cognitorex

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(How a Chalabi “Palm-ocracy” could never happen.)

Iraq (as with its neighbors) was ruled by brutality and armed suppression before America began its occupation.
Iraq (as with its neighbors) will be ruled by brutality and armed suppression after the U.S. leaves.
No amount of troops or time frame under a half century will alter this formula.
America seeks to align itself with this, to-be-decided, new ruling force.
That this new ruling force will be a democracy is oxymoronic.
That the new ruling force will be a democracy aligned with the interests of the U.S. is even yet more naively ridiculous.
What the Cheney/neocon aggressors wanted and could have best hoped for, no matter how incompetent in assessing the tribal/religious nature of Iraq they were, would be to establish a "palmocracy."
When Arafat died I opined that hopefully, eventually, a Sunni palmocrat of Arafat's scheming mold would appear who would collect the graft and grease together a new working government. Tribes, religions, criminal elements, power seekers, moneyed neighbors with agendas and foreign born terrorists , as a mix, simply overwhelm this possibility.
Chalabi as a symbol of what a palmocracy might be was so enticing. Oh well!
Brutality and suppression will eventually create a new Iraq. The Iraqis want America out now. This desire can only increase.
It is entirely illogical that a ruling body will appear from the ashes of Iraq that will kiss the hand of its invader.
--One last tip, if you can, by stock in Crescent Condominium Development Limited. It's listed on the Iranian Stock Exchange and is reputedly a real favorite of the Mullahs.--

Labels: Crescent Condominium Deveopment Ltd., democracy, Iraq, Iraq withdrawal, palm-ocracy

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There is a marvelous passage within a 7/30 New Yorker magazine article regarding the rampant increase in (citizen) journalism that was ascribed to the advent of democracy in the French artist Courbet's epoch.

The Title of the piece is "Painting by Numbers, Gustave Courbet and the making of a master, by Peter Schjeldahl." (link, page 2)

The passage so intriguingly resonates with hundreds of recent op-eds and articles explaining, haranguing or lauding the growth of internet blogging. The passage follows, below:

--"A new means was at hand: journalism. In 1836, Chu writes, Paris's daily newspaper circulation was eighty thousand. By 1870, it topped a million. Publications large and small engendered what the great conservative critic Charles-Augustin Sainte-Beuve called "industrial literature," churned out with "audacity and naïveté" by men "with this single device inscribed on their banner, 'to live by writing.' " Sainte-Beuve saw the development as an inevitable consequence of democracy. He noted, unhappily, that it was in line "with our electoral and industrial customs that everyone may have his page.""--

I found it interesting. Oui? No?

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When Chris Matthews of "Hardball" condescendingly sneers the MSM adopted sobriquet, "These bloggers, they're mostly living in their parent's basements'' it shows to me that he is rattled by the phenomena and sarcasm is his little-minded response.

Labels: bloggers, dailykos, democracy, MSM, politics