Tibet has been occupied since the Chinese army crossed into eastern Tibet in 1949. A steady effort to transfer Chinese people into Tibet has made Tibetans a minority in cities across their remote Himalayan land.
The destruction of several thousand monasteries followed by decades of strict control of Buddhist practice has eroded the foundation of Tibetan Buddhism such that monasteries in exile are now stronger than those in Tibet.
The Tibetan flag is banned, as are photographs of the Dalai Lama. Three generations of Tibetans have been born and matured under occupation.
Despite all this, China has failed to absorb the Tibetan people, or eliminate their thirst for freedom. And like kids who finally get fed up with being pushed around in the hallway, the bullied are turning on the bully.
The word “squeeb” is a crude mix of squid and dweeb, and by inventing it I mean no disrespect to the squid, which in most respects is an excellent and admirable animal. In the ocean there’s almost nothing you’d rather be than a squid, one of nature’s most perfect predators — fast, resilient, ruthless, more intelligent by leaps and bounds than your average fish, and able to squeeze into impossibly tiny cracks. In the ocean, there is no hiding from a squid, I tell you.
But on land, a squid is about as useless as it gets. It’s a spineless, squishy little hunk of seafood that wouldn’t stand a chance in a cage match with a baby squirrel. It has no heart, and its first instinct when trouble comes is to hide in a cloud of its own excretions. This is why a squiddy word like squeeb seems to me to be a good way to describe the American voter during a presidential election season.
That’s especially true now, during a “controversy” like this latest flap over Barack Obama pastor Jeremiah Wright. This Wright business is a perfect example of the American electorate at its squeeby worst — panicky, gutless, acting more on reflex than thought, incapable of retaining information for more than a few minutes at a time. It’s also a great example of how the presidential election process has become more about enforcing the attitudes of a cultural orthodoxy than a system for choosing leaders. Through scandal after idiotic scandal, the election process has become a painfully prolonged, deeply irritating exercise in policing conventional wisdom, through a variety of means keeping the public in a state of heightened, dumb animal panic, and ultimately turning the election itself into a Darwinian contest — survival of the Squeebiest.
“Falling Slowly” from Once—My Oscar pick to (deservedly) win best original song
Sorry, no other selections today (unless you want to see how much Frank Rich hates Hillary’s va-jay-jay). Have some weekend work to get through and still recovering from that head cold that clobbered me yesterday morning. The Sunday Selector will return in its normal form next weekend.
“And the Powerline ‘Book of the Year’ award goes to…”
Earlier we cited how Jeffrey Goldberg poked fun at Norman “Please Bomb Iran So I Can Get Blood Flowing to My Loins Again” Podhoretz in his recent (and excellent) article in The Atlantic. Well, now The New York Sun has come to the defense of that doddering old tool by drooling out what has to be the dumbest political cockup unveiled so far this year .... The Podhoretz Method:
Norman Podhoretz, the neoconservative sage, will be honored tonight at a dinner in Manhattan, where his “World War IV: The Long Struggle Against Islamofascism,” will be given the “Book of the Year” award by Powerline.
[...]
[A} kerfuffle has been sputtering on the World Wide Web over a question Mr. Podhoretz asked in respect of the Kurds. Mr. Podhoretz asked the question five years ago at a banquet in New York honoring Robert L. Bartley of the Wall Street Journal, Bernard Lewis of Princeton, and Jeffrey Goldberg, then of the New Yorker. Mr. Goldberg, a marvelous reporter, was being saluted for a dispatch from Kurdistan that had helped light the way for American entry into the Battle of Iraq. Mr. Goldberg had just come in from Northern Iraq and spoke about Kurdistan. In a tour d’horizon of the Middle East in the January/February number of the Atlantic, Mr. Goldberg related that after the event, Mr. Podhoretz asked him, “What’s a Kurd, anyway?” Mr. Podhoretz, in Mr. Goldberg’s account, “seemed authentically bewildered.” As it happens, we were either in the same or a similar conversation with Mr. Podhoretz at the same banquet, and we took him not as being ignorant of the Kurdish question; after all, Commentary during his years as editor in chief contained plenty of references to Kurdistan. We took him to be curious as to how Mr. Goldberg would answer a question of ethnography that has never been resolved.
Basic questions are what one might call the Podhoretz Method, and we predict that generations from now, journalists will study his knack for — his insistence on — pressing the simplest seeming, most basic questions as if each were fresh and open to new implications. The Podhoretz Method is one for our moment, too, what with our country at a crossroads and in the midst of a presidential election that for the first time in decades appears it will involve neither a presidential nor vice presidential incumbent. It may well shape up as a contest between, on the one hand, the Republican who, in Senator McCain, has been most determined to stick with the fight and most outspoken in warning of the consequences of retreat and, on the other hand, a Democratic nominee, in Senators Clinton or Obama, who either regrets going into the Battle of Iraq or opposed it from the start. It is a time when, more than ever, we need sages like Norman Podhoretz to ask basic questions, and deliver basic answers, which no doubt explains why so many — including Secretary of State Kissinger and Mark Steyn — will be crowding into the Four Seasons as Mr. Podhoretz is honored this evening.
Generations from now journalists will appreciate Podhoretz’s ability to ask basic questions and deliver basic answers? That’s really what they think? Could they possibly be that fucking dumb (or be cocky enough to think that we are)?
TO MY GREAT CHAGRIN: The eagerly-awaited (in my house, at least) world premiere of the documentary To My Great Chagrin: The Unbelievable Story of Brother Theodore comes to MOMA this Wednesday, February 13th (also playing on March 1st). He was a complex, brilliant and vastly underrated performance artist and you can view some of his pitch-perfect and hysterical ravings in a video compilation we posted here back in September.
FUERZABRUTA: Friday I took my lovely wife Chris to see Fuerzabruta, the new spectacle from the creators of De La Guarda, for her birthday at the Daryl Roth Theatre and was totally blown away by it. I enjoyed De La Guarda, but thought it was a little over-hyped and found myself wishing it would come to an end about 45-minutes into it. Fuerzabruta, on the other hand, I never wanted to end, noticing at several points during the performance that my face was smeared with a thoroughly ridiculous shit-eating grin that only a child can accommodate without feeling like a complete tool. As an added bonus, I was selected by one of the Fuerzabruta “dancers” to join her on a metal platform and dance in front of hundreds of people before having an oversized, exploding paper cinderblock dropped on our heads. According to Chris the crowd was cheering me on (I inserted several of my death-defying robot maneuvers into my routine) and afterwards the dancer came over and gave me a big thumbs up when she found me back in the crowd. If you’re a New Yorker, I highly recommend checking this show out. If the $72 price tag is too steep for you, they sell $25 rush tix at the box office two hours before each performance.
Michael Chabon had an editorial in the Washington Post today. It’s quite good and spot on:
There are many reasons not to support Barack Obama’s candidacy for president, but every one of them is bad for the same reason.
Because I have come out publicly for the senator from Illinois, I am often called upon to listen as people offer up—with wistfulness and regret, or with a pundit’s show of certainty, or with a well-earned but useless skepticism—their bad reasons for not giving Obama their support. For a long time now, I have listened to these people with forbearance and with a sense of duty—not to some principle of open debate or of the inherent merit in the free exchange of even meritless ideas, but rather out of obligation to the candidate whose cause I champion.
Because Obama appears to be a patient, forbearing man with a gift for listening, I figured I owed it to him to play the thing his way. So I have nodded and looked into their eyes and hummed sympathetically as people gave their reasons and made their excuses and generally offered up, as if they were golden ingots of profound wisdom, the handful of two-penny nails with which they plan to board up the windows of their hopes for themselves, their families, their country and the world.
John Prine & Iris DeMent - “In Spite of Ourselves”
CLOVERFIELD: My pal Mark and I went on a gay date to see Cloverfield yesterday because our wives would have none of it. This is his review. It didn’t have quite the same effect on me, but, good cripes, was the shaky camera gimmick annoying. Looking at Odette Yustman, not so much.
With all of the consultants, advisers, strategists, etc. working for the Democrats right now, can’t one of them come up with a way to take this “the surge is working and the Dems don’t want to admit it!” meme away from the Republicans? It’s about all they have right now and they’re fitfully hanging off of it like deranged squirrel monkeys and the media is lapping it up. I know it’ll piss off some of the more rabid elements of the anti-war movement, but can’t Dems think of a strategically sound way of pointing out that if it wasn’t for their electoral wins in ‘06 chances are pretty good we’d still be burdened with Donald “Dunderhead” Rumsfeld, who pretty much everyone, except for the most rabid dead-enders, has admitted was a colossal failure? There would be no Robert Gates. There would be no General Petraeus. There would be no reduction in our military fatalities. There would be no surge. And if they want to see continued “success” (or what’s interpreted as success) in Iraq and an eventual withdrawal from this War in Error, they have to elect a Democratic president and vastly increase the number of Dems in Congress.
It seems fairly simple to me. Or am I missing something?
Jeffrey Lewis—“Anxiety Attack” (unauthorized fan video)
The Hyena and Other Men: If you’re a New Yorker you’ve only got a few days left to immerse yourself in Pieter Hugo’s stunning exhibit at the Yossi Milo Gallery. It’s comprised of large-scale photographs of a band of Nigerian men who roam the country with a menagerie of animals and a six-year-old girl named Mummy. You can view most of the photos at the gallery (and many, many more) here (hint: view images separately—right-click), but the small JPGs are nowhere near as impactful as witnessing them blown up and surrounding you.
Butter 08: Egg City Radio is giving away Butter 08’s way-fun and punk-funky (and out-of-print) selt-titled ‘96 release featuring Miho from Cibo Matto and Russell from the Blues Explosion. From Miho saying, “Thank you, daddy” to the last throbbing yelps of “Butterfucker,” this delivers great gifts to your needy assbone.
Why I Believe Bush Must Go: George McGovern writes an editorial in The Washington Post calling for the impeachment of Bush and Cheney. Yes, that sound you hear off in the distance is the howler monkeys of the right going batshit.
Dear terrorists, please kill several thousand people in an American city (or cities) of your choice so that I won’t continue to look like a fucking dunderhead to all of my ex-friends for hanging out with loathsome douchebags like Bill Sammon and Ann Coulter. Thanks, Ron Silver
Here we go again. Via TS at Instaputz I see that the somewhat-newly-minted wingnut and part-time actor Ron “Reversal of Fortune” Silver is pining for massive terrorist attacks over at Pantload Media:
The critics of our national security policies know we have the means to sort things out in finding the proper balance between civil liberties and security. What they haven’t figured out is how to deal with the real enemy so they avoid talking about it. They don’t like what we’re doing but they offer nothing else. I believe they’re afraid to take on our real adversaries.
In fact we are not afraid enough. Perhaps after losing Seattle, San Francisco, Chicago or Atlanta a great many of our citizens will realize that George Bush was not the person to be afraid of. Although I have every confidence they will find a way to blame him. Classic displacement-redirecting an impulse (in this case fear) onto a substitute target.
Perhaps after losing acting job after acting job Ron Silver will realize that he’s not being shunned in Hollywood because of his political views but because after 9/11 he turned into a full-blown, utterly repugnant dickhead.
Put that in your displacement and redirect it, Silver.
When compiling a list of the most loathsome douchebags involved in the Bush admin (I know, an endless task), b-lister Douglas Feith (along with David “I Keep Evil in My Beard” Addington) is often overlooked. Monday Feith came crawling out of his dank little hole (currently located at Georgetown, where he teaches a course that’s sole purpose seems to be trying to scrub the massive shit stain off his reputation) to speak at the cretin-packed stink tank American Enterprise Institute. He was introduced by the deeply delusional and discredited Richard Perle while his massive failure of a buddy Paul Wolfowitz sat in the front row to cheer him on. No cameras were allowed at the event, but the Washington Postwas there:
A former top Pentagon official blamed the Bush administration’s top official in Iraq for abandoning a plan for a quick transition to Iraqi leadership in the summer of 2003 and instead keeping the U.S. government in control of the country for more than a year.
The decision to carry out “a lengthy occupation was, I believe, the single biggest mistake the United States made in Iraq,” said Douglas J. Feith, who as undersecretary of defense for policy was a key figure in the drive to war.
[...]
Feith served as one of the top civilians in the Pentagon from July 2001 until August 2005. Many military officers disliked his precise, intellectual approach to making decisions, which they found tangled and time-consuming. Most famously, retired Army Gen. Tommy R. Franks, who led the U.S. invasion force in Iraq, stated in his memoir that Feith had achieved the reputation within the military of being “the dumbest [expletive] guy on the planet.”
But Feith was consistently supported by then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who in a 2004 interview with the Associated Press called him “without question, one of the most brilliant individuals in government” and “one of the really . . . intellectual leaders in the administration in defense policy.”
Defenders of Feith constantly throw around the “intellectual” tag when referring to him, probably to soften the blow of that Franks quote which will, thankfully, follow Feith to his grave. Is he an intellectual? Sure, maybe using the simplest definition of the word, he is an intellectual, but he’s also WRONG ABOUT EVERYTHING, which should count for something outside of the neocon clubhouse. And after hearing him interviewed on NPR back in April, let’s just say, I came away thinking Franks was pretty spot-on in his, ahem, frank assessment.
Fortunately, the Post wasn’t the only paper to cover Feith’s speech, The New York Times let the uber-crotchety Maureen Dowd loose on the Feithdom:
Doug Feith, the former Rummy gofer who drove the neocon plan to get us into Iraq, and then dawdled without a plan as Iraq crashed into chaos, was the headliner at a reunion meeting of the wooly-headed hawks Monday night at the American Enterprise Institute.
[...]
But he wasn’t self-flagellating. He was simply trying to put an egghead gloss on his Humpty Dumpty mishegoss.
“At the end of the day, here we are, and as of now there’s a reasonable chance that the country is going to remain united,” he said. Not quite the original boast of democracy cascading through the Middle East.
You know, it’s not that I have anything against dissidents, it’s just that I can’t stand (and don’t trust) the loathsome douchebags who promote them:
ON A COLD MORNING last winter, I arrived at the home of Richard Perle outside Washington for a scheduled interview. I was about 10 minutes early, so I chose to shiver a bit on the front porch. Perle, the point man for the neoconservatives’ drive for regime change throughout the Middle East, had agreed to spend time me with for a book I was writing about his life and times. Just then, the front door opened and out stepped Perle and a robust young man who was obviously in a hurry.
“Oh, Alan,” Perle said with some surprise. “I’d like you to meet . . . ” But I already knew who his guest was.
“Yes, sir,” I said, extending my hand. “I recognize you from your photographs.”
My, my, I thought. Mr. Perle is at it again.
The exiting guest was Farid Ghadry, an exiled Syrian dissident who, like Perle, believes it’s past time to replace Syrian dictator Bashar Assad. Ghadry, who heads a Washington-based group called the Syrian Reform Party, hopes to be the man in charge one day in Damascus. When I met him, he had already been granted audiences with David Wurmser, Vice President Dick Cheney’s top Middle East advisor and Perle protege, and with Cheney’s daughter, Elizabeth, who headed the State Department’s Iran-Syria desk from 2005 until last June. I asked Wurmser about Ghadry. Was he another Ahmad Chalabi, the checkered Iraqi exile whom the United States backed as a Saddam Hussein replacement in Iraq?
“He’s not asking for money, and we’re not advocating money for him,” Wurmser told me. “As for him wanting power, sure, he probably has an agenda. But it doesn’t matter. This is where you go back to the Soviet Union, because it’s the same question that we always work with, from Lech Walesa to Vaclav Havel: ‘Did they have an understanding of the malady and danger posed by the totalitarian regime in their country?’ “
If there’s one reason (I know, it’s hard to pick one) to keep Giuliani from being president, it’s to ensure that neocons, who Digby has succinctly (and repeatedly) pointed out are wrong about everything, are forever discarded into the dustbin of history.
