I was sitting in the sun yesterday and feeling kind of low from a bout of reading the news. It feels like we're in the midst of a collective global slide, and the People In Charge are doing all they can to grease the path on the way down. It's a deeply powerless feeling, and I don't like it.

With regard to the Israel/Palestine/Lebanon war (which is what Israeli leaders are calling it and they're the ones who get to decide) the situation seems impervious to outside influence. These people are going to kill one another until there's a collective decision to stop, which doesn't seem to have come just yet. It's a shit-sandwitch all around, and it's still escalating.

My real concern though is that this bloodshed is going to be used as a means to snowball some momentum to attack Iran, which I think will have really bad consequences for us. It has some of the same feeling as the run up to the Iraq invasion, though the axis of Bush is clearly not flying as high. At the same time, all they wanna do is drop some bombs, so the bar to clear in the public mind is probably lower.

I feel like someone should be organizing something to counter this momentum. "Someone should be organizing something" usually means that I need to start to do it. Fuckers.

I'm off to SF for a few days, a little business to transact. Also meeting with the Zacker and Duke Lauter and maybe a pre-bar Girth. Will bring my camera.

Sounds a little (union!) old-school, yet the ability to address deep points and make them a rallying cry is powerful. Threepenny: Mamet, Workers and Managers:

Now, the issues confronting our country are serious, but they are all resolvable, and resolvable in an atmosphere of cooperation. How do I know? Because I've seen it, and you've seen it, at work.

We have been conditioned to huff and puff ourselves about political questions, and characterize those who disagree as fools—but we may discuss these same questions with our fellow workers, around the water cooler, at lunch, over a drink, and in that discussion we find that, rather than proclaiming our own view, we want to know what the other fellow thinks, and, after listening, may find some possibility of consensus. Why? Because we are looking for consensus. At work we recognize that we are going to have to live with those who disagree, and that therefore there must and will be some accommodation.

We know this at work—why do we forget it in politics?

Because it is in the interest of management to keep the workers divided.

I am not a Marxist. I do not believe that the corporation is, per se, bad. I do not believe that capital is, per se, bad. I believe that the corporation, like any powerful entity, will, unchecked, progress toward tyranny, and that it must be kept in check.

Good stuff. The identification of the Bush/Republican regime and rampant Corporatism is potent.

The Bush Administration is the American corporation run wild.

Booyakashaaa. That's an applause-line, people.

It's the Apocalypse, as this link-strewn post proves beyond a reasonable doubt.

Evil minds that plot destruction. Glenn Greenwald quoting Bill Kristol, who's a very very influential person among the Cheney/Rumsfeld cohort:

The war against radical Islamism is likely to be a long one. Radical Islamism isn't going away anytime soon. But it will make a big difference how strong the state sponsors, harborers, and financiers of radical Islamism are. Thus, our focus should be less on Hamas and Hezbollah, and more on their paymasters and real commanders--Syria and Iran. And our focus should be not only on the regional war in the Middle East, but also on the global struggle against radical Islamism.

For while Syria and Iran are enemies of Israel, they are also enemies of the United States. We have done a poor job of standing up to them and weakening them. They are now testing us more boldly than one would have thought possible a few years ago. Weakness is provocative. We have been too weak, and have allowed ourselves to be perceived as weak...

Yes. They are actively seeking to fight in a clash of civilizations, to enter into a Holy War which will last generations, and which the US cannot win in any military sense. This is such a bad idea, it's very hard to express.

Bill Kristol: sorcerer of death's construction.