures with even an ounce of sympathy-- not to mention guilt. Why should they? They're as removed from anything that happens on the ground in Iraq as they are from appreciating a painting by Francis Bacon, a play by Tony Kushner, an essay by Susan Sontag, a poem by Amira Barraka... or their very own complex biologies, hormonal makeups, desires, urges, compulsions... or the California coastline with its tremendous cliffs, coastal redwoods, coral and seabirds (it's all so much seagull shit to them)... or the heroism of the Stonewall rioters, the "theorizing" of Charles Darwin, the stunning architecture of Frank Ghery, the cryptic brilliance of David Lynch, the hilarious and hammering prose of Phillip Roth, the thundering voice of PJ Harvey, the delicacy of Gong Li's features, the sublime bite of Lagavulin, the revolutionary zeal of the Marquis de Sade, the intoxicant that is love, the scientific method... or dead American soldiers... or dead Iraqis... And on... And on... And on....

These people understand power-- raw power-- and power only, and I've had just about enough of it. I say to these warmongering pussies (and here I'm paraphrasing Axl rose): Get in the fucking ring! Put your life on the line! Put your son's life on the line! Put your daughter's life on the line! This was your stupid fucking war! You die for it! I'm sure the gun will feel good in your hands-- it will make you feel all tingly inside. Strap it on, cocksure closet cases, and be gone with you! I'm sick to death of the lot of you.

"Some brains to go with your sperm sac, sir?"

E-Dawg and I went to Tama Sushi on Studio City's sushi row (or should I say "roe") last night. We each opted for the $30 B-plan omakase. We split a large Sapporo and a large sake. Katzu-san immediately went to work, delivering to us a fresh squid salad, consisting of the squid itself, wakame, and cucumbers, with a couple of sauces drizzled over the whole shebang-- one based on soy sauce , the other based on the unidentifiably fragrant Japanese citrus fruit, yuzu. The squid was the texture of al dente pappardelle, very much unlike the tire-rubber chewiness of the squids you find at lesser places, and very delicious.

Then came the platter of assorted bite-sized bits of palate-titillating appetizers: steamed okra with some kind of sauce on it, sardine on a slice of tomato and topped with minced ginger, a tiny deep-fried crab to be eaten whole and unaccompanied by sauce, a deep-fried scallop, and something in the middle of the platter that looked like the intestinal tract of a small bird. I asked Katzu what this might be, to which he responded in his heavily accented English, "Mayo egg." "What kind of fish?" "Mayo egg." "Male egg?" "Yes. Mayo egg. What you call?" "Sperm?" "Yes. Fugu. Very good." So it was with this bit of unexpected and exciting news that E-Dawg and I had our first-ever tastes of the sperm sac of the blowfish. I'd had fugu liver before (the poisonous part), at the ludicrously expensive and exceedingly delicious Ginza Sushi-ko, but never the sperm sac. It proved to be no let down.

As part of the B-plan omakase that Katzu offers, you are next delivered dashi in a teapot-- a seafood dashi rich in shrimp, shitake mushrooms, and some kind of whitefish. You sqeeze a lime into the broth, pour yourself a cup, and drink the divine goodness that results when bonito flakes and konbu are brought together in just the right combination and for just the right amount of time.

And then on to the sushi. First were two large cuts of toro-- this was big eye, not blue fin, but it was still terrifically fatty-- one from below the fin, and the other from the stomach itself. Next were two hefty cuts apiece of hamachi and kampachi-- both brilliant, but the hamachi was particularly fantastic. I think it was then that we saw Katzu go to work on a live scallop. After he had shelled the creature and cut it into thirds, he held the pieces over the counter to show us that it was indeed still alive. I was about to eat right out of his hands, but at that moment, he brought them back over the counter, put them on their beds of rice, and seasoned them with lime and sea salt. Then he served us halibut and the saba that caused E-Dawg, once having eaten it, to writhe around in a fugue of semiconscious, semi-orgasmic, semi-breathing euphoria, uttering something along the lines of, "That was the single best thing that has ever been in my mouth... It lingers... It's long... I want to fuck Katzu." And then came the finale: uni with shiso; and dungeness crab atop its own brain. And then it was over.

Or, not quite over. At some point towards the end of the meal, the two of us aswirl in a cocktail of sake and omega 3 fatty acids, E-Dawg endeavored to lecture the Spanish woman sitting to our left about Franco, fascism, and, if I remember correctly, fisting. Oh, but it's all a blur...

The check, with tip, was $110. This is not a cheap meal for two, but I would nonetheless rank it pound-for-pound as one of the best deals in town in terms of getting what you pay for. I know of no other super-high-quality sushi joint that lets you off so easy. A truly delicious, utterly transformative meal. I want to fuck Katzu.

Burbank: Where All the Action Is

This probably won't be very impactful on any of your lives, but I feel the need to report it anyway. While I was just outside in the alley behind my work smoking a cigarette, I came dangerously close to being run over by a white cow with the number 5 on it. I'm pretty sure that this is what actually happened. There were some cowboys in a great big pickup truck on its tail. They almost ran me over too.

My Cuppeth Runneth Over

Due to my meteoric rise in the world of blogging and my unprecedented 25% leap in readership-- there are now five of you-- I would like to take this time to say thank you. Yes, thank you, you, you, you, and you (and you know who you are). I do, however, have one simple request. Please, leave comments in the comment section. This is really the lifeblood of this venerable institution of blog. It fuels the raging storm of discourse that takes place herein and reminds me that I truly am a great human being. Again, thank you.

Liberal Hawkus Pawkus, Continued

I see that the very even keeled, and quasi-liberal hawk, Kevin Drum, tackled the Beinart column Thursday night. Although I disagree with Mr. Drum on a great variety of issues-- usually a matter of degrees, not whole cloth-- he's a very good blogger, and this is another good post that's well worth reading. Today, I see that Atrios has taken a chunk out of the Beinart influence in lefty blogville here, here, and here.

In my previous post, while in the throes of a self-induced froth to take on Beinart, I had determined to dissect his piece argument by argument, word by word. I really haven't the time or energy for all that nitpicking, so I've decided to concentrate on his main thesis, which is that liberals need to purge themselves of the "softs" (i.e. pacifists) among us, and in so doing, promote fighting totalitarian Islam to the top of our agenda, reframing the issue as we do so as a liberal struggle against the ravages of reactionary policy and dogma.

To make his point, Beinart employs the writerly device of conflating the totalitarian threat represented by the Soviet Union with the one that is today represented by totalitarian Islam. He doesn't go so far as many on the Right do when they conflate the "War on Terror" with World War II (Just last week on Meet the Press I heard Jerry Falwell, of all people, respond to a question being asked as to whether the Iraqi war adequately meets the Christian standard of a "just war" by admonishing Al Sharpton that if he had his way then the Nazis would have won the second world war-- or some such nonsense [Surely Russert-- or somebody-- should have jumped in to remind Herr Reverend that the main domestic resistance to military intervention in WWII came from the isolationist Republicans]). Beinart does this by highlighting the ADA's (Americans for Democratic Action) opposition to communism and communists during the Cold War, and then by decrying the lack of a similar group on the Left today-- one that would put anti-Islamo totalitarianism at the center of its radar. He then sheepishly tries to innoculate himself against the obvious criticism of this device-- namely, that the respective threats represented by Soviet totalitarianism and by Islamo totalitarianism are in no way equal-- by offering this caveat: "Obviously, Al Qaeda and the Soviet Union are not the same. The USSR was a totalitarian superpower; Al Qaeda merely espouses a totalitarian ideology, which has had mercifully little access to the instruments of state power." Well, thank you, sir. Our own president frequently espouses a desire to be dictator rather than president, but he has had mercifully little success in running roughshod over the executive limits outlined in the Constitution... D'oh! Bad example.

This, though, is where I tend to disagree with Beinart vis-a-vis the nature of the Al Qaeda threat. Does Al Qaeda really espouse a totalitarian ideology? Maybe. But as Kevin Drum points out, there seems to be nothing fundamentally expansionist about their ideology. And furthermore, I'm really not so sure that what they espouse is any different than what fundamentalists of all stripes espouse everywhere-- and I mean everywhere. Everything I've read about them suggests that they have specific grievances with the ruling factions of various Middle Eastern and Western countries, and that if they were able to procure the instruments of state power somewhere, the resulting state would probably look not that different from what we saw with the Taliban in Afghanistan-- a very strict theocracy that is more than shitty for its women, stifling to intellectualism and the arts, and generally a fucked up isle of Mesozoic sensibilities-- not, though, a highly technical and expansionist Nazi-like army ready to reap carnage and doom on all "evil doers" in every corner of the world (though power does corrupt).

Beinart also has grievances, and these are twofold-- Moveon.org and Michael Moore. These are the twin pillars of the "soft" elements on the Left that Beinart wants to see cleansed from mainstream American liberalism. In another exercise of conflation, he seems to think that these two bodies (and I use the term "bodies" advisedly) are the equivalent of a State Department and Minister of Information for the Left. He is all over them for not supporting the war in Afghanistan, and he throws out the disses in such a way as to suggest that the virtues of that war were/are self-evident. He uses the perjorative term "soft" as a taunt. He seems to have trouble making the crucial distinction between somebody that makes policy decisions and somebody that makes movies. He thinks they are gutless and clueless. He thinks that these flower children prefer "pie-in-the-sky" pipe dreams to serious, well-considered solutions. In short, he thinks these voices must be shut out. (These, of course, are standard rhetorical weapons in the Right's arsenal. They win elections because of this nonsense, and they get to have proxies [poor, brown and black] fight their wars for them because of this horseshit. I'm glad to see that this weaponry isn't solely reserved for use by the Coulterites.)

Beinart, for his part, envisions a new, ambitious, expansionist liberalism in which young people would flock to the Middle East, Peace-Corps-like, and a new Middle East Marshall Plan would be born to try to change the hearts and minds of Middle Easterners on the ground (Neoliberalism wrought large). It's pretty lofty stuff, and I applaud him for that, but it also makes me cringe with the same bile that burbles up when some ass-fuck or another on the Right wants to constitutionally outlaw burning the American flag. What Beinart fails to understand is that many of us on the Left, Michael Moore included, see something much more fundamental, though relationally causal, to the threat posed by Weird Al Yank-Qaeda and its satellites, which is the unsustainable and expansionist thrust of Western-dominated global market capitalism. Yes, it's the oil, douchebag. That was my first thought that Tuesday morning when the planes hit (I've just violated a personal axiom that says, "The next person that tells me what they were doing or where they were on 9/ll gets a fistful of guitar-playing knuckles in the xiphoid process"). It's the fucking oil. And it's fucking Israel. And until mainstream liberals and mainstream ass-bitches learn this from the Left, we, as in all of us, will continue to be on the wrong side of history; we will continue to be a step behind some fucking ass-tards who want to blow themselves up so that they can fuck some virgins in the afterlife (Who likes fucking virgins anyway?); and we, as in me, will continue to be lectured by Peter Beinart on why we need to purge ourselves from something of which didn't even know we were a part.

A big shout out to Pablo in San Francisco for his cogent comments in the previous posting on this subject. You're right, Pablo. There are ugly forces that want to do us harm, I have no doubt. I just tend to see this threat as something that can be, as Kerry suggested, reduced to the level of a nuisance. I don't see it as a clash of civilizations, or as the defining issue of the 21st century or anything like that (though our actions, as in our government's actions, are making this an ever-increasing likelihood).

The Great White Dope

Bush, in his 2004 state of the union address:

"So tonight I call on team owners, union representatives, coaches, and players to take the lead, to send the right signal, to get tough, and to get rid of steroids now."

Just another victory for the administration.

Liberal Hawkus Pawkus, Pt. 1 (Rough Draft)

cjbeats wants a new post, cjbeats gets one.

I've been directed to this article by "liberal hawk" Peter Beinart in the New Republic by various folks in the blogosphere, Andrew Sullivan, "liberal hawk" himself and former editor of TNR, among them. First, I'd like to look at the seemingly oxymoronic phrase "liberal hawk" itself. So far as I can tell, the term is ascribed to folks who believe in a robust, aggressive, lassoing type of foreign policy. These are people that don't give a second's pause to the absurdity of the existentially deranged verbiage "War on Terror." These people thought that invading Iraq was a great idea, though many of them have since made amends by saying that they didn't actually advocate what they once advocated. Oh, and they were very surprised that there were no WMD in Iraq. "Everyone knew he had WMD" is a common refrain. Except, of course, there were some voices, including the courageous former weapons inspector, former marine, and former Bush voter, Scott Ritter, who always maintained that there were no WMD in Iraq. (Just because the Iraqi Minister of Information says something, it doesn't mean, in every circumstance, that the opposite is in fact correct. For real Bizarro World politics look no further than the current administration.)

Anyhow, these "liberal hawks" like to spill blood and spread Empire around the world, but they also want our environment protected at home, the social safety net to remain in place, and our civil liberties to be protected-- or, in Andrew Sullivan's case, the right to fuck his boyfriend; and, if the courtship proves adequately transcendent, the eventual right to marry him. This crew actually has much in common with the neocons, who also tend to be on the liberal side of things when it comes to social matters, that is, if they give these matters any thought at all.

Time presses. To the article itself. I may have to dedicate some more thought and time to this issue at a later date, because the more I read the article, the more it pisses me off.

Here is the crux of Beinart's argument:

Today, three years after September 11 brought the United States face-to-face with a new totalitarian threat, liberalism has still not "been fundamentally reshaped" by the experience. On the right, a "historical re-education" has indeed occurred--replacing the isolationism of the Gingrich Congress with George W. Bush and Dick Cheney's near-theological faith in the transformative capacity of U.S. military might. But American liberalism, as defined by its activist organizations, remains largely what it was in the 1990s--a collection of domestic interests and concerns. On health care, gay rights, and the environment, there is a positive vision, articulated with passion. But there is little liberal passion to win the struggle against Al Qaeda--even though totalitarian Islam has killed thousands of Americans and aims to kill millions; and even though, if it gained power, its efforts to force every aspect of life into conformity with a barbaric interpretation of Islam would reign terror upon women, religious minorities, and anyone in the Muslim world with a thirst for modernity or freedom.

This last bit, "...if it gained power, its efforts to force every aspect of life into conformity with a barbaric interpretation of Islam would reign terror upon women, religious minorities, and anyone in the Muslim world with a thirst for modernity or freedom," is very informative about the inadequacies of the hypothetical. Furthermore, Beinart seems blind to the fact that many of Bush's top advisors, including Sidemouth himself, were both signees to the Project for the New American Century, and longtime supporters of just this sort of militaristic adventurism. Long before September 11, envisioning what it would take to accomplish the neocon goals of American full-spectrum dominance, Sidemouth famously said, “The process of transformation is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event—like a new Pearl Harbor.”

Well, as we all know, they got their Pearl Harbor. I bring this up only to refute Beinart's claim that "On the right, a "historical re-education" has indeed occurred--replacing the isolationism of the Gingrich Congress...." As he should know, toppling Saddam's regime has been the glorious trigger for multitudes of Cheney's, Wolfowitz's, Perle's, and others' nocturnal emmisions since the day's of the first gulf war-- and this is not to mention that the notion of toppling Saddam was too titilatingly Oedipal for Georgie to resist: "He trahed to kill mah daddy."

I'll post what I have now, and continue with more, much more, tomorrow. Good night.

To be continued...