Gyroscope

A newsletter for those unmoved by spin.
No. 15, November 3, 2003

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There's been quite a spate of books exposing the lies of the conservatives and the way the media covers for them. Al Frankin has become a serious analyst, Joe Conason's effort I reviewed some weeks ago, and there are others. One not getting much attention is the effort by novelist and analyst Joan Didion.

Political Fictions, (Vintage, 2001), came out before the current round, but commands interest. She has a series of essays on various events and players - Newt Gingrich, the efforts to unseat Clinton, and so on. The early chapters go farther back, to the absurdities of the 1988 campaign, for instance.

She is particularly good at exposing the coordinated antics of the not-so-vast right wing conspiracy that did indeed work behind the scenes to prop up the effort to remove Clinton She draws connections between the players that I've not seen put forward before.

She brings out the contempt that the conservatives in fact feel for ordinary people and for democracy itself (see the Bork quote opposite, more proof keeping him off the court was a good idea). She points us to how their mission is to control and limit the role of democracy in our government. Written before 9/11 and the Ashcroft/Bush assault on liberty, the words are prophetic.

She is a novelist, and one that works on impressions, so anyone who has read Salvador will be prepared for the sometimes discursive and nonlinear nature of her work.

"It was indeed stirring rhetoric, entirely appropriate for the purpose of rallying the colonists and justifying their rebellion to the world. But some caution is in order. The ringing phrases are hardly useful, indeed may be pernicious, if taken, as they commonly are, as a guide to action, governmental or private. Then the words press inevitably towards extremes of liberty and the pursuit of happiness that court personal license and social disorder." -- Robert Bork, commenting on the US Declaration of Independence in Slouching Towards Gomorrah, quoted in Political Fictions, p. 273.

"A new report by Human Rights Watch has found that American prisons and jails contain three times more mentally ill people than do our psychiatric hospitals." -- Sally Satel, columnist in the New York Times, Nov. 1, p. A29.

POWs from the first Gulf War in 1991 have had their efforts to collect damages from Iraq for being tortured blocked by the Bush administration, reports the Seattle Times, Oct. 27, p.A10.

"Let's be careful before associating the term "massive intelligence failure" with Iraq policy. ... When intelligence debunks the notion of Iraq's buying enriched uranium from Niger while the Administration embraces it as fact, this is not a failure of intelligence. It's merely a lie. When intelligence discounts any meaningful Iraq-al Qaeda link that nonetheless becomes a centerpiece of Administration speechmaking, this too, is not a failure of intelligence but yet another lie." -- Col. Harvey R. Greenberg (Ret.) U.S. Air Force. Letter in BusinessWeek, Oct. 13, p. 20.

"For years, Arab populations have received a distorted message from Washington: the the United States stands for democracy, freedom, and human rights everywhere except the Middle East and for everyone except Arabs." Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, in Foreign Affairs, Sept, p. 13

One bit of progress from Iraq: huge marshes drained by Saddam are being restored again. The marshes, home of Shitte Muslims, were a hiding place for rebels against Saddam's regime. He ordered them drained at huge cost to the environment and to the villages that depended on the marsh for food and shelter. Starting in April, Iraqi engineers, aided by U.S. military are reversing the water flow from the diversion canals back into the marshes. Plant and animal life is returning, even though it may take years to fully restore the water level, reports Rajiv Chandrasekaran in the Washington Post, quoted in the Guardian Weekly, Oct. 23, p. 35. What makes this especially interesting is the imitative taken by Iraq's and the cooperation of the US in the wishes of the locals.