Good morning. Apparently, the ghosts of the past were revived for a significant moment over the course of the weekend. Namely, the United States government annouces that they have definitively killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan. The architect of many terror attacks around the world is deceased. Of course, photo evidence of such is probably nonexistent, considering those who killed him claim they buried his body at sea to prevent it from being lionized. The backstory is now being filled in, with accounts of gunfire and chases and the events that lead up to the raid and its result. That is, once the details are solidified, anyway.
Al-Jazeera has a good collection of reactions to the news from prominent figures.![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
theferret explains why celebrating that the United States made good on a promise is doable, while also understanding that this particular act changes nothing, and that celebrating a death is always an ambivalent affair. It allows you to debate the merits of whether sovereignty trumps the need to hunt down criminals, and to recall the ways that the previous administrator played down bin Laden after he couldn't capture or kill him in the immediate aftermath. This becomes important when the Republican Party tries to make this an achievement for George W. Bush rather than Barack Obama, because they can't actually praise him on anything. One must try to keep in mind whom the "we" in "we got him" is.
On the conservative side of the equation, jubilation at the death of bin Laden is not a strange reaction, nor counting it as a momentous occasion in the Concept War. It is a time to talk about how the long and expensive Concept War has produced excellent fruit. Of course, that is immediately tempered by warnings that the Concept War is far from finished, and that others will look to take bin Laden's place, so forget about any rollbacks on the security state of the last ten years.
In the end, though, Osama bin Laden remains a ghost of the past, and an excuse to avoid the problems of the present while trying to spot the problems of the future, like who steps into the void as leader. And because of the way things were done, Pakistan finds itself in a difficult place, trying to decide which media narrative to adopt - whether this was done with their cooperation and knowledge, or whether this was done without. Both ways have their pitfalls, for both Pakistan and the United States, and in either case, there will always be people looking to lionize and make a martyr out of the dead man. But there will also be others who are ready to declare the age of bin Laden is finished, and the world he inhabited no longer had room for him to grow. And there will be an inquiry about whether the United States acted in any sort of legal way in killing bin Laden.
Elsewhere, a journalist went in undercover to write about the life experience of the chronically underemployed, and found that it contained a riptide that drags everyone out to sea. Furthermore, just about every investigation of Apple's manufacturing plants in China finds inhumane working conditions, wages, and schedules, and yet, we continue to buy Apple.
We also continue to let megacorporations sit on the boards of non-profits and use the non-profits as puppets, allow banks and other investment houses to control and speculate on the price of basic things, driving them up significantly, and put pressure on countries that aren't nearly as gung-ho about the adoption of genetically modified materials, all in the name of corporate profits.
Protesters in Bahrain were condenmed to death after being convicted of responsibility in the death of a policeman. That is, a military court tried civilians, found them guilty, and sentenced them to death. That worries human rights activisits, and should ring very familiar for members of the US that talk about their military trials.
Canada had Parliamentary elections! Aaaand... Prime Minister Stephen Harper remains Prime Minister, this time with a Conservative majority, while the NDP unseats the Liberals for official Opposition status. The Greens won their first riding, for the leader, and the Bloc Quebecois did so poorly as to not qualify as a party. After such a stomping for his party, Liberal leader Michael Ingatieff resigned as leader of the Liberal Party of Canada. Now with a majority government, The PRime Minister plans on goign full-bore with his agenda.
Domestically, The FBI may be accused of having misplaced priorities - with cyber-intrusions and attacks at their highest, the department that fights child pornography has twice as much effort as the one that fights attacks. DoJ is Not Happy about those results or those priorities.
A goup of deaf and mute friends were stabbed in an attack after a gang-affiliated woman in the bar mistook their sign language for gang signs and brought in her own gang members to teach them a thing or two.
Finally, A deliberate decision to flood a significant amount of ground around the Mississippi river to relieve pressure on shipping lanes in Illinois. The Missouri attorney general fought hard, trying ot get the courts to block the decision that will impact many thousands of lives in Missouri, but ultimately lost.
In opinions, Mr. Sowell calls for the abolition of the Federal Reserve System, beleiving that the Fed is responsible for prolonging recessions through loose fiscal policy, and criticizing the current administration for their policies that create "uncertainty" in those employers that are sitting on piles of cash and not investing it.
A top ten list of Barack Obama's biggest blunders since taking office could easily have their subjects applied to the previous administrator as well as teh current one, suggeseting the American populace has not gotten a whole lot smarter in picking their eelcted leaders if both of them can commit the same kinds of mistakes...or that the partisan nature of our politics makes it so that just about any accusation leveled at one side can be sent back just as easily.
Mr. Knight accuses Mr. Obama of being such a hard leftist that he'll let his personal politics get in the way of drilling to ease gas prices. This is the same administration that is apparently okay with handing out deep water drilling permits, despite proven flaws in the designs of blowout preventers currently in use.
Mr. Krauthammer accuses the administration of not being Team America and actually believing what the critics have to say, so he's not being the run-roughshod-over-everyone President conservatism expects a President to be.
Last out, though, Mr. Greenberg puts his finger on the state of politics in the United States - the President can't please anyone, so he's ratcheting up his rhetoric, and the people opposing him are right now, batshit to a person, so they're already in crazy drama territory. What he'd like to see is a sane, sensibile person that has actual appeal and pragmatism in his approach. Unfortunatley, it might very well be "clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right".
At the end of today, Mr. Thomas wonders what has happened to his childhood hero, that he's suddenly considering the international perception of his actions and whether he wants to be seen as an instrument of US foreign policy, and believes it to be nothing more than a plot hook or the actions of some nefarious villain. He'll be happily looking at othe superheroes while this story arc plays, but he doesn't believe Superman would ever abandon America. (We wonder if he's read True Brit or Red Son.) Mr. Pendry just considers it a betrayal of the Superman character and a lessening of his gravitas for him to be anything other than a lockstep U.S. jingoist.
Al-Jazeera has a good collection of reactions to the news from prominent figures.
theferret explains why celebrating that the United States made good on a promise is doable, while also understanding that this particular act changes nothing, and that celebrating a death is always an ambivalent affair. It allows you to debate the merits of whether sovereignty trumps the need to hunt down criminals, and to recall the ways that the previous administrator played down bin Laden after he couldn't capture or kill him in the immediate aftermath. This becomes important when the Republican Party tries to make this an achievement for George W. Bush rather than Barack Obama, because they can't actually praise him on anything. One must try to keep in mind whom the "we" in "we got him" is.On the conservative side of the equation, jubilation at the death of bin Laden is not a strange reaction, nor counting it as a momentous occasion in the Concept War. It is a time to talk about how the long and expensive Concept War has produced excellent fruit. Of course, that is immediately tempered by warnings that the Concept War is far from finished, and that others will look to take bin Laden's place, so forget about any rollbacks on the security state of the last ten years.
In the end, though, Osama bin Laden remains a ghost of the past, and an excuse to avoid the problems of the present while trying to spot the problems of the future, like who steps into the void as leader. And because of the way things were done, Pakistan finds itself in a difficult place, trying to decide which media narrative to adopt - whether this was done with their cooperation and knowledge, or whether this was done without. Both ways have their pitfalls, for both Pakistan and the United States, and in either case, there will always be people looking to lionize and make a martyr out of the dead man. But there will also be others who are ready to declare the age of bin Laden is finished, and the world he inhabited no longer had room for him to grow. And there will be an inquiry about whether the United States acted in any sort of legal way in killing bin Laden.
Elsewhere, a journalist went in undercover to write about the life experience of the chronically underemployed, and found that it contained a riptide that drags everyone out to sea. Furthermore, just about every investigation of Apple's manufacturing plants in China finds inhumane working conditions, wages, and schedules, and yet, we continue to buy Apple.
We also continue to let megacorporations sit on the boards of non-profits and use the non-profits as puppets, allow banks and other investment houses to control and speculate on the price of basic things, driving them up significantly, and put pressure on countries that aren't nearly as gung-ho about the adoption of genetically modified materials, all in the name of corporate profits.
Protesters in Bahrain were condenmed to death after being convicted of responsibility in the death of a policeman. That is, a military court tried civilians, found them guilty, and sentenced them to death. That worries human rights activisits, and should ring very familiar for members of the US that talk about their military trials.
Canada had Parliamentary elections! Aaaand... Prime Minister Stephen Harper remains Prime Minister, this time with a Conservative majority, while the NDP unseats the Liberals for official Opposition status. The Greens won their first riding, for the leader, and the Bloc Quebecois did so poorly as to not qualify as a party. After such a stomping for his party, Liberal leader Michael Ingatieff resigned as leader of the Liberal Party of Canada. Now with a majority government, The PRime Minister plans on goign full-bore with his agenda.
Domestically, The FBI may be accused of having misplaced priorities - with cyber-intrusions and attacks at their highest, the department that fights child pornography has twice as much effort as the one that fights attacks. DoJ is Not Happy about those results or those priorities.
A goup of deaf and mute friends were stabbed in an attack after a gang-affiliated woman in the bar mistook their sign language for gang signs and brought in her own gang members to teach them a thing or two.
Finally, A deliberate decision to flood a significant amount of ground around the Mississippi river to relieve pressure on shipping lanes in Illinois. The Missouri attorney general fought hard, trying ot get the courts to block the decision that will impact many thousands of lives in Missouri, but ultimately lost.
In opinions, Mr. Sowell calls for the abolition of the Federal Reserve System, beleiving that the Fed is responsible for prolonging recessions through loose fiscal policy, and criticizing the current administration for their policies that create "uncertainty" in those employers that are sitting on piles of cash and not investing it.
A top ten list of Barack Obama's biggest blunders since taking office could easily have their subjects applied to the previous administrator as well as teh current one, suggeseting the American populace has not gotten a whole lot smarter in picking their eelcted leaders if both of them can commit the same kinds of mistakes...or that the partisan nature of our politics makes it so that just about any accusation leveled at one side can be sent back just as easily.
Mr. Knight accuses Mr. Obama of being such a hard leftist that he'll let his personal politics get in the way of drilling to ease gas prices. This is the same administration that is apparently okay with handing out deep water drilling permits, despite proven flaws in the designs of blowout preventers currently in use.
Mr. Krauthammer accuses the administration of not being Team America and actually believing what the critics have to say, so he's not being the run-roughshod-over-everyone President conservatism expects a President to be.
Last out, though, Mr. Greenberg puts his finger on the state of politics in the United States - the President can't please anyone, so he's ratcheting up his rhetoric, and the people opposing him are right now, batshit to a person, so they're already in crazy drama territory. What he'd like to see is a sane, sensibile person that has actual appeal and pragmatism in his approach. Unfortunatley, it might very well be "clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right".
At the end of today, Mr. Thomas wonders what has happened to his childhood hero, that he's suddenly considering the international perception of his actions and whether he wants to be seen as an instrument of US foreign policy, and believes it to be nothing more than a plot hook or the actions of some nefarious villain. He'll be happily looking at othe superheroes while this story arc plays, but he doesn't believe Superman would ever abandon America. (We wonder if he's read True Brit or Red Son.) Mr. Pendry just considers it a betrayal of the Superman character and a lessening of his gravitas for him to be anything other than a lockstep U.S. jingoist.
