Gaia-hypothesis propounder James Lovelock has Greenpeace, and others, in a tizzy over his recommendation that environmentalists need to get over their concerns about nuclear power, since he believes it offers the only hope of averting catastrophic climate change: ‘Only nuclear power can now halt global warming’.

A longtime lies.com link-suggester, who turns out to be Canadian, engaged me in the following interesting email exchange this morning. With his permission, I’m running it here with his identifying information removed.

From: [email deleted]
Subject: A Note From Abroad
To: jbc@lies.com

Dear jbc:

Just wanted to give you a take on the “word on street” from abroad — in this case, Canada.

The general sense here is that the US has completely lost it. Not just in regards to Iraq, but across the board. This torture scandal has pretty much tied it.

Particularly telling is that even the rightmost-leaning of my friends, who previously (grudgingly) supported the US invasion of Iraq, have abandoned their positions. (And for the record, there weren’t very many of those people in the first place up here.)

And for the vast majority of “people on the street” in Canada, it looks for all the world like you guys have simply gone insane. No media outlets in Canada ever pushed a connection between Iraq and Al Qaeda, which means that the whole supposed war rationale was a transparent sham from day one. (And we were already scratching our heads over the theft of the federal election!)

So here’s what we see: a rogue superpower, doing whatever it wants, answerable to no one (foreign or domestic), throwing dissenters at home and abroad in jail forever, flouting international law and its own laws on any whim, starting wars for fun and profit, alienating the world and even its closest allies, run by (at best) a mediocre intellect with a criminal background who blatantly stole the “election”. The populace of this rogue state is too cowed and terrified of being labelled as “unpatriotic” or singled out for punishment to speak up for their basic rights, more of which disappear — perhaps forever — every day.

There’s a word for this, and it’s not democracy. It’s despotism.

When the US is on its game, it is a shining example to the world. But when it slides down into despotism, it’s the scariest thing in the world.

And believe me, we are shared shitless of you guys.

Jesus, guys — if the US can slide into despotism, who the hell can’t?

(As always, please don’t publish my full name — I, too am scared of retribution.)

---

From: John Callender
To: [name and email deleted]
Subject: Re: A Note From Abroad

Could I run your letter as an item on the site, assuming I remove all identifying information from it?

---

From: [email deleted]
Subject: Re: A Note From Abroad
To: jbc@west.net

Of course, provided you agree to fix my typo of “supporters” to “supported” in the third para. (And any other typos you see.)

:)

Listen, I’ve re-read a couple of my letters to you recently, and they were pretty condescending and holier-than-thou. In retrospect, I really regret this.

You have to understand that many in Canada look to the US as a big brother — which is not so inaccurate. We do have the same parents — but where you guys are the rebels that stole the family Thunderbird and peeled off in a cloud of burned rubber, we are the quiet nerds that lived in the basement of the family home until we were 35.

This means that we have a unique perspective. When you exceed us — as you often do — we love you for it, since you’re family, and we’re rooting for you. Plus, like all little brothers, we secretly envy you.

And yet, when you go astray, we strangely feel guilty (guilt, by the way, is the Great Canadian Emotion(tm)), because we feel we should have been able to help you somehow. Plus we feel sad, since you are family, and we love you. And lastly, like all little brothers, we are worried about you.

But right now, it’s like we’ve just learned our big brother has ditched all his friends and gone on a crime spree, robbing banks and blowing people away. We love you, but we’re scared you’ll show up on our doorstep some night, drunk, with a gun on the seat of the old, idling Thunderbird, and demand that we join you.

I guess I’m saying we know we’re not superior to you. Quite the reverse — we will likely always play second fiddle to our big brother. But this raises the critical point I mentioned before — if our big brother can go bad, can’t we?

(Maybe you can wrap these two letters together somehow.)

Here’s a thought-provoking item from the BBC: Anti-Barbie becomes Russian icon.

Kos has an excellent piece today: Losing allies on the WOT. It runs through some of the bad news that has come out in the last few days regarding the rapidly thinning ranks of Bush’s “Coalition of the Willing”.

It’s not just lefties like Kos, and craven appeasers like the Spanish, who are increasingly having a problem siding with Bush in his “with us or against us” world. Check out the following from the Los Angeles Times editorial writers, a group that tends to be pretty little-c conservative, at least from my perspective: A war’s woeful results. An excerpt:

At least the president might score a debatable point in asserting that life in Iraq is far better without Saddam Hussein. But he’s the president of the United States and leader of the free world. So it’s fair to ask whether the war has made life better for this nation and its allies. In our assessment, it has not. Although ridding Iraq of weapons of mass destruction was the administration’s major selling point for the war, it is now clear that Hussein’s regime no longer possessed those weapons. And European allies, including Poland — which Bush on Friday used as a post-communist model of how Iraq could evolve — feel misled and more worried than ever about their security.

Hussein’s Iraq played no part in 9/11, even as the administration insisted that the war in Iraq was an inevitable consequence of the 9/11 attacks. Al Qaeda followers, perpetrators of the assault against the United States, were and still are more likely to be found within the borders of U.S. ally Pakistan than within the borders of Iraq. Islamic radicals were able to portray the war as an imperialist ploy of the U.S. and its reluctant followers, invading Iraq because it was a Muslim nation with a stand-up Hussein as leader. That propaganda, which the Bush administration helped mightily to feed through its hubris and miscalculations, has spawned a new generation of recruits for terror. Those recruits have joined Hussein’s followers to kill U.S. soldiers and Iraqis cooperating with the occupation forces. More than 570 U.S. troops have died in Iraq, along with soldiers from Britain, Spain, Italy and other nations. The war has killed thousands of Iraqis as well. Nations must retaliate for attacks like those on the World Trade Center and Pentagon and expect casualties in war. But the invasion and occupation of Iraq — a nation that did not pose an imminent threat — and the shameful underfunding of homeland security have not lessened U.S. vulnerability. The U.S. grows increasingly isolated from its allies, and that gives comfort and strength to its enemies.

Attention Bush supporters: You have a problem.

Here’s an interesting item from a few days ago: Why words matter. It compares Tony Blair and George Bush in terms of their respective justifications for the war on Iraq, a comparison that doesn’t reflect at all well on Bush.

(I can NOT believe we haven’t mentioned this story on lies.com before)

Armin Meiwes was found guilty of manslaughter in a German court this week, and sentenced to 8.5 years in prison. Armin recieved this sentance for castrating his victim, eating his flesh while the victim bleed to death, and then butchering and freezing his body to eat over the course of several months — all of which he recorded on video for later sexual gratification.

Now brace yourself — none of that is the bizarre part.

The bizarre part is that the victim was a willing participant in the whole experience — and even choose to eat some of his own flesh before dying. (I know, it sounds like i’m plagiarizing “Hannibal” but I’m not.) Like Meiwes, his victim “Bernd-Juergen Brandes” was a cannibalism fetishist, with a Hansel and Gretel obsession, who prepared a very detailed will, and sold most of his property before going to Meiwes’s house and asked to be eaten. The two met had met online, when Brandes responded Meiwes’s Internet chat room post: “Gay male seeks hunks 18-30 to slaughter.”

This all happened back in 1995. Meiwes wasn’t arrested until December of 2002 when police were tiped off by chat room users after Meiwes posted again, looking for another victim.

The German news organization “DW World” seems to have the most comprehensive coverage, so Here’s a breif timeline of their articles…

• Dec13, 2002: German Police Investigate Alleged Cannibal Murder
• Dec14, 2002: German Cannibal Victim’s Will Found
• Dec3, 2003: German Cannibal Trial Opens in Complexity
  
  (RealAudio interview with psychology professor)
• Jan16, 2004: Cannibal Victim Was Willing To Pay To Be Eaten
• Jan30, 2004: Cannibal Convicted of Manslaughter
  
  (RealVideo of reporter covering trial)

(That last video link includes a great straight faced delivery by the News anchor asking the reporter why legal experts are saying that this case is so “unique”).

I remember hearing about the US’s new Fingerprint & Photo rule for visitors with visas while I was in Australia earlier this year (not sure how much press it got here, it was *HUGE* overseas). And I remember hearing that Brazil had decided to reciprocate by requiring that any US citizen travelling to Brazil would have to do the same. But somehow I managged to miss seeing this story untill now….

An American Airlines pilot was detained/fined ~$13,000 for making an “internationally recognized obscene gesture while he was being photographed for identification.” Now admittedly, I wasn’t there … I don’t know what he said when the picture was taken, or what his overall demeaner was … but I don’t understand how they can possible justify arresting the guy based purely on the picture. I know lots of people who might hold up a piece of paper like that.

Oh, look: Yet another story claiming that 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta met with representatives of Saddam Hussein’s intelligence service in Prague shortly before the attacks. Greg Mitchell of Editor & Publisher doesn’t think much of it: When will press stop circulating dubious Iraq claims?

My apologies to loyal Lies.com readers for shirking my posting duties lately. Reader Steve D. has been keeping up a steady stream of interesting story suggestions; here’s one, with several more to follow. Thanks, Steve!

Anyway, from The Mirror: Bush and Blair: The big fall-out. Seems Tony Blair is getting annoyed at Uncle Sam’s puppeteer’s hand currently rammed up his backside, or something. The story is short on detail, but fun nevertheless.

As we approach the holiday season, people tend to reflect back on the 2003 and their accomplishments. What better time to take stock of some of this years accomplishments (and misshaps) of people even more disfunctional then yourself.

Kynn of Shock & Awe does a really nice job of pointing out some glaring hypocrisy from reigning überblogger Glenn Reynolds: Instapundit and Communist protesters. Everybody else is linking to him, so I thought I’d get my head in the trough.

This time of year, many people get into the spirt of giving, and donate food/money to programs that help feed the Homeless — particularly homeless children. Other people kiddnap them, tie them up in a sack, tell people they are a stray dog, and sell them to be used as food.

Happy Holidays!

Proving once again the he is a rare beacon of reason among his right-wing brethren, Daniel Drezner points out that really, the people of Iraq deserve a little slack if they choose to be less than enthusiastic about having been bombed, maimed, burned, killed, dispossessed, and otherwise liberated: Why James Lileks is flat-out wrong. (Warning: Academic using the F-word ahead.)

Here’s a fun little item from Counterpunch’s Gary Leupp: The matrix of ignorance. It features the following pop quiz:

Which of the following best indicates the relationship between Arabs and Muslims?

1. All Muslims are Arabs.
2. All Arabs are Muslims.
3. Most Muslims aren’t Arabs.
4. Most Muslims are Arabs.

In which Muslim countries do Christian churches and Jewish synagogues operate legally, as well as mosques?

1. Morocco, Egypt, Tunisia, Iraq.
2. Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Somalia.
3. Pakistan, Sudan, United Arab Emirates.
4. Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Afghanistan.

According to the U.S. government (which may or may not be accurate in its report), the nineteen 9-11 hijackers were of what nationalities?

1. 15 Saudis, 4 Iraqis.
2. 14 Iraqis, 3 Saudis, 2 Yemenis.
3. 15 Saudis, 1 Egyptian, 1 Lebanese, 2 from union of Arab Emirates.
4. 14 Iranians, 2 Afghans, 2 Lebanese, 1 Iraqi.

Scroll down, or follow the link below, or just see the whole Counterpunch article at the link above, for the answers. (Note me smirking smarmily at my 3-for-3. See? That Poli Sci degree and the obsessive news-junkie behavior was good for something.)
(more…)

This isn’t really news, but it provides a good summing up of a sad situation. From the New York Times: Foreign views of US darken since 9/11.

Fun item from The Onion: Relations break down between U.S. and Them. Thanks to badass Hiro for the link.

From Salon comes another story good enough to justify sitting through a commercial to get the one-day pass: Terror in the Saudi kingdom. It’s an interview with former CIA officer Bob Baer, who has a new book out called, “Sleeping With the Devil: How Washington Sold Our Soul for Saudi Crude.”

Interesting Q&A from the latest issue of Adbusters magazine: Early signs of fascism. Thanks to awesome link-suggesters Glen & Pilar for the link.

It appears that the U.S. is tentatively backing Mahmudali Chehregani, an exiled former PM from Azerbaijan, in Northern Iran, to be a catalyst in spreading the unrest within the country. The Azeri population is a large minority within Iran, and Chehregani is going to try to inspire this group, who has always been a bit cool toward Tehran, to join in the open protests of the Iranian leadership.

The main thing this unrest has been missing is a central figure who can consolidate various ethnic groups and classes into a relatively unified force. I have doubts that this person will be the one. First, he is a bit too closely tied to the US, which will make too many dissidents wary. Also, he has supported in the past, and apparently still advocates, a reunification of the Iranian region of Azerbaijan with the Republic of Azerbaijan, just across the border. This doesn’t seem to be a popular idea with the rest of the population in Iran. Chehregani also publicly promotes having a federation of “states” within Iran, of which the region of Azerbaijan would be one. But which option do Iranians feel he would actually pursue if he obtained power?

If nothing else he will serve to ratchet up the scale of unrest that will continue to ferment until a real voice of the people emerges.

Much ruckus being kicked up regarding the New York Times’ article, yesterday, that blew the whistle on the White House having so watered down the section on global warming in the EPA’s upcoming big-ass report on the state of the environment that it was eventually decided to just remove that section altogether: Report by the EPA leaves out data on climate change. Editorial/opinion pages are pretty universally taking up the call against such politicization of scientific findings. From Derrick Z. Jackson in the Boston Globe: Bush fries climate change. SunSpot: More revisionist history. And the NYT itself: Censorship on global warming.

It’s part of the same pattern that gave us sexed-up evidence of Iraqi WMDs. Bush & Co. have little use for expert opinion that doesn’t square with their political agenda. Yeah, I realize all politicians do the same thing to some degree, but with Bush it’s off the charts. And since simply pretending very, very hard that things are true that really aren’t, or aren’t true that really are, has a poor track-record in terms of actually changing reality, this becomes pretty scary for anyone who has to live with the consequences of the resulting decision-making.