Thursday, February 16, 2012
It's an Orwellian World
Saturday, February 11, 2012
Israel and the MEK
Bad Deal
Insulting Our Intelligence
According to the Obama administration, forcing insurance companies to provide free contraception to women won’t cost the companies a penny. How can that be? Because, officials explained, by providing contraception, insurers won’t have to pay for baby delivery and prenatal care. Brilliant!
Well, not so brilliant. That bogus argument assumes that women who don’t get free contraception through insurance won’t get it at all. How likely is that?
Mario Rizzo nails this point.
TGIF: Contraception: Insuring the Uninsurable
Insurance arose as a way for individuals to pool their risk of some low-probability/high-cost misfortune befalling them. It shouldn’t be necessary to point this out, but coming of child-bearing age and choosing to use contraception is not an insurable event. It’s a volitional act. It may have good consequences for the person taking the action and society at large, but it is still a volitional act. It makes no sense to talk about insuring against the eventuality that a particular person will use contraception. Strictly speaking, contraception has nothing to do with insurance.Read TGIF here.
Some Feminists
As a feminist, I'd like to know why establishment "feminists" look to paternalistic government for free contraception.
Obama's "Accommodation" on Contraception
President Obama tells us that through his "accommodation" on the contraception controversy he's avoided "choos[ing] between individual liberty and basic fairness for all Americans."
How so? By ordering insurance companies to give away birth control pills.
Thursday, February 09, 2012
“We Perpetuate War by Exalting Its Sacrifices”
What could be more ridiculous? Has she forgotten that the invasion, war, and occupation – which laid waste to Iraq, killed over a million people, unleashed sectarian violence/cleansing, and created four million refugees – was against a country that had never threatened Americans and was based on bald-faced lies about weapons of mass destruction and Saddam Hussein’s connection to al Qaeda and the 9/11 attacks?
What’s to celebrate? Victory? There is nothing that could be described as victory. The invasion and aggressive war guaranteed certain disgrace for the United States. But even in conventional terms, there was no victory. An authoritarian and corrupt government was left in charge -- a government that is close to Iran, which is demagogically portrayed as America’s (and Israel’s) mortal enemy. (I have no problem with the Iraq’s affinity for Iran, but America’s ruling elite can’t be thrilled about it.) The refugees have not returned to their homes. Half of them left the country. The place is a shambles.
Again, what’s to celebrate?
It will be said that, politics aside, the troops made sacrifices that should be honored. Nonsense. First, they made no sacrifices for “the country.” The country didn’t “call.” They might have thought that it did, but in fact their sacrifices were for opportunistic politicians and the military-industrial complex, who’ve all done quite well, thank you very much. The troops weren’t protecting “our freedom.” On the contrary, the U.S. government’s brutal treatment of Arabs and Muslims endangers Americans by provoking a desire for revenge. That’s why 9/11 happened in the first place.
So the vets weren’t serving the country. They were serving the imperial government, which seeks global hegemony for political and economic reasons. At best, the military personnel were fooled. At worst, they just enjoyed kicking Arab ass.
But shouldn’t they be honored anyway? it will be asked.
The last word in opposition to any celebration was provided by Paddy Chayefsky in his great antiwar movie, The Americanization of Emily:
“We perpetuate war by exalting its sacrifices."
Wednesday, February 08, 2012
The Picture that’s Worth a Thousand Words
The blue mass in the middle is Iran. The stars in the red areas represent U.S. military bases. (Click to enlarge.)
Tuesday, February 07, 2012
Op-ed: Obama Can Stop Israel from Attacking Iran
[W]hile Israel insists on its freedom of action, it realizes it would need America’s help. This means that the Obama administration holds the upper hand: it is in a position to stop Israel from igniting a catastrophic war in the Middle East simply by declaring publicly that it will not back Netanyahu if he orders an attack — or covertly provokes Iran into firing the first shot.
Americans who oppose war with Iran can best serve peace by demanding that Obama make such a declaration.
Read the full op-ed here.
Saturday, February 04, 2012
Iran’s Nuclear Program
[The International Atomic Energy Agency has] inspectors in all the sites where Iran is producing enriched uranium. These inspectors, who make frequent surprise visits, keep cameras in place to watch every move, and they carefully measure Iran’s input of feed stock to the centrifuges and the output of low enriched uranium, which is then placed under seal.
Ron Paul: Open-Borders Advocate?
In “Ron Paul & Immigration: A Speculative Theory,” I expressed “my suspicion that Ron Paul secretly favors open borders” because although he says he supports “secure borders,” he opposes all standard measures for achieving that end. Rep. Paul lately has furnished more evidence (HT: Gary Chartier) that my theory is accurate. An Associated Press report from Las Vegas begins, “Republican presidential hopeful Ron Paul outlined his views on immigration Wednesday, saying he favors a compassionate policy that doesn't rely on ‘barbed-wire fences and guns on our border.’”
The AP continued:
Paul blasted politicians who blame immigrants for causing the country's economic problems. He compared the situation to Nazi Germany's targeting of Jews in the 1930s.
"When things go badly, individuals look for scapegoats," Paul said. "Hispanics, the immigrants who have come in, are being used as scapegoats."
Paul also told an Hispanic audience he opposes illegal immigration and that “[i]f an individual is found to be breaking the law, serious consideration should be given for them to return.”
But this position may not be what it seems on the surface. Open-borders advocates also oppose illegal immigration. Indeed, we seek to legalize--or better, decriminalize—freedom of movement, making illegal immigration a thing of the past.
Moreover, when Paul talks about immigrant law-breakers, he seems to mean laws other than immigration laws. He followed up his statement about lawbreakers by adding, “I would think 99 percent of people who come here come because they believe in the American dream.”
Note also his reluctant tone: “serious consideration should be given for them to return.” Obviously he is unenthusiastic about deporting even lawbreakers.
Ron Paul clearly seems uncomfortable with government restrictions on people’s freedom to move. His libertarian convictions apparently run deep enough to keep him from sounding like other Republicans (and Democrats) on this issue.
“The one thing I have resisted and condemned: I do not believe that barbed-wire fences and guns on our border will solve any of our problems. You say, ‘Well, this is only for illegals.’ That's a bunch of baloney. How do you sort out illegals from legals? Unless you put papers and identification on everybody.”
Does that sound like an opponent of a key natural right: the freedom to move?
Thursday, February 02, 2012
Wednesday, February 01, 2012
Sunday, January 29, 2012
Trivializing Anti-Semitism
Glenn Greenwald has heroically exposed the latest trivialization of the charge of anti-Semitism. (His other posts are here and here.) These days one is likely to be hit with that ugly charge – or the perhaps uglier one of being a “self-hating Jew” – merely for doubting that Iran is developing a nuclear weapon or is an “existential threat” to Israel. (Guilty!)
Needless to say, if the epithet “anti-Semite” is going to be used in such a patently ridiculous way, it will have little force when applied to the real thing. Why are the “Israel-firsters” so short-sighted?
That term – “Israel-firster” – has drawn a good deal of attention from those who lightly throw around the anti-Semitism charge in order to silence criticism of Israel and the Israel lobby, but it’s not at the heart of the issue. (An Israel-firster is not someone who says, “Israel right or wrong” but rather one who says, “Israel can’t be wrong.”) Criticism itself of Israel and the lobby is the real target. The campaign to silence the critics would have been no less intense had that term never been used – and in fact writers who have never called anyone an Israel-firster are nonetheless accused of anti-Semitism (or of dangerously skirting it).
Yet it’s hard to see what’s objectionable about the label “Israel-firster” when, as Greenwald points out, some of the most prominent American backers of Israel essentially call themselves the same thing. Greenwald writes:
Let’s start with Haim Saban, the Hollywood mogul who, among other things, lavishly funds the Democratic Party, as well as the center at the Brookings Institution bearing his name where pro-Iraq-War and Iran-adversary Kenneth Pollack is a “senior fellow”; this is what Saban told The New York Times (which described him as “the most politically connected mogul in Hollywood, throwing his weight and money around Washington and, increasingly, the world, trying to influence all things Israeli”):
I’m a one-issue guy and my issue is Israel.
Then there’s Sheldon Adelson, Newt Gingrich’s financier. Amazingly, you can read and hear reports about Adelson and his Las Vegas casino megafortune that never mention Israel or that he publishes a pro-Likud newspaper there. Yet NBC quoted Adelson saying:
All we care about is being good Zionists, being good citizens of Israel, because even though I am not Israeli born, Israel is in my heart.
Gingrich, by the way, took a more moderate line on the Palestinians (whom he now says were only recently “invented”) before he met Adelson. If there’s one thing worse than a demagogue, it’s a demagogue for sale.
If Saban and Adelson are willing to say such things openly – which is their perfect right to do – what is the problem with criticizing them or using the term “Israel-firster”?
Clearly, the point is to intimidate the critics of Israel and the Israel lobby, which – let us not forget – are working overtime to provoke a war against Iran.
Update: This is the first time I’ve used the term “Israel-firster.” My reason for not using it is the same as Corey Robin’s, namely, “not because it questions the patriotism of American Jews but because it partakes of the vocabulary of patriotism in the first place, a vocabulary I find suspect and noxious from beginning to end.”
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
Iraqi Death Toll
Posted by Dahlia Wasfi on Facebook:
To Whom It May Concern:
Your January 3, 2012 post, “Lest We Forget, Iraq’s Horrific Body Count” offers a final toll for the Iraq “War” (honestly, an illegal invasion and occupation) as 162,000, 79% civilian, from Iraq Body Count. This figure is horrific enough, but it is not even close to the results of accurate surveys. Iraq Body Count is a non-scientific tabulation of the dead. Accurate studies were done, published in the Lancet journal in 2004 and 2006. The estimated number of dead in 2004--more than seven years ago--was 98,000. The estimated number of dead in 2006—more than five years ago—was 654,965, and this calculation excluded the slaughters in the city of Fallujah. The British polling agency ORB put the figure at over 1,000,000 in 2007. That was more than four years ago, and the figure has only grown since then. As for using the qualifier of “civilian,” when we invade a nation that poses no threat to us; that is, when we commit the supreme crime against humanity, ALL of our victims are innocent. The very least we can do to respect the dead is acknowledge how many there are to the best of our ability. Please publish a correction.
Sincerely,
Dahlia Wasfi, M.D.
Monday, January 23, 2012
Nock on Moral Education
The point is that any enlargement [of the State], good or bad, reduces the scope of individual responsibility, and thus retards and cripples the education which can be a product of nothing but the free exercise of moral judgment. Like the discipline of the army, again, any such enlargement, good or bad, depraves this education into a mere routine of mechanical assent. The profound instinct against being ‘done for our own good’ . . . is wholly sound. Men are aware of the need of this moral experience as a condition of growth, and they are aware, too, that anything tending to ease it off from them, even for their own good, is to be profoundly distrusted. The practical reason for freedom, then, is that freedom seems to be the only condition under which any kind of substantial moral fibre can be developed.
--Albert Jay Nock, “On Doing the Right Thing”
