At issue, S. Ward Casscells told USA TODAY, “is whether the Army missed a warning signal. It’s a legitimate question.” … Casscells, who retired in April as the Pentagon’s assistant secretary for health affairs, said he had been speaking to many who worked with Hasan at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center near Washington, D.C.

Some at Walter Reed, Casscells said, was that Hasan was sent to Fort Hood for “a fresh start” after a difficult time at Walter Reed.

Hasan received a poor performance evaluation there, the Associated Press reported, quoting an official who spoke on condition of anonymity. While he was an intern, Hasan had some “difficulties” that required counseling and extra supervision, according to Dr. Thomas Grieger, who was the training director at the time. …

“Talking to people who knew him,” Casscells said, “no one thinks that this was (post traumatic stress), and they are skeptical that he was subject to religious harassment.”

“That is not tolerated in the military. The military will look at all this closely and decide if there is any mental or physical illness, whether this is just a lonely guy with a remote personality who got a bad officer evaluation report and lost the confidence of his peers, maybe withdrew into religion as solace. What could we have missed? How could we do better?”

“These are the types of questions that will be rigorously asked.”

If Hasan was in the doghouse, then it would be interesting to ask why a “lonely guy with a remote personality” badly regarded by his evaluators was selected to represent the Uniformed Services University School of Medicine at a Homeland Security series of workshops held between April 2008 and January 2009. (Hasan’s name is on page 32). Those workshops were attended by a wide variety of personalities, including foreign diplomats, think tank analysts and academics. It would have been difficult to imagine why Hasan should be chosen to front for an institution if his views were controversial.

The US News report says “Hasan came to the attention of law enforcement officials six months ago because of Internet postings about suicide bombings and other threats, including posts that equated suicide bombers to soldiers who throw themselves on a grenade to save the lives of their comrades. Investigators had not determined for certain whether Hasan was the author of the posting, and a formal investigation had not been opened before the shooting, law enforcement officials who spoke on condition of anonymity told the Associated Press.” The Army refused to rule out the possibility that Hasan was not acting alone.

What happened at Walter Reed? Did Hasan have an influential patron? If Hasan had exhibited certain disturbing tendencies, and if he was in fact being scrutinized by law enforcement, then what was achieved by moving him to Fort Hood, except putting distance between Hasan and whatever was in Washington DC?  What hypothesis could cover so many disparate facts? Many questions remain unanswered. There’s not enough data yet to conclude anything.

President Obama ordered the flags at the White House and other federal buildings be at half-staff and urged people not to draw conclusions while authorities investigate. “We don’t know all the answers yet. And I would caution against jumping to conclusions until we have all the facts,” Obama said in a statement.

This investigation can go anywhere. There’s a great incentive to make sure that whatever the truth happens to be that those in officialdom who have the most to lose should not be the last to know.

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When is religion indistinguishable from politics? When is politics indistinguishable from religion? An article in the Daily Mail describes an environmentalist who believes that his Green Views are indistinguishable from traditional religious beliefs. Tim Nicholson argued that his dismissal from a government position was tantamount to religious persecution.

If he wins he could be entitled to an unlimited compensation payout.

Mr Nicholson was dismissed from his job as head of sustainability at Grainger, the UK’s biggest residential landlord, which manages 27,000 properties worth £3billion.

He claims he was unfairly made redundant in July 2008, after two years’ service, for criticising senior management … His criticisms included accusations that executives failed to live up to their own green policies to cut emissions of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide, including driving ‘the most polluting cars on the road’.

The Equality and Employment (Religion or Belief) Regulations 2003 were brought in to stop employees being sacked on the grounds of their religion.

But after lobbying by secular groups, philosophical beliefs were also included. To qualify for protection, a philosophical belief must be ‘genuinely held’, be about a ‘weighty and substantial aspect of human life’, and have ’seriousness, cohesion and importance and be ‘worthy of respect in a democratic society’. …

However, Andrea Williams, of the Christian Legal Centre, condemned the ruling. … ‘Christians are being discriminated against for holding orthodox views that have been protected in law over many centuries …  in Britain. We have 45 cases where Christians have found themselves discriminated against.’

These include several highprofile cases involving the Employment Appeal Tribunal.  Former registrar Lilian Ladele is challenging the tribunal’s ruling in support of Islington Council’s decision to discipline her for refusing to carry out civil partnerships on the grounds of her Christian beliefs.

What is the difference between a Christian who refuses to carry out an abortion on the basis of a religious belief and an environmentalist who refuses to follow management on the basis of his adherence to Gaia? What is the difference between either of these and a Muslim who believes his fundamental duty is to the Ummah and not the United States of America? And can a multicultural country so constituted survive?  Or will it dissolve into Balkanized enclaves? The Christian Science Monitor argues that blasphemy laws now being pushed by the United Nations will effectively shut down free speech. There may come a time when you can’t even raise this subject for discussion.

the Organization of the Islamic Council. Under the leadership of Pakistan, the 57-nation OIC wants to give the religious antidefamation idea legal teeth by making it part of an international convention, or legally binding treaty. Members of the UN Human Rights Council are passionately debating that idea in Geneva this week.

The United States under Barack Obama recently joined the UNHRC, maligned for years as the mouthpiece for countries that are themselves flagrant human rights abusers. A “new” council formed in 2006. President Obama’s hope is that as an engaged member, the US can further reform – and its own interests. This case will test his theory.

Lincoln believed that a country could not remain simultaneously divided and united. The presupposition was that there was an overarching and shared set of values to which everyone owed a primary duty.

If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could then better judge what to do, and how to do it.  We are now far into the fifth year, since a policy was initiated, with the avowed object, and confident promise, of putting an end to slavery agitation. Under the operation of that policy, that agitation has not only, not ceased, but has constantly augmented.  In my opinion, it will not cease, until a crisis shall have been reached, and passed.

“A house divided against itself cannot stand.”

I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved — I do not expect the house to fall — but I do expect it will cease to be divided.

It will become all one thing or all the other.

Can there be such a thing as treason in a multicultural society or is that so yesterday? If so, Lincoln was wrong: a house divided against itself can stand. In a heap about an inch high perhaps, but maybe that’s cool. And cool in the end may best describe a house with no walls. Maybe Cole Porter got it right after all. Anything goes.

Of 412 comments, comments number 58, 64, 69, 74, 81, 83, 88, 89, 92, 98, 101, 104, 107, 111, 115, 116, 129, 131, 133, 137, 154, 157, 162, 165, 166, 167, 172, 174, 179, 180, 186, 191, 193, 195, 198, 200, 205, 206, 208, 212, 213, 215, 217, 229, 231, 234, 241, 249, 252, 253, 260, 263, 265, 267, 278, 288, 293, 295, 299, 323, 325, 326, 327, 333, 334, 348, 350, 352, 355, 358, 359, 365, 369, 386, 387, 389, 390, 392, 394, 395, 397 and 402 were made by one disrupter. That’s 82 of 412, or 20%, or 1 of every 5 comments.
The commentariat did not cover themselves with glory on this one.

Comments number 68, 72, 79, 80, 82, 84, 85, 86, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 100, 102, 103, 108, 110, 112, 114, 120, 125, 132, 136, 138, 142, 143, 155, 158, 159, 163, 170, 176, 177, 182, 185, 188, 196, 197, 199, 202, 203, 207, 209, 210, 214, 216, 218, 219, 221, 222, 226, 228, 230, 232, 233, 235, 244, 246, 251, 254, 257, 258, 286, 298, 301, 306, 308, 309, 310, 315, 318, 335, 343, 344, 346, 349, 354, 356, 360, 363,364, 366, 368, 370, 372,373, 374, 375, 377, 380, 381, 388, 391, 393, 396, 400, 401, 403, 405, 409, were responses to the troll, either to him or about him. 102 comments to be added to his 82 = 184, or 45% .

Damn near half of that post’s comments were by him or about him. That’s effective disruption.

Open thread.

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CIA director Leon Panetta got into hot water with Congress, after he revealed an agency program to hunt down and kill terrorists. A recent report from the U.S. military’s Joint Special Operations University argues that the CIA didn’t go far enough. Instead, it suggests the American government should set up something like a “National Manhunting Agency” to go after jihadists, drug dealers, pirates and other enemies of the state. …

Sometimes, that will mean operating “in uncooperative countries.” In those cases, the teams must be prepared “to act unilaterally, with no support or coordination with local authorities, in a manner similar to that employed by Israel’s Avner team in response to the Munich Olympics massacre.” … Such a group wouldn’t just go after terrorists. “Human networks are behind narcotics trafficking, arms proliferation, piracy, hiding war criminals from authorities, human trafficking, or other smuggling activities,” Crawford writes. “Human networks also lie at the core of national governments, offering an increased potential to nonlethally influence state actors with precision. A robust manhunting capability would allow the United States to interdict these human networks.”

The idea that America will replace Sergeant Rock with Jason Bourne may at first seem like an enlightened one. But hold on. Weighing in on the other side was Italian Judge Oscar Magi, who sentenced 23 CIA agents to jail in absentia for allegedly taking part in the kidnapping of Abu Omar in 2003 and rendering him to Egypt. Jason Bourne had better be prepared to stay on the run from the Italian authorities.

At first glance defending one’s territory against bombardment may seem unambiguously legitimate. One threat that Israel now faces but which other countries may face as available missile ranges grow longer is the threat of bombardment from nonstate actors. Space War reports that rockets from Gaza can now hit Tel Aviv. An Iranian system being supplied to Hamas can reach out to Beersheba and possibly Dimona. The Hezbollah has also been supplied with up to 250 Iranian-designed Fateh 110 missiles, which have a 160 mile range. Israel has been widely criticized for trying to take out Hezbollah and Hamas in order to stop bombardments.

What abut interdicting arms supplies? Surely that’s better and exactly what Israel has just done. MSNBC reports that the Israeli navy has seized a ship carrying hundreds of tons of munitions bound for Hezbollah.

“It’s a cargo certificate that shows that it was from a port in Iran,” military spokeswoman Lt. Col. Avital Leibovich said. “All the cargo certificates are stamped at the ports of origin, and this one was stamped at an Iranian port. … Israeli military officials said the ship’s journey started in Iran, and it arrived a week ago in Beirut. The next stop was Damietta, Egypt, where the weapons were loaded, they said. Ben Yehuda said the ship was headed for Latakia, Syria.

But the Israeli action was branded “piracy” by the Syrians. And the Egyptians maintained that simply because the weapons were loaded in Egypt, it was illogical to think that Cairo was shipping weapons to Hezbollah. Israel has demanded that the UN investigate the “war crime” perpetrated by Iran. Good luck to them on that.

What about diplomatic measures? Hope has been held out that the West can stem “the hatred” directed against it by employing confidence building measures to communicate that it means no harm to anyone. Recently the US dismantled a missile defense system that would be based in Poland. But the message has been slow to sink in. The Telegraph reports that Russia simulated a nuclear attack and offensive amphibious operations against Poland’s Baltic coast in September.

The armed forces are said to have carried out “war games” in which nuclear missiles were fired and troops practised an amphibious landing on the country’s coast.

Documents obtained by Wprost, one of Poland’s leading news magazines, said the exercise was carried out in conjunction with soldiers from Belarus.

The manoeuvres are thought to have been held in September and involved about 13,000 Russian and Belarusian troops.

Poland, which has strained relations with both countries, was cast as the “potential aggressor”.

The documents state the exercises, code-named “West”, were officially classified as “defensive” but many of the operations appeared to have an offensive nature.

The Russian exercise highlights the seamless way that “defense” can segue into “offense”. Even using the high ground of space to defend against missile attack is seen as provocative. The NYT called space defenses “folly”.  This line was repeated by candidate Obama who pledged not to “weaponize space”. But a high Chinese defense official has now gone on record as saying that this is inevitable and argued that his country should agressively pursue the capability to fight outside the earth’s atmosphere. The Telegraph reports:

A TOP China air force commander has called the militarisation of space an “historical inevitability”, state media said today, marking an apparent shift in Beijing’s opposition to weaponising outer space.

In a wide-ranging interview in the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Daily, air force commander Xu Qiliang said it was imperative for the PLA air force to develop offensive and defensive operations in outer space.

“As far as the revolution in military affairs is concerned, the competition between military forces is moving towards outer space… this is a historical inevitability and a development that cannot be turned back,” Commander Xu told the paper.

What about disarmament efforts? What about building “a world without nuclear weapons”? In 1922 President Warren Harding tried something simpler: creating a world without battleships. He convened a Naval Conference in Washington DC ostensibly for the purpose of scrapping useless and expensive fleets. But not only did many of the signatories cheat (the mightiest battleships in the world, Bismarck, Tirpitz, Yamato and Musashi, were built in violation of the treaty) the development of the aircraft carrier dates in large part from conference. Denied one avenue of advance, the militaries of the world simply pursued another and more deadly method. When the Second World War broke upon the America nineteen years later it was carrier borne aircraft which led the attack on Pearl Harbor.  A world without battleships became a world of super-battleships and the aircraft carrier.

There is no universally held consensus on what it means to keep the peace. What is sauce for the goose is not always sauce for the gander. All across the board there is dispute over what actions a nation can take, in time of peace, to prevent or forestall a wider war.  A “national hit team” may prevent war, but it ‘undermines international law’. Letting Israel go after shipping may avoid the need to go into Gaza or Lebanon, but what about ‘freedom of the seas’? Hamas’ missiles can reach Tel-aviv, so shouldn’t missile defenses be pursued instead? But missile defense ultimate requires sensors, radar and possibly outer space. And we can’t go around weaponizing space can we?

Whatever course is taken some risks must be run. The problem is that national politicians are afraid of risks and are quick to denounce even rational and proportionate actions at the first sign of criticism. But the dilemmas remain and it is not always possible to forever escape from their horns.

Update: a reader writes:

I read with interest your post today about the fine line between offensive systems and defensive systems, which I found (as usual) informative and thought-provoking.

I have to urge a correction on the factual and interpretive details about Harding and the Washington Conference, however. The conference is called in 1921, and meets from November 1921 to February 1922. It’s easy to lambast the conference and its outcome as silly, because they hoped that by getting rid of battleships they’d get rid of war, but it worked remarkably well. The impetus for the conference was Great Britain and the United States not wanting to sink enormous quantities of money into a pointless arms race (since it would have been directed, on both sides, at each other) AND Britain being bound by its 1902 alliance with Japan, up for renewal in 1922 (but now aimed only, ever really, at the United States, which the Canadians and Australians deeply opposed). And in the context of the great war just having ended, no one thought that war was likely. It’s a model for a successful arms control process, in fact, because it lasted more than a decade, the powers held to the limits they were given (while putting their energies into less significant weapons systems) and substituted a political-diplomatic framework in Asia that substituted for a power-
based relationship (i.e. the size of fleets). Only with the Great Depression, and the concomitant Japanese and Chinese internal political chaos, does the system really break down irreparably. You mention the carriers, and of course no one at the time thought about using carriers as the exclusive method of offensive attack–that doesn’t come until after 1929 (with the U.S. thinking about it in the fleet problems of that year and the next) and with the British attack on the Italians in 1940–which we now understand to have been the model for the Japanese plan of attack on Pearl Harbor. Some analysts of the Washington system have faulted it for preventing the U.S. from building up a large enough force for the outset of the war in 1941 (which is a little anachronistic) but the general agreement among scholars of the subject is that it +saved+ the U.S. from sinking inordinate amounts of money in the 1920s and possibly the 1930s onto weapons platforms that would have been, by the standards of the 1940s, obsolete. So the U.S. built much more modern stuff instead of wasting money on attempting to upgrade legacy systems. Finally, the Germans did not really “cheat” with their pocket battleships because they were not signatories in the original conference; the Japanese built the Yamato and Musashi in 1937 and 1938 (respectively) +after+ Japan had left the Washington system in late 1934, free to begin construction on the warships it wanted after two years…and thus in early 1937.

Jonathan Reed Winkler
Associate Professor of History

I think there is a lot of justice in this comment. First of all, I had forgotten, but now remember that the British were deeply afraid the US would outbuild their exhausted economy after the Great War ended and wanted to freeze the ships to near enough where their stock of battleships lay. I think the most telling point was that the arms control effort was driven by the interests of the parties. Countries can sometimes wish to control arms, a wish which coincides with disarmament.

One interesting difference is that while older ship ties lose their utility with age, nuclear weapons do not become less useful to the same degree. An exact copy of Little Boy, for example, would have a lot of utility in 2009 in ways that an exact copy of the Enola Gay would not. But this should not obscure the fact that I was thinking very sloppily when I used the example of the Naval Conference.

TEHRAN became a battleground again last night between supporters and opponents of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, as Iran marks the 30th anniversary of the storming of the US embassy. … Protesters chanted “Death to the dictator” while a pro-government group that had also gathered at the square chanted “Death to America”.

The differences had as much to do with present politics as it did with history, with each side trying to harness history for their own ends. “Mir-Hossein Mousavi, the former prime minister defeated by Mr Ahmadinejad in June, had urged supporters to make the day a reminder that “it is the people who are the leaders”. Mehdi Karroubi, another defeated presidential candidate, was expected to march through the capital. … Meanwhile, in a sign of a hardening stance on nuclear talks, Iran’s supreme leader accused the US of trying to strong-arm Tehran.”

“Whenever the US offers a smile, it hides a dagger in his back,” Ayotollah Khamenei said, according to the state news agency IRNA. He rejected “talks in which the US decides about its results in advance.”

President Obama declared that he wanted to “move beyond this past”, without squarely addressing the question of which side he wanted to see control the future, other than to affirm that the US sought “a relationship with the Islamic Republic of Iran”.

“This event helped set the United States and Iran on a path of sustained suspicion, mistrust and confrontation,” Obama added. “I have made it clear that the United States of America wants to move beyond this past, and seeks a relationship with the Islamic Republic of Iran based upon mutual interests and mutual respect. … We have made clear that if Iran lives up to the obligations that every nation has, it will have a path to a more prosperous and productive relationship with the international community.”

But it was the future which the rival forces in Teheran were fighting over. The Guardian, live blogging ongoing events reported that “this would be the biggest opposition demonstration since the rallies in June if the reports of the unrest are correct”. The opposition in fact used the official commemoration of the US embassy as an occasion to organize their own anti-regime rallies.

Unsurprisingly the state media is ignoring the opposition protests and focusing instead on the official anti-US rallies. Press TV claims: “Tens of thousands of people from all walks of life and many political persuasions have staged a rally at the site of the former US embassy in Tehran, better known in Iranian history as the ‘den of spies’.”

The Iranian opposition movement has been debating new dates to renew their street protests since they last took to the streets in significant numbers on Qods day in September. They opted for today in attempt to hijack another official rally. It’s Students Day when Iran celebrates the 1979 takeover of the US embassy in Tehran with anti-US demonstrations.

At this writing the struggle for Iran’s future is still underway. The Los Angeles Times reports that clashes have erupted between anti-government demonstrators and security forces. Today’s events suggest that things have moved beyond a mere remembrance of the seizure of the US embassy. Those events are now secondary to the question of which path the Iranian nation is now going to take.

Reporting from Tehran and Beirut – Large stretches of the Iranian capital erupted in chaos and violence today as anti-government protesters and security forces clashed on the 30th anniversary of the takeover of the U.S. Embassy by radical students.

Amateur videotape also purported to show small, boisterous demonstrations in the Caspian Sea city of Rasht, the southwestern city of Ahvaz and the eastern city of Mashhad.

As dusk settled, protesters in Tehran continued to gather in the streets and prepare for what they predicted would be a long night of clashes with security forces stationed at main squares around the capital.

The most interesting parallel between Nov 4, 1979 and Nov 4, 2009 is that on both occasions a relatively left wing US President was placing a bet on the future of an Iran that was in flux. In 1979 Jimmy Carter angered the coming men with his effusive praise of the men who were shortly to leave power. He misjudged the situation. Carter bet on a horse that lost and then tried to change horses in midstream, to mix metaphors, by attempting to conciliate the Islamic Revolutionaries, leading to Khomeini’s slogan “America can’t do a thing”. It only compounded his error.

If the Obama Administration is looking for lessons, it would do well to consider one more recent than Mossadegh: it should try to avoid making the same mistake that doomed Jimmy Carter. The President is facing his own test. In approaching Iran, who does he deal with? The only people he can deal with for the present are those in power. But for how long will they remain there? And will Obama, by dealing with the existing men, be delivering the equivalent of Carter’s televised toast to the Shah? Perhaps the President still sees the Islamic Revolution as the “wave of the future”. That may have been true in 1979, but maybe their energy is near spent. At the very least Iranian society is looking for new directions. Obama’s desire for “engagement” with the current regime should take into account that the fact that it might change. It did in thirty years ago with disastrous effects on Carter.

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Her sympathies — pro-choice, pro-homosexual marriage, weak on taxes, sticking by the Teamsters and the SEIU on the “card check” program, which would deprive workers of a secret ballot in union-organizing votes — found her to the left of many Democrats and most Republicans. It was no surprise, then, that she enjoyed the support of such hard-Left elements as ACORN, the government-employee unions, and Daily Kos honcho Markos Moulitsas Zúñiga.

For another, she immediately confirmed the worst suspicions when she endorsed Democrat Bill Owens immediately after resigning from the race. This deeply embarassed Newt Gingrich, who had endorsed Scozzafava and drew a public mea culpa from House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio). Following her endorsement of the Democratic candidate he said:

“This lady clearly has an agenda that’s different than most Republicans,” Boehner said of Scozzafava, who dropped out of the race Saturday. “She was out there promoting herself and we’re doing everything we can to help Doug Hoffman in this race and we hope he wins.”

To make matters worse, it looked like a case of attempting to join a bandwagon that had left the GOP leadership behind. Polls had Hoffman — the outsider who didn’t stand a chance — ahead of Bill Owens. Although the Tea Party flag is now effectively flying from the New York 23rd district Republican standard, the National Review has serious doubts about the the insurgent’s ability to take the more heavily fortified establishment bulwarks. They explained that in the case of the 23rd District, the town doors had been left open and the watchmen were mostly asleep.

The unique circumstance of a special election allowed Republican county chairmen, not Republican primary voters, to choose the candidate. That’s not going to be the case in congressional districts around the country next year. Nor will many Republican candidates be as awful as Scozzafava, the choice of New York’s decrepit GOP establishment. Yes, candidates should reflect their districts — Buffalo, N.Y., is not Ames, Iowa, is not Orange County, Calif. — but the line obviously should be drawn well short of positively liberal candidates like Scozzafava. We suspect all those liberal pundits gleefully predicting a self-defeating GOP “civil war” will be sorely disappointed next year.

Next time they’ll be ready, said the NRO. But although there is confusion and high dudgeon in Republican leadership circles, an unaccountable panic has seized Mr. Frank Rich, who Commentary calls “the New York Times’s theater-critic-turned-political-columnist”. For Mr. Rich, Hoffman is a ‘right-wing Stalin’ incarnate:

For most people, this is an interesting intra-party skirmish with some potentially important political ramifications. But for Mr. Rich, it’s so much more than that. It’s going to set off a “riotous and bloody national G.O.P. civil war.” The northern district in New York “could become a G.O.P. killing field.” What’s going on there is evidence that “the right has devolved into a wacky, paranoid cult that is as eager to eat its own as it is to destroy Obama.” And conservatives are “Jacobins” who are “re-enacting Stalinism in full purge mode.” And in case that was too subtle, they are “the Stalinists of the right.”

Commentary argues that Rich is merely running scared. “Rich and others on the Left are going around the twist because they sense that the political ground is shifting beneath their feet. Their political Messiah is turning out not only to be mortal but also deeply flawed. His policies are generating widespread and intense opposition.” Both the Commentary and NRO pieces, for all their excellence, don’t tackle the most interesting question raised by Frank Rich’s reaction to Doug Hoffman’s earthquake. Where are the Tea Parties of the Left?

A partial answer is provided by the New Republic. The grassroots movement of the Left is presently cooling its heels in “party headquarters inside a putty brown stucco building south of the Capitol.” Lydia DePillis writes of the rise and fall of Obama’s grassroots. “It wasn’t supposed to be this way.” But in the process of telling the story of Obama’s grassroots, she lets the most interesting fact of all out the bag. All the strings were being pulled from the top. The words are those of DePillis. The emphasis is mine.

Previous presidents had outsourced their activism to interest groups; Obama was going to create his own. OFA was supposed to be a new kind of permanent campaign: a grassroots network wielding some 13 million email addresses to mobilize former volunteers on behalf of the administration’s agenda (and keep them engaged for 2012). “We’ve never had a political leader who has continued their organizing while in office like this at this scale,” Tom Matzzie, former Washington director of MoveOn, told NPR in January.

As right-wing protesters dominated the news this summer, it would have seemed the perfect opportunity for Obama’s much-touted organizers to drown out the conservatives with some coordinated agitation of their own. But they barely made a ripple. Where were they? And how could such a formidable grassroots operation–having just put Obama in office–fall quiet so quickly?

The morning after the election, some 10,000 organizers dialed into a conference call with President-elect Obama, who told them that they would be needed for fights to come. But within the Obama camp, there was disagreement about how, exactly, their services ought to be used. OFA could become a freestanding organization that would advocate independently for the president’s agenda. Or it could be folded–along with its formidable fundraising potential–into the Democratic National Committee. Steve Hildebrand, Obama’s deputy campaign manager, favored the independent option: It would allow the group to “pressure anybody who we would need to build a coalition of votes in the House and Senate,” he told the Los Angeles Times in mid-November. David Plouffe, the campaign’s mastermind, disagreed. He had won the election through a precisely directed field operation combined with iron message discipline, and wasn’t about to give it up.

A few days before the inauguration, Obama announced, in effect, that Plouffe’s view had prevailed: Organizing for America would be securely housed within the DNC. (Hildebrand returned to his consulting firm in Sioux Falls, and would later become vocally critical of the administration’s incremental approach to issues such as gay rights. Plouffe stayed on as an adviser, and his firm raked in $376,000 this year from the DNC.) The bulk of the DNC’s new hires have gone to support OFA, which takes up about half the square footage at party headquarters inside a putty brown stucco building south of the Capitol.

Although Barack Obama has often been described as an “Alinsky organizer”, the calumny was on Alinsky. Barack Obama is the very antithesis of the kind of organizer that Saul Alinsky envisioned: a man who permanently eschewed the limelight; who developed leaders and never became a leader himself and who always lived by the axiom, “let the people decide”. In Obama we see a man who purposefully mobilized supporters in order to control them from the outset. Then when Obama attained the White House, he reconfirmed his earlier decision. Organizing For America became Organizing for President Obama.

To the question, “Where are the Tea Parties of the Left?” the simple answer is: they were led from the top. The crucial question which every man of the left must wrestle with is whether Tea Parties of the Left will ever be led from the bottom. George Orwell always assumed the answer to be “yes” until he learned differently in Catalonia. Most people on the Left think that rebellion is a permanent condition of “their” side. When out of power maybe. When in power things are different. Conservatives operate on a different model from that of the Left. They band together at need but tend to form no permanent organizations. By contrast, the Left is a standing political army. It never sleeps. It never disbands. It is always on the march, in season and out of season. And even when it isn’t doing anything — it is doing something. And when it is in power, it must do even more.

The Blue Collar Professor notes that Alinsky was Gramscian rather than Stalinist in his approach. People may be surprised to learn that Saul Alinsky wrote:

Let us in the name of radical pragmatism not forget that in our system with all its repressions we can still speak out and denounce the administration, attack its policies, work to build an opposition political base. True, there is government harassment, but there still is that relative freedom to fight. I can attack my government, try to organize to change it. That’s more than I can do in Moscow, Peking, or Havana. Remember the reaction of the Red Guard to the “cultural revolution” and the fate of the Chinese college students. Just a few of the violent episodes of bombings or a courtroom shootout that we have experienced here would have resulted in a sweeping purge and mass executions in Russia, China, or Cuba. Let’s keep some perspective.

The interesting question is whether, if Saul Alinsky were alive today, he would be sitting “at party headquarters inside a putty brown stucco building south of the Capitol” having meekly obeyed the order of the One to go home and disband. Well, would George Bush read Albert Camus?

Three essays by Dr. Miho Takashima in the International Journal of Humanities explore the relation between the work of the French writer Albert Camus and the English writer George Orwell … Takashima argues that Orwell — perhaps intentionally, in order to warn the intellectual elite — compromised with “Big Brother”, while Camus confronted with The Plague. This is observed not only in the comparison between Nineteen Eighty-Four and The Rebel but, especially, in Camus’ play The State of Siege. This theatrical play was written together with the novel The Plague and the essay The Rebel. It is the work which — according to Camus himself represents him best and is a response to George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. The hero, Diego, opposes the totalitarian dictator named Plague, and dies in order to set a Spanish town free from the Inquisition.

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Last night Natasha’s mother, Carmen Collins, said she believed the couple would still be alive had they not worked in television. And she attacked the BBC for not doing more to tackle the problem of drugs in the media industry.  She said: ‘I do think they have a responsibility to their staff and random checks could help save a lot of people’s lives. The BBC should do random drug-tests on all its staff. …

‘There is a huge cocaine culture so it should look out for its employees. … Two weeks ago the Commons Home Affairs Select Committee inquiry into the cocaine trade was told by former BBC producer Sarah Graham that she was offered the drug on her first day at the Corporation.

‘The BBC executives must know it is happening and should protect people like my daughter when they enter the industry.’ …

[Collins said] ‘People need to know that going into the TV industry, there is a massive chance they will be exposed to drugs.  ‘In hindsight, I’d love it if Natasha had chosen to go into teaching like her sister and not into TV. But she had this dream of being an actress and the drug culture in the industry killed her.’

Although audiences are supposed to know that what’s “on TV” isn’t real, viewers are often shocked at the gap between the personalities portrayed and the ones who exist in reality. The Times of London describes the fate of some of the BBC’s stars.

• Frank Bough earned a reputation as a housewives’ favorite in the 1970s and 80s but in 1988 admitted to taking cocaine and wearing women’s underwear at parties with prostitutes.
• Richard Bacon was sacked after the News of the World revealed: “Blue Peter goody-goody is a cocaine snorting sneak”.
• Kevin Greening, a former Radio 1 DJ, died of a heart attack in 2007 after taking cocaine, ecstasy and GHB, following a bondage session on the eve of his 45th birthday.
• Angus Deayton, the host of Have I Got News For You, got a mauling on his own show after it was revealed he had stripped naked and snorted cocaine with a high-class prostitute.

There is too much money riding on the provision of fantasy to be particular about the underlying reality. The show must go on; and much of the public doesn’t care what happens backstage as long as the entertainments keep coming. When David Letterman told audiences in early October he had been blackmailed because someone knew he was having sex with his staffers, the audience rollicked with laughter. The Hollywood Gossip was outraged that anyone should react differently. “He’s a comedian. His job is to make us laugh, not to set some paradigm of moral behavior. From Michael Jordan to Bill Clinton to Brad Pitt, the number of celebrities that have had affairs might outweigh those that have not.” Who cares about the truth, as long as the fantasy is engaging.

Deceptions can be carried out in the full view of millions.  Andre Agassi wrote in a recent book that in the 1990s not only did he play wearing a hairpiece, he played stoned; on crystal meth. But even after he tested positive the authorities turned a blind eye after he lied to exculpate himself. There was no incentive to get at the truth; too many people’s paychecks were dependent on Agassi’s star draw for them to upset the apple cart. We want to watch the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat; not be reminded that our idol is wearing a toupee and juiced to his eyeballs.

Why have we become so indifferent to counterfeits? So willing to accept the clever facsimile for the ostensibly real? In part because perceptions are now such a big part of the economy that for so long as perceptions appear to be OK, then the economy must be ‘OK’.  In recent years management literature has talked extensively about the “servitization of the products” The modern economy no longer produces “things”. It produces intangibles called services. Insurance, banking, government, tourism, retail, education, social services, franchising, news media, hospitality, consulting, law, health care, environmental services, real estate and personal services now dominate the activity of the Western world. We produce satisfaction. Perhaps the key difference between an economy based on things relative to that based on services is that the “truth” of things is self-evident while the value of services is often based on perception. Perception is often the proxy for value in a service economy. Indeed it often comprises the value itself, at least in the entertainment industry and possibly in news. It immediately follows that in a huge market for intangibles where “children’s programs”, sporting events, entertainment, academic degrees, derivatives, mortgages, ‘health care’, news and environmental indulgences are traded for vast sums telling the unflattering truth can be extremely costly. Stay away from the truth unless you absolutely positively have to.

In a market for fantasy the truth has little or no value. If we aren’t interested in David Letterman or Bill Clinton the real person but only in some fantasy character they play then logically nobody should care about blackmail or stained blue dresses. In this kind of world there is no essential difference between a President and a person who plays the President for so long as he does it entertainingly. Whether the product is a subprime mortgage, a politician or the fantasy of a Michael Jackson comeback, facts must be kept subordinate to feelings, at least until the sale is consummated.

But are there any consequences to this?

One of problems economists should study is what happens when the overall truth content of a servitized economy declines. Whereas the “truth” of a ton of steel is the steel itself, what is the truth of a bundled subprime mortgage? What is the truth content of a credit default swap? Perhaps we don’t know, and this circumstance has directly led to the current economic crisis. The financial meltdown is from a certain point of view, a pure crisis of information. What we don’t know (or better yet what we do know but ain’t so) is hurting us. The market has either temporarily lost its ability to properly value assets; or more disturbingly we are simply unwilling, like the ATP vis a vis Andre Agassi, to value the assets because to recognize the truth would be catastrophic for business in our servitized world. Perhaps the real psychological purpose of the various government stimulus packages is simply to suggest that we don’t need to know the truth. It’s government’s way of saying that when we don’t like market signals then bureaucracies can set it aside;  that with enough printed money we can avoid looking at ourselves in the economic mirror and forestall bankruptcies indefinitely. The music can be kept playing forever if only we wish for it hard enough.

The problem is that we can never be wholly free of the truth.

The words “and ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free” are often used in a moral sense. But they can be used in the entirely secular meaning of the need to be free of bad information. Bad information destroys. We need to be free of bad information. Perhaps the underlying reason for the large and seemingly growing crisis in the Western World is that its truth reserves — the percentage of its information store that actually corresponds to reality — have fallen below a critical level and its institutions are attempting to cover the deficit by frantically printing more lies. Maybe the reason why finance, politics, news, real estate and environmental services are in dire such straits is that they among the service industries have the biggest portfolio of defective information. And it’s killing them. While there may be a tendency in the service economy to increase the amount of spin for short term gain in the long run survival depends on its minimization. We have to know where we are, if we are to avoid getting lost.

The way to the truth is to take the shortest path back to reality. Carmen Collins, the mother of the dead BBC employee, intuitively believed that her daughter might have fared better if she had chosen a simpler career. What drives that sense is the same reason behind the apparent wholesomeness of grassroots political movements and untutored pundits like Joe the Plumber in contrast to the artificiality of the MSM. The outsiders have not yet been firewalled from reality in the way that the mandarins of the BBC and the politicians in Washington have been. The Tea Party world is still that of genuinely funny things — not the sour mordancy of Letterman; it is still one of basic fears and simple joys, of aching feet and a welcome ice-cream soda at the end of the day. Some people spend their whole lives trying to get away from it; to forget the memory of people sitting around a sunny porch eating peanuts, to try with various expensive unguents to wash the smell of new-mown grass and two stroke gasoline fumes from their hair. That is what “success” all too often means in certain circles. That and a line of white powder across a table. In the end they may arrive at a palace of chrome and glass, all cold air and ice at some dizzying height above the world. But they must always remember, or forget at their peril, that it is all upborne by truth and human love.

I can’t get no satisfaction
I can’t get no satisfaction
‘Cause I try and I try and I try and I try
I can’t get no, I can’t get no

When I’m drivin’ in my car
And a man comes on the radio
He’s tellin’ me more and more
About some useless information
Supposed to fire my imagination
I can’t get no, oh no no no
Hey hey hey, that’s what I say

I’d like to congratulate Leo on his well deserved victory in the commenter poll.  He is a teacher in the best sense and hose are rare. Our schooldays, which may have gone on for decades probably contains only a few of them. We pick can pick them out in our memories from among the hundreds.  They have the ability to make what was dumb in us speak. It is when we marvel at what has been awoken in ourselves that we recognize what great teaching is, and I suppose what a great comment is.

Everyone had a path through.

Now they don’t. The most sophisticated Americans, experienced in how the country works on the ground, can’t figure a way out. Have you heard, “If only we follow Obama and the Democrats, it will all get better”? Or, “If only we follow the Republicans, they’ll make it all work again”? I bet you haven’t, or not much.

This is historic. This is something new in modern political history, and I’m not sure we’re fully noticing it. Americans are starting to think the problems we are facing cannot be solved … from the White House through Congress, and so many state and local governments … they are not offering a new path, they are only offering old paths—spend more, regulate more, tax more in an attempt to make us more healthy locally and nationally. …

Rep. Barney Frank had just said on some cable show that the Democrats of the White House and Congress “are trying on every front to increase the role of government in the regulatory area.” The executive [Noonan spoke to] said of Washington: “They don’t understand that people can just stop, get out. I have friends and colleagues who’ve said to me ‘I’m done.’ ” He spoke of his own increasing tax burden and said, “They don’t understand that if they start to tax me so that I’m paying 60%, 55%, I’ll stop.”

The bipartisan urge to tax and spend has become an addiction. And amazingly enough, the addicted think the music will never stop. Those words: “I’ll stop” are a phrase that the people in power — “the children” in Noonan’s words — never thought to hear. What? Stop? How can you stop? How can you say there’s no more money? Where have you hidden the money? Those in power think there’ll always be more money, Noonan believes, because there’s always been money. All they had to do was cry louder to make it come.  They’ve come to imagine they’ve come into possession of a magic orange. All you have to do is squeeze harder and the juice keeps flowing out.  She continues:

When I see those in government, both locally and in Washington, spend and tax and come up each day with new ways to spend and tax—health care, cap and trade, etc.—I think: Why aren’t they worried about the impact of what they’re doing? Why do they think America is so strong it can take endless abuse? I think I know part of the answer. It is that they’ve never seen things go dark. …

they don’t feel anxious, because they never had anything to be anxious about. They grew up in an America surrounded by phrases—”strongest nation in the world,” “indispensable nation,” “unipolar power,” “highest standard of living”—and are not bright enough, or serious enough, to imagine that they can damage that, hurt it, even fatally.

We are governed at all levels by America’s luckiest children, sons and daughters of the abundance, and they call themselves optimists but they’re not optimists—they’re unimaginative. They don’t have faith, they’ve just never been foreclosed on. They are stupid and they are callous, and they don’t mind it when people become disheartened. They don’t even notice.

“They don’t even notice.” But in the end, they must. The one thing no generation of parents can protect their children from is reality. No inheritance can withstand the foolishness of heirs. The harsh arithmetic on the frontier, the terrible outflow of dollars and cents, the gradual and then sudden loss of credibility as people see they are dealing not with serious people but with gilded fools cumulate their irresistible effects. In the end the gay parade of capering children enters a dark cavern and the entrance shuts behind them. Those who don’t want to join in this cavalcade have two duties.

The first is to survive; to have the wit to realize that if something can’t go on, then it won’t. The administration is touting “green shoots”. Others might use the phrase “pushing up daisies”. People who can tell the difference have got to rig for depth charges and evade worst; but be ready to take aggressive productive action where they can.

But the second duty is more important. Those unentranced by the magic flute have an obligation to remember what happened; to keep the history books free of revisionism so that by shame and memory those pied pipers who led a generation astray can never return unchallenged to sound their witching tune again. But for the children already lost to the dark we can only wish that wherever they have gone, they’ve found what they were looking for.

The mayor sent East, West, North and South,
To offer the Piper, by word of mouth,
Wherever it was men’s lot to find him,
Silver and gold to his heart’s content,
If he’d only return the way he went,
And bring the children behind him.
But when they saw ’twas a lost endeavour,
And Piper and dancers were gone for ever,
They made a decree that lawyers never
Should think their records dated duly
If, after the day of the month and year,
These words did not as well appear,
“And so long after what happened here
“On the Twenty-second of July,
“Thirteen hundred and seventy-six:”
And the better in memory to fix
The place of the children’s last retreat,
They called it, the Pied Piper’s Street –
Where any one playing on pipe or tabor,
Was sure for the future to lose his labour.
Nor suffered they hostelry or tavern
To shock with mirth a street so solemn;
But opposite the place of the cavern
They wrote the story on a column,
And on the great church-window painted
The same, to make the world acquainted
How their children were stolen away,
And there it stands to this very day.

Hopes of a diplomatic breakthrough over Iran’s nuclear programme were dwindling tonight after Tehran demanded changes to a uranium exchange deal that European diplomats described as “unacceptable”.

If the deal collapses, as seemed likely, the apparent progress made over Tehran’s nuclear programme in recent weeks would evaporate, the diplomats said. It would deliver another critical blow to the Obama administration’s policy of engagement, and put international sanctions and Israeli military action back on the table. …

Hopes of a diplomatic breakthrough over Iran’s nuclear programme were dwindling tonight after Tehran demanded changes to a uranium exchange deal that European diplomats described as “unacceptable”.

If the deal collapses, as seemed likely, the apparent progress made over Tehran’s nuclear programme in recent weeks would evaporate, the diplomats said. It would deliver another critical blow to the Obama administration’s policy of engagement, and put international sanctions and Israeli military action back on the table.

The uranium deal, agreed in principle in Geneva at the beginning of the month, involved Iran shipping out most of its enriched uranium and, in return, being provided about a year later with fuel rods for its research reactor in Tehran.

Iran’s response, delivered after a week’s delay to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), was not made public, but according to diplomats familiar with the details, Tehran demanded two big changes. They would only ship their uranium out in batches, and only hand it over at the same time the French-made fuel rods were delivered.

That would remove the element of the deal that made it attractive to the west: the temporary removal of most of Iran’s enriched uranium, which is currently enough to make a nuclear weapon. Iran says its nuclear programme is peaceful.

“This is completely unacceptable,” said a European diplomat, who said discussions were under way in Brussels tonight to formulate a common response.

“They want to keep all the gains, and give nothing away themselves,” another diplomat said.

Gee, you would have thought they would have guessed. Meanwhile, in other news, Daniel Ortega is re-establishing himself as the dictator of Nicaragua.  The wolves are howling everywhere, even in the backyard.  Investors.com reports:

Daniel Ortega muscled Nicaragua’s courts to permit his permanent re-election, effectively making him dictator. He’s not alone. After the U.S.’ shabby treatment of tiny Honduras, a new wave of tyrants is rising.

‘Nothing can stop me from re-election,” crowed Ortega, a man Ronald Reagan once called “the little dictator.” Last Monday Nicaragua’s Supreme Court issued a ruling permitting the Marxist Ortega to run for a second term after he and a group of allied mayors petitioned them, overruling a one-term limit in the constitution. Same old Ortega: His dictatorial hunger hasn’t changed.

But one thing is different: U.S. actions since the Honduran crisis that have only emboldened him. Last June 28, Honduras’ Supreme Court ruled that then-President Manuel Zelaya’s bid to hold a reelection referendum was unconstitutional and subject to the sanctions of Honduras’ 1982 constitution: removal from office.

Out he went, but the U.S. cried foul, shortly after Zelaya’s patron in Caracas, Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, yelled “military coup.” Unlike Chavez, whose means of striking at Honduras were threats and mayhem — such as sneaking Zelaya back to Tegucigalpa to whip up mobs — the Obama administration was in a position to inflict long-term punishment on the Hondurans.

Readers will recall how President Obama dramatically announced a showdown with Iran at a G20 press conference describing Teheran’s secret nuclear enrichment program. “The accusations were made public in an extraordinary joint statement by the US President, flanked by Gordon Brown and the French President, Nicolas Sarkozy before the start of the G20 economic summit in Pittsburgh”. But in the weeks following, President Ahmadinejad simply gloated over his Western opponents. The Telegraph reported the Iranian President “has proclaimed victory in his battle with the West, claiming he has compelled the US and its allies to ‘co-operate’ with Iran’s nuclear programme”. Maybe it was all show and nothing down.

As Iran’s nuclear negotiator handed in the country’s response to a proposed deal to process its enriched uranium stocks abroad, Mr Ahmadinejad hailed a change in Western policy from “confrontation to co-operation”.

“We welcome fuel exchange, nuclear co-operation, building of power plants and reactors and we are ready to co-operate,” he said in a speech shown live on state television. But he said he would not retreat “one iota” in his demand that the country continue with its nuclear programme, understood by most observers to mean its policy of enriching uranium.

What happens next? The President took a lot of the nation’s hopes as political capital into the Big Casino. Now, after sitting at the tables for 9 months, there’s only a small pile left of what was once a mountain of chips. Is the next hand going to win him big? Is he going to double down again? Or get up and catch a cab home, in case what’s left in his pocket will cover it. Or will he write out a check on the basis of the family farm and spin the wheel of fortune again on the basis of his faith in the fundamental goodness of America’s enemies?  Order another round of drinks for everybody on the Big Spender. Go watch a play on Broadway and keep being Diamond Jim long after all the real diamonds have been hocked for paste. Is there a point where betting on hope means being stuck on stupid? Kenny Rogers once had some advice for people in this situation. But I can’t see his hit tune being played in international diplomatic circles. It wouldn’t go with the wine and cheese.

On a warm summer’s evenin’ on a train bound for nowhere,
I met up with the gambler; we were both too tired to sleep.
So we took turns a starin’ out the window at the darkness
‘Til boredom overtook us, and he began to speak.

He said, “Son, I’ve made my life out of readin’ people’s faces,
And knowin’ what their cards were by the way they held their eyes.
so if you don’t mind my sayin’, I can see you’re out of aces.
For a taste of your whiskey I’ll give you some advice.”

So I handed him my bottle and he drank down my last swallow.
Then he bummed a cigarette and asked me for a light.
And the night got deathly quiet, and his face lost all expression.
Said, “If you’re gonna play the game, boy, ya gotta learn to play it right.

You got to know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold ‘em,
Know when to walk away and know when to run.
You never count your money when you’re sittin’ at the table.
There’ll be time enough for countin’ when the dealin’s done.

Ev’ry gambler knows that the secret to survivin’
Is knowin’ what to throw away and knowing what to keep.
‘Cause ev’ry hand’s a winner and ev’ry hand’s a loser,
And the best that you can hope for is to die in your sleep.”