José Saramago, famous writer and stealer of my ideas¹ has a blog in Portuguese and Spanish. If you read either of these languages, it is worth checking out; Saramago is very much into writing essays in the tradition of the "autonomous intellectual," commenting on the absurdities of society from a distance. This style has its drawbacks, and certainly doesn't pass muster in academia, but it is very fun to read. I would prefer it if he would use hyperlinks, but I'm sure he has his reasons for not doing so. He's the first major author that I know of who has started a blog (of course, I'll probably find a million more if I just google search).

¹I am, of course, kidding. Please don't accuse me of defamation.

Update: I think I was a little ungenerous in my initial description of Saramago's blog. The description of his blog as "commenting on the absurdities of society from a distance" certainly applied to the post I was reading at the time, but many of his other posts show a more engaged, thoughtful style.

One thing that hasn't got much mention from last night is McCain's so-called "League of Democracies" and just how criminally reckless that would be. Disregarding Russia for the moment, which seems hellbent on estranging itself from global politics, why on earth would we consider, even for a second, estranging China? If good foreign policy is producing World Wars within a year of inauguration, then McCain's "League of Democracies" is brilliant. Such a boneheaded scheme can only be put forward because both the Left and the Right in the U.S. hate the U.N. But substituting a polarizing, isolationist bloc for a corrupt organization seems worse than insane.

One of the points where McCain really shined last night was on Lebanon and his vote against sending marines into Lebanon in 1983. So it's nice to see that he was lying (or, at best, telling a half truth):

McCain seriously misstated his vote concerning the marines in Lebanon. He said that when he went into Congress in 1983, he voted against deploying them in Beirut. The Marines went in Lebanon in 1982, before McCain came to Congress. The vote came up a year into their deployment, when the Marines had already suffered 54 casualties. What McCain voted against was a measure to invoke the War Powers Act and to authorize the deployment of U.S. Marines in Lebanon for an additional 18 months. The measure passed 270-161, with 26 other Republicans (including McCain) and 134 Democrats voting against it.

"Serious but so far undisclosed ailments" - Eric Margolis says this is the word on John McCain from one of his old friends. The line about Palin being a heartbeat from the presidency - never very funny to begin with - is now dead serious. I was guessing something was up with McCain's health recently; since a little before the Convention, he's started to look like someone at death's door. Margolis discusses just how terrifying a Palin presidency would be.

The post from Tuesday has legs (I would love to take credit, but it was Democracy Now! that dropped the story on Monday). Glenn Greenwald at Slate has now posted on it. This current development is the direct result of the 2006 repeal (for all intents and purposes) of the Posse Comitatus Act in the Defense Authorization Act of 2006. The Bush Admin used Katrina as the pretense to push for a law that would allow military units to be deployed in the United States. If Katrina had been their real motive, it seems likely that they would have simply pushed for more funding and troop support for the National Guard.

The title of the post over at Qlipoth, "Excuse me?", sums it up pretty clearly:

Army Unit to Deploy in October for Domestic Operations

Beginning in October, the Army plans to station an active unit inside the United States for the first time to serve as an on-call federal response in times of emergency. The 3rd Infantry Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team has spent thirty-five of the last sixty months in Iraq, but now the unit is training for domestic operations. The unit will soon be under the day-to-day control of US Army North, the Army service component of Northern Command. The Army Times reports this new mission marks the first time an active unit has been given a dedicated assignment to Northern Command. The paper says the Army unit may be called upon to help with civil unrest and crowd control. The soldiers are learning to use so-called nonlethal weapons designed to subdue unruly or dangerous individuals and crowds.

If you're not worried about this, you should be.


Update:I just found the Army Times story:

It is not the first time an active-duty unit has been tapped to help at home. In August 2005, for example, when Hurricane Katrina unleashed hell in Mississippi and Louisiana, several active-duty units were pulled from various posts and mobilized to those areas.

But this new mission marks the first time an active unit has been given a dedicated assignment to NorthCom, a joint command established in 2002 to provide command and control for federal homeland defense efforts and coordinate defense support of civil authorities.
...
They may be called upon to help with civil unrest and crowd control or to deal with potentially horrific scenarios such as massive poisoning and chaos in response to a chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear or high-yield explosive, or CBRNE, attack.
...
The 1st BCT’s soldiers also will learn how to use “the first ever nonlethal package that the Army has fielded,” 1st BCT commander Col. Roger Cloutier said, referring to crowd and traffic control equipment and nonlethal weapons designed to subdue unruly or dangerous individuals without killing them.“It’s a new modular package of nonlethal capabilities that they’re fielding. They’ve been using pieces of it in Iraq, but this is the first time that these modules were consolidated and this package fielded, and because of this mission we’re undertaking we were the first to get it.”

The package includes equipment to stand up a hasty road block; spike strips for slowing, stopping or controlling traffic; shields and batons; and, beanbag bullets.

“I was the first guy in the brigade to get Tasered,” said Cloutier, describing the experience as “your worst muscle cramp ever — times 10 throughout your whole body.

“I’m not a small guy, I weigh 230 pounds ... it put me on my knees in seconds.”

An Open Letter to the U.S. State Department Regarding Recent Violence in Bolivia (excerpt reprinted from Upside Down World) :

To Dr. Condoleezza Rice, U.S. Secretary of State

Cc: Phillip Goldberg, U.S. Ambassador to Bolivia
Henrietta Fore, Administrator, U.S. Agency for International Development
Representative Eliot Engel, Chair, Subcommittee on Western Hemisphere, Committee of Foreign Affairs
Senator John McCain
Senator Barack Obama

Dear Dr. Rice,

We are writing out of deep concern over recent events in Bolivia that have left dozens dead and cost millions of dollars in lost revenue to the Bolivian government and the Bolivian people. We are especially concerned that the United States government, by its own admission, is supporting opposition groups and individuals in Bolivia that have been involved in the recent whole-scale destruction, violence, and killings, above all in the departments of Santa Cruz, Pando, and Chuquisaca.

Since the United States government refuses to disclose many of the recipients of its funding and support, there is currently no way to determine the degree to which this support is helping people involved in violence, sabotage, and other extra-legal means to destabilize the government of Bolivia.

Yet since the democratic election of Evo Morales in December 2005, the U.S. government has sent millions of dollars in aid to departmental prefects and municipal governments in Bolivia. In 2004, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) opened an "Office of Transition Initiatives" (OTI) in Bolivia, which provided some $11 million in funds to "build on its activities designed to enhance the capacity of departmental governments."[1]

The OTI in Bolivia sought to "[build] the capacity of prefect-led departmental governments to help them better respond to the constituencies they govern," and even brought departmental governors to the U.S. to meet with state governors.[2] Some of these same departmental governments later launched organized campaigns to push for "autonomy" and to oppose through violent and undemocratic means the Morales government and its popular reforms.

According to the OTI, it ceased operations in Bolivia about a year ago; however some of its activities were then taken up by USAID, which refuses to disclose some of its recipients and programs. USAID spent $89 million in Bolivia last year. This is a significant sum relative to the size of Bolivia's economy; proportionally in the U.S. economy it would be equivalent to about $100 billion, or close to what the United States is currently spending on military operations in Iraq.

U.S. taxpayers, as well as the Bolivian government and people, have a right to know what U.S. funds are supporting in Bolivia.

For clarification: a "department" is similar to what we call a "state" in the U.S., although because most South American countries do not have the degree of federal control that we have in the U.S., departments are often more autonomous than states. Recently, in Bolivia, there have been a number of direct attacks of aggression against supporters of the democratically-elected Morales, including assassinations of government officials (for more on these issues, look at Upside Down World's extensive coverage of Bolivia). There is ample reason, as this open letter makes clear, to believe that the U.S is actively interfering in Bolivian politics. We don't want to see another Pinochet in Bolivia.