A gentleman of residual taste, at least

You'd be surprised at who's losing patience with the loony left:

The Upchuck Letters, Chapter 1

Aim High, Shoot Low

Well, I’ve finally taken the plunge into comics-blogging, thanks to its twisted advocacy of LS at Amish Tech Support and others. Here begins my contribution:



This and the subsequent ‘toons are satirical commentaries on the “praxis” of the Situationist International (SI), a group of semi-Marxist theorists concentrated in France from 1958-72. They followed the “revisionism” of Georg Lukacs seminal tome HISTORY AND CLASS CONSCIOUSNESS, which posited that capitalism had an inherent capacity to re-invent and present itself that transcended its status in orthodox Marxist thought as a mere economic system. Since this came close to the revisionism of Bernstein, Lukacs had to spend the rest of his long life dodging and grovelling before the Stalinists. The Situationists had the luxury of being in Western Europe, and so were able to take pot-shots at the bureaucratic nature of “actually existing socialism“ in Russia and China.

In their analysis, the Situationists argued that capitalism had turned all relationships transactional, and that life had been reduced to a "spectacle". The spectacle is the key concept of their theory. In many ways, they merely reworked Marx's view of alienation, as developed in his early writings. The worker is alienated from his product and from his fellow workers and finds himself living in an alien world: The worker does not produce himself; he produces an independent power. The success of this production, its abundance, returns to the producer as an abundance of dispossession. All the time and space of his world becomes foreign to him with the accumulation of his alienated products....

The increasing division of labor and specialization have transformed work into meaningless drudgery. "It is useless," Vaneigem observes, "to expect even a caricature of creativity from a conveyor belt." What they added to Marx was the recognition that in order to ensure continued economic growth, capitalism has created "pseudo-needs" to increase consumption. Instead of saying that consciousness was determined at the point of production, they said it occurred at the point of consumption. Modern capitalist society is a consumer society, a society of "spectacular" commodity consumption. Having long been treated with the utmost contempt as a producer, the worker is now lavishly courted and seduced as a consumer.

At the same time, while modern technology has ended natural alienation (the struggle for survival against nature), social alienation in the form of a hierarchy of masters and slaves has continued. People are treated like passive objects, not active subjects. After degrading being into having, the society of the spectacle has further transformed having into merely appearing. The result is an appalling contrast between cultural poverty and economic wealth, between what is and what could be. "Who wants a world in which the guarantee that we shall not die of starvation," Vaneigem asks, "entails the risk of dying of boredom?"

In place of the society of the spectacle, the Situationists proposed a communistic society bereft of money, commodity production, wage labor, classes, private property and the State. Pseudo-needs would be replaced by real desires, and the economy of profit become one of pleasure. The division of labor and the antagonism between work and play would be overcome. It would be a society founded on the love of free play, characterized by the refusal to be led, to make sacrifices, and to perform roles. Above all, they insisted that every individual should actively and consciously participate in the reconstruction of every moment of life. They called themselves Situationists precisely because they believed that all individuals should construct the situations of their lives and release their own potential and obtain their own pleasure.

Guy Debord and the Situationists

Their practice of “detournment” or sabotage referred to in my strips is derived from the above position. There are two problems with it. First, the Nietzschian one of becoming the monster that you fight by adopting its methods and practices [which motivated Debord to withdraw all of his films from distribution, for example] and the more subtle one of parasitism. You can “pirate” TERRY AND THE PIRATES all you like, but -someone- still has to draw the dang thing. Why should Milt Caniff draw -anything- if it is not his to express, but can be taken up and used as an ideological “wax nose” with a majority vote by a collective?

Still and all, I can‘t say that they would approve of the stupidity going on now, given their opposition to Maoism in the 60‘s and Debord's subsequent prediction of the decay of the European left. Say what you will about the contradictions in their theory, they at least knew a fascist when they saw one.

To learn more about the SI, check out the following:

Here is a somewhat motley collection of information relating to the Situationist International.

Lexmark: It's All About the Ink

Those who believe that Lexmark offers printers at low prices and makes up the loss by selling expensive ink cartridges are right:

Printer maker Lexmark International Inc. on Thursday reported a higher fourth-quarter profit, powered by growth in sales of replacement ink cartridges for its inkjet and laser printers.

In 1999, I bought a Lexmark for $100 and got a $50 rebate. Excited about having an inkjet printer after years of using a noisy dot matrix, I did no research into the pricing of ink cartridges. I have no one to blame but myself, but Lexmark's bait-and-switch is still obnoxious for a number of reasons.

First, it is almost as cheap to buy a new Lexmark printer (one of the lower end models) as it is to buy a replacement cartridge for it. My model came with a cartridge, so for about $20 more than the price of a cartridge, I could have a new printer for each refill I've bought.

Second, Lexmark could cut out the rebates and price its cartridges lower. I would gladly have paid $100 for the printer for the sake of paying $20 for a refill.

Third, Lexmark does not offer reconditioned cartridges, whereas the other printer makers do.

Finally, the cartridges often cease to work for no discernable reason, even when the ink meter shows ink left.

I won't be buying a Lexmark again. From what I've read, certain Canon models have a low cost per page. Unfortunately, I suckered Ernie into buying the same Lexmark model.

Whither Hollywood?, or Salma doesn’t ‘Koootchie Koootchie Koo”

One of my political science professors had an unpleasant experience with our local school system. His wife volunteered to help at the school her children attended, only to meet a stonewalling response from the administration, despite the fact that she had at least two earned doctorates. The fact that she was Mexican probably had a little to do with it. They undoubtedly feared that she would traumatize the students by breaking out a flamenco guitar and singing "La Cucaracha." I was reminded about her in relation to the following:

"If Salma were white and male, she'd be bigger than Harvey Weinstein," says Alfred Molina, who played Diego Rivera to Hayek's Frida Kahlo in the Miramax-financed "Frida."

"Salma held her own against everybody," says Weinstein, pairing his star with Julie Taymor, who directed the movie. "I call them the Ballbreaker Twins. I should be the one getting sympathy, having to deal with women that strong. Between the two of them, I didn't know which way my ass was getting kicked."

The pitfalls of looking good

I’m sure that the magical question on everyone’s mind is, “Why -isn’t- she (bigger than ‘Harv,’ that is)?” What is there about making movies that requires a pasty complexion and the “right” secondary sex characteristics? Well, Ms. Hayek has the explanation:

"No one would hire me," (said Hayek in the interview). "I had studio heads say to me, 'You could have been the biggest star in America, but you were born in the wrong country. You can never be a leading lady, because we can't take the risk of you opening your mouth and people thinking of their maids.'"

Entertainment Tonight - Salma Strikes Back

Hmm, let me check out there...

All you moviegoers who employ Hispanic maids, raise your hands...

I thought so.

The hyper-protesting Hollyweird jerks that we’re hearing so much from lately are awfully silent about this. I guess that Viggo, Babs, Sheryl and Co. had to get their pro-fascist “Acid baths are too good for Saddam-hating scum” tee-shirts made up while this was going on. As for "artistes" that should have a stake in this issue, it seems that ‘President -Josiah Bartlett-’ is too busy “passing for WASP” to really concern himself with real-life racism and sexism in his own bloody industry. Martin knows which side his bread is buttered on.

Wait a mo, I just had a brainstorm. Hayek is 1/4 Lebanese, perhaps she’s just not putting her best minority claim forward. Strap a suicide bomb around her lissome waist and throw her an AK-47 and she’d probably be head of production for a major studio right now.

The sad thing is, that’s probably the -only- way she’ll ever be one, given the cowardice of the H-wood “left-behinds.”

Sad, really.

Whites Die More Often in War

Do blacks bear the brunt of war by dying disproportionately more than whites? Just the opposite according to this USA Today article:

Blacks, especially in the enlisted ranks, tend to be disproportionately drawn to non-combat fields such as unit administration and communications. They are underrepresented in jobs shooting rifles or dropping bombs.

Whites, on the other hand, go into higher risk jobs, and hence die disproportionately. What's interesting about this is that although it disarms the war-is-racist argument on one ground, it opens the argument up on another. The issue now is not how many blacks die in war, but how many serve as pilots, engineers, and so forth. Naturally, many will claim that this issue demonstrates racism in the armed forces, but the above article concludes:

The reasons for the racial divide are unclear, but several theories have emerged, including lingering racism in some quarters of the military and a tendency among black recruits to choose jobs that help them find work in the civilian sector.

The irony is that if one wants to claim that blacks should be better represented "in jobs shooting rifles or dropping bombs," then one is claiming that blacks should die in higher numbers. To be fair, this is not an absurd position; one could accept that consequence in the name of equality, but I suspect that the race lobby will want to play the issue both ways, i.e., that it is wrong that blacks die disproportionately and wrong that they do not serve in high-risk jobs. The two positions are not compatible, but one can always cite Walt Whitman in defense: "Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself."

A Blog from Willy Wonka

Saturn in Retrograde is pleased to post the following open letter from none other than candy maker extraordinaire, Willy Wonka. The letter is addressed to certain public health officials in England.

---

My Dear Good Sirs,

I read in this morning's dispatch that many public health officials are concerned about the growing size of chocolate bars. These officials are rightly concerned with the increase in obesity and its corresponding effect on health. All well and good.

But then comes an accusation that I wouldn't even make against my worst enemy, Mr. Slugworth:

Nutritionists claim that some manufacturers deliberately lure children and low-income families into buying fatty, sugary and high-salt foods by heavily promoting cheaply priced, king-sized products.

My protege, Mr. Charlie Bucket, takes great offense at this. Having once been poor himself, Charlie found that being able to buy a larger candy bar at a reduced price was a boon, not a curse. Why? Because one does not need to eat the entire bar at one sitting. The Oompa Loompas have composed an entire opera on just this point. Moreover, such a bar can be shared with say, Grandpa Joe or Grandma Georgina.

I do hope that public health officials will not take issue with my Everlasting Gobstopper, which is designed for children with very little pocket money. Lest I be blamed for ruining the dental health of poor children, let me remind everyone that just because the Everlasting Gobstopper never gets any smaller is not reason to keep one in your mouth all of the time. The Oompa Loompa song about gum chewing drives this point home.

Equally puzzling is this passage:

Children were the least likely to understand the risks of buying king-sized chocolate bars or soft drinks.

I have some expertise regarding how children understand risk, so my response is: no kidding. Who should understand the risks?--

What do you get when your kid is a brat,
Spoiled and pampered like a Siamese cat?
Blaming the child is a lie and a shame,
You know exactly who's to blame--
The Mother and the Father.

As to obesity:

The same research showed that one king-sized chocolate bar would make up 30 per cent of a nine-year-old's daily fat intake--creating a "substantial problem" of over-eating for children.

Again, I have some expertise here. I once knew a lad who tried to drink my chocolate river and just might have had there not been some slight unpleasantness involving him, a pipe, and Bernoulli's Principle. My point? Obesity is a problem regarding the entirety of one's eating habits, not just the eating of a large candy bar. Augustus Gloop ate everything in sight, candy or not. And that was his downfall (or in this case, his upfall).

Finally:

Later this month, the Health minister Hazel Blears is expected to open another conference where experts will add to calls for tighter controls of food advertising, particularly targeting young people.

Stop. No. Don't.

Good Day Sirs,
Willy Wonka

Argumentum Ad Armageddon

When in doubt, try to convince people that your enemies are going to cause Armageddon. That seems to be the reason why anti-war activists have remade the infamous "daisy" ad. It's easy to dismiss the ad as an alarmist scare tactic--because that's what it is--but the ad also implies an argument that many activists readily accept as sound:

1. If the U.S. goes to war in Iraq, some catastrophic event X will occur.
2. This X would be the fault of the US.
3. Therefore, we should not go to war with Iraq.

Let's go through the argument.

1. If the U.S. goes to war in Iraq, some catastrophic event X will occur. There is an ambiguity here: some might interpret the ad as saying that X might happen, and so it is prudent not to go to war. This would mean that the conclusion would follow probably, but not absolutely, from the premise. Fair enough, but this does not change anything in terms of the argument's merit. There still has to be a strong likelihood that event X will follow from another Persian Gulf War (hereafter PGWII) in order to justify the equally strong claim that it would be prudent to avoid PGWII. So for all intents and purposes, let's treat the argument as a deductive one.

So is there anything wrong with (1)? It should be noted that (1) is actually an argument itself, namely, a slippery slope argument alleging that P will lead to Q and Q will lead to R--and in this case ultimately to catastrophic event X. We might call such an argument an argumentum ad Armageddon, i.e., an appeal to Armageddon. The form of the argument is valid--sometimes P will lead to X--so the question here is: how likely is it that PGWII will lead to X?

"Not very" seems to be the reasonable answer. Remember the context of the original daisy ad. It was an ad implying that Barry Goldwater might lead us into a nuclear war with the Soviet Union. Of course, Goldwater lost the election to Lyndon Johnson, so we cannot say that ad's claim was falsified. However, we do know that Ronald Reagan's strong anti-Soviet position did not lead to a nuclear war. In fact, whether he was responsible or not, the Soviet Union collapsed. So in this regard, the implied claim that hardline conservative presidents will lead us into Armageddon seems to be false.

But what about an actual war, and not just a hardline stance? Here, too, predictions of Armageddon seem untenable. Neither the Vietnam War nor the Korean War led to X, despite involving two nuclear powers, and even more to the point, neither did the first Persian Gulf War. Moreover, even the predictions of a Vietnam-like "quagmire" in Iraq, Serbia, and Afghanistan did not come true. The point is not that war will never lead to X, but that is has not so far done so, contrary to dire predictions made by activists.

Another problem for (1) is that it does not mesh with certain other assumptions held by anti-war activists. As Christopher Hitchens pointed out on Hardball, the same people supporting the new daisy ad tend to believe that Saddam Hussein does not have nuclear weapons. This does not make the ad's argument false, but it does mean that some activists have an incoherent point of view; and so if they wish to make an argumentum ad Armageddon, they need to admit that Saddam has catastrophic weapons. [I suspect that they won't, because doing so would destroy the case for prolonged weapons inspection.]

2. This X would be the fault of the U.S.. Some might doubt that the ad implies this, but the ad clearly puts the burden for X on the U.S. and nowhere else. It is the U.S., not Iraq, that is supposed to change its ways. So while the U.S. might not be the efficient cause of X (e.g. the one who launches the nuclear strike), it is nonetheless somehow responsible for X. We've seen this same argument in regards to 9/11: Islamic terrorists were the efficient cause of the destruction of the World Trade Center, but the U.S. in some way begged for such an attack.

Of course, questions about who is responsible for what when countries come into conflict are thorny, but we can cut to the chase by looking at what underlies (2); and we might call what underlies it the Sheryl Crow Doctrine. According to the SCD:

The best way to solve problems is to not have enemies.

At first blush, this seems to be naive or even vacuous, but a charitable interpretation of the SCD would be something like this:

Don't provoke people or countries until they become dangerous enemies.

Indeed, there is a kernel of truth in this. If one provokes a snake, one risks getting bit. So its much better to let the snake go on its way and do its snakey things.

Anti-war activists (as well as isolationists on the right) tend to view war and peace (and terrorism) in these terms, and although it has a certain appeal, the snake theory of enemy-making makes for inadequate foreign policy. Iraq and North Korea, to name but two, do not merely pursue their own ends in isolation from the rest of the international community. They threaten, they attack, they oppress their citizens; and they commit human rights violations that would make Mumia Abu-Jamal glad to live in a U.S. prison if he had to suffer them. The upshot is that when countries act in such a way they cannot help but make enemies. It is we who are the provoked snake. It is Iraq and North Korea that need to heed the SCD, not the United States.

3. Therefore, we should not go to war with Iraq. This might be true. But because (1) and (2) are not sound, the daisy ad argument fails to support this conclusion.

Finally, Ernie would chastise me if I did not mention who is responsible for the original 1964 daisy ad: Bill Moyers of PBS fame. Also, I linked above to a pro-Mumia site; here is a site dedicated to Daniel Faulkner, the police officer whom Mumia shot and killed.

This is the city of Billy Beck's nightmares...

and mine, too,,,

1,400 residents

30 book shops

4 million books

The City of Books

The Writer who Came In From Human Decency [warning, long post]

To celebrate The Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler blogger Emperor Misha I’s birthday, I thought that I’d do a Fisking of John “Moral Equivalence Moron” Le Carre in his honor. I’ll forgo Misha’s usual cuss words in favor of reviving some choice old English terms which, although now almost forgotten, really get at the literary idiocy of Mr. Le Carre.

America has entered one of its periods of historical madness, but this is the worst I can remember: worse than McCarthyism, worse than the Bay of Pigs and in the long term potentially more disastrous than the Vietnam War.

Yep, I just saw Justice Hathorne out with Cotton Mather and the local constable rounding up imams to be hung. Distressed by this spectacle, I went in and turned on my TV to find George W. Bush ranting and raving about “109 Zam-Zam drinking Islamists” in the State Department and Afgani kids running down the road with their skin burned off after a napalm attack. It’s introductions like this that let us know about the sophisticated reasoning abilities of European leftist intellectual elites. Warning, his thinking gets more jumentous as we move along.

The reaction to 9/11 is beyond anything Osama bin Laden could have hoped for in his nastiest dreams.

Quite so, you anile old naffin, but not for the reasons (or outcomes) that either you or Osama wanted.

As in McCarthy times, the freedoms that have made America the envy of the world are being systematically eroded. The combination of compliant US media and vested corporate interests is once more ensuring that a debate that should be ringing out in every town square is confined to the loftier columns of the East Coast press.

John Le Carre, meet the Internet. Internet, say hello to noted English badling John Le Carre. Comments about the Official Secrets Act and the EU’s continual attacks on speech freedoms elided because the author was too busy laughing his fundament off.

The imminent war was planned years before bin Laden struck, but it was he who made it possible. Without bin Laden, the Bush junta would still be trying to explain such tricky matters as how it came to be elected in the first place;

It’s a little thing called the Electoral College, one of those teensy features of that scrap of paper called the Constitution, O excerebrose One.

Enron;

Perhaps the members of the preceding administration could fill you in on that one, along with the government of India, but I fear that you are too intellectually lubbardly to care much, John-Boy.

its shameless favouring of the already-too-rich;

The echolalia of tired old class-envy rhetoric strikes again.

its reckless disregard for the world’s poor,

Yep, the Marquis de St. Evre’monde had nothing on George W. Why, he wouldn’t even extend unemployment benefits to his own jobless. (wait a moment...)

the ecology

Le Carre must be referring to the Kyoto treaty. Well, the upper chamber of our legislature scored that one “98” for the economy, “Nil” for the idiotic and empirically unverified eructations of the environmental racketeers during Clinton‘s administration. The Boy President committed us to following its provisions via Presidential fiat, which one would expect Le Carre to oppose as an act of “unilateral” executive tyranny. (crickets chirping)

and a raft of unilaterally abrogated international treaties.

Just the ABM Treaty, which we gave formal notice for, you pathetic glump.

They might also have to be telling us why they support Israel in its continuing disregard for UN resolutions.

Desticate all you like about 242, the Israelis are fighting for survival against bloodthirsty janiform anti-Semites such as yourself.

But bin Laden conveniently swept all that under the carpet. The Bushies are riding high. Now 88 per cent of Americans want the war, we are told. The US defence budget has been raised by another $60 billion to around $360 billion. A splendid new generation of nuclear weapons is in the pipeline, so we can all breathe easy. Quite what war 88 per cent of Americans think they are supporting is a lot less clear. A war for how long, please? At what cost in American lives? At what cost to the American taxpayer’s pocket? At what cost — because most of those 88 per cent are thoroughly decent and humane people — in Iraqi lives?

Spare us the bathetic idiocy, Johnny. The U.S. military takes pride in minimizing civilian casualties, because it’s not only moral but good war-fighting as well, “the moral is the practical.”

How Bush and his junta succeeded in deflecting America’s anger from bin Laden to Saddam Hussein is one of the great public relations conjuring tricks of history.

Mr. Hussein had a lot to do with that by coming out in favor of the Twin Tower attacks after 9/11/01. To paraphrase Dr. Johnson, “Depend upon it, sir. When a rational man sees 3,000 people incinerated in front of his eyes, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.” By applauding such heinous crimes, he put himself squarely in favor of the terror axis in a way that not even the scromboid loser Arafat dared to do.

But they swung it. A recent poll tells us that one in two Americans now believe Saddam was responsible for the attack on the World Trade Centre. But the American public is not merely being misled. It is being browbeaten and kept in a state of ignorance and fear. The carefully orchestrated neurosis should carry Bush and his fellow conspirators nicely into the next election.

“Shake, rattle and roll.” “The American Electorate” that I see as I walk along the street seems serene and rational. Even the street crazies are more poised and subdued than you are, Le Carre. We know that Saddam has been in power too long, and that the Iraqis might actually make a go of it if given half a chance...

Those who are not with Mr Bush are against him. Worse, they are with the enemy. Which is odd, because I’m dead against Bush, but I would love to see Saddam’s downfall — just not on Bush’s terms and not by his methods. And not under the banner of such outrageous hypocrisy.

How, pray tell, are we going to unseat Saddam, if not by Bush’s methods and on Bush’s terms? Bush is the leader of the only country in the world with both the will and the capacity to do something about Hussein. Internal subversion won’t work, it has been tried countless times before. Old age will only eventually put Uday on the top. Perhaps we can call in Richard Gere to lead a worldwide campaign to think nice thoughts about the Marsh Arabs until Hussein’s karma backs up on him and he relents. Orwell’s point about pacifism working to the advantage of fascism is completely appropriate here. It was tremendously hypocritical of Stalin to campaign against Hitler on the grounds of “anti-fascism” when he was a large, if indirect, reason for Hitler coming into power in the first place (by undermining the KPD) and an ally of Adolf for a year and a half (1939-41). I join other Fiskers of this article in noting Le Carre’s silence on that point. It seems that things get very “black and white” when it is lil’ Johnnie’s dubious moral equivalencies that are in question.

The religious cant that will send American troops into battle is perhaps the most sickening aspect of this surreal war-to-be. Bush has an arm-lock on God. And God has very particular political opinions. God appointed America to save the world in any way that suits America. God appointed Israel to be the nexus of America’s Middle Eastern policy, and anyone who wants to mess with that idea is a) anti-Semitic, b) anti-American, c) with the enemy, and d) a terrorist.

Hardly, it’s just that a) Israel is the only functioning democracy in the region aside from Turkey [1/2 the time], b) the Arabs/Palestinians have continually advocated the genocidal destruction of the internationally-recognized and U.N.-created State of Israel in both worlds and deeds from the time of its creation right to the present day, c) those same Arabs idolize fascism and anti-Semitism to the point of dramatizing the PROTOCOLS OF THE ELDERS OF ZION and making Adolf Hitler a best-selling author. Thus ,d) those who support the Arabs over the Israelis deliberately uphold such values (or, equally deliberately, ignore such facts), making them backers of anti-Semitism and fascism if we take the guilt-by-association logic that Le Carre hypocritically denounces here (but employs in the paragraphs immediately below) seriously. If you lie down with mad dogs, you get up with rabies, Le Carre.

God also has pretty scary connections. In America, where all men are equal in His sight, if not in one another’s, the Bush family numbers one President, one ex-President, one ex-head of the CIA, the Governor of Florida and the ex-Governor of Texas.

*Yawn* See the Adams, Harrison, Roosevelt and Kennedy families. Political dynasties are nothing new in America. Your entheomaniac ramblings about God and politics are quite revealing, but we Americans shrug it off as being lip service to the God of the Civil Religion. If you were literate enough in American fiction to make the appropriate reference to Mark Twain’s WAR PRAYER, it might have been impressive. As it is, you’re just a typical klazomaniac enraptured with the sound of his own shouting.

Care for a few pointers? George W. Bush, 1978-84: senior executive, Arbusto Energy/Bush Exploration, an oil company; 1986-90: senior executive of the Harken oil company. Dick Cheney, 1995-2000: chief executive of the Halliburton oil company. Condoleezza Rice, 1991-2000: senior executive with the Chevron oil company, which named an oil tanker after her. And so on. But none of these trifling associations affects the integrity of God’s work.

Here’s Le Carre’s guilt-by-association hypocrisy laid bare. Quite the secular Pecksniff, eh?

In 1993, while ex-President George Bush was visiting the ever-democratic Kingdom of Kuwait to receive thanks for liberating them, somebody tried to kill him. The CIA believes that “somebody” was Saddam. Hence Bush Jr’s cry: “That man tried to kill my Daddy.” But it’s still not personal, this war. It’s still necessary. It’s still God’s work. It’s still about bringing freedom and democracy to oppressed Iraqi people. To be a member of the team you must also believe in Absolute Good and Absolute Evil, and Bush, with a lot of help from his friends, family and God, is there to tell us which is which. What Bush won’t tell us is the truth about why we’re going to war. What is at stake is not an Axis of Evil — but oil, money and people’s lives. Saddam’s misfortune is to sit on the second biggest oilfield in the world. Bush wants it, and who helps him get it will receive a piece of the cake. And who doesn’t, won’t. If Saddam didn’t have the oil, he could torture his citizens to his heart’s content. Other leaders do it every day — think Saudi Arabia, think Pakistan, think Turkey, think Syria, think Egypt.

Our resident misologist seems to forget that two of the countries above have their own oil. By his tortured logic, we should invade and subdue Saudi Arabia first.

Baghdad represents no clear and present danger to its neighbours, and none to the US or Britain. Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction, if he’s still got them, will be peanuts by comparison with the stuff Israel or America could hurl at him at five minutes’ notice. What is at stake is not an imminent military or terrorist threat, but the economic imperative of US growth. What is at stake is America’s need to demonstrate its military power to all of us — to Europe and Russia and China, and poor mad little North Korea, as well as the Middle East; to show who rules America at home, and who is to be ruled by America abroad.

One would think that a putative writer of espionage thrillers would at least have a minimal understanding of the difference between conventional and unconventional means of warfare. Saddam doesn’t concern anyone now because of his overt military prowess, but because of his known potential as a third-party enabler of terrorism as a wholesaler of tailor-made diseases and poisons, plus being a potential (and if Le Carre had his way, -actual-) nuclear vendor. Notice his patronizing description of North Korea as an Ophelia suitable for Bedlam, when in fact it is the Stalinist -leadership- of the country that is driving it down. Note also that Le Carre thinks that it is preferable for North Koreans to starve on grass rather than be a part of the same political order that fashioned South Korea’s current freedom and prosperity. How rectopathic he is at the prospect for freedom and human dignity when Europeans aren‘t concerned.

The most charitable interpretation of Tony Blair’s part in all this is that he believed that, by riding the tiger, he could steer it. He can’t. Instead, he gave it a phoney legitimacy, and a smooth voice. Now I fear, the same tiger has him penned into a corner, and he can’t get out. It is utterly laughable that, at a time when Blair has talked himself against the ropes, neither of Britain’s opposition leaders can lay a glove on him.

That’s called a “strong party parliamentary democracy,” Johnny-me-boy. Once one has a clear majority, virtually anything goes. The party leader and whips have all the power, and the backbenchers get to play backseat backbiter and contemplate community service. I fail to see why I, a -Yank- of all people, have to give you a civics lesson in the workings of the British Constitution and its political ecology. The rectalgia you give your readers just keeps on increasing, Le Carre.

But that’s Britain’s tragedy, as it is America’s: as our Governments spin, lie and lose their credibility, the electorate simply shrugs and looks the other way. Blair’s best chance of personal survival must be that, at the eleventh hour, world protest and an improbably emboldened UN will force Bush to put his gun back in his holster unfired. But what happens when the world’s greatest cowboy rides back into town without a tyrant’s head to wave at the boys? Blair’s worst chance is that, with or without the UN, he will drag us into a war that, if the will to negotiate energetically had ever been there, could have been avoided; a war that has been no more democratically debated in Britain than it has in America or at the UN. By doing so, Blair will have set back our relations with Europe and the Middle East for decades to come. He will have helped to provoke unforeseeable retaliation, great domestic unrest, and regional chaos in the Middle East. Welcome to the party of the ethical foreign policy. There is a middle way, but it’s a tough one: Bush dives in without UN approval and Blair stays on the bank. Goodbye to the special relationship.
I cringe when I hear my Prime Minister lend his head prefect’s sophistries to this colonialist adventure. His very real anxieties about terror are shared by all sane men. What he can’t explain is how he reconciles a global assault on al-Qaeda with a territorial assault on Iraq. We are in this war, if it takes place, to secure the fig leaf of our special relationship, to grab our share of the oil pot, and because, after all the public hand-holding in Washington and Camp David, Blair has to show up at the altar.

Well, since Mr. Blair has undoubtedly studied British history, he is no doubt reminded of the whining that went on whenever England had to step in and take things in hand over the objections of lesser powers. You know, actions like stopping cult murders and widow-burning in India and other examples of “multicultural” wonderfulness. Aside from the shiny, happy fascism of his domestic policy, Blair knows that Saddam is a menace and one of the legs of support for Arab terrorism. It’s true that his party is fractured behind him, but they, like you, offer no sensible alternative except leftist screeching at the actual thought of opposing fascism.

“But will we win, Daddy?”
“Of course, child. It will all be over while you’re still in bed.”
“Why?”
“Because otherwise Mr Bush’s voters will get terribly impatient and may decide not to vote for him.”
“But will people be killed, Daddy?”
“Nobody you know, darling. Just foreign people.”
“Can I watch it on television?”
“Only if Mr Bush says you can.”
“And afterwards, will everything be normal again? Nobody will do anything horrid any more?”
“Hush child, and go to sleep.”

Once a mammothrept, always a mammothrept, I suppose. Le Carre may need for his political leaders to tell him bedtime stories, but adults can make their own judgments. Let’s see how his view really cashes out in sleepy-time dialogue:

“But why can’t we help them, Daddy?”
“Of course not child, that would be helping America, and that would be wrong.”
“Why?”
“Because they spread things like Western Enlightenment values and stop Uncle Saddam and other freedom-loving men from doing what they want.”
“But doesn’t he kill people?”
“Nobody you know, darling. Just foreign people.”
“Don’t foreign people have rights?”
“Of course not, they’re just sand-crawlers and wogs who think that they have some ridiculous right to human freedom and dignity.”
“Isn’t that racism, Daddy?”
“Hush child, and go to sleep.”

Last Friday a friend of mine in California drove to his local supermarket with a sticker on his car saying: “Peace is also Patriotic”. It was gone by the time he’d finished shopping.

“You know, as the acid bath is slowly dissolving my flesh off of my bones here in an Iraqi dungeon, I can’t help but count my blessings that I don’t live in a country where bumper stickers would be scraped off my automobile by random passers-by. Of course, I never got the chance to actually OWN a car, but it’s the principle of the thing that counts...”

“That’s right, Abdul. As a Coptic Christian formerly living in Egypt, I can proudly state that the bumper stickers on my car proclaiming my religious allegiance, one that predates Islam in my country by six centuries, were never removed from my car without my permission. Instead, my Islamic compatriots voiced their complaints about my theology in a mature and rational manner, namely by burning me to death -inside- my car, but, thank God, they didn’t take the stickers themselves off.”

Perhaps Le Carre can join up with the Poet Laureate of the Garden State for the first epic espionage thriller/poem, “Who scrape off da Bumpa?” It should get enough of the idiotarian trade to catapult them both back onto the bestseller list.

Johnny, call your agent.

Fanatics Rejoice

According to Vicki Erwin of Scholastic Books Trade Sales, HARRY POTTER AND THE ORDER OF PHOENIX will be published on June 21, 2003 in the U.S., U.K., Canada and Australia.