Dear Egypt,

As I am sure you have suspected, we Americans don't want you to have a democracy. This is because Hosni Mubarek is a team player. Hosni Mubarek is a "good ol' boy, never meanin' no harm, beats all you've ever saw, been in trouble with the law since the day [he] was born." That's a lyric from the Dukes of Hazzard theme. Hazzard is a much-beloved American low-brow sitcom from the 1970s. I think it fairly encapsulates my government's sentiments on the matter.

If you do not understand, do not worry. It will be alright. In a few days, it'll be as though none of this rebel-rousing ever happened, and you can go back to your day jobs building pyramids and shit.

In closing, I doubt you guys would like democracy anyhow. It's a big hassle. I mean, I've been voting, arguing, petitioning, donating, and writing to my representatives and fellow citizens for years, and I never get what I want. It's just depressing.

Sincerely,
some American douchebag

Press freedom isn't enough. Joe Lieberman needs to stop talking.

From the latest Glenn Greenwald posting, comes this important quote from the newspaper business in Australia: 

It is the media’s duty to responsibly report such [classified] material if it comes into their possession. To aggressively attempt to shut WikiLeaks down, to threaten to prosecute those who publish official leaks, and to pressure companies to cease doing commercial business with WikiLeaks, is a serious threat to democracy, which relies on a free and fearless press. 

 I was struck by the phrase "free and fearless." The "free" part is obvious. Democracies need a free press. Any schoolchild knows that. (At least I don't think the bastards have prohibited teaching about press freedom. It does have a well-known liberal bias.) However, the "fearless" part is critical. In the U.S., our Constitution enshrines press freedom in the First Amendment. Unfortunately, our politicians can threaten to do whatever the fuck they want on the evening news, including threatening journalists, and the evening newsman won't challenge said politicians because said newsman doesn't consider himself a journalist. So U.S. journalism, and now international journalism, is living under fear. And if not fear, then at least they feel hassled. This is bad. The press needs to be fearless and unhampered. They need to know that anything short of placing the U.S. under imminent danger (the standard adopted in the Pentagon Papers case) is fair game for publishing.

Rape Vs. Date Rape

This ongoing oil disaster in the Gulf has got me thinking about the conduct of oil companies in the U.S. as opposed to their conduct in the Third World-- for instance, in the Niger Delta. The analogy that best describes the difference is rape vs. date rape. In the Third World, oil companies just sweep in, bribe the entire government, hire thugs for security, and drill with impunity. In the First World, it's more complicated. You've got to "wine and dine" the government first. You've got to determine who can be bought off. You've got to come up with a greenwashing strategy. You've got to study the regulations and determine which can be ignored, which can be defeated, and which ones can be written off as simply the cost of doing businesss. You've got to know when the inspector is coming.

You get the picture. We make it difficult to rape the environment. We make it a hassle. But we don't outlaw it. We've got to change this. Rape is rape.

judicial activism from the "conservative" wing of SCOTUS

In the latest national security ruling from the Supreme Court, the majority has

Upheld a federal law that bars "material support" to foreign terrorist organizations, rejecting a free speech challenge from humanitarian aid groups. The court ruled 6-3 that the government may prohibit all forms of aid to designated terrorist groups, even if the support consists of training and advice about entirely peaceful and legal activities.

NPR has reported that the majority argued [agreed with] two points [concerning the peaceful, legal support given to terrorist organizations] :

• It may ostracize allies.
• It may give terrorist organizations an "air of legitimacy"

These are not legal arguments. Just call balls and strikes, John.

Suck it, Hummer! The BP Oil spill only gets ZERO miles per 400,000 gallons -- per day!

From the AP:

BP officials previously said they believed the burner system could incinerate anywhere from 210,000 gallons of oil to 420,000 gallons of oil daily once it's fully operational. Work to optimize the new system was still ongoing, and the company did not say how much oil it has burned so far.

our wingnut cousins in the former USSR

This is a good documentary on the growing right-wing/authoritarian movement in Russia and what it looks like on the ground. The best part is at 35:55, which looks like a militia gathering in the U.S. Of course, in Russia, their wingnuts are more influential. Note that during the gathering, the head Y-chromosome talks on the phone with a parliament member.

footprints of wingnuttery

Just saw a Vanguard documentary on the Ugandan anti-gay climate at the time that the Ugandans were considering a bill which would have punished gay people with life-imprisonment or death. It was fucked up. I remember the row it created. Rick Warren had to issue a condemnation of the Ugandan bill because the fuckwit was part of a cretinous milieu of wingnuttery that has descended on Africa recently. The American Right has come to Africa under the pretenses of missionary work and fighting HIV. But what they are really doing is spreading right-wing ideology. The main dude spreading the hate, fiery evangelical Pastor Ssempa, said two things that drew my immediate attention: "liberal media" and "George Soros." Now who do you think taught the goodly pastor about the twin terrors of the liberal media and George Soros? Probably not Jesus.

Remember when Alan Greenspan realized that his whole life was a fraud?

Yeah, he totally did:

A long-time cheerleader for deregulation, Greenspan admitted to a congressional committee yesterday that he had been "partially wrong" in his hands-off approach towards the banking industry and that the credit crunch had left him in a state of shocked disbelief. "I have found a flaw," said Greenspan, referring to his economic philosophy [Randian quackery]. "I don't know how significant or permanent it is. But I have been very distressed by that fact."

...

"I made a mistake in presuming that the self-interests of organisations, specifically banks and others, were such that they were best capable of protecting their own shareholders and their equity in the firms," said Greenspan.

Alas, Greenspan has yet to hara-kiri himself on national television. Oh well. Yesterday, Digby wrote that the problem with Ayn Rand acolytes, besides the fact that they won't die properly, is that they fail to realize that "unbridled greed and selfishness makes people reckless." This is true, but there is also a perfectly logical reason why Ayn Rand remains a black taint upon all humanity: ownership of our shining city upon a hill is collective. Yeah, look it up. The corporation is a financial instrument with which America's patrician class smears accountability throughout the land. No one person wants full ownership of something as big and complicated as the modern corporation. They would have to be an utter loon. And yet many people who are stuck in Ayn Rand's fantasy universe actually think that the people who run America's financial empire are accountable for the health of their empire. They are not, and they never were. The only people who truly put their financial asses on the line in this "malfunctioning corporation called the USA" are small business owners.


When the hell did we lose sight of this? How did the free market become construed as financial anarchy? There's a lot of talk about how we have privatized gains and socialized losses. To some extent, that's always going to be true. The government is always going to be there, God willing, to bail out large companies in order to prevent recessions. Furthermore, people already socialize their losses by putting their money in stocks and bonds. The government cannot force management to "go down with their ships." Well, it could, but then no one would manage any corporations, and we need corporations to make microwaves and maintain the intertubes. In conclusion, the solution to the boom and bust economy is strong, sensible financial regulation and smaller corporations. 

Corporate whores need proper uniforms.

In the wake of the Supreme Court's Citizen's United case, it's clear that the people need to strike back. Here's one solution that I heard from a caller to the Diane Rehm Show today: legislators need to wear sponsorship patches on their suits.

2000 - 2009 in Memoriam: Fuck You.

Fuck you, 2000 - 2009. You were definitely the shittiest decade since the 1930s. Everyone knows about the DOW going nowhere, but this decade was worthless politically as well. Again, it was not nearly as bad as the 1930s, which saw the disintegration of the peace following WWI and the rise of Hitler, but it was pretty horrible nonetheless. The decade basically started on September 11, which sucked. However, history will record that our reaction to those attacks precipitated much more death and destruction than Osama bin Laden could have ever dreamed of. Republicans and their allies in dank think-tanks like the Project for the New American Century thought they could turn a stolen election in 2000 into a new mandate for world domination. September 11 was their trigger -- their Pearl Harbor. It started two Middle Eastern wars that were basically about oil and hegemony. The rest is history. The only good thing about this decade was that the aggressor finally lost. The belligerent nation, the United States of America, will fall by the wayside. This century will belong to others. We don't deserve it.

The Deal -- well, a deal

Here at Great Justice, we -- the royal we -- have several acquaintances who argue with us incessantly. We think of this as blogging practice. During a recent argument about geostrategery with someone who thinks FDR "gave away" the eastern bloc to the Ruskies, I made an interesting agreement: We get the fuck out of every country that plays "host" to our fine men and women in uniform and put the defense industry out of business for good, and conservatives get to have unemployed illegal immigrants deported and the border strengthened with moats and alligators and shit. I think it's a pretty good deal. Course, I'm not someone who could easily be confused as an illegal immigrant. Is that racist?

Global Anarchy, aka., free trade

I'm listening to the BBC right now, hearing about the Bhopal gas leak. It's the 25th anniversery. It remains the most deadly industrial disaster ever, worse than Chernobyl. What made it so devastating was the fact that factory workers lived right next to the factory when the leak occurred. A deadly gas leaked from holding towers, fell to the ground, and spread throughout the slums around the factory. The gas killed thousands. Twenty-five years later, the groundwater is deadly. The Indian government provides the locals with water that is trucked in from elsewhere, but it's never enough. On the BBC, I'm now listening to the ridiculous irony of a BBC reporter, from the West, grilling an Indian official about the plight of the locals.