The big buzz this morning is over a massive release of classified documents on the war in Afghanistan from the website Wikileaks. Wikileaks is a loosely organized association headquartered in Sweden that was “founded by Chinese dissidents, journalists, mathematicians and start-up company technologists, from the US, Taiwan, Europe, Australia and South Africa,” its website says. This is according to Wikipedia, as the Wikileaks site is down at the moment.

Via Steve Benen, Michael Crowley’s assessment is that the documents don’t tell us anything new.

It’s never been a secret, for instance, that the Taliban have proven more resilient than anyone expected; that U.S. special forces hunt and eliminate Taliban leaders without the courtesy of a fair trail; that elements within our putative ally Pakistan play a sinister double game with radical Islamists; that our troops kill innocent Afghans on a regular basis. It’s not even a secret, as anyone familiar with the Pat Tillman saga knows, that the military sometimes manipulates facts about the war.

Once again, we’re learning that the days in which one could subdue and pacify an enemy through warfare are over. For the benefit of any rightie who happens to wander into this blog: Nations fight to maintain their territory and their sovereignty, and when that is no longer tenable there is not much left for them to do but surrender and agree to terms. When the enemy is not a nation, but a movement, or hostile organizations not tied to anyone territory and not under the authority of any one government, that’s not the case.

Following up the last post — this is in George Bob Herbert’s column —

The point that Ms. Sherrod was making as she talked in her speech about the white farmer who had come to her for help was that we are all being sold a tragic bill of goods by the powerful forces that insist on pitting blacks, whites and other ethnic groups against one another.

Ms. Sherrod came to the realization, as she witnessed the plight of poverty-stricken white farmers in the South more than two decades ago, that the essential issue in this country “is really about those who have versus those who don’t.”

She explained how the wealthier classes have benefited from whites and blacks constantly being at each other’s throats, and how rampant racism has insidiously kept so many struggling whites from recognizing those many things they and their families have in common with economically struggling blacks, Hispanics and so on.

“It’s sad that we don’t have a roomful of whites and blacks here tonight,” she said, “because we have to overcome the divisions that we have.”

Pretty much what we were saying in the comment thread to the last post.

See also Bernie Sanders at The Nation, “Say No to Oligarchy.”

Update: Unrelated, but it’s too funny not to mention and I don’t want to start another post — word is that Mexican drug cartels have invaded Texas and commandeered several ranches! This is reliable information from a Texas blogger, whom Michelle Malkin calls a “veteran immigration blogger.” Well-trained drug cartel commandos have taken over at least two ranches in the Loredo, Texas, area, and this has been confirmed by a reliable source in the Loredo Police Department.

Or, maybe not. Confederate Yankee called the Loredo Police Department and also the Webb County sheriff’s department and was told by one amused and one irritated law enforcement officer that the rumors were false. And see Tbogg’s take if you need a good laugh.

Apparently what set the rumors off was a gun battle on the Mexican side of the Rio Grande. People heard the shots on the U.S. side and called police, who investigated and determined that no violence spilled over into Texas. Little Lulu quotes an AP story —

Frightened people on the U.S. side of the border called emergency dispatchers after hearing the gunfire, Laredo police spokesman Joe Baeza said Thursday. But he said there was no spillover violence.

“We were getting reports from people who live on the river’s edge that they could hear gunfire and explosions from the Mexico side,” Baeza said.

“We didn’t have any incidents on the American side. It’s hard for people to understand who don’t live here,” he added. “They’re not Vikings, they’re not going to invade us, it doesn’t work that way.”

What does he know? A reliable source alerted me to these photos of the invasion.

I’m sorta kinda responding to Melissa McEwan’s response to Jim Webb’s Wall Street Journal op ed “Diversity and the Myth of White Privilege.”

Webb’s op ed, very generally, points to the issue of white poverty. Unfortunately Webb begins by framing his argument in terms of white workers losing ground because of affirmative action programs, and I disagree that’s the problem.

However, It’s way out of order, I think, to accuse Webb of merely trying to maintain white privilege. I agree with John Cole, there are whites living in places “where poverty is so deep, so ingrained, that the idea in those regions that there is some sort of ‘white privilege’ is in fact laughable. To them, the privilege of chronic unemployment, life in a tarpaper shack with no medical care, food stamps but no grocery store, and not much of a future doesn’t look like that great of a deal.”

I’d also say that while the issues of racial discrimination and entrenched poverty do overlap, a lot, they aren’t exactly the same. I agree also with John that the real issue is closer to what Shirley Sherrod was saying about class v. race.

But whatever it is, it’s a real issue, and it is not at all helpful to react to discussion of the problems of white poverty with knee-jerk declarations that “This isn’t about white people; it’s about privileged white men.”

No, it’s about white poverty, and about the cultural marginalization of rural whites. I don’t think Webb addressed the topic as well as it needed to be addressed, but I know where he’s coming from, because it’s pretty close to where I came from.

There are whites living out of most people’s sight in Appalachia, the Ozarks, and other sparsely populated areas who are hopelessly locked into poverty. Some of these areas are marginally agricultural, and sometimes there is mining — dangerous, usually non-union, but a paycheck. Where there isn’t farming or mining there are white families whose existence going back four or five generations has depended on a combination of government assistance and sporadic menial jobs, and the children don’t receive the social, cultural, educational, medical, and sometimes even the nutritional support to pull themselves out of that.

In the most isolated areas are people who are barely functional in 21st-century culture. For example, I’ve known very bright people — been related to ’em, in fact — who didn’t, and probably couldn’t, speak standard English. In most of the U.S. an adult whose articulation, syntax and verb conjugation skills signal IGNORANT HILLBILLY is seriously handicapped.

Such places tend to be off the beaten track, out of sight and out of mind. And yes, this a relatively small slice of the white population of the U.S. But it’s not that small.

White impoverished areas I know of didn’t get that way because of affirmative action programs. They were dirt poor before there was such a thing as affirmative action programs. And we really need to get over the idea that giving a hand up to minorities was somehow at the expense of whites, because an economy that makes it easier for everyone to be productive is a healthier economy for everyone. But let’s not forget that people can be left behind for reasons other than race.

According to this Yahoo News story, people around the country are organizing protests against the proposed Islamic Center in lower Manhattan. They’ve got a photo of a bleeping protest in bleeping Tennessee. Give me a break. How would they feel if a bunch of New Yorkers showed up in their town and dictated to them what they could and could not build?

I didn’t pay much attention to it when it happened, but apparently a few weeks ago Pam Geller organized a protest in lower Manhattan in which people from across the U.S. assembled and protested the Islamic center. Exactly how many is a matter of dispute, but it was some number between 350 and 2 million.

Geller is organizing another protest for September 10. I am no good at organizing things, but I would just love to whip up a humongous counter-protest of NEW YORKERS. Well, OK, I’ll let New Jerseyites come too. They watched the towers burn and fall from New Jersey. But if anyone has any idea whom to prod to organize such a thing, speak up.

I get an impression that some of the protesters are opposed to building mosques anywhere in the U.S. A google search showed there already are three mosques in Manhattan and more than 30 in the New York City area. How do we know they aren’t going to train terrorists? some ask. I guess the same way we know, or hope, they aren’t training pedophiles at Saint Patrick’s. If we aren’t going to turn into a police state, sometimes you have to give people the benefit of the doubt that they are what they say they are.

But if that’s what worries the haters, then it’s far better to build a big Islamic center in lower Manhattan than anywhere else. It would be tricky to have a secret training camp in one of the more densely populated places on the planet.

Now that great waste of human protoplasm known as “Newt Gringrich” is saying “There should be no mosque near Ground Zero in New York so long as there are no churches or synagogues in Saudi Arabia.” Yes, that’s mature. If the Saudis are intolerant, we have to be intolerant too, just to show we can be as intolerant as they are! That’ll show ’em!

Except the Saudis wouldn’t be affected. The ones who would be affected are “West African handbag vendors, to Egyptian halal cart owners, to a few financial workers.” Who are also New Yorkers, and Americans, by the way. Not Saudis.

Nice article by Kelly Caldwell, “Say Yes to a Mosque at Ground Zero.”

Allegedly Democratic senators Kent Conrad (ND), Ben Nelson (NE), and Evan Bayh (IN) apparently will vote to extend all the Bush tax cuts, including those of the mega-wealthy, for two more years, which probably means they will be extended two more years. I take these three are afraid of being accused of “raising taxes” before a midterm, so they’ll throw responsibility under the bus.

Sometimes I think there are two John Funds David Frums.

Update: Sorry; I should never post after 10 pm. I don’t know where by brain is then.

Media Matters has a video of Shirley Sherrod’s full speech, with a transcript of the essential parts, and it is now beyond a doubt that Andrew Breitbart shamelessly slandered this good woman, and I hope she sues him for everything he’s worth.

Breitbart’s excuse, that he didn’t see the full video before he publicized the edited version, ought to give Breitbart no legal shelter. Seems to me that for a professional media figure to publish something damaging to an individual without properly vetting it first falls under the purview of “reckless disregard for the truth.”

I really hope the Obama Administration gives her her job back. If they don’t, this will not only perpetrate the injustice but would be a huge wasted opportunity.

What else do we know?

Will this episode hurt Andrew Breitbart’s reputation among his rightie admirers? Of course not.
Will Fox News use more caution about using videos from Breitbart in the future? Nope.
Will some elements on the Right dig up whatever they can find to further slander Shirley Sherrod? Certainly.

Update: Breitbart is now claiming the farmer and his wife who spoke up on Sherrod’s behalf are “plants.”

Update: Salon: “Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack apologized to Shirley Sherrod for her unnecessary firing. He also offered her an unspecified new job with the USDA. According to CNN, Sherrod will think the job offer over for a few days before making a decision.”

I’ve been busy with other things but want to at least link to the blowup over Andrew Breitbart’s latest attempt at video propaganda. Breitbart put into circulation a video snipped from a speech by a black USDA employee who seemed to be saying she withheld help from a white farmer because of his attitude. The wingnuts jumped on this as proof that the Obama Administration discriminates against whites. The employee, Shirley Sherrod, promptly lost her job, and even the NAACP condemned her.

But then, the wife of the farmer who allegedly had been discriminated against by Sherrod came out in defense of Sherrod. “Eloise Spooner said as far as she’s concerned Sherrod worked tirelessly to help the couple hold onto their land as they faced bankruptcy,” says the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Apparently, Sherrod’s talk was about how working with this white family helped her overcome her own issues about race. The NAACP now says they were “snookered” by Breitbart.

However, last I heard Sherrod was still out of a job.

The Washington Post is running a Big Deal investigative piece on our secretive national security infrastructure. This investigation has been going on for two years. It covers “The top-secret world the government created in response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.”

I have not read the entire thing yet, but the gist of it is that this national security infrastructure is big and secretive, and pretty much ineffectual. It’s ineffectual because it is so big and clumsily organized, and so secret it’s a mystery even to itself. It gathers far more data than anyone can analyze and cranks out far more reports than anyone has time to read. It’s so big it’s a challenge even for the Guys In Charge to know what all the parts of the infrastructure are, never mind what they’re finding. Apparently there is no coordinating agency and no way for anyone to know what all the parts are up to at any given moment or how much of what the parts are doing is duplicating what the other parts are doing.

Now, this much isn’t really news. I know I have blogged about such complaints before, although I’m not finding the posts. Very basically, after September 11 the Bush Administration went into overdrive creating new intelligence nets without bothering to come up with a coordinated, systemic way of sorting and analyzing the intelligence. And here’s no way to know if and how much the parts are skirting the law and the Constitution regarding the rights of citizens.

If we were living in a futuristic political novel, this would be Chapter One of how Big Brother Came to Power. As Glenn Greenwald says, “we keep sacrificing our privacy to the always-growing National Security State in exchange for less security.” What’s growing is a surveillance network that is scarier than al Qaeda. This is how dictatorships begin.

Naturally, the usual suspects who scream perpetually about Big Government have a different view.

TownHall: ObamaCare is worse.

Fox News: Obama should be ashamed.

Weekly Standard: La la la nothing to see here move along hey isn’t that Lindsey Lohan?

Daily Caller: The Washington Post piece is a national security threat!

I can see it already. The GOP will try to hang the blame for this dysfunction onto the Obama Administration, even though the dysfunction was a creation of the Bush Administration. And when the Dems point out that this was Bush’s doing, the GOP will screech oh, yes, everything is always Bush’s fault.

Not everything, but yeah, most of it. Bush so screwed the national pooch it may never be unscrewed, and what unscrewing is possible will take many years. I’m not letting Obama off the hook entirely, however, because he has appeared to be way too comfortable with the surveillance infrastructure the Bushies bequeathed to him.

Final comment: For all their swaggering about how they were efficient people of business and not bureaucrats, the upper levels of the Bush Administration was staffed almost entirely by people whose careers were made in academia, government, or by family connections. The fact that they fancied themselves to be other than an assortment of hothouse flowers is a testament to their persistent self-delusion. And then there was Karl Rove, whose entire career was as a political operative, and yet who was put in charge or projects like the cleanup after Katrina that required entirely different skill and experience sets.

These people were idea people, albeit with really bad ideas, not people who knew how to do concrete things. They all seemed to have the attitude that once they put their ideas into motion, the details would fall into place. Like charging into Iraq with absolutely no idea what they would do after the invasion. Yes, the unscrewing will take years.