Motley Moose – Archive

A hard if not impossible act to follow, I’ve struggled to find anything further to say on US politics which hasn’t been expressed in comments to and from Chris in his recent ‘Sell Me’ diary.

So forgive this oblique and perverse turn to the personal, as I turn my fire to the Month of August which, in recent memory, has always been the worst month of the year.

I don’t know why that is. I always look forward to August as a sun-baked time of relaxation away from home or – if staying at home – a sneaky enjoyment of the absence of others and the emptiness of the roads and transport system.

But for all its promise, August has always let me down…

The rise of Islamophobia across Europe in recent years has filled me with a kind a foreboding I haven’t felt since the early 90s and the Nationalism in Former Yugoslavia. So I salute your President for taking on Palin, the TeaPartyers and Islamophobes over the Mosque Prayer Room in Downtown Manhattan as he celebrated the beginning of Ramadan at the White House last night.

Tony Judt, Professor of History at NYU, historian, thinker, teacher and polemicist, died surrounded by his family in his Manhattan Apartment yesterday afternoon, having struggled for two long years with Lou Gehrig’s disease.

I’ve written about Tony before, and here’s a picture of us both (me on the right, Tony in the middle, and Polish producer and activist Krzysztof Czyzewski on the left) from happier days in Oxford three years ago.

Though not unexpected, this is a personal loss for me, because Tony was both friend and mentor (as another friend has written “severe and kind”). I’d recently interviewed him for Prospective Magazine, and written an appraisal of his heroic stand on European history, Identity Politics, Israel, Iraq, and the corruptions of Marxism and the future of the left, published only this month….

Wake up, Moose! Come on. Stop sleeping. Summer’s lease hath all too short a date. It’ll be the mid terms soon. Time to shake that shaggy ass and get up off those dusty haunches. You’ll be needed come November. Just leave that grass alone (not mentioning anyone by name) and get up onto your hoofs!

Where are they now? Ou sont les neiges d’antan? Where are the snows of yesterday? Bushy Blasky and Prickly Allen? Where battling feminists JJC and Michelle? Where imagistic Kysen and empathetic Sricki? Where hot-hob Hubie and down-under Shaun? Where Gadfly and Btchakir and all my friends beside?

Ou sont les neiges d’antan?

OK. I get it. You’re tired. You’re bushwhacked. You fought to elect a democratic president and congress… and waddya get? Trouble. Compromise. Legislation. Grey zones. More legislation. Imperfection. Sell outs. Corporatists. Pragmatists. Idealists on a stick. In other words.. Politics.

To use more ponsy French: plus ca change.

But how to goad the somnolent beast out its slumber? What woke it up before? What made the Moose strut, run, and use its horns like a Spanish bull in frenzy?

Hmmm. I know. I remember the most commented diaries. So here we go. This has got everything that gets you going my Moosey Friends. Feminism. Palin. Sexism. Liberalism. And even a bit of I/P in the mix like a Tequila slammer with nitro, triple sec and glycerine.

Follow me below the fold if you dare.  

Many of you remember the true story of Exodus, turned into a compelling piece of fiction by Leon Uris, and great film by Otto Preminger. If any single story helped to solidify a positive pioneer image of Israel in the American mind, it was probably this.

The ship sailed with 4,515 passengers (mainly Holocaust survivors – PJ) from the port of miggets Sète, France, a fishing town near Montpellier on July 11, 1947, and arrived at Palestine shores on July 18. The British Royal Navy cruiser Ajax and a convoy of destroyers trailed the ship from very early in its voyage, and finally boarded it some 20 nautical miles (40 km) from shore. The boarding was challenged by the passengers (the ship was in international waters where the Royal Navy had no jurisdiction), and so the British soldiers used force. Three shipmates, including 1st mate William Bernstein, a U.S. sailor from San Francisco, died as a result of bludgeoning and several dozen others were injured before the ship was taken over

It was unusually sunny this morning at the Central London polling station when I voted in the UK General Election. If the steady stream of voters I saw is anything to go by, turnout looks to be high – up to 70 per cent from the 60 per cent turnout in 2005. There are many reasons for this… and not of a few of them connected to Obama’s campaign in 2008, which not only re-energised my interest in politics (and the left wing blogosphere) but captivated the country.

But the kind of change the British General Election has ushered isn’t that obvious, as can be seen from thee front page the Murdoch-owned best-selling conservative leaning Tabloid this morning.

Yes, you got it. The people who supported John McCain, the company that brings you the 24 hour asinine right wing ass-hattery of  FOX TV, have the temerity to use the Obama Change image as their crucial headline.

‘It was the Sun Wot Won it’ was the famous refrain after the tabloid claimed it swayed the last close election – in 1992 – for the Tories. Recently, the Political Editor of The Sun told some journalists recently that his job was ‘to win the fucking election for David Cameron’ (one of his predecessors on the Sunday Murdoch Tabloid is none other than the Conservative Campaign Honcho). There are several transparent  financial interests that the Murdoch Empire has in a Conservative election victory in the UK, as the spoofters have already spotted..

More of these to be found here. But the bigger question is – how can a Conservative candidate be an avatar of change? And what kind of change is the UK looking for?

We’re a couple of months away from a General Election in the UK, and though we’ve tried to emulate the successes of the US political blogosphere, we’re a few steps behind as I pointed out in a diary last year -. Two recent events (the second happened today) serve to illustrate why.

The first is a humorous story about Conservative Party’s attempts to muster up smear website called Cash Gordon, using a US company that has run sites against HCR and Gays in the military. The site is almost identical to NoEnergyTax.com the Heritage Foundation’s vehicle designed to scupper carbon trading legislation designed to combat climate change….

So far, so familiar to my friends in US Blogistan…

 

Words Fail me. This is someone who’s internalised all those great speeches and great thoughts, and then says the right thing at exactly the right moment…learned not by teleprompter, but by heart

But he didn’t do it alone: great footage here of Nancy Pelosi pissing off Teabaggers, marching arm in arm, Selma like, with John Lewis, and wielding a mighty scary weapon – the gavel

A transcript of the whole amazing extempore speech after the flip

In what Israel’s ambassador to the United States has called “the most severe crisis in U.S.-Israeli relations” in decades, George Mitchell has indefinitely postponed a planned trip to the Middle East.

At the same time hundreds of Palestinians rioted in East Jerusalem today, hurling rocks at security forces who countered with stun grenades and rubber bullets. Tensions were fuelled by the reopening of landmarked synagogue in Jerusalem’s old city and construction projects near the al Aqsa mosque compound.  

Tomorrow is the anniversary of the original Iranian revolution, and our friend Kamin Mohammadi has a message for the Moose