The Chess Players (1977)

The Oscar success of Slumdog Millionaire--IMHO, a manipulative phony British exploitation film about boarding school sadism pretending to be Indian--reminded me to write about Satayajit Ray's 1977 classic, The Chess Players (Shatranj Ke Khilari). It is a parable of British Imperialism and Indian weakness in the year before the Siege of Lucknow became the Mutiny that drove the British East India Company out. Sanjeev Kumar and Saeed Jaffrey co-star as two chess-playing Indian notables, Mir and Mirza, who try to escape from reality through a game of strategy. Meanwhile, the British East India Company man, played by Richard Attenborough (director of Ghandi), plots a regime change in Lucknow--overthrowing a loyal but ineffectual king, Wazid Ali Shah, apparently just because he could. The film is set in the year is 1856. Indian viewers would have known that on July 11th, 1857, the Indian sepoys at Lucknow mutineed, turning on the British. The chess game went on, and on, and goes on still today...

For a genuine Indian film, it's The Chess Players over Slumdog every time....

The Iraq War Is Over

I've seen this movie before, when President Nixon began troop withdrawals from Vietnam. It doesn't end prettily, IMHO. On the other hand, no one has come up with a better idea, so it may be inevitable. Defeat in Vietnam led to a collapsed American economy that didn't recover until Ronald Reagan decided to win the Cold War. I believe the economy is linked to the war. When America is losing wars, our economy suffers. When we won the Cold War, the economy benefitted.

So, if Obama reprises the Nixon and Carter eras, it's going to be a long four years. He might get away with losing Iraq if he really wins Afghanistan...but if America is driven out of Kabul in disgrace, IMHO it means a Republican landslide in 2010, and a Republican in the White House in 2012.

A Russian View of America's Financial Crisis

Sergei Karaganov's "The World Crisis – A Time for Creation" reads a bit like it might have been penned by Henry Kissinger, IMHO:

AND HERE COMES THE CRISIS
Back in late August it seemed that the political semi-farcical Cold War – unleashed by the United States and its allies and clients in Eastern Europe and in Britain and which many Old Europeans met with caution but also with sympathy – would be the main political trend for the next two to three years.

But then the global financial crisis broke out, which is now being followed by a global economic crisis. I think the United States and the Old West will now have other things on their minds than conducting a Cold War.

The acute crisis has forced countries to start correcting the entire system of global economic governance. The United States and its ideas of the superiority of liberal capitalism and the limited role of the state in the economy have been dealt a severe blow. Faced with a possible severe depression, comparable to the crisis of the late 1920s-1930s, Washington has decided to nationalize failed system-forming financial companies and banks and to invest hundreds of billions of dollars in the economy. This policy is directly opposite to the Washington Consensus ideology, which was so confidently imposed in recent decades on other countries, including Russia. True liberals should have let bankrupt enterprises and the bankrupt policy fail completely and should have made room for the sprouts of a new economy. The U.S. has been followed by other countries in resorting to “socialist” methods to save failed companies and banks.

Reasonable apprehensions have already been expressed that the retreat from the former ideology of super-liberalism may go too far toward an increased state interference and may make the Western economy even less competitive. (I wish these warnings were first heeded by Russia, which is successfully destroying its competitiveness by quasi-socialist and reckless increases of labor costs and by the massive interference of corrupt state capitalism.)

Meanwhile, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and even the financial G7 remain silent, although the crisis had been ripening for quite some time. Only Europeans are trying to act jointly, albeit inconsistently and with unknown results.

CONCLUSIONS FOR ALL AND FOR RUSSIA

It is clear that the global crisis is only beginning and will affect everyone. But it is not clear how and when all countries will jointly start overcoming it.

But we should already sum up the preliminary results of the recent developments.

The period from August to October 2008 will likely go down in history as the start of the fourth stage in the world’s development over the past century, which began – really, not according to the calendar – in August 1914, closing the door on the splendid 19th century and ushering in the savage and revolutionary 20th century. Actually, the 21st century is beginning right now. (This idea is not mine, but that of Thierry de Montbrial, the founder of the Evian Forum and an outstanding French political thinker.)

This crisis and this new period in world history threaten to inflict inevitable hardships on billions of people, including Russians. Coupled with the aforementioned rapid geopolitical changes, with the collapse of the former system of international law and security systems, and with attempts by the weakening “elders” to stop the redistribution of forces not in their favor, this period may bring a dramatic destabilization of the international situation and an increased risk of conflicts. I would have dared to describe it as a pre-war situation and compare it with August 1914, but for one factor: huge arsenals of nuclear weapons remain, along with their deterrent factor, which makes politicians more civilized. Yet one must keep in mind the objective growth of military danger anyway.

The world economic crisis will fix the new redistribution of forces. But it can also change its speed. When the U.S. overcomes the crisis, it will end up with even less moral and political capital. I do not think that Barack Obama, now viewed as a ray of hope for America, would be able to quickly restore this capital as president. Quite possibly, the crisis will inflict even more economic damage on new industrial giants, especially at first. External markets, on which their growth largely depends, will shrink. The super-fat years will come to an end for oil producing countries, as well, including Russia, which has proved reluctant or unable to switch to a new economy and renovate its infrastructure.

The matter at hand is not just a deep financial and economic crisis. This is an overall crisis of the entire system of global governance; a crisis of ideas on which global development was based; and a crisis of international institutions.

Overcoming this overall crisis will require a new round of reforms, the construction of international institutions and systems for governing the world economy and finance, and a new philosophy for global development.

This crisis will clear out what has been artificially preserved or not reformed since the end of the Cold War. A new global governance system will have to be built on the ruins of the old one.

The time will come for creation.

When this overall crisis is over, its relative beneficiaries will include not only countries that will have been less affected by it, but also those that will have seized the initiative in building a new world order and new institutions. They will have to correspond to the emerging balance of forces and effectively respond to new challenges.

One must be morally and politically ready for that period of creation, and already now, despite the crisis, one must start building up one’s intellectual potential so that in a year or several years one could be ready to put forward one’s own, well-grounded proposals for rebuilding the international governance system on a more just and stable basis.

Russia has so far proposed a very modest plan for rebuilding the European security system and supported, at last, the idea to establish a new Concert of Nations as an association of not seven to eight old countries, but 14 to 20 of the most powerful and responsible states capable of assuming responsibility for global governance.

We need to go further and start thinking about the future already now – however difficult this might be during a crisis.

I would propose for discussion some principles for building the future system:

– Not boundless and irresponsible liberalism, but support for free trade and a liberal economic order coupled with basically stricter international regulation.
– Joint elaboration and coordination of policies by the most powerful and responsible countries, rather than attempts to establish hegemony by one country, or a struggle of all against all.
– Collective efforts to fill the security vacuum, rather than create new dividing lines and sources of conflict.
– Joint solution of energy problems, rather than artificial politicization of the energy security problem.
– Renunciation of the recognition of a nation’s right to self-determination up to secession if this is done by force. (The wave of fragmenting countries, which began in the 1950s and which received a fresh impetus with the recognition of the independence of Kosovo, South Ossetia and Abkhazia, must be stopped.)
– Russia and the European Union must strive not for a strategic partnership in their relations, but for a strategic alliance.
– The goal of development must be progress, not democracy. Democracy is a consequence and an instrument of progress.

Surely, many of the proposed principles will be objected to and rejected. But the habitual politically correct cliches will not help to improve the situation and build a new world. Meanwhile, the time is coming for creation.

John LeBoutillier on Obama's Speech to Congress

From Boot's Blasts:

• Our new President is a nice guy. The more he loosens up and relaxes himself - and smiles that huge and friendly and sincere smile - the more time he buys himself to cope with these cascading fiscal and banking problems;

• Because he fought for the Stimulus Plan and the Republicans did not join him, the economy now becomes Obama’s sooner than if the GOP was a part of it. In other words, Obama took ownership once his own prescription and protocols were implemented; blaming G.W. Bush won’t last much past this year.

• That is not to say that the Republicans escape the consequences of the ongoing financial meltdown; in fact, they have the blame painted all over them. And this taint will last for years to come.

• The GOP brand has lost its one-time luster as the party better able to cope with fiscal and national security matters. It will take years to get that special mantle back - if we can ever get it back.

• The Obama Administration is going to have more trouble with their fellow Democrats up on the Hill than they are with the Republicans. Yes, that is true. The GOP is - for the next 2 years anyway - almost completely inconsequential; but the leftist Democrats are feeling their oats and will soon want to move ever farther to the Left than Obama.

• Thus a new tension will soon arise - between these long-time House and Senate bulls who have been waiting for years to have un-checked power - and the Obama Administration which will soon realize their agenda is too much, too soon.

• Barack Obama is spending all his political capital now; he is speaking and travelling at a furious rate for a new president. Indeed, he does risk wearing out his welcome and suffering overexposure. At some point the public gets sick of the same speech over and over again and they begin to tune it out.

• Already the polling shows his numbers among Republicans falling quickly (to be expected) and among Independents to be slightly eroding (somewhat worrisome for Team Obama). And the markets tank after every big speech he makes!

• After a month it is clear that Obama fancies himself as the Salesman-in-Chief - much more than a hands-on administrator who is on top of everything in the Executive Branch. We have already seen break-downs in this model in the Daschle, Richardson and Geithner vetting procedures and the lard inside the Stimulus Bill, which Obama should have written instead of having Nancy Pelosi do it.

• Everything - EVERYTHING - for the Obama Administration depends on solving the ongoing banking problem.
• It is startling that so far neither Obama nor Geithner has come up with a bold, innovative plan to fix this mess and get people feeling better about it.

• Nor has the GOP offered up anything but Nays.

• Why not this simple, bold plan: the US Government - acting as a surgeon operating on a deteriorating patient - goes to the heart of the problem: the toxic, cancerous tumors in each bank - these securitized (bad) mortgages - and cuts them out of the patients’ balance sheets. All these cancerous tumors are gathered up into one federal bank - in the model of the S&L mess of 20 years ago - and held there until their value increases.

• Presto, the banks’ balance sheets are free and clear of the debts that were inhibiting lending - (their MRIs are suddenly clean of cancer now!)

• The Federal Government holds these toxic assets for as long as it takes for the housing market to recover - which it will because there will be pent-up demand for housing in the long run. We are a growing, now-over-300 million people population - and the demand for housing will eventually drive home values up again - although maybe not back to where they have been.

• We need a bold plan like this. Instead, Team Obama is following Team Bush’s approach - and it isn’t working.

Obama's Speech & Budget Plans: Another Double

This photo on the White House website makes it look like the President is praying for something to turn up...

President Obama's Tuesday night address to the Joint Session of Congress, like his first press conference, was a solid double. He didn't strike out, he got on base, but he didn't hit the ball out of the park. He wasn't Reaganesque, or even Clintonesque...he was Obamaesque. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but not quite a good thing, either.

Basically, Obama read a laundry list of government programs and promises. I liked that he said he would end no-bid contracts and stop torture, but didn't like that he didn't say he would get our money back from the no-bid contractors and demand punishment for the torturers. The problem is that while talked about holding people accountable in the future, he stayed away from holding anyone to account for creating the mess we are in now. IMHO, that's a significant problem.

Obama needs to say, not "Tell it to Joe!" but "Disgorge your ill-gotten gains!" and "Pay for your crimes!" Maybe if the perpetrators are truly contrite he could pardon them--but first, at least they need to show some remorse...for the sake of rebuilding confidence, they can't be allowed to keep laughing after they have gone to the bank with the loot--or gotten away with murder.

Why would anyone give a dime to people who haven't gone after the people who have stolen literally billions of dollars? What is needed is not bipartisanship, rather what is needed is a good house-cleaning. He might begin by ordering the SEC to re-open at once every single securities investigation closed or dropped without resolution during the Bush administration.

Unfortunately, the President talks about the need to restore confidence yet appointed a Treasury Secretary who does not, and IMHO cannot. No wonder the market continued to fall after Obama's speech. Last night's TV interview with Jim Lehrer made Geithner look like a complete dope...if it had been a job interview, Geither would have quickly heard, "Next!" The Treasury secretary couldn't give a straight answer to a single question, plus he had a supercilious smirk on his face, like he was pleased to be pulling one over on Jim Lehrer. If Obama is serious about restoring confidence, Geithner might want to decide the what he really wants to do is spend more time with his family, asap. The administration needs someone who personally inspires confidence, who has real achievements and a reputation for honesty--not a tax cheat who sounds like a C student squeaking by in an oral exam. Someone with gravitas like Paul Volcker.

Finally, Obama did not paint a "big picture" in his speech. He can't inspire without one. All the ditches and bridges and teachers and firemen and computerized medical records and tax credits in the world won't make up for it. At this point "Yes, we can" is not good enough. We already did...he's the President. Now, Obama needs some specific mission for the nation. JFK rallied America around a Mission to the Moon; Ronald Reagan, the High Frontier and Winning the Cold War; Bill Clinton, a Bridge to the 21st Century. Each stimulated the economy...the Space Race led to the communications satellites and fiber optics that made the computer age possible, as well as deterring the USSR; the defeat of the USSR led to a new birth of freedom and economic growth around the country and the world; and Clinton's high-tech revolution and commercialization of the internet (yes, spearheaded by Al Gore) created opportunities for technologies such as Google and Blogger and Twitter and iPhones and all the rest. Digging ditches and volunteering in soup kitchens and windmills isn't going to cut it, I'm afraid.

One acquaintance noted that Obama didn't even mention the space program in his talk. Yet at this moment, we are faced with challenges as great as Sputnik from China's moon shot, India's moon shot, and Iran's satellite launch. Even if these countries don't use the new technology to attack the US directly, they certainly are set up to challenge American satellite and IT dominance in war as well as peace. IMHO, Obama needs to look up into the heavens, inspiring us to reach for the stars--in addition to promoting "shovel ready" construction projects here on earth.

Unsuccessful Presidents, such as Bush 41 & 43, Gerald Ford, and Jimmy Carter, have asked us to lower our expectations preying on our fears. Successful Presidents such as JFK, Reagan, and Clinton, have led us into a brighter future, inspired by our hopes. If he wants a second term, Obama needs to give us some really big picture hopes, that create jobs and stimulate new dreams.

In the meantime, here's a link to Recovery.gov, official website of the stimulus package. And here's a link to an ACLU petition demanding that President Obama open Guantanamo Bay prison to independent public inspection.

Mary Eberstadt: Is Food the New Sex?

George Will discussed this article from Policy Review in his column today. Her conclusion:

THE MINDLESS SHIFT
When Friedrich Nietzsche wrote longingly of the “transvaluation of all values,” he meant the hoped-for restoration of sexuality to its proper place as a celebrated, morally neutral life force. He could not possibly have foreseen our world: one in which sex would indeed become “morally neutral” in the eyes of a great many people — even as food would come to replace it as source of moral authority.4

Nevertheless, events have proven Nietzsche wrong about his wider hope that men and women of the future would simply enjoy the benefits of free sex without any attendant seismic shifts. For there may in fact be no such thing as a destigmatization of sex simplicitur, as the events outlined in this essay suggest. The rise of a recognizably Kantian, morally universalizable code concerning food — beginning with the international vegetarian movement of the last century and proceeding with increasing moral fervor into our own times via macrobiotics, veganism/vegetarianism, and European codes of terroir — has paralleled exactly the waning of a universally accepted sexual code in the Western world during these same years.

Who can doubt that the two trends are related? Unable or unwilling (or both) to impose rules on sex at a time when it is easier to pursue it than ever before, yet equally unwilling to dispense altogether with a universal moral code that he would have bind society against the problems created by exactly that pursuit, modern man (and woman) has apparently performed his own act of transubstantiation. He has taken longstanding morality about sex, and substituted it onto food. The all-you-can-eat buffet is now stigmatized; the sexual smorgasbord is not.

In the end, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that the rules being drawn around food receive some force from the fact that people are uncomfortable with how far the sexual revolution has gone — and not knowing what to do about it, they turn for increasing consolation to mining morality out of what they eat.

So what does it finally mean to have a civilization puritanical about food, and licentious about sex? In this sense, Nietzsche’s fabled madman came not too late, but too early — too early to have seen the empirical library that would be amassed from the mid- twenty-first century on, testifying to the problematic social, emotional, and even financial nature of exactly the solution he sought.

It is a curious coda that this transvaluation should not be applauded by the liberationist heirs of Nietzsche, even as their day in the sun seems to have come. According to them, after all, consensual sex is simply what comes naturally, and ought therefore to be judged value-free. But as the contemporary history outlined in this essay goes to show, the same can be said of overeating — and overeating is something that today’s society is manifestly embarked on re-stigmatizing. It may be doing so for very different reasons than the condemnations of gluttony outlined by the likes of Gregory the Great and St. Thomas Aquinas. But if indiscriminate sex can also have a negative impact — and not just in the obvious sense of disease, but in the other aspects of psyche and well-being now being written into the empirical record of the sexual revolution — then indiscriminate sex may be judged to need reining in, too.

So if there is a moral to this curious transvaluation, it would seem to be that the norms society imposes on itself in pursuit of its own self-protection do not wholly disappear, but rather mutate and move on, sometimes in curious guises. Far-fetched though it seems at the moment, where mindless food is today, mindless sex — in light of the growing empirical record of its own unleashing — may yet again be tomorrow.

David Forsmark: Save King of the Hill!

From National Review Online:

King of the Hill, unlike The Simpsons, has not suffered a creative decline, nor have its ratings plunged. Fox’s official statement attributes the decision to nothing more than a desire to “freshen up” its “Animation Domination” Sunday-night schedule.

The “solution”? In the course of 2009, Fox will add two shows to Animation Domination. One is called Sit Down, Shut Up. The other is a spinoff of the foul-mouthed Family Guy, whose creator, Seth MacFarlane, already has a second Animation Domination show, American Dad. So Fox Sunday nights will rise from 50 to 60 percent MacFarlane. Right, how fresh.

It’s been a long time since King was a ratings champ, but viewership is still solid and comparable to the rest of the Fox Sunday lineup. The show has beaten the odds, in fact: It was frequently the victim of Fox’s Sunday football schedule, so first-run episodes sometimes were pre-empted or aired only in part. Despite my diligence, there were some I never saw until the DVD release. King was even on the cancellation block once before, but it was saved by the ratings bump that followed the announcement.

Perhaps even more intriguing, however, is the fact that Judge is creating a series for ABC that could be called the flip side of King. Judge’s animated The Goode Family follows the misadventures of an ultra-liberal vegan family that tries too hard to be politically correct in all things, particularly the environmental (even their dog is not allowed to eat meat products).

Historically, animated shows have performed better when paired. A late ratings rally for King might make ABC consider that strategy — especially since King regularly outperforms ABC’s Life on Mars, Homeland Security USA, and Wife Swap by considerable margins. It even draws more viewers than the venerable 20/20.

However, the real reason to watch King of the Hill on Sunday nights is the same as it’s always been: It’s a really good show.

While I don’t want to go back to the days when three TV networks battled for about 90 percent of the viewing audience, there is something to be said for the shared common experience of, say, a Mary Tyler Moore Show farewell episode. It would seem that a fourteen-season show deserves that kind of sendoff.

Though if there’s one thing we can be sure of, it’s that King of the Hill will not end with a group hug. Not if Hank has anything to say about it.

Here's a promo for The Goode Family from YouTube:

One Oscar Pick That Seems OK

James Marsh's documentary Oscar for Man on a Wire, about Phillip Petit's walk between the Twin Towers... to remind people that once upon a time there was a World Trade Center in New York City.

Socks, 20

According to the LA Times, the Clinton administration's "First Kitty" was 20 years old. He had been taken care of by former Presidential secretary, Betty Currie.

TPM Muckraker: Stanford Wooed Washington Power-Brokers

TPM Mucraker has posted some photos of Allen Stanford meeting with members of the Congressional Caribbean Caucus at a Washington, DC meeting, to illustrate an interesting article by Zachary Roth:

By now, we've all seen those pictures of Allen Stanford hobnobbing with lawmakers in Antigua. But, with the exception of one trip by Sen. John Cornyn, it wasn't Stanford himself who picked up the tab for these jaunts -- it was an obscure outfit called the Inter-American Economic Council.

And taking a closer look at the IAEC, and its ties to Stanford, sheds some light on how the Texas billionaire gained access to all those members of Congress -- and what he hoped to gain by doing so.

The IAEC's website says that the Washington-based group was founded in 1999 and that it aims to "provide senior Government Officials, leading Business Executives, and Academic Professionals the opportunity to engage in a dialogue about current and future economic strategies in the Hemisphere." And in 2003, the Associated Press reported (via Nexis) that, according to IAEC president Barry Featherman, the organization "relies mostly on contributions from U.S. corporations."

But the group appears to have remarkably close ties to Stanford himself. In this 2006 report, Bloomberg described Stanford as a "principal backer" of the organization. And Stanford Financial told Bloomberg that it had "donated the use of its aircraft" to the IAEC for one 2006 trip to Jamaica that four Democratic lawmakers went on.

That same year, the IAEC gave Stanford its "Excellence in Leadership" award. A press release put out by the group (since removed from its website) declared that Stanford "has strongly supported the work that the IAEC is doing in Latin America and the Caribbean."

Stanford also appears to have taken advantage of IAEC-funded events by showing up personally to schmooze lawmakers. We already posted these shots of current or former lawmakers including Katherine Harris, Pete Sessions, Tom Feeney, James Clyburn, and John Sweeney chilling with Stanford and Caribbean dignitaries in Antigua in 2005.

And The Oscar Goes To...

My hopes (not predictions) for tonight:

BEST PICTURE: ""Frost/Nixon"

BEST ACTRESS: Meryl Streep, "Doubt"

BEST ACTOR: Frank Langella, "Frost/Nixon"

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Viola Davis, "Doubt"

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR: Philip Seymour Hoffman, "Doubt"

BEST DIRECTOR: Ron Howard, "Frost/Nixon"

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY: Andrew Stanton, and Jim Reardon; original story by Stanton and Pete Docter"WALL-E"

One More Question: Who Protected Allen Stanford?

The tremendous news coverage of the Allen Stanford scandal reminded someone I know that after we first saw his large bank buildings next to the VC Bird airport on a trip some years back (we have been going to Antigua for over 30 years)--and subsequently learned from local residents that Stanford had displaced the Hadeed family as the richest man in town--she had conducted an internet search on Stanford...and come up with almost nothing. Which perhaps was because not only was he a big man in Antigua, he had a enjoyed widespread reputation as an alleged money-launderer for international drug dealers.

So, until this story broke in the US, we had thought he was pretty much a local phenomenon, keeping his head low. Perhaps his ego got the better of his caution, for it was a surprise to read that he had descended from a helicopter onto Lord's Cricket Ground in London, that he had American operations, and that he had a Washington office paying out millions in campaign contributions and fees to political insiders. Which made one wonder...did Stanford become bolder because he may have thought he had been buying protection? And did his protection end after the 2008 election results became clear? For according to press reports, despite long-standing complaints, action only was taken in the Stanford case in December, 2008.

Which makes one wonder precisely which "unnamed agency" asked the SEC to lay off Stanford, and why? And how high Stanford's protection, if there had been protection, may have extended.

We arrived in Washington during the BCCI scandal, known informally as the "Bank of Crooks and Criminals International"--which turned out to have reputed protection from the US government as a pass-through for unsavory activities, including accusations of CIA-money laundering. Was Stanford's bank a 21st-century version of BCCI? From Wikipedia:

BCCI was not shy about dealing with questionable elements, like many other international banks as well as Swiss private banks. It frequently handled money for various purposes, and was the banker for such dictators as Saddam Hussein, Manuel Noriega, Hussain Mohammad Ershad and Samuel Doe, all of whom were explicitly connected to the United States government at various points in time. Preferential treatment by some of the world's moneyed leaders to BCCI led to it being nicknamed by some of its rivals as "the Bank of Crooks and Criminals International."

In 1988, BCCI was implicated in a drug-money-laundering scheme based in Tampa, Florida: the C-Chase case. BCCI was called many names, including the CIA’s money-laundering facility, an allegation that once again was never proven to be true. BCCI, under immense pressure from US authorities, pleaded guilty in 1990, but only on the grounds of respondeat superior. While federal regulators took no action, Florida regulators forced BCCI to pull out of the state.

We'll have to see what Congressional investigations turn up. Now that the likes of Johnny Damon are involved, there may be some "curb appeal" for politicians to pursue the matter...all the way to Houston, Texas.

Andrew Ferguson on Bill Moyers' FBI Spying

From The Weekly Standard:

The most surprising thing about the recent revelations concerning Bill Moyers is that anyone should be surprised. For those of us who care--and those of us who care, care deeply--detailed accounts of Moyers's career as a political bottom-feeder have been publicly available since the mid-1970s.

Yet even Moyers watchers will find the new information juicy, if perfectly in keeping with the Moyers we have come to know. The Washington Post reported last week that in 1964, J. Edgar Hoover's FBI investigated Jack Valenti, a close aide to President Lyndon Johnson, chasing rumors that Valenti was gay. He wasn't, but homosexuality was a sore subject in the Johnson White House in 1964. The same month that the FBI launched its investigation into Valenti, the president's most trusted adviser, a fellow Texan named Walter Jenkins, was arrested in a Washington YMCA on what was then quaintly called a "morals charge." The presidential election was a few weeks away. The timing could have been better.

With Johnson's reluctant approval, the FBI followed an anonymous tip that Valenti was (another quaint phrase) "a sex pervert." Hoover's men came up with nothing, aside from a remark from a closeted gay photographer that Valenti was a "very charming and intelligent individual." He was certainly right about that. After he left government Valenti became a lobbyist for Hollywood and a Washington fixture, impossible to miss at a black tie dinner or in the gossip column of the Post or zipping down H Street in his silver Mercedes. He was the size of a leprechaun and accented his mysteriously deep permatan with a gleaming semi-pompadour. His fathomless store of gossip, his gift for profanity, and, perhaps most of all, his clothes--high collars, billowing ties, Burberry two-buttoned, double-vented suits with lapels as sharp as an X-Acto knife--marked him as a creature otherwise unseen in the natural world. Valenti was the Washington lounge lizard.

Another trait of his, one he shared with many veterans of the Johnson White House, was a deep antagonism to Bill Moyers, who had also served Johnson as an aide/confidant/sycophant. (Johnson required his staff to multitask.) The FBI memos that the Post uncovered give a hint why Moyers's former colleagues disliked him so. "Even Bill Moyers," the Post reporter writes, "is described in the records as seeking information on the sexual preferences of White House staff members." Even Bill Moyers! Forty years of bogus reputation-building prop up that even. Valenti knew better. When he was in government, seeking information about sexual preferences was the kind of thing Moyers did.

What Did Bill Moyers' Know About FBI Spying, and When Did He Know It?

From today's Wall Street Journal editorial page:

J. Edgar Moyers
The TV moralist's government record.

One of the darker periods of modern American history was J. Edgar Hoover's long reign over the FBI, as we have learned since he died in 1972. So it is more than a historical footnote to discover new records showing that prominent public television broadcaster Bill Moyers participated in Hoover's exploits.

Under the Freedom of Information Act, the Washington Post has obtained a few of the former FBI director's secret files. According to a Thursday front-page story, Hoover was "consumed" with exposing a (nonexistent) relationship between a gay photographer and Jack Valenti, the late film industry lobbyist who was then an aide to Lyndon Johnson. Hoover's M.O. was to amass incriminating personal information as political blackmail.

But as the Post reports in passing, the dossier also reveals that Mr. Moyers -- then a special assistant to LBJ -- requested in 1964 that Hoover's G-men "investigate two other administration figures who were 'suspected as having homosexual tendencies.'"

This isn't the first time Mr. Moyers's name has come up in connection with Hoover's abuse of office. When Laurence Silberman, now a federal appeals judge, was acting Attorney General in 1975, he was obliged to read Hoover's secret files in their entirety in preparation for testimony before Congress -- and as far as we know remains one of the only living officials to have done so. "It was the single worst experience of my long governmental service," he wrote in these pages in 2005.

Amid "bits of dirt on figures such as Martin Luther King," Judge Silberman found a 1964 memo from Mr. Moyers directing Hoover's agents to investigate Barry Goldwater's campaign staff for evidence of homosexual activity. A few weeks before, an LBJ aide named Walter Jenkins had been arrested in a men's bathroom, and Mr. Silberman wrote that Mr. Moyers and his boss evidently wanted leverage in the event Goldwater tried to use the liaison against them. (He didn't, as it happened.)

When that episode became public after Mr. Silberman testified, an irate Mr. Moyers called him and, with typical delicacy, accused him of falling for forged CIA memos. Mr. Silberman offered to study the matter and, should Mr. Moyers's allegations pan out, he would publicly exonerate him. "There was a pause on the line and then he said, 'I was very young. How will I explain this to my children?' And then he rang off."

Memories are short in Washington, and Mr. Moyers has gone on to promote himself as a political moralist, routinely sermonizing about what he claims are abuses of power by his ideological enemies. Since 9/11, he has been particularly intense in criticizing President Bush for his antiterror policies, such as warrantless wiretapping against al Qaeda.

Yet the historical record suggests that when Mr. Moyers was in a position of actual power, he was complicit in FBI dirt-digging against U.S. citizens solely for political purposes. As Judge Silberman put it in 2005, "I have always thought that the most heinous act in which a democratic government can engage is to use its law enforcement machinery for political ends."

Mr. Moyers told us through a spokeswoman that he "never heard of the Valenti matter until this story and had nothing to add to it." He also pointed to a 1975 Newsweek article in which he wrote that he learned of the LBJ-Hoover relationship in "the quickly fading days of my innocence." In the Nixon days, this was called a nondenial denial.

Obama's Russia Policy: "Turn Down The Temperature"

That's the bottom-line, as far as I can figure it out from yesterday's Brookings Institution coming-out party for Steven Pifer's policy paper Reversing the Decline: An Agenda for US-Russian Relations in 2009. The panel consisted of Pifer, former US Ambassador to the Ukraine; Daniel Benjamin, former Clinton official; Robert Kagan, leading neo-conservative Russia-basher; German ambassador Klaus Scharloth, representing the EU and NATO; and Strobe Talbott, Brookings headman and intimate of the Clintons. Benjamin announced at the start that Pifer's paper was currently being read in buildings all over Washington. I read it, and didn't find too much "smart" or "creative" diplomacy...but I did at least find a little bit of common sense. Pifer wants to ratchet down the rhetoric and confrontation between the US and Russia. A very good idea, considering what is going on in Iran and the Ummah these days. Strobe Talbott said the answers were, "No, and No," to Russia's desire for a sphere of influence or an end to NATO expansion. Too bad the USA promised Russia when the Berlin Wall came down that no NATO troops would be on her borders. The German ambassador felt expansion was necessary. Well, I hope it doesn't turn out to be Russian expansion. Turning down the heat is a good first step, but when I thought I heard Talbott threatening to unleash more Chechen, Ingueshetian, and Dagestani separtist attacks in order to break up the Russian Federation if Putin and Medvedev don't accept the US position, I had to wonder if these guys realize that the US has already been burned by the Islamist extremist fire that the world has been playing with since, say, 1979? (This was the theme of Vladimir Sinelnikov's Russian documentary film, The Terror Casino: World War III.) Threatening more Islamist extremist terrorism backed by the US against Russia, while the US is fighting the same phenomenon in Afghanistan, strikes me as a misreading of the nature of the current Clash of Civilizations. Those 20th Century tricks are unlikely to work again, and Tablott's stridency in saying "No" reminded me of a joke I heard somewhere in the post-Soviet space, though I don't remember who told it to me: "The conservatives hate Russia because it was once Communist--and the liberals hate Russia because it no longer is..." That's what seemed to unite Kagan and Talbott and the German ambassador.

What is needed, during the simmering phase, is for someone to come up with a new recipe entirely that doesn't include the toxic ingredient of Russia-hatred. When I was at the Heritage Foundation in 1991, Amb. Charles Lichtenstein told me that NATO should be disbanded immediately, that it had served its purpose and would only cause problems looking for a role in a changed world. Time has confirmed his prediction.

What was missing from this presentation, IMHO, was a Russian voice. Maybe a first step to developing "smart" and "creative" ideas would be for Brookings to set up a Center for the Study of the US and Russia to balance their Center for the Study of the US and Europe? Hire some Russians and Russian emigres. Ask them to work with Americans on a totally new framework. And yes, Gazprom could pay for it...

Glenn Garvin on Bill Moyers' FBI Spy Reports

From the Miami Herald:

Bill Moyers' Journal, gay-bashing edition

Of all the second acts in American public life, none has amazed me more than that of Bill Moyers. He spent the first decade of his adult life as one of Lyndon Johnson's dirtiest henchmen. His work on Johnson's viciously dirty 1964 presidential campaign is probably worth an entire book by itself: Moyers helped thwart the seating of an integrated delegation from Mississippi at the 1964 Democratic National Convention, and asked the FBI to investigate 15 members of the Senate staff of Johnson's opponent, Barry Goldwater. Other lowlights include Moyers giving the FBI the okay to spread dirty stories about Martin Luther King's sex life, and his ongoing role spinning fanciful stories about the war in Vietnam as Johnson's press secretary from 1965 to 1967.

Yet somehow none of that has stopped Moyers from posing as the conscience of the American press for most of the past four decades, mostly in various screechy PBS shows. Without any apparent sense of irony, he viciously excoriates the U.S. press for its supposed subservience to the White House on Iraq, Afghanistan and the war on terror. Amazingly, when Moyers is ranting that the Bush administration fabricated everything about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction, nobody ever asks him about the Johnson administration's fanciful account of the imaginary 1964 attack in the Tonkin Gulf that became the excuse for the Vietnam war, an account he helped to construct.Everything about Moyers' years with Johnson has somehow vanished down the memory hole.

Now another load of Moyers' dirty laundry has appeared on the clothesline. On Thursday, the Washington Post published a story based on newly revealed documents that show that the FBI investigated rumors that Johnson aide Jack Valenti (later the head of the Motion Picture Association of America) was gay. The documents also show that Moyers asked the FBI to investigate two other Johnson administration figures who were "suspected as having homosexual tendencies."

Moyers, questioned about the documents by Post reporters, replied that his memory was hazy. Don't worry, Bill; if past history is any indication, pretty soon our memories will be hazy, too.

Christopher Hitchens v Syrian Nazis

A brawl in Beirut shows Hitchens isn't just talk when it comes to confronting evil...From Ace of Spades HQ:(ht Michelle Malkin)

Update: I got it a bit wrong on how much Hitchens had been roughed up and the exact sequence here.

He had underplayed it, I guess. From another witness I got that he'd been roughed up more than he let on.

First of all, there weren't ten goons, but around six.

Second, the goon squad, and not just the look-out man, did in fact get to Hitchens. They knocked him down to the ground, kicked him while he was down, and stamped on his writing hand (which I'd known). I had thought they escaped the gang, but they didn't, not quite; they got roughed up by them before a cabbie got them away.

Oh, and the errand they were on: Well, they were on their way to a bar. But they hadn't gotten there yet. It was about, oh, 3 or so in the afternoon. We had downtime between events (which were scheduled around the clock pretty much) and I guess they just wanted to check out a local watering hole.

Here's what I know word-of-mouth about the Syrian Nazis: They're actual Nazis, first of all, having taken inspiration from Hitler and sporting a modified swastika on their posters and flags. They're a small party, I'm told. They had been banned years ago but are back, but not in force. There are about 300 of them (again, this is what I am told) and are more of a street-gang of bullyboys than an actual party. However, they have the backing of Syria, and they do, when called upon, murder people.

Guardian story, here. Beirut Daily Star story, here.

What Was Bill Moyers' Role in FBI Spying on Jack Valenti?

The more you learn about Bill Moyers, the more you wonder how his reputation could get any worse. I often wondered why Jack Valenti gave me a long interview for my PBS book. Now I think I understand why he had his own reasons to distrust Bill Moyers. From today's Washington Post article on FBI investigations of allegations of homosexuality:

Even Bill Moyers, a White House aide now best known as a liberal television commentator, is described in the records as seeking information on the sexual preferences of White House staff members. Moyers said by e-mail yesterday that his memory is unclear after so many years but that he may have been simply looking for details of allegations first brought to the president by Hoover.

In Valenti's case, agents located the photographer and he confirmed that he had attended parties with Valenti and stayed at his apartment on two occasions. But he stressed that Valenti was strictly a platonic friend, records show. Historians have suggested that Hoover himself may have been gay and that the bureau's fascination with the sex lives of others was a manifestation of deeper currents in his psychology. Hoover never married and was a constant companion of his longtime FBI aide Clyde Tolson.

Valenti was a successful Texas businessman before joining Johnson in the White House in the hours after President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. After three years in Washington, Valenti was named head of the Motion Picture Association, where he served as Hollywood's chief lobbyist from 1966 to 2004. His tanned face became a fixture on the annual Academy Awards broadcast.

The FBI file shows that a routine background check performed when Valenti joined the Johnson administration in 1963 turned up a series of picayune concerns. The file noted that Valenti's father and father-in-law had spent time in prison for embezzlement, and that his father-in-law had an "undesirable credit record" and had once been arrested for "being drunk."

A number of informants alleged that Valenti was good friends with a "top hoodlum and prominent gambler" in Houston, and agents suspected that the underworld figure had underwritten the cost of Valenti's wedding and a honeymoon suite at the Tropicana hotel in Las Vegas.

Most people interviewed praised Valenti, his morals and his social skills; one described him as "smiley" and "able to charm the horns off a billy goat."

Agents asked about Valenti's dating habits and quizzed his friends about whether they thought he had been faithful since he married Johnson's personal secretary the previous year.

One informant told agents that when Valenti was a bachelor, "he always dated extremely attractive women" and that "his only trouble with his female acquaintances was 'they all wanted to marry him.' "

The informant said Valenti told him he was waiting for the "real thing." When he met the woman who would become his wife in 1962, he was "very much in love." The informant added that all of "Valenti's relations with the opposite sex were moral in all respects."

Nothing discovered during the background check was solid enough to endanger Valenti's position as a special assistant to the president.

Then, in October 1964, a man whose name has been redacted from the records called an FBI official in New York. The caller encouraged the FBI to investigate Valenti "as a sex pervert," files show. "He based this request on the fact that he had read in the newspapers that Valenti swims in the nude in the White House pool."

A month later, the bureau found out that the Republican Party had hired a retired FBI agent to look into rumors that Valenti was attracted to men. The agents then focused on Valenti's relationship with the photographer, whose connections with Valenti had enabled him to photograph Johnson two years earlier, the memo said.

The agents learned that Valenti was a frequent party host in Houston, and the photographer often attended. An FBI memo dated Nov. 12, 1964, stated that the photographer "has the reputation of being a homosexual." The photographer and "Valenti have allegedly been having an affair for a number of years," the memo said.

Six days later, Hoover reported the allegations to the president. Johnson spoke to Hoover lieutenant Cartha D. DeLoach and asserted that "Valenti was all right; however, his judgment was faulty inasmuch as he felt Jenkins had been all right," files show.

DeLoach advised Johnson to have Valenti submit a sworn affidavit regarding his association with "this homosexual." Johnson demurred, saying Valenti had no need to defend himself.

"The President indicated that if I were to ask him if 'Lady Bird' were virtuous he would feel it would be unnecessary to reply, inasmuch as he knew 'Lady Bird' was virtuous," DeLoach wrote in a note. "The President stated that Valenti was attracted to the women and not to the men. The President also stated that in his opinion the FBI should not interview the photographer."

Seven days later, DeLoach pressed Johnson again and he relented. In the same conversation, a memo shows, they discussed a request from Moyers, then a special assistant to Johnson, that the FBI investigate two other administration figures who were "suspected as having homosexual tendencies."

On Dec. 1, 1964, the FBI interviewed the photographer. He said that he had "homosexual tendencies" and that he "engaged in homosexual activities on a 'discreet' basis." He added that he had once been arrested on a sex charge, but was so drunk at the time that he could not remember the circumstances.

The photographer said that he had known Valenti for about 15 years and that they had attended parties together, along with their female dates. The photographer told the agents that Valenti had "never engaged in homosexual activities and he does not have these tendencies," according to an FBI memo sent to Moyers.

Vote Now For YouTube Symphony Orchestra...

More here. One of the contestants:

I Wonder Who's Kissing Her Now?

Ann Althouse posted this video of Hillary Clinton with her husband and President Obama, it's too good to pass up...

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