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Up to the minute notes on the current state of free thinking and free living: Kentucky moonshine - original analysis and reporting from MoreThings, and all round pop culture museum of sight and sound - photo galleries, mp3 and video downloads.
Al Barger and MoreThings - getting people's goats since 1998.
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May 03, 2003
Magic 8 Ball, should we search Iraqi intelligence offices?
A few days ago, a British newspaper found a document linking Al-Qaeda with the former Hussein regime in Iraq. A reporter found it laying in the rubble of the Mukhabarat, the Iraqi intelligence agency. It detailed a week long summit between Iraqi intelligence a representative of Bin Laden, with hotel arrangements and such. [I wrote about this previously.]
A few people doubted the authenticity of the document. That may be a possibility, though I find it pretty unlikely. Beyond anything else, it would be foolhardy and risky to absolutely forge such a document. The likelihood of being busted for it would be pretty high, and the downside too great to contemplate. Heads would roll. My best guess is that it is authentic.
The question no one has asked, however, is how it is that some schlub from a newspaper got to be the one to find it? Now, there may be all kinds of juicy documents and tidbits for journalists all over that danged country, but this was Iraqi intelligence.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but offices of Iraqi intelligence services should have long since been gone over with a fine tooth comb by allied intelligence. They might conceivably want to take a couple of journalists with cameras along to document the chain of evidence or some such, but the CIA should have gone over that building pretty much stone by stone.
Why in hell would there be any documents laying around there for some random journalist to find? Enquiring minds want to know.
As a good Libertarian, I used to really suspect the intelligence community just on the basis of civil liberties issues- but I had the idea that they generally got the job done, even if they were somewhat corrupt. Now I'm getting serious doubts about them getting the job done. They didn't see 9/11 coming at us. They don't seem up to speed on finding WMDs, some of which would seem almost certain to be there.
OK, those are pretty tricky tasks. I may not have been able to do any better, hard telling. But would it take a flippin' PhD to know to throughly search intelligence offices for documents, right away?
posted by Al at 5/03/2003 03:39:00 AM
May 02, 2003
Rhetoric worthy of a president
"The advance of freedom is the surest strategy to undermine the appeal of terror in the world. Where freedom takes hold, hatred gives way to hope. When freedom takes hold, men and women turn to the peaceful pursuit of a better life. American values and American interests lead in the same direction: We stand for human liberty."
-President George W Bush, speaking from the USS Abraham Lincoln
posted by Al at 5/02/2003 02:33:00 PM
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/29/health/nutrition/29VITA.html?ex=1052193600&en=86f18ea19390dac7&ei=5062
posted by Al at 5/02/2003 04:50:00 AM
Bill O'Reilly's contrived outrage
Now and again, Bill O'Reilly raises some entertaining hell over at Fox News. Very much of the time, however, he seems to specialize in a special brand of canned, contrived outrage. He's gone on repeatedly, for example, about the book Harmful to Minors: The Perils of Protecting Children from Sex by Judith Levine.
"music producer David Krebs" later joined O'Reilly in being disgusted by Tatu. They are obviously not legitimate, since they don't write their own songs [tell that to Frank Sinatra's fans], and they have no talent. Most of all, they are [or play at being] lesbians, playing on MTV. We are OUTRAGED!!!
Shut the hell up.
posted by Al at 5/02/2003 04:47:00 AM
May 01, 2003
Democrats wouldn't recognize liberty if it bit their donkey
Liberals are so philosophically disjointed from the the basic ideas of individualism that form the basis of civil liberties that they often just have no clue. They wouldn't recognize a real civil liberty if it came up and bit them in their Democrat donkey ass. Jane Galt has a beautiful little rant on the pure pettiness of typical liberal Democrat ideas of civil liberties, which amount to stuff like "nativity scenes in the public spaces of small, southern towns to which atheists interested in ruining everyone's holiday have to be imported for the purpose of securing their civil right to be Jesus-free while renewing their driver's license."
posted by Al at 5/01/2003 12:30:00 AM
April 30, 2003
200th anniversary of the Louisiana Purchase
200 years ago, on April 30, 1803 the United States made the Louisiana Purchase for $15 million, which about doubled the size of the country.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but this was a pretty big deal historically that barely gets mentioned now.
That's 828,000 square miles at 4 cents per acre. Thank you, Frenchy.
posted by Al at 4/30/2003 11:11:00 PM
Aw, let the freak in
I'll give some Democrats some credit here. Several dozen Democrat office holders and former office holders are petitioning the South Carolina party to include perennial candidate, ex-felon and conspiracy freak Lyndon Larouche in the upcoming May 3 pre-pre-primary presidential debate. The Democrat Party would actually gain at least one or two points with me if they took the inclusiveness stuff seriously enough to include Larouche in their public event, knowing that he's really likely to not make the party look good on tv.
The principle argument for his inclusion seems to be that he has more campaign contributors than any of the other announced candidates. Fair enough.
Give the guy at least a little chance to say his piece early on. Get another voice in the mix. He does have some number of people who follow him. Get his two cents in, then you can winnow him out of later debates as things start to heat up in the likely event that he's getting no traction. At least they can say he's had his chance.
And heck, he might make even Al Sharpton start to look reasonable and moderate.
posted by Al at 4/30/2003 04:34:00 AM
May the ghost of Ayn Rand smite them
The Lower Manhattan Development Corporation has published guidelines for submissions of designs for the World Trade Center memorial. Just in this most sensitive corner, they've managed to inject the worst kind of fake egalitarian nonsense into the rules in just about the most offensive possible way:
The World Trade Center site memorial should honor the loss of life equally and the contributions of all without establishing any hierarchies.
In other words, by the official rules you cannot represent artistically that some people were merely victims setting in their offices and some were heroically rushing in trying to save them. Can't even list the professional rank or title of firefighters or policemen. Might hurt the feelings of families of office workers by making them think the firefighters were more heroic. That the statement is obviously true does not matter.
This nonsense is so precise in its faux egalitarian offense that I almost expect Ayn Rand to rise from the dead and smite these ignorant bastards as they deserve. Of all the places in all the cities of the world, the World Trade Center in New York City has come to be the great symbol of America, of our wealthy capitalist dream. This is why is was chosen for destruction on 9/11, and why we're needing a memorial.
The big point of America's capitalist market system is recognition for individual achievement. The rewards (mostly) go to those who are actually doing things. A brilliant market analyst has rank over the janitorial staff, as evidenced by their pay and their nice suits. The window washer may be a fine fellow human being, but the sharp broker gets the corner office.
In the case of 9/11, the extra factor would go to the firemen and cops who were really making the performance that day. Their posthumous perk should naturally be a little bit of glory. Not necessarily anything ostentatious, but modest acknowledgement of their heroic contributions. That is simple justice.
This does not take anything away from the fellow working in the mail room. In this case, he and the CEO come out about the same. That is, they are both blameless victims of an undeserved attack. They weren't particularly heroic in many cases. They were both just poor schmucks in the wrong place at the wrong time. Hey, not everybody can be heroic all the time.
Denying simple proper recognition to firemen and cops who died in the line of duty does not raise up the janitor in any way, however. It merely denies the special contribution of people who with full consciousness gave all.
The beautiful and sensible Kathleen Parker breaks it down further without cussing, which is better than I can do.
posted by Al at 4/30/2003 03:21:00 AM
Who do these damned Christians think they are?
Are you now, or have you ever been a member of a Christian church? That should be the question asked before anybody can do business with the US government.
It has come out that an outfit called Grace Digital Media and their subsidiary Federal News Service have gotten a government contract to provide a television studio for producing an Arab language satellite news service. ZNet has details in an article by Russell Mokhiber (editor of Corporate Crime Reporter) and Robert Weissman, his co-author of the book Corporate Predators: The Hunt for MegaProfits and the Attack on Democracy. Our pal Brian Flemming is also properly unpleased.
In case you are not yet properly incensed, Grace Digital Media means "grace" as in "by the grace of God." God. Did you hear that? The person who runs the thing is a fundamentalist Christian name of Cheryl Reagan. If that isn't bad enough, she is pro-Israel. To top it off, when Mokhiber and Weissman wanted to talk to her she was vacationing IN ISRAEL!!!
Now Grace Digital Media is only providing the studio, not the editorial staff. Still, a legitimate writer or anchor might see a Bible in the breakroom, or even be witnessed to by a camera man. Besides being offensive in itself, this could possibly rub off even accidentally and corruptly influence adherents of the Religion of Peace.
This is so wrong. Somebody needs to investigate. They can't be allowed to get away with this.
It's unconstitutional. It says right in the US Constitution that only atheists are allowed to do business with the government. Says it right there in the back somewhere.Labels: god, julie andrews
posted by Al at 4/30/2003 01:52:00 AM
April 29, 2003
US out of the UN!
As an American patriot and member of the Libertarian Party, I've been saying this for many years now. Expressing such opinions has sometimes caused people to consider me some kind of crazy paranoid right wing nut. Heaven forbid!
However, as with the issue of drug legalization, recent events have made my outlook at least marginally more acceptable among Decent People. Even people overly anxious to consider themselves "mainstream" or "moderate" are wondering what we're spending our money on there, where from they get any kind of moral authority, and who died and left Kofi Anon boss? Also, should France have a veto power over our national defense policies?
Friends, it's a movement. And all you've got to do to join is sign the petition. It is a petition to "Terminate U.S. Membership in the UN". What a good idea.
posted by Al at 4/29/2003 01:43:00 AM
Crisis du jour
I hate when local tv news shows go on crusades, inventing crises about which the government must do something. They conjure up some real or imagined problem, then show up with cameras asking public officials what they're doing about it. Basically, they make it clear that they are going to be rousing the rabble about their crisis du jour, and demand that public officials do something about it so the station can take credit for helping out.
Not that they're worse than any other, but Indianapolis CBS affiliate WISH-TV attempted to get my goat by airing just such nonsense on their early evening newscast on Monday, April 28.
Specifically, there is a big problem of uninsured motorists. Why, we don't even have any policy in this state for having insurance companies notify the BMV when someone cancels their insurance policy. What's the use in having a law requiring car insurance if you're not going to have a police state to enforce it? What are you doing about this, Mr. Legislator?
Indeed, what is the use of having drug laws if we're not going to really enforce them? Perhaps the WISH team will be buttonholing legislators to find out what they're doing to institute regular mandatory drug testing for all citizens. After all, surely drugs are an even worse problem than uninsured motorists.
It's unfortunate that some people do not have insurance, but that doesn't mean that we need new laws. There is no problem in life that is so bad that government can't come in and screw it up worse.
posted by Al at 4/29/2003 12:10:00 AM
April 28, 2003
A modest proposal to monkey with Tim Robbins' mind
 Good ol' Tim Robbins. He may be a liberal cheesehead, but he's also an outstanding actor and writer. He's done some good work. In recognition, I'd like to offer a modest proposal to both honor his best work- and stick it up his ass.
His best work of all was his classic 1992 political satire Bob Roberts. If you have any taste at all for political movies, especially political comedies, this is an absolute must see. He presented the story as a fake documentary of an evil right-wing folksinger running for the US senate.
Naturally, the key to the success of the whole project is the quality of the songs. Tim Robbins and his brother wrote a bunch of "folk" songs espousing the characters' despicable right-wing views.
They did indeed write an outstanding batch of songs, better musically and more interesting in fact than anything Dylan himself has written in at least 20 years.
Yet they have had very limited exposure, and that's a damned shame. The movie itself was a big flop commercially. How many political movies have ever been hits?
Moreover, Tim Robbins himself was careful to corral the songs away from being heard out of context. From the notes to the DVD:
Because the music works so well and because the lyrics capture the conservative agenda, both brothers are adamantly opposed to releasing the songs on a soundtrack. "I had it written into the contract that there wouldn't be any soundtrack album," said tim. "We just don't want to hear these songs played out-of-context on the radio."
That's just a damned shame. These really are some outstanding songs, and they're mostly just going to waste.
Here's my proposal then: Some of you musicians should pick out the songs from the movie and learn to play them. Play them around bars, maybe make some simple studio recordings to distribute as MP3s on the net. Truly these songs deserve a wider audience.
Now, I'm no kind of musician, but there are plenty of you out there to take up the mantle. Mike Hendrix of the Cold Fury, I'm looking your direction- for starters. This would definitely harsh some mellows.
Your best approach would be to watch the DVD with the captions on, and simply write down the words of the songs. Then you can go from there to pick up your guitar and figure out the chords. Here are the words to the first song to get you going:
COMPLAIN
Some people will work
Some simply will not
But they'll complain and complain and complain and complain and complain
Some people must have
Some never will
But they'll complain and complain and complain and complain and complain
Like this: It's society's fault I don't have a job
It's society's fault I am a slob
I got potential no one can see
Give me welfare
Let me be me
Hey bud, you're living in the land of the free
No one's going to hand you opportunity
I spend all my time drunk in a bar
I want to be rich
I don't have a brain
So give me a handout while I complain
Some people must have
Some never will
But they'll complain and complain and complain and complain and complain
I don't know that Robbins will ever end up literally hearing any of this come back to him on the radio, but they deserve whatever exposure we can conjure up. These songs should be heard.
And if it happens to monkey with Robbins' head a little at the same time, why that's just extra good gravy.
posted by Al at 4/28/2003 05:36:00 AM
South Park and sympathy for the social conservatives
I rather disagree with some of Rick Santorum's likely public policy conclusions, but I will defend him to a significant extent. Let's go back to some of the senator's recent remarks that Brian Flemming was quoting in response to an earlier post:
"If you say, there is no deviant as long as it's private, as long as it's consensual, then don't be surprised what you get. You're going to get a lot of things that you're sending signals that as long as you do it privately and consensually, we don't really care what you do. And that leads to a culture that is not one that is nurturing and necessarily healthy. I would make the argument in areas where you have that as an accepted lifestyle, don't be surprised that you get more of it."
This statement is absolutely reasonable. If you create a social climate in which all choices are treated equally, you would expect to find many more people than before choosing irresponsible, self-indulgent behavior. This also jibes with an observation of facts on the ground. Hey, being a whore getting a couple of abortions a year is just another equally valid life choice to being a responsible wife and mother. Expect to see more of it.
Being a promiscuous homosexual hanging out in bath houses is arguably NOT morally equivalent to being a faithful husband and father. Some choices are much better for the individual and for society.
I don't particularly fault someone simply for being gay. For starters, there is a world of difference between the gay gentleman of Sting's "Englishman in New York" and some jackass "Act Up" fag. As Chef said in "The Death Camp of Tolerance" speaking of South Park's "sick queer" teacher who had just shoved a gerbil up his teaching assistant's ass in front of the students, "There's a big difference between being gay and being Mr. Garrison."
I would also just as much, probably more, fault irresponsible heterosexual behavior. Some guys think that humping everything, and then leaving it for the moms and the social workers to sort out is the cool thing to do. They're jackasses. This does more social harm than anything perpetrated by homosexuals, but we're not going to be outlawing non-marital sex anytime soon.
Likewise, I recognize that a lot of private consensual choices to smoke crack rocks or drink lots of booze are bad choices.
Nonetheless, I think those are choices for the individuals to make for themselves. Rick Santorum has legitimate concerns, but I don't wish to grant him or any politician the right to decide which exactly of my private behaviors are socially destructive. None of their business. Even granting that he has good intentions, I do not trust his ability to distinguish between truly socially deleterious behaviors versus things that he just personally doesn't like. Nor do I wish to grant him the powers that would be needed to enforce these distinctions.
Still, he has a perfectly legitimate point of concern. It may not be the best thing for society to define deviancy down, equating all choices as equal. It concerns me, too.
I don't have a full answer for the perfectly reasonable concerns of social conservatives such as Mr. Santorum. There really isn't one. We're dealing with the fallibility of human nature.
My best response comes from South Park, and the aforementioned "Death Camp of Tolerance" episode (perhaps their best ever). They made a big point of distinguishing between "tolerance" vs "acceptance." In their typically practical analysis, they understand that tolerance means that we have to "put up with" lots of behavior that we find inappropriate. That does not mean that we have to accept all things equally, or pretend to believe in cheap egalitarian moral equivalence.
It may not be as simple as instituting a police state, but we just have to rely mostly on non-coercive social persuasion to gently point our brethren in the right direction. Trying to set a good example and positively talking your own family and friends into constructive choices have to be the main ways things are done in a free society.
Secondarily, the stick of ostracism is a fair fallback position in egregious cases. You may have a right to destroy yourself with booze, but I have the equal right to dissociate from you. Stay away from me with your nonsense. I'm not having any of it. At some point, you're going to be on your own. You can just go off in the gutter and die. They're only going to be improving the gene pool by getting out of it.
From a legal, political level, the most thing you can legitimately do to enforce reasonable life choices is simply not to publicly subsidize stupidity. You screw up, you clean it up yourself. You may have a right to smoke crack, but you don't have a right to demand that I pay for your detox, or pay your rent because you're too stoned to hold down a job. If you want help, then you'll have to convince individuals to voluntarily support you- which will probably mean making some voluntary commitment to doing things to help yourself.
Supposed "tolerance" can also turn into fear and fascism. In South Park, the boys end up in a nazi-fied programming camp for the crime of being disgusted by the sight of their teacher's deviant sexual practices. Likewise, there hangs a pall over many American workplaces at the risk of being judged to have created a "hostile work environment" for such crimes as passing around blonde jokes in emails. Not much actual tolerance going on here.
In short then, our best bet is to put up with each other as best we can. Your hate crime laws and your sodomy and drug laws have to go.
In a free society, some people are going to freely screw it up; some will flatly crash and burn. That's just part of the deal.Labels: south_park
posted by Al at 4/28/2003 05:26:00 AM
April 27, 2003
The Al Qaeda plot thickens
We'll probably be seeing all kinds of fascinating documents filtering out from Iraq for a year or two. We're already seeing documentation of crappy dealings between Hussein's intelligence service and some of our supposed allies.
Most intriguing so far is this document found by British journalists in the ruins of Iraqi intelligence hq detailing meetings with a representative for Al Qaeda, and even preliminary plans to bring in Bin Laden himself. Read all about it HERE and HERE.
Weapons of mass destruction were the top reason sited for the invasion of Iraq, but that's only because the administration was careful not to artificially pump up connections between Iraq and Al Qaeda that we might not be able to document. Al Qaeda are the direct ones who attacked us on 9/11, so connections to this group will be the most sound moral and international legal justifications possible for a military action.
In other words, a few documents like this will go a long way toward silencing any lingering possible doubts about the legitimacy of having invaded Iraq. Such documentation would seem to be even better justification for our efforts than finding WMDs, which we certainly will do also.
There are some few whose political thought processes consists only of the words "AMERICA BAD" who will never approve of our actions no matter what. For everyone else, though, more proof of the appropriateness of the administration's choices appears daily.
posted by Al at 4/27/2003 11:24:00 PM
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