Timing is everything. To the managers of the Iraq War, perception has always trumped reality. From the beginning it was a war of media stunts—the attempt to assassinate Saddam with 50 cruise missiles before the invasion, the Shock and Awe, the bringing down of the statues, Jessica Lynch, Saddam in the hole, purple fingered Iraqi voters and many other events staged for media consumption.
The essence of information/media warfare is to seize the advantage, frame the story, and capture the audiences’ imagination. It's been a key part of modern warfare from the set-up flags of Iwo Jima in World War 2 to that not so safe house in Baquba in Iraq.
And now, we have the bloodied head of the feared Zarqawi displayed on TV by the very military that will not allow us to see the American dead coming home. He was brought down by not one, but two, 500 pound bombs, in an operation that CNN tells us cost $500,000 and has been underway for months.
What a coup! What a show! And what an event for Iraqi "leaders" to show-off with using terms like he has been "eliminated." Within hours, the more polished US military spinmeisters were showing the airstrikes at a press conference, declaring a "major victory" and pronouncing another "turning point."
Think also of the timing, yes, they think about timing all the time. Timing is, as I have said, everything. A day earlier the NY Times had the defeat of the CIA backed warlords in Somalia on page one. The day and week before, it was All Haditha, All The Time with many commentators like Paul Rodgers, to cite one example, arguing that responsibility for the crimes and the cover-up goes way up the chain of command.
At the Pentagon, this was seen as not good. Not good at all. In fact, a very public opinion conscious Administration was aware, had to be aware, that a new AP poll was coming out reporting that well over 50% of the American public was sick of the war.
"The poll, taken Monday through Wednesday before news broke that U.S. forces had killed al-Zarqawi, found that 59 percent of adults say the United States made a mistake in going to war in Iraq -- the highest level yet in AP-Ipsos polling."
How do you get those folks back on the proverbial reservation? How do you turn around such a public relations disaster?"
The answer: Feed the public a very public miracle, something to wave the flag about again.
What better time to pull a rabbit out of the hat and dominate the news cycle by burying the bad news with spectacular good news, right out of Mission Impossible. It’s time to trot out the oldest of PR formulas called "change the subject."
Yesterday morning they changed it, with AP reporting:
"With al-Zarqawi out of the way and the new government in place, some Sunni Arab leaders may be emboldened to resume a dialogue they started last fall -- exchanges sunk by al-Zarqawi's al-Qaida in Iraq."
According to Raw Story, the hunt for Zargawi had been underway for a long time, a fact, of course, disclosed way after the fact.
"According to military and intelligence sources, five of Zarqawi's men were picked up in early May by an already ongoing effort by an elite US special ops force, known by some as Gray Fox and by others as Task Force 145, which had been scouring Iraq for Zarqawi since the insurgency began."
HMMMM.....Isn’t "Gray Fox" a perfect name in the age of Fox News?
So, the military likely new where he was in early May. ("Vee have ways of getting you to talk!") But rather then reeling him in, they waited for a more opportune moment in order to maximize the impact. A more opportune time like June 8!
Significantly, the "good guys" moved just as a trifecta of bad news stories was souring the public on the War on Terror
Their new message of the day quickly became "Gotcha," recalling L. Paul Bremer's announcement of the capture of Saddam with an upbeat, "We got him."
WILL THE TIDE TURN
The implication, of course, echoed on every major media outlet, is that now the tide will turn.
No one remembered or mentioned an NBC story aired on March 2, 2004 that reported the Administration had three opportunities to kill Zargawi and didn’t. NBC Pentagon correspondent Jim Miklaszewski revealed back then:
"NBC News has learned that long before the war the Bush administration had several chances to wipe out his terrorist operation and perhaps kill Zarqawi himself — but never pulled the trigger."
Hmmmmm,...
The unquestioned assumption in the mainstream is that Zargawi is Al Qaeda and since, everyone hates Al Qaeda, with him out of the way peace is at hand, the insurgency will be history and Iraqi Freedom will arrive at last.
Not so fast.
Professor Juan Cole who knows more about Iraq than any TV journalists was quick to point out :
"There is no evidence of operational links between his Salafi Jihadis in Iraq and the real al-Qaeda; it was just a sort of branding that suited everyone, including the US. Official US spokesmen have all along over-estimated his importance. Leaders are significant and not always easily replaced. But Zarqawi has in my view has been less important than local Iraqi leaders and groups. I don't expect the guerrilla war to subside any time soon."
The key words again: "just a sort of branding," just another way of saying that show biz has infiltrated news biz with Zargawi playing the role of the evil pirate that everyone can blame for any crimes they want. In fact, as Mazin Qumsiyeh, a Middle East Human right activist points out, the press has distorted his relationship to the resistance:
"Zarqawi was not a leader of the Iraqi resistance/insurgency. In fact, the leadership of the Iraqi resistance condemned Zarqawi and company. US intelligence itself believes that most of the resistance is home grown and not linked to Zarqawi/Al-Qaeda. This was intentionally obfuscated in the media parroting of government triumphalist PR."
The Nation’s David Corn also argues the resistance will fight on:
"His death--brought about by a US air strike that was apparently ordered after a captured Zarqawi lieutenant disclosed Zarqawi's favorite hiding places--may not mean much in terms of bringing peace, democracy and stability to Iraq. His al Qaeda in Iraq--which was estimated to number no more than several hundred fighters--made up the smallest slice of the insurgency. His departure will not have much impact on the forces fueling the fighting and chaos in Iraq."
On the right, the news rapidly became grist for talking points in the ditto head echo chamber. Here’s a smirking comment in a blog called Red State:
"My guess is that he is not going to find those 72 virgins either. He may find a bunch of disgruntled suicide bombers who didn't get their virgins! My impression is that there aren't a lot of sweet virgins in hell. Abu is going to burn in hell for some time, perphaps forever!
"Furthermore, he was killed because of a tip from an Iraqi citizen. This morning, Dan Seanor,(sic) former coalition spokesman, said that tips are coming in from all over Iraq."
TIPPING POINT?
What about the Tipping point argument, Malcolm Kendal Smith in England writes.
"The anti-war movement will not feel sorry in any way over Zarqawi's death. While we have always defended the right of Iraqis under international law to resist the US and British occupation of their country, we have never supported the use of tactics which target innocent Iraqi civilians, of the kidnapping of aid workers such as Margaret Hassan, or the murder of journalists who have died in record numbers trying to report therealities of life in Iraq since the war in 2003.
"Zarqawi and his terrorism were a consequence of the illegal invasion of Iraq. As were the 1,400 deaths by violent means recorded in May 2006 by Baghdad's central morgue alone. As were the numerous atrocities committed by the US military, the names of which are engraved for ever in history: Abu Ghraib, Fallujah, Tal Afar, Haditha and many more....
"Zaqawi's death will no more be a turning point for Iraq than any of the "new beginnings" proclaimed by Bush and Blair, because the chaos, destruction and slaughter in Iraq can only end when their source is removed – i.e. when all the occupying troops leave Iraq and Iraqis are free to decide for themselves how they want their country to be governed.
Not everyone on the left in the UK feels this way. Jonathan Steele of the Guardian believes "The death of Abu Musab al Zarqawi offers Iraq's government a chance, long term, to fix the mess created by the U.S. and Britain."
WHAT ABOUT THE REST OF US?
These events and the continuing horrors there may not mobilize a war weary country as Bob Herbert noted in the NY Times:
"For the smug, comfortable, well-off Americans, it doesn't seem to matter how long the war in Iraq goes on - as long as the agony is endured by others. If the network coverage gets too grim, viewers can always switch to the E! channel (one hand on the remote, the other burrowing into a bag of chips) to follow the hilarious antics of Paris, Britney,
Brangelina et al."
And no facts, no revelations, no exposes will dislodge the hard-core pro-war ideologues for whom no crime cannot be excused or ignored. Here’s Gordon Sawyer writing on a website in Georgia excusing the atrocities in Haditha:
"Let me ask you: does it make you sick in the pit of your stomach to read or hear about our GI's being investigated for possible criminal charges because they shot someone in the heat of battle? These are our brightest and best who volunteered to defend our freedom, and here they are in Haditha, Iraq, doing the job we-the-people asked them to do. And what do we know about the situation last November 19 in which some Iraqis were killed. First we know Haditha is a hotbed for the bad guys....
"This could have happened to any one of the military people we have in Iraq ... any one of the soldiers of Charlie Company (MyLai?) , or any of the young Marines from our area."
Gordon is no doubt happy today with 'Zargawi the horrible' out of the way.
Unfortunately, whether he likes it or not, the bloodshed and the war will continue and those who committed crimes there, on all sides, will eventually, Jesus, Moses and Allah willing, be brought to justice.
— News Dissector Danny Schechter is "blogger in chief" of Mediachannel.org. His new books and film are listed at at www.newsdissector.org/store.htm
Comments to Dissector@mediachannel.org
Saturday, June 10, 2006
Chile Refuses to let Bush bully her on Venezuela in Washington
By: Roger Burbach
President Michelle Bachelet came to Washington on Thursday for a one day whirl wind trip that included a meeting with George Bush. Both exchanged pleasantries after the meeting, neither referring to the heavy-handed efforts of the Bush administration to pressure Chile to oppose Venezuela's bid for a seat on the United Nations security council.
Just 11 days before the White House visit the Chilean daily La Tercera published a report on a meeting between Condoleezza Rice and the Chilean foreign minister, Alejandro Foxley, in which the US secretary of state insisted that Venezuela's candidacy for the UN seat "aims at the heart of US interests". Rice warned that "Chile could fall into a group of losers against US interests ..." and that the United States "will not understand" a Chilean vote for Venezuela.
The Bush administration is backing the candidacy of Guatemala in its campaign to stop President Hugo Chávez from winning a seat for Venezuela. Five of the 10 rotating seats on the security council are opening up in October, and one of them traditionally goes to a Latin American nation. Although the UN general assembly formally votes on the council members, the candidate is usually selected beforehand by a consensus among the countries of the region.
It is no surprise that the United States in its meddling in Latin American waters is backing Guatemala, a country with an atrocious human rights record. Under the current government of Oscar Berger, who took office in 2004, there have been charges of human rights abuses and he has done virtually nothing to bring to justice the perpetrators of a genocidal war against the country's Indian population in decades past.
At a meeting of Latin American and European nations in Austria in May, President Bachelet, alluding to the growing US hostility towards the so-called "power axis" between Venezuela and Bolivia, stated: "I would not want us to return to the cold war era where we demonise one country or another. What we have witnessed in these countries [Bolivia and Venezuela] is that they are looking for governments and leaders that will work to eradicate poverty and eliminate inequality."
Regarding the UN seat, Foreign Minister Foxley says, "Chile has not made a decision, we will make it only as we get closer to October." He added: "We are interested in a region that has a strong sense of unity ..."
At the White House Bachelet hailed "political, commercial relationships" with the US. None the less Chile has demonstrated a streak of independence in its dealings with the Bush administration. Chile held a security council seat in 2003, in the leadup to the US invasion of Iraq, and the government of Carlos Lagos, in which Bachelet served as minister of defence, refused to buckle under US pressure to support the invasion.
In Washington, Bachelet stopped off to see another colleague from her days in the Lagos cabinet, Jose Miguel Insulza, who is now secretary general of the Organisation of American States (OAS). Insulza was elected to the post in May 2005 over the strong opposition of the Bush administration, which backed a candidate from El Salvador, another county with an atrocious human rights record.
The secretary general of the OAS has generally played a largely subservient role, given that the US pays most of the bills. In recent months Insulza has struck an independent pose, criticising the US last month when it broke off trade talks with Ecuador after it nationalised the holdings of Occidental Petroleum. When the Bush administration set up a post-Castro transition office in the State Department, Insulza declared "there's no transition and it's not your country." Regarding Venezuela, Insulza - who is no fan of Chávez - has none the less made it clear the Bush administration is overestimating the dangers that Venezuela poses to the hemisphere.
Bachelet during her trip to Washington refused to comment on the controversy over Venezuela while the foreign ministry in Santiago is tight-lipped about its leanings over the UN seat. To be sure, Chávez has made his share of enemies in Latin America, including the newly elected president of Peru, Alan Garcia, whom Chávez called a "cheat and a scoundrel". And the central American countries along with Mexico are already known to be backing Guatemala's candidacy.
Regardless of which way Chile jumps in this hemispheric debate, it is clear Bachelet will not let herself be pushed around by the United States and that she will do what is best for Chile and Latin America.
President Michelle Bachelet came to Washington on Thursday for a one day whirl wind trip that included a meeting with George Bush. Both exchanged pleasantries after the meeting, neither referring to the heavy-handed efforts of the Bush administration to pressure Chile to oppose Venezuela's bid for a seat on the United Nations security council.
Just 11 days before the White House visit the Chilean daily La Tercera published a report on a meeting between Condoleezza Rice and the Chilean foreign minister, Alejandro Foxley, in which the US secretary of state insisted that Venezuela's candidacy for the UN seat "aims at the heart of US interests". Rice warned that "Chile could fall into a group of losers against US interests ..." and that the United States "will not understand" a Chilean vote for Venezuela.
The Bush administration is backing the candidacy of Guatemala in its campaign to stop President Hugo Chávez from winning a seat for Venezuela. Five of the 10 rotating seats on the security council are opening up in October, and one of them traditionally goes to a Latin American nation. Although the UN general assembly formally votes on the council members, the candidate is usually selected beforehand by a consensus among the countries of the region.
It is no surprise that the United States in its meddling in Latin American waters is backing Guatemala, a country with an atrocious human rights record. Under the current government of Oscar Berger, who took office in 2004, there have been charges of human rights abuses and he has done virtually nothing to bring to justice the perpetrators of a genocidal war against the country's Indian population in decades past.
At a meeting of Latin American and European nations in Austria in May, President Bachelet, alluding to the growing US hostility towards the so-called "power axis" between Venezuela and Bolivia, stated: "I would not want us to return to the cold war era where we demonise one country or another. What we have witnessed in these countries [Bolivia and Venezuela] is that they are looking for governments and leaders that will work to eradicate poverty and eliminate inequality."
Regarding the UN seat, Foreign Minister Foxley says, "Chile has not made a decision, we will make it only as we get closer to October." He added: "We are interested in a region that has a strong sense of unity ..."
At the White House Bachelet hailed "political, commercial relationships" with the US. None the less Chile has demonstrated a streak of independence in its dealings with the Bush administration. Chile held a security council seat in 2003, in the leadup to the US invasion of Iraq, and the government of Carlos Lagos, in which Bachelet served as minister of defence, refused to buckle under US pressure to support the invasion.
In Washington, Bachelet stopped off to see another colleague from her days in the Lagos cabinet, Jose Miguel Insulza, who is now secretary general of the Organisation of American States (OAS). Insulza was elected to the post in May 2005 over the strong opposition of the Bush administration, which backed a candidate from El Salvador, another county with an atrocious human rights record.
The secretary general of the OAS has generally played a largely subservient role, given that the US pays most of the bills. In recent months Insulza has struck an independent pose, criticising the US last month when it broke off trade talks with Ecuador after it nationalised the holdings of Occidental Petroleum. When the Bush administration set up a post-Castro transition office in the State Department, Insulza declared "there's no transition and it's not your country." Regarding Venezuela, Insulza - who is no fan of Chávez - has none the less made it clear the Bush administration is overestimating the dangers that Venezuela poses to the hemisphere.
Bachelet during her trip to Washington refused to comment on the controversy over Venezuela while the foreign ministry in Santiago is tight-lipped about its leanings over the UN seat. To be sure, Chávez has made his share of enemies in Latin America, including the newly elected president of Peru, Alan Garcia, whom Chávez called a "cheat and a scoundrel". And the central American countries along with Mexico are already known to be backing Guatemala's candidacy.
Regardless of which way Chile jumps in this hemispheric debate, it is clear Bachelet will not let herself be pushed around by the United States and that she will do what is best for Chile and Latin America.
Colombian and Peruvian Elections Prove Stalin Was Right - by Stephen Lendman
COLOMBIAN AND PERUVIAN ELECTIONS PROVE STALIN WAS RIGHT
Joe Stalin wasn't just an ordinary dictator, he was a very savvy one. He had to have been to have held on to power for over 30 years, succeed in outfoxing his rivals, and even be able to break the back of the vaunted Nazi Wehrmacht that turned the tide of the war in Europe and led to Hitler's demise. His political control at home and over his allied Warsaw Pact countries was best explained by the philosophy he reportedly once expressed: "It's not the people who vote that count; it's the people who count the votes."
That Stalinist wisdom and modus operandi surely applies to the elections just concluded in Colombia and Peru. Both nations have a majority of poor and indigenous people who want no part of a US imposed neoliberal "free market" way of doing things, and in a free and open election would never elect any candidate who did. So how come that's exactly what happened? On May 28, we're supposed to believe the Colombian people rejected a more moderate or democratic alternative and instead chose to reelect right wing hard-liner and close Bush ally Alvaro Uribe Velez who had to arrange for the constitution to be changed to allow him to run in the first place. And on June 4, lightning seemed to strike twice in one week as the people of Peru for some unexplained reason elected former disgraced president and economy-wrecker while he held office Alan Garcia who also happens to support the Washington Consensus and will dutifully surrender his nation's sovereignty to the Bush administration.
I hope readers of this web site don't buy any of this and are savvy enough to understand how smart Joe Stalin was. I'd also like to add my own strong view to what the former Soviet dictator may have said. It's not just who counts the votes that determines an election outcome, it's also who decides who's allowed to vote and who isn't. For many weeks before the Colombian and Peruvian elections, CIA, National Endowment for Democracy (NED), US Agency for International Development (USAID) and International Republican Institute (IRI) operatives were all over both countries setting in place the process needed to assure both their candidates won regardless of whether the majority of people wanted them. They clearly did not, and had they been allowed to vote and do it fairly would have defeated both Washington allied candidates who will do everything they can to support the interests of the US, its giant transnational corporations and their own elite and virtually nothing whatever to serve the needs of their own people.
So what may lie ahead in both countries as two oppressive regimes pursue their Washington-friendly policies and continue to harm the great majority in their own countries. Yesterday on the VHeadline.com web site, Alfredo Bremont wrote that Hugo Chavez "has every reason to be happy that Alan Garcia won in Peru." He went on to explain that "there is no nation on this planet that will succeed as long (as) it follows Washington D.C.'s dictum" as Colombia and Peru have done. Alfredo says they got what they have "chosen." My own view is those in charge of the electoral process, with lots of help from US experts, arranged for and got the outcome they wanted. This is nothing new as the US has a long history of staging "demonstration elections" (as Edward S. Herman brilliantly documented in his book by that title), particularly in Latin America.
But Alfredo and I see a similar future and not just in Colombia and Peru. The spirit and strength of Hugo Chavez's Bolivarian Revolution will one day spread throughout the region and eventually displace those alternatives that only serve wealth and power and do it at the expense of the people. The June 6 headline on a page 4 Wall Street Journal story that "In Peru Vote, Biggest Loser is Chavez" will one day prove embarrassingly wrong. But when today's WSJ gloat fades, you won't find that reported on its pages.
No system as corrupted as the US model that needs repression, imperial expansion and militarism to make it work can possibly survive. It's already in decline and will eventually crumble under its own weight. That's the fate of all houses made only of cards and not substance. In the case of Colombia and Peru, justice has only been delayed, not denied. A glorious, shinning day is ahead for all peoples in the Americas and beyond, and when it comes the spirit and legacy of Hugo Chavez and his glorious Bolivarian Revolution will have been vindicated.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.
Joe Stalin wasn't just an ordinary dictator, he was a very savvy one. He had to have been to have held on to power for over 30 years, succeed in outfoxing his rivals, and even be able to break the back of the vaunted Nazi Wehrmacht that turned the tide of the war in Europe and led to Hitler's demise. His political control at home and over his allied Warsaw Pact countries was best explained by the philosophy he reportedly once expressed: "It's not the people who vote that count; it's the people who count the votes."
That Stalinist wisdom and modus operandi surely applies to the elections just concluded in Colombia and Peru. Both nations have a majority of poor and indigenous people who want no part of a US imposed neoliberal "free market" way of doing things, and in a free and open election would never elect any candidate who did. So how come that's exactly what happened? On May 28, we're supposed to believe the Colombian people rejected a more moderate or democratic alternative and instead chose to reelect right wing hard-liner and close Bush ally Alvaro Uribe Velez who had to arrange for the constitution to be changed to allow him to run in the first place. And on June 4, lightning seemed to strike twice in one week as the people of Peru for some unexplained reason elected former disgraced president and economy-wrecker while he held office Alan Garcia who also happens to support the Washington Consensus and will dutifully surrender his nation's sovereignty to the Bush administration.
I hope readers of this web site don't buy any of this and are savvy enough to understand how smart Joe Stalin was. I'd also like to add my own strong view to what the former Soviet dictator may have said. It's not just who counts the votes that determines an election outcome, it's also who decides who's allowed to vote and who isn't. For many weeks before the Colombian and Peruvian elections, CIA, National Endowment for Democracy (NED), US Agency for International Development (USAID) and International Republican Institute (IRI) operatives were all over both countries setting in place the process needed to assure both their candidates won regardless of whether the majority of people wanted them. They clearly did not, and had they been allowed to vote and do it fairly would have defeated both Washington allied candidates who will do everything they can to support the interests of the US, its giant transnational corporations and their own elite and virtually nothing whatever to serve the needs of their own people.
So what may lie ahead in both countries as two oppressive regimes pursue their Washington-friendly policies and continue to harm the great majority in their own countries. Yesterday on the VHeadline.com web site, Alfredo Bremont wrote that Hugo Chavez "has every reason to be happy that Alan Garcia won in Peru." He went on to explain that "there is no nation on this planet that will succeed as long (as) it follows Washington D.C.'s dictum" as Colombia and Peru have done. Alfredo says they got what they have "chosen." My own view is those in charge of the electoral process, with lots of help from US experts, arranged for and got the outcome they wanted. This is nothing new as the US has a long history of staging "demonstration elections" (as Edward S. Herman brilliantly documented in his book by that title), particularly in Latin America.
But Alfredo and I see a similar future and not just in Colombia and Peru. The spirit and strength of Hugo Chavez's Bolivarian Revolution will one day spread throughout the region and eventually displace those alternatives that only serve wealth and power and do it at the expense of the people. The June 6 headline on a page 4 Wall Street Journal story that "In Peru Vote, Biggest Loser is Chavez" will one day prove embarrassingly wrong. But when today's WSJ gloat fades, you won't find that reported on its pages.
No system as corrupted as the US model that needs repression, imperial expansion and militarism to make it work can possibly survive. It's already in decline and will eventually crumble under its own weight. That's the fate of all houses made only of cards and not substance. In the case of Colombia and Peru, justice has only been delayed, not denied. A glorious, shinning day is ahead for all peoples in the Americas and beyond, and when it comes the spirit and legacy of Hugo Chavez and his glorious Bolivarian Revolution will have been vindicated.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.
CNN censors anti-Bush Interview WITH MICHAEL BERG RE: ZARQAWI
CNN CUTS INFLAMMATORY INTERVIEW WITH MICHAEL BERG RE ZARQAWI
By Blake Fleetwood - June 8, 2006
HUFFINGTON POST - This morning I watched CNN's Soledad O'Brien conduct an incredible interview with Michael Berg, the father of Nick Berg, who was beheaded by al-Zarqawi, but the most interesting and upsetting part of the interview was cut from further broadcasts on CNN later on in the day. They had Berg on many times, but they didn't have the following provocative thoughts. (see below).
CNN must have considered the words too inflammatory to put on the mainstream media. They balanced the coverage with predictable interviews with other relatives of Zarqawi victims:
Blake Fleetwood: ''We will see if these words see the light of day when Berg is interviewed by Larry King later tonight.
10:45 PM EST. Thursday 6/8: ''Larry King did not press Berg on these earlier comments. Berg was very eloquent. A real pacifist. The amazing thing about what Berg said earlier is that 80% of the rest of the world agrees with him and thinks that Bush is worse than Saddam.
Saddam grew up in a culture of cruelty and mass murder. Bush came from a more civilized society, but comparing the number of innocent people killed, the results are about the same.''
Blake Fleetwood, Huffington Post, 2006 - The Url address of this article is: www.globalresearch.ca/PrintArticle.php?articleId=2608
CIA TERROR SHOW MUST GO ON: SUCCESSOR TO AL ZARQAWI READY
The PNAC #1 propaganda paper New York Times not only tells us that many new people in the Iraqi puppet government are former Saddam Hussein's generals etc. - they also proudly announce the successor of mythical al Zarqawi: ''Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV, an aide to the top American commander here, Gen. George W. Casey Jr., told reporters at a briefing that United States commanders had identified the man most likely to take over as Al Qaeda's leader in Iraq, an Egyptian militant who uses the nom de guerre Abu al-Masri.
General Caldwell said Mr. Masri had been in Iraq since 2002, and had played a major role in organizing suicide bombings around Baghdad.'' - End quote - full item NYT war propaganda - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/kjman
Organizing suicide bombings: Fake Terrorism Is a Coalition's Best Friend - by Matt Hutaf - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/a8f7e
FPF - concerns - "Dead? Who created the story of Al Zarqawi?" -
Url.: http://www.cemab.be/print.php?id=1450
FPF/HR - TO US WARS AND FASCISM RELATED LINKS - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/gkgrb
* THE US PNAC WARS & NATO’S SECRET ARMIES LINKED TO TERRORISM? - (NATO, the Pentagon, NSA, MI6, the CIA, Mossad, BND, and all other European and global 'intelligence services' are linked to inhuman terror, coups d’état, 'rendition', the PNAC Gulags and torture - HR) - by Daniele Ganser - Url.: http://globalresearch.ca/articles/GAN412A.html
* FALSE FLAG 9/11 - NO LEGAL BASE FOR NATO FIGHTING US WARS - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/zqzkc
* FPF-COPYRIGHT NOTICE - In accordance with Title 17 U. S. C. Section 107 - any copyrighted work in this message is distributed by the Foreign Press Foundation under fair use, without profit or payment, to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the information. Url.: http://liimirror.warwick.ac.uk/uscode/17/107.html
FOREIGN PRESS FOUNDATION
http://forpressfound.blogspot.com/
Editor: Henk Ruyssenaars
http://tinyurl.com/amn3q
The Netherlands
fpf@chello.nl
By Blake Fleetwood - June 8, 2006
HUFFINGTON POST - This morning I watched CNN's Soledad O'Brien conduct an incredible interview with Michael Berg, the father of Nick Berg, who was beheaded by al-Zarqawi, but the most interesting and upsetting part of the interview was cut from further broadcasts on CNN later on in the day. They had Berg on many times, but they didn't have the following provocative thoughts. (see below).
CNN must have considered the words too inflammatory to put on the mainstream media. They balanced the coverage with predictable interviews with other relatives of Zarqawi victims:
BERG: Democracy? Come on. You can't really believe that that's a democracy there when the people who are running the elections are holding guns. That's not democracy.SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: There is a theory that as they try to form some kind of government that, in fact, it's going to be brutal, it's going to be bloody, there's going to be loss and that's the history of many countries, that that's just a lot of people pay for what they believe will be better than what they had under Saddam Hussein.
BERG: Well, you know, I'm not saying Saddam Hussein was a good man, but he's no worse than George Bush. Saddam Hussein didn't pull the trigger, didn't commit the rapes. Neither did George Bush, but both men are responsible for them under their reigns of terror. I don't buy that.[endquote] - Censored CNN interview - Url.: www.globalresearch.ca/PrintArticle.php?articleId=2608
Iraq did not have al Qaeda in it. Al Qaeda supposedly killed my son. Under Saddam Hussein, no al Qaeda. Under George Bush, al Qaeda. Under Saddam Hussein, relative stability. Under George Bush, instability. Under Saddam Hussein, about 30,000 deaths a year. Under George Bush, about 60,000 deaths a year.
I DON'T GET IT.
WHY IS IT BETTER TO HAVE GEORGE BUSH BE THE KING OF IRAQ RATHER THAN SADDAM HUSSEIN?
Blake Fleetwood: ''We will see if these words see the light of day when Berg is interviewed by Larry King later tonight.
10:45 PM EST. Thursday 6/8: ''Larry King did not press Berg on these earlier comments. Berg was very eloquent. A real pacifist. The amazing thing about what Berg said earlier is that 80% of the rest of the world agrees with him and thinks that Bush is worse than Saddam.
Saddam grew up in a culture of cruelty and mass murder. Bush came from a more civilized society, but comparing the number of innocent people killed, the results are about the same.''
Blake Fleetwood, Huffington Post, 2006 - The Url address of this article is: www.globalresearch.ca/PrintArticle.php?articleId=2608
CIA TERROR SHOW MUST GO ON: SUCCESSOR TO AL ZARQAWI READY
The PNAC #1 propaganda paper New York Times not only tells us that many new people in the Iraqi puppet government are former Saddam Hussein's generals etc. - they also proudly announce the successor of mythical al Zarqawi: ''Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV, an aide to the top American commander here, Gen. George W. Casey Jr., told reporters at a briefing that United States commanders had identified the man most likely to take over as Al Qaeda's leader in Iraq, an Egyptian militant who uses the nom de guerre Abu al-Masri.
General Caldwell said Mr. Masri had been in Iraq since 2002, and had played a major role in organizing suicide bombings around Baghdad.'' - End quote - full item NYT war propaganda - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/kjman
Organizing suicide bombings: Fake Terrorism Is a Coalition's Best Friend - by Matt Hutaf - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/a8f7e
FPF - concerns - "Dead? Who created the story of Al Zarqawi?" -
Url.: http://www.cemab.be/print.php?id=1450
FPF/HR - TO US WARS AND FASCISM RELATED LINKS - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/gkgrb
* THE US PNAC WARS & NATO’S SECRET ARMIES LINKED TO TERRORISM? - (NATO, the Pentagon, NSA, MI6, the CIA, Mossad, BND, and all other European and global 'intelligence services' are linked to inhuman terror, coups d’état, 'rendition', the PNAC Gulags and torture - HR) - by Daniele Ganser - Url.: http://globalresearch.ca/articles/GAN412A.html
* FALSE FLAG 9/11 - NO LEGAL BASE FOR NATO FIGHTING US WARS - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/zqzkc
* FPF-COPYRIGHT NOTICE - In accordance with Title 17 U. S. C. Section 107 - any copyrighted work in this message is distributed by the Foreign Press Foundation under fair use, without profit or payment, to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the information. Url.: http://liimirror.warwick.ac.uk/uscode/17/107.html
FOREIGN PRESS FOUNDATION
http://forpressfound.blogspot.com/
Editor: Henk Ruyssenaars
http://tinyurl.com/amn3q
The Netherlands
fpf@chello.nl
American Bloody Impunity - By Mike Whitney
"Successive imperialist powers have shown that the bottom line in combating the hopes and dreams of ordinary people is to resort to spreading terror through the application of extreme violence." Max Fuller; "For Iraq, the ‘'l Salvador Option' becomes Reality"George Bush is right; Iraq is "the central battlefield in the global war on terror". Regrettably, it is United States that is the main sponsor and supporter of that terror in the form of American-trained death squads. Death squad activity in Iraq now accounts for more than 1,000 casualties per month. The Baghdad morgue has become a conveyor-belt for American-generated carnage.
Up to now, the US involvement in the killing has been effectively concealed by the mainstream media.
Apart from infrequent reports on the internet, there is little information connecting the burgeoning death toll to America’s counterinsurgency operations.
That changed on May 4, 2006 when Congressman Dennis Kucinich gave a speech on the floor of the House which linked the Bush administration to the death squad’s in Iraq. Reading from a long list of newspaper articles he had compiled, Kucinich provided a detailed account of America's disturbing undercover war. Naturally, his speech was shunned by the major media and consigned to the memory hole. It outlines the extent of America's complicity in the ongoing slaughter and asks us to question whether any additional involvement can be morally justified.
Kucinich's speech was framed in the context of 2 letters which he delivered to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and President George Bush.
His comments are entered below, if you use this Url.: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article13558.htm
STRONGLY RELATED LINKS - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/gkgrb
* FPF-COPYRIGHT NOTICE - In accordance with Title 17 U. S. C. Section 107 - any copyrighted work in this message is distributed by the Foreign Press Foundation under fair use, without profit or payment, to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the information. Url.: http://liimirror.warwick.ac.uk/uscode/17/107.html
Fwd. by:
FOREIGN PRESS FOUNDATION
http://forpressfound.blogspot.com/
Editor: Henk Ruyssenaars
http://tinyurl.com/amn3q
The Netherlands
fpf@chello.nl
America's Endless Race Wars and Massacres
Massacre is an acquired taste. The United States is arguably the only country on the planet whose national personality and self-image is rooted in centuries of unremitting expansion through race war punctuated by massacre. There have always been "free-fire zones" all along the coveted, ever moving peripheries of white American power, from the "Indian country" surrounding the settler beachheads of Plymouth Rock and Jamestown to the "Sunni Triangle" of Iraq and the mountains of Afghanistan. Whole peoples – millions – have been erased in the glorious march of American Manifest Destiny.
It is true that the globe-ravaging European colonial powers certainly killed more human beings in the course of their imperial careers than their settler sons in North America. However, the national characters of Britain, Spain, France, Holland and Belgium were already formed when the Great European Breakout and Worldwide Pillage commenced. Although their wealth was later built on the blood and bones of faraway “natives” and slaves, European civil societies were already shaped by long histories of conflict among themselves, between classes and nations on their small sub-continent. Britain and France stretched forth their naval and army tentacles to ensure that wealth arrived in Liverpool and Marseilles, but the colonized peoples did not effectively intrude on the evolution of European society.
Nobody had to invent the historical personalities of the Frenchman in France, the Englishman in England. Their civil societies were deeply impacted – and some sectors greatly enriched – by the existence of the colonies, but not (until very recently) by the foreign peoples who died for European prosperity.
The English settler colonies in North America were different – unique. Masses of armed migrants came to steal, and stay, and keep stealing. Theirs was an enterprise of aggrandizement at the native's expense, and unlimited expansion. Less than a century and a half after the massacre and near-erasure of the Pequots – in celebration of which the Governor of Massachusetts proclaimed the first day of Pilgrim Thanksgiving – the white colonists decided that they were a distinct people, no longer Europeans.
They were right. American colonial society was shaped by constant depredations against non-whites, close up and brutal. By 1776, one out of five non-Indian residents of the colonies were Black slaves, the control and dehumanization of which had become a daily collective duty of much of the white population. Across the Alleghenies lay unconquered Indian lands that, once cleansed, could usher into being a white empire that would dwarf Europe. The English King and his treaties with the Indians stood in the way; he had to go.
The "American" mission was clear, manifest: to endlessly expand through the elimination of impediments posed by the External Other ("savage" Indians), while keeping white society safe and separate from the "debauchery" of the valuable, Internal Other (Black slaves). This is the foundation on which the American iconography and celebration is based. Lacking any other, it is the template of white American identity and purported "civilization."
From Outright Theft to Glorious Empire
By the turn of the 20th Century, with the Indians dead or subjugated and African Americans forced into the long nightmare of Jim Crow, soon-to-be president Teddy Roosevelt – who called Blacks "a perfectly stupid race" – summed up the great American adventure with the guilelessness of a pure psychopath. In our March 16, 2004 issue, BC contributing writer Paul Street described Roosevelt's "massive, four-volume 1899 study Winning of the West” as "a white-supremacist paean to Anglo-America's near-eradication of North America's original civilizations."
"During the past three centuries," Roosevelt opined, "the spread of English-speaking people over the world's waste spaces" (meaning spaces not occupied by "progressive" capitalist-developmental Caucasians) was a great and welcome "feat of power," for which the "English-speaking race" could justly feel proud. No such "feat" of "race power" was more laudable, however, than "the vast movement by which this continent [North America] was conquered and peopled" – the "crowning and greatest achievement of a series of mighty movements."
This is still the song that is sung, the imperative to supremacy that cannot but lead to endless war and massacre. Paul Street presents a long but necessarily incomplete chronicle of the mass murder exclamation points in U.S. history that polite white society now shakes its head in regret about, but which remain the operative events and premises on which U.S. behavior in the world is justified – celebrated! – today.
Roosevelt became a "hero" in the Spanish-American War of 1898, a pushover conflict in which a decrepit Spain was ejected from Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines. The U.S. was now a full-fledged imperial power with tens of millions of "natives" under its boot – and proud of it. American Manifest Destiny had gone truly global, as white as ever.
But the Filipinos, who had surrounded and almost run out the Spanish before the Americans arrived, insisted on claiming their independence. The U.S. embarked on a scorched earth and bodies strategy – as usual.
The American soldiers were confused, however. What would they call these people who lived in the thousand-island archipelago "free-fire" zone? With the Indian wars (massacres) still fresh in their minds, and the lynching of thousands of American Blacks the favorite pastime for many back home, U.S. soldiers wrote to family and friends of the fun they were having killing the "niggers" and "injuns" of the Philippines.
"Gooks," "chinks," and "hajis" would come later, once the Americans got their feet wet in the blood of the world.
Mark Twain, an anti-war activist, wrote of how 30,000 U.S. troops caused the deaths of a half-million Filipinos. One episode of many in the imperial butchery occurred in 1906 when a whole village sought refuge from the invaders in a dormant volcanic crater on the southern island of Jolo. Sixteen-hundred were massacred by American artillery, rifles and machine guns. U.S. officials reported:
"This action was absolutely necessary to the welfare of the people of Jolo. The position was first shelled by a naval gunboat and then assaulted by the troops and constabulary. The Moro women fought alongside the men and held their children before them, having sworn to die rather than yield. In this way a number of women and children were among the killed – an unfortunate but necessary evil."
The same script we hear today had been written, even then, just as the U.S. was stepping fully onto the global stage. We will not list the atrocities that U.S. soldiers have committed against (almost always) non-white peoples in the 100 years since the Jolo Crater Massacre, the Philippines. They are legion, as were the massacres that occurred in the previous centuries of the evolution of American Manifest Destiny.
The rabid expansionism at the core of the American national personality has never been bound by fixed borders, international law, or any other constraints. Steeped in racism, it places no value whatsoever on non-white lives. That's why the Bush administration gets away with not counting the civilian casualties in Iraq – only the American dead matter. And that’s why contemporary Americans feel perfectly normal speaking of "exporting American values" and other nonsense to cloak the atrocities of nation-stealing that are but a "necessary evil" in the fulfillment of some God-given mission – wherever it leads.
Continuity of Crimes
The Haditha, Balad, Ramadi, and Makr al-Deeb massacres of Iraqi civilians by U.S. troops are mere whiffs from the inferno that has consumed up to a quarter million Iraqis since the Americans set upon their mission to accomplish – as in 1906 Jolo, the Philippines – what was "absolutely necessary to the welfare of the people."
In a post-Haditha column that Cindy Sheehan, anti-war mother of a soldier killed in Iraq, called “the most difficult article that I have ever had to write,” she decried "the fact that our troops are being turned into war criminals." Sheehan recognizes that the U.S. is in violation of international law – that the Iraq war is a criminal enterprise.
"War turns our mostly normal American youth into wanton murderers who have lost their own humanity and love of others. Haditha in this war and My Lai in another disgusting war were unfortunately not aberrations. War is the abominable aberration."
We commend Sheehan's courage in describing the U.S. government as criminal. In doing so, she is beginning to confront the national mythology – at the core of the national identity – that Americans are always seeking some "greater good" and commit crimes only by mistake or through the “aberrations” that are inevitably unleashed once wars are started.
But even the brave Ms. Sheehan cannot face the truth. The (white) American public still cannot discuss why the U.S. glories in having become the ultimate imperial power of all time, to the acclaim of the overwhelming majority of its citizens whose whole history and culture has prepared them to accept this "burden." Wars may be aberrant experiences in the lives of most human individuals, but some nations are serial aggressors. American society is unique in having been formed almost wholly by processes of aggression against external and internal Others.
Societies willingly go to war when they have been primed to do so by an already existing mass internal dynamic that is easily manipulated by scheming rulers. White America has been constantly at war with Others, internal and external, since long before the founding of the Republic. George Bush just played the right chords, in Iraq. Now the music is sounding way off key, which causes majorities of Americans great concern and confusion. Yet these same citizens react just like their pre-Iraq selves when the Bush regime choreographs a near-identical run-up to war with neighboring Iran – another country they know nothing about except that it's not "white" in the American sense. Are white Americans stupid, or have they been conditioned by a national ethos born of habitual aggression, fundamental expectations of impunity, and an idiotic assumption of innocence.
Cindy Sheehan tries to find the soft spot in America by blaming the crimes in Iraq and Vietnam on something called "war," but sadly winds up in the same place as apologists for slavery and genocide, who claim these systematic crimes were "aberrations" not fundamental to the American national character and worldview.
Slavery was not an aberration; it created the wealth that allowed the United States to emerge as a world power only a century-and-a-quarter after the Declaration of Independence, and to become a magnet for successive waves of European immigrants. Genocide of Native Americans was not an aberration; it was the logical outcome of the original European hemispheric-theft project, and became the national project with the triumph of the settlers over the British. The ever-expanding United States was born. Was it an aberration?
At the very least, we must hope the planet survives the United States. In a world that is becoming inter-dependent at breath-taking speed, there is no room for a superpower nation born in and nurtured by centuries of massacre and endless war, always with the majority support of its white citizenry.
A Change of Values
Most Black Americans understand that the U.S. has never been up to any good in the non-white vastness of the world, because we realize that most American whites have been steeped in either blood or lies about our own Black corner of the society. African Americans react with learned cynicism when white anti-warriors call for a "return" to "American values" – for obvious historical and contemporary reasons. What values? "American" values are the problem.
The American-instigated crisis that threatens to widen the arenas of war is not just an "aberration" that can be corrected by getting the Bush men out of office – although that would be welcome. In truth, most Americans care little about the world, unless they have a privileged position in it, imposing their will on everyone else. They are collectively hostile to their own fellow citizens who are Black, and many are rousing themselves for a fierce confrontation with yet another Other: Latino immigrants. It's the same historical dynamic, that can only lead to more massacres and endless wars – foreign and domestic.
Glen Ford and Peter Gamble are writing a book to be titled, Barack Obama and the Crisis in Black Leadership.
Don't Forget Those Other 27,000 Nukes By Hans Blix
06/08/06 "IHT" -- -- Stockholm, Sweden -- During the Cold War, it proved possible to reach many significant agreements on disarmament. Why does it seem so impossible now, when the great powers no longer feel threatened by one another?
Almost all the talk these days is about the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction to states like Iran and North Korea, or to terrorists. Foreign ministers meet again and again, concerned that Iran has enriched a few milligrams of uranium to a 4 percent level.
Some want to start waving the stick immediately. They are convinced that Iran will eventually violate its commitment under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty to forego nuclear weapons.
While it's desirable that the foreign ministers talk about Iran, they don't seem to devote any thought to the fact that there are still some 27,000 real nuclear weapons in the United States, Russia and other states, and that many of these are on hair-trigger alert.
Nor do the ministers seem to realize that the determination they express to reduce the nuclear threat is diminished by their failure to take seriously their commitment, made within the framework of the NPT, to move toward the reduction and elimination of their own nuclear arsenals.
The stagnation in global disarmament is only part of the picture. In the United States, military authorities want new types of nuclear weapons; in Britain, the government is considering the replacement, at tremendous cost, of one generation of nuclear weapons by another - as defense against whom?
Last year a UN summit of heads of states and governments failed to adopt a single recommendation on how to attain further disarmament or prevent the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. For nearly a decade, work at the disarmament conference in Geneva has stood still. It is time for a revival.
One can well understand that policymakers in the United States, as elsewhere, feel disappointment and concern that the global instruments against nuclear proliferation - the NPT and international inspection - have proved to be insufficient to stop Iraq, North Korea, Libya and possibly Iran on their way to nuclear weapons.
This may help explain their inclination to use the enormous military potential of the U.S. as either a threat or a direct means of preventing proliferation.
However, after three years of a costly and criticized war in Iraq to destroy weapons that did not exist, doubts are beginning to arise about the military method, and a greater readiness may emerge to try global cooperation once again to reduce and eventually eliminate weapons of mass destruction.
A report with 60 concrete recommendations to the states of the world on what they could do to free themselves from nuclear, biological and chemical weapons, worked out by an independent international commission of which I was the chairman, is now available at www.wmdcommission.org.
Apart from proposals for measures to prevent the spread of weapons of mass destruction to more states and terrorists, the report points to two measures that could turn current concerns about renewed arms races into new hopes for common security. In both cases, success would depend on the United States.
A U.S. ratification of the comprehensive test-ban treaty would, in all likelihood, lead other states to ratify and bring all such tests to an end, making the development of nuclear weapons more difficult. Leaving the treaty in limbo, as has been done since 1996, is to risk new weapons testing.
The second measure would be to conclude an internationally verified agreement to cut off the production of highly enriched uranium and plutonium for weapons purposes.
This would close the tap everywhere for more weapons material and would be of special importance if an agreement on nuclear cooperation with the United States were to give India access to more uranium than it has at the moment.
It is positive that the U.S. has recently presented a draft cutoff agreement, but hard to understand why this agreement does not include international inspection. Do the drafters think that the recent record of national intelligence indicates that international verification is superfluous?
Hans Blix is a former chief UN weapons inspector.
Almost all the talk these days is about the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction to states like Iran and North Korea, or to terrorists. Foreign ministers meet again and again, concerned that Iran has enriched a few milligrams of uranium to a 4 percent level.
Some want to start waving the stick immediately. They are convinced that Iran will eventually violate its commitment under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty to forego nuclear weapons.
While it's desirable that the foreign ministers talk about Iran, they don't seem to devote any thought to the fact that there are still some 27,000 real nuclear weapons in the United States, Russia and other states, and that many of these are on hair-trigger alert.
Nor do the ministers seem to realize that the determination they express to reduce the nuclear threat is diminished by their failure to take seriously their commitment, made within the framework of the NPT, to move toward the reduction and elimination of their own nuclear arsenals.
The stagnation in global disarmament is only part of the picture. In the United States, military authorities want new types of nuclear weapons; in Britain, the government is considering the replacement, at tremendous cost, of one generation of nuclear weapons by another - as defense against whom?
Last year a UN summit of heads of states and governments failed to adopt a single recommendation on how to attain further disarmament or prevent the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. For nearly a decade, work at the disarmament conference in Geneva has stood still. It is time for a revival.
One can well understand that policymakers in the United States, as elsewhere, feel disappointment and concern that the global instruments against nuclear proliferation - the NPT and international inspection - have proved to be insufficient to stop Iraq, North Korea, Libya and possibly Iran on their way to nuclear weapons.
This may help explain their inclination to use the enormous military potential of the U.S. as either a threat or a direct means of preventing proliferation.
However, after three years of a costly and criticized war in Iraq to destroy weapons that did not exist, doubts are beginning to arise about the military method, and a greater readiness may emerge to try global cooperation once again to reduce and eventually eliminate weapons of mass destruction.
A report with 60 concrete recommendations to the states of the world on what they could do to free themselves from nuclear, biological and chemical weapons, worked out by an independent international commission of which I was the chairman, is now available at www.wmdcommission.org.
Apart from proposals for measures to prevent the spread of weapons of mass destruction to more states and terrorists, the report points to two measures that could turn current concerns about renewed arms races into new hopes for common security. In both cases, success would depend on the United States.
A U.S. ratification of the comprehensive test-ban treaty would, in all likelihood, lead other states to ratify and bring all such tests to an end, making the development of nuclear weapons more difficult. Leaving the treaty in limbo, as has been done since 1996, is to risk new weapons testing.
The second measure would be to conclude an internationally verified agreement to cut off the production of highly enriched uranium and plutonium for weapons purposes.
This would close the tap everywhere for more weapons material and would be of special importance if an agreement on nuclear cooperation with the United States were to give India access to more uranium than it has at the moment.
It is positive that the U.S. has recently presented a draft cutoff agreement, but hard to understand why this agreement does not include international inspection. Do the drafters think that the recent record of national intelligence indicates that international verification is superfluous?
Hans Blix is a former chief UN weapons inspector.
Death of a Jailbird - Zarqawi's End is Not a Famous Victory By ROBERT FISK
So, it's another "mission accomplished". The man immortalised by the Americans as the most dangerous terrorist since the last most dangerous terrorist, is killed--by the Americans. A Jordanian corner-boy who could not even lock and load a machine gun is blown up by the US Air Force--and Messrs Bush and Blair see fit to boast of his demise. To this have our leaders descended. And how short are our memories.
They seek him here, they seek him there.
Those Frenchies seek him everywhere.
Is he in heaven? Is he in hell?
That damned elusive Pimpernel?
Sir Percy Blakeney, of course, eluded the revolutionary French. But the Baroness Orczy--unlike Mr Bush--would scarcely have bothered with Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian thug whose dubious allegiance to al-Qa'ida turned him in to another "Enemy Number One" for those who believe they are fighting the eternal "war on terror". For so short is our attention span--and Messrs Bush and Blair, of course, rely on this--we have already forgotten that our leaders' only interest in Zarqawi before the illegal 2003 Anglo-American invasion of Iraq was to propagate the lie that Osama bin Laden was in cahoots with Saddam Hussein.
Because Zarqawi met Bin Laden in 2002 and then took up residence in a squalid valley in northern Iraq--inside Kurdistan but well outside the control of both the Kurds and Saddam--Messrs Bush and Blair concocted the fable that this "proved" the essential link between the Beast of Baghdad and the international crimes against humanity of 11 September 2001. The date on which this fictitious alliance was proclaimed--since it is far more important, politically and historically, than the date of Zarqawi's death--was February 5, 2003. The location of the lie was the United Nations Security Council and the man who uttered it was the then Secretary of State, Colin Powell.
What a sigh of relief there must have been in Washington that Zarqawi was dead and not captured. He might have told the truth.
Yesterday, with an inevitability born of the utterly false promise that the bloodbath in Iraq is yielding dividends, we were supposed to believe that the death of Zarqawi was a famous victory. The American press dusted off their favorite phrase: "terrorist mastermind". No one, I suspect, will be able to claim the $25m on his head--unless he was betrayed by his own hooded gunmen--but the American military, stained by the blood of Haditha, received a ritual pat on the back from the Commander-in-Chief. They had got their man, the instigator of civil war, the flame of sectarian hatred, the head chopper who supposedly murdered Nicholas Berg. Maybe he was all these things. Or maybe not. But it will bring the war no nearer to its end, not because of the inevitable Islamist rhetoric about the "thousand Zarqawis" who will take his place, but because individuals no longer control--if they ever did--the inferno of Iraq. Bin Laden's death would not damage al-Qa'ida now that he--like a nuclear scientist who has built an atom bomb--has created it. Zarqawi's demise--and only al-Qa'ida's killers would have listened to him, not the ex-Iraqi army officers who run the real Iraqi insurgency--will not make an iota of difference to the slaughter in Mesopotamia.
Messrs Bush and Blair slyly admitted as much yesterday when they warned that the insurgency would continue. But this raised another question. Will the eventual departure of Bush and Blair provide an opportunity to end this hell/ disaster? Or have the results of their folly also taken on a life of their own, unstoppable by any political change in Washington or London? Already we forget the way in which the same American forces credited with Zarqawi's death had proved only a few weeks ago that he was a bumbling incompetent. The Beast of Ramadi--or Fallujah or Baquba or wherever--had produced a videotape in which he fired a light machine gun while promising victory to Islam. Days later, the Americans showed the rough cuts of the same video--in which Zarqawi could be seen pleading for help from his comrades after a bullet jammed in the breech of the weapon.
In prison in Jordan, back in the days when he was a mafiosi rather than a mahdi, Zarqawi would drape blankets around his bed, curtains that would conceal him from his fellow prisoners, a cave--a Bin Laden cave--from which he would emerge to stroke or strike the men in his cell. Possessive of his wife, he left her with so little money that she had to go out to work in his native Zarqa. When his mother died, Zarqawi sent no condolences.
Like Bin Laden--the man of whom he was both beholden and intensely jealous--he had already transmogrified, undergone that essential transubstantiation of all violent men, from the personal to the immaterial, from the uncertainty of life to the certainty of death. Zarqawi's videotape was an act of extreme vanity that may have led to his death and he may have made it, subconsciously, to be his last message.
That the intelligence services of King Abdullah of Jordan--descendant of the monarch whom Sir Winston Churchill plopped off to the Hashemite throne--might have located Zarqawi's "safe house" in Baquba was a suitably ironic historical act. The man who believed in caliphates had struck at the kingdom--killing 60 innocents in three hotels--and the old colonial world had struck back.
A king's anger will embrace a duke or two. Even an ex-jailbird. Which, in the end, is probably all that Zarqawi was.
Robert Fisk is a reporter for The Independent and author of Pity the Nation. He is also a contributor to CounterPunch's collection, The Politics of Anti-Semitism. Fisk's new book is The Conquest of the Middle East.
They seek him here, they seek him there.
Those Frenchies seek him everywhere.
Is he in heaven? Is he in hell?
That damned elusive Pimpernel?
Sir Percy Blakeney, of course, eluded the revolutionary French. But the Baroness Orczy--unlike Mr Bush--would scarcely have bothered with Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian thug whose dubious allegiance to al-Qa'ida turned him in to another "Enemy Number One" for those who believe they are fighting the eternal "war on terror". For so short is our attention span--and Messrs Bush and Blair, of course, rely on this--we have already forgotten that our leaders' only interest in Zarqawi before the illegal 2003 Anglo-American invasion of Iraq was to propagate the lie that Osama bin Laden was in cahoots with Saddam Hussein.
Because Zarqawi met Bin Laden in 2002 and then took up residence in a squalid valley in northern Iraq--inside Kurdistan but well outside the control of both the Kurds and Saddam--Messrs Bush and Blair concocted the fable that this "proved" the essential link between the Beast of Baghdad and the international crimes against humanity of 11 September 2001. The date on which this fictitious alliance was proclaimed--since it is far more important, politically and historically, than the date of Zarqawi's death--was February 5, 2003. The location of the lie was the United Nations Security Council and the man who uttered it was the then Secretary of State, Colin Powell.
What a sigh of relief there must have been in Washington that Zarqawi was dead and not captured. He might have told the truth.
Yesterday, with an inevitability born of the utterly false promise that the bloodbath in Iraq is yielding dividends, we were supposed to believe that the death of Zarqawi was a famous victory. The American press dusted off their favorite phrase: "terrorist mastermind". No one, I suspect, will be able to claim the $25m on his head--unless he was betrayed by his own hooded gunmen--but the American military, stained by the blood of Haditha, received a ritual pat on the back from the Commander-in-Chief. They had got their man, the instigator of civil war, the flame of sectarian hatred, the head chopper who supposedly murdered Nicholas Berg. Maybe he was all these things. Or maybe not. But it will bring the war no nearer to its end, not because of the inevitable Islamist rhetoric about the "thousand Zarqawis" who will take his place, but because individuals no longer control--if they ever did--the inferno of Iraq. Bin Laden's death would not damage al-Qa'ida now that he--like a nuclear scientist who has built an atom bomb--has created it. Zarqawi's demise--and only al-Qa'ida's killers would have listened to him, not the ex-Iraqi army officers who run the real Iraqi insurgency--will not make an iota of difference to the slaughter in Mesopotamia.
Messrs Bush and Blair slyly admitted as much yesterday when they warned that the insurgency would continue. But this raised another question. Will the eventual departure of Bush and Blair provide an opportunity to end this hell/ disaster? Or have the results of their folly also taken on a life of their own, unstoppable by any political change in Washington or London? Already we forget the way in which the same American forces credited with Zarqawi's death had proved only a few weeks ago that he was a bumbling incompetent. The Beast of Ramadi--or Fallujah or Baquba or wherever--had produced a videotape in which he fired a light machine gun while promising victory to Islam. Days later, the Americans showed the rough cuts of the same video--in which Zarqawi could be seen pleading for help from his comrades after a bullet jammed in the breech of the weapon.
In prison in Jordan, back in the days when he was a mafiosi rather than a mahdi, Zarqawi would drape blankets around his bed, curtains that would conceal him from his fellow prisoners, a cave--a Bin Laden cave--from which he would emerge to stroke or strike the men in his cell. Possessive of his wife, he left her with so little money that she had to go out to work in his native Zarqa. When his mother died, Zarqawi sent no condolences.
Like Bin Laden--the man of whom he was both beholden and intensely jealous--he had already transmogrified, undergone that essential transubstantiation of all violent men, from the personal to the immaterial, from the uncertainty of life to the certainty of death. Zarqawi's videotape was an act of extreme vanity that may have led to his death and he may have made it, subconsciously, to be his last message.
That the intelligence services of King Abdullah of Jordan--descendant of the monarch whom Sir Winston Churchill plopped off to the Hashemite throne--might have located Zarqawi's "safe house" in Baquba was a suitably ironic historical act. The man who believed in caliphates had struck at the kingdom--killing 60 innocents in three hotels--and the old colonial world had struck back.
A king's anger will embrace a duke or two. Even an ex-jailbird. Which, in the end, is probably all that Zarqawi was.
Robert Fisk is a reporter for The Independent and author of Pity the Nation. He is also a contributor to CounterPunch's collection, The Politics of Anti-Semitism. Fisk's new book is The Conquest of the Middle East.
Riverbend (Girl Blog from Iraq) on the death of Zarqawi...
Baghdad Burning
... I'll meet you 'round the bend my friend, where hearts can heal and souls can mend...
Saturday, June 10, 2006
Zarqawi...
So 'Zarqawi' is finally dead. It was an interesting piece of news that greeted us yesterday morning (or was it the day before? I've lost track of time…). I didn't bother with the pictures and film they showed of him because I, personally, have been saturated with images of broken, bleeding bodies.
The reactions have been different. There's a general consensus amongst family and friends that he won't be missed, whoever he is. There is also doubt- who was he really? Did he even exist? Was he truly the huge terror the Americans made him out to be? When did he actually die? People swear he was dead back in 2003… The timing is extremely suspicious: just when people were getting really fed up with the useless Iraqi government, Zarqawi is killed and Maliki is hailed the victorious leader of the occupied world! (And no- Iraqis aren't celebrating in the streets- worries over electricity, water, death squads, tests, corpses and extremists in high places prevail right now.)
I've been listening to reactions- mostly from pro-war politicians and the naïveté they reveal is astounding. Maliki (the current Iraqi PM) was almost giddy as he made the news public (he had even gone the extra mile and shaved!). Do they really believe it will end the resistance against occupation? As long as foreign troops are in Iraq, resistance or 'insurgency' will continue- why is that SO difficult to understand? How is that concept a foreign one?
"A new day for Iraqis" is the current theme of the Iraqi puppet government and the Americans. Like it was "A New Day for Iraqis" on April 9, 2003 . And it was "A New Day for Iraqis" when they killed Oday and Qusay. Another "New Day for Iraqis" when they caught Saddam. More "New Day" when they drafted the constitution… I'm beginning to think it's like one of those questions they give you on IQ tests: If 'New' is equal to 'More' and 'Day' is equal to 'Suffering', what does "New Day for Iraqis" mean?
How do I feel? To hell with Zarqawi (or Zayrkawi as Bush calls him). He was an American creation- he came along with them- they don't need him anymore, apparently. His influence was greatly exaggerated but he was the justification for every single family they killed through military strikes and troops. It was WMD at first, then it was Saddam, then it was Zarqawi. Who will it be now? Who will be the new excuse for killing and detaining Iraqis? Or is it that an excuse is no longer needed- they have freedom to do what they want. The slaughter in Haditha months ago proved that. "They don't need him anymore," our elderly neighbor waved the news away like he was shooing flies, "They have fifty Zarqawis in government."
So now that Zarqawi is dead, and because according to Bush and our Iraqi puppets he was behind so much of Iraq's misery- things should get better, right? The car bombs should lessen, the ethnic cleansing will come to a halt, military strikes and sieges will die down… That's what we were promised, wasn't it? That sounds good to me. Now- who do they have to kill to stop the Ministry of Interior death squads, and trigger-happy foreign troops?
... I'll meet you 'round the bend my friend, where hearts can heal and souls can mend...
Saturday, June 10, 2006
Zarqawi...
So 'Zarqawi' is finally dead. It was an interesting piece of news that greeted us yesterday morning (or was it the day before? I've lost track of time…). I didn't bother with the pictures and film they showed of him because I, personally, have been saturated with images of broken, bleeding bodies.
The reactions have been different. There's a general consensus amongst family and friends that he won't be missed, whoever he is. There is also doubt- who was he really? Did he even exist? Was he truly the huge terror the Americans made him out to be? When did he actually die? People swear he was dead back in 2003… The timing is extremely suspicious: just when people were getting really fed up with the useless Iraqi government, Zarqawi is killed and Maliki is hailed the victorious leader of the occupied world! (And no- Iraqis aren't celebrating in the streets- worries over electricity, water, death squads, tests, corpses and extremists in high places prevail right now.)
I've been listening to reactions- mostly from pro-war politicians and the naïveté they reveal is astounding. Maliki (the current Iraqi PM) was almost giddy as he made the news public (he had even gone the extra mile and shaved!). Do they really believe it will end the resistance against occupation? As long as foreign troops are in Iraq, resistance or 'insurgency' will continue- why is that SO difficult to understand? How is that concept a foreign one?
"A new day for Iraqis" is the current theme of the Iraqi puppet government and the Americans. Like it was "A New Day for Iraqis" on April 9, 2003 . And it was "A New Day for Iraqis" when they killed Oday and Qusay. Another "New Day for Iraqis" when they caught Saddam. More "New Day" when they drafted the constitution… I'm beginning to think it's like one of those questions they give you on IQ tests: If 'New' is equal to 'More' and 'Day' is equal to 'Suffering', what does "New Day for Iraqis" mean?
How do I feel? To hell with Zarqawi (or Zayrkawi as Bush calls him). He was an American creation- he came along with them- they don't need him anymore, apparently. His influence was greatly exaggerated but he was the justification for every single family they killed through military strikes and troops. It was WMD at first, then it was Saddam, then it was Zarqawi. Who will it be now? Who will be the new excuse for killing and detaining Iraqis? Or is it that an excuse is no longer needed- they have freedom to do what they want. The slaughter in Haditha months ago proved that. "They don't need him anymore," our elderly neighbor waved the news away like he was shooing flies, "They have fifty Zarqawis in government."
So now that Zarqawi is dead, and because according to Bush and our Iraqi puppets he was behind so much of Iraq's misery- things should get better, right? The car bombs should lessen, the ethnic cleansing will come to a halt, military strikes and sieges will die down… That's what we were promised, wasn't it? That sounds good to me. Now- who do they have to kill to stop the Ministry of Interior death squads, and trigger-happy foreign troops?
Letter from Subcomandante Marcos to the Family of Alexis Benhumea
"Ollin Alexis now takes on a name and face for the brutality of those who don't know how to govern without intimidating, repressing, raping, imprisoning, assassinating."
By Subcomandante Marcos
The Other Mexico City
June 9, 2006
Zapatista Army of National Liberation.
Mexico.
June 7, 2006
To the family of Ollin Alexis Benhumea Hernández:
Compañera, compañero:
We learned of it in the mid-morning. We knew then that, after more than a month in the determined trench of strength that Alexis fought from, the assassination begun on the morning of May 4 had come to its completion.
The Benhumea Hernández family mourns their son and brother.
Photo: D.R. 2006 Erwin Slim
The Mexican government assassinated a young man. Ollin Alexis, his name; of the last names Benhumea Hernández. It took more than thirty days to kill his life. It was a work of death, with which the government kills, this young compañero died in the pre-dawn hours.
When the system collects its cruel bill with the life of a youth like Ollin Alexis, the death seems like an absurd interruption, like something senseless and out of place in the middle of the road, blocking it irredeemably.
Two decades of life cut short, taken by a grenade… from a weapon… from a police officer… from a government… from a system.
Barely an hour beforehand, among those up there above where they fight with each other to make the booty of our Homeland theirs, one had promised the mortal fate of Alexis to all the young people of Mexico… along with better salaries and alibis for the assassins.
Another forgot to offer the enthusiastic applause that he gave when the streets of Atenco ran with fresh blood and Alexis agonized without being able to receive the medical attention that would have saved his life.
Another ratified the complicit silence.
And up there, above, they barely battle some stupidities and say that they debate ideas.
Photo: D.R. 2006 Erwin Slim
“After all is said and done,” they think there on high, “who cares about a youth below and to the left?”
And we respond:
We do.
It matters to us.
His death matters and his life matters.
And, carefully, in pain, from his death we make a note in the long list of things to be done that we will have to collect on someday. From his life and from his political position we add that decision that we have taken on.
The Mexican government killed Ollin Alexis. It began to kill him in the morning of May 4 and ended up assassinating him on June 7 of the same year.
It assassinated him because it was afraid, because his solidarity and presence in San Salvador Atenco, on May 4, 2006, put their legality, institutions, foreign investiments, “Law and Order,” good manners, peace, tranquility, and stability at risk. Ollin Alexis Benhumea Hernández, UNAM student, was a threat and that’s why they eliminated him. His youth was a threat. Today the stock markets and flow of investments and the presidential campaigns and the governments of Fox and of the State of Mexico and of the town of Texcoco and the PAN and the PRI and the PRD can rest easy because Ollin Alexis is dead. Those who assassinated him receive decorations, awards, congratulations.
“Order! An Iron Fist!” bark those who own everything and the hunting dogs obey them.
They were afraid of this and so they killed this: 20 years of fresh existence, a university student with two simultaneous professional majors (economy and mathematics), an artist with ten years of study in dance, with a passion for history and for the commitment of those from below, another youth of La Otra.
There is the photo of Ollin Alexis on Zapatista lands; on his feet, uplifted, behind Comandante Gustavo (in one of the preparation meetings of La Otra?), caring, looking, learning with us.
Unknown to many, Ollin Alexis now takes on a name and face for the brutality of those who don’t know how to govern without intimidating, repressing, raping, imprisoning, assassinating.
This is what this government offers: a killing death for the youth.
And now we are learning to conjugate his name in death, when we wanted and want to name him in life.
A young woman, co-disciple of Alex and of all of us who are in the big school of La Otra, wrote him a few days ago with the hope that he would recover and return to the struggle in a world where life is unjust. “It will stop being like this because of us,” she wrote in her letter.
It’s true that Alexis already could not read these lines, but it is also true that the commitment of many men and women is reflected in those lines:
That Alexis does not lie alone in the night, that he doesn’t confront the darkness of the earth alone.
That the collective voice that, with him, we are building to break the silence, creates the lightning bolt that, like a tree of light, rises up, grows, advances.
Compañera, compañero:
What can we say to you who knew him all his life, who are pained by his death like no one else?
What will we miss? We will miss it but never like you.
Alexis is no longer with you but we, La Otra, that we are, will be.
According to our way of looking at things, Alexis is not alone, and also, above, you are not alone.
That’s why I ask you to accept the embrace that, collectively, the Zapatistas offer you, that you receive the salute of our silence as it is, which is shared pain and rage.
With that indignation we will raise our heads together toward those above that kill us with the killing death, with disrespect and a void. On our feet we defy them and we say:
What can you do, damn you, against the air?
What can you do, damn you, against
all that blooms and surges and falls silent and looks
and you are waiting for me to judge you?
(Pablo Neruda, General Song)
With life, with dignity, with memory, we rise up, defy them. They will not have nor peace nor tranquility.
Vale. Health and rage that brings tomorrows,
From the Other Mexico City,
Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos
Mexico, June of 2006.
By Subcomandante Marcos
The Other Mexico City
June 9, 2006
Zapatista Army of National Liberation.
Mexico.
June 7, 2006
To the family of Ollin Alexis Benhumea Hernández:
Compañera, compañero:
We learned of it in the mid-morning. We knew then that, after more than a month in the determined trench of strength that Alexis fought from, the assassination begun on the morning of May 4 had come to its completion.
The Benhumea Hernández family mourns their son and brother.
Photo: D.R. 2006 Erwin Slim
The Mexican government assassinated a young man. Ollin Alexis, his name; of the last names Benhumea Hernández. It took more than thirty days to kill his life. It was a work of death, with which the government kills, this young compañero died in the pre-dawn hours.
When the system collects its cruel bill with the life of a youth like Ollin Alexis, the death seems like an absurd interruption, like something senseless and out of place in the middle of the road, blocking it irredeemably.
Two decades of life cut short, taken by a grenade… from a weapon… from a police officer… from a government… from a system.
Barely an hour beforehand, among those up there above where they fight with each other to make the booty of our Homeland theirs, one had promised the mortal fate of Alexis to all the young people of Mexico… along with better salaries and alibis for the assassins.
Another forgot to offer the enthusiastic applause that he gave when the streets of Atenco ran with fresh blood and Alexis agonized without being able to receive the medical attention that would have saved his life.
Another ratified the complicit silence.
And up there, above, they barely battle some stupidities and say that they debate ideas.
Photo: D.R. 2006 Erwin Slim
“After all is said and done,” they think there on high, “who cares about a youth below and to the left?”
And we respond:
We do.
It matters to us.
His death matters and his life matters.
And, carefully, in pain, from his death we make a note in the long list of things to be done that we will have to collect on someday. From his life and from his political position we add that decision that we have taken on.
The Mexican government killed Ollin Alexis. It began to kill him in the morning of May 4 and ended up assassinating him on June 7 of the same year.
It assassinated him because it was afraid, because his solidarity and presence in San Salvador Atenco, on May 4, 2006, put their legality, institutions, foreign investiments, “Law and Order,” good manners, peace, tranquility, and stability at risk. Ollin Alexis Benhumea Hernández, UNAM student, was a threat and that’s why they eliminated him. His youth was a threat. Today the stock markets and flow of investments and the presidential campaigns and the governments of Fox and of the State of Mexico and of the town of Texcoco and the PAN and the PRI and the PRD can rest easy because Ollin Alexis is dead. Those who assassinated him receive decorations, awards, congratulations.
“Order! An Iron Fist!” bark those who own everything and the hunting dogs obey them.
They were afraid of this and so they killed this: 20 years of fresh existence, a university student with two simultaneous professional majors (economy and mathematics), an artist with ten years of study in dance, with a passion for history and for the commitment of those from below, another youth of La Otra.
There is the photo of Ollin Alexis on Zapatista lands; on his feet, uplifted, behind Comandante Gustavo (in one of the preparation meetings of La Otra?), caring, looking, learning with us.
Unknown to many, Ollin Alexis now takes on a name and face for the brutality of those who don’t know how to govern without intimidating, repressing, raping, imprisoning, assassinating.
This is what this government offers: a killing death for the youth.
And now we are learning to conjugate his name in death, when we wanted and want to name him in life.
A young woman, co-disciple of Alex and of all of us who are in the big school of La Otra, wrote him a few days ago with the hope that he would recover and return to the struggle in a world where life is unjust. “It will stop being like this because of us,” she wrote in her letter.
It’s true that Alexis already could not read these lines, but it is also true that the commitment of many men and women is reflected in those lines:
That Alexis does not lie alone in the night, that he doesn’t confront the darkness of the earth alone.
That the collective voice that, with him, we are building to break the silence, creates the lightning bolt that, like a tree of light, rises up, grows, advances.
Compañera, compañero:
What can we say to you who knew him all his life, who are pained by his death like no one else?
What will we miss? We will miss it but never like you.
Alexis is no longer with you but we, La Otra, that we are, will be.
According to our way of looking at things, Alexis is not alone, and also, above, you are not alone.
That’s why I ask you to accept the embrace that, collectively, the Zapatistas offer you, that you receive the salute of our silence as it is, which is shared pain and rage.
With that indignation we will raise our heads together toward those above that kill us with the killing death, with disrespect and a void. On our feet we defy them and we say:
What can you do, damn you, against the air?
What can you do, damn you, against
all that blooms and surges and falls silent and looks
and you are waiting for me to judge you?
(Pablo Neruda, General Song)
With life, with dignity, with memory, we rise up, defy them. They will not have nor peace nor tranquility.
Vale. Health and rage that brings tomorrows,
From the Other Mexico City,
Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos
Mexico, June of 2006.
Friday, June 09, 2006
Senator Hillary Clinton
Dear Friend,
She sat on the board of Wal-Mart for six years.
She is Rupert Murdoch’s new political buddy and beneficiary of his fund-raising draw.
She voted for Bush’s illegal, immoral, and fabricated war in Iraq.
And she supports NAFTA and GATT-WTO.
She does not challenge the bloated, corruption-ridden, redundant military budget.
She does not challenge hundreds of billions of dollars in corporate welfare - subsidies, giveaways, bailouts...
She does next to nothing against the corporate crime wave sweeping through the inner cities of New York state and around the country - the poor pay more and are defrauded more...
And if the vote were held today, Senator Hillary Clinton would be the Democratic nominee for President in 2008.
And even the most progressive of Democrats would support Clinton in her campaign for the White House.
The philosophers have a word for this – it’s called self-deception.
These Democrats are deceiving themselves into believing that they can support Clinton for President and live with themselves as conscientious human beings.
They cannot.
Self-deception is a major problem affecting conflicts throughout the world – in families, corporations, politicians, and in war zones.
Self deception arises when we deny our own humanity and the humanity of others.
Actions that contradict our own human standards.
And then we seek all kinds of ways to justify these contradictions...
This happened in 2004.
And it is destined to happen again in 2008.
The only way out is for the country to understand that it is in a box of collective self-deception.
And then to get out of the box.
And there is a way out.
See others as human beings.
Not as objects or subjects.
Once we do this, our humanity will not allow us to support pro-war, corporate candidates like Senators Clinton and Joseph Lieberman.
And we will begin to build a viable, strong, winning alternative to the corrupt, decaying, and deceiving two party system.
Here is one thoughtful way to see others as human beings. It comes from one of America's greatest philosophers of justice - John Rawls.
Rawls came up with a concept called the "veil of ignorance." Put on a "veil of ignorance," and imagine a just and fair society without yet knowing where you would place in it. Set the rules before you know whether you'd end up rich, poor, middle class, white, black, man, woman and so forth.
That's one way to put aside one's biases and class and see how you would design a fair and just society.
Sincerely,
Ralph Nader
She sat on the board of Wal-Mart for six years.
She is Rupert Murdoch’s new political buddy and beneficiary of his fund-raising draw.
She voted for Bush’s illegal, immoral, and fabricated war in Iraq.
And she supports NAFTA and GATT-WTO.
She does not challenge the bloated, corruption-ridden, redundant military budget.
She does not challenge hundreds of billions of dollars in corporate welfare - subsidies, giveaways, bailouts...
She does next to nothing against the corporate crime wave sweeping through the inner cities of New York state and around the country - the poor pay more and are defrauded more...
And if the vote were held today, Senator Hillary Clinton would be the Democratic nominee for President in 2008.
And even the most progressive of Democrats would support Clinton in her campaign for the White House.
The philosophers have a word for this – it’s called self-deception.
These Democrats are deceiving themselves into believing that they can support Clinton for President and live with themselves as conscientious human beings.
They cannot.
Self-deception is a major problem affecting conflicts throughout the world – in families, corporations, politicians, and in war zones.
Self deception arises when we deny our own humanity and the humanity of others.
Actions that contradict our own human standards.
And then we seek all kinds of ways to justify these contradictions...
This happened in 2004.
And it is destined to happen again in 2008.
The only way out is for the country to understand that it is in a box of collective self-deception.
And then to get out of the box.
And there is a way out.
See others as human beings.
Not as objects or subjects.
Once we do this, our humanity will not allow us to support pro-war, corporate candidates like Senators Clinton and Joseph Lieberman.
And we will begin to build a viable, strong, winning alternative to the corrupt, decaying, and deceiving two party system.
Here is one thoughtful way to see others as human beings. It comes from one of America's greatest philosophers of justice - John Rawls.
Rawls came up with a concept called the "veil of ignorance." Put on a "veil of ignorance," and imagine a just and fair society without yet knowing where you would place in it. Set the rules before you know whether you'd end up rich, poor, middle class, white, black, man, woman and so forth.
That's one way to put aside one's biases and class and see how you would design a fair and just society.
Sincerely,
Ralph Nader
American Anti-Drug Zealots Push Eye-Eating Fungus on Colombia's Poor
Drug Warriors Push Eye-Eating Fungus
Why are members of Congress advocating the use of a dangerous crop-killer in Columbia?
By Jeremy Bigwood
An infection caused by Fusarium fungus destroys a human cornea.
On April 16, the New York Times ran a full-page ad from contact lens producer Bausch and Lomb, announcing the recall of its “ReNu with MoistureLoc” rewetting solution, and warning the 30 million American wearers of soft contact lenses about Fusarium keratitis. This infection, first detected in Asia, has rapidly spread across the United States. It is caused by a mold-like fungus that can penetrate the cornea of soft contact lens wearers, causing redness and pain that can lead to blindness—requiring a corneal replacement.
That same week, the House of Representatives passed a provision to a bill requiring that the very same fungus be sprayed in “a major drug-producing country,” such as Colombia. The bill’s sponsor was Rep. Mark Souder (R-Ind.) and its most vocal supporter was his colleague Dan Burton (R-Ind.), who has been promoting the fungus for almost a decade as key to winning the drug war.
The Colombian government has come out against it. And those entities of the U.S. government that have studied the use of Fusarium for more than 30 years don’t recommend it either: The Office of National Drug Control Policy, also known as the Drug Czar’s office, CIA, DEA, the State Department and the USDA have all concluded that the fungus is unsafe for humans and the environment.
“Fusarium species are capable of evolving rapidly. … Mutagenicity is by far the most disturbing factor in attempting to use a Fusarium species as a bioherbicide,” wrote David Struhs, then secretary of Florida’s Department of Environmental Protection, in a 1999 letter rejecting the use of the fungus against Florida’s outdoor marijuana crop. “It is difficult, if not impossible, to control the spread of Fusarium species.”
Mutation of the fungus allows it to attack other “hosts.” The eye-eating Fusarium seems to be a result of such a mutation. After all, the soft-contact lenses that it grows behind are a recent development—having only been commercially available since 1971.
The DEA stopped funding Fusarium research in the United States during the early ’90s after it learned that Fusarium infections can be deadly in “immunocompromised” people—not only AIDS patients and those with other illnesses, but also those who are severely malnourished. The University of the Andes in Bogotá has recently reported that 12 percent of Colombian children suffer from chronic malnutrition. Spraying this fungus on a vulnerable population could be perceived as using a biological weapon.
The CIA has been against the use of Fusarium to kill drug crops since at least 2000. At that time, one official told the Times, “I don’t support using a product on a bunch of Colombian peasants that you wouldn’t use against a bunch of rednecks growing marijuana in Kentucky.”
A top scientist from the USDA, which has studied the fungus the longest, said that his agency “cannot support” its use. And the State Department, whose Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement carries out drug crop eradication all over the world, does not support it, either.
In 2000, when Congress first passed “Plan Colombia,” the Colombian aid package that ordered the use of the fungus in Colombia, President Clinton waived the part of the bill that dealt with the fungus because he thought its use would be perceived as biological warfare. At the same time, the Andean Community of Nations, an organization comprising Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela, banned it within their territories.
So, who does support the spraying of the eye-eating fungus over other countries? Only a few adamant drug war jihadists in the House, led by Burton, who are frustrated by the lack of progress in the drug war.
The fungus provision has already passed the House, but the Senate version of the bill contains no similar language. Responsibility for a final decision rests on the conference committee where the House and Senate bills will be reconciled—scheduled to happen before this summer.
D(isnformation) Day - 60 Years is Enough By MICKEY Z.
June 6, 2004 marks 60 years since the fabled Allied invasion known as "D-Day." Lost amid the self-congratulatory orgy is the minor detail that by the time of the D-Day invasion, the Soviets were engaging 80 percent of the German Army on the Eastern Front. Oops...
Alexander Cockburn has called D-Day a "sideshow," explaining that WWII had already been won "by the Russians at Stalingrad and then, a year before D-Day, at the Kursk Salient, where 100 German divisions were mangled. Compared with those epic struggles, D-Day was a skirmish...Hitler's generals knew the war was lost, and the task was to keep the meeting point between the invading Russians and Western armies as far east as possible."
Of course, this doesn't fit the "good war" myth (more than just a good war, NBC newsman Tom Brokaw has deemed WWII "the greatest war the world has seen."), so it's down the memory hole.
To borrow from the World Bank protestors, I say 60 years is enough.
Faced with a perpetual war against evil and presidential election pitting one Yale war criminal against another, the time has never been better to challenge the "greatest generation" hype. The next time someone you know speaks of WWII in hallowed tones, remind them that:
But, Hollywood aside, John Wayne never set foot on Iwo Jima. Despite the former president's dim recollections, Ronald Reagan did not liberate any concentration camps. And, contrary to popular belief, FDR never actually got around to sending our boys "over there" to take on Hitler's Germany until after the Nazis had already declared war on the U.S. first.
American lives weren't sacrificed in a holy war to avenge Pearl Harbor nor to end the Nazi Holocaust. WWII was about territory, power, control, money, and imperialism. What we're taught about the years leading up to the Good War involves the alleged appeasement of the Third Reich. If only the Allies were stronger in their resolve, the fascists could have been stopped. Having made that mistake once, the mantra goes, we can't make it again.
Comparing modern-day tyrants like Saddam Hussein to Adolf Hitler and invoking the A Word (appeasement) activates the following historical façade: After whipping the original axis of evil in a noble and popular war, the US and its allies can now wave the banner of humanitarianism and intervene with impunity across the globe without their motivations being severely questioned...especially when every enemy is likened to Hitler.
But it wasn't appeasement that took place prior to WWII. It was, at best, indifference; at worst it was collaboration...based on economic greed and more than a little shared ideology.
U.S. investment in Germany accelerated by more than 48% between 1929 and 1940, while declining sharply everywhere else in Europe. For many US companies, operations in Germany continued during the war (even if it meant the use of concentration-camp slave labor) with overt US government support. For example, American pilots were given instructions not to hit factories in Germany that were owned by US firms. As a result, German civilians began using the Ford plant in Cologne as an air raid shelter.
The pursuit of profit long ago transcended national borders and loyalty. Doing business with Hitler's Germany or Mussolini's Italy proved no more unsavory to the captains of industry than, say, selling military hardware to Indonesia does today. What's a little repression when there's money to be made?
This is where the most relevant similarities between Hussein and Hitler exist. Despite committing atrocities, both murderers received overt and covert support from the U.S...in the name of profit and capitalism. Make no mistake: The U.S., with its stockpile of lethal weapons and no shortage of bi-partisan leaders dying to use them, has never been in the business of appeasement.
When President (sic) Bush says, "You are either with us or against us," he's merely selling old wine in a new bottle.
The first step toward smashing that bottle is to "just say no" to the myth. The 20th century has been called the century of genocide, but it was also a century of propaganda (partially to justify the genocide). Little has changed in the way foreign interventions are aggressively packaged and sold to a wary public...except the technology by which the lies are disseminated.
More than 100 years ago, anarchist Emma Goldman described the national mood at the beginning of the Spanish-American War: "America had declared war with Spain. The news was not unexpected. For several months preceding, press and pulpit were filled with the call to arms in defense of the victims of Spanish atrocities in Cuba. It did not require much political wisdom to see that America's concern was a matter of sugar and had nothing to do with humanitarian feelings. Of course there were plenty of credulous people, not only in the country at large, but even in the liberal ranks, who believed in America's claim."
If the working class is kept unaware of what is being done in their name, rebellion is unlikely. If the average citizen in inundated with images designed to demonstrate that the U.S. government has always acted in a benevolent manner, rebellion appears unnecessary. As a result, justification is crucial for those in power.
Films like Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan are popular attempts at such justification. Even if war is hell and the good guys sometimes lose their way, these vehicles teach us that there is still no reason to question either the morality of the mission or the stature of that particular generation.
Tom Brokaw's best seller informs those who came of age during the era of Reagan and Rambo that those who came of age during the Depression and WWII were indeed "the greatest generation any society has ever produced."
Thanks to the seductive power of myth, millionaire celebrities like Brokaw, Spielberg, Tom Hanks, and others gain further wealth and prestige by playing the role of corporate/military propagandist to an audience deceived and pacified by jingoistic hysteria and the solace it often provides.
Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels said, "It is not enough to reconcile people more or less to our regime, to move them towards a position of neutrality towards us, we want rather to work on people until they are addicted to us."
Thus, it is our moral obligation to see through our own propaganda and kick the addictive habit of lazy thinking. We must address the many uncomfortable truths about WWII by recognizing on the public relations and media propaganda used by Western corporate states to transform a conflict between capitalist nations into a holy crusade.
In 1941, revolutionary pacifist A.J. Muste declared, "The problem after war is with the victor. He thinks he has just proved that war and violence pay. Who will now teach him a lesson?" Precisely how and when such a lesson will be taught is not known, but it can be safely assumed that this lesson will never be learned from a standard college textbook, an insipid bestseller, or a manipulative box office smash. The past 60 years have also shown that without such a lesson, there will be many more wars and many more lies told to obscure the truth about them.
Ending this cycle begins with each of us deciding we will no longer buy what's being sold. Debunk the "Good War" myth and the tenets behind the "War on Terror" will crumble. As Bob Marley sang, "Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery; none but ourselves can free our minds."
Mickey Z. is the author of four books. For more information, please visit: http://www.mickeyz.net
Alexander Cockburn has called D-Day a "sideshow," explaining that WWII had already been won "by the Russians at Stalingrad and then, a year before D-Day, at the Kursk Salient, where 100 German divisions were mangled. Compared with those epic struggles, D-Day was a skirmish...Hitler's generals knew the war was lost, and the task was to keep the meeting point between the invading Russians and Western armies as far east as possible."
Of course, this doesn't fit the "good war" myth (more than just a good war, NBC newsman Tom Brokaw has deemed WWII "the greatest war the world has seen."), so it's down the memory hole.
To borrow from the World Bank protestors, I say 60 years is enough.
Faced with a perpetual war against evil and presidential election pitting one Yale war criminal against another, the time has never been better to challenge the "greatest generation" hype. The next time someone you know speaks of WWII in hallowed tones, remind them that:
The enduring Good War fable goes well beyond Memorial Day barbecues and flickering black-and-white movies on late night TV. WWII is America's most popular war. According to accepted history, it was an inevitable war forced upon a peaceful people thanks to a surprise attack by a sneaky enemy. This war, then and now, has been carefully and consciously sold to us as a life-and-death battle against pure evil. For most Americans, WWII was nothing less than good and bad going toe-to-toe in khaki fatigues.
- The U.S. fought that war against racism with a segregated army.
- It fought that war to end atrocities by participating in the shooting of surrendering soldiers, the starvation of POWs, the deliberate bombing of civilians, wiping out hospitals, strafing lifeboats, and in the Pacific boiling flesh off enemy skulls to make table ornaments for sweethearts.
- FDR, the leader of this anti-racist, anti-atrocity force, signed Executive Order 9066, interning over 100,000 Japanese-Americans without due process...thus, in the name of taking on the architects of German prison camps became the architect of American prison camps.
- Before, during, and after the Good War, the American business class traded with the enemy. Among the US corporations that invested in the Nazis were Ford, GE, Standard Oil, Texaco, ITT, IBM, and GM (top man William Knudsen called Nazi Germany "the miracle of the 20th century").
- While the U.S. regularly turned away Jewish refugees to face certain death in Europe, another group of refugees was welcomed with open arms after the war: fleeing Nazi war criminals who were used to help create the CIA and advance America's nuclear program.
But, Hollywood aside, John Wayne never set foot on Iwo Jima. Despite the former president's dim recollections, Ronald Reagan did not liberate any concentration camps. And, contrary to popular belief, FDR never actually got around to sending our boys "over there" to take on Hitler's Germany until after the Nazis had already declared war on the U.S. first.
American lives weren't sacrificed in a holy war to avenge Pearl Harbor nor to end the Nazi Holocaust. WWII was about territory, power, control, money, and imperialism. What we're taught about the years leading up to the Good War involves the alleged appeasement of the Third Reich. If only the Allies were stronger in their resolve, the fascists could have been stopped. Having made that mistake once, the mantra goes, we can't make it again.
Comparing modern-day tyrants like Saddam Hussein to Adolf Hitler and invoking the A Word (appeasement) activates the following historical façade: After whipping the original axis of evil in a noble and popular war, the US and its allies can now wave the banner of humanitarianism and intervene with impunity across the globe without their motivations being severely questioned...especially when every enemy is likened to Hitler.
But it wasn't appeasement that took place prior to WWII. It was, at best, indifference; at worst it was collaboration...based on economic greed and more than a little shared ideology.
U.S. investment in Germany accelerated by more than 48% between 1929 and 1940, while declining sharply everywhere else in Europe. For many US companies, operations in Germany continued during the war (even if it meant the use of concentration-camp slave labor) with overt US government support. For example, American pilots were given instructions not to hit factories in Germany that were owned by US firms. As a result, German civilians began using the Ford plant in Cologne as an air raid shelter.
The pursuit of profit long ago transcended national borders and loyalty. Doing business with Hitler's Germany or Mussolini's Italy proved no more unsavory to the captains of industry than, say, selling military hardware to Indonesia does today. What's a little repression when there's money to be made?
This is where the most relevant similarities between Hussein and Hitler exist. Despite committing atrocities, both murderers received overt and covert support from the U.S...in the name of profit and capitalism. Make no mistake: The U.S., with its stockpile of lethal weapons and no shortage of bi-partisan leaders dying to use them, has never been in the business of appeasement.
When President (sic) Bush says, "You are either with us or against us," he's merely selling old wine in a new bottle.
The first step toward smashing that bottle is to "just say no" to the myth. The 20th century has been called the century of genocide, but it was also a century of propaganda (partially to justify the genocide). Little has changed in the way foreign interventions are aggressively packaged and sold to a wary public...except the technology by which the lies are disseminated.
More than 100 years ago, anarchist Emma Goldman described the national mood at the beginning of the Spanish-American War: "America had declared war with Spain. The news was not unexpected. For several months preceding, press and pulpit were filled with the call to arms in defense of the victims of Spanish atrocities in Cuba. It did not require much political wisdom to see that America's concern was a matter of sugar and had nothing to do with humanitarian feelings. Of course there were plenty of credulous people, not only in the country at large, but even in the liberal ranks, who believed in America's claim."
If the working class is kept unaware of what is being done in their name, rebellion is unlikely. If the average citizen in inundated with images designed to demonstrate that the U.S. government has always acted in a benevolent manner, rebellion appears unnecessary. As a result, justification is crucial for those in power.
Films like Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan are popular attempts at such justification. Even if war is hell and the good guys sometimes lose their way, these vehicles teach us that there is still no reason to question either the morality of the mission or the stature of that particular generation.
Tom Brokaw's best seller informs those who came of age during the era of Reagan and Rambo that those who came of age during the Depression and WWII were indeed "the greatest generation any society has ever produced."
Thanks to the seductive power of myth, millionaire celebrities like Brokaw, Spielberg, Tom Hanks, and others gain further wealth and prestige by playing the role of corporate/military propagandist to an audience deceived and pacified by jingoistic hysteria and the solace it often provides.
Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels said, "It is not enough to reconcile people more or less to our regime, to move them towards a position of neutrality towards us, we want rather to work on people until they are addicted to us."
Thus, it is our moral obligation to see through our own propaganda and kick the addictive habit of lazy thinking. We must address the many uncomfortable truths about WWII by recognizing on the public relations and media propaganda used by Western corporate states to transform a conflict between capitalist nations into a holy crusade.
In 1941, revolutionary pacifist A.J. Muste declared, "The problem after war is with the victor. He thinks he has just proved that war and violence pay. Who will now teach him a lesson?" Precisely how and when such a lesson will be taught is not known, but it can be safely assumed that this lesson will never be learned from a standard college textbook, an insipid bestseller, or a manipulative box office smash. The past 60 years have also shown that without such a lesson, there will be many more wars and many more lies told to obscure the truth about them.
Ending this cycle begins with each of us deciding we will no longer buy what's being sold. Debunk the "Good War" myth and the tenets behind the "War on Terror" will crumble. As Bob Marley sang, "Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery; none but ourselves can free our minds."
Mickey Z. is the author of four books. For more information, please visit: http://www.mickeyz.net
D(isnformation) Day - 60 Years is Enough By MICKEY Z.
June 6, 2004 marks 60 years since the fabled Allied invasion known as "D-Day." Lost amid the self-congratulatory orgy is the minor detail that by the time of the D-Day invasion, the Soviets were engaging 80 percent of the German Army on the Eastern Front. Oops...
Alexander Cockburn has called D-Day a "sideshow," explaining that WWII had already been won "by the Russians at Stalingrad and then, a year before D-Day, at the Kursk Salient, where 100 German divisions were mangled. Compared with those epic struggles, D-Day was a skirmish...Hitler's generals knew the war was lost, and the task was to keep the meeting point between the invading Russians and Western armies as far east as possible."
Of course, this doesn't fit the "good war" myth (more than just a good war, NBC newsman Tom Brokaw has deemed WWII "the greatest war the world has seen."), so it's down the memory hole.
To borrow from the World Bank protestors, I say 60 years is enough.
Faced with a perpetual war against evil and presidential election pitting one Yale war criminal against another, the time has never been better to challenge the "greatest generation" hype. The next time someone you know speaks of WWII in hallowed tones, remind them that:
But, Hollywood aside, John Wayne never set foot on Iwo Jima. Despite the former president's dim recollections, Ronald Reagan did not liberate any concentration camps. And, contrary to popular belief, FDR never actually got around to sending our boys "over there" to take on Hitler's Germany until after the Nazis had already declared war on the U.S. first.
American lives weren't sacrificed in a holy war to avenge Pearl Harbor nor to end the Nazi Holocaust. WWII was about territory, power, control, money, and imperialism. What we're taught about the years leading up to the Good War involves the alleged appeasement of the Third Reich. If only the Allies were stronger in their resolve, the fascists could have been stopped. Having made that mistake once, the mantra goes, we can't make it again.
Comparing modern-day tyrants like Saddam Hussein to Adolf Hitler and invoking the A Word (appeasement) activates the following historical façade: After whipping the original axis of evil in a noble and popular war, the US and its allies can now wave the banner of humanitarianism and intervene with impunity across the globe without their motivations being severely questioned...especially when every enemy is likened to Hitler.
But it wasn't appeasement that took place prior to WWII. It was, at best, indifference; at worst it was collaboration...based on economic greed and more than a little shared ideology.
U.S. investment in Germany accelerated by more than 48% between 1929 and 1940, while declining sharply everywhere else in Europe. For many US companies, operations in Germany continued during the war (even if it meant the use of concentration-camp slave labor) with overt US government support. For example, American pilots were given instructions not to hit factories in Germany that were owned by US firms. As a result, German civilians began using the Ford plant in Cologne as an air raid shelter.
The pursuit of profit long ago transcended national borders and loyalty. Doing business with Hitler's Germany or Mussolini's Italy proved no more unsavory to the captains of industry than, say, selling military hardware to Indonesia does today. What's a little repression when there's money to be made?
This is where the most relevant similarities between Hussein and Hitler exist. Despite committing atrocities, both murderers received overt and covert support from the U.S...in the name of profit and capitalism. Make no mistake: The U.S., with its stockpile of lethal weapons and no shortage of bi-partisan leaders dying to use them, has never been in the business of appeasement.
When President (sic) Bush says, "You are either with us or against us," he's merely selling old wine in a new bottle.
The first step toward smashing that bottle is to "just say no" to the myth. The 20th century has been called the century of genocide, but it was also a century of propaganda (partially to justify the genocide). Little has changed in the way foreign interventions are aggressively packaged and sold to a wary public...except the technology by which the lies are disseminated.
More than 100 years ago, anarchist Emma Goldman described the national mood at the beginning of the Spanish-American War: "America had declared war with Spain. The news was not unexpected. For several months preceding, press and pulpit were filled with the call to arms in defense of the victims of Spanish atrocities in Cuba. It did not require much political wisdom to see that America's concern was a matter of sugar and had nothing to do with humanitarian feelings. Of course there were plenty of credulous people, not only in the country at large, but even in the liberal ranks, who believed in America's claim."
If the working class is kept unaware of what is being done in their name, rebellion is unlikely. If the average citizen in inundated with images designed to demonstrate that the U.S. government has always acted in a benevolent manner, rebellion appears unnecessary. As a result, justification is crucial for those in power.
Films like Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan are popular attempts at such justification. Even if war is hell and the good guys sometimes lose their way, these vehicles teach us that there is still no reason to question either the morality of the mission or the stature of that particular generation.
Tom Brokaw's best seller informs those who came of age during the era of Reagan and Rambo that those who came of age during the Depression and WWII were indeed "the greatest generation any society has ever produced."
Thanks to the seductive power of myth, millionaire celebrities like Brokaw, Spielberg, Tom Hanks, and others gain further wealth and prestige by playing the role of corporate/military propagandist to an audience deceived and pacified by jingoistic hysteria and the solace it often provides.
Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels said, "It is not enough to reconcile people more or less to our regime, to move them towards a position of neutrality towards us, we want rather to work on people until they are addicted to us."
Thus, it is our moral obligation to see through our own propaganda and kick the addictive habit of lazy thinking. We must address the many uncomfortable truths about WWII by recognizing on the public relations and media propaganda used by Western corporate states to transform a conflict between capitalist nations into a holy crusade.
In 1941, revolutionary pacifist A.J. Muste declared, "The problem after war is with the victor. He thinks he has just proved that war and violence pay. Who will now teach him a lesson?" Precisely how and when such a lesson will be taught is not known, but it can be safely assumed that this lesson will never be learned from a standard college textbook, an insipid bestseller, or a manipulative box office smash. The past 60 years have also shown that without such a lesson, there will be many more wars and many more lies told to obscure the truth about them.
Ending this cycle begins with each of us deciding we will no longer buy what's being sold. Debunk the "Good War" myth and the tenets behind the "War on Terror" will crumble. As Bob Marley sang, "Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery; none but ourselves can free our minds."
Mickey Z. is the author of four books. For more information, please visit: http://www.mickeyz.net
Alexander Cockburn has called D-Day a "sideshow," explaining that WWII had already been won "by the Russians at Stalingrad and then, a year before D-Day, at the Kursk Salient, where 100 German divisions were mangled. Compared with those epic struggles, D-Day was a skirmish...Hitler's generals knew the war was lost, and the task was to keep the meeting point between the invading Russians and Western armies as far east as possible."
Of course, this doesn't fit the "good war" myth (more than just a good war, NBC newsman Tom Brokaw has deemed WWII "the greatest war the world has seen."), so it's down the memory hole.
To borrow from the World Bank protestors, I say 60 years is enough.
Faced with a perpetual war against evil and presidential election pitting one Yale war criminal against another, the time has never been better to challenge the "greatest generation" hype. The next time someone you know speaks of WWII in hallowed tones, remind them that:
The enduring Good War fable goes well beyond Memorial Day barbecues and flickering black-and-white movies on late night TV. WWII is America's most popular war. According to accepted history, it was an inevitable war forced upon a peaceful people thanks to a surprise attack by a sneaky enemy. This war, then and now, has been carefully and consciously sold to us as a life-and-death battle against pure evil. For most Americans, WWII was nothing less than good and bad going toe-to-toe in khaki fatigues.
- The U.S. fought that war against racism with a segregated army.
- It fought that war to end atrocities by participating in the shooting of surrendering soldiers, the starvation of POWs, the deliberate bombing of civilians, wiping out hospitals, strafing lifeboats, and in the Pacific boiling flesh off enemy skulls to make table ornaments for sweethearts.
- FDR, the leader of this anti-racist, anti-atrocity force, signed Executive Order 9066, interning over 100,000 Japanese-Americans without due process...thus, in the name of taking on the architects of German prison camps became the architect of American prison camps.
- Before, during, and after the Good War, the American business class traded with the enemy. Among the US corporations that invested in the Nazis were Ford, GE, Standard Oil, Texaco, ITT, IBM, and GM (top man William Knudsen called Nazi Germany "the miracle of the 20th century").
- While the U.S. regularly turned away Jewish refugees to face certain death in Europe, another group of refugees was welcomed with open arms after the war: fleeing Nazi war criminals who were used to help create the CIA and advance America's nuclear program.
But, Hollywood aside, John Wayne never set foot on Iwo Jima. Despite the former president's dim recollections, Ronald Reagan did not liberate any concentration camps. And, contrary to popular belief, FDR never actually got around to sending our boys "over there" to take on Hitler's Germany until after the Nazis had already declared war on the U.S. first.
American lives weren't sacrificed in a holy war to avenge Pearl Harbor nor to end the Nazi Holocaust. WWII was about territory, power, control, money, and imperialism. What we're taught about the years leading up to the Good War involves the alleged appeasement of the Third Reich. If only the Allies were stronger in their resolve, the fascists could have been stopped. Having made that mistake once, the mantra goes, we can't make it again.
Comparing modern-day tyrants like Saddam Hussein to Adolf Hitler and invoking the A Word (appeasement) activates the following historical façade: After whipping the original axis of evil in a noble and popular war, the US and its allies can now wave the banner of humanitarianism and intervene with impunity across the globe without their motivations being severely questioned...especially when every enemy is likened to Hitler.
But it wasn't appeasement that took place prior to WWII. It was, at best, indifference; at worst it was collaboration...based on economic greed and more than a little shared ideology.
U.S. investment in Germany accelerated by more than 48% between 1929 and 1940, while declining sharply everywhere else in Europe. For many US companies, operations in Germany continued during the war (even if it meant the use of concentration-camp slave labor) with overt US government support. For example, American pilots were given instructions not to hit factories in Germany that were owned by US firms. As a result, German civilians began using the Ford plant in Cologne as an air raid shelter.
The pursuit of profit long ago transcended national borders and loyalty. Doing business with Hitler's Germany or Mussolini's Italy proved no more unsavory to the captains of industry than, say, selling military hardware to Indonesia does today. What's a little repression when there's money to be made?
This is where the most relevant similarities between Hussein and Hitler exist. Despite committing atrocities, both murderers received overt and covert support from the U.S...in the name of profit and capitalism. Make no mistake: The U.S., with its stockpile of lethal weapons and no shortage of bi-partisan leaders dying to use them, has never been in the business of appeasement.
When President (sic) Bush says, "You are either with us or against us," he's merely selling old wine in a new bottle.
The first step toward smashing that bottle is to "just say no" to the myth. The 20th century has been called the century of genocide, but it was also a century of propaganda (partially to justify the genocide). Little has changed in the way foreign interventions are aggressively packaged and sold to a wary public...except the technology by which the lies are disseminated.
More than 100 years ago, anarchist Emma Goldman described the national mood at the beginning of the Spanish-American War: "America had declared war with Spain. The news was not unexpected. For several months preceding, press and pulpit were filled with the call to arms in defense of the victims of Spanish atrocities in Cuba. It did not require much political wisdom to see that America's concern was a matter of sugar and had nothing to do with humanitarian feelings. Of course there were plenty of credulous people, not only in the country at large, but even in the liberal ranks, who believed in America's claim."
If the working class is kept unaware of what is being done in their name, rebellion is unlikely. If the average citizen in inundated with images designed to demonstrate that the U.S. government has always acted in a benevolent manner, rebellion appears unnecessary. As a result, justification is crucial for those in power.
Films like Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan are popular attempts at such justification. Even if war is hell and the good guys sometimes lose their way, these vehicles teach us that there is still no reason to question either the morality of the mission or the stature of that particular generation.
Tom Brokaw's best seller informs those who came of age during the era of Reagan and Rambo that those who came of age during the Depression and WWII were indeed "the greatest generation any society has ever produced."
Thanks to the seductive power of myth, millionaire celebrities like Brokaw, Spielberg, Tom Hanks, and others gain further wealth and prestige by playing the role of corporate/military propagandist to an audience deceived and pacified by jingoistic hysteria and the solace it often provides.
Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels said, "It is not enough to reconcile people more or less to our regime, to move them towards a position of neutrality towards us, we want rather to work on people until they are addicted to us."
Thus, it is our moral obligation to see through our own propaganda and kick the addictive habit of lazy thinking. We must address the many uncomfortable truths about WWII by recognizing on the public relations and media propaganda used by Western corporate states to transform a conflict between capitalist nations into a holy crusade.
In 1941, revolutionary pacifist A.J. Muste declared, "The problem after war is with the victor. He thinks he has just proved that war and violence pay. Who will now teach him a lesson?" Precisely how and when such a lesson will be taught is not known, but it can be safely assumed that this lesson will never be learned from a standard college textbook, an insipid bestseller, or a manipulative box office smash. The past 60 years have also shown that without such a lesson, there will be many more wars and many more lies told to obscure the truth about them.
Ending this cycle begins with each of us deciding we will no longer buy what's being sold. Debunk the "Good War" myth and the tenets behind the "War on Terror" will crumble. As Bob Marley sang, "Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery; none but ourselves can free our minds."
Mickey Z. is the author of four books. For more information, please visit: http://www.mickeyz.net
Zarqawi is dead
Zarqawi is dead
...in an airstrike on a "terrorist safe house." And the obvious question (obvious to me, but your chances of hearing it in the corporate media are nil) is, "Even if this is true (and I assume it is), how many innocent Iraqis died in the many airstrikes on other alleged "safe houses" in previous attempts to kill Zarqawi (or his associates)?" Attempts like this one (20 dead). Or this one (40 dead). Or this one (11 dead). Or this one (40 dead). And those are just four that happened to be reported and that I wrote about.
Nor do I mean that lightly. We read today that there were 750 airstrikes in Afghanistan in May alone, and a "smaller number" in Iraq. How many of those were even reported in the press (through no fault of theirs in most cases, I'll add), nevertheless followed up on to determine the outcome? How many Iraqis and Afghans have died that we'll never even hear about?
This is what happens when you conduct war from the air based on a combination of "tips" and complete disregard for the civilian population. Occasionally, those tips will prove valid (as evidently in this case). More often than not, they won't. But don't worry. No one in the corporate media, and even few in the alternative media, will call it a "massacre" when innocent, defenseless people die without even seeing the faces of their attackers. After all, they weren't being targeted. It was just a "mistake."
Update: George Bush has this to say: "Coalition and Iraqi forces persevered through years of near misses and false leads, and they never gave up." "Near misses" of Zarqawi that is. The innocent civilians who were foolish enough to put their bodies in the way of the American bombs aimed at Zarqawi weren't so lucky.
...in an airstrike on a "terrorist safe house." And the obvious question (obvious to me, but your chances of hearing it in the corporate media are nil) is, "Even if this is true (and I assume it is), how many innocent Iraqis died in the many airstrikes on other alleged "safe houses" in previous attempts to kill Zarqawi (or his associates)?" Attempts like this one (20 dead). Or this one (40 dead). Or this one (11 dead). Or this one (40 dead). And those are just four that happened to be reported and that I wrote about.
Nor do I mean that lightly. We read today that there were 750 airstrikes in Afghanistan in May alone, and a "smaller number" in Iraq. How many of those were even reported in the press (through no fault of theirs in most cases, I'll add), nevertheless followed up on to determine the outcome? How many Iraqis and Afghans have died that we'll never even hear about?
This is what happens when you conduct war from the air based on a combination of "tips" and complete disregard for the civilian population. Occasionally, those tips will prove valid (as evidently in this case). More often than not, they won't. But don't worry. No one in the corporate media, and even few in the alternative media, will call it a "massacre" when innocent, defenseless people die without even seeing the faces of their attackers. After all, they weren't being targeted. It was just a "mistake."
Update: George Bush has this to say: "Coalition and Iraqi forces persevered through years of near misses and false leads, and they never gave up." "Near misses" of Zarqawi that is. The innocent civilians who were foolish enough to put their bodies in the way of the American bombs aimed at Zarqawi weren't so lucky.
Political humor of the day (Government Brain-Dead about soldiers brain injuries
There's nothing whatsoever funny about brain injuries to U.S. soldiers, but this statement has to be new low in the absurd statements emanating from the U.S. government:
The Pentagon spokesperson is probably right that disclosing the results would put lives at risk. The lives, however, are the political lives of those who brought us this war -- the ones who really "put the lives of those fighting at risk."
The Pentagon is refusing to release data on how many soldiers have suffered brain injuries in Iraq and Afghanistan. It says disclosing the results would put the lives of those fighting at risk.Ri-i-i-i-ight. Because if they only knew the number was 10,453 and not just "a lot" they would surely redouble their efforts at setting IEDs.
The Pentagon spokesperson is probably right that disclosing the results would put lives at risk. The lives, however, are the political lives of those who brought us this war -- the ones who really "put the lives of those fighting at risk."
Wake up: the American Dream is over
Even America's richest think they're getting too many tax breaks from a government determined to keep the poor in their place. As poverty in the US grows, Paul Harris wonders what happened to the Land of Opportunity
There is a common response to America among foreign writers: the USA is a land of extremes where the best of things are just as easily found as the worst.
This is a cliché. But it is often hard to argue with when surveying America's political and cultural landscape. America has some of the worst urban sprawl in the world and also the most beautiful and well-protected wildernesses. Its politics is awash with lobbyist inspired corruption. Yet passionate political engagement among millions of Americans puts many other countries to shame.
Culturally American TV can plunge depths that are hard to imagine. Yet at the same time commercial channels such as HBO produce the best dramas, documentaries and comedies in the world. Its media boasts celebrity tabloids including People and the National Enquirer, yet the New Yorker and Harpers and Atlantic Monthly are examples of its magazines which invest in quality journalism that no publication in Britain can match.
So in this land of black and white, we should not be too surprised to find some of the biggest gaps between rich and poor in the world. Such a yawning chasm is just the American Way, it would seem. Besides, the American Dream offers a way out to everyone. All someone has to do is work hard and climb the ladder towards the top. No class system or government stands in the way.
Sadly, this old argument is no longer true. Over the past few decades there has been a fundamental shift in the structure of the American economy. The gap between rich and poor has widened and widened. As it does so, the ability to cross that gap gets smaller and smaller. This is far from business as usual but there seems little chance of it stopping, not least because it appears to be government policy.
Over the past 25 years the median US family income has gone up 18 percent. For the top one percent, however, it has gone up 200 percent. A quarter of a century ago the top fifth of Americans had an average income 6.7 times that of the bottom fifth. Now it is 9.8 times.
Inequalities have grown worse in different regions. In California, home to both Beverly Hills and the gang-ridden slums of Compton, incomes for lower class families have fallen by four percent since 1969. For upper class families they have risen 41 percent.
This has led to an economy hugely warped in favour of a small slice of very rich Americans. The wealthiest one percent of households now control a third of the national wealth. The wealthiest 10 percent control two-thirds of it. This is a society that is splitting down the middle and it has taken place against a backdrop of economic growth.
Between 1980 and 2004 America's GDP went up by almost two-thirds. But instead of making everyone better off, it has made only a part of the country wealthier, as another part slips ever more into the black hole of the working poor. There are now 37 million Americans living in poverty, and at 12.7 percent of the population, it is the highest percentage in the developed world.
Yet the tax burden on America's rich is falling, not growing. The top 0.01 percent of households has seen their tax bite fall by a full 25 percentage points since 1980. That was when 'trickle down' economics began, arguing that the rich spending more would benefit everyone as a whole. But America's poor have simply been getting poorer: clearly that theory has not worked in reality.
And still the American government is set on tax breaks for the rich. Bush's first-term tax cuts notoriously benefited the upper strata of American taxpayers. So much so that even Warren Buffet, the second richest man in the world who benefited to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars, has said the tax cuts 'scream of injustice'. As head of a hugely successful investment firm, it is hard to paint Buffet as a lefty liberal who hates Wall Street (though, bizarrely, some conservatives do try).
Still the tax cuts go on. This week one of the main political debates in Washington has been about scrapping the 'estate tax' whereby those who inherit large amounts from their relatives will be taxed on it. This overwhelmingly affects the wealthy. The estate tax is already set so high ($4m) that only one in 200 estates pay any tax at all when they are inherited. Unlike the UK's inheritance tax, which affects more and more Britons as house prices increase, this is not a problem faced by Joe and Jennifer Public.
Yet the White House and many politicians, overwhelmingly Republican, want to get rid of it. The lobbying campaign against it has been financed mostly by 18 business dynasties, including the family that owns WalMart. At the same time the Bush administration has sanctioned millions of dollars of cuts to Medicare, Medicaid and the education budget as part of a measure aimed at reducing the spiraling deficit. This is, frankly, obscene.
The effect of all this has been to scotch that long-cherished notion of the American Dream: that honest toil is enough to reap the rewards and let even the poorest join the middle class, or maybe even strike it rich. A survey last year showed that such economic mobility (a measure of those people trying to make the Dream come true) was lower in America than Canada, Germany, Norway, Denmark, Sweden and Finland. In fact, the only country doing as bad as America was Britain (food for thought, there).
Now this is not some argument against capitalism. Inequality is inevitable. It is a good thing. People need incentives. People need competition. People need markets. Some people will always be poor. Others deserve to be rich. But at the moment it looks like the rules of the game are being fixed in America in favour of the wealthy. The gap between rich and poor will only get wider. That is very dangerous.
Don't just take my word for it. Take Buffet's. After all he doesn't have anything to gain from criticising current policy. In fact he has hundreds of millions of dollars to lose. 'If class warfare is being waged in America,' he has written 'My class is clearly winning.' When even the rich are starting to think they are getting too many tax cuts, then you know something has gone very wrong.
There is a common response to America among foreign writers: the USA is a land of extremes where the best of things are just as easily found as the worst.
This is a cliché. But it is often hard to argue with when surveying America's political and cultural landscape. America has some of the worst urban sprawl in the world and also the most beautiful and well-protected wildernesses. Its politics is awash with lobbyist inspired corruption. Yet passionate political engagement among millions of Americans puts many other countries to shame.
Culturally American TV can plunge depths that are hard to imagine. Yet at the same time commercial channels such as HBO produce the best dramas, documentaries and comedies in the world. Its media boasts celebrity tabloids including People and the National Enquirer, yet the New Yorker and Harpers and Atlantic Monthly are examples of its magazines which invest in quality journalism that no publication in Britain can match.
So in this land of black and white, we should not be too surprised to find some of the biggest gaps between rich and poor in the world. Such a yawning chasm is just the American Way, it would seem. Besides, the American Dream offers a way out to everyone. All someone has to do is work hard and climb the ladder towards the top. No class system or government stands in the way.
Sadly, this old argument is no longer true. Over the past few decades there has been a fundamental shift in the structure of the American economy. The gap between rich and poor has widened and widened. As it does so, the ability to cross that gap gets smaller and smaller. This is far from business as usual but there seems little chance of it stopping, not least because it appears to be government policy.
Over the past 25 years the median US family income has gone up 18 percent. For the top one percent, however, it has gone up 200 percent. A quarter of a century ago the top fifth of Americans had an average income 6.7 times that of the bottom fifth. Now it is 9.8 times.
Inequalities have grown worse in different regions. In California, home to both Beverly Hills and the gang-ridden slums of Compton, incomes for lower class families have fallen by four percent since 1969. For upper class families they have risen 41 percent.
This has led to an economy hugely warped in favour of a small slice of very rich Americans. The wealthiest one percent of households now control a third of the national wealth. The wealthiest 10 percent control two-thirds of it. This is a society that is splitting down the middle and it has taken place against a backdrop of economic growth.
Between 1980 and 2004 America's GDP went up by almost two-thirds. But instead of making everyone better off, it has made only a part of the country wealthier, as another part slips ever more into the black hole of the working poor. There are now 37 million Americans living in poverty, and at 12.7 percent of the population, it is the highest percentage in the developed world.
Yet the tax burden on America's rich is falling, not growing. The top 0.01 percent of households has seen their tax bite fall by a full 25 percentage points since 1980. That was when 'trickle down' economics began, arguing that the rich spending more would benefit everyone as a whole. But America's poor have simply been getting poorer: clearly that theory has not worked in reality.
And still the American government is set on tax breaks for the rich. Bush's first-term tax cuts notoriously benefited the upper strata of American taxpayers. So much so that even Warren Buffet, the second richest man in the world who benefited to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars, has said the tax cuts 'scream of injustice'. As head of a hugely successful investment firm, it is hard to paint Buffet as a lefty liberal who hates Wall Street (though, bizarrely, some conservatives do try).
Still the tax cuts go on. This week one of the main political debates in Washington has been about scrapping the 'estate tax' whereby those who inherit large amounts from their relatives will be taxed on it. This overwhelmingly affects the wealthy. The estate tax is already set so high ($4m) that only one in 200 estates pay any tax at all when they are inherited. Unlike the UK's inheritance tax, which affects more and more Britons as house prices increase, this is not a problem faced by Joe and Jennifer Public.
Yet the White House and many politicians, overwhelmingly Republican, want to get rid of it. The lobbying campaign against it has been financed mostly by 18 business dynasties, including the family that owns WalMart. At the same time the Bush administration has sanctioned millions of dollars of cuts to Medicare, Medicaid and the education budget as part of a measure aimed at reducing the spiraling deficit. This is, frankly, obscene.
The effect of all this has been to scotch that long-cherished notion of the American Dream: that honest toil is enough to reap the rewards and let even the poorest join the middle class, or maybe even strike it rich. A survey last year showed that such economic mobility (a measure of those people trying to make the Dream come true) was lower in America than Canada, Germany, Norway, Denmark, Sweden and Finland. In fact, the only country doing as bad as America was Britain (food for thought, there).
Now this is not some argument against capitalism. Inequality is inevitable. It is a good thing. People need incentives. People need competition. People need markets. Some people will always be poor. Others deserve to be rich. But at the moment it looks like the rules of the game are being fixed in America in favour of the wealthy. The gap between rich and poor will only get wider. That is very dangerous.
Don't just take my word for it. Take Buffet's. After all he doesn't have anything to gain from criticising current policy. In fact he has hundreds of millions of dollars to lose. 'If class warfare is being waged in America,' he has written 'My class is clearly winning.' When even the rich are starting to think they are getting too many tax cuts, then you know something has gone very wrong.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)