The Train of Thought Lounge: Tokyo Police Club

Hello all. Today's installment of The Train of Thought Lounge features a Canadian band called Tokyo Police Club, if that isn't too confusing. They sound somewhat like a cross between Bloc Party and The Decemberists, their songs mainly consisting of frenetic, two-and-a-half minute pop-powered energy bursts. I really was put on to this band, quite simply, because of its name. I thought it sounded cool. Luckily, out of a slew of indie bands with avant garde names (Feist, Spoon and Vampire Weekend come to mind), Tokyo Police Club live up to the anticipation with a refreshing sound.

Here they are live on the David Letterman Show performing "Nature Of The Experiment" off of 2006's "A Lesson In Crime" album. The band has subsequently released "Elephant Shell" in 2008.

Tokyo Police Club - Nature Of The Experiment

John McCain understands Colonialism

From an interview with Matt Bai (via Matt Yglesias):

as we talked, I tried to draw out of him some template for knowing when military intervention made sense — an answer, essentially, to the question that has plagued policy makers confronting international crises for the last 20 years. McCain has said that the invasion of Iraq was justified, even absent the weapons of mass destruction he believed were there, because of Hussein’s affront to basic human values. Why then, I asked McCain, shouldn’t we go into Zimbabwe, where, according to that morning’s paper, allies of the despotic president, Robert Mugabe, were rounding up his political opponents and preparing to subvert the results of the country’s recent national election? How about sending soldiers into Myanmar, formerly Burma, where Aung San Suu Kyi remained under house arrest by a military junta?

“I think in the case of Zimbabwe, it’s because of our history in Africa,” McCain said thoughtfully. “Not so much the United States but the Europeans, the colonialist history in Africa. The government of South Africa has obviously not been effective, to say the least, in trying to affect the situation in Zimbabwe, and one reason is that they don’t want to be tarred with the brush of modern colonialism. So that’s a problem I think we will continue to have on the continent of Africa. If you send in Western military forces, then you risk the backlash from the people, from the legacy that was left in Africa because of the era of colonialism.”

There's quite a few insane things about that statement. First off, does McCain not know that Iraq WAS in fact colonized, in addition to quite a few places other than Africa:

Second, and really strangely, it seems like he gets it for second with the "tarring with the brush of modern colonialism" line, but be can't seem to wrap his mind around how that completetly conflicts with his views on Iraq or his hawkish outlook on the rest of the world. Yglesias points out:

Actually, though, I think McCain's not alone here. Very few Americans (even American elites) seem to recognize that most of the "pro-American" regimes in the region -- all the monarchies, basically -- just are colonial regimes set up by the British imperial authorities. Eventually, the United States took over from Britain as the foreign underwriter of those regimes. But to understand U.S. policy in the region and how the U.S. is viewed, you need to understand that Jordan and the G.C.C. aren't just autocracies, they're autocratic creations of the British Empire and CENTCOM is seen as the successor to the Colonial Office. Meanwhile, the "anti-American" or "radical" regimes in Syria, Iran, and (formerly) Iraq all have their origins in rebellions against colonial regimes.

I definitely see Matt's point that the majority of Americans don't understand what our role was/is in the middle east, just because the discourse on our history as well as Europe's is completely sugar coated (to put it mildly). But then again, most Americans don't run campaigns claiming to be experts in foreign affairs. Ladies and Gentlemen, John McCain! Your 2008 Republican nominee for president of the United States!

Different era, same shit.

Vietnam, 1880:

Following the colonial conquest, the French symbolically took over the Hà Nội Citadel, destroying what few buildings were left and replacing them with military barracks and depots. It has remained an army base ever since, though at the time of going to press some of its outer sections are being opened up to the public.

In order to make the colonists feel more at home and at the same time to reflect its vision of imperial grandeur, the French colonial government set about systematically rebuilding the major Vietnamese cities according to European specifications. Central to French urbanist plans was the segregation of these cities into quartiers, based primarily on the ethnicity of residents. In marked contrast to the relative squalor of their neighbours in the quartiers indigènes, the inhabitants of the European quarters of Hà Nội and Sài Gòn were given wide boulevards lined with spacious residential villas.

Prior to 1920 many important public buildings were constructed in Parisian neo-classical style; the latter is best illustrated in Hà Nội by the architecture of St Joseph's Cathedral (1891), the Governor General's Palace (1906), the Palace and Office of the French Resident (1906), the High Court (1906), the Opera House (1911) and the Directorate des archives et bibliothèques (1917, now the National Library of Việt Nam); and in Sài Gòn by the Town Hall (1873, now the People's Committee Building), Notre Dame Cathedral (1880), the High Court (1885), the Vice-Governor's Palace (1890), the Central Post Office (1891) and the Opera House (1900).

Iraq, 2008:

Picture, if you will, a tree-lined plaza in Baghdad's International Village, flanked by fashion boutiques, swanky cafes, and shiny glass office towers. Nearby a golf course nestles agreeably, where a chip over the water to the final green is but a prelude to cocktails in the club house and a soothing massage in a luxury hotel, which would not look out of place in Sydney harbour. Then, as twilight falls, a pre-prandial stroll, perhaps, amid the cool of the Tigris Riverfront Park, where the peace is broken only by the soulful cries of egrets fishing.

Improbable though it all may seem, this is how some imaginative types in the US military are envisaging the future of Baghdad's Green Zone, the much-pummelled redoubt of the Iraqi capital where a bunker shot has until now had very different connotations.A $5bn (£2.5bn) tourism and development scheme for the Green Zone being hatched by the Pentagon and an international investment consortium would give the heavily fortified area on the banks of the Tigris a "dream" makeover that will become a magnet for Iraqis, tourists, business people and investors. About half of the area is now occupied by coalition forces, the US state department or private foreign companies

....

One Los Angeles-based firm, C3, has said it wants to build an amusement park on the Green Zone's outskirts. As part of the first phase, a skateboard park is due to open this summer.

American officials stress that final decisions about reconstruction and development rest with the Iraqi government. Karnowski added that as well as the benefits of renovating and demilitarizing an important area of Baghdad, the blueprint would help to create a "zone of influence" around the massive new US Embassy compound being built on the eastern tip of the Green Zone. The $1bn project to move the embassy from Saddam's old presidential palace is planned for completion later this year."When you have $1bn hanging out there and 1,000 employees lying around, you kind of want to know who your neighbours are. You want to influence what happens in your neighbourhood over time," Karnowski told Associated Press.

For many Baghdad residents, the Green Zone has been a no-go area for years, first under Saddam and now under the occupation. "What do I care?" shrugged one, Ahmed Hussein. "I don't have electricity, I don't have fresh water and I don't have a job."

Call me a dork, but few things piss me off more than people using words like fascism, socialism, empire etc. without having any idea about what they actually mean.

We are an imperial power, and as we have shown in Iraq, we are an imperial nation where the colonial mentality is still very much alive in our words and actions. It's not a pleasant truth to look at ourselves in that light, but M.O.P. would say: "DEAL WITH IT MOTHER FUCKER!!!"

And while this isn't a new idea (Most recently the best case was made by Chalmers Johnson), it is important to keep in mind in order to not lose perspective of our actions in the world, and equally important, how we are seen by the rest of the world.

www.thetrainofthought.com

As you can see at the top of the page, we have a new address, www.thetrainofthought.com.

It was insanely cheap and easy to do, so when I had the chance I figured why not.

You can change your bookmarks if you want, although the old address should still forward you to the new url. Blogger says the transition between the sites should take a few days, so if there are any fuck ups, hopefully they will be fixed by next week once the switch is finished.

Functionality or design wise, having our own url doesn't really change anything. It just makes the site seem a bit more professional ballin', thats all.

This can't be a good sign

From the DC Sports Bog this morning, news has broken that longtime sports columnist Tony Kornheiser has taken a buyout from the Washington Post, where he was an employee for nearly 30 years.

"All I ever wanted to be was a newspaper writer," he said, which is likely not something that anyone under the age of 30 will ever say again. "This other stuff is great, but I don't care about it," he continued. "In my mind that's what it says on the headstone, it says 'newspaper guy.' "

(via the Bog).

Hey, wait a minute... I'm under the age of 30! What does this mean for my upcoming degree in print journalism? Should I flush it down the toilet?

You see, up to this point my plan was to follow in the footsteps of guys like Kornheiser and Michael Wilbon and write about sports for a living at a reputable newspaper (maybe even a world-renowned paper like the Washington Post). Then, if I became any good, I could become a columnist (like those guys), become rich and famous, live happily ever after and all that jazz.

Clearly though, this is an odd time to become a journalist, what with the declining revenues and increase in people looking to the internet or television to get their news. The largely-held belief that newspapers will be entirely digital in the future is hard to argue against, but 15-20 years ago not a single aspect of any paper was online. About 25 years ago, there was no internet, at least not in the way it exists today. My question is what will become of the internet 25 years from now? Theoretically, there could be some whole other system in place that is completely unforeseen.

So I'm not so sure about this notion that newspapers will no longer exist in a physical form at some point in the future. What exactly it will consist of, though, is anybody's guess.

As for Kornheiser, I've never agreed with everything he's had to say but I always had enormous respect for him. It's not the job of a sports columnist, or any columnist for that matter, to always go along with the popular opinion. You are entitled (and paid) to say whatever the fuck you want, within reason. The reason I've always respected Kornheiser and Wilbon is that they brought their own opinions to the table, passionately defended them and never tried to run from them if they turned out to be completely wrong. It's no coincidence that the two went on to host "Pardon The Interruption" on ESPN; they are two of the best in the business. As other shows like "Around The Horn" later proved, most sports columnists are unbelievable idiots.

Kornheiser will still host his radio show, as well as PTI and will be in the booth for Monday Night Football. Plus, you could see him being fazed out from the Post for the past couple of years, really. With that being said, farewell to one of my biggest sportswriting influences.

Progress Marches On in Myanmar (or “Burma, it’s an industry term”)

Go ahead and picture this if you will: Rule by military junta. An oppressed democracy movement. A Nobel Peace Prize winner under house arrest. Peaceful demonstrations by monks cut short by gunfire. A disastrous cyclone followed by a government response so skilled it makes the Hurricane Katrina assistance from FEMA look positively amateurish.

Yes, there’s only one place that fits all of these criteria: Burma! Technically all I really had to type was the one about house arrest, as Burma is currently the only country in the world to have taken the bold move of imprisoning a Nobel Peace Prize winner. Still, it does feel good to have all of accomplishments of the Burmese government listed in one paragraph.

The last time we heard about Burma in the news was when the junta put an end to what some refer to as the Saffron Revolution. Those of us who have been raised in the decadent West have no idea what it must be like to live in a country with so many Buddhist monks running around, peacefully agitating for human rights and democracy- what unspeakable horror! Fortunately the junta was able to take a few cues from its friends in Beijing, and quickly restored law and order and harsh merciless oppression to the land.

I know that I’m personally pretty glad that the United States, United Nations, European Union, ASEAN, and pretty much every other potential force for good in the world were happy to sit that one out. One factor partially explaining why the U.S. didn’t do anything may be the efforts of one Doug Goodyear, who was until quite recently the coordinator for the 2008 Republican National Convention. Turns out his lobbying firm had accepted a contract from the junta, to try and improve relations between DC and the Burmese government!

With this deal exposed and Myanmar likely not getting its moneys worth, I’ve taken it upon myself to provide a few potential slogans for use on posters, flyers, t-shirts, and blinking flashing moving pop-up ads:

• Aung San Suu Kyi rocks the house! (with a picture of the house she’s been confined to for 18 or so years)
  
• Myanmar: More than just dead monks! (probably don’t want a picture for this one)
• Military Junta? More like FUN-ta! (attempt the impossible task of procuring a picture of any Burmese citizen having fun)

Today the news is again filled with images of the Burmese regime doing what it does best. Food only somewhat extremely past its prime is being distributed to survivors. The military, with little else to do while the people of Burma struggle to survive, has taken to hassling the monks again. A good thing, too, because the monks were close to overshadowing the official government response, despite having practically no resources. Outside help has been largely rejected by the government. Yes, progress truly marches on in Burma.

Odds and Ends

A few reads:

• As the horrific death toll continues to climb in Burma, an deadly earthquake kills an estimated 10,000 in China.

• Potentially more Labor/Environmental partnerships in the future? Let's hope so.

• Hillary Clinton is 20 Million dollars in debt. Hilarious. Not being able to manage a campaign without resorting to lending yourself millions, and yet still finding yourself in massive debt. Now that's someone who should be running a country!

• A really stupid diary getting Rec'd on dailykos, leads to a common sense response from Chris Bowers:

While the Daily Kos diary in question is specifically arguing that the Cooper plan was great (although that is implied), it does take as its main point that health care reform failed in 1993-1994 because Democrats, specifically Hillary Clinton, weren't nice enough to conservatives. If only Hillary Clinton had been nicer to conservatives, then we could have had great health care plans like Jim Cooper's. Hell, Jim Cooper himself says so. And look, David Brooks agrees, so it much be right.
This is a very disturbing argument. The moment when dislike of Hillary Clinton is combined with calls for Democrats to compromise in the manner of Jim Cooper, and it is all justified by citing David Brooks, is a moment when I really fear for the internal logic of some Barack Obama support.

Jim Cooper=Bad. Check out the rest of the post for the full story and background.

• Paul Krugman once again lets his feud with Obama get the better of his judgment:

Discussions of how and why Mr. Obama’s support narrowed over time have a Rashomon-like quality: different observers see very different truths. But at this point it doesn’t matter whose fault it was. What does matter is that Mr. Obama appears to have won the nomination with a deep but narrow base consisting of African-Americans and highly educated whites. And now he needs to bring Democrats who opposed him back into the fold.

I've defended Krugman before during the primary because he was right in his policy criticism of Obama, and instead of responding to the criticisms, Obama's team put out a factually inaccurate hit piece on him. Here he moves away from issue based critiques, and on to utter bullshit. One Drop from Too Sense has a great response:

Not to get all racial up in here, but have any of you noticed how quickly white folks start talking about "it doesn't matter whose fault it was" . . . when the responsible party is white? You hear the same kind of rhetoric whenever the uncomfortable topic of race comes up, "Let's not go pointing fingers now," or "Playing the blame game isn't going to help anyone." Those statements, and similar ones, are really just euphemisms to avoid saying "Now, let's not go blaming white people for anything!"

In Krugman's case, I can't say that he's trying to deflect blame away from white people in general. He's definitely trying to deflect blame from Hillary and her campaign, though. If Krugman had any plausible way to put the entire blame for the recent racialization of the Democratic primaries on Obama, "It doesn't matter whose fault it was" is the last sentence he would have written.

So who is responsible for the increase in racial tension? Well, did Obama go on tour in front of exclusively black audiences and tell them that Clinton does not care about "people like you?" Has Obama ever gone before a black audience and told them that Hillary, the white candidate, was making fun of them for supporting him? Has Obama ever referred to "hard working Americans, black Americans" or stated that Clinton has no support among black voters?

No?

Okay, next question: Has Clinton done the reverse?

Few things piss me off more than a whitewashing (no pun intended) an event and pretending there was equal blame to go around. It's always important to understand who is to blame for what and why, for the simple reason of not repeating your mistakes or trusting people who should not be trusted or listened to.

And just for the record, the first paragraph of One Drop's response is also describes what's wrong with the current discussion of colonialism. "Look, it's not about assessing blame, its about what we can do now" is the most common response from European powers when it comes to issues of the developing world. Ok, it's about right now, but how the hell can you understand what's going on now if you don't acknowledge how we got there, who got us here and why?

On another note, it'll be fun to see how Hillary Clinton responds tonight after a win in West Virginia. Her speeches have really been comedy gold recently, with all her talking of "winning" and "being the nominee". It's a level of delusion that would be hard to keep up, and it'll be interesting to see how she plays it. Interesting enough to watch during one or two commercial breaks of the Spurs-Hornets game.
Maybe.
If it's a blowout.