Torn and frayed in Manila

WikiLeaks: neither good nor bad, just inevitable

The latest round of not very surprising revelations from WikiLeaks ("Prince Andrew a boor? Never!) is part of an inevitable transfer of power from the holders of political power to the holders of technological power. If Julian Assange and his organization had not released this information, another techie would have done so sooner rather than later. This shift in the control of information will alter international politics for ever. I for one feel fortunate to be around to welcome the new age.

This being Bonifacio day in the Philippines, I have been at home listening to BBC World Service. This has meant listening to Hillary Clinton’s fulminations against Wikileaks every half hour and she seems more out of touch every time I hear her:

"This disclosure is not just an attack on America's foreign policy interests. It is an attack on the international community — the alliances and partnerships, the conversations and negotiations, that safeguard global security and advance economic prosperity."

A better example of the patronizing, we’ll-take-care-of-it world view of the ruling political class would be hard to find.

If Clinton thinks the world we live in exhibits “global security,” she must have been too busy asking her staff to pinch senior UN officials’ credit card details to have noticed the prospect of war on the Korean peninsula, actual wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and a nuclear stand-off between India and Pakistan, to name just a few.

As for “economic prosperity,” 80% of humanity lives on less than $10 a day; the European Central Bank has had to step in to avert economic collapse in Greece and Ireland and may have to do the same for Portugal and Spain; and 40 million people in Clinton’s own country are living in poverty.

To preserve the serene and affluent earth of the secretary of state’s imagination, she asks us to leave the “conversations and negotiations” of international diplomacy alone so the diplomatic pas de deux can continue away from our prying eyes (and they can slag each other off in private). However, Hillary “Metternich” Clinton can long for the good old days of ententes and “cables” (incredible that they should still refer to them in this way) as much as she likes, they ain’t coming back. She and rest of her privileged tribe had better wake up to that. There are many aspects of our no longer private world that I am uncomfortable with, but exposing the shenanigans and sheer stupidity of our “betters” is not one of them. Bring it on Julian.

McCain or Paris: you decide

You wouldn’t think even the Americans could find anyone stupider than George W. Bush, but they are doing their best with McCain. There are so many things wrong with his pitiful attempt to compare Obama with Paris Hilton I don’t know where to begin. I’ll just let you suffer through it—it speaks for itself.

But at least McCain’s brainless effort allowed Paris to make this cute reply:

See more Paris Hilton videos at Funny or Die

Bush's disastrous presidency

I did like this:

And I also applaud the the public spirited citizens of San Francisco.

"Looking to honor the forty-third President of the United States of America, George W. Bush, the recently formed Presidential Memorial Commission of San Francisco is looking to change the name of the Oceanside Wastewater Treatment Facility. It seems the group would like to rename the SF Zoo adjacent facility to the 'George W Bush Sewage Plant,'

Something fascinating about the world of Ashley Alexandra Dupré

She’s just the latest in a line of bimbos* to have appeared in the scandal sheets because of their involvement with a politician, but I can't help finding the life of high-class New York call girl Ashley Alexandra Dupré sort of absorbing.

She left a broken home on the Jersey Shore at 17 and came to New York City to work the nightclubs as a rhythm and blues singer. Now, at 22, she is the unwitting, and as yet unseen, star of the seamy drama that is the downfall of Gov. Eliot Spitzer of New York.

And, since we live in a curious bare-all world, Ashley Alexandra Dupré naturally enough has her own MySpace page.

*Donna Rice, Fawn Hall, and Monica Lewinsky

Obama’s blacknesss

This subject has been covered many times, but I still find the easy categorization of Barack Obama as “black” quite weird. Barack’s mum is as white as mine. By calling him “black” it seems that Americans (i) can’t get out of their racial filing cabinet, they have to label the guy somehow and, well he looks sort of black and has a black wife so let’s stick him under “b”; and/or (ii) they regard African-American genes as such a pollutant that anyone with a dash of them must be “black”.

This came up with Tiger Woods too, who protested against being filed under “b”, pointing out (to some African-Americans’ displeasure) that he was part Thai, Chinese, native American, and Dutch.

I reckon if Barack were a citizen of a European country he would be described as what he is, mixed race, most of the time. Take Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, the latest tennis sensation, who reached the final of the Australian Open last month. Even before his parents arrived for the final, commentators were at pains to point out that the unseeded Tsongas was the son of an immigrant from Congo and a white French mother. So if tennis commentators can get it right, why not political pundits?

My guess is that, even in America, the sort of racial categorization that asserts Barack’s blackness is going to seem very old fashioned in a few short years. You just have to go to Europe these days and look around you; at least in the large cities, the number of mixed race kids is growing apace. Even in my quite traditional Scottish family, my cousin married an Indian guy and they have two kids. As Woody Guthrie said:

And all creeds and kinds and colors Of us are blending Till I suppose ten million years from now We'll all be just alike

Same color, same size, working together
And maybe we'll have all of the fascists
Out of the way by then
Maybe so

When you think of all the harm that racial categorization has done in human history I think we will be well shot of it. What does it matter after all?

Obama rolls on

Barack Obama’s crushing victory in the Wisconsin primary confirms him as the favorite to become the next president of the US. That possibility is so amazing to me that I have trouble taking it in. In less than a year, George W. Bush may just be an unpleasant memory and we may have an American president who is not a total asshole. That’s the first time since 1980 as far as I am concerned.

CNN streamed Obama’s victory speech, which was the first chance I have had to hear him at any length. He was just as good as everyone says, with every pause, every cadence carefully balanced. Obama would certainly inspire me if I were a young American, especially when compared to the stuttering efforts of the current president.

The contrast between Obama’s fluid delivery and the clip from Bush’s efforts in Africa on the news tonight was damning. Bush sounds to me like someone going through voice therapy after a particularly heavy blow to the head. Obama sounds like a leader—like someone cleverer and wiser than the rest of us, not like a retarded cousin.

I never liked Billary’s campaign much but two recent elements have particularly turned me against her. For a start, after her last three defeats she has refused to congratulate Obama, in defiance of normal practice and good manners. Someone asked me what pikon meant the other day, you won’t get a better example of it than that.

Or take her campaign’s insistence on fighting for the Florida and Michigan “ghost” delegates to be reinstated. Gimme a break. When the Democratic Party announced that those states would be allowed no delegates at the convention (as a penalty for moving their primary dates forward) Obama and Edwards didn’t even bother to put their names on the ballot. The fact that Hillary is now fighting to change the rules of the game halfway through—and doesn’t seem to realize how tainted such a victory would be—just shows how she and her team want to win at any cost. She is a vindictive woman who would make an awful president -- I have no sympathy for her at all.

Hillary -- something familiar about her?

It surprises me that press commentators, even unfriendly ones, have been willing to accept Hillary Clinton’s self evaluation of her alleged competence, hard work and attention to detail at face value. I don’t know about you, but every time I hear her in this vein I am reminded of another president who promised a similar package yet has delivered very little.

The art of the possible in politics depends not only on diligence and command of policy, but on managing your friends and enemies. That is where Gloria, with her inability to confront powerful interest groups (notably the military) and her inconstancy, has conspicuously failed. I have a feeling that Hillary’s latent vindictiveness would also prevent her from forming the coalitions she will need to be a good president.

Here is Greg Craig, a personal friend of both Clintons, who is now with the Obama camp:

“You’re getting to that five per cent of Hillary that I don’t like—which is to see in every corner a conspiracy or an opponent that must be crushed. Look at her comment ‘Now the fun part starts’ ”—Clinton’s announcement in Iowa that she would begin attacking Obama’s record. “There is a quality of playing the embattled, beleaguered victim that I find unappealing and depressing.”

The quotation comes from a New Yorker article delineating the differences between the two leading Democratic candidates. Here is another example of this side of her personality:

Clinton’s instinct to fight back was honed in the rough world of Arkansas politics. Once, when the two couples were talking about policy matters, Danner proposed a way to offer retail discounts to Arkansas’s substantial elderly population. To the astonishment of Danner and Pietrafesa, Hillary responded, “The last thing we need to do right now is something for folks who didn’t vote for Bill.” She had, Danner remembered, “this binary view of the world, a little like Bush’s comment ‘You’re with us or you’re against us.’ ” In Pietrafesa’s opinion, “Hillary needs enemies.”

Hillary's need for enemies reminds me of another former president.

In order to understand Nixon's growing paranoia and criminal activities we need to look closely at who was on his enemies list:

… Joe Namath, Jane Fonda, Dick Gregory, Gregory Peck, Steve McQueen

Edward Kennedy, Edmund Muskie, Harold Hughes, Walter Mondale, William Proxmire, Birch Bayh
The Presidents of Yale, Harvard Law School, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the World Bank, the Ford Foundation, the Rand Corporation, the National Education Association, Philip Morris, and the National Cleaning Contractors

The American Civil Liberties Union, the National Organization for Women, Americans for Democratic Action, and the Urban League.

For this and for many other reasons I'm for Obama all the way on Tuesday.

655,000 reasons why the war on Iraq was wrong

I wanted to write on the study published in the Lancet that the number of Iraqi deaths since the American-led invasion had reached an astonishing 655,000, but this piece says it well. As one of the commenters said:

Iraqis and Vietnamese aren't real people as far as these mortality deniers are concerned. They're just speed bumps on the highway to freedom.

Duck Cheney

The best comments on the Cheney shooting came from Jon Stewart's "Daily Show":

On Monday night one of the show’s correspondents, Rob Corddrey, introduced as a “vice-presidential firearms mishap analyst” said that “according to the best intelligence available, there were quail hidden in the brush” and “everyone believed there were quail in the brush” and “while the quail turned out to be a 78-year-old man, even knowing that today, Mr Cheney insists he would still have shot Mr Whittington in the face”.

You can see the extract here.

Quote of the week

Thanks Nige!