Bollettino

Hmm. We don’t know if we can pat ourselves on the back yet, but it does look like our projection about the Shi’ite response to Saddam’s capture is starting to assume the outlines we predicted.

“Officials held a round of urgent meetings in Washington and Baghdad in the wake of the rejection on Sunday by a powerful Shiite religious leader, Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, of the administration's complex plans to hold caucuses around the country to select an interim legislature and executive in a newly self-governing Iraq. Officials say they are responding to the cleric's objections with a new plan that will open the caucuses to more people and make their inner workings more transparent.
Administration officials also expressed concern about a separate part of Ayatollah Sistani's statement on Sunday that demanded that any agreement for American-led forces to remain in Iraq be approved by directly elected representatives.”
If you will cast your mind back, faithful reader, you’ll remember that we said, a day or two after the capture of Saddam:

“With Saddam rendered irrelevant, the third factor in Iraqi politics can now come into play � and come into play in such a way as to disturb Wolfowitz�s dream of Pax Chile on the Euphrates. That third factor is the Shi’ite demand for elections. Americans have been blocking this demand, because the American backplan is to somehow thrust a Chalabi or Chalabi like figure on Iraq. This thrusting was to be called democracy, not rape. So far, with Chalabi, it has pretty much failed …

In our opinion, the combinations now at work in Iraq are about to tumble to a new configuration. And this is not going to make the Pentagon happy. Our bet, right now, is that the following will emerge as the combination of forces in Iraq in the next, oh, two or three months:

The resistance will continue. It is a headless resistance. Whether it gets a brain will make a lot of difference, here. Our bet is that it won’t.

The Council is going to have to over-reach or dissolve. They�ve been put in an impossible middle position by the Americans. The question of who and how and for what Saddam H. is tried is going to be a point around which the Council will have to concentrate, for good or ill. We think that the Council, which is as brainless as the resistance, will try to over-reach and submit at the same time, and that it just won�t work any more. Alienating its patron, and alienated from its land, the Council will change radically.

Southern Iraq, assured by Saddam�s capture, will finally show a restiveness that America can ill afford. This, we think, will shape whatever happens next in Iraq. As to what that shape will be --- we have no idea. In truth, the Bushies have been so blinded to what is happening in Iran that they dont realize that the conservative mullahs are, ideologically, their best friends. We think the clerical Shi�a elite, which has obtained a considerable amount of capital, is eager to find an excuse to privatize, and to inject its capital into the global monetary flows. Whether that influences the Shia elite in Iraq is something we don�t know enough about to predict.”

Hey, that looks pretty good at the moment.

So, the comedy of multi-cultural misunderstanding goes on. It is rather amazing that Americans in 2004 are acting the way Americans in 1904 acted in the Philippines – as if they were dealing with an inferior race. But, in fact, that is exactly what they are doing. These grafs are wholly believable, and wholly astonishing:
“Now that Ayatollah Sistani has rejected the system as not democratic enough, administration officials said they were intensifying efforts in all of Iraq's governorates and in cities and towns to hold local meetings to select delegates to the caucuses.
The new hope in Washington, the officials said, was in effect to make the caucus system look more democratic without changing it in a fundamental way.”
Right. It’s the beads approach – give those savages beads, and in return they’ll give you Manhattan. Hell, worked four hundred years ago, oughta work today. So much for the much lauded moral politics of the Wolfowitz crowd. It’s democracy without any of that pesky will of the people stuff. And really, how can the people object when we’ve imposed on them a perfectly decent savage, one Chalabi, who even learned the charming American art of swindling – he’s almost as civilized as us!

However, a hopeful point should be made. We originally thought that there might be a lot more violence in Southern Iraq, due to the capture of S. There hasn't been. Really, there is a chance for a peaceful revolution here, after all: one bringing with it the prefiguration of Iraqi democracy without the servility towards the Americans. A good thing, a very good thing.

Bollettino

We went to a story in the Observer about grunt discontents. The story pointed us to a highly commendable site, run by the Veterans for Common Sense.

When Time magazine named the soldier the Man of the Year, there was something about the gesture reminiscent of Uriah Heep rubbing his hands together – an unctuous hypocrisy, if you will. Because, beyond the photo ops, the common soldier of America’s current war is being treated dismally by a government that pinches its pennies, when it comes to family leave for reservists, while throwing its billions away, when it comes to contracting with Halliburtan. It stinks.

The Veterans for Common Sense site has a compilation of articles about the collective dump the Pentagon is taking on Times Man of the year. For instance:

1. The wounded. Has there ever been an American war in which the censorship was so hamfisted, and the response of the press was so pussyfooted? In WWII, the press advocated for the GI; in this war, the press so far has advocated for a total of one GI, Jessica Lynch. The rest of them – the 2,841 wounded by offical count on January 7 – have somehow missed out on the Made for Tv movie, and the million dollar book deal. They are also missing out on their rights, not that this is going to make any headlines:

“Most service members severely wounded in Iraq and returned to the United States are treated at Walter Reed.

In a letter sent this week to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Dave Gorman, executive director of Disabled American Veterans, complained that the DAV is being blocked from carrying out its congressionally chartered mission.

Gorman questioned measures that require hospital pre-screening and approval of all visits, and full-time escorts during those visits, according to the letter a copy of which CNN obtained. Gorman said because of those escorts there is a lack of privacy over matters the counselors discuss with patients and their families at Walter Reed.”

2. Money. One of the great things about casting the soldier as a hero is that you don’t have to pay for heroes. I mean, Hercules getting a disability pension? Oh, forget it. It’s enough that Tom Cruise plays him in a cheesy Hollywood movie – one of those movies that, for the one millionth time, says NOTHING about the pay structure of the Army and the National Guard. So Times runs its suck piece; the Defense Department tries to “cut fat’ by cutting out the 300 million extra bucks that go to families for combat pay and family leave. And it isn’t an issue. We’d much rather see smiling dudes in camouflage hoisting a flag than think about paying them a decent salary. The gross inequalities that have become a structural part of the American system since the 80s have created a callousness that is most evident here. If you destroy unions and divert as much money as possible to the wealthiest, eventually the soldier – who is, after all the medals are taken off, another worker – is just going to have to take it on the chin. And there’s going to be more chin-taking as the war goes into its second year. Why? Because the deep, pervasive lying that took place as the Bushies organized this war meant that fighting it had to be done at the least political cost. No selective service here. No preparation for long term combat. Rather, we call up the Reserves – units that should, as the name implies, be Reserves. And as this AP article in the Army Times makes clear, that is the Rumsfeld policy. All military operations have to have a great code name: Operation Eagle, or Thunderbolt, or something. For this one I suggest "The Three Stooges come to the Defense Department".

“Back-to-back wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have stretched the Army thin. Nearly two-thirds of its active duty brigade-sized units are deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan. When the troops currently in Iraq rotate out this spring, the U.S. plans to lean heavily on the National Guard and Reserves for replacements. The Pentagon said Wednesday that the number of U.S. military reservists called to active duty jumped by more than 10,000 in the past week.

“What we’re trying to do is to manage the force now so that we don’t have a falloff in recruitment or retention a year from now, and then have a gap where we have to scramble to rectify that,” Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Tuesday.”

Ah, the gibberish just flows and flows from the Donald! He’s the Ed McMahon of bad planning!

3. Meanwhile, back on the home front. The Observer mentioned a Military Families Who Speak Out. The site has some interesting letters. An articulate and impassioned letter from Jessica D. Salamon to President Bush caught our eye. She makes a sensible suggestion: “Please do all of us a favor and don't talk about the sacrifices we are making until you know what they are.”

Pursuant to that request, she enumerates some of her sacrifices. Her husband joined the Ohio National Guard. This turned out to be a bad move, since “he thought being in a local unit would make the most difference in his immediate world. He also thought I would best accept his enlistment because traditionally the National Guard stays home to protect the US, our citizens, and our beloved Constitution.” And it does – normally. But Mr. Salamon wasn't calculating on the political cowardice stalking D.C., where the feel good rodomontade of the belligeranti is paid for by the blood of the citizenry. Ms. Salamon explains what her particular sacrifice is all about:
“When you speak of sacrifices, what do you picture? Do you picture apple-cheeked wives going out to sell war bonds or become Rosie the Riveter? Because that is not the reality of the sacrifices currently being made by military families. I welcome you to spend a day with me. It will be a long day, though, because I am unemployed and have trouble sleeping at night because I am under a lot of stress. I wait all day for my husband to call. I have to have my cell phone with me at all times because I am afraid to miss a call. I won't shop in the grocery store very long, because I don't get a signal in there and I'm afraid that he will call while I am in there. I cry every time I hang up with him because all of the joy and emotion is gone from his voice, he doesn't sound like the husband I married eight months ago, nor the man I have been with for nearly six years.

I spend much of my day writing him letters and printing articles off of the internet for him to read. I try to convince him that things will be better for us when he returns.

We haven't had a very good year, you see. We married in haste in April because we thought his unit was to be deployed then. My husband graduated with a degree in Computer Science and although he is a talented programmer, he was unable to find a job. In August, our home in Columbus was destroyed in a flash flood and we lost everything we owned. Our whole life washed away in one rain storm. We moved to northeastern Ohio to be near our families and try to rebuild our lives. We were both unemployed then. In November, we got the orders for my husband to report on Dec. 6 for mobilization. He was allowed to come home for Christmas, but our holiday was tainted by the fact that everyone had questions about his deployment and the fact that he was only allowed a three day pass. He didn't get to come home for New Year's, he will miss his birthday this month and our first anniversary in April. We may never get to go on a honeymoon. His orders are for eighteen months, so things are not looking up for us in the immediate future.”

Ms. Salamon obviously doesn’t realize what compassionate conservatism is all about – as you make the sacrifices, you store up your joys in heaven, not on earth! On earth, we have to sacrifice to make sure that people in Cheney's income bracket, poor pressed things, and those poor mutual funds investors, and especially those poor, suffering people in the energy industry don’t suffer the untold harm of taxation and regulation. Consequently, we don’t have the money for pesky little things like extending unemployment insurance. And we certainly can't take gravy out of the mouths of the numerous well entrenched military industries (Dyncorps, SIAC, Martin Marietta, Boeing) just to sprinkle some on the families of those who are really doing the fighting, can we? That’s going way too far.

Bollettino

We’ve examined the combinations with regard to Iraq. Let’s examine the combinations with regard to Bush’s re-election.

Most analysis of the election that LI reads in the paper is determined by a very short horizon: what happened this week. Or last week. And what the polls say about it.

But let’s try to take another approach, and look at the bad news and good news possibilities held by this year. If good news is taken to help Bush, what good news can he expect?

It was the orthodoxy – from October to December – that he would be enjoying great economic headlines in 2004. The newest employment figures rather kick that in the head. Plus the figures that aren’t being publicized – the dip dip dip of the value of the dollar. If unemployment doesn’t go down, the money flowing into the market might start seeking to take advantage of the dollar’s currently low status. This would be a double whammy of bad news for Bush.

This is the hardest thing to predict. Economists have never found a way to map their models over the actual working economy, even though certain models do have predictive power in the long run. But what matters, at the moment, is that if there is no change, this will be bad news for Bush. That possibility should hedge any prediction of a Bush landslide, such as those that are being pitched about by the right. Because bad news, here, is either remain the same news, or actual bad news – the return of the recession --

The best news, outside of a boom, for Bush would be the capture or killing of Osama bin Laden. The timing of Saddam H.’s capture was really fortunate for the Dems – if it had happened in June of this year, for instance, the good news would certainly float Bush into the general election like the Queen of the Rose Bowl.

So, one would expect a stirring up of the troops to bring Bush Osama’s head. Best time for him would be about August. If I were a Democrat, I would be figuring out how to pre-empt that. Bush has rather screwed himself, here, however: there are not enough American troops, we think, to operate against Osama as Americans operated against Saddam. This means relying on the Pakistanis or Afghans to capture the guy. We imagine that there will be some shift of troops from Iraq to Afghanistan this year, but we wonder whether that won’t bring up more questions than it is worth.

I think all the good news has been squeezed out of Iraq. The news from now to November is probably going to be bad. American casualties, recalcitrant Iraqis, blah blah blah. The best option for the administration is closing down discussion of Iraq, but that will be difficult when it defines the administration. Especially given the jingos who want to take a shot at Syria and Iran. The consensus of D.C. people seems to be that Iraq will be a net gain for Bush, but I don’t see how they figure that.

LI thought surely corruption – the culture of corruption in top management, and the complicity of Bush’s people in that corruption – would be a big Bush deficit. It hasn’t worked out that way. Put this down to our class bias. In actuality, even people who were totally screwed by Enron just aren’t interested in seeing Jeff Skilling’s head on a platter.

As for Bad news that could help Bush – the one thing that springs to mind is another attack on the Homeland. LI believes that this possibility should sink the Prez – after all, he’s been in office three years. No way to blame this one on Clinton. But the Republicans have invested years of irrationally aggressive rhetoric with the electorate. We all like to think that the bully is unmasked, in the end, but in reality, the bully can go on for a long time. If there is an attack in September or October, Bush is a shoo-in. Again, this is due to multiple failings – for instance, the failure of the press to investigate why we were vulnerable to four parties of truly amateur hijackers in 2001; whether the Bush administration’s findings about the attack on the U.S.S. Cole in June of that year should have sent up flags; etc. etc. The official story has solidified: a heroic president, making it back in a crisis to D.C., and directing a response that crushed the enemy. The counter-story is confused: should Bush have pre-empted Osama bin? But aren’t we critics of pre-emption? It doesn’t have clarity or momentum. If an attack comes early this year, a lot will depend on the scope .of it. LI doesn’t see how the U.S. can scrape up an extra 400 billion dollars to inject into the economic system to counter the inevitable bad effects of an attack on the scale of 9/11. However, never underestimate the credit limit of Uncle Sam.

That’s the coldest eye we can cast on the possible major good and bad news during the next eleven months. Of course, LI is not a prophet or magician. Low level events – from some personal failing or virtue of Bush, to some celebrity trial, to whatever – can change the value of these factors trememdously. But it is a good start on constructing the salient combinations for this election – and a much better exercise than some exegesis of the polls, which seems to be the only thing journalists know how to do.

In a later post, we will try to properly construct these factors into combinations.

Bollettino

In our series of posts about Libya, we listed three dishonorable honorables – federal judges whose recently disclosed behavior during the Edwin Wilson trial should lead to the resignations of the two of them still on the bench, D. Lowell Jensen and Stephen Trott, and should cast a shadow over the third, Stanley Sporkin, who served as a judge in the very prominent D.C. Federal Court.


Today, the NYT has a story about the Monsanto Judge. It is so nice when a major corporation has a judge in its pocket, it so makes one feel that capitalism is being guarded from its enemies.. The judge, Rodney W. Sippel, is a Clinton appointee – by way of Gephardt. When he was a mere lawyer for Husch & Eppenberger, he worked as a lawyer for Monsanto, and is even listed as a Monsanto lawyer on a price fixing case. Now, as a Judge, he is presiding over a Monsanto price fixing case. Oh, and he forgot to disclose that previous connection. But not to worry! We are assured by the archons of good behavior in the law world, consulted by the Times, that he is an honorable guy and would NEVER, EVER be biased in favor of his former bread and butter.

After quoting the code in the matter of when a Judge is supposed to recuse himself (“The Judicial Code of Conduct says that "a judge shall disqualify himself or herself in a proceeding in which the judge's impartiality might reasonably be questioned, including but not limited to instances in which: the judge has a personal bias or prejudice concerning a party, or personal knowledge of disputed evidentiary facts concerning the proceeding." The code also says a judge should disqualify him or herself if "the judge served as lawyer in the matter in controversy, or a lawyer with whom the judge previously practiced law served during such association as a lawyer concerning the matter"), the Times got a Professor Stephen Giller on the line. Giller is sophisticated enough to know that if we are going to go by the wording of the judicial code, why, you just aren’t going to get the kind of rulings that will countenance the spirit of blithe corporate corruption:
“Prof. Stephen Gillers at New York University Law School, however, said that while Judge Sippel probably should have disclosed his relationship with Monsanto, there did not appear to be enough evidence to disqualify him from the price-fixing case because the earlier case - even if he had worked on it for Monsanto - was not the exact same case.
"These are not sufficiently connected to be the same matter," Professor Gillers said, referring to the code of conduct. "The judge has not violated the code of conduct but he could have and should have told the parties about his prior relationship."”
Gillers interpretation of the code would, of course, practically eviscerate it. But what the hell, eh? How are you going to put in those billable hours for corporate giants, bring home the half a mil, and still get your cushy behind ensconced in the seat of judgment otherwise?
Sippel, meanwhile, has put the letter asking him to be recused under seal – which is not, according to the article, very standard behavior. Using the Giller principle, however, that unless a judge is caught slaughtering people with an automatic weapon on a downtown street at noon, he hasn’t violated any petty code, Sippel’s behavior isn’t going to earn him any demerits.
However, perhaps the Gillers principle only works when the Judge has been appointed by a Democrat president. In a case this summer in which a Wyoming Judge, a Republican, overturned Clinton’s rules against roads on national lands, it came out afterwards that the Judge had about a million dollars invested with oil companies. Gillers is quoted in the Denver Post as saying “Brimmer [the Judge in question] had an obligation to notify the parties of his holdings. 'You can't bury your head in the sand. You have to know your assets and know how they may be affected by cases that come before you,' he said.
Gillers said that in his opinion, Brimmer should have recused himself.”

Conflict of interest, you know, a veritable mosaic. It’s why we need ethical “experts.”

Bollettino

LI readers should rush right out and read the winter issue of Common Knowledge. Surely that is the best general scholarly journal since Raritan. Well, okay, there’s Critical Inquiry, but let's not quibble. Common Knowledge has devoted the to the ‘second world:” Central and Eastern Europe. This is a world of drowned kingdoms – Austro-Hungary, the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union, Bohemia, and the like. Even as they were drowning, certain writers – Joseph Roth, Robert Musil, Andrei Bely – caught a last, fantastic glimmer.

But we wanted to quickly go to the Galin Tihanov’s “Why Did Modern Literary Theory Originate in Central and Eastern Europe? (And Why Is It Now Dead?).” Cognescenti will know that we are according the highest praise when we say that Tihanov encyclopedic, smart essay reminds us of T.J. Clark. Tihanov doesn’t have Clark’s tactile ability – Clark’s ability to describe a painting so that you can track it with your eye, if your eye was endowed with super-intelligence (alas, as Duchamp pointed out, the eye is dumb). Tihanov isn't quite to that point yet, and he is too specialized, from what I have seen of his other work, but he does pose pertinent questions, and comes up with really interesting answers.

Since the title is a question, let’s cut to the chase. Here is the answer, two thirds of the way through the essay:

“A new form of conceptualization is the reliable, if often belated, sign of the arrival of a new regime of relevance, as whose product it eventually emerges. Thus despite the many, if subtle, links and shades between regimes of relevance in the twentieth century, we can say that literary theory emerged in Eastern and Central Europe in the interwar decades as one of the conceptual products of the transition from a regime of relevance [End Page 78] that recognizes literature for its role in social and political practice to a regime that values literature primarily for its qualities as an art. Literary theory, however, was only one such form of conceptualization, though probably the most representative and interesting: the regime of artistic relevance (as opposed to that of social and political relevance) had been in evidence, after all, since long before the seventy years during which literary theory flourished. This regime emerged in the last quarter of the eighteenth century as a response to the changing status of art in the bourgeois marketplace; it made its first important, but self-contradictory and not always consequential, moves in the work of the Romantics (hence the significant if often vague role of Romanticism in the work of modern literary theorists); it continued through the years of aestheticism and l'art pour l'art, down into the first decades after World War II, with the American New Criticism as its high point and death knell.”

A few explanations. By ‘regime of relevance,” Tihanov is referring to the set of assumptions, the tones, the examples, and the privileged references that constitute the unity of a certain discourse over a certain time within a certain social group It is a unity not of ideas, but of ways of considering ideas.

By literary theory, Tihanov is not talking about the endless stream of student papers finding symbolism in the Scarlet Letter. Even though those are the social detritus left over as literary theory mummifies. Tihanov’s idea is that literary theory constructed, as an object, literature; it endowed literature with the characteristic of autonomy within the social whole; it then explored literature with reference to that founding autonomy; and it used that autonomy to legitimate its analysis of the peculiar linguistic structures that populate literary texts.

As Tihanov sees it, that view of literature, and by implication that kind of literary theory, originated in the 2nd world – in Russia, parts of the Austro-Hungarian empire, Poland, etc. – between the first world war and the thirties. The great figures of this era – Jakobson, Lukacs, Ingarten, Mukarovsky, Bakhtin, Shklovsky – circulate, in Tihanov’s view, as innovators and connectors, condensing their own sometimes marginal experience – as exiles, for instance, or opponents of particular political orders – into the constitution of literary theory. Now, of course, anyone familiar with the English school, from I.A. Richards to Leavis, or familiar with the influence of Taine not only on a generation of French literary critics, but, in this country, on Edmund Wilson, might want to protest on the foreclosure of some of the main lines of literary theory’s history. And there is certainly a problem with including Lukacs in this group, and excluding Benjamin and Adorno. I would certainly revise Tihanov’s last sentence: “aestheticism and l'art pour l'art” did indeed continue, as the organizer of a regime of relevance, “down into the first decades after World War II, with the American New Criticism…” but surely Adorno’s Aesthetic Theory was its “high point and death knell.” In fact, Adorno writes in that book like a tolling bell, with the clapper of dialectic going back and forth until the bell cracks.

Adorno, unmentioned, seems to be the ghost of Hamlet’s father in this piece, moaning under the elaborate woodwork. As Tihanov surveys, rather gloomily, the end of the golden age, isn’t that the Cultural Industry I hear creaking in the background?

“A good example of this interpenetration and competition of regimes within the space of a single article is Jakobson's 1919 piece "The Tasks of Artistic Propaganda," where he uses Marxist parlance and arguments to champion a Formalist and futurist agenda. 51 The interaction of regimes of relevance also explains, to a degree at least, the attempts of the Formalists and the Prague Circle to participate in the struggle for the distribution of social and cultural capital in the new states. Perhaps needless to say, the regime of social and political relevance was eventually imposed by force at the expense of the regime of aesthetic relevance, and with devastating consequences for literary theory in Russia. Similarly, in the 1960s we can begin to discern the complex overlap of all three regimes that I have described: a lingering appreciation of literature on the basis of literariness; the eruptive sway of literature in social and political discussions at universities in Paris, Prague, and Berkeley; and finally, the withdrawal into private consumption of literature as a largely escapist medium in the face of increasingly mediated forms of communication and the enhanced commodification of leisure. Today, the regime of relevance validating literature as a source of experience and entertainment overlaps with the freshly transfigured regime of social and political relevance exemplified in the struggle for "representative" national and global canons. What we need especially to bear in mind while studying literature and literary culture is that, while quite different regimes of relevance coexist at any one time, one of them comes to the fore—whether manifestly or obliquely—as the leading component in the mix.”

The last sentence, in particular, seems to appeal to a necessity that I wouldn't grant. Under Tihanov's words is an image that comes from a distorted picture of evolution, in which there is a tree with a direction, and competition that creates one kind of every species in an environment. That, however, isn't true, as Stephen Jay Gould pointed out. To be jargonish, the rhizomatic moment occurs at the cultural juncture of TV and deconstruction. I would contend, actually, that the retreat to the internal exile of literature, in the face of TV, like some terrible Big Brother, getting into our speech, our pockets, our dreams, is a distinct regime that has rooted itself, weirdly enough, in the technology that has put TV in retreat – the technology that enables you to read this, gentle reader.

Don't count on hegemony. Tihanov needs to read the latest Nielsen ratings.

Still – a very thought provoking piece. Read it.

Note from LI

Well, we’ve been doing this for two and a half years. As our faithful readers know (LI has bitched often and loud enough that they ought to know), LI has been luxuriating in the character stiffening circumstances of the Bush recession, like a man falling downstairs on his ass who pretends it is a cheap form of chiropractery. Another tough month is upon us. As we were walking home with our groceries – you know, the Fosters and the salami – we figured, why not beg a little. No doubt, too, we’ve been influenced by a scarifying book that we are reviewing for the Austin Chronicle, The Working Poor, by David Shipler. It is a work of journalist ethnography concerning the forty to sixty million Americans who make enough money not to be considered poor, but too little money not to be considered credit risks. Shiplen went around, talking to these people. The authorial persona was sometimes condescending, but mostly pretty on top of things. For instance, he notices the way all Americans have seemingly acceded to the idea of the sacredness of businesses. He tells one of those humdrum horror stories about a woman whose 14 year old semi-retarded daughter unthinkingly confided that she was afraid when he Mom left for the late shift. Of course, her Mom has no options – there’s no welfare system that is going to support her – but the government, in the form of the principal of the school, felt bound to report abuse, or potential abuse, and so the state contemplated taking the child. The process involved consulting psychologists, driving the working mother almost crazy, and pushing for her to get another job – but nobody from this group called her factory to ask that she be put on the day shift. Nobody. I mean, one can’t interfere with the perfect working of the mysteries of capital, even as the state gets out its needle nosed pliers to pluck apart the innards of its poorest citizens.

And so it goes. The 40 hour a week, the 6.50 an hour divorcee clerk. The roofer supporting the three kids and the bedridden wife. Etc., etc.

So many anecdotes, and all of them went straight through the LI heart. The incorrigible unforesightedness of the working poor, the desire to fit in the system, to pay off debts, to be normal, to have the phone company not add that extra late fee, to have the cable and (criminal luxury!) dentistry – all of those virtues that lock you into poverty. All of the virtues whose systematic violation by the CEOs of even the most penny-ante of the Fortune 500 has become routine. An obsolescence that signals that the bourgeois ethical code is now, like something given away to Goodwill, yesterday’s fashion.

So that is what this post is about. Those of you who come here often enough, and like to come here (and from whom I haven’t already borrowed money that I can never pay back – that party can send me shaming emails) should consider sending us some of the ready as a sort of end of the year gift. And it isn’t tax deductible, either. We are talking 1 to 10 bucks --- nothing higher, and no pennies please – we detest pennies. They are always falling out of the LI pocket. We look around LI HQ, and there’s always some damn penny on the floor.

If you feel like it, then, here’s where you should send the lucre: Roger Gathman, 615 Upson, #203 Austin Texas 78703.

If you don’t feel like it, buy yourself a vodka martini on us.

Oh, and apologies to D. – he hates these kinds of posts. D. thinks I ought to have some sense of dignity.
And he’s known me, what, for twenty years?

Bollettino

Smoking guns... aborting the dreams of a swindler

Well, the WP has finally tracked down the most terrible threat ever to be faced by the American Republic. Yes, I’m talking of the truly awesome WMD capacity nursed, like a snake nurses its kittens, by Saddam the Monster. They have a picture of the reason we went to war on their site, here.

Is it scary or what? One wonders if the paper got an ultra security clearance to publish these two extremely dangerous and war-worthy diagrams. Perhaps they can be waved in the air when our POTUS addresses Congress for the annual round-up.

In other Iraqi news today...

The WSJ is fronting an important story about Iraq’s oil industry, today. After extensively pondering how to get away with it, the U.S. is apparently backing away from privatizing Iraq’s oil.

“U.S. advisers and Iraqi oil officials, now studying how to organize Iraq's vast but dilapidated oil industry, are leaning heavily toward recommending the formation of a large state-run petroleum company. If adopted, the move could sharply curtail the role of international oil corporations for years.

'Officials of the U.S.-led occupation have been pushing liberalization in most parts of the Iraqi economy. But in the politically sensitive oil sector, occupation advisers say they strongly support establishing a state-owned company similar to those in neighboring Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.”
T
here are some interesting sub-themes about the swindler – Chalabi – the Pentagon’s point man in Iraq -- who has “championed a much firmer free-market line,” and will probably be unhappy at the thought of having this opportunity for his brand of corruption being taken out of his hands. Chalabi’s dream of being Iraq’s Mussolini has been rudely handled by reality since the fall of Baghdad. But who needs Mussolini when you have the Russian oligarchs? Obviously, the man’s licked his lips over that kind of money. His theft of some millions in Jordan pales by comparison.

“In an interview this fall, Mr. Chalabi chided U.S. occupation officials. "They won't act in any way to give the impression that they came to Iraq for oil," he said. "This is a correct policy, of course, but this delays us."

"Mr. Bahr al-Uloum, the interim oil minister, appears to share views similar to Mr. Chalabi's. The son of another prominent Governing Council member, Mr. Bahr al-Uloum is a New Mexico-educated petroleum engineer. He has aggressively courted foreign oil companies and publicly backed privatization of oil-related businesses such as refineries and pipelines. He also has recently purged a number of the senior oil technocrats who are counseling a more conservative approach.””

Chip Cummins, whose byline is on this piece, ends with some speculation as to the replacement of al-Uloum if the state run oil company idea goes through.

Well... this reminds us of our frequent reference to the combinations that are possible in Iraq. If you will remember, we pointed out that Bush's betting on privatization, democracy by appointment of the Americans, and thinning down the troops was improbable -- the improbability compounded by each conjunction. We will have to review the combinations pretty soon. So far, the Shi'ite response to Hussein's capture has been much less intense than we expected.

What's up with that?