Serving the Flathead Valley & Montana since 2006. A reality based independent journal of observation & analysis. © James Conner.

 

17 June 2014

On other blogs today

At the Western Word, Mike Brown has a thoughtful essay on whether partitioning Iraq, an idea proposed by, among others, Joe Biden when he was still in the Senate, makes sense. I’ve always thought it did. Iraq is not a natural nation, by which I mean a nation defined not only by geography but by language and religion. It’s a remnant of the Ottoman Empire, its borders in part the consequence of interventions by westerners such as Gertrude Bell, and its ethnic regions held together by strong men such as Saddam Hussein. Now it’s coming apart along ethnic seams, with many Sunni areas in the north controlled by the murderous ISIS.

We’re well out of it, our troops home, but as Steve Benen and James Fallows note, the same people — Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, the Kagens, to name a few — who thought invading Iraq in 2003 was such a good idea are raising their voices again, reasserting it was a good idea, and that it would be a good idea to intervene again to preserve democracy. No one should listen to them this time.

At Montana Cowgirl, we learn that the Montana State Fund is spending money on billboards asserting “Work Heals.” The slogan bears an unnerving resemblance to arbeit macht frei, a German phrase that translates as “work makes you free” that was associated with certain unpleasant places in der Vaterland 70 years ago. Why the Montana State Fund needs to spend a cent on advertising, let along on billboards sporting an Orwellian phrase, escapes me.

There are State Fund posters, too. At Athena Photography, there’s an image of a poster with photograph of a burly guy in a hardhat and the quote “A joke from Bill in shipping, now that’s a painkiller.” In other words, stop taking opioids to kill the pain of your injury and get back to work, where Bill’s dirty jokes will replace the soothing arms of Mother Morphine and won’t cost the State Fund anything.