Exonerated

Here is an exceptionally good story from Intercept about the life of an ex-prisoner convicted for a crime he didn't commit.





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Poem of the Day: "Zone"

"Zone" by  Guillaume Apollinaire, trans., by David Lehman.


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Pilger and Fisk

In transmitting President Richard Nixon’s orders for a “massive” bombing of Cambodia in 1969, Henry Kissinger said, “Anything that flies on everything that moves”.  As Barack Obama ignites his seventh war against the Muslim world since he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, the orchestrated hysteria and lies make one almost nostalgic for Kissinger’s murderous honesty.

The rest of the news from the brilliant John Pilger.

Is there a “Plan B” in Barack Obama’s brain? Or in David Cameron’s, for that matter? I mean, we’re vaguely told that air strikes against the ferocious “Islamic State” may go on for “a long time”. But how long is “long”? Are we just going to go on killing Arabs and bombing and bombing and bombing until, well, until we go on bombing? What happens if our Kurdish and non-existent “moderate” Syrian fighters – described by Vice-President Joe Biden last week as largely “shopkeepers” – don’t overthrow the monstrous “Islamic State”? Then I suppose we are going to bomb and bomb and bomb again. As a Lebanese colleague of mine asked in an article last week, what is Obama going to do next? Has he thought of that?

The analysis of Robert Fisk.

With corporate media offering nothing, it's nice to have a couple of real journalists at work.


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Tied in the 7th

Bryce Harper "putting on a show."


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FishDuck

Charles Fischer has posted a right-on essay at his fan site, FishDuck.

Mr. Fischer is a devoted Duck, and he regularly produces well thought-out pieces and analyses of Oregon's games from a fan's point-of-view.

This time he's stepped into new territory for him--an analysis of what is clearly wrong with the loud, obnoxious, would-be coaching geniuses who are calling for a mid-season coaching change at Oregon.

He sees many of the same problems I have expressed regarding this aspect of fan entitlement.

He makes a strong case, one I couldn't agree with more.

Very well done.


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Baseball

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Love It

Love the wild, parity-driven landscape of the PAC this season, a reflection of what is happening everywhere.

Of course Oregon played like crap, but so did UCLA, so now Arizona has the upper hand.

But look, the Wildcats play USC this weekend--who knows which team will pull that one out?

It's crazy and fun.

Pure entertainment, as glorious as watching Alabama fall last weekend.

I caught last night's K.C. torching of the Angels as well, my first glimpse of the MLB playoffs.  Will tune into the Giants game today for kicks.


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History Worth Watching

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Bacevich Again

By inadvertently sowing instability, the United States has played directly into the hands of anti-Western radical Islamists intent on supplanting the European-imposed post-Ottoman order with something more to their liking. This is the so-called caliphate that Osama bin Laden yearned to create and that now exists in embryonic form in the portions of Iraq and Syria that Islamic State radicals control.

Want to measure what America’s war for the Middle East has accomplished through its first 13 iterations? The Islamic State has to rank prominently on any list of achievements. If Iraq possessed minimally effective security forces, Islamic State militants wouldn’t have a chance. But the Iraqi army we created won’t fight, in considerable measure because the Iraqi government we created doesn’t govern.

Bacevich is writing some of the best commentary on the ME out there these days.  Imagine that.  I give much credit to his military experience.  Retired, he can wield his pen and tell it like it is from his ivory tower at Boston U.--and his historian's chops are very strong.


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New Cycle of Ugliness Coming

You knew they would, but man the boo birds are coming hard after Oregon today.  A loss to Arizona will cause that.

Nobody--players, coaches, administrators, the ball boys--is exempt.

This is something I've never understood while being a long-time college football watcher in general and an Oregon fan specifically.

I started watching the Oregon program when I enrolled there in 1971. I've never missed a season, win or lose; the reason being I simply enjoy the game and the excitement of college ball. And believe me, in the old days there was plenty to get frustrated by as well as to celebrate.  One thing I made sure of through the morass over the years is that I had fun watching the game.

Being a fan can be frustrating, but wrapping your entire identity around the game and your school's football program is dumb.  Oregon lost the game last night.

The fans are making themselves miserable by giving the entire enterprise too much importance, treating it like life and death.

Oregon's program has obviously fallen off, another cycle has begun. What more can you say?

Oregon's recent success has bred a lot of unreasonable behavior among the team's faithful.  Now everybody is a coach, and miraculously, a program director.  The arrogance of the many has recalibrated--bounced the needle from "we're great" to a  "we're-too-good-to-stand-for-this" fantasia.

The fire-the-staff movement is on, something I won't participate in because, frankly, I don't think any of this is important in the midst of what ought to be an entertainment.  My goal now is to block out the noise.

That's becoming very difficult to do.

Unacknowledged this morning is a point of realism that the faux-coaches in Oregon's fan base simply are unwilling to embrace.

Arizona has a better team.  Better players.  Better coaches.  Like many, I mourn the fall, but it was as inevitable as the Oregon rain.

The cycle of the seasons.

Things are about to get as ugly as a muddy snowbank in the winter. Queue the Vivaldi.

Sigh...


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Poor Ducks Cooked

Too many injuries and poor defense undo my Ducks.

Not the upset people are claiming, Arizona is talented, and whomever the Ducks play always give them their best shot.

Undefeated Arizona will be ranked now, and deservedly so.  The PAC south is loaded.

Oh, well.  It's a long season.  Probably will lose another or two, starting next weekend in L.A. against UCLA.


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10

1. Islamic State presents an immediate threat to the people of the U.S.

In justifying air attacks on Syria on Sept. 23, President Barack Obama said, “We will not tolerate safe havens for terrorists who threaten our people.”

I saw firsthand the tens of thousands of Yazidis forced to flee Islamic State fighters. IS is a vicious, un-Islamic, ultra-right-wing group that poses a real threat to the people of Syria and Iraq. But those people will defeat IS, not the U.S., whose motives are widely questioned in the region. IS poses no more of a terrorist threat to the American people than al-Qaida and its offshoots.

In fact, within a matter of weeks, the Obama administration admitted that IS posed little terrorist threat to the U.S. mainland and focused instead on a heretofore-unknown group that the U.S. calls Khorosan. Now evidence is emerging that the Khorosan threat was exaggerated in order to justify expanding the bombing to Syria.

10 Myths.


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Showtime

I was downtown as this ended today.

The boys and girls in the media were dressed to the nines for their on-camera spots.

BTW, there were indictable offenses by the kid before the FBI created the sideshow, which turned into a show trial, and a judicially sanctioned prime warning to radical Muslims.

Now we're safe, fer sure.

Read the comments for a real laugh or two.


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Positive View

Twenty years ago the Los Angeles Times was a mighty power. Today it totters from one savage cost-cut and forced retirement to the next. Will the broadsheets and tabloids vanish? Not in the foreseeable future, any more than trains disappeared after the advent of the Interstate system. A mature industry will yield income and attract investors interested in money or power long after its glory days are over. But it’s a world in decline and a propaganda system in decay.

Jeffrey St. Clair on the future of information systems.


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What's New?

BREAKING NEWS—They're selling us another war on television.

As a Washington media strategist, people ask me, "Who's offering alternatives to war on the Sunday morning news shows?" As reported by the New York Times, military analysts dominating the Sunday airwaves, marshaling support for war in the Middle East, have been ex-military employed by defense industry contractors profiting from war. They appear with current administration officials/apologists, former members of the Bush Iraq War team, and politicians scoring points by being for a war on ISIS but against the president.

Dissenting voices are few: Katrina vanden Heuvel, Editor of The Nation, Rep. Raul Grijalva and Michael Shank in The Guardian. But their viewpoint is often obliterated by the drumbeat of war. Or... they're simply not booked to appear.

Has television news failed us completely?

This one was published yesterday, but nothing has changed since then.


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