Point Lookout
Musings from the hillside

What should we call them, the various parties who thundered about the death of “freedom of the press” and the abrogation of the Bill of Rights. A military Court Martial subpoenaed Ms. Olsen to testify about her interactions with Lt. Ehren Watada who refused to return to Iraq and is attempting to resign his commission. She interviewed Watada and wrote, extensively, reporting what they discussed.

Ms. Olsen’s testimony was intended to help the Court Martial make a determination in the matter of Lt. Watada’s alleged commission of Acts Unbecoming a Gentleman and an Officer. The acts in question appear to have included his interviews with Ms. Olsen, later widely published and by no means secret or confidential. Mr. Watada has spoken widely on his own behalf and repeated, so fas as I can tell, everything told to Ms. Olsen. But the Court Martial “chillingly” subpoenaed Ms. Olsen to testify on this matter. The subpoena has been broadly interpreted as some kind of monstrous threat to journalistic freedoms … an argument for which I have seen no compelling explanation. There’s no hint of protecting an anonymous source here. He said, she published. Public record. What’s all the noise about? If it were a libel case and she was the defendant, she’d run (or be pushed) into court to defend herself … or vice versa.

Now that the Court Martial has bargained with Lt. Watada and his legal advisors, they have agreed to drop the charge regarding Acts Unbecoming a Gentleman and an Officer. This was, presumably, done to simplify the conduct of the Court Martial and (properly to my mind) focus its considerations on Lt. Watada’s refusal to obey an order to deploy. None of the parties has raised much in the way of controversy over this charge. His conviction is likely to be uncontested and the sentence of up to two years in the brig a foregone conclusion by all parties.

Ehren Watada knew of this likely outcome when he decided to refuse to deploy. His is an act of conviction. Some consider it brave and honorable. Others, treasonous and cowardly. It is his act and I, for one, don’t judge him for it knowing he took it understanding the consequences. The process has afforded him an excellent platform to share his views and gain publicity for his cause. He is resigned to his fate. He decided to become an actor on that stage. So be it.

Sara Olsen deserves no further mention. She was not saved from any threat. She was not the point. She and her yammering gaggle of self-centered and self-serving geese cluck about this as a huge victory for her, the press, and the American people. I see nothing of the sort. Her role in the story ended with announcement of the plea bargain.

I wish Ms. Olsen well and hope she finds and reports many important stories worthy of the national stage. Her reporting of the early days of the Watada affair was well done. We all hope she perseveres and does more of that … it is the nature of good journalism.

In this matter of the now vacated subpoena, she and her gaggle of noisy and noisesome friends should have the grace to quietly depart leaving a minimum of additional droppings and feathers behind.

Quite a good speech in the Congress by Bartlett of Maryland.

I love how speeches like this get made to empty rooms.

Israel and its supporters, presumably world-wide, have redefined anti-Semitism. Both HaAretz and ynetnews.com (Israeli news services with online news feeds) ran stories today roughly titled “Report shows anti-Semitism on the rise”. From the story on ynetnews.com:

“Almost all forms of anti-Semitism, from the anti-Israel boycott attempts by the radical Left, to the propaganda of Islamic extremists, shared the attempt to equate the State of Israel with Nazi Germany, Hermon pointed out.”

Read the full story (link above the quote) but the government and its sources appear to accept this definition.

When you hear “anti-Semitism is on the rise”. Think, public frustration with the aggressive militaristic behavior and demonstrated lack of concern for non-Jewish human rights in (at least) Israeli occupied territories is on the rise, leading to unflattering comparisons.

The depth of analysis and the narrowness of the scope of data they looked for is bad enough. The politicizing of the term takes the world’s eye off religious persecution issue and focuses it directly back onto the State of Israel’s policies that fuel such comparisons (appropriate or not). This has nothing to do with Religion. It has everything to do with finding more propaganda to use to scare up more contributions from those who keep Israel funded.

obviously not by a neo-conservative Bush/Cheney directed lawyer. This post is obviously too simple, clear, and to the point for either the Administration, Congress, or the mainstream media. I suppose I’ll have to read it (the Constitution of the United States) myself.

Clever title to this NY Times story. I wonder how many of the 92% rams who are claimed to be heterosexual are bisexual (have occasional sex with other males).

I guess I find myself wondering if the gray lady just wanted the word “Gay” in a headline. Cynical me.

When will the sainted Israeli Holocaust sermonizers start mentioning the Romani, the homosexuals, and/or the Russians caught up in the same program? It’s not that there’s anything wrong with their grief for their “own kind” but there’s something wrong with their failure to grieve for the others who also died in huge numbers at the hand of the German Holocaust machinery.

Of course, we understand the political difference of being “The Victim” as opposed to “A Victim”.

Did we all notice the little story today that tells of Anne Frank’s father trying to two years to get the family out of Holland? Let us all grieve for the failure of the world’s community to provide shelter to the persecuted … for this and every deserving group.

maybe three. I suspect that this article tells us that the beloved Bill Clinton (a fondly remembered Democrat, remember) and/or his highly active VP Gore put the idea into the Executive’s head and Shrub is just tweaking it a little. In fact, the damage looks like it was done in the pious name of cost benefit analysis by the beloved Dems.

Shrub is just taking it to the next and seemingly logical level. If  you go one step, the next step is one of degree not kind. The Clintonites took the step of kind and now we’re stuck with the Bushies tweakiing the degree.

And so many of my bleeding heart friends worship Clinton

This YnetNews.com article contains “official” translations of remarks by Olmert at the Herzliya convention in Israel. John Edwards visited and spoke there, generally predictable but worryingly committed to continuing to blindly prop up Israel. But here, Olmert lays out the rhetoric in one simple speech.

• There is no near threat of a nuclear attack on Israel.
• The Jewish nation is scarred with the Holocaust, and won’t allow itself to again face a threat to its existence.
• When the leader of state publicly announces his intentions to wipe a country off the map, and is busy creating the weapons to do so… we must act with all force against the plot.

These are ingenuous and, for the most part, fatally flawed arguments. Olmert has speech writers as good as any propagandists if the past 70 years. And as dishonest.

Let’s see. Iran borders Pakistan, a nuclear power, which borders Inda, a nuclear power, and China, another nuclear power. Iran borders on Iraq, nuclear-enabled by the US occupiers. We never hear how many nuclear devices are along for the ride in the naval and air arsenals in the Gulf. I’d be flabbergasted if there weren’t at least of couple of pet nukes on a submarine, an air craft carrier, or in a hangar on some airbase in the theater. You just don’t know when you’ll need one, you know.

Then, on the other side of Iraq, divided by Jordan that’s just announced they want a nuclear program, for peace ful purposes mind you, we find Israel, another nuclear power. They have finally admitted it in a moment of brazen openness. And you don’t get very far from Iran’s northern border before you get into former Soviet territories that may or may not have nuclear weapons (nobody seems to want to know).
So, Iran is the demon, demanding that we all stand by and let it build the bomb? That’s not what they keep saying. They keep saying they want nuclear power. Everyone else who ignored non-proliferation treaties and pompous words knows they’re lying and insists it’s about the bombs. Britain is building nuclear power plants. Britain and the US have thriving nuclear power supply industries. But Iran won’t be allowed to develop even civil power nuclear capability.

As usual, the children are being absurd.

The bloggers over at Foreign Policy have gone off on a rant which in part says:

“Is Derakhshan completely opiated? Doesn’t he understand the nature of the Faustian bargain between middle class and regime in Iran? It’s the classic example of a tottering authoritarian regime creating a radical disjuncture between political and civil society, granting the bourgeoisie the latter and sealing off the former.”

Doesn’t the FP blogger understand the nature of the Faustian bargain between middle class and regime in the US? Sounds to me, from their rant, that they’re living in some anechoic sound-proofed chamber listening to the beating of their own hearts.

There’s a disconnect between the people and the governments. The governments are increasingly strident in an attempt to reassert control over the people that they lost to global information flow and commerce. And it doesn’t really seem to be working. The people seem to be either making these Faustian bargains (actually, breaking the old “bargain” and just doing their thing in spite of non-responsive governments run by rich and power-hungry elites) or heading into the streets. I suspect we’ll see a lot more of the latter as things go forward.