Must-read

I've already linked this post at Twitter and I'm going to recommend it here too because it's absolutely right on. Please read it, from Echidne of the Snakes.

By “we” I mean us, the ones who are supposed to really own the United States and its government. That our government puts our needs behind the insatiable greed of the economic elite is the clearest of all signs that our legal and governmental system is entirely gone awry. That our clearest needs and our ability to force our government to address those needs are constantly undermined by the mass media is the fact that they are the servants of that economic elite. The judiciary and legal orthodoxy which enforces a system that protects both a lying, propagandistic media and the direct theft of our money is another basic aspect of the ruin of our country and our lives.

This is such an amazing, killer post that points out exactly what's wrong right now. It's much longer, so please click through and read.

Shameless Self-promotion blogging: The Economic Crisis as Security Concern

Another piece of mine went up at Global Comment this weekend.

Those “Oh my god, the Bush era is over” moments are getting fewer and farther between now as the Obama administration settles in.

The easy-to-accomplish changes have happened, and now the hard work has set in. Congress fought bitterly over the economic stimulus plan, and a second nominee for the Commerce department has dropped out before confirmation hearings.

But in the car Friday morning, I had one of those moments where I pounded the steering wheel and cheered for the voice on the radio again.

The voice this time belonged to the new director of national intelligence, retired four-star admiral Dennis Blair. And what he said was, “The primary near-term security concern of the United States is the global economic crisis and its geopolitical implications.”

The director of intelligence, the person in charge of keeping the United States safe from external threats, said that the economy is the biggest security concern.

read on.

Also, my partner in crime Matt has a great piece up there about Avigdor Lieberman and the Israeli election.

I don't want to make this all self-promotion

I'm still recovering from driving home for the holidays, and am drowning a bit in things I need to get done, but I have a few things up at other places that I wanted to cross-post here in case anyone was interested.

My piece on Gaza, at GlobalComment, which took me far too long and far too much agonizing to write.

I’m an American Jew, and when I state that fact, I invite a wealth of assumptions, not all of them anti-Semitic in nature. Renee Martin recently addressed the conflation of criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism, so I don’t have to (though I would like to note that Modern Mitzvot has a very good point too).

Daniele Archibugi pointed out that upcoming elections in Israel and Palestine most likely have something to do with the timing and force of the Israeli attack. But being in the U.S., I have to see it through the lens of the election we just had, here, and one of the Republican party’s favorite anti-Obama attacks.

And on a slightly lighter note, I've found the definitive piece of Bush-era fiction, and it's a comic.

I picked up DMZ #1 way back in 2005 and reviewed it for Best Shots (wow, I’ve been doing this way too long). Since then, I’ve read and dropped many other monthly comics, but DMZ has stayed on my pull list. I’ve given it as a gift, made my professors read it, and flogged it mercilessly on this very site.

But aside from being an excellent story, it’s a story that at its core is about all the major questions of the Bush era.

DMZ picks all of us up and drops us into the middle of a war zone. But Brian Wood and Riccardo Burchielli (and some excellent guest artists) transfer that war back home, to a place we all know. New York City is the most familiar landscape in America even to people who haven’t been there, and it was the central point of the crises we’ve dealt with in the last eight years...

DMZ holds us all responsible for the failures of our government under Bush. No one gets a free pass. Each time you think you know who Wood is pointing the finger at, you find it twisting around to point squarely back at you.

I promise to write something for you guys soon. I miss you.