I was listening to Randi Rhodes today. She’s not the worst radio host. Sometimes, she’s right on target (though her solution to every problem is almost always to vote for a Democrat). But she does try to employ logic and consistency to her arguments. Usually.

But today, she justified the war in Afghanistan citing several half-hearted reasons. One reason was downright comical.

Randi suggested that we invaded and occupied Afghanistan in order to train their army to repel foreign invaders.

So, Randi, we invaded Afghanistan to help keep them safe from invasions?

Really?

One of the Bay Area mystery writers I read tends to wear her political correctness on her sleeve, which when it comes to denouncing racial and homophobic bigotry is OK, if a little trite. But for some reason she concurrently disparages hippies, as though that type of bigotry is somehow acceptable.

Perhaps it is a symptom of her age, brought up during rather than after World War II, caught between the generation that fought the war against the Nazis and the generation that demonstrated against the war in Vietnam. A generation known more for its corporal compliance than for its quest for philosophical transformation.

Undoubtedly their limited understanding of transcendent relationships is due in part to their lack of entheogenic exploration, but this does not entirely explain their propensity to disparage what they do not understand; that, unfortunately, is a widespread symptom of the regularized rewards of superficial social status–what some would call the meritocracy of mediocrity.

In this informative article from New Zealand about American Indians buying back stolen lands, the only interviewee to make a misleading remark is a spokesman for the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Figures.

Conservatives AND Democrats are now calling for war against Yemen.
http://rawstory.com/2009/12/senator-lieberman-calls-attack-yemen/

This, because a Nigerian recently seemed to try to blow up an airplane heading to Detroit. That man supposedly had been to Yemen for al Qaida training.

No word on why we aren’t threatening Nigeria with an attack. Nor why we aren’t threatening Saudi Arabia with war as most of the 9-11 hijackers came from there.

With $2million in federal funds provided by Texas Governor Rick Perry’s criminal justice office, the Texas Border Sheriff’s Coalition (TBSC) operates a network of 21 surveillance cameras along the 1250-mile long (2000 km) border between Texas and Mexico.

Live video from these cameras is displayed around the clock on a website (Blueservo.net) that encourages people to sign up as “virtual deputies” to monitor and, as explained by website administrators, report “border crime” – not illegal immigration.

Armchair Vigilantes

Concerned with issues raised by this, Jay Stanley of the American Civil Liberties Union says (in an article on the BBC news website) that while it is “legitimate to protect the country’s border, we would be concerned that the cameras might encourage vigilantism. That people would think they saw an illegal immigrant and then jump in their truck with a gun.”

Ultimately, the idea is to spread armchair vigilantism across the United States to include virtual neighborhood watchers (in addition to its virtual deputies) in a network of local neighborhood watch groups set up — according to the website — “to protect their own homes, neighborhoods, and families from criminal acts.”

Chris Floyd examines the punitiveness of racism in America.