making peace with monsters

"The people the Villagers have anointed as our moral leaders are, for the most part, monsters."

"Big Dog. Showed why he earned the name."

[Rick Perlstein on Agee] In his book, he arrived at a typically New Left solution: the institution must not be reformed, for “reform” is the very myth by which the Leviathan nourishes itself. It must be destroyed. This root-and-branch determination turned what might have been a noble, if controversial, vehicle for intelligence reform into something destructive. Amid its overwhelming welter of details (“It almost takes the stamina and interest of a Soviet spy to get through,” Walter Pincus wrote in the Times review), the book included the real names of every C.I.A. officer, agent and asset Agee could recollect. Shortly after its publication, Richard Welch, a C.I.A. officer not named by Agee but whose name was published by a Greek newspaper in the worldwide fad for agent-outing that followed “Inside the Company,” was murdered by anti-American militants. The year began with strong momentum for intelligence reform; the C.I.A. took advantage of Welch’s martyrdom to defend the status quo.
...Philip Agee was never part of any solution, just another facet of the shadow world’s ever proliferating strangeness.

During Avrakotos's time in Greece, the CIA was instrumental in destroying Greek freedom and helping to turn the country into probably the single most anti-American democracy on Earth today. Incredibly, Crile describes this as follows: "On April 21, 1967, he [Avrakotos] got one of those breaks that can make a career. A military junta seized power in Athens that day and suspended democratic and constitutional government." Avrakotos became the CIA's chief liaison with the Greek colonels. After the fall of the colonels' brutally fascist regime, the 17 November terrorist organization assassinated the CIA's Athens station chief, Richard Welch, on Dec. 23, 1975.

"We have heard that a half million children have died. I mean, that's more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?"
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright: "I think this is a very hard choice, but the price--we think the price is worth it."

[The actual number may be a quarter million, or it may be more, but should the term "monster" hinge on the distinction? And the same applies to the attack on Al-Shifa.]

I won't call Duncan Black a "moral monster" for having a crush on the killer of Ricky Ray Rector.

4) Using carshare is easy and takes zero time. Click on the online reservation system, then go get your car. Key FOB opens door, keys are in car. No paperwork, no dealing with humans..."

There's less irony there than Atrios would want to admit.

And I call Zionists racists, not monsters, because that's a fair description of the facts: they're racial separatists who think that history justifies their actions.

Not bad:

Krystian Zimerman, the great Polish concert pianist, is usually a man of few words. He doesn't, as a rule, talk to the audience during performances. He says little or nothing in the press between his all-too-rare concert tours - not even about his habit of travelling everywhere with his own Steinway grand piano. He rarely grants them the pleasure of an encore. 

So he triggered more than the usual rumble of discomfort when he raised his voice in the closing stages of a recital at Los Angeles' Disney Hall on Sunday night and announced he would no longer perform in the United States in protest against Washington's military policies.

"Get your hands off my country," Zimerman told the stunned crowd in a denunciation of US plans to install a missile defence shield on Polish soil. Some people cheered, others yelled at him to shut up and keep playing. A few dozen walked out, some of them shouting obscenities. 

"Yes," Zimerman responded with derision, "some people when they hear the word military start marching."