Anderson Cooper is reporting from the Syria-Turkish border (or maybe the bathhouse). Cooper has allowed a brief segment in which The Rebels (our side, of course) are arresting and coercing other Syrians to join their cause, at the point of a gun.
As usual, “Keeping them Honest Cooper” (that’s his slogan) is soliciting the bellicose advice of the Arab neoconservatives. The local chalabies, if you will. (Chalaby was the Iraqi who agitated on American tv for American intervention in Iraq, and fed the New York Times’ birdbrain Judith Miller, now perching at FoxNews, with the “intelligence” she presented to the public.)
Fouad A. Ajami, if I recall, once even called for a Marshal Plan for the Arab countries. Some of the Arab neoconservatives were once close to Bush, and keep reinventing themselves as perfectly legitimate (because not Jewish) agitators for US intervention in the Middle east.
In any case, Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov told reporters on Monday something that “Keeping them Dishonest Cooper” failed to: “weapons continue to flow to [Syria’s] militant opposition.”
Car bombs were not the norm in Syria; now they are. “At least 55 people have been killed and 372 others injured by two powerful blasts in the Syrian capital on Thursday morning,” reports RT.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov does not rule out the possibility of outside forces being involved in masterminding the Damascus attacks. [Qatar and Saudi Arabia, for sure, and, in all likelihood, the US] “At least some of our partners are doing some practical things aimed at exploding the situation [in Syria] both in a direct and indirect sense of the word. I mean the explosions you have mentioned,” Lavrov commented on the blasts during a press conference in Beijing.
Qatar and Saudi Arabia have admitted that they support Syrian opposition financially. It is believed that Turkey is turning a blind eye on armed groups using Syrian refugee camps on Turkish territory near the border to rest and regroup before moving into Syria.
Windy and insubstantial is the kindest thing an honest newsman might say about the gimmick that is the Strategic Partnership Agreement, signed today by Barack Obama in Afghanistan. The president snuck into that US satrapy in secret. Had his intended “benevolence” toward the poor Pashtuns of Afghanistan been made public—the same people would have tried to blow Air Force One out of the sky.
“Afghanistan has a friend and a partner in the United States,” Obama said before he and Afghan President Hamid Karzai signed the Strategic Partnership Agreement outlining cooperation between their countries once the U.S.-led international force withdraws in 2014. … “There will be difficult days ahead, but as we move forward in our transition, I’m confident that Afghan forces will grow stronger; the Afghan people will take control of their future,” Obama said.
Stripped of the baffle-gab, the agreement from Bagram amounts to this: Even when U.S. forces in Afghanistan are reduced considerably, they will still maintain the necessary meaty presence.
Essentially we’re paying to keep in power the authoritarian protectorate we’ve helped establish, headed by the puppet we appoint, all of whom are hated by the Pashtun majority.
Afghanistan was the war Obama could call his own. He increased America’s presence there from 30,000 troops to 90,000, and thus earned his commander-in-chief credentials. Electability in fin de siècle America hinges on projecting strength around the world—an American leader has to aspire to protect borders and people not his own. Obama needed a war he could call his own. Afghanistan served his purposes.
And he intends on keeping Afghanistan on America’s welfare rolls. Afghanistan’s GDP approximates the foreign aid it receives annually, and you know who supplies the lion’s share of that “GDP”? Counterfeiter-in Chief, Ben Bernanke and the US printing press.
It is no contest:RT leads the way with gritty broadcasting. RT does what a broadcaster should do; challenge the powers that be and probe every aspect of the story. Yes, the angle pursued is more often left-libertarian than paleo, but RT is also less statist than American mainstream media. (And they happen to feature my own paleolibertarian column, which takes courage too.)
As the talented Gayane Chichakyan has noted, Julian Assange’s new RT program is making the American mainstream nuttier than normal. Chichakyan has editorialized about mainstream’s protest against letting Assange loose on air—Bill O’Reilly, Megyn Kelly, Glenn Beck, Ed Schultz (who recommended death to Assange); all were apoplectic. (On The Other Channels, we’re accustomed to the wilderness of women reporters—Don Lemon, Anderson Cooper, Erin Burnett, Tamron Toots Hall, etc.)
Gayane hinted that the malfunctioning media’s objection to more of a variety in opinion seems to have at its goal the further closing of the already atherosclerotic American mind.
Mr. John Derbyshire, the man whose blurb appears on your book, has been unceremoniously sacked by the eunuchs at NRO.
What an apt appellation for that castrate, Rich Lowry.
Adds Peter Brimelow of VDARE.COM:
“[T]o appease a Left-wing lynch mob, John Derbyshire has just been fired from the new, Politically Correct National Review—despite (or perhaps because of) his unmatched brilliance there, to say nothing of his cancer and his years of loyal service.”
National Review has been PC—and worse, boring—for as long as I can remember.
John, who, as Aditya mentioned, had endorsed my book without flinching, was fired by the intellectual pygmies of NRO, for a tract titled “The Talk: Nonblack Version,“ published at Taki’s Magazine.
UPDATE I: NRO did at least employ John for a long time. They have never considered my work and have never replied to submissions.
UPDATE II: When you read Amy Davidson’s inane histrionic piffle, published in an elite magazine, you realize that ousting John for his views is more about enforcing mediocrity than enforcing conformity.
Americans cannot abide enormous talent, unless it is in a mindless or uncontroversial field such as sport or hard science. You have to be mediocre in writing and thinking and echo one of two party lines. I lived in Canada (I’m a Canadian) where my stuff appeared in the national press, no less. That could never happen in the US.
UPDATE III: Richard Spencer: “… it’s hard to mistake the trajectory of official ‘Conservatism’ as anything other than a gradual degeneration and dumbing-down. NR has gone from James Burnham and Russell Kirk to Kathryn Jean Lopez and various man-children spouting human-rights doctrines. … the mainstream Right [is] much stupider…more defined by the Goldbergs, Ponnurus, Lowrys, and Lopezes of the world…and more obviously a racket and dead-end. …”
UPDATE IV (April 10): In reply to the Facebook thread. Aditya, AMM, and others: To me, the Derb issue is never about whether you agree or disagree with his article, as Richard Spencer does (on FB, I quoted a slice of Spencer’s piece with which I agree). This perennial Soviet-style purging is never about “agreement,” to me. I do not know why people think that if you want to see a lot of well-written, wickedly witty, controversial writing in print (pixels or paper), as I do—you necessarily endorse all of it.
NONSENSE.
During the Iraq war, when the likes of Paul Craig Roberts, myself and other non-Beltway libertarians and paleos were writing up a storm against Bush’s barbarity–and being ousted and banished for it—Roberts noted that readers wanted to see a mirror of their opinions in his writing. This is so true. Readers judge me not in terms of style, thinking; quality of writing, a challenge to consensus, etc., but in accordance with how much I reflect their opinions; do they agree with me.
Cognitive consonance is what writing in the Age of the idiot is all about.
The narrowing of the American mind is not the fault of corporations; its The People’s fault, for heaven’s sake. Corporations would not survive if they ceased to cater to The People, who are tyrants in their own right. This leftist argument misconstrues the direction of the dumbing of America.
I am on record as saying that I am not comfortable with the racialist right’s tack. (To quote: “I think I reflect Western man’s disdain for race as an organizing principle, and for broad generalizations. Good luck with organizing modern westerners around race. I prefer to beat back the state so that individuals regain freedom of association, dominion over property, the absolute right of self-defense; the right to hire, fire, and, generally, associate at will. That’s the route to freedom.”)
But I simply love—and think it is necessary to a free society—to see all well-expressed, eloquent opinion and argument in print, at the pleasure of that print’s owners.
Of course, self-interest plays a role in wanting to see Derb and his work prevail. Derb is one of many canaries in this minefield of our own making.
UPDATE V: Maureen O’Connor of Gawker.com has actually done the job of a journalist in interviewing Derb. I hope he gets a book deal or makes a ton of money out of this shameful episode in the annals of NR.
UPDATE VI: “The first pessimists were the Old Testament prophets.” I love the Prophets, Jeremiah being my favorite. John Derbyshire on The B.S. of A. with Brian Sack (Full)
