Gore Vidal in the Observer Yesterday

Ed: 'summing up', 'syndicated', 'principal' (NB. he usually has me do the spell-check so am not being mean).

I'm not v.serious, btw. I'm all for freelancers not getting ripped off. It's just that people don't seem to consider the knock on effects for research. If they could somehow work out a way of getting the freelancers to get a cut of download fees (from payable newspaper databases, I mean), then we'd all be happy. Nicole probably knows more about this than me.

Anyway lest we blether on, back to Ed's thread.

My mother is turning into greater Republican swine by the day and should be forced, Clockwork Orange stylee, to read this article. Everything political/anti-Bush I have to say gets knocked back to 'think of all those people in those buildings, who must be avenged etc.' She doesn't quite get it when I say, 'but I am thinking of them.'

Sean: because papers in most of America are cobbled together from wire services and 'lifestyle' pieces by soccer moms who don't think they're really soccer moms, so no room. Take a look at the Minneapolis paper, for epitome of this. Also Gore Vidal is *expensive*, he's got heating bills for a big fuckoff house on Lake Como to pay for.

because it's not really news. it sounds unsubstantiated and misinformed. Similar stuff appears in the Utne reader and ten other mags on a monthly basis. It's not like it can't be done and it's not like huge criticism of the current administration doesn't appear in a range of papers on a daily basis. It's just that this sounds like famous-person logic and unproveable conspiracy theory ranting. It's like asking why won't the Washington Post print Woody Harrelson's op-ed from The Guardian (I think it was the Guardian?)? - because it's Woody f'ing Harrelson. Also, Gore Vidal is allowed to rant about anything in the NYTimes and Vanity Fair whenever he wants to. No One is trying to silence him.

Americans got earfuls of dissenting voices (Vidal, Chomsky, Sontag et al) after 9/11. The continued cries of "you're stifling our dissent!" that I keep hearing from the left (and I say this as someone of the left) sounds more and more like "you don't agree with us and we can't figure out why!"

Not that there aren't good arguments to be made re ideological myopia in american media, and I haven't read this piece so I can't comment on it specifically, but this seems like a general trend worth pointing out before everyone gets too eager to cry censorship.

Make no mistake, this is a much more serious problem.

Haha yes this also contributes to a pervasive atmosphere of fear in which people view the flag like a cross to ward vampires as much as something to actually rally behind.

Ned: my point being that people who say that free-speech is stifled are not far off the mark, because it IS. Market forces are only part of it -- legislative and judicial acts as well as threats of such also contribute to a climate of fear. And indeed under constitutional law, free speech can be infringed not only in the deed, but in the legislative act in situations where risk of prosecution is unclear this can lead to an "atmosphere which unduly stifles public speeh" or words similar to thsi effect which I forget.

When Bush I read it, he thought it was insane and ignored it.

Who had a hand in writing it? Cheney, Rumsfield, and various other Bush II cronies.

So when Bush II comes to power, they just happen to get their "Pearl Habor" event and the think-tank's report becomes the official US foreign policy - word for word.

Normally I am pretty skeptical of conspiracies, but this is too much.

(Apart from that I think I agree with you.)

So all you're saying is that these "leftists" are holding their own highly-developed nation to higher standards than those of people elsewhere, which I really don't think is so odd: that's the whole point of living in a country suffused with the rhetoric of democracy.

nabisco: The report itself isn't the "conspiracy': the conspiracy is letting 9/11 happen.

the major extra factor in 9-11 terms is exactly what's gone wrong for putin at the moment: that anti-terrorist action which kills victims as well as perpetrators goes totally against the instincts of politicians who live in the world of spin and perception

http://www.newamericancentury.org/RebuildingAmericasDefenses

Read it for yourself.

My sense, though -- limited as this is, I grant -- is more with Spencer's take, in that I don't sense a climate of fear but a climate of indifference. I think that has to be factored into things a little more thoroughly here.

Trying to ensure control of various energy supplies and economic resources, by all accounts. Keep in mind I still think that fuel cell technology will render the oil factor of this all irrelevant or at least greatly reduced by the decade's end, and that both the left and right have as yet failed to consider all the possible implications of that.

I'm baffled as well by the climate of indifference, Ned. Where do you live ?

Orange County, where there's plenty of it and then some. And keep in mind that this is far from a lily white county, outside impressions otherwise.

I don't believe it will happen quite that fast, but I generally agree (and most geologists agree that the last drop of oil will come out of the ground sometime in the 22nd century - optimistically). And that begs a signifcant question:

Will the middle-east in general and Islam<>West relations be improved or made worse if there is less interest in the region's resources?

I know that I can walk down the street carrying any sign or write in any paper anything I want and I won't suffer much for it. If I'm arrested at a rally, I won't lose my job or my social standing. But will it make any difference? I'm not sure if anti-Iraq invasion protesters in Washington actually help their cause at all (or even hurt it). I went to Berkeley and am thoroughly desensitized to protest. I'm wondering if that's a prevalent condition for America as a whole in reaction to the sixties.

His controversy quotient comes from writing things like Myra Breckenridge in the '60s and generally being a thorn in the side because his money and background ironically give him the freedom to do so. Sometimes the most effective attackers of establishment practice have to come from inside it due to the sheer knowledge they have of individuals and their motives, family background etc.

I trust you're not assuming that there's a US plan to try and do that all over the damn world. C'mon, Sterling, there's no way that the US Armed Forces could do that, even threaten it! Assuming a worst case scenario like that is not helping your argument.

Ned and nabisco, you two are the ones confusing the "plot" (i.e. urge to dominate with the world) with its successful execution.

This is getting ridiculous. If we look at the chief opponents in the Security Council alone, Russia has had a longstanding interest in what happens with Iraq (and Iran, for that matter) since the days when the two countries were Persia and part of the Ottoman Empire. As for France, there is a vested oil interest it has (as does Western Europe in general) that can't be ignored when it comes to its dealing with the Middle East in general. Do you think their opposition to the US resolution is based solely on some moral high ground without general strategic and economic calculuses being at play?

What's happening in the UN and in general is not being argued in some sort of crazy vacuum where the US = the only money-grubbing oil-soaked consumer in the entire world and the rest of the world = blameless innocents (and blameless innocents who don't care, for that matter). I'm finding it harder to believe you're actually taking this particular stance of yours seriously; everywhere you look you're seeing evidence of some sort of overarching and flawlessly executed plan on part of 12 ft. lizards rather than what to me is a far more realistic and worrisome situation, namely a chaotic series of impulses from an unsure US matched with responses from an equally unsure world community that in general has been met with shoulder-shrugging in the US.

The distinction between dominance and deterrence is irrelevant: both are systems of influencing the actions of other nation-states not through direct control but by creating systems of consequences that discourage certain actions. I think the application of this in that report is as dumb, dangerous, and amoral as you probably do, but I also see a very clear distinction between that and outright Roman-conquering-style "taking over the world." I don't think that distinction is even a point of interpretation: if we're all speaking English here, then it's a point of fact.

the problem is not that I want to give the current situation too much credit (i.e. overextend its tendencies) but I want to attribute to Bush and co a certain level of maniacal millenialism in their plans and justifications. Their ability to carry anything like this out is a different question entirely.

Nabisco you say "our" creeping around this urge but what fucking "us" I mean what does Bush policy have to do with you?

The only reason Bush & Co. aren't riding higher on the world is that they can't. They clearly have ambitions for total u.s. dominance, which is the point of the report.

Nabisco did the british empire end because the british got bored with it or because it collapsed?

The only thing I have done here is to make the evidently bold and controversial assertion that "ambitions for total U.S. dominance" means something slightly different from "using its supreme military might to take over the world." If you speak some English dialect in which those two mean the same thing, then fine. If you're arguing about something else then you're arguing with someone other than me.

Seems to me this can be said without saying "Doom is nigh -- SEE?" And if you weren't saying that, it didn't come across that way to me.

This is our difference Nabisco: you confuse actual u.s. policy with bush & co.'s policy ambitions. Congress might not all agree on this, the American population certainly doesn't all agree on this but Bush & co. want this -- you extend them somehow the "misguided" benifit of the doubt.

Also dominate and take over are fairly roughly interchangable. I mean there's not too much rhetorical slippage involved.

Ned: I certainly didn't mean to come across as a "doom is nigh" man.

BNW: it doesn't have to be a matter of "perspective" -- it can be a matter as simple as having more to say about actions your own democratic government is taking in your name than things done by people over whom you claim no control. The actions of your own government are the ones you have the most room and the most need to get moralistic and high-standards about: they're the ones that you are, in some broad collective sense, personally responsible for.

Moving along, then: I get the feeling everyone here objects to that agenda no matter how we phrase it. Out of curiosity, who objects on what levels: do you find it morally unconscionable, philosophically untenable, or just plain bad policy planning?

(* = this may be a lie.)
(** = theory means people killing each other can be termed political unrest that will serve the greater good.)