A short commentary on the past sounds very current.
The article, I think, gave the impression that the power of the [Roman] Senate to execute its enemies was somehow a new one, or a rarely used one, or some kind of exception, whose door once opened might not be closed. That really wasn’t the case, and Caesar was more than anything speaking from memory. not predicting the future.
Julius Caesar’s youth was largely formed by the conflicts between his relative Marius and Marius’s main rival Sulla. Caesar was around 15, when Marius, as Consul of the Senate, embarked on his campaign of executing Sulla’s supports as enemies of the state. Caesar was closer to 20, when he had to flee the city and spent a year or two in hiding, because Sulla had declared him an enemy of the state needing execution. The senate executed literally 1,000s of people as enemies of the state during the 86-BC to 80BC period. After Sulla’s retirement, the Senate stopped most of that behavior, but the Catiline debates are only around 17 years later.
The nature and quality of the debates, though, is fundamentally historic, not prescient. They are about whether the Senate wishes to RETURN to the era when enemies of the state are regularly executed or not. I’m not sure if this doesn’t enhance your point though. The Senate ALL remembered what happened under Marius and Sulla. They all remembered the 1000′s that were killed, and they all remembered the craziness, fear and uncertainty during that period. They all knew where declaring enemies of the state and killing them could lead, and yet, they voted to kill Catilina anyway.
No one needed to be a genius, or a furtune-teller to see the future. They all remembered the past, and most voted to execute anyway, because, of course, Catilina “deserved it,” and, all that nonsense that happened a mere 17 years earlier, well, that is just irrelevant!
The clear and unmistakable analogies to modern times are important, and rather remarkable.
In 2008 at the end of a year-and-a-half primary season “the Democratic Party had a tough decision to make.” I stood by my television (one of the few times I have ever felt the urge to do so) – indeed, I rushed home from classes – as the primary convened, and made it through days one, two, and three without any definite outcome.
I was, for no other explicable reason than having made a choice, a supporter of Hilary. As she stood and made her speech yielding years (perhaps decades) of her hopes to a younger, more inspirational, rival; giving him, not just in action but in word, her pledged delegates, and doing so with a good spirit. I knew, as did Hilary, that with either candidate
we would profoundly change the world for the better. And that we did. At the same time, over in the Republican camp, that party was trying to decide if you could see Russia from Sarah Palin’s kitchen window.
This year the Republicans have another tough decision to make as well. Will they decide that Mormonism is a cult or will they decide that women who use birth control are sluts? It’s a tough call. But either way we will profoundly change the definition of just how stupid is stupid. God Bless America.
Now you see it, now you don’t. The economic recovery you’re hearing about but not seeing, feeling but not touching, must be here. “The economy is improving — technically, it is. Growth this year will most likely average around 2 percent. The problem is, most Americans aren’t feeling it in their paychecks.” People “aren’t spending more is they don’t have the money. Personal income was up just .2 percent in February — barely enough to keep up with inflation. As a result, personal saving as a percent of disposable income tumbled to 3.7 percent in February from 4.3 percent in January.”
The economy added 120,000 jobs in March (another way of looking at that would be to realize 120,000 people, or an entire mid-size city, were out of work); this dropped the unemployment rate from 8.3 to 8.2 percent. A report of two months ago notes that “the increasingly visible statistic shows that roughly 11 million working-age Americans are being excluded from the nation’s formal tally of 13.75 million unemployed Americans.” True, this only leaves 24,750,000 unemployed. Since that’s less than the population of California we don’t have much to worry about.
Robert Reich, economic adviser to President Clinton, is good enough to remove any hope that the increase in employment might have inspired in you. “Real spending (adjusted to remove price changes) this year hasn’t been going anywhere. It increased just .5 percent in February after an anemic .2 percent increase in January. The reason consumers aren’t spending more is they don’t have the money. Personal income was up just .2 percent in February — barely enough to keep up with inflation. As a result, personal saving as a percent of disposable income tumbled to 3.7 percent in February from 4.3 percent in January.”
It should seem obvious that if employment is increasing, but personal income is not increasing, and neither is personal saving, that we need change our economy. If “consumer spending is 70 percent of the economy” – and I don’t spend money on much else – and employers won’t hire without increased consumer spending (and consumers don’t have any increase in the amount to spend) then we need to try a new system.
Maan News Agency | April 5, 2012
BETHLEHEM (Ma’an) — The Israeli human rights group B’Tselem wrote Thursday to the country’s military advocate urging a military police investigation into the death of a protester on Land Day in Gaza.
Israeli forces used live fire against the demonstrators at Erez crossing. Several dozen youths were shot in the arms or legs and sustained light wounds, B’Tselem says.
“It appears that soldiers used live ammunition despite having tear gas at their disposal, which they also used,” the rights group said.
Its letter noted the events “raise a grave suspicion of illegal and unjustified use of live ammunition when soldiers were in no danger whatsoever. Land Day demonstrations were announced in advance and the army should have been prepared for demonstrations and clashes along Gaza’s border with Israel, in a way that would have enabled soldiers to use only non-lethal crowd control measures.”
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It’s campaign season, so of course it’s time to accuse former friends and former enemies of accomplishments. It’s the time to renounce personal accomplishments such as health care reform and desire for peace. During campaign season, which is perpetual and perennial, dreams become reality and reality becomes irrelevant.
The latest in campaign antics has just arrived. “Mitt Romney continued his verbal assault on President Obama on Thursday, accusing him of spending too much time at Harvard.” Both president and candidate attended the prestigious institution; “it’s an odd attack coming from a fellow Harvard graduate, especially considering Romney spent more time at the Ivy League institution than Obama did.”
There’s no surprise that Romney pulls randomness such as this out of this air – as a politician, it’s his job – but it exemplifies perfectly both the problem with a perpetual campaign and a human affairs in general. There are, after all, those who really know and those who just feel (video). And they are, each thinks, right. Right, and the other must be wrong. Or at least, not as right, not as correct, and not as reliable or grounded in reality.
Well, until someone says something else, this is the good stuff from the campaign.
Who cares about the American Care Act?
“[If the ACA is struck down,] Republicans will need a Plan B. Unfortunately, they wasted the past three years that might have developed one. If the Supreme Court doesn’t rescue them from themselves, they’ll be heading into this election season arguing, in effect, Our plan is to take away the government-mandated insurance of millions of people under age 65, and replace it with nothing. And we’re doing this so as to better protect the government-mandated insurance of people over 65—until we begin to phase out that insurance, too, for everybody now under 55,” – David Frum.
As George Zornick reported last week, House Budget Committee Chair Paul Ryan’s budget for the coming fiscal year would have a devastating impact on the poor, elderly and disabled. By turning Medicare into a private voucher system and Medicaid into a block grant program, along with cuts to food stamps, it paints a frightening picture of what would happen if Republicans sweep the next election. Ryan’s plan enjoys enough support to pass in the House. In the Senate, which Republicans are likely to take over because Democrats have so many more seats up for re-election, it would only need a simple majority since budget bills can avoid being filibustered.
And that is why Ryan’s budget helps President Obama. If Mitt Romney, the likely Republican presidential nominee, replaced Obama in the White House, along with a Republican Congress, the Ryan plan would become law. Romney has been a supporter of Ryan’s…
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We have found the enemy, and they are … us? They are white, black, brown, yellow, and every other shade of people, and they are as Christian, Jewish, Hindu, Muslim, and atheist as the rest of us. They are as quiet and generally peaceful as the rest of us. They are workers and unemployed, side by side. They are rich and poor, old and young, as childless or having as many mouths to feed as the rest of us.
They have taken to the streets. We have taken to the streets, even those of us who have not. Being indoors is nice, but the ind00r sign-a-petition, gather-and-talk-about-how-bad-things-are method is not solving our problems. Will the streets?
Those who are in the streets have not been entirely clear with their demands. They view the street as theirs, as a result of taxes, and claim the First Amendment as their permit, much to the chagrin of those who go through the permitting process. It is clear to anyone not stuck on a mobius strip, though, what some of the demands are. Among other things, 49.1 million Americans live below the poverty level. Student loan debt is higher than credit card debt.
It must tiresome for the hundreds of cities where people have decided to Occupy public space. They could do like New York and arrest hundreds, or like Santa Barbara and enforce ordinances against camping and being in a park past 10pm, or like Atlanta and arrest hundreds, or like Oakland and cause serious injuries, or like Portland and threaten to use chemical agents and non-lethal weapons.
If it comes down to a simple matter of right and wrong, it is wrong – disastrously, stupidly, wrong; just as we would say about foreign countries – for police to use chemical agents or non-lethal weapons against Americans engaging in a peaceful, in prolonged, protest. Portland Police, do not make an enemy of yourself, for we are you and you are us.
In 2007, then-candidate John McCain blew any chance of serious foreign-policy discussion when he reverted to singing “bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran.” Bombing a country is generally considered serious. We’re long past this faux-pas of McCain’s in the middle of another round of Republican primary season, in which foreign policy is completely ignored. That’s not the point though. Bombing Iran is a frequent theme, and if candidates for office aren’t discussing it, policy-makers and observers of international affairs are talking about it.
In July of this year, MJ Rosenberg wrote a fascinating article about the near future. My experience is that he’s not given to hyperbole of scaremongering, and wasn’t writing to get people excited or vitriolic. He may have been writing to put the world on guard; or even, to write what would happen in order to prevent it from happening. Rosenberg was writing, or course, about bombing Iran – not advocating it, merely discussing the future. Happily for us, this was supposed to happen in September, about two months ago. September has come and gone, and with it Israel’s only chance to bomb Iran that month.
His informant was “a longtime CIA officer” who more than twenty years in the Middle East, and “is predicting that Israel will bomb Iran this fall, dragging the United States into another major war and endangering U.S. military and civilian personnel (and other interests) throughout the Middle East and beyond.” The CIA informant, “[Robert] Baer has had a storied career, including a stint in Iraq in the 1990s where he organized opposition to Saddam Hussein. (He was recalled after being accused of trying to organize Saddam’s assassination). Upon his retirement, he received a top decoration for meritorious service.” Where does Baer get his information? “Baer didn’t name sources for his prediction of an Israeli attack, but the few he did cite are all Israeli security figures who have publicly warned that Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak are hell-bent on war.”
The named sources include “former Mossad chief, Meir Dagan, who “left the Israeli intelligence agency in September 2010 and [in May] predicted that Israel would attack and that doing so would be ‘the stupidest thing’ he could imagine.” Besides the abject stupidity of war, what would happen? Dagan said “the Iranians have the capability to fire rockets at Israel for a period of months, and Hizbollah could fire tens of thousands of grad rockets and hundreds of long-range missiles.” Unlike debate over nuclear capability, that’s not speculation. Chiefs and formers heads of Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency, usually don’t comment on public policy, much less much derisive remarks about the coalition government. And “Dagan is very conservative on security matters….one of the most rightwing militant people ever born here. … When this man says that the leadership has no vision and is irresponsible, we should stop sleeping soundly at night,” according to Ben Caspit, of MaAriv. Also, Dagan isn’t the only one commenting. “According to Think Progress, citing the Forward newspaper, 12 of the 18 living ex-chiefs of Israel’s two security agencies (Mossad and Shin Bet), are ‘either actively opposing Netanyahu’s stances or have spoken out against them.’ Of the remaining six, two are current ministers in Netanyahu government, leaving a grand total of four out of 18 who independently support the prime minister.”
Some statements are wrong. Other statements are written so that predicted things shall not come to pass. Whichever was intended when MJ Rosenberg wrote about information that Baer, a former member of the CIA, predicted to international media, the bombing of Iran did not happen. According to Baer’s prediction, there was a “‘near certainty’ that Netanyahu is ‘planning an attack [on Iran] … and it will probably be in September before the vote on a Palestinian state. And he’s also hoping to draw the United States into the conflict.'” With at least six weeks warning in the international media, was Israel, and/or the US, wise enough to stop the planned attack, or use diplomatic leverage to stop the attack? Or was there never any thought of bombing Iran?
This latter thought is unlikely. The discussion of bombing Iran didn’t end with McCain in 2007, or with Rosenberg and Baer in the summer of 2011. A few days ago, at the beginning of November, Israel’s ynetnews ran an article titled “IDF [Israeli Defense Force] Ready to Strike Iran.” “Anyone following the intensive drills held by the Air Force in the Mediterranean and in distant regions realizes that Netanyahu’s and Barak’s declarations that Israel will not tolerate nuclear arms in Iranian hands is backed up by practical capabilities developed by the Air Force and by our military industries. No less importantly, the international community and the Iranians fully realize that Israel’s top politicians are seriously considering such strike in order to curb or at least delay the Iranian race to the bomb. This is assuming there is no non-military, efficient option to secure this aim.” The problem is recognized, nicely, that “the above is contingent upon absolute certainty that Iran has already started to produce the bomb and that all other ways to prevent Tehran from doing so have been exhausted.”
If the goal of writing is to prevent the future from happening, that is also the goal of war. The author of the ynetnews article recognizes, though, that “the above scenario is still relatively far off, as according to all estimates the Iranians are not expected to complete their preparations to produce nuclear weapons before 2015.” Given the argument that Israel will only bomb Iran to “curb or at least delay” Iran acquiring nuclear weapons, and even Israel says that won’t be before 2015, perhaps nuclear weapons are just a red herring?
Scott Olson became famous quickly, but probably not how he wanted to. A former marine acting bravely shouldn’t come as any surprise. A former marine being hit in the head by a projectile thrown by police, however, should come as a surprise. “His injury” – a nice phrase for being hit hard in the head – “is believed to have damaged the speech centre of his brain.”
The Oakland Police appear to have raised the stakes against their own interests:
Smart crowd control requires letting protesters protest – giving them an outlet. In Oakland on Tuesday evening, long before anything bad happened, police decided to deny Occupy Oakland that outlet. A peaceful, if rowdy march was headed from the main library toward Frank Ogawa Plaza – the location from which they’d been forcefully evicted the night before. They were headed off by a hastily assembled line of police clad in riot gear. The protesters decided to change course and head toward the jail where, according to a National Lawyers’ Guild observer on the scene, 105 protesters were being detained.
Again, the police blocked their route. They made another turn (I don’t know what the objective was at that point) and were again blocked. The police did not have the manpower to actually block the many cross-streets we crossed, but somewhere a commander decided to put five or six cops on every side street. This was a stupid move, as five officers cannot keep 500 protesters, now angrier than they had been at the onset, at bay….
There were injuries and arrests. I think none of it would have happened had they decided to let the protesters chant, “let them go!” for a while in front of the jail instead of forcing them – seemingly arbitrarily– to walk around in circles facing off against line after line of police blocking their way….
The police response last night wasn’t the most brutal I’ve seen (that honor goes to the dozen Florida police agencies that descended on Miami to crush protests against the Free Trade Area of the Americas in 2002), but it was the most inept. By aggressively boxing in protesters again and again, law enforcement simply ratcheted up the pressure for no apparent purpose.
The Dole Blog 