If you want to know Pres. Obama’s job tonight, this is it. Make Americans understand the United States has a clear goal in Libya, which is also attainable. He’ll make the case by saying a humanitarian catastrophe has already been prevented, which isn’t a bad thing to bring to the table on his first speech on Libya to a national audience.
After several days of airstrikes on Libya by the United States and its allies, the public has mixed reactions to the military operation. Nearly half of Americans (47%) say the United States made the right decision in conducting air strikes in Libya while 36% say it was the wrong decision. Fully one-in-six (17%) express no opinion.
If Obama can move those 17% he’ll be in much better shape, regardless of the fact that his Libyan mission has been incoherent from the start.
I doubt, however, Pres. Obama will answer Justin Elliott’s question, which is a good one: Will Obama violate the arms embargo in Libya? The WSJ reported that Egypt is already arming the “rebels,” though it remains unconfirmed.
It’s also good news that when Pres. Obama sits down tonight he can say NATO is in charge of a greater portion of what’s going on.
I can’t count how many articles I’ve read on Libya, from all sides of the political spectrum, mostly concentrating on foreign policy experts. Few can explain any backing of Obama’s war of choice in Libya with any clarity where American priorities are concerned. I don’t think anyone ever will.
One view from Canada is harsh, calling what’s been done in Libya as “humanitarian imperialism.”
This doctrine is known as the “responsibility to protect” (R2P for short) and was endorsed by the United Nations in 2005. It mandates that the “international community” is morally obliged to defend people who are in danger of massive human-rights violations. It’s rooted in Western guilt over the failure to prevent genocide in Rwanda. R2P is the moral underpinning of the war in Libya…
[...] We have entered a new age – the age of humanitarian imperialism. Humanitarian imperialists are besotted with fantasies of the West’s inherent goodness. As American writer David Rieff puts it, they have promised that, from now on, all wars will “noble wars of altruism.” To them, the facts on the ground don’t matter much. What really matters is their good intentions.
There is no equivalent between Rwanda and Libya, but that’s the trouble with humanitarian missions that aren’t in a country’s vital interests. What’s the death toll or atrocity trigger that pushes countries to action?
Ms. Wente goes on to talk about Clinton, Rice and Power, as well as France’s Bernard-Henri Lévy.
Pres. Obama will make his case tonight, but will he address his “Gadhafi has to go” doctrine in terms of strategic interests, as well as how this all ends? He can’t, because it doesn’t fit that framing, and no one knows.
Pres. Obama letting emotions be his guide is how we got into Libya. It’s also the leading reasoning behind others who back him.
Juan Cole has a post up today “unabashedly cheering the liberation movement on”, applauding Pres. Obama’s interventionism into Libya, his war of choice. As much as I respect Juan Cole, his arguments are unpersuasive, as he cherry picks his way through rationalizing the President’s actions.
The United Nations Security Council authorization for UN member states to intervene to forestall this massacre thus pitched the question. If the Left opposed intervention, it de facto acquiesced in Qaddafi’s destruction of a movement embodying the aspirations of most of Libya’s workers and poor, along with large numbers of white collar middle class people. Qaddafi would have reestablished himself, with the liberation movement squashed like a bug and the country put back under secret police rule. The implications of a resurgent, angry and wounded Mad Dog, his coffers filled with oil billions, for the democracy movements on either side of Libya, in Egypt and Tunisia, could well have been pernicious. [...]
Among reasons given by critics for rejecting the intervention are:
1. Absolute pacifism (the use of force is always wrong)
2. Absolute anti-imperialism (all interventions in world affairs by outsiders are wrong).
3. Anti-military pragmatism: a belief that no social problems can ever usefully be resolved by use of military force.
For a man who has called Afghanistan another Vietnam, while never understanding the human rights as women’s rights argument, it’s astounding Cole is ignoring a major element on Libya. One that has convinced me that we’ve done what we can in Afghanistan and while we’ll continue to aid them, our military must disengage.
There is absolutely nothing about Libya that is in American’s geopolitical interests.
Cole’s flippant refusal to consider the Sudan because military intervention would have required more effort than Libya is to say that preventing genocide can only be done if it’s easy. Genocide often happens in out of the reach places where the perpetrators think they can get away with it, as they did in Rwanda.
The other very real issue is focus and what taking our eye off of the geopolitical ball can mean. Distractions are dangerous and that’s exactly what Libya is.
From Steve Clemons, who is correct on Libya and has the most cogent analysis of anyone:
However, the nation of real rather than imagined national security consequence to the U.S. in the region is Egypt. Richard Haass of the Council on Foreign Relations and others — including myself — are worried about the ‘bandwidth’ of the White House to deal with multiple major challenges at the same time. Libya will soon be NATO protectorate and focus of significant attention — adding some ‘stretch marks’ to the stress NATO members are already feeling on Afghanistan.
But what of Egypt which is going through extraordinary changes in turbo time? Senior officials in the Department of State tell me “we are on it.” And I believe they are in the sense of working with Egyptian authorities to offer counsel on strategies to transform the Constitution and set the terms for significantly broader political stakeholding in the country — but there is no doubt that the system that President Obama has established for exhaustively internally inclusive national security decision making has less space for Egypt today than Libya.
Clinton said the elements that led to intervention in Libya — international condemnation, an Arab League call for action, a United Nations Security Council resolution — are “not going to happen” with Syria, in part because members of the U.S. Congress from both parties say they believe Assad is “a reformer.”
Leaving aside for now the absurd notion that Pres. Assad is a “reformer,” I cannot find any through line from the Administration on why Libya and not Syria.
Sen. Joe Lieberman did and it reveals the problem in Juan Cole’s analysis, which opens up a whole can of worms. Via Reuters:
Senator Joseph Lieberman, an independent, suggested the United States and other countries could intervene militarily in Syria if President Bashar al-Assad, who came to power after the 2000 death of his father, Hafez, attacked protesters with greater ferocity.
“There’s a precedent now that the world community has said in Libya, and it’s the right one, ‘we’re not going to stand by and allow this Assad to slaughter his people like his father did years ago,’” Lieberman told the “Fox News Sunday” program.
Of course we feel for the poor and workers of Libya. If Gadhafi had been allowed to clash with protesting Libyan civilians it would have been gut wrenching to watch.
But what about human rights violations in China? In North Korea?
If the U.S. is spread any thinner our national security interests will become vulnerable, our interests unprotected, because we will now be embroiled in Libya, along with Afghanistan and Iraq. While Egypt, which is much more critical to American interests than Libya, will not get the attention it warrants.
It’s being reported that NATO will indeed take on duties beyond the no-fly zone, arms embargo, but also protecting civilians. But NATO’s “Needs America To Operate” history means we won’t be completely hands off, because this mission is not over. Never mind we still do not know the ultimate intent, which Obama states is “Gadhafi must go,” while admitting he has no intention of forcing the issue.
The entire endeavor has been fraught with inconsistensies from the start.
Juan Cole is understandably emotional about Libya, which is how Pres. Obama got dragged into this war of choice in the first place.
There are many tensions breaking open and what’s required right now is clear, tough-eyed realism. Bleeding hearts will compromise American interests and get us embroiled while our adversaries plot.
The next time a woman would grace a national ticket would be in 2008, when John McCain chose Sarah Palin.
In the late ’90s Ms. Ferraro was given 3 years to live, five at the most, but in 2007 she was given a clean bill of health. But as anyone who has ever seen someone battle cancer, it’s rarely forever. She succumbed today after her valiant battle with blood cancer.
Back during the 1984 election cycle when Geraldine Ferraro was picked as the vice presidential nominee on the Democratic presidential ticket with Walter Mondale, many young women shrugged, just like many young women of another generation shrugged when Hillary Rodham Clinton took center stage in the 2008 cycle, this time attempting to crack the ultimate glass ceiling.
Ferraro broke the mold for women in politics, something for which she never received much credit, something Hillary experienced as well until she earned her own recognition at the State Dept.
In 2008, Ms. Ferraro was on Hillary’s 2008 presidential campaign finance committee. She was known for many things, but she went out of the political arena with a bang when she blasted candidate Barack Obama in a sequence of statements that caused a furor, got her called a racist, forced her resignation from Clinton’s campaign, which precipitated her being ensconced on Fox News channel as the spoiler to a U.S. press under the thrall of candidate Obama’s unique political gifts.
The modern political audience will likely remember her most for her outspoken, some would say outrageous, candor.
“If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman (of any color) he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept.”
This statement was as unfortunate as it was incorrect. Having seen Obama in action during the primaries I can tell you the man’s talent was unmistakable and had nothing to do with color.
There is, however, a good case to make that a woman of equal talent would not have been vaulted to the presidential slot, but instead would have been made to take the vice presidency instead. A woman having Barack Obama’s slim resume back in 2007 simply wouldn’t have made it through the DNC and Senate’s old boys’ club.
Ferraro on Obama as the great “reconciler”:
“I was reading an article that said young Republicans are out there campaigning for Obama because they believe he’s going to be able to put an end to partisanship. Dear God! Anyone that has worked in the Congress knows that for over 200 years this country has had partisanship – that’s the way our country is.”
It was always a fantasy that Obama would usher in a “new kind of politics,” especially since he used an old kind of politics to beat Clinton. Nothing wrong with that, because all’s fair in presidential politics, but Ferraro was correct when she levied the “Dear God!” exclamation, because the notion was laughable.
The right-wing would never let it happen, which has now been proven. That’s especially true now that Donald Trump is out as the front man for birtherism, which will certainly be only angle the Right will use to come at Obama in 2012.
During the Clinton administration Ferraro was ambassador to the United Nations Committee on Human Rights, and also did a stint as host on the old “Crossfire.”
Her rise to politics came through a career as a teacher and lawyer, including the D.A.’s office in Queens, N.Y., then she landed as a congresswoman from New York’s 9th District. Ferraro had her own scandals when the press got a hold of stories about her husband, which raised a ruckus and caused a lot of embarrassing defense. She tried twice for the Senate, 1992 and 1998, both of which ended unsuccessfully.
The Mondale-Ferraro ticket was creamed by Ronald Reagan in a landslide in ’84. Reagan went on to a very mixed legacy, including the Iran-Contra affair for which he should have been impeached.
So what do you do? Take the crumbs, or hold out for the full loaf? Or what if you’re offered a slice or two, rather than a crumb or two? Are crumbs and slices a way – a painfully slow and frequently exasperating way — of getting to the full loaf?
Queerdom is definitely not the only group of people who know the “here’s a crumb, now go away until later” method of progress toward equality. But with Barack Obama, the “hope” for “change” from the crumb method was probably raised higher than ever. Whether or not one shared the high hopes (I didn’t), all of us have to deal with what we got, as we always do. The self-proclaimed “fierce advocate” very quickly revealed that incremental steps are his idea of ferocity. So one question is simply this: what’s the best use we can make of the incremental approach?
Last week the United States signed a “Joint Statement on the Rights of LGBT Persons at the Human Rights Council” of the United Nations. That’s a step forward. The statement, signed by some 85 countries, is entitled, “Ending Acts of Violence and Related Human Rights Violations Based On Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity.” The U.S. Department of State issued a “Fact Sheet” which you can see here (pdf).
It is a good step, especially when compared to the complete lack of action by the Bush administration. Even by comparison, I don’t think Obama’s actions are “fierce,” but signing the statement is significant. And it does come as one in a series of (mostly mini-) steps.
Fred Sainz, vice president of communications at the Human Rights Campaign … (said): ‘For those who have been denied their equality for decades, change will never come soon enough. But there should also be no doubt that in the past two years more positive change for and on behalf of gay people has been made than ever before.
That this step, the U.N. statement, was noticed by, among others, The Family Research Council, is an indication, if in a back-handed kind of way, that it does have some importance. Via LGBTQ Nation :
In opposition to the proposed declaration, The Family Research Council … released a statement saying, “Our global neighbors have the freedom to believe that homosexuality is wrong — just as they have the freedom to legislate against any behavior they think is harmful to society.”
One reason for taking the crumbs and slices, and using them to continue building the loaf, is because of what FRC represents – a fierce advocacy against LGBT rights. Another is, as the LGBTQ Nation article also notes, “Homosexuality is still punishable as a crime in at least 85 countries, including Afghanistan, Iran, Sudan, and Ghana.” And we mustn’t forget Uganda. A crumb of protection is better than no protection. But of course, it’s far from sufficient.
I become very tired of the crumbs method. I rather fiercely refuse to jump up and down with excitement when the one-eighth-ful glass is presented as a something over which I should offer effusive praise. But I can acknowledge the step, while continuing to work for the next, preferably bigger one.
In the past several months, the Obama Administration has secured the passage of a legislative repeal of the military’s Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy and is shepherding the full repeal through the armed services. They also have declined to defend DOMA in federal court, agreeing that the law violates the Constitution. Now there’s this global action, which could make it more difficult for some governments to allow the abuse and murder of at-risk members of the LGBT community in their own countries. This leadership role came late for many LGBT advocates, and not until a series of high-profile protests by activists who accused the White House of foot-dragging. But the White House has made efforts late in the game to take a positive posture.
That is a very important point: the activists who called-out the crumby method for what it is.
Harvey Milk said: “If the government is ever going to be returned to the people, it will only be returned when the people demand it. When the people throw off the political machines, the public relations speeches, and the crumbs thrown to keep you quiet…”
I don’t like being thrown crumbs, but I don’t think they have to keep us quiet. I think you can identify them for what they are — careful, cautious, creeping political decisions. And you can turn around and use them in building the whole loaf.
The UN statement is another good step. But it comes as a part of the Obama administration’s stumbles, shuffles and crumb sprinkling, with a slice or two thrown in. No matter how much I want the whole loaf, I know it’s going to be necessary to continue using morsels and tidbits. Dealing with crumbs is a part of the political nitty gritty world — incrementalism, frequently defined as “pragmatism.” So we take the crumb, call it what it is, and use it as an appetizer, as energy, as motivation. It’s not enough, it’s less than we deserve. We won’t forget that, and it won’t keep us quiet. But we can use it to get more. The whole loaf is the one we’re making.
Amnesty International: Egyptian women protesters forced to take ‘virginity tests.’ Hillary, who has been sounding the alarm on the dangers of women being shut out of the new Arab world, is no doubt following this horrific development very closely.
But former Obama administration official Anne-Marie Slaughter says that “this idea of the women going to war is wildly overplayed.”
“On the one hand, you get the women in the administration criticized because they focus on development issues and empowering women and humanitarian issues, and the next minute they are being stylized as Amazons — that’s ridiculous,” says Slaughter, who ran Clinton’s policy planning office at the State Department until recently.
Clinton initially took a cautious line on military intervention, turning only after she was assured that Arab states supported it and would play a role.
Only the day before, Mrs. Clinton — along with her boss, President Obama — was a skeptic on whether the United States should take military action in Libya. But that night, with Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s forces turning back the rebellion that threatened his rule, Mrs. Clinton changed course, forming an unlikely alliance with a handful of top administration aides who had been arguing for intervention.
Was President Obama “henpecked” into waging war on Libya by his “Amazon warrior” female advisors? Only if you’re shocked by the thought of women in positions of power actually asserting their power. It also helps if you consider skepticism of military engagement to be inherently “feminine” and think that getting convinced of something by a woman is in and of itself emasculating. And if you’re Maureen Dowd you repeat all that stupid, backward cant, because you’re the hard-charging award-winning New York Times columnist with the most retrograde conception of gender relations this side of Hays Code-era Hollywood.
Photo (at the beginning of this post): U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton acknowledges the crowd at a ceremony marking World Water Day at World Bank Headquarters in Washington, Tuesday, March 22, 2011 (Reuters).
Heather Allen at NRDC, on the MOU (memorandum of understanding) agreement on water, signed by Hillary and World Bank president Robert Zoellick on WWD 2011:
Last year Hillary Clinton’s speech on World Water Day catapulted water to the top of the mind among the diplomatic and humanitarian communities. Previously water had done well in Congress (regularly receiving signficant appropriations and passing the Paul Simon Water for the Poor Act), however focus from the White House or Administration had been lacking.
In Clinton’s 2010 speech she called water the ‘wellspring of all life’, and characterized it as central to international development. From that speech and other actions over the last year we have seen significant progress toward prioritizing water. Just last month the Rajiv Shah the Administrator of USAID appointed Chris Holmes to be the new Global Water Coordinator – a position designed to help build a water strategy across government agencies. In addition President Obama requested just over 300 million for water appropriations for 2012 – the largest amount ever, indicating an increasing focus on water.
This MOU will help to ground these advances and build support at all levels throughout government agencies for cooperation on water. Agreements like these can be powerful tools to support innovative projects on water, because they make it clear that the highest levels of government intend to see progress here.
Today’s agreement on water helps people in the World Bank and the U.S. Government focus attention where we need it most – to bring water and sanitation to the billions who lack it, a great reason to celebrate on World Water Day.
Hillary and Zoellick exchanging documents after signing the MOU (click to view larger):
“We’ve also authorized military authorities for NATO to take on the broader military protection mission.” – Sec. Clinton
Before Clinton spoke, the news coming through multiple news sources is NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen says the alliance has reached an agreement to take over no-fly operations from the U.S., also known as “the coalition.”
Rasmussen said on CNN there is no decision on “a broader mission,” which remains under U.S. military command. This includes attacks on the ground, Gadhafi’s tanks, etc. This is the tougher part of the “mission,” such as it is.
“At this moment there will still be a coalition operation and a NATO operation,” Fogh Rasmussen said. “But we are considering whether NATO should take on that broader responsibility in accordance with the U.N. Security Council resolution, but that decision has not been made yet.” – MSNBC
Turkey is very much against NATO being in charge of this aspect of the “mission.” However, Turkish air bases will be open for the no-fly part of the mission, which is no small thing.
CNN is also reporting a “no-fly plus” being considered, with permission needed to expand Libyan mission to hit other targets, but the correspondent transmission was interrupted.
This is getting very convoluted, with two different four-star generals in charge, according to one military expert on CNN, “unity of command” is out the window.
Steve Clemons said on MSNBC that the U.S. will be acting “behind the scenes” delivering “unique capabilities,” aka intelligence and as sort of a “kind of Wizard of Oz behind the curtain, if you will, without a lot of public exposure,” but a “systems integration role,” which will continue after the hand-off.
We still don’t know the ultimate goal of what we’re doing in Libya, but the U.S. military is still very much involved, as Sec. Clinton’s statement at the top of this report illustrates.
Much remains to be worked out.
Pres. Obama choosing to not address the nation, but instead give Sec. Clinton the lead, is an interesting way to address a situation that is getting more involved, rather than less.
President Bashar al-Assad made a rare public pledge to look into granting Syrians greater freedom on Thursday as anger mounted following attacks by security forces on protesters that left at least 37 dead. – Thousands chant “freedom” despite Assad reform offer
You think it’s America’s job to interject ourselves and save the world?
Citing rights activists and witnesses, the AFP news service reported that 100 people were killed when police opened fired in the southern city on Wednesday. However, the report could not immediately be verified.
Thousands defied the deadly government crackdown on Thursday as they took to the streets in funeral marches for protesters killed by police gunfire, an activist said.
As the casualties mounted, people from the nearby villages of Inkhil, Jasim, Khirbet Ghazaleh and al-Harrah tried to march on Daraa Wednesday night but security forces opened fire as they approached, the activist said. It was not immediately clear if there were more deaths or injuries. Story: 15 dead in new clashes in southern Syria city
Democracy activists used social-networking sites to call for massive demonstrations across the country on Friday, a day they dubbed “Dignity Friday.”
Meanwhile, the State Dept. is “deeply concerned.” That’s the phrase that has helped launched the What are you going to do about it question? for decades.
Pres. Obama has started down a path that reveals the knotted reality of cherry picking carnage to manage, which is threatening to reduce his presidency to rubble. NATO still can’t come to an agreement over command. Via MSNBC:
Quarreling NATO While the fighting raged, NATO again failed to agree to take over command of the military operation “Odyssey Dawn” from the United States, chiefly because of objections from Turkey, diplomats said.
The United States, with its forces already tied up in Iraq and Afghanistan, said it wants to give up its lead role in Libya in a “matter of days,” with NATO playing an important role in the command of the operation, although the exact structure of its role was still under discussion. France, which launched the air campaign against Libya with Britain and the United States on Saturday, argues that having the U.S.-led NATO in charge would erode Arab support because of the alliance’s unpopularity in the Arab world.
After starting down a deliberative path, Pres. Obama’s now ventured into no man’s land, because looking at Syria, Bahrain and Yemen, nothing he’s currently doing makes any sense.
The Libya no-fly misadventure now has the dubious distinction of having the lowest approval of any war“kinetic military action” in four decades and that’s before people learn just how little information the Obama administration had on the “rebels” prior to Pres. Obama pulling the trigger.
The original intent of the no-fly zone was to prevent carnage in Benghazi. It did. Now fears are growing that a humanitarian crisis is coming across Libya.
Who could have predicted that? After all, war never causes these types of secondary issues– Oh, strike that. Pres. Obama and his administration say this isn’t a war. I keep forgetting that point. If Obama says it isn’t a war it isn’t a war, right?
MR. RHODES: Well, again, I think what we are doing is enforcing a resolution that has a very clear set of goals, which is protecting the Libyan people, averting a humanitarian crisis, and setting up a no-fly zone. Obviously that involves kinetic military action, particularly on the front end. But again, the nature of our commitment is that we are not getting into an open-ended war, a land invasion in Libya. What we are doing is offering a unique set of capabilities over a period of days that can shape the environment for a no-fly zone.
What could possibly go wrong with this mumbo jumbo?
What a giant political disaster Pres. Obama has created. And not calling what’s being done in Libya a war? Who are these guys and how did they get to such a level of leadership? It’s absolutely juvenile.
It’s hard to find a precedent for a president ordering U.S. military forces into action, then heading off for a five-day tour of Latin America, but that’s just what President Barack Obama did when he approved the deployment of air and naval assets to establish a no-fly zone over Libya. His homecoming gift is a barrage of questions about the military action Obama aides refuse to label a “war.” – Unanswered questions about Libya
Jamie Rubin put it well on MSNBC this morning. There’s an old saying about NATO, which has an alternative acronym: Needs America To Operate. The reason America usually leads, which is why the Right and others are caterwauling about the operation, is that without our lead things fall apart.
Pres. Obama missed that lesson and is now in the middle of an international diplomatic firing squad, while his people are arguing about whether this is a war or not.
I can picture V.P. Joe Biden right now muttering expletives under his breath.
[...] “My Mother was an extraordinary woman who lived life to the fullest, with great passion, humor, and love,” he said. “Though her loss is devastating to those of us who held her so close and so dear, we will always be inspired by her enduring contribution to our world. Her remarkable body of work in film, her ongoing success as a businesswoman, and her brave and relentless advocacy in the fight against HIV/AIDS, all make us all incredibly proud of what she accomplished. We know, quite simply, that the world is a better place for Mom having lived in it. Her legacy will never fade, her spirit will always be with us, and her love will live forever in our hearts.” – ABC News
Elizabeth Taylor was the corporeal Venus. Lust in human form. A voracious devourer of life itself.
She was known as “the most beautiful woman in the world,” famous for her violet eyes. She was Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire. She founded the American Foundation for AIDS Research (amfAR) and the Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation after watching her dear friend Rock Hudson die in the shadows of the disease. She was godmother to Michael Jackson’s children, Paris Jackson and Prince Michael; and was best friends with the tragic Montgomery Clift. She was the “temporary custodian of some incredible and beautiful things,” with her astounding jewelry collection something over which Richard Burton competed with Aristotle Onassis to give her. Most of all Elizabeth Taylor was thefemale movie icon of the 20th century who earned movie star status that no other woman could ever claim. She was also a brilliant, Academy Award winning actress, winning Oscars for “Butterfield 8″ and “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”, a role every young serious actress with chops takes for a spin (including yours truly, back in my Broadway days).
Elizabeth Taylor was also a heart-breaking ball-buster of a femme force who chewed up the scenery of life and the men she loved, fucked with ferocity and left behind her when the force of wills became too strong. The list of cocksmen is long: Conrad ‘Nicky’ Hilton, Michael Wilding, Michael Todd, Eddie Fisher, Richard Burton twice, John Warner, and Larry Fortensky, but the leading man after Todd was always Burton. Elizabeth also leaving men at her feet well beyond her mating conquests, including studio heads who were expected to present her with gifts of jewels, excepting the legendary asshole Jack Warner who said “I’m paying her a million, and one hundred thousand, plus 10 percent of the gross. Let her buy her own brooch.” Men who offered contracts befitting the queen of the silver screen for the pleasure of allowing them to film her quintessential essence.
A legendary boozer, eater, pill popper, a primal sexual partner, Elizabeth had no rivals and never will. The Golden Age of film dies with her and now the legend can rise.
From Dame Elizabeth Taylor’s Twitter account, circa July 22, 2010: Every breath you take today should be with someone else in mind. I love you. Her last entry publicizing her Harper’s Bazaar interview with Kim Kardashian. Her comments on rumors of a movie of her life classic of Hollywood’s greatest broad:
Let the casting begin, because there was simply nothing like Elizabeth Taylor’s life. Just don’t call the move “Dick and Liz,” because she hated the chopping off of her name and that this is what she and Burton became as their most decadent heights fell away to them becoming simply mortals, well almost.
After she lost her love Mike Todd in an airplane crash, then peeled through his best friend’s life making Eddie Fisher Taylor her husband, then moving to the staid Sen. John Warner’s wife, which bored the hell out of her, Elizabeth went on to live on yachts with the tortured Welshman genius Richard Burton, whose only dream was to be a writer and poet because he believed acting not fit for a man. This was the love affair that riveted the world for years, as they were hounded from port to port in order to duck taxes on their extraordinary wealth, always with dogs and children and family in tow. Fans hounding them in one city so ferociously Elizabeth thought she’d lose her life by being crushed to death before being rescued, which haunted them both ever after. Mr. Burton caring for his family, which went well beyond the norm, as his manic depressive Welsh roots hounded him through his tragic life. Family always the center of the Burtons’ world.
The extraordinary book about the life lived by Elizabeth and Richard Burton was chronicled in “Furious Love – Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, and the Marriage of the Century” and spares no delicious detail of this everlasting carnal coupling that was the libidinous equivalent of Zeus and Hera on earth. From their harrowing fright and flight from fans, to Burton’s quest to bathe his beauty in jewels, morphing the phenomenal Cartier Diamond into the “Taylor-Burton diamond” when the competition between Burton and Onassis to bathe Elizabeth versus Jackie in the opulent jewel boiled over to an Onassis loss, to their putting Mexico on the map as their den of iniquity that soothed their longing to hide away, even while their egos thrived on being Elizabeth and Richard, the most famous lovers on earth. Authors Sam Kashner and Nancy Schoenberger capture their epic romance completely and tragically, as all love is, because the infinite heart can never outlast the finite human experience we are all living:
What Liz Smith had seen, perhaps, and the other critics had not, was that Elizabeth had finally embraced her new role of queen of camp. She had always loved the big show–Mike Todd had taught her that–the spectacular entrance, the opulent furs, the eye-popping diamonds, fabulousness for the sake of fabulousness. She loved it, she celebrated it, she understood it. And perhaps the biggest reason why she and Burton could not longer be together onstage, was that, by now, Richard was tragedy and Elizabeth was comedy. Elizabeth realized it herself, saying at the time, “When we were able to be Richard and Elizabeth, the marriage worked beautifully. It’s Liz and Dick that didn’t work, because they were two people who didn’t really exist.” But now it was all they had left. … …
[...] We’ve never really split up,” [Richard Burton] told Graham [Jenkins, his brother], and I guess we never will.” … But mostly they kept in touch through frequent phone calls. For a man who spent his whole life avoiding the telephone, he loved it when it was Elizabeth’s voice at the other end. Sometimes they would discuss new projects they could do together, or teach each other, or revisit the past. “The bond between them seemed to defy all efforts, including their own, to make a clean break,” Graham believed.
Then, in one long phone call from Celigny late in the summer of 1984, Richard did something he had never done before in his talks with Elizabeth. After hoping to meet again, either in London or in Gstaad or in Celigny, he uncharacteristically ended his call with “Good-bye, love.”
For Elizabeth, it had an eerie sound of finality to it, though neither she nor Richard knew that they would never see each other again.
A few days after Burton’s death, Elizabeth received a love letter from him. Maybe now we’ll find out what it said.
Elizabeth Taylor was a force of nature, an unquenchable inquisitive human who met a man who challenged her to rise to heights of her craft that she may have found alone, but in this coupling found nurturing amidst the cracking open of the eye of the lustful hurricane that she was as a woman and Elizabeth and Richard were as voracious and tortured lovers. Burton helped tap Elizabeth’s inexhaustible primal human force, which in the end is the purpose of great love between a man and a woman at its height of heat.
The spirit that made Elizabeth Taylor who she was in life should have exploded long ago through her choice of obliterating the boundaries of life’s possibilities, pleasures and worldly pursuits, indulgences and self-inflicted stresses, but nothing could dim the nuclear force that was Elizabeth.
Elizabeth Taylor lived out loud all of her life. She died untamed.
Sarkozy’s stamp on the conflict has been unmistakable. Cable news in the U.S. on Monday featured the celebrity philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy, an unexpected Sarkozy ally, barking praise for the French president at a CNN anchor and elated Libyan opposition fighters shouting, “Merci, Sarkozy.” And Sarkozy was indeed a central force in goading the world to act. “Sarkozy has a huge investment in seeing Qadhafi go,” said Justin Vaisse, the director of research for the Center on the United States and Europe at Brookings in Washington. “He’s going to be a constant force in favor of hardening the stance and the action.” – Nicolas Sarkozy’s war, by Ben Smith
Intelligence from people on the ground reveals there really isn’t a good reason for Pres. Obama to have engaged in the Libya no-fly zone. While Ms. Maddow was correctly slamming the Right’s Sen. Lindsay Graham and others, as well as the notion of impeachment that was always a non-starter, her purpose of pushing the marketing aspect of Obama’s reluctance, as well as his smaller U.S. foot print, didn’t hold up for very long. It hardly matters what’s being said as the U.S. pounds Libya with $1 billion worth of armament not surprising in the end, while also stating we’re getting ready to go and that Gadhafi has to, too.
The Democratic support for Obama on Libya is well-meaning, of that I have no doubt. But it’s sorely out of step with reality, which John Judis proves accidentally, especially when you consider Obama’s inaction on Iran in ’09, Egypt, not to mention what’s happening in Bahrain, which forces the U.S. to be on the side against the people looking for freedom, because of national interests. When you look at Syria exploding and Yemen as well, if this is our policy, our no-fly efforts look like the beginnings of interminable interventionism. That’s not going to happen, so Pres. Obama’s reasoning quickly starts to collapse.
Richard Engel provided the proof that U.S. intelligence on Libya was not only scant but non-existent, which could prove dangerously embarrassing for the American President if Obama doesn’t extricate our military quickly and even then questions will ultimately linger. When Maddow asked Engel what kind of impact the strikes were having on Gadhafi’s forces, saying the “declared strategy” was to “make things safe enough for the rebels that they can win on their own,” Engel revealed the intelligence chasm the U.S. is operating under.
“Ooh, that’s going to be a tough one. These rebels are, they’re divided into two groups. They’re the volunteers and these rebels have really no military experience, very little sophistication, very little education. A lot of bravado, but when the actual fighting happens most of them run away. We were with rebels today who didn’t know how to load their weapons. They were dropping rounds of ammunition on the ground. A lot of them are fighting for weird conspiracy theories. I would say 1 in 5 of the rebels told me today that they’re fighting because they think Gadhafi is Jewish. …The other of the rebels is people, units that have defected from Gadhafi’s army and if we’re waiting for these defected units to go and suddenly storm the front lines I think we’re going to be waiting a little bit longer. I went looking for one of the top commanders here in Tobruk, actually the top commander in Tobruk and we went to the military base and we knocked on the door. He’s decided to take the day off. And I was shocked at that. You would think if the U.S. military had just joined your revolution after two plus days that this wouldn’t be the time to go home and spend some time with the family.
“Unbelievable,” Ms. Maddow responded. Indeed.
Unlike Egypt or even Iran’s Green uprising in ’09, both of which Pres. Obama and his administration sat back and watched unfold, at first even backing Mubarak, after initial deliberative reticence Pres. Obama jumped in to have the U.S. military lead the way on the no-fly zone on Libya, obviously unaware the composition of the rebels U.S. firepower was protecting. Huffington Post’s David Wood revealed this early on, with some of them “anti-American extremists.”
The reasoning Obama intervened was on humanitarian grounds, with U.S. foreign policy rarely if ever having a consistent strategy on what constitutes this reality. Pres. Obama answered questions on Libya, but even he went ’round in circles, talking about limited military actions, along with “Gadhafi’s got to go” as policy, which isn’t regime change. It was… um… nuts.
And as hard as the White House is pushing back on the women inside the Obama administration having a leading role on Libya, which quite a few males in the media have channeled, there is absolutely nothing that convinces me that the strong diplomatic work of Sec. Clinton, with Dr. Rice’s lead at the U.N. to muscle abstentions instead of objections, aided significantly by Samantha Power and her history of influence on Barack Obama, didn’t play a lead role in guiding the Administration to where Obama landed. The notion that these women have to be in the room when the decision is actually made to have led the argument to strike in Libya is preposterous. But the White House doesn’t like the meme, so tapping political writers to push back by giving them access isn’t surprising as a counter narrative.
Neera Tanden, former policy director for Senator Clinton and now COO of Center for American Progress, tried again today on MSNBC to make the Democratic argument for humanitarian intervention. Keep in mind that the threats to civilians in Benghazi have been mitigated already, which Tanden admitted, so she was forced to dance on the head of Obama’s diplomatic pin to keep from talking about “regime change,” something from which Arab allies would recoil. There is no tape, but this is a good transcript I did myself:
“Look, we have a humanitarian crisis and that is what has sponsored this incredible outgrowth of international support to our Arab allies. And so I think what’s holding this coalition together is really strong support for stopping a madman from literally killing and slaughtering his own people. And that objective is actually being achieved as we speak. Benghazi was on the throes of being overrun and that was stopped in its tracks. I think we can debate ultimate goals… ..” – Neera Tanden, COO Center for American Progress
The “ultimate goals” of Pres. Obama lie somewhere between “Gadhafi’s got to go” and humanitarianism, the latter having already been achieved.
This is where France’s Pres. Sarkozy comes in, because going back years his “brain child,” if you will, has been the creation of an economic and political Mediterranean Union comprised of Algeria, Cyprus, Egypt, France, Greece, Israel, Italy, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Malta, Morocco, Palestine, Portugal, Spain, Syria, Tunisia, and Turkey, which is supposed to “bridge Europe, Africa, and the Middle East.”(Bernard-Henri Levy mentioned this last night on Lawrence O’Donnell’s show.) Sarkozy has a reason for leading the no-fly zone mission, even if he doesn’t have the military to begin it, so the importance of Pres. Obama handing off to him is critical.
The problem then becomes political for Obama, because the humanitarian aspect of the Libyan question was far away from any genocide standard, with “Gadhafi must go” a preference but simply not in America’s vital interests, because no one has a fricking clue what would replace him. The confusion of the mission coupled with the real leader being France, because of Sarkozy’s goal, is something that’s very hard to explain to a United States audience that expects America to be out front on every mission even if it’s not in our interest to do so.
Sen. Lindsay Graham helps this storyline by expecting Pres. Obama to make this no-fly effort a mission it simply is not, with the U.S. having absolutely no business attempting regime change. The Arab League backing the initial no-fly effort would freak if that’s what this morphed into, but Obama’s been his own worst enemy on this aspect.
Somewhere between Richard Engel’s reporting, which shows absolutely no fervor, let alone organization, from Libyan rebels close to Iran in ’09 and certainly not Egypt’s organized uprising, and our military interventionism, which is in Sarkozy’s personal interest, Obama’s foreign doctrine is being revealed as haphazardly incoherent.
It’s positively depressing to be a liberal and watch this national security insanity unfold.
That’s why you have experts like Steve Clemons going on Rachel Maddow and other shows carefully tiptoeing around what’s unfolding and trying mightily not to be critical of Pres. Obama, while simultaneously saying the whole effort is worrisome.
So, in the first two segments of her show as Ms. Maddow tried to separate Pres. Obama from his presidential predecessors, while also attempting to show him as a reluctant warrior, even as he ordered the U.S. military-led bombings to continue, everything fell apart. Because her guests provided evidence that regardless of Obama trying to go about his day job in a business as usual manner, keeping his South American job outreach on schedule, the rationale for authorizing military strikes unraveled before Maddow’s audiences’ eyes, with neither Richard Engel or Steve Clemons helping her case at all. Engel even suggestrf he might should be somewhere else since things in Yemen and surrounding areas were really catching fire.
Rachel Maddow is as good as they get on issues, but she and other Obama allies are really being put to the test on Libya. It’s not turning out very well so far.
The Pentagon says 114 Tomahawk cruise missiles have been launched from U.S. and British ships in the Mediterranean, hitting more than 20 Libyan targets along the Mediterranean coastline. Navy Vice Adm. William E. Gortney, director of the Pentagon’s Joint Staff, told reporters the Tomahawk cruise missiles were fired from one British submarine and a number of American destroyers and subs. He said the success of the mission was not immediately clear, adding that additional attacks would commence later. – Qaddafi’s Air Defenses ‘Severely Disabled’ Following Military Strikes
Never having fallen for what Ann Althouse writes about today, I don’t find it remotely surprising that it’s women who guided Pres. Obama to act in Libya. Some of you might remember this column. It’s not the first time women have channeled the masculine on foreign policy, because there has yet to be a convincing competing narrative created by any woman. Is it because on war and peace gender doesn’t apply? If anything, it’s Pres. Obama who has offered the feminine side of the equation so far.
In a Paris hotel room on Monday night, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton found herself juggling the inconsistencies of American foreign policy in a turbulent Middle East. She criticized the foreign minister of the United Arab Emirates for sending troops to quash protests in Bahrain even as she pressed him to send planes to intervene in Libya.
Only the day before, Mrs. Clinton — along with her boss, President Obama — was a skeptic on whether the United States should take military action in Libya. But that night, with Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s forces turning back the rebellion that threatened his rule, Mrs. Clinton changed course, forming an unlikely alliance with a handful of top administration aides who had been arguing for intervention.
[...] The shift in the administration’s position — from strong words against Libya to action — was forced largely by the events beyond its control: the crumbling of the uprising raised the prospect that Colonel Qaddafi would remain in power to kill “many thousands,” as Mr. Obama said at the White House on Friday.
The change became possible, though, only after Mrs. Clinton joined Samantha Power, a senior aide at the National Security Council, and Susan Rice, Mr. Obama’s ambassador to the United Nations, who had been pressing the case for military action, according to senior administration officials speaking only on condition of anonymity. Ms. Power is a former journalist and human rights advocate; Ms. Rice was an Africa adviser to President Clinton when the United States failed to intervene to stop the Rwanda genocide, which Mr. Clinton has called his biggest regret.
Now, the three women were pushing for American intervention to stop a looming humanitarian catastrophe in Libya. [...]
This is the same type of action that helped kick Hillary Rodham Clinton off the presidential path, regardless of the reality that Sen. Barack Obama had virtually the same voting record on matters of war and peace as Sen. Clinton, minus his ducking out on a measure on Iran where he couldn’t get away with voting “present,” which has been his problem the past few weeks as well.
As much as I wanted and applaud Pres. Obama for waiting for word from the Arab League and the UNSC, both of which finally came, I am astounded at the lack of consideration on WHO IS GOING TO PAY FOR THE MILITARY ACTION Clinton, Rice and Power wanted, and Obama now backs.
Let me also ask a question no one seems to be asking: Where the hell are the Saudis and the Egyptians? The Saudis have a fierce fighting force, with Obama having completed the largest sale in U.S. history to them last fall, $60 billion, and we give Egypt $1.3 billion a year. So why is the U.S. so willing to foot the bill for a military action that isn’t in America’s vital interests no matter how you look at it?
Trying to salve the wounds of past mistakes doesn’t make what’s happening in Libya “genocide.” It’s a civil war citizens of Libya are waging against their leader, which however excruciating to watch isn’t any of our business.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton warned Iran on Saturday to stop meddling in Bahrain and other Arab states in the Persian Gulf, but also called on the kingdom’s leaders not to use force against anti-government protesters.
Clinton said the United States “has an abiding commitment to Gulf security” and that “a top priority is working together with our partners on our shared concerns about Iranian behavior in the region.”
“We share the view that Iran’s activities in the Gulf, including its efforts to advance its agenda in neighboring countries, undermines peace and stability,” she told reporters after an international conference on the crisis in Libya. At that meeting, she met with numerous Arab officials who complained that Iran was fomenting unrest Bahrain and elsewhere.
Bahrain’s Sunni minority monarchy is facing growing opposition from the Shiite-majority population and has called in security forces from neighboring Sunni states such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates to deal with escalating protests.
[...] The Gulf force underscores the deep worries about Bahrain’s stability among the region’s Sunni kings and sheiks. They fear any stumble by Bahrain’s leaders could embolden more challenges to their own regimes and possibly open room for Shiite heavyweight Iran to make political inroads.
The U.S., which counts Bahrain as a centerpiece of its Gulf military framework, has sent top envoys to meet with the embattled monarchy and has been criticized by Shiite opposition groups for not coming to their support.
And where the hell is Congress where Libya is concerned? Did we learn nothing from preemptive war in Iraq?
Once again, this time goaded by females, Pres. Obama is unleashing the winds of war without thinking through the exercise completely, even if cautious deliberation is where he began. It does, however, give more proof that if he was in the Senate at the same time as Clinton Obama would have very likely joined the other presidential hopefuls in wanting to oust Saddam Hussein.
Obama’s declaration was stunning:
“Left untouched,” Obama said, “we have every reason to believe Gadhafi would commit atrocities against his people.” – USA Today
That’s our military foreign policy standard? Hardly, because it sure as hell didn’t apply in Darfur.
Pres. Obama, after being correct to wait, is now sounding astoundingly hypocritical.
American politicians have proven their bankruptcy once again through talking about military intervention as the U.S. economy sputters, austerity talks continue, entitlements suggested for targeting, with the U.S. military budget and our policies never being included in the reality scenarios.
You cannot talk about cutting entitlements while sanctioning military action in the Arab world and not also demand the Saudis and Egyptian government step in to use their massive military might, which we’ve made possible.
As for the women who continue to lead like men, I’ve written about it many times before, so none of this surprises me at all. Perhaps that’s why a woman has never been elected president, because no female has ever offered an alternative vision for the world and what it would mean for America in terms of war and peace.
That Pres. Obama has gone from deliberative and waiting for Arab nations and the world to join in, while not demanding more in the war of financial participation, as he also shrugs off Congress, reveals anything but “change we can believe in.”
UPDATE 3: Pres. Obama has announced no ground troops will be sent to Libya. So, time to revisit Gen. Wesley Clark’s warning this past week, “Libya isn’t worth the risk.” Clark remembers words that then Pres. Clinton said at the time, with there being a huge difference, part of which I mentioned today:
In 1999, when we launched the NATO air campaign against Serbian ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, President Bill Clinton had to state publicly that he didn’t intend to use ground troops. He did so in an effort to limit the costs of an initiative that the public and Congress did not consider to be in our nation’s vital interest. The administration and I, as the NATO commander in Europe, were in a difficult position, and Serbian dictator Slobodan Milosevic knew it. But what Milosevic didn’t understand was that once we began the strikes — with NATO troops deployed in neighboring countries and the Dayton Peace Agreement to enforce in Bosnia — NATO couldn’t afford to lose. And the United States had a vital interest in NATO’s success, even if we had a less-than-vital interest in Kosovo.
[...] It is hard to stand by as innocent people are caught up in violence, but that’s what we did when civil wars in Africa killed several million and when fighting in Darfur killed hundreds of thousands…
P.J. Crowley, spokesperson for the State Dept., has been shit-canned by the White House after honestly stating that PFC Bradley Manning’s treatment “is ridiculous and counterproductive and stupid.”
P.J. Crowley is abruptly stepping down as State Department spokesman under pressure from the White House, according to senior officials familiar with the matter, because of controversial comments he made about the Bradley Manning case.
Crowley will step down as early as Sunday afternoon, the officials said, because White House officials are furious about his suggestion that the Obama administration is mistreating Manning…
[...] But Crowley has told friends that he is deeply concerned that mistreatment of Manning could undermine the legitimate prosecution of the young private. Crowley has also made clear he has the Obama administration’s best interests at heart because he thinks any mistreatment of Manning could be damaging around the world to President Obama, who has tried to end the perception that the U.S. tortures prisoners.
This is Pres. Obama’s decision, but the White House’s lack of trust in Mr. Crowley was telegraphed when Obama’s NSC spokesperson, Mike Hammer, was sent over to State.
Obama’s claims that the Pentagon has “assured” him that Manning is being treated under basic standards is laughable and insulting to our intelligence.
The move to silence Crowley is being done to deflect from the torturous treatment Manley has reportedly been under.
Manning’s lawyer also says the young private recently had to sleep in the nude because defense officials thought there was a suicide threat and decided to take away his boxer shorts.
PJ Crowley served as National Security Council spokesman for Pres. Bill Clinton.
Matt Stoller said it perfectly via Twitter: The WH thinks governing means a mix of PR and enforcing petty corrupt social norms. That’s it. That’s really it.
This would be a good science fiction screenplay, maybe even an episode of ABC’s “V.”
Undoubtedly, Janet Folger Porter is a delusional fanatic. But in the Republican Party today this means she’s got the power to put one life over something that isn’t equal, which is playing out in John Kasich’s Ohio. It’s similar to what the Taliban and Islamists do by contending women have less right to be free than men.
States can inhibit women’s freedoms regardless of the privacy we’ve won through the Supreme Court. So-called “heartbeat laws” are meant to shame, coerce and trap male legislators into denying women their freedoms, because of what’s inside a woman’s belly that cannot live without her life.
The so-called “heartbeat” bill is the first of its type introduced in the nation, and it seeks to ban the procedure as early as six weeks after conception — the first moment a fetus’ heartbeat can be detected. If it becomes law in Ohio — and it appears to have the votes in the Republican-dominated legislature — it would be among the earliest stages that a state has tried to ban abortions.
Who came first the fetus or the woman? Of course, it is the woman. Can a fetus live without the woman’s life? Of course not, so the fetus is dependent, not equal, not human. But Faith 2 Action is attempting to make the case that a heartbeat is a person and equal to the woman on which it depends.
An “unborn human individual” is not a person. “An individual organism of the species homo sapiens from fertilization until live birth” ignores the woman completely. The Taliban could make this argument, as would many religious extreme, which have a lot in common with the current crop of anti-women Republicans.
How exactly its handlers are going to arrange this is not quite clear, though it appears that a woman who is nine weeks pregnant is going to have an ultrasound on the spot. ( It seems worth noting that at nine weeks fetuses tend to be too small to be detected by the classic over-the-belly ultrasounds of TV and movies, so in order for the audience to see this “witness,” it will be necessary to use an intra-vaginal probe.) It seems obvious to me that the witness, described by Faith 2 Action as “the youngest witness to ever come before the House Health Committee,” will not actually be speaking.
People like the fanatical anti-women crusaders Janet Folger Porter want to continue to carve women’s inalienable rights and freedoms away. In some states this will work in the short-term, but it will eventually fail, because you can’t jail women for taking care of themselves as they see fit and incarcerating doctors will not be popular. The anti-women jihad has already scared many doctors away from performing reproductive health procedures including abortions, but that’s not enough.
It is the woman’s body the fetus needs to survive, with the woman always having the freedom to do with her body as she sees fit. No one can stop a woman from determining her own destiny, not even a testifying fetus.
Religious wackos on a crusade against women’s freedom in the 21st century are exhaling their last gasp. However, that does not make the present any less dangerous to us all.
What we all should be talking about is how to get contraception and morning after pharmaceuticals into the hands of women who need them. That’s not the argument the Republican Right want to have, because it’s rational, something they are not, but also implies that they’ve lost, which they did a long time ago.
When back alley abortion clinics were the only means of women saving their own lives, however they deemed it necessary, you couldn’t stop a woman from deciding her own fate even on threat that she might lose her life.
Extremists like Janet Folger Porter aren’t only going to lose the fetus, she’s going to end up being responsible for killing women, something “religious” fanatics never consider, because they think of pregnant women simply as hostesses. It’s an alien notion to any woman who expects to carve her own destiny.
As I ask every time this subject comes up: Is freedom just for men?
“He has to get out…We will soon see the fall of this regime.” – Ibrahim Dabbashi, Libya’s deputy ambassador to UN on Al Jazeera English
Al Jazeera’s reporting today on Libya has been harrowing, with several of Moammar Gadhafi’s own ambassadors in stations around the world resigning. The Arab League is having an “emergency meeting” tomorrow to discuss the situation, which Bloomberg is now reporting. Nouri Masood El Mesmari, Gaddafi’s Secretary of Protocol has also resigned.
If ever there was a time for correspondents, news agencies and foreign policy writers across the world to press the Arab League for more vocal admonishments to the carnage being waged in Libya this is it. Egypt’s revolution shifted the Arab world on its axis, with Arab leaders across the region needing to be more involved and vocal instead of turning to the United States to step in, which is an impossible task given the complexities.
For one, Silvio Berlusconi’s role in Gadhafi’s kingdom, as well as Italy’s large Libyan ex-pat community, because of proximity, as well as early colonialization. The Italian Prime Minister has called Gadhafi’s actions “unacceptable,” saying he’s “alarmed” by the marauding mercenaries Gadhafi has set on Libyan civilian protesters, but that’s hardly enough.
An activist on Al Jazeera said he wanted to see “blue helmets” in Libya, asking for real United Nations’ action. It’s clear the world organization is not prepared for the great dictatorial unraveling we’re seeing commence. This same activist also revealed impatience with the ongoing “condemnation” from the world, asking when action would be applied.
By Monday afternoon, a witness saw armed militiamen firing on protesters who were clashing with riot police. As a group of protesters and police officers faced off in a neighborhood near Green Square, in the capital, Tripoli, ten or so Toyota pickup trucks carrying more than 20 men in mismatched fatigues arrived at the scene.
Holding small automatic weapons, they started firing in the air, and then at the protesters, who scattered, the witness said. “It was an obscene amount of gunfire,” said the witness. “They were strafing these people. People were running in every direction.” The police stood by and watched, the witness said, as the militiamen, still shooting, chased after the protesters.
There is so much conflicting information, with Twitter a wild place right now, because there is no confirming news source on the ground in Libya. Quite a few tweets being logged and retracted as quickly as the feed moves. Many of the tweets coming straight from information out of Al Jazeera’s broadcasting, because sourcing and confirmation is crippled due to the media blackout by Gadhafi.
Earlier this afternoon there were reports of two senior colonel military pilots landing in Malta asking for asylum, which Al Jazeera featured in pictures, after they were ordered to bomb protesters in Tripoli, which they refused to do.
There may not be open media coverage, but one can only imagine if this is the way Gadhafi is going out that there will be much to sift through after his forty year reign ends, whenever that comes. Examples of murderous killings must come with warnings, so if you click on these links please be very prepared for the worst: shots of half-bodies and head shots, via Andy Carvin of NPR. It’s impossible not to imagine what horrors will eventually be found in Gadhafi’s wake.
President Obama’s response to a press conference question about his budget, and why it doesn’t include many of the recommendations of his bipartisan fiscal commission, has received a good bit of attention: “you guys are pretty impatient. … I’ve had this conversation for the last two years about every single issue that we’ve worked on, whether it was health care or ‘don’t ask/don’t tell.”
He made the queer connection for me. The “just be patient” response from Electeds to constituents is familiar: The timing isn’t right. Wait until after the election. We’ll get to you, promise. Be patient.
GetEqual’s “ENDA Timeline: Broken Promises,” is a good example. The Employment Nondiscrimination Act hasn’t received as much attention in the last few years as DADT or DOMA (Defense of Marriage Act), though there have been organizations, and even a few Electeds, working on it.
A February 10, 2011 article, “The False Choice: ENDA v. Marriage Equality,” by Equality Matters’ Kerry Eleveld, includes this, regarding ENDA: “My own personal experience of talking to reasonably well-informed straight allies is that many have no idea people can still be fired on the basis of their sexual orientation in 29 states or that transgender individuals can be fired in 38 states.”
That’s my experience, too. For an extensive compilation of the ENDA process, see “ENDA Timeline” at GetEqual.
This is a selective overview (brackets enclose my summaries; bold added):
March 14, 1974 – … Rep. Bella Abzug (D-NY) and Rep. Ed Koch (D-NY) introduce H.R. 14752, dubbed the “gay rights bill”… but it fails to make it out of committee. …
[1975 version fails.]
[1994 & 1995 - ENDA introduced; fails to get out of committee]
Sept. 10, 1996 – … Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-MA), the lead sponsor of ENDA, struck a deal with Senate Republican leaders to allow ENDA to come up for a vote only if Kennedy and his Democratic allies agreed to end a filibuster blocking a vote on … DOMA. On the same day the Senate narrowly defeated ENDA, it passed DOMA by a vote of 85 to 14. …
1997 – Another version of ENDA is introduced … fails to make it out of committee. …
1999 – The National Gay & Lesbian Task Force becomes the first gay civil rights organization to stop work on ENDA because of its lack of a transgender provision. ENDA reintroduced, again without transgender protections, fails to make it out of committee. …
[2002 – 2003 – A hearing, a committee, nothing to the floor for a vote ]
2006 - During midterm elections, Democrats and the Democratic Leadership once again promise to make passage of ENDA a top priority. …
[April 24, 2007 – inclusive ENDA introduced in House. September 26, Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) announces he doesn’t have the votes to pass an inclusive, recommends gay-only version.]
[Week of October 5, 2007 - 150 state and national gay groups sign a statement demanding members of Congress oppose any non-inclusive version of ENDA.]
[From October 10 – 24, various statements and actions, including The House Committee on Education & Labor approving a gay-only ENDA; House postpones promised non-inclusive ENDA vote.]
Week of Oct. 31, 2007 - … Freshman House Democrats reportedly urge Pelosi not to allow Baldwin to introduce her (inclusive) amendment in fear that voting on it will hurt their re-election efforts. …
November 7, 2007 – House passes non-inclusive ENDA 235 to 184, five days before end of session with no vote taken or scheduled in the Senate – effectively rendering it dead. …
June 26, 2008 – Congress holds groundbreaking hearing on gender identity issues. …
[ 2009 - Inclusive-ENDA bill introduced in the House and Senate; House committee hearings held; mark-up postponed indefinitely, with staffer saying it will be “rescheduled after Thanksgiving holiday.” It wasn’t.]
March 23, 2010 – … Frank says … a vote on ENDA “may not come this week” afterall (sic), but he “expects a votes as soon as they come back” from recess on April 9. …
April 1, 2010 – (Activist) David Mixner sends out a warning … “Democratic leaders begged us to wait until after healthcare was successfully passed. … But now they are telling us … they used up all their ‘chits and clout’ with healthcare and now is not the time …”
May 10, 2010 – The whip count on ENDA enters its fifth week, and Rep. Tammy Baldwin, respond[ed] to complaints from moderate lawmakers who question the political wisdom of pushing gay rights bills in a difficult election year” …
May 13, 2010 – Rep. Heath Shuler (D-N.C.) … chief whip for the Blue Dog Coalition says, (of) ENDA, “I don’t think they should bring it up, first, let’s get our fiscal house in order.” …
[May 17, 2010 – Pelosi tells community leaders it’s “literally impossible,” for scheduling reasons, to take a vote on DADT and ENDA in the same week.]
May 21, 2010 – … Frank says that ENDA will be delayed until late June or mid-July because of the planned upcoming vote on the compromise repeal of DADT.
July 1, 2010 - Rep. Jackie Speier (D-CA) says, when asked whether the House would vote on ENDA this year, “The rest of the year is in question. ENDA, we will have that law for sure within the next five years.” …
July 24, 2010 – [Pelosi asked at Netroots Nation about ENDA] Regarding timing of the passage of ENDA … “I can’t give you a time. But I can tell you that it is a priority and it had been our hope to do it this year. We have to finish Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell and hopefully we can do both this year.”
Electeds to Queerdom: We’ll do it! We’re working on it! We’re trying. We hope. … Okay, too late this year, but we’ll get to it right after the elections! Don’t forget to vote for me … not that you have another option.
1974 to 2011 – someday, perhaps fairly soon, it will ENDA, but please, no lectures about being patient.
TM NOTE: This SecyClintonBlog post was bumped from “In the News.”
Well, this is disappointing but not unexpected. The fact is, the settlements are illegal and the Palestinians should have the right to request some accountability, even if only symbolic. The illegal expansion has been going on for decades and there is a reason for that.
The U.S. argument that the resolution, which basically is a reiteration of US policy, “hurts” the peace process is just another excuse out of many to provide cover for Israel’s intransigence. Perhaps one of the reasons Israel continues building illegal settlements despite our “concern” is because it knows it will never have to be held accountable in any meaningful way?
Another interesting thing is that while the US and the world have long held that the settlements beyond the ’67 borders are illegal, for the last 10 years or so the U.S. has shied away from using the word “illegal” when discussing them. Instead, they use words like “unhelpful,” “unfortunate,” “obstacles.” Words have meaning and if the U.S. position on settlements has really changed (they continually claim it hasn’t) then they need to come out and say that the U.S. no longer deems them illegal. But the government won’t do that because we want to have our cake and eat it too- we want to claim we oppose the settlements (because we know under international law they clearly are illegal) all the while enabling their continuation due to political pressure here at home.
The United States on Friday voted against a United Nations Security Council draft resolution that would have condemned Israeli settlements as illegal. The veto by the U.S., a permanent council member, prevented the resolution from being adopted.
The other 14 Security Council members voted in favor of the draft resolution. But the U.S., as one of five permanent council members with the power to block any action by the Security Council, struck it down.
The resolution had nearly 120 co-sponsors, exclusively Arab and other non-aligned nations.
The Obama administration’s veto is certain to anger Arab countries and Palestinian supporters around the world.
The U.S. opposes new Israeli settlements but says taking the issue to the UN will only complicate efforts to resume stalled negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians on a two-state solution.
Palestinians say continued settlement building flouts the internationally-backed peace plan that will permit them to create a viable, contiguous state on the land after a treaty with Israel to end its occupation and 62 years of conflict.
As usual, we are the only member blocking the resolution from passing.
This is a great message to be sending to the Arab world right about now.
I’m just wondering, what rights, exactly, do the Palestinians have? They don’t have the right to peaceful assembly or protest, they don’t have any legal protections when Israel’s security service takes their children into custody, holding them for weeks in an undisclosed location for “interrogation” (some as young as 10) to deter their Palestinian parents from protesting the Occupation, they certainly don’t have the right to self defense and they don’t have the right to have their concerns addressed in any international forum because it is always labeled as “unhelpful” or “anti-Israel” or an attempt to “delegitimize.”
Also, at this stage, the idea that the resolution hurts the peace process is preposterous. What hurts the peace process is illegal settlements expanding every day in order to change the facts on the ground in Israel’s favor. What hurts the peace process is the understandable belief on the part of the Palestinian people and the Arab world, that the U.S. is incapable of being an honest broker in this process.
HayaAlfa Hayaa AlFadhel @NickKristof Stop spreading lies! where were u when 200,000 Bahraini went to celebrate our king peacefully! you’re a disgrace to reporters!
Troops and tanks have locked down Manama, the Bahraini capital, and a ban has been announced on public gatherings as pro-reform supporters bury their dead, a day after a violent security crackdown.
Tanks and armoured personnel carriers were patrolling the streets of Manama on Friday, where checkpoints have been set up by the country’s military.
Riot police using clubs and tear gas broke up a crowd of protesters in the city’s financial district in a pre-dawn swoop on Thursday, killing at least four people.
Al Jazeera’s correspondent, who cannot be named for security reasons, reported from Manama on Friday that thousands of people observed the funerals of three people killed in the police raid on the protesters’ tents in the city’s Pearl Roundabout area.
For the first time since he was banned from leading weekly friday (sic) prayers in Egypt 30 years ago, prominent Muslim scholar Yusuf al-Qaradawi will lead thousands in the weekly prayers from Cairo’s Tahrir Square on Friday.
Sources told Al Arabiya that a military force will accompany the head of the International Union of Muslim Scholars from his home to Tahrir Square, provide security for the prayers and accompany him back to his residence.
Richard Engel in Bahrain, which sounds like a harrowing place to be fighting right now. Tweets:
Reports a group from a funeral decided to march to pearl.. Shot as they approached
In Yemen, today is being observed as the “Friday of Fury.”
The daughters of the missing opposition leader, Mir Hussein Moussavi, told an opposition Web site that they had had no word from either of their parents since Tuesday and feared they had been detained. Security forces have surrounded their home, and all communications have been cut.
TM Note: The picture above came from Twitter, original source unknown.
From Karen J. Greenberg, Executive Director, Center on Law and Security
Nir Rosen is always provocative, but he crossed the line yesterday with his comments about Lara Logan. I am deeply distressed by what he wrote about Ms. Logan and strongly denounce his comments. They were cruel and insensitive and completely unacceptable. Mr. Rosen tells me that he misunderstood the severity of the attack on her in Cairo. He has apologized, withdrawn his remarks, and submitted his resignation as a fellow, which I have accepted. However, this in no way compensates for the harm his comments have inflicted. We are all horrified by what happened to Ms. Logan, and our thoughts are with her during this difficult time.
“Jesus Christ, at a moment when she is going to become a martyr and glorified we should at least remember her role as a major war monger” wrote Rosen. – Daily Caller
From Daily Caller we get a sampling of Nir Rosen’s Tweets about Laura Logan, after it was reported she’d been sexually assaulted. Not to put too fine a point on it, but what Rosen wrote was far worse than “trashing” her.
Rosen’s online resume states he’s a fellow at the New America Foundation, but calling them they said he hadn’t been a fellow for “a long time.” However, Rosen is a fellow at New York University Center on Law and Security, which I called for comment. They are overwhelmed and have been inundated with calls and will have a statement within the hour on “what they’re going to do about the situation,” according to the person I spoke to on the phone, a young woman, Sarvenaz Bakhtiar. It will eventually appear on their blog as well.
From Daily Caller:
Feminist bloggers rightly rant about the nonchalant mentality of some about violence against women. They often write that Americans do not take attacks nearly serious enough. We got a load of Republican ignorance when they tried to rewrite the rules on rape and unwanted pregnancy, by taking a woman’s freedom away from her in favor of intrusive anti-privacy laws.
That an American male, let alone a supposed liberal, would say such things about Logan out of political hatred is unconscionable and inhumane.
Political differences about war and peace should never give way to such callous disregard for a foreign correspondent who was sexually assaulted for a prolonged period of time.
“I am deeply ashamed because they do not represent who I am,” Nir Rosen, who has written for the New York Times and New Yorker and contributed to an Oscar-nominated documentary, tells THR.
Rosen should be ashamed, he should also lose his New York University Center on Law and Security fellowship.
… In an awkward bit of timing, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is to deliver a major speech on Internet freedom in Washington on Tuesday just hours after Justice Department lawyers are scheduled to be in federal court a few miles away in the first public courtroom showdown over the probe into WikiLeaks and its founder, Julian Assange. Prosecutors are expected to urge a federal magistrate in Alexandria, Va., to uphold a court order requiring Twitter to turn over confidential information about the use of its services by three WikiLeaks supporters. … – U.S weaves tangled Web policy
Sect. Clinton’s speech on Internet Freedom is streamed live here, as well as on Facebook where you can leave comments.
Clinton begins with Egypt… .. as she began commotion was heard from someone protesting, but he was quickly taken out, a door slammed behind him.
Twenty minutes into her speech, Sect. Clinton addressed Wikileaks. It began “with a theft.” Makes a case for secrecy in diplomatic efforts, again disagreeing with transparency. Talked about Wikileaks exposing people to even greater risks, but does acknowledge there is a “duty” to transparency, be “judicious” when closing off access to information. Clinton still making the case that Wikileaks did endanger diplomatic work, while also saying the Universal Declaration of Human Rights protects the freedom of expression for all.
To add, Clinton’s emphasis on “theft” of Wikileaks is not a coincidence. As I said in the comments, it smacked of DOJ implications when she went out of her way in this section of the speech. As the POLITICO story now linked at the top reveals, DOJ today attempted to press their Twitter case re: Julian Assange and Wikileaks, just before Clinton spoke. Assange is livid at the pressure, which the POLITICO piece covers as well.
Clinton continued on saying the antidote to hate speech is more speech. Internet freedom and staying “one step ahead from the censors,” is now part of our diplomatic mission. There is “no silver bullet” against Internet oppression. “Start working,” Clinton encourage, which was greeted with chuckles. “We are taking an investor capital type of approach,” with investment in cutting edge technologies.
On this day in history, February 15,1542, the fifth wife of England’s King Henry VIII, Catherine Howard, was executed for adultery.
I’ve rounded up some links for you to peruse:
~The Palestinian Authority has announced it will hold elections in September. Hamas is saying it won’t take part. In other news, Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat has resigned after an investigation found that the Palestine Papers were leaked by someone in his office.
~Former Israeli negotiator and Mideast expert Daniel Levy has an optimistic take on future of Egyptian-Israeli ties, believing that democracy in Egypt could result in a positive change in the status quo that makes it more likely that Israel and the Palestinians will move forward on a peace deal because it will be in Israel’s interest to do so. The days of Egypt providing a stamp of Arab legitimacy on the never-ending conflict will likely be over, forcing all sides to start to accept that time is not on their side. On the other side of the coin, Helena Cobban thinks Daniel has some good ideas, but it’s too little, too late.
~Boy, the U.S. sure knows how to apply pressure on an ally when it wants to- the operative word being want.
~Rachel Maddow calls out some on the political right for siding with Mubarak, over, you know, the pro-democracy protesters.
~Today, tensions in Egypt are bubbling to the surface as the military clears protesters from Tahrir Square. The military has sent the message, apparently, that there are limits to what kind of change they are willing to enact. And herein lies the rub- this was a coup, albeit a peaceful one, and there are many that are worried that the military is not going to be willing to give up the power and privilege that they have enjoyed for so long.
~The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has plans to discredit liberal bloggers and union organizers according to leaked documents. Here’s the thing, besides getting next to no media attention, some of the strategies sound out-right illegal. More proof that there are different sets of rules for the elite ruling class- no ethics, no accountability and no punishment. Ever.
~Speaking of corporate shenanigans- Bank of America’s war against WikiLeaks just hit a really big snag, while dragging several prominent intelligence companies and law firms through the mud with them. There’s a lot of MSM radio silence on this story as well.
~The NYT has an interesting article (which looks a lot like a planted article from the White House) about how some of the mixed messaging from the administration was a result of a difference in viewpoints about whether to privilege stability over a quick Mubarak exit. This tension clearly illustrates the difference between the status-quo-maintaining old guard of the foreign policy establishment and a new guard that seems to understand that the U.S. needs to start to accept that it’s leverage in the Middle East is not what it used to be and that our foreign policy needs to change to reflect that reality. In this information age, the chasm between our words and our deeds are amplified in a way they never were before and the protesters in Cairo were quick to point out U.S. hypocrisy.
~Speaking of which, Nick Kristoff is again a voice of reason, calling out the U.S. for using lazy, fear-mongering stereotypes of all Arabs as an excuse to prop up dictators under the false flag of stability.
~Fox News insider admits that the “news” network just makes stuff up to undermine democrats.
~Fox News had a “Breaking News” interruption for this Sarah Palin tweet on Egypt:
~Speaking of CPAC, it’s no surprise that many used the events in Egypt to slam Islam. I think they were watching a different Egyptian revolution than the rest of us were. One thing was very clear at CPAC, other than fear-mongering about Islam, foreign policy is not their strong suit. They’re going to need to brush up on that because they are not ready for prime time.
~While our attention was diverted elsewhere, another U.S. ally, China, has detained and beaten a prominent activist and his wife after he released a video detailing his treatment.
~Democrats are thinking ahead to the Arizona Senate race and floating the idea that Gabrielle Giffords might be the perfect candidate.
~The GOP is proposing massive cuts to the State Dept. and UN because, you know, who needs all that silly democracy-promoting nonsense? We need more advanced weapons systems!
~Ok, this is the coolest thing ever. Kovas Boguta has done a computational history of how Twitter users in Egypt influenced each other based on their “follows.” If you click on the photo (you may have to do that twice- I did it and it did work) you will be taken to a larger image and you can zoom in to see the influence that certain Arabic and English-speaking Twitter users had related to Egypt (and definitely go check out his site at the above link for more explanation):
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