Faux News: The Irony Generator

It occurs to me that if you don't understand irony, your are bound to create it.  Case in point:  Fox News.  Truly an organization bereft of introspection or self-doubt.  Doubting oneself involves questioning your own thoughts or actions.  Fox doesn't question.  They make it up and then they tell it.  If you don't think it's right because of some, I don't know, facts or something, that makes you part of the problem. 

Immune to the ironic, this is what was on the Fox News page this morning:

Side-by-side, like dance partners, the "top-selling rifle" threatened by the bad ATF (Waco!  Waco!) and the latest in an unending series of gun tragedies in the US.  Irony - I rebuke thee!

The AR-15, in case you didn't grow up in the US (I guarantee every American reading this knows what an AR-15 is), is a civilian version of the military M-16 assault rifle.  It is accurate, has decent range, and is lethal when it strikes virtually any part of the human body. 

"I don't know anyone walking around who's been hit by one."

Years after Columbine, and even years since Bowling for Columbine, America's gun problem persists.  In the latest tragedy (above) a shooter killed 7 and then himself.  Another person is dead of natural causes.  It says a lot when the mystery death in the scenario was by natural causes. 

Guns kill people.  Nobody runs around stabbing 7 people to death. 

Chris Rock had it right when he said:  "bullets should cost $5000."  No innocent bystanders killed anymore.  And now it seems the Obama administration is trying to take away Americans cherished freedom to commit gun atrocities. 

If you don't think that's a good idea, just check the Fox News Irony Generator.  You'll say "hey!  Obama's overstepping his...  Wait a minute.  Another senseless gun killing?  Okay, I'm cool with the AR-15 thing."

Thanks, Fox News!

Faux News

I've made a delightful discovery which is bound to provide unlimited future mirth.  It's called the Fox News homepage.  Why have I denied myself the pleasure of this site for so long? 

What's odd, actually, is that I read quite a lot of on-line news from different sources, usually following where the news aggregators wind blows me.  So Fox News stories don't end up in aggregators.  I wonder why?

Looking at the site is like reading a newspaper on acid.  There's the laughing face of Hillary Clinton under the headline:  "NO LAUGHING MATTER."  It's a "news story" about Clinton accepting bad money from Algeria or something.  Why did they match a laughing Hillary pic with this story?  Are you kidding? 

Every "news story" on the page tells an ideological tale.  Be very afraid!  ISIS is coming to get you!  But softie John Kerry doesn't think so.  He wants ISIS to kill your children!  Does the government fear freedom?  Of course it does!  The FCC wants to take the freedom to own the internet away from the Deserving Rich and the People-Corporations. 

It's a delusional take on events, to be sure.  No wonder Jon Stewart has been hacking them to pieces for years.  They are the 180-degree opposite of The Daily Show.  Where Stewart uses intelligent humor to reveal the truth and skewer the rich and powerful, Fox News dumbs down every story and fits it into their box.  They don't actually need news stories - they just make stuff up to fit the required narrative of the rich and powerful.

Which is all well and good because a recent Frank Rich article puts Fox firmly in their place:  at the fringe.  Even though Fox numbers are the best in cable TV, it's still just a fraction of TV viewership overall when you include networks, and they're a big zero on the inter-web.  The internet is increasingly where people get their news, and Fox isn't cutting it there. 

So don't have a cow every time a Fox Personality says something outrageous.  The people watching are true believers.  They enter and exit with their minds made up.  And their median viewer age is 68.  68! 

I'm with Frank up to a point.  Yes, the "news stories" on Fox are well understood to be propaganda.  But the thing is, the Republican Party is run on these ideas.  Leadership in both houses of Congress is Republican, meaning all the racism and science denial and fear mongering is what is running two thirds of the federal government (including the far-right Supreme Court). 

So it matters that this warped perspective has a media organization.  It matters what they say and think because that's what the federal government will say and think.  If Fox News runs with "be afraid of ISIS" - be afraid our kids are going to be sent into another blood bath that has little to do with US interests, and zero to do with protecting Americans. 

Now I'm depressed.  I think I'll go read some more Fox News craziness to cheer myself up!

NASCAR Congress

I was just reading about the latest attempts by the far rightest party controlling America's congress - so-called "Republicans" - to sell the internet to the highest bidder.  The internet is the greatest invention of my lifetime.  It has changed the world profoundly and will continue to do so far into the future.  We all know that.

What we don't know is that like everything else, rightists want to sell it off.  Not even to the highest bidder - a 'high bidder' implies some form of competition.  Rightists don't believe in competition.  They are Cartel Capitalists.  Like the Robber Barons of the 19th century, the modern financial raider does not compete.  They take.  And now they've come for the internet.

The internet is special in part because it is a level playing field - one of the few available to us.  This post has the same chance of being read as a post by a major newspaper or a corporate PR shill.  If I were a more worthy correspondent I could hope to create a media following like my idol, Bill Simmons, who turned his love of sports and pop culture into an internet giant. 

That sort of fair play doesn't sit well with the totalitarian mindset.  It's not that they don't want people to post things - they certainly pay enough 'wingnut welfare' to their useful idiots.  No shortage of sponsored rightist idiocy is there. 

Rightists want to allow large internet providers to sell faster service to powerful customers.  They don't want the internet to be regulated, not because Freedom!  Regulation would force internet companies to provide fair service to all. 

Trying to sell their usual 'regulation stops freedom' snake-oil, congressional rightists are trying to prevent the internet from being regulated as the telecommunication is.  Freedom, in their little minds, is the freedom of large companies to take anything they can get from you.  The freedom is all on the corporate side.  Freedom means, literally, cash. 

So if you don't have enough "Freedom" to pay off Congress, you lose. 

So I think Congress should maximize their Freedom grabs all they can.  I think they should start putting on patches from their owners, like NASCAR drivers do on their uniforms.  John Boehner should slap some oil company logos on his suit.  Maybe wear a telecom or two on his tie.  And I'm sure the Koch Brothers could put a big toilet paper logo on his back. 

Hey - why do this thing half-assed?  Get as much Freedom as you can.  As Rod Blagojevich said: 

"I've got this thing and it's (expletive) golden.  I'm not just giving it up for (expletive) nothing."

Terrorism Needs Cops Not Tanks

Canada's new Defense Minister, Jason Kenney, made his very first speech to parliament Thursday.  He chose to speak about terrorism.  My only question is this:  why?

Terrorism is a matter for the RCMP, not the Canadian Armed Forces.  Terrorists are inhuman murderers, but they are not an army.  US Secretary of State John Kerry, when he was running against George W. Bush, said that terrorism was a police matter, and was roasted for it.  We've come to accept that the terrorist threat is a military challenge, but it is not.

All the examples that Kenney used were police matters. 

"We need only to look to Copenhagen, to Paris, to Brussels and to Sydney," Kenney said."We need only consider the Toronto 18, the ongoing trials in Vancouver in the plot to bomb for the B.C. legislature and in Toronto against the alleged Via Rail bombers, to know that there is a high probability of future jihadists attacks from within." 

Which of those threats should the Defense Minister be spending time on?  Are we planning to invade the Toronto 18?  Should we be preparing mechanized infantry to face the Via Rail bombers? 

Kenney goes on to talk about Boko Haram in Nigeria.  Are Boko Haram terrorists?  They're certainly scary and unquestionably evil.  But, like ISIS, Boko Haram are taking territory (and committing mass murder).  They are fighting the armies of Nigeria and the neighboring countries.  They are not two scumbags murdering innocents in Paris.  They are not one cowardly killer in Ottawa.  They are an army.

Look;  we need to get a handle on this, and soon.  The word 'terrorism' has to mean something.  Currently, it is bent by governments to mean virtually any Islamic violence that is not aligned with the West.  When we allow them to do that, we end up with an endless open-ended war on an undefined enemy.  And we allow ourselves to turn a blind eye to the real threats and causes.  We don't have to hold up a mirror and see what we are doing and not doing to encourage violent extremism. 

The threat of terrorism in North America is virtually non-existent.  People die of things like heart attacks and car crashes, not terrorists.  A few attacks and thwarted attacks do not justify the expansion of surveillance powers and limitations on free speech that conservatives are imposing on all of us. 

I choose to be more free and less safe, and I think most people in North America would agree.  That means government should abide by the Charter and the Constitution.  They should require a warrant to perform surveillance.  CSIS and the NSA should have to play by the rules.  Would I be less safe if they weren't reading my email and bugging my phone? 

I'll take that chance.

Domestic terrorists are a police challenge, not a military one.  The RCMP and FBI have done a great job stopping them.  Peter MacKay's 'non-terrorists' (i.e. they were white) in Halifax were caught on a tip by Crime Stoppers - not by billion-dollar spy equipment.  Internationally, terrorists are made from marginalized and radicalized youth.  Groups like ISIS and Boko Haram fill the void created by failed states.  These are all complex problems. 

Which of them should the Canadian Minister of Defense be working on?  The answer is "E - None of the above."

Exceptional American Finger Pointing

Sometimes the news cycle can be generous.  The other day it offered two stories of interest, somehow missing their linkage.  Allow me to connect them. 

First we had Joe Biden kicking off the White House conference on countering violent extremism.  Interesting that they felt compelled to add "violent."  Simple 'extremism' isn't, apparently, something that requires countering.  Perhaps they seek to preserve the cherished memory of Barry Goldwater, who maintained that "extremism in defense of liberty is no vice."  But I don't think there are a lot of Goldwater Republicans in the White House, so we'll have to shelve that question for another day.

Biden kicked it off with a bit of old fashioned America!  Fuck Yeah!

“I am not suggesting that America has all of the answers here; we are just a lot more experienced,” ​Biden told a roundtable in the executive office building. “We are a nation of immigrants and our strength is that we are a melting pot.”

Yes, if you want to learn how to live in peace and harmony there is no better teacher than the good old US of A.  Perhaps you'd like to start your tour in Ferguson, MO?  Or perhaps a little more historically in Selma?  Americans don't really need immigrants to show their bad side.  They have home-grown minority populations to mistreat.  Their 'immigration' happened about 400 years ago and involved chains.

The plain truth is that the US is no better or more experienced at stopping violent extremism than anyone else.  It's just that we have a different population of immigrants to marginalize than, say, France or England. 

In Europe, immigrants arrive from places where, for various reasons, it sucks to live there.  Many places in North Africa, such as Libya (right now), suck.  Many places in the Middle East, such as the Middle East, suck.  Syria and Iraq and the nation that ISIS is building are tough spots to raise a family.  Yemen is no fun at all.  Don't forget the US drones which are dropping ordinance on anything that moves with a beard in the region. 

Back to America, where our immigrants are not arriving mainly from the Levant, but from nations to the South of us - Mexico, Caribbean countries, Central and South America.  How are we doing with  them? 

Let's let the news cycle deliver the answer on the very same day Biden was clucking about America!

A federal judge in Texas stopped the Obama administration from protecting up to 5 million undocumented immigrants through executive action.  Because we're so good at being a melting pot, except for those people.  We're great at immigration as long as nobody shows up.  America stops extremism by being lucky that the people we piss off are more civilized than we are. 

Look, the Jews who showed up at Ellis Island (like my family!) weren't overly burdened with documentation.  Nor were the Irish and Italians and everyone else who built the US.  America was founded by people running away from something.  As Bill Murray said in the classic Stripes:  "our forefathers were kicked out of every decent country on earth." 

The point being that we shouldn't point.  I like the direction the summit seems to be taking - that to limit violent extremism we need to be more inclusive.  Right France?  France?  We're talking to you.  But until the US can get its own house in order and do something human about immigration, Joe Biden needs to stick those kind of remarks straight in his melting pot.

Peter MacKay - Dumberer

Canada's current Justice Minister (and former Defense Minister) is a guy from Nova Scotia who is dumb as a brick.  The guy is a medical miracle in that his cranium is as dense as diamond but still used for what can be loosely defined as a form of cognition.  And he is thoroughly untrustworthy.  He was the last leader of the venerable Progressive Conservative Party and he took the opportunity to murder his charge.  He was the leader who put the old girl to sleep by merging with the then Alliance Party. 

I mention this because I seem to spend an inordinate amount of time talking about people who I deem to be stupid.  Rather than spending too much time on Mr. MacKay's obvious lack of capability, I'd like to clarify exactly what I mean when I called them dumb. 

I don't mean that they have a less than average capability to learn.  I have no idea what Mr. MacKay's actual IQ might be.  What I know is that he and his like are intellectually lazy.  What he knows or thinks he knows is what is advantageous to him politically and financially.  When information is hard to learn or politically disadvantageous, the easiest thing to do is just be against it.  That way you never have to actually learn anything.  Lazy and dumb. 

George Bush and his ilk destroyed the world's greatest democracy with that sort of facile idiocy. 

I fear for Canada with this variety of professional imbecile in charge.  It's a studied, learned incapability.  If you can make things easy for the rich and for the socially unevolved, there's money and power in it for you. 

MacKay's latest public evidence that he just doesn't get it is his handling of the (happily) prevented Halifax attacks by some "murderous misfits."  Quoth MacKay:  "The attack does not appear to have been culturally motivated, therefore not linked to terrorism."  Huh?

Canadian law says nothing about 'cultural motivations' in their definition of terrorism.  Moreover, the statement clearly shows a deliberate misunderstanding of 'terrorism'  Again, it's a misunderstanding that profits MacKay and his fellow travellers.  If 'terrorism' only mean 'Islamic terrorism,' that magically makes it okay to increase spending on spies and defense.  It's okay to step on civil liberties once people are afraid of the right things.

But domestic terrorists are no fun.  Lots of conservative voters don't mind a bit of right-wing extremism for the cause.  Even if they don't believe in the violence part of it, they may understand a bit of the motivation.  Bad politics.  Bad for the social conservative vote.  Bad for the types of extreme conservatives that MacKay killed his party to join. 

So when MacKay denies that this was a 'terror' attack, he's playing to the money and politics that have been his watchword for his entire career.  He has no credibility - and maybe that's what bothers me so much.  There was a time when - even for simple self-interest - politicians would speak truth over self-interest.  But in today's Fox News world, MacKay's fact-less statements are just boring. 

Too bad.  Canada deserves better.

New Anti-Terror Measures: Be Very Afraid

The European Union is discussing more anti-terror moves.  Canada is implementing a new anti-terror law.  What they have in common is that they do little or nothing to stop actual terrorists, but will enhance government's ability to track you and spy on you.  Feel safer?

The EU is reacting to recent violence in Paris - the Charlie Hedbo attacks and the killings in the aftermath of that horrific act.  As well they should.  But what would actually stop terrorists?  If more spying and tracking were the answer, there wouldn't be a terrorist left in the world.  Western powers have been sucking the internet and telephone systems dry for more than a decade.  They're likely reading the shopping list clipped to your refrigerator door. 

The truth is that we have all the laws we need.  Conspiring to commit murder is a serious crime - so is attempting and succeeding in murder.  Giving government more power to spy, and reducing free speech would not have discovered or stopped the human garbage who committed the Charlie murders.  It would not have stopped the killing of brave Corporal Nathan Cirillo in Ottawa. 

Terrorism in increasingly decentralized.  While a group like ISIS advocates and evangelizes to create overseas murderers, they are not the ones doing the killing here or in Paris. 

The new Canadian law has been put forward by the blockheaded Harper conservatives.  It criminalizes certain speech, which experts say will hurt our ability to find the people expressing terrorist views.  Without an ability to find these people and intervene to change their direction, we have zero chance of stopping them. 

To really stop terrorism in the West, we need to reach out and engage with marginalized communities.  Rather than try to predict when some psychopath's head will explode, we need to get there before that head is filled with hate.  The West - France in particular - has a history of marginalizing populations who may have arrived less than a century ago.  Some populations - like Jews - have been marginalized as outsiders for a millennia. 

When a young person is given no outlet of expression they will find one on their own.  If that outlet is a job and a place in the community, we all prosper.  But if that outlet is a shared whisper with an ISIS recruiter on Skype, we're in trouble. 

ISIS - Insurgants, Not Terrorists

The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria - ISIS - is a collection of the biggest assholes on the planet. As a Jewish man, I know they would torture me to death if they ever got their hands on me. I say that because the purpose of this post is in no way to defend these animals, but rather to define them.

Most media outlets would say so (too many to quote - ask the Great Gazoogle if you don't believe me). But that presupposes a definition of 'terrorism' that is politically convenient to the kinds of people who want to read your email to protect you from it. The Bush legacy of declaring war on a concept, and then defining that concept in ways (ever-changing) that gave him unlimited political power and made his robber-baron stewards even richer lives on. ISIS is a sponsor and instigator of terror outside the region they occupy, to be sure. And there can be little doubt that many of the locals living under their rule are terrified.

But let's define them by their successes. They have taken land and populations from Iraq and Syria (and attempted to take Kurdish lands and people. Terrorists don't do that. Al Qaeda doesn't plant flags, they plant bombs. ISIS is trying to create, enlarge, and maintain a state. They are revolutionaries.

The definition is important as President Obama has used the 2001 AUMF (before going to Congress for a blank cheque to use against ISIS specifically) to fight them. This is not a question of trying to frighten and outrage an enemy you are powerless against - terrorism. It's a battle to create a new country. It's a battle that is taking place because both Iraq and Syria and Failed States. Iraq in particular has been America's experiment in Middle Eastern democracy. The problem is that instead of employing the 'better angels of our nature' (Lincoln's term),we unleashed Team Bush and the F Students. Bloody, bloodless right-wing ideologues made the only thing they were capable of out of a defeated Iraq - a failed state.

It's been the needless American devastation of Iraq that created ISIS, and ongoing American drone and bombing atrocities that fuel them. The Bush-Obama Iraq is a story of creating a deadly mess and not having any idea how to clean it up. ISIS has an idea, though. With the Iraqi failed state on one side and the Syrian failed state on the other, their trained guerrilla fighters have become a cohesive recognizable uniformed force - an army.

You cannot deal with them as if they were terrorists because they're not. You can't treat a pandemic as if it was cancer. The root of their threat is the failure of the US to build a legitimate state in Iraq, not the amorphous non-specific hatred of 'terror.' ISIS is paying salaries, running a legal system (such as it is), and otherwise trying to govern. Stopping them will take more than victory on the battlefield. It will take a real legitimate government in the region. In Iraq, that's still America's bad. In Syria - well, nobody but the Assads are rooting for the Assads, but nobody really knows how much worse the opposition is (that's where ISIS came from).

At the end, the magic 'terror' word cannot keep driving us to more folly.