Another socialist blog

The late Jesse Helms famously ran a racist commercian against a black political opponent in 1990.

On the television commercial, the camera zones in on a white man’s hands, crumpling what apparently is a job rejection letter. The announcer then intones: ‘You needed that job and you were the best qualified. But they had to give it to a minority because of a racial quota. Is that really fair?’

Those darn minorities, taking jobs from white boys. This would be, or should be, the lead in Jesse Helms’ obituary, just a shameful footnote in history. But the guy who wrote the ad, Charlie Black, is now chief strategist for John McCain.  Who would have thought McCain would turn a blind eye to racism?

The Bush administration’s secret war against Iran has already begun. Seymour Hersch reveals in the New Yorker that covert military operations, and covert “intelligence” operations, are already occurring. Armed Special Forces units are on the ground inside Iran, with orders to assassinate various “high value targets.” They are authorized to use “defensive lethal action,” which I imagine means killing any Iranians who have the temerity to defend themselves. The target list, the list of people to be murdered, was drawn up by the Vice President’s office, a fact Hersch reiterated in this Fresh Air interview.

The White House denies it.

“I can tell you flatly that U.S. forces are not operating across the Iraqi border into Iran, in the south or anywhere else,” U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan C. Crocker said Sunday during an interview on CNN’s Late Edition.

This is something Hersch must be used to by now. So far, he always turns out to be right: about the My Lai massacre, among other stories of American war crimes.

Key members of Congress approved $400 million in funding for the secret war. According to the article,

None of the four Democrats in the Gang of Eight—Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Intelligence Committee chairman John D. Rockefeller IV, and House Intelligence Committee chairman Silvestre Reyes—would comment on the Finding, with some noting that it was highly classified. An aide to one member of the Democratic leadership responded, on his behalf, by pointing to the limitations of the Gang of Eight process. The notification of a Finding, the aide said, “is just that—notification, and not a sign-off on activities.  Proper oversight of ongoing intelligence activities is done by fully briefing the members of the intelligence committee.” However, Congress does have the means to challenge the White House once it has been sent a Finding. It has the power to withhold funding for any government operation. The members of the House and Senate Democratic leadership who have access to the Finding can also, if they choose to do so, and if they have shared concerns, come up with ways to exert their influence on Administration policy.

In other words, they signed off. More to the point, if the Democratic Party had any intention of interfering with secret Presidential wars, they would have repealed the law authorizing covert wars in the first place.  And they would have impeached George W. Bush by now.

There has been a recent surge of violence inside Iran.

This Modern World is usually dead-on hilarious, but especially so this week as we take a look at those oh-so-color-blind Republicans.

Charter Communications has announced that it will soon begin wiretapping its customers.

Well. They don’t call it wiretapping of course, they call it…”enhanced user experience.” By which they mean they will be looking at your web browser activity in detail, and inserting their own targeted ads based on whatever you happened to be doing at the time. Which, you might have imagined, was your own business.

I hardly know where to begin. Far from a paragon of virtue to start with, Charter proposes to invade the privacy of your private communications. Trust them, they promise they aren’t stealing credit card numbers or checking to see who’s been naughty and who’s been nice. Come on, if you can’t trust a big corporation who can you trust?

Surely they’ve got a good reason to demand you give up your rights, not to mention your peace of mind. Be assured, they do. But it’s not to protect you from terrorism, nor to protect your children from pedophiles, nor to stop spam or viruses from getting to your computer. They want to do it so you can enjoy more ads. That is, after all what you use the Internet for, right? Looking at commercials?

Nine months of blog inactivity! That’s a new record, and hopefully it’ll stand from now on.

I’ve converted from Blosxom to Wordpress MU, since I was rebuilding the server anyhow, so it’ll have more features and will probably look sharper as well. I should have all the old posts converted by the weekend.