or so it seems. swine flu is the new, hot disease. no one cares about the old reliables that constantly kill. rarely recognized are the old diseases that never went away, but now mainly kill people "somewhere else." i have seen or heard no reports or discussions lately on starvation, water borne disease, malaria, and tuberculosis. thousands will die today, tomorrow, and the day after, of these ailments, but their existence won't be front page news.
others die as well. the 20,000 americans who will die this year from a lack of health insurance, the 15,000 killed on the job, and the tens of thousands who will die in car accidents will likewise receive no hoopla, no fanfare comparable to the victims of swine flu. for they are systemic victims. their victim hood is caused by the system, and therefore, said victim hood is to be glossed over.
and what of our increases in cancer, asthma, autism, heart disease, obesity, doubtlessly leading to thousands of additional deaths and related difficulties? might a degraded environment, decimated by ruthless corporate and military endeavors, be responsible to a large degree for these deaths? one will never know, for to try to find out would be to begin a process of questioning, of thinking, of challenging the dominant economic and political structures ascendant in our society, and that is not something most are interested in. no, they, and the culture that creates and caters to them, would rather babble about swine flu and sars.
it is not that these outbreaks are a laughing matter. of course, they are serious. perhaps they tell us that we should not be eating swine. whatever the matter, it is always a concern when people get sick and die. my opposition to death and illness leads me, for example, to be anti-war, but sadly, most swine flu fanatics haven't engaged in such opposition as of yet. what can you do?
our concern over suffering shouldn't be determined by what disease is hot. if a disease kills, whether in africa or america, it should concern us, and make us think about why certain diseases kill certain people. hence, we need to be concerned with economics and politics and wars and corporate fraud and environmental destruction, not just the disease top 10.
this ain't the hit parade folks. our collective existence is at stake.
for once, it would be nice if we would face that fact, and act accordingly.
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
ginsberg said
ginsberg once said that he saw the best minds of his generation destroyed by madness. pretty deep. well, here are some things i have seen and heard over the last couple of weeks.
parking spaces being sold for 350 dollars a month.
a pack of cigs being sold for 8.50.
right wingers talking about how obama is turning america into a fascist nation. these are the same guys who support every war, bash every non-white immigrant, and think god created the sun to warm the earth.
chavez met obama and gave him a book on u.s. intervention in latin america. the book was by eduardo galeano, and is called "open veins of latin america."
i have listened to more jazz. early dexter gordon is better than i recall, though i still find him annoying at times. ben webster was a monster ballad player, but limited on fast tunes. zoot sims never plays badly. wardell gray may well have been the man on the tenor if he had lived into the lp era. the same goes for fats navarro on trumpet. harvey pekar liner notes tend to be mediocre, but you like them, because they are written by harvey pekar.
the bulls-celtics series is one of the best i have ever seen. of the 4 games so far, 2 have gone into overtime, and a third was decided with half a second left.
game 5 is minutes away.
go bulls.
parking spaces being sold for 350 dollars a month.
a pack of cigs being sold for 8.50.
right wingers talking about how obama is turning america into a fascist nation. these are the same guys who support every war, bash every non-white immigrant, and think god created the sun to warm the earth.
chavez met obama and gave him a book on u.s. intervention in latin america. the book was by eduardo galeano, and is called "open veins of latin america."
i have listened to more jazz. early dexter gordon is better than i recall, though i still find him annoying at times. ben webster was a monster ballad player, but limited on fast tunes. zoot sims never plays badly. wardell gray may well have been the man on the tenor if he had lived into the lp era. the same goes for fats navarro on trumpet. harvey pekar liner notes tend to be mediocre, but you like them, because they are written by harvey pekar.
the bulls-celtics series is one of the best i have ever seen. of the 4 games so far, 2 have gone into overtime, and a third was decided with half a second left.
game 5 is minutes away.
go bulls.
musings from mumia
[col. writ. 4/19/09] (c) '09 Mumia Abu-Jamal
As U.S. President, Barack Obama treks to the Caribbean to sit and sup with Latin American leaders, he does so amidst a promise of a new relationship with America del Sur.
While this brand of quiet and thoughtful presence is indeed profoundly different from the thoughtless bravado and bluster of his immediate predecessor, George W. Bush, it still hearkens back to a bygone era, one rarely recalled today, that of John F. Kennedy.
Yet is this merely a difference of style or substance?
From the time of the 5th U.S. president, James Monroe (ca.1820) this country has pursued a policy of domination, interference and control over the countries to the south. The U.S. has toppled governments it doesn't like, supported dictators, backed military coups, and both trained and funded armies to oppose trade unionists and social activists, all in the name of the so-called Monroe Doctrine.
And while some presidents have thundered and bellowed, and others have whispered, the essential elements of U.S. foreign policy have remained virtually unchanged in a region many Americans think of as their 'backyard.'
But Latin America is experiencing a renaissance of late, one caused, in part, by popular resistance to U.S. domination of their economies, governments and politics.
There is a wave of leftist governments arising in Latin America today. Any serious student of U.S. - Latin American history can't be surprised by this trend.
The U.S. has either intervened, invaded, or supported dictators in: Chile, Colombia, Cuba, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Panama, Grenada, Dominican Republic, and Haiti (just to name a few).
It must be said, only slightly tongue-in-cheek, that the U.S. has never met a dictator it didn't like -- especially when opposed by a populist or a nationalist.
The best exemplar of this imperialist trend may be seen in the U.S.response to the 1963 election of Dr. Juan Bosch as President of the Dominican Republic, after the CIA-backed assassination of dictator Rafael L. Trujillo in 1961. Bosch was shortly thereafter overthrown by a military coup.
The U.S., under President Lyndon B. Johnson, moved heaven and earth to insure the installation and election of Joaquin Balaguer, a Trujillo clone who outdid his former boss at repression. * After the armed intervention, Johnson invited two leading Republican congressmen to the White House, to boast that he'd "just taken an action that will prove that democratic presidents can deal with Communists as strongly as Republicans" (p.80).
Because of U.S. intervention (and occupation, with some 40,000 troops!) the country endured some 60 years under brutal dictatorships -- backed, trained, and funded by the U.S.
What would be a 'new relationship' would be an abandonment of U.S. interference, intervention, invasion and subversion of neighboring states to the south.
Kennedy smiled, and he was a brilliant politician, but he sent in Green Berets when he couldn't get his way.
A new relationship would be an end to U.S. imperialism.
As U.S. President, Barack Obama treks to the Caribbean to sit and sup with Latin American leaders, he does so amidst a promise of a new relationship with America del Sur.
While this brand of quiet and thoughtful presence is indeed profoundly different from the thoughtless bravado and bluster of his immediate predecessor, George W. Bush, it still hearkens back to a bygone era, one rarely recalled today, that of John F. Kennedy.
Yet is this merely a difference of style or substance?
From the time of the 5th U.S. president, James Monroe (ca.1820) this country has pursued a policy of domination, interference and control over the countries to the south. The U.S. has toppled governments it doesn't like, supported dictators, backed military coups, and both trained and funded armies to oppose trade unionists and social activists, all in the name of the so-called Monroe Doctrine.
And while some presidents have thundered and bellowed, and others have whispered, the essential elements of U.S. foreign policy have remained virtually unchanged in a region many Americans think of as their 'backyard.'
But Latin America is experiencing a renaissance of late, one caused, in part, by popular resistance to U.S. domination of their economies, governments and politics.
There is a wave of leftist governments arising in Latin America today. Any serious student of U.S. - Latin American history can't be surprised by this trend.
The U.S. has either intervened, invaded, or supported dictators in: Chile, Colombia, Cuba, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Panama, Grenada, Dominican Republic, and Haiti (just to name a few).
It must be said, only slightly tongue-in-cheek, that the U.S. has never met a dictator it didn't like -- especially when opposed by a populist or a nationalist.
The best exemplar of this imperialist trend may be seen in the U.S.response to the 1963 election of Dr. Juan Bosch as President of the Dominican Republic, after the CIA-backed assassination of dictator Rafael L. Trujillo in 1961. Bosch was shortly thereafter overthrown by a military coup.
The U.S., under President Lyndon B. Johnson, moved heaven and earth to insure the installation and election of Joaquin Balaguer, a Trujillo clone who outdid his former boss at repression. * After the armed intervention, Johnson invited two leading Republican congressmen to the White House, to boast that he'd "just taken an action that will prove that democratic presidents can deal with Communists as strongly as Republicans" (p.80).
Because of U.S. intervention (and occupation, with some 40,000 troops!) the country endured some 60 years under brutal dictatorships -- backed, trained, and funded by the U.S.
What would be a 'new relationship' would be an abandonment of U.S. interference, intervention, invasion and subversion of neighboring states to the south.
Kennedy smiled, and he was a brilliant politician, but he sent in Green Berets when he couldn't get his way.
A new relationship would be an end to U.S. imperialism.
jeremy is not over the scahill
the occupation is over
long live the occupation
the Picture of Dorian Gray
Obama's Iraq
By JEREMY SCAHILL
Remember when Barack Obama made that big announcement at Camp Lejeune about how all US combat troops were going to be withdrawn from Iraqi cities by June 30? Liberals jumped around with joy, praising Obama for ending the war so that they could focus on their “good war” in Afghanistan.
Of course, the celebrations were and remain unwarranted. Obama’s Iraq plan is virtually identical to the one on Bush’s table on January 19, 2009. Obama has just rebranded the occupation, sold it to liberals and dropped the term “Global War on Terror” while, for all practical purposes, continuing the Bush era policy (that’s why leading Republicans praised Obama’s plan). In the real world, US military commanders have said they are preparing for an Iraq presence for another 15-20 years, the US embassy is the size of Vatican City, there is no official plan for the withdrawal of contractors and new corporate mercenary contracts are being awarded. The SoFA Agreement between the US and Iraq gives the US the right to extend the occupation indefinitely and to continue intervening militarily in Iraq ad infinitum. All it takes is for the puppets in Baghdad to ask nicely…
In the latest episode of the “Occupation Rebranded” mini-series, President Obama is preparing to scrap the June 30 withdrawal timeline.
As The New York Times reports: “The United States and Iraq will begin negotiating possible exceptions to the June 30 deadline for withdrawing American combat troops from Iraqi cities, focusing on the troubled northern city of Mosul, according to military officials. Some parts of Baghdad also will still have combat troops.”
According to the Times, the US is playing with the definition of the word “city” when speaking of withdrawing combat troops from all cities:
[T]here are no plans to close the Camp Victory base complex, consisting of five bases housing more than 20,000 soldiers, many of them combat troops. Although Victory is only a 15 minute drive from the center of Baghdad and sprawls over both sides of the city’s boundary, Iraqi officials say they have agreed to consider it outside the city.
In addition, Forward Operating Base Falcon, which can hold 5,000 combat troops, will also remain after June 30. It is just within Baghdad’s southern city limits. Again, Iraqi officials have classified it as effectively outside Baghdad, so no exception to the agreement needs to be granted, in their view.
Combat troops with the Seventh Field Artillery Regiment will remain in the heart of Baghdad at Camp Prosperity, located near the new American Embassy compound in the Green Zone. In addition to providing a quick reaction force, guarding the embassy and noncombat troops from attack, those soldiers will also continue to support Iraqi troops who are now in nominal charge of maintaining security in the Green Zone.
Camp Victory is of tremendous strategic importance to the US occupation. In addition to the military’s share of Baghdad International Airport, it includes four bases—Victory, Liberty, Striker and Slayer—as well as the US-run prison “Camp Cropper.” That’s where the US keeps its “high value” prisoners. While the US officially handed control of Forward Operating Base Freedom to “Iraqi control,” the US military is keeping the swimming pool.
Meanwhile, future plans are being laid for other US bases. Camp Prosperity is going to house US contractors and other personnel, while at Camp Union III housing is being built for several thousand soldiers, trainers and advisers.
What is abundantly clear is that there are enough cosmetic changes going on in Baghdad intended to make it look like the occupation is ending, while continuing it. Again, from the Times:
The Green Zone was handed over to Iraqi control Jan. 1, when the agreement went into effect. In addition to the United States-Iraqi patrols, most of the security for the Green Zone’s many checkpoints and heavily guarded entry points is still done by the same private contractors who did it prior to Jan. 1.
“What you’re seeing is not a change in the numbers, it’s a doctrine change,” said First Sgt. David Moore, a New Jersey National Guardsman with the Joint Area Support Group, which runs the Green Zone. “You’re still going to have fighters. Every U.S. soldier is trained to fight.”
The Iraq occupation is like The Picture of Dorian Gray. No matter what public face the Obama administration attempts to present, it only grows more heinous with each passing day.
long live the occupation
the Picture of Dorian Gray
Obama's Iraq
By JEREMY SCAHILL
Remember when Barack Obama made that big announcement at Camp Lejeune about how all US combat troops were going to be withdrawn from Iraqi cities by June 30? Liberals jumped around with joy, praising Obama for ending the war so that they could focus on their “good war” in Afghanistan.
Of course, the celebrations were and remain unwarranted. Obama’s Iraq plan is virtually identical to the one on Bush’s table on January 19, 2009. Obama has just rebranded the occupation, sold it to liberals and dropped the term “Global War on Terror” while, for all practical purposes, continuing the Bush era policy (that’s why leading Republicans praised Obama’s plan). In the real world, US military commanders have said they are preparing for an Iraq presence for another 15-20 years, the US embassy is the size of Vatican City, there is no official plan for the withdrawal of contractors and new corporate mercenary contracts are being awarded. The SoFA Agreement between the US and Iraq gives the US the right to extend the occupation indefinitely and to continue intervening militarily in Iraq ad infinitum. All it takes is for the puppets in Baghdad to ask nicely…
In the latest episode of the “Occupation Rebranded” mini-series, President Obama is preparing to scrap the June 30 withdrawal timeline.
As The New York Times reports: “The United States and Iraq will begin negotiating possible exceptions to the June 30 deadline for withdrawing American combat troops from Iraqi cities, focusing on the troubled northern city of Mosul, according to military officials. Some parts of Baghdad also will still have combat troops.”
According to the Times, the US is playing with the definition of the word “city” when speaking of withdrawing combat troops from all cities:
[T]here are no plans to close the Camp Victory base complex, consisting of five bases housing more than 20,000 soldiers, many of them combat troops. Although Victory is only a 15 minute drive from the center of Baghdad and sprawls over both sides of the city’s boundary, Iraqi officials say they have agreed to consider it outside the city.
In addition, Forward Operating Base Falcon, which can hold 5,000 combat troops, will also remain after June 30. It is just within Baghdad’s southern city limits. Again, Iraqi officials have classified it as effectively outside Baghdad, so no exception to the agreement needs to be granted, in their view.
Combat troops with the Seventh Field Artillery Regiment will remain in the heart of Baghdad at Camp Prosperity, located near the new American Embassy compound in the Green Zone. In addition to providing a quick reaction force, guarding the embassy and noncombat troops from attack, those soldiers will also continue to support Iraqi troops who are now in nominal charge of maintaining security in the Green Zone.
Camp Victory is of tremendous strategic importance to the US occupation. In addition to the military’s share of Baghdad International Airport, it includes four bases—Victory, Liberty, Striker and Slayer—as well as the US-run prison “Camp Cropper.” That’s where the US keeps its “high value” prisoners. While the US officially handed control of Forward Operating Base Freedom to “Iraqi control,” the US military is keeping the swimming pool.
Meanwhile, future plans are being laid for other US bases. Camp Prosperity is going to house US contractors and other personnel, while at Camp Union III housing is being built for several thousand soldiers, trainers and advisers.
What is abundantly clear is that there are enough cosmetic changes going on in Baghdad intended to make it look like the occupation is ending, while continuing it. Again, from the Times:
The Green Zone was handed over to Iraqi control Jan. 1, when the agreement went into effect. In addition to the United States-Iraqi patrols, most of the security for the Green Zone’s many checkpoints and heavily guarded entry points is still done by the same private contractors who did it prior to Jan. 1.
“What you’re seeing is not a change in the numbers, it’s a doctrine change,” said First Sgt. David Moore, a New Jersey National Guardsman with the Joint Area Support Group, which runs the Green Zone. “You’re still going to have fighters. Every U.S. soldier is trained to fight.”
The Iraq occupation is like The Picture of Dorian Gray. No matter what public face the Obama administration attempts to present, it only grows more heinous with each passing day.
the crime of independence
we dislike cuba because they refuse to be puppets. they do not allow the u.s. to dictate the political and economic structures within their society. we speak often of sovereignty, but when a country practices it, we oppose them. the very existence of cuba as it is currently constituted should be celebrated, whatever problems may exist there.
cuba libre.
The Crime of Independence
Why the U.S. Still Hates Cuba
By FREDERICO FUENTES
At the centre of the Summit of the Americas held in Trinidad and Tobago over April 17-19, was the only country from the hemisphere not present — Cuba.
Speaking at the opening session, Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega noted that while a large majority of the heads of states of the Americas were present, “there are two major absentees”.
The first was “Cuba, whose crime has been to fight for its independence, for the sovereignty of the peoples; lending solidarity, without conditions, to our peoples, and for that it is being sanctioned, for that it is being punished, for that it is being excluded.”
The second was the nation of Puerto Rico, which continues to be an official colony of the United States — denied independence.
In 1962, Cuba was expelled from the Organisation of American States for having openly declared the nature of its revolution to be socialist — based on the ideology of “Marxism-Leninism”.
Despite its exclusion, Cuba’s presence was felt at the summit.
In his April 4 column, “Why is Cuba being excluded?”, former Cuban president Fidel Castro explained that Ortega “gave me a large number of paragraphs that are being debated about the final declaration of the upcoming Port of Spain Summit”.
Arguing that there were “a great number of inadmissible concepts”, he said that the summit would be a “litmus test for the peoples of the Caribbean and Latin America”.
Cuban President Raul Castro attended the Bolivarian Alternatives for Our Americas (ALBA) Summit in Cumana, Venezuela, over April 16-17, in which the anti-imperialist bloc sought to “prepare its artillery”.
The ALBA countries (Venezuela, Cuba, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Honduras and Dominica) issued a public document declaring their opposition to the draft declaration of the Summit of the Americas.
Part of the reason was the exclusion of Cuba and the refusal of the US to lift its nearly five decade-long economic blockade.
At the summit, Latin American president after president denounced the US blockade and called for Cuba’s inclusion in the summit. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez proposed the next summit be held in Havana.
Others raised the need for an Organisation of Latin American and Caribbean States, including Cuba but not the US or Canada.
The March decisions by the Costa Rican and El Salvadoran government to renew diplomatic ties with Cuba left the US as the only country in the Americas without official ties with Cuba’s socialist government. This is a long way from previous decades, when only a handful of regional governments kept links and the OAS backed US anti-Cuba policy.
In light of this hemispheric shift, the Obama administration recently moved to lift travel restrictions to Cuba for Cubans living in the US. It also eased restrictions on remittances from Cuban immigrants in the US sent home.
However, Obama remains firm on keeping the US blockade, despite speculation of more changes to come..
On April 20, the Washington Post reported Obama as saying: “The policy that we’re had in place for 50 years hasn’t worked the way we want it to.”
This is because, Obama said, “The Cuban people are not free”.
But, as Shamus Cooke noted in PEJ News that same day, the “purpose of the embargo is not to pressure Cuba into being more democratic: this lie can be easily refuted by the numerous dictators the U.S. has supported in the hemisphere, not to mention dictators the U.S. is currently propping up all over the Middle East and elsewhere”.
The real cause of continued US hostility is that “Cuba remains a solid source of pride” for the continent.
Cuba achieved impressive social gains, including an extensive and completely free education system and a lower infant mortality rate than the US. It has achieved these gains despite the US blockade and the economic crisis caused by the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s.
The US government and its apologists accuse Cuba of a lack of democracy.
Cuba’s system is not perfect. However, not only is access to housing, jobs, education and health care (guaranteed in Cuba) pre-requisites for democratic participation, Cuba’s political system is based on “people’s power”. Cuban citizens are able to exercise significant control over the system — including the right to recall elected officials.
“Where is there more democracy, in the United States or in Cuba?”, Chavez said. “Who has the democracy meter? I have no doubt that there is more democracy in Cuba than in the United States.”
Speaking at the ALBA summit, Bolivian President Evo Morales said, “The US has no right or authority to speak of democracy, because they are the ones that foster coups”. He said Cuba exercises a democracy, in which million-dollar electoral campaigns don’t exist.
Cuba’s crime is the political and economic independence won through the revolution.
Cooke said: “Defeating the U.S. Bay of Pigs invasion [in 1961] while remaining fiercely independent in a region dominated by U.S. corporations and past government interventions has made Cuba an inspiration to millions of Latin Americans. This profound break from U.S. dominance — in its ‘own backyard’ no less — is not so easily forgiven.
“There is also a deeper reason for not removing the embargo. The foundation of the Cuban economy is arranged in such a way that it threatens the most basic philosophic principle shared by the two-party system: the market economy (capitalism).”
Cooke said that “the current crisis of world capitalism is again posing the question: is there another way to organize society?”
Frederico Fuentes writes for Green Left Weekly.
cuba libre.
The Crime of Independence
Why the U.S. Still Hates Cuba
By FREDERICO FUENTES
At the centre of the Summit of the Americas held in Trinidad and Tobago over April 17-19, was the only country from the hemisphere not present — Cuba.
Speaking at the opening session, Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega noted that while a large majority of the heads of states of the Americas were present, “there are two major absentees”.
The first was “Cuba, whose crime has been to fight for its independence, for the sovereignty of the peoples; lending solidarity, without conditions, to our peoples, and for that it is being sanctioned, for that it is being punished, for that it is being excluded.”
The second was the nation of Puerto Rico, which continues to be an official colony of the United States — denied independence.
In 1962, Cuba was expelled from the Organisation of American States for having openly declared the nature of its revolution to be socialist — based on the ideology of “Marxism-Leninism”.
Despite its exclusion, Cuba’s presence was felt at the summit.
In his April 4 column, “Why is Cuba being excluded?”, former Cuban president Fidel Castro explained that Ortega “gave me a large number of paragraphs that are being debated about the final declaration of the upcoming Port of Spain Summit”.
Arguing that there were “a great number of inadmissible concepts”, he said that the summit would be a “litmus test for the peoples of the Caribbean and Latin America”.
Cuban President Raul Castro attended the Bolivarian Alternatives for Our Americas (ALBA) Summit in Cumana, Venezuela, over April 16-17, in which the anti-imperialist bloc sought to “prepare its artillery”.
The ALBA countries (Venezuela, Cuba, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Honduras and Dominica) issued a public document declaring their opposition to the draft declaration of the Summit of the Americas.
Part of the reason was the exclusion of Cuba and the refusal of the US to lift its nearly five decade-long economic blockade.
At the summit, Latin American president after president denounced the US blockade and called for Cuba’s inclusion in the summit. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez proposed the next summit be held in Havana.
Others raised the need for an Organisation of Latin American and Caribbean States, including Cuba but not the US or Canada.
The March decisions by the Costa Rican and El Salvadoran government to renew diplomatic ties with Cuba left the US as the only country in the Americas without official ties with Cuba’s socialist government. This is a long way from previous decades, when only a handful of regional governments kept links and the OAS backed US anti-Cuba policy.
In light of this hemispheric shift, the Obama administration recently moved to lift travel restrictions to Cuba for Cubans living in the US. It also eased restrictions on remittances from Cuban immigrants in the US sent home.
However, Obama remains firm on keeping the US blockade, despite speculation of more changes to come..
On April 20, the Washington Post reported Obama as saying: “The policy that we’re had in place for 50 years hasn’t worked the way we want it to.”
This is because, Obama said, “The Cuban people are not free”.
But, as Shamus Cooke noted in PEJ News that same day, the “purpose of the embargo is not to pressure Cuba into being more democratic: this lie can be easily refuted by the numerous dictators the U.S. has supported in the hemisphere, not to mention dictators the U.S. is currently propping up all over the Middle East and elsewhere”.
The real cause of continued US hostility is that “Cuba remains a solid source of pride” for the continent.
Cuba achieved impressive social gains, including an extensive and completely free education system and a lower infant mortality rate than the US. It has achieved these gains despite the US blockade and the economic crisis caused by the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s.
The US government and its apologists accuse Cuba of a lack of democracy.
Cuba’s system is not perfect. However, not only is access to housing, jobs, education and health care (guaranteed in Cuba) pre-requisites for democratic participation, Cuba’s political system is based on “people’s power”. Cuban citizens are able to exercise significant control over the system — including the right to recall elected officials.
“Where is there more democracy, in the United States or in Cuba?”, Chavez said. “Who has the democracy meter? I have no doubt that there is more democracy in Cuba than in the United States.”
Speaking at the ALBA summit, Bolivian President Evo Morales said, “The US has no right or authority to speak of democracy, because they are the ones that foster coups”. He said Cuba exercises a democracy, in which million-dollar electoral campaigns don’t exist.
Cuba’s crime is the political and economic independence won through the revolution.
Cooke said: “Defeating the U.S. Bay of Pigs invasion [in 1961] while remaining fiercely independent in a region dominated by U.S. corporations and past government interventions has made Cuba an inspiration to millions of Latin Americans. This profound break from U.S. dominance — in its ‘own backyard’ no less — is not so easily forgiven.
“There is also a deeper reason for not removing the embargo. The foundation of the Cuban economy is arranged in such a way that it threatens the most basic philosophic principle shared by the two-party system: the market economy (capitalism).”
Cooke said that “the current crisis of world capitalism is again posing the question: is there another way to organize society?”
Frederico Fuentes writes for Green Left Weekly.
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
10 years later, and still no apology
NATO's War on Yugoslavia: Ten Years Later
April 22, 2009 By Danilo Mandic
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In the chilling conclusion of the Serbian play The Professional, a paranoid and abusive Stalinist interrogates an innocent man accused of pro-Western sympathies. Bloody from beatings and tied-up to a chair for a crime he did not commit, the victim is offered a benevolent compromise by his torturer:
"Let's make a deal, shall we? We're both reasonable men. I'll forgive you for having beaten you, and you confess to being a spy and tell me who your contacts are."
To say that US/NATO attitudes towards Serbia are like this torturer's would be unfair to the Stalinist thug. Namely, Serbia has still not been forgiven by the West for having been bombed "back to 1389" ten years ago, in Thomas Friedman's memorable phrase calling for targeting civilians (NYT 4/03/99). A decade ago, US-led NATO forces bypassed the UN Charter, the UN security council, NATO's own charter and, despite illusions to the contrary, world opinion to engage in a "humanitarian intervention" that turned a tragedy into an irreversible catastrophe. Major General Lewis MacKenzie recalls the circumstances:
"For anyone playing close attention to the events leading up to the campaign, it was pretty obvious that the independence- seeking Kosovo Liberation Army - which, according to the CIA, was a terrorist organization - and its retained U.S.-based, public-relations support had played the West like a Stradivarius. This culminated with NATO volunteering to be the KLA's air force" (Globe & Mail, November 22, 2006).
Accomplishments included several thousand deaths (overwhelmingly civilians), hundreds of thousands of refugees, the destruction of scores of hospitals, schools, apartment complexes and other civilian infrastructure, and a calamitous intensification of violence towards Kosovo residents of all ethnicities. As is common in US wars, the long-term effects on the mental health of the affected populations are not even considered worthy of interest. Most major newspapers and news channels neglected to even mention the anniversary of the war, while the extent of its human cost is ignored altogether.
Having endured 78 days of incessant bombing, the traumatized Serbian population failed to recognize NATO's benevolence at the time, and their ignorance continues to this day: notwithstanding popular support for EU integration, between 50% and 80% of the population has opposed Serbia's integration into NATO over the past five years, according to Strategic Marketing polls. The popular sentiment is greeted almost monthly with statements from Brussels and Washington about the need for Serbs to "forget the past" and "move on" to a brighter future in the outdated alliance. Why Serbs are opposed to integration is considered a kind of mystery, as if a mystical hypnosis swept over their minds (often called "nationalism") and induced irrational dislike of NATO, just as it single-handedly destroyed Yugoslavia (see "Connoisseurs of Cruelty" in New York Review of Books, March 12, 2009).
The reaction is less mysterious to those who remember the war. Belgrade Deputy Mayor Radmila Hrustanović, for her part, commemorated the 10th anniversary by laying wreaths on the grave of Milica Rakić, a three-year-old girl killed in her home by NATO bombs. She was one of hundreds of children slaughtered by US/NATO bombs, many of whose bodies were so thoroughly torn to shreds as to make identification impossible. Hrustanovic noted that:
"They called those murders ‘collateral damage'. She [Milica] was an innocent victim of bombardment and it is hard to forgive her three years of life, nor can that be forgotten. Milica is a symbol of the agony of the people who suffered for 78 days. Ten years later, we were hoping someone would account for what they have done. The murder of Milica and so many others warrants at least an apology" (B92 3/24/09).
An apology that has never even been contemplated by any NATO country, despite overwhelming evidence from human rights groups that NATO used depleted uranium and cluster bombs illegally against civilians. In addition to the installment of the US's largest military base in Europe - Camp Bondsteel - the US eventually realized a status of so-called "independence" for Kosovo, at a tremendous cost for non-Albanians in the province (over 250,000 fled after 1999), and in violation of UN Security Council resolution 1244 that maintained the "sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia." After a farcical negotiation process, the "final status talks" were scrapped in favor of a unilateral declaration of "independence" on February 17, 2008. Predictably, this action had the same effect on Serbia's internal politics as the bombing that prepared it: right-wing and authoritarian political currents received vast advantages.
What emerged could appropriately be called a "failed state" of Kosovo, but its quasi-state status (remaining unrecognized by the UN) and its utter dependency on the US/NATO military presence make the term slightly misleading. The failed entity, to be sure, has become the undisputed center for drug and human trafficking, arms smuggling and organized crime in all of Europe. Minority discrimination continues to be rampant, Amnesty International reports, with proven war criminals and former KLA terrorists dominating affairs internally. Anticipated witnesses against Kosovo Albanian leaders accused of war crimes at the Hague Tribunal are routinely murdered. With a faltering economy, an enormous population of unemployed youth, and organized crime at the highest levels of government, Kosovo is, David Binder noted:
"a civil war society in which those inclined to violence, ill-educated and easily influenced people could make huge social leaps in a rapidly constructed soldateska" ("Kosovo auf Deutsch," Balkananalysis, 18 November 2007).
Even if the tendencies towards the formation of a "Greater Albania" through a unification of Albania and Kosovo do not win over, the instability created by the US's state-formation experiment is colossal, and may very well emerge as a major conflict zone in the future.
As with most of recent Balkan history, discussing America's culpability is regularly equated with a welter of irrelevant positions. One is "whitewashing" the Milosevic regime; one is denying Serbia's crimes; one is a supporter of genocide. These slurs would be comical if they were not foul insults to the victims of the Kosovo tragedy. The fact that Serbs - like all sides - committed heinous crimes in a mindless and brutal civil war does not, regrettably, change the fact that the US's criminal campaign was itself unforgivable, its only success being the vast escalation of an unnecessary conflict.
NATO's notorious claim of intervention for the sake of preventing genocide, and the accompanying lies about casualty figures, were being exposed even before the campaign began. The Independent International Commission on Kosovo's report noted very early on that the US's conduct before, during and after the war was the decisive cause of humanitarian disasters that could have been avoided. The State Department had claimed that up to half-a-million Kosovo Albanians were murdered in the period preceding the bombing - a figure that has magically shriveled to 2000 deaths over the entire year preceding the war. Refugee numbers have similarly been reduced to a fraction of what was initially claimed. A decade later, the exaggerations have been proven ludicrous, but no revision of the standard history is even attempted in the US press. Nor are the victims of US violence - both during and after the air campaign - paid any mind.
The 1999 war's greatest legacy, however, was the precedent it set for American foreign policy in the post-Cold War period. Post-9/11 military excursions into the Middle East were largely continuations of the model of successful military intervention that was fabricated through the Kosovo tragedy. The utter discrediting of the UN, the contempt for world opinion, and the brutal targeting of civilians were well-established foreign policy practices years before 9/11. We might also remember that Vladimir Putin warned at the onset that unilateral declaration of independence in Kosovo sends a clear message that South Ossetia and Abkhazia are subject to the same rules; indeed, Russia followed NATO's own standard perfectly in its August 2008 expedition, which was met with amazement. Kosovo is unfortunately far from a "unique case," as EU spokesmen insisted it was, and its treatment by the US has opened a true floodgate in international relations. Comparable situations with the Basques and Catalans in Spain, the Corsicans in France, the Flemish in Belgium and Turks in Cyprus, make US double standards particularly blatant, which angers Russia as much as it does US victims in the Middle East. Finally, in its insistence on permanent military bases, its contempt for diplomacy and its post-war reconstruction debacles in the Middle East, the US is merely replaying its Kosovo policy on a greater and more destructive scale. If one cares to learn what American nation-building projects look like outside of Ivy League fantasies, one should look at Kosovo.
Thankfully, propaganda about the NATO bombing and the Yugoslav tragedy in general is not omnipresent. A Wall Street Journal editorial notes the legacy of the Kosovo debacle for US involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan (Matthew Kaminski, August 08, 2007). George Szamuely's "The Absurdity of Independent Kosovo" (Feb. 15 2008) was a refreshingly critical forecast of the long-term consequences of US intervention in Kosovo. And Foreign Policy in Focus, to its eternal credit, published an enlightening exchange between Edward Herman and John Feffer, in which what the latter calls "revisionism" has the curious feature of being accurate and well-documented ("Strategic Dialogue: Yugoslavia," April 6, 2009). As many of the crafters of the NATO war and its aftermath regain power over US foreign policy under the Obama administration, a recollection of this recent history may be in order.
April 22, 2009 By Danilo Mandic
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In the chilling conclusion of the Serbian play The Professional, a paranoid and abusive Stalinist interrogates an innocent man accused of pro-Western sympathies. Bloody from beatings and tied-up to a chair for a crime he did not commit, the victim is offered a benevolent compromise by his torturer:
"Let's make a deal, shall we? We're both reasonable men. I'll forgive you for having beaten you, and you confess to being a spy and tell me who your contacts are."
To say that US/NATO attitudes towards Serbia are like this torturer's would be unfair to the Stalinist thug. Namely, Serbia has still not been forgiven by the West for having been bombed "back to 1389" ten years ago, in Thomas Friedman's memorable phrase calling for targeting civilians (NYT 4/03/99). A decade ago, US-led NATO forces bypassed the UN Charter, the UN security council, NATO's own charter and, despite illusions to the contrary, world opinion to engage in a "humanitarian intervention" that turned a tragedy into an irreversible catastrophe. Major General Lewis MacKenzie recalls the circumstances:
"For anyone playing close attention to the events leading up to the campaign, it was pretty obvious that the independence- seeking Kosovo Liberation Army - which, according to the CIA, was a terrorist organization - and its retained U.S.-based, public-relations support had played the West like a Stradivarius. This culminated with NATO volunteering to be the KLA's air force" (Globe & Mail, November 22, 2006).
Accomplishments included several thousand deaths (overwhelmingly civilians), hundreds of thousands of refugees, the destruction of scores of hospitals, schools, apartment complexes and other civilian infrastructure, and a calamitous intensification of violence towards Kosovo residents of all ethnicities. As is common in US wars, the long-term effects on the mental health of the affected populations are not even considered worthy of interest. Most major newspapers and news channels neglected to even mention the anniversary of the war, while the extent of its human cost is ignored altogether.
Having endured 78 days of incessant bombing, the traumatized Serbian population failed to recognize NATO's benevolence at the time, and their ignorance continues to this day: notwithstanding popular support for EU integration, between 50% and 80% of the population has opposed Serbia's integration into NATO over the past five years, according to Strategic Marketing polls. The popular sentiment is greeted almost monthly with statements from Brussels and Washington about the need for Serbs to "forget the past" and "move on" to a brighter future in the outdated alliance. Why Serbs are opposed to integration is considered a kind of mystery, as if a mystical hypnosis swept over their minds (often called "nationalism") and induced irrational dislike of NATO, just as it single-handedly destroyed Yugoslavia (see "Connoisseurs of Cruelty" in New York Review of Books, March 12, 2009).
The reaction is less mysterious to those who remember the war. Belgrade Deputy Mayor Radmila Hrustanović, for her part, commemorated the 10th anniversary by laying wreaths on the grave of Milica Rakić, a three-year-old girl killed in her home by NATO bombs. She was one of hundreds of children slaughtered by US/NATO bombs, many of whose bodies were so thoroughly torn to shreds as to make identification impossible. Hrustanovic noted that:
"They called those murders ‘collateral damage'. She [Milica] was an innocent victim of bombardment and it is hard to forgive her three years of life, nor can that be forgotten. Milica is a symbol of the agony of the people who suffered for 78 days. Ten years later, we were hoping someone would account for what they have done. The murder of Milica and so many others warrants at least an apology" (B92 3/24/09).
An apology that has never even been contemplated by any NATO country, despite overwhelming evidence from human rights groups that NATO used depleted uranium and cluster bombs illegally against civilians. In addition to the installment of the US's largest military base in Europe - Camp Bondsteel - the US eventually realized a status of so-called "independence" for Kosovo, at a tremendous cost for non-Albanians in the province (over 250,000 fled after 1999), and in violation of UN Security Council resolution 1244 that maintained the "sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia." After a farcical negotiation process, the "final status talks" were scrapped in favor of a unilateral declaration of "independence" on February 17, 2008. Predictably, this action had the same effect on Serbia's internal politics as the bombing that prepared it: right-wing and authoritarian political currents received vast advantages.
What emerged could appropriately be called a "failed state" of Kosovo, but its quasi-state status (remaining unrecognized by the UN) and its utter dependency on the US/NATO military presence make the term slightly misleading. The failed entity, to be sure, has become the undisputed center for drug and human trafficking, arms smuggling and organized crime in all of Europe. Minority discrimination continues to be rampant, Amnesty International reports, with proven war criminals and former KLA terrorists dominating affairs internally. Anticipated witnesses against Kosovo Albanian leaders accused of war crimes at the Hague Tribunal are routinely murdered. With a faltering economy, an enormous population of unemployed youth, and organized crime at the highest levels of government, Kosovo is, David Binder noted:
"a civil war society in which those inclined to violence, ill-educated and easily influenced people could make huge social leaps in a rapidly constructed soldateska" ("Kosovo auf Deutsch," Balkananalysis, 18 November 2007).
Even if the tendencies towards the formation of a "Greater Albania" through a unification of Albania and Kosovo do not win over, the instability created by the US's state-formation experiment is colossal, and may very well emerge as a major conflict zone in the future.
As with most of recent Balkan history, discussing America's culpability is regularly equated with a welter of irrelevant positions. One is "whitewashing" the Milosevic regime; one is denying Serbia's crimes; one is a supporter of genocide. These slurs would be comical if they were not foul insults to the victims of the Kosovo tragedy. The fact that Serbs - like all sides - committed heinous crimes in a mindless and brutal civil war does not, regrettably, change the fact that the US's criminal campaign was itself unforgivable, its only success being the vast escalation of an unnecessary conflict.
NATO's notorious claim of intervention for the sake of preventing genocide, and the accompanying lies about casualty figures, were being exposed even before the campaign began. The Independent International Commission on Kosovo's report noted very early on that the US's conduct before, during and after the war was the decisive cause of humanitarian disasters that could have been avoided. The State Department had claimed that up to half-a-million Kosovo Albanians were murdered in the period preceding the bombing - a figure that has magically shriveled to 2000 deaths over the entire year preceding the war. Refugee numbers have similarly been reduced to a fraction of what was initially claimed. A decade later, the exaggerations have been proven ludicrous, but no revision of the standard history is even attempted in the US press. Nor are the victims of US violence - both during and after the air campaign - paid any mind.
The 1999 war's greatest legacy, however, was the precedent it set for American foreign policy in the post-Cold War period. Post-9/11 military excursions into the Middle East were largely continuations of the model of successful military intervention that was fabricated through the Kosovo tragedy. The utter discrediting of the UN, the contempt for world opinion, and the brutal targeting of civilians were well-established foreign policy practices years before 9/11. We might also remember that Vladimir Putin warned at the onset that unilateral declaration of independence in Kosovo sends a clear message that South Ossetia and Abkhazia are subject to the same rules; indeed, Russia followed NATO's own standard perfectly in its August 2008 expedition, which was met with amazement. Kosovo is unfortunately far from a "unique case," as EU spokesmen insisted it was, and its treatment by the US has opened a true floodgate in international relations. Comparable situations with the Basques and Catalans in Spain, the Corsicans in France, the Flemish in Belgium and Turks in Cyprus, make US double standards particularly blatant, which angers Russia as much as it does US victims in the Middle East. Finally, in its insistence on permanent military bases, its contempt for diplomacy and its post-war reconstruction debacles in the Middle East, the US is merely replaying its Kosovo policy on a greater and more destructive scale. If one cares to learn what American nation-building projects look like outside of Ivy League fantasies, one should look at Kosovo.
Thankfully, propaganda about the NATO bombing and the Yugoslav tragedy in general is not omnipresent. A Wall Street Journal editorial notes the legacy of the Kosovo debacle for US involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan (Matthew Kaminski, August 08, 2007). George Szamuely's "The Absurdity of Independent Kosovo" (Feb. 15 2008) was a refreshingly critical forecast of the long-term consequences of US intervention in Kosovo. And Foreign Policy in Focus, to its eternal credit, published an enlightening exchange between Edward Herman and John Feffer, in which what the latter calls "revisionism" has the curious feature of being accurate and well-documented ("Strategic Dialogue: Yugoslavia," April 6, 2009). As many of the crafters of the NATO war and its aftermath regain power over US foreign policy under the Obama administration, a recollection of this recent history may be in order.
fuck the yankees...both kinds.
The Pinstripe Patriot Act
by Dave Zirin
One day last August, Bradley Campeau-Laurion just wanted to leave his seat and use the bathroom at the old Yankee Stadium. The 30-year-old New York resident had no idea that nature's call would lead him down a road to perdition where he would be accused of challenging God, country, and the joys of compulsory patriotism at the ballpark.
Under the thirty-six-year watch of George Steinbrenner--and now his offspring--the New York Yankees have always wrapped their fans, like it or not, in red, white and blue bombast. This is the team that so loves God and country that it mandates the singing of two national anthems--Francis Scott Key's 1814 epic, "The Star-Spangled Banner" and Irving Berlin's 1918 anthem, "God Bless America."
For a while after 9/11, "God Bless America" was standard fare in major league ballparks. But while most ball clubs have let the practice slide, the super-patriotic Steinbrenners have ramped up the flag-waving, extending the seventh-inning stretch to include "God Bless America" along with the traditional "Take Me Out to the Ballgame." Sometimes "God Bless..." is performed live by Irish tenor Ronan Tynan, but most often the tune is delivered over stadium loudspeakers via a scratchy vintage recording by the operatic warbler Kate Smith, who first popularized the song in 1938. But no matter who's singing, the Yankees have been known to cordon off the aisles and put off-duty police officers in place to ensure the multitudes stand at respectful attention. (Fans of the world unite! You have nothing to lose but a long-dead singer and the chains on your bleachers!)
Not only do the Yankees expect fans to stand during the singing of patriotic songs, but during the Bush era they virtually mandated fan support for the Iraq War, all the while extorting tax breaks and other public subsidies from city, state and federal governments to build their new $1 .5 billion cathedral of baseball. (Separation of sports and state anyone?) For the Steinbrenners and the high-rollers who occupy Yankee Stadium's $2,500 top-shelf seats, this kind of power patriotism wedded to corporate welfare must be sweet as champagne.
But as the global economic meltdown has proven, there ultimately comes a time to put the brakes on corporate execs--to say nothing of mindless patriotism. And while some Yankees fans have grumbled and a few intrepid sports bloggers, like former Deadspin Editor Will Leitch, have raised concerns, it took one man's full bladder to hoist the Yankees organization with its own petard.
All Campeau-Laurion did was try to go to the men's room during the seventh-inning stretch. In swooped two New York Police Department officers working security detail, who reportedly roughed him up and threw him out of the ballpark. Now Campeau-Laurion has filed a civil suit against the the city, the cops and the team for violating his rights.
"New York's finest have no business arresting someone for trying to go to the bathroom at a politically incorrect moment," said Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, which is representing Campeau-Laurion in the lawsuit. According to the complaint, Campeau-Laurion drank two beers and took the seventh-inning stretch to mean he could actually go stretch.
"As he walked toward the tunnel leading to the concourse, a uniformed New York City police officer put up his hands and mumbled something to Mr. Campeau-Laurion, " according to the complaint, blocking his way to the bathroom during the singing of "God Bless America."
As Campeau-Laurion tried to move past the officer, the policeman grabbed his arm and said, "He's out" to another officer, who twisted his left arm behind his back, hustling him down the ramp and out of the stadium.
NYPD tells a different story.
"The officers observed a male standing on his seat, cursing, using inappropriate language and acting in a disorderly manner while reeking of alcohol and decided to eject him rather than subject others to his offensive behavior," NYPD spokesman Paul Browne said in an e-mail reply to my query. This account strains credulity. If it were standard procedure for the NYPD to kick out every drunken fan from Yankee Stadium, the place would be emptier than a John Ashcroft concert at the Apollo Theatre.
Campeau-Laurion disputes the NYPD account. "Not a word of that is true," he told Bloomberg News. "The whole incident didn't occur at my seat. It occurred at my section when I went to use the restroom."
"I don't care about 'God Bless America.' I don't believe that's grounds constitutionally for being dragged out of a baseball game... I simply don't have any religious beliefs... It devalues patriotism as a whole when you force people to participate in patriotic acts," he continued. "It devalues the freedom we fought for in the first place."
This ugly incident raises a series of inconvenient questions: why does America feel compelled to bind sports to patriotic ritual? Why are publicly funded facilities like stadiums used to promote private religious or political beliefs? And given the putrid start of the Yankees's season, shouldn't management be more concerned with what's happening with the players than with the fans? All should stand with Campeau-Laurion until we get some answers.
by Dave Zirin
One day last August, Bradley Campeau-Laurion just wanted to leave his seat and use the bathroom at the old Yankee Stadium. The 30-year-old New York resident had no idea that nature's call would lead him down a road to perdition where he would be accused of challenging God, country, and the joys of compulsory patriotism at the ballpark.
Under the thirty-six-year watch of George Steinbrenner--and now his offspring--the New York Yankees have always wrapped their fans, like it or not, in red, white and blue bombast. This is the team that so loves God and country that it mandates the singing of two national anthems--Francis Scott Key's 1814 epic, "The Star-Spangled Banner" and Irving Berlin's 1918 anthem, "God Bless America."
For a while after 9/11, "God Bless America" was standard fare in major league ballparks. But while most ball clubs have let the practice slide, the super-patriotic Steinbrenners have ramped up the flag-waving, extending the seventh-inning stretch to include "God Bless America" along with the traditional "Take Me Out to the Ballgame." Sometimes "God Bless..." is performed live by Irish tenor Ronan Tynan, but most often the tune is delivered over stadium loudspeakers via a scratchy vintage recording by the operatic warbler Kate Smith, who first popularized the song in 1938. But no matter who's singing, the Yankees have been known to cordon off the aisles and put off-duty police officers in place to ensure the multitudes stand at respectful attention. (Fans of the world unite! You have nothing to lose but a long-dead singer and the chains on your bleachers!)
Not only do the Yankees expect fans to stand during the singing of patriotic songs, but during the Bush era they virtually mandated fan support for the Iraq War, all the while extorting tax breaks and other public subsidies from city, state and federal governments to build their new $1 .5 billion cathedral of baseball. (Separation of sports and state anyone?) For the Steinbrenners and the high-rollers who occupy Yankee Stadium's $2,500 top-shelf seats, this kind of power patriotism wedded to corporate welfare must be sweet as champagne.
But as the global economic meltdown has proven, there ultimately comes a time to put the brakes on corporate execs--to say nothing of mindless patriotism. And while some Yankees fans have grumbled and a few intrepid sports bloggers, like former Deadspin Editor Will Leitch, have raised concerns, it took one man's full bladder to hoist the Yankees organization with its own petard.
All Campeau-Laurion did was try to go to the men's room during the seventh-inning stretch. In swooped two New York Police Department officers working security detail, who reportedly roughed him up and threw him out of the ballpark. Now Campeau-Laurion has filed a civil suit against the the city, the cops and the team for violating his rights.
"New York's finest have no business arresting someone for trying to go to the bathroom at a politically incorrect moment," said Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, which is representing Campeau-Laurion in the lawsuit. According to the complaint, Campeau-Laurion drank two beers and took the seventh-inning stretch to mean he could actually go stretch.
"As he walked toward the tunnel leading to the concourse, a uniformed New York City police officer put up his hands and mumbled something to Mr. Campeau-Laurion, " according to the complaint, blocking his way to the bathroom during the singing of "God Bless America."
As Campeau-Laurion tried to move past the officer, the policeman grabbed his arm and said, "He's out" to another officer, who twisted his left arm behind his back, hustling him down the ramp and out of the stadium.
NYPD tells a different story.
"The officers observed a male standing on his seat, cursing, using inappropriate language and acting in a disorderly manner while reeking of alcohol and decided to eject him rather than subject others to his offensive behavior," NYPD spokesman Paul Browne said in an e-mail reply to my query. This account strains credulity. If it were standard procedure for the NYPD to kick out every drunken fan from Yankee Stadium, the place would be emptier than a John Ashcroft concert at the Apollo Theatre.
Campeau-Laurion disputes the NYPD account. "Not a word of that is true," he told Bloomberg News. "The whole incident didn't occur at my seat. It occurred at my section when I went to use the restroom."
"I don't care about 'God Bless America.' I don't believe that's grounds constitutionally for being dragged out of a baseball game... I simply don't have any religious beliefs... It devalues patriotism as a whole when you force people to participate in patriotic acts," he continued. "It devalues the freedom we fought for in the first place."
This ugly incident raises a series of inconvenient questions: why does America feel compelled to bind sports to patriotic ritual? Why are publicly funded facilities like stadiums used to promote private religious or political beliefs? And given the putrid start of the Yankees's season, shouldn't management be more concerned with what's happening with the players than with the fans? All should stand with Campeau-Laurion until we get some answers.
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
so i've heard
you hear a lot of different things, for people say a lot of different things. a couple of days ago, i heard obama talk about how several latin american leaders had told him that their economies had been damaged by the imf. well, today, i heard that the obama administration has approved a 100 billion dollar loan to that very same imf. we know that in argentina, equador, jamaica, and so many other nations in the hemisphere, the imf has done its damage, and we also know that our own economy is hurting, and that people could surely put that 100 billion to use right here, but no matter. for there is the realm of words, were occasionally, truths are spoken, and there is the realm of deeds, where the ways of power are continued, spoken truths to the contrary. yes, the imf may fuck up economies, but we don't care about that, as long as it is the masses who get fucked, while the corporations profit. the film life and debt does a nice job of showing how the imf works. by the way, the imf doesn't operate magically on its own. it is american driven. it does the work of western capital, and dances to the tune called by the u.s. so, all nice words aside, the deed of throwing 100 billion at the imf demonstrates the continued imperial economic policies that the obama administration will partake in.
wardell gray was a wonderful sax man, and a deep thinker. a reader of sartre, and a supporter of henry wallace in 1948, gray was one of the true swing to bop links on the tenor. sadly, he was found with a broken neck in las vegas, dead in 1955, at the age of 31. mysterious to say the least. perhaps the mob did him in. whatever the case, he was as good as anybody. stitt and frank foster seemed to pick up on his playing, but it would have been nice to have him longer, especially with the lp on the horizon. he left us way too soon, along with booker little, eric dolphy, clifford brown, fats navarro, bird, and so many others. dig whatever wardell you can get your hands on. you won't regret it.
"anything south of the canadian border is south."
malcolm x.
wardell gray was a wonderful sax man, and a deep thinker. a reader of sartre, and a supporter of henry wallace in 1948, gray was one of the true swing to bop links on the tenor. sadly, he was found with a broken neck in las vegas, dead in 1955, at the age of 31. mysterious to say the least. perhaps the mob did him in. whatever the case, he was as good as anybody. stitt and frank foster seemed to pick up on his playing, but it would have been nice to have him longer, especially with the lp on the horizon. he left us way too soon, along with booker little, eric dolphy, clifford brown, fats navarro, bird, and so many others. dig whatever wardell you can get your hands on. you won't regret it.
"anything south of the canadian border is south."
malcolm x.
beware the real pirates
Of Pirates & Piracy
[col. writ. 4/13/09] (c) '09 Mumia Abu-Jamal
In the news of late is the piracy drama off Africa's horn -- the eastern coast of Somalia.
All of a sudden, piracy is a problem, one needing military, if not global solutions.
Every petty politician is bum-rushing the mike, to spout off on how pirates are "thugs", "criminals", or the latest Western curse, " terrorists".
Such pronouncements almost always leave me cold, or, at best, ambivalent, for behind these events lie a history that cries out for clarity and perspective.
If piracy is a crime when individuals do it, what is it when states do it?
Who can deny that America was stolen and swindled from the Indians? Or that millions of people were stolen from Africa to work for them for centuries?
Is that piracy-- or just plain policy?
Piracy did occur in the 17th and 18th centuries, and this was either cases of conflict between colonial powers (where British 'privateers', for example, would target and steal from Spanish ships), or simply in pursuit of profits.
The Somali state has been absent for a generation, and as such, what is today's piracy but making a living, albeit a dangerous one?
When Ethiopia was armed and egged on to invade Somalia several years ago by the Bush administration, was that state piracy?
When the U.S. invaded and occupied Iraq in 2003, removed it's government, imposed its puppets, bombed its people, and ran a third of its population into exile, based on lies--was this piracy of one nation against another--or 'national security?'
Pirates are retail; nations are wholesale.
Who are the 'thugs', the 'criminals', the real pirates?
To my knowledge, no band of pirates has ever stolen a nation.
Guess who has?
[col. writ. 4/13/09] (c) '09 Mumia Abu-Jamal
In the news of late is the piracy drama off Africa's horn -- the eastern coast of Somalia.
All of a sudden, piracy is a problem, one needing military, if not global solutions.
Every petty politician is bum-rushing the mike, to spout off on how pirates are "thugs", "criminals", or the latest Western curse, " terrorists".
Such pronouncements almost always leave me cold, or, at best, ambivalent, for behind these events lie a history that cries out for clarity and perspective.
If piracy is a crime when individuals do it, what is it when states do it?
Who can deny that America was stolen and swindled from the Indians? Or that millions of people were stolen from Africa to work for them for centuries?
Is that piracy-- or just plain policy?
Piracy did occur in the 17th and 18th centuries, and this was either cases of conflict between colonial powers (where British 'privateers', for example, would target and steal from Spanish ships), or simply in pursuit of profits.
The Somali state has been absent for a generation, and as such, what is today's piracy but making a living, albeit a dangerous one?
When Ethiopia was armed and egged on to invade Somalia several years ago by the Bush administration, was that state piracy?
When the U.S. invaded and occupied Iraq in 2003, removed it's government, imposed its puppets, bombed its people, and ran a third of its population into exile, based on lies--was this piracy of one nation against another--or 'national security?'
Pirates are retail; nations are wholesale.
Who are the 'thugs', the 'criminals', the real pirates?
To my knowledge, no band of pirates has ever stolen a nation.
Guess who has?
Monday, April 20, 2009
our telling cuba to free its political prisoners is like a man who beats his wife telling a guy not to yell at his woman. if i was leading cuba, i would insist that the u.s. return to the prison population it had in 1980. this would free over a million people, far more than the 200 or so people in cuba that obama is so keen on freeing.
such hypocrisy is nothing new for us. we are the kings of hypocrisy. we bomb nations and then speak of the brutality of their leaders. we invade countries and then tell the world that foreign forces are fighting our forces, who all were surely born in the countries they invade.
funny, but obama's concern for political prisoners seems to be quite new. i have not heard him speak a word about cointelpro, the false convictions of panther, move, and aim members, the jail sentences of the puerto rican independence movement, the imprisonment of the elf, the harsh sentences against the cuban 5, angola 3, san francisco 8, and so many more. nor have i heard him once speak of the hundreds of thousands languishing in prisons for non violent drug offenses, or the thousands more innocent of the charges against him, but railroaded anyway due to their race or class.
yes, it is a strange concern, this concern about political prisoners. sort of like our concern over genocide, which motivates us to build museums about the crimes that others have committed, but which doesn't grant us the courage to even verbally acknowledge the extent of our own crimes against the black and indigenous people among us.
they can free their prisoners?
yes, but can we free ours?
we are a man masterbating, who continues to tell others to keep their hands out of their pants.
such hypocrisy is nothing new for us. we are the kings of hypocrisy. we bomb nations and then speak of the brutality of their leaders. we invade countries and then tell the world that foreign forces are fighting our forces, who all were surely born in the countries they invade.
funny, but obama's concern for political prisoners seems to be quite new. i have not heard him speak a word about cointelpro, the false convictions of panther, move, and aim members, the jail sentences of the puerto rican independence movement, the imprisonment of the elf, the harsh sentences against the cuban 5, angola 3, san francisco 8, and so many more. nor have i heard him once speak of the hundreds of thousands languishing in prisons for non violent drug offenses, or the thousands more innocent of the charges against him, but railroaded anyway due to their race or class.
yes, it is a strange concern, this concern about political prisoners. sort of like our concern over genocide, which motivates us to build museums about the crimes that others have committed, but which doesn't grant us the courage to even verbally acknowledge the extent of our own crimes against the black and indigenous people among us.
they can free their prisoners?
yes, but can we free ours?
we are a man masterbating, who continues to tell others to keep their hands out of their pants.
end the cuban embargo on the u.s.!
As a result of the Trinidad/Tobago Summit, in recent days the United States government and mass media have called on the Cuban government to react to the good hearted initiatives of the government in Washington, DC. Cuba is certainly thankful that such a powerful country is so interested in advancing liberty and opportunity within our island. The fact that you do not do the same with China - a huge country by comparison - only demonstrates that we Cubans are more important to you than all those millions of people in Asia.
Out of magnanimous politeness the United States government did not want to be very precise as to what it expects of us Cubans so that we can be granted the blessings of a democratic system in our island. We do appreciate that the interests of Cubans is what guides American policy toward us, something that - obviously - we forget to do ourselves. Your selflessness is commendable, while our own self-interested behavior is certainly demeaning.
We have decided, consequently, to respond to your expectations of reciprocity. We want to be good and be like you. Hereby we are lifting our economic embargo of the United States. Moreover, we will go the extra mile. We have come up with a number of initiatives of our own, hoping that you will be pleased and recognize us as your faithful students. The proposals should be considered our response to your substantial and magnificent first steps [i.e. letting Cuban Americans freely travel to our humble nation and do as they wish with their own money].
Please note that what follows is a request to you; it is not a demand. If there is something in this statement that your American Congress does not like, we will be delighted to delete it and offer our apology - beforehand. As Tomas Estrada Palma, the first president you put in charge in 1901, we know that you understand our interests better than we do. We are so lucky to be so close to your shores, so you can continue acting like our father or big brother. The laws of political gravitation and geography have certainly turned us into diplomatic realists. [We are so happy to be learning the terminology!]
We know that there are many things that the American government wants for our people in Cuba but your dogged respect of our sovereignty limits your freedom to tell us what to do. Of course, these are just the first steps in what you properly have called our necessary political transition.
The list below is part of a political roadmap as you like to say. We will be preparing a similar economic shopping list in the future in order to properly have a free economic system wide open to your highly responsible banks and financial institutions. We now realize that economic and social inequality has important political benefits. We have been wrong assuming that the poor should be involved in politics and we are certain that you will help us with that problem too. The poor should spend their time working on other things.
But let us begin with the political side of the equation: In order to have a "democratic opening" and a "multi-party elections" system in Cuba, the government of Cuba hereby requests of the Obama administration the following:
1. That Newt Gringrich and Sarah Palin be permitted to become Cuban citizens so that they may offer Cuba the proper guidance on how to set up political parties in the island. They will be put in charge of a two-party system. We realize that we do not need more than two parties, as you have shown the world through your example.
2. That the United States National Security Agency help the Cuban police modernize their surveillance technology so that we can better keep track of the congressmen we elect, as you do so well.
3. That the United States Congress lends a hand to the Cuban authorities in order to set up in Cuba a similar legal system to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, thus we can democratize listening to everyone's conversations. Cuba intends to ask the United States for appropriate funding in order to train personnel in the use of the equipment necessary.
4. That the United States Congress assist Cuba in setting up the legal system to allow the establishment of business lobbies within the Cuban political system. We are aware that members of Congress every day hear from the business interests and want to establish that influence in the island as well.
5. That the United States send a corps of privately financed lobby legislative coordinators to rewrite Cuban law, thereby bringing it into agreement with the lobbyist-written laws of the United States and freeing up our future elected officials to spend time fundraising for their media-intensive campaigns.
6. That Democratic and Republican parties from the United States set up training sessions on how to raise money from private commercial, financial interests to fund electoral campaigns. We do want the best politicians that money can buy.
7. That a team of the best Secretaries of States from around the United States be sent to Cuba to help mimic the process of stealing elections as done in Ohio, Florida and elsewhere. We are particularly interested in learning the unique methods by which poor and non-white people can be caged.
8. That the best private election counting companies from the United States who successfully have stolen elections be sent to Cuba in order to learn the best procedures to accomplish the same transparent methods that American democracy proclaims.
9. Since we are so new at this game of political democracy we expect to have a US Assistant to Democratization within our government in Havana. Since the United States government knows so much about such matters, we will pay the salary of the US government assigned person. We will provide that person with the rank of Minister within the Council of State. Moreover, the position will have the power to veto any decision that we Cubans make. After all, we do not want to make mistakes on such serious matters as building a properly functioning democracy - something that you Americans do so well.
10. Considering that we will start from no experience on these matters of free elections, we will appreciate it if you continue the funding of dissidents and through them help us choose the best candidates for our elections and in the process you can exercise your right to give media and financial support to the candidates you prefer for us.
11. Our mass media has not been free or balanced, like yours. Moreover, we like the idea of making the irrelevant important and vice versa.. Send us a team of Fox News to show our media how to build party mouthpieces and we will call the effort "justo y balanceado."
12. It is also urgent that you send a team of Harvard professors, as you did in 1902, to rewrite our history textbooks. We truly understand the need to forget the past in order to forge ahead. We know you want us to do that, and we are willing.
Two additional comments:
We think it is wonderful to have in the United States a black President. It is certainly much easier for us to have a black father figure up north, rather than a white one, telling us what we ought to do with all of our political institutions and economy. We are just ripe for the tutelage, a sort of "lowest-hanging fruit".[4] We are earnestly looking forward to the plucking.
We know we can not be manifested by destiny to become a great empire. God clearly chose only the United States for such an important role. But perhaps you could at least give us a few tips about expanding our reach. You took by war or intimidation all the land to the west of the original 13 British colonies -- and then some. Maybe we could pick up just a few Caribbean islands -- with your help, of course.
Nelson P Valdés is the Director of the Cuba-L Project. Ma Chetera, Saul Landau and Ned Sublette have contributed with suggestions and editorial comments to this piece.
Out of magnanimous politeness the United States government did not want to be very precise as to what it expects of us Cubans so that we can be granted the blessings of a democratic system in our island. We do appreciate that the interests of Cubans is what guides American policy toward us, something that - obviously - we forget to do ourselves. Your selflessness is commendable, while our own self-interested behavior is certainly demeaning.
We have decided, consequently, to respond to your expectations of reciprocity. We want to be good and be like you. Hereby we are lifting our economic embargo of the United States. Moreover, we will go the extra mile. We have come up with a number of initiatives of our own, hoping that you will be pleased and recognize us as your faithful students. The proposals should be considered our response to your substantial and magnificent first steps [i.e. letting Cuban Americans freely travel to our humble nation and do as they wish with their own money].
Please note that what follows is a request to you; it is not a demand. If there is something in this statement that your American Congress does not like, we will be delighted to delete it and offer our apology - beforehand. As Tomas Estrada Palma, the first president you put in charge in 1901, we know that you understand our interests better than we do. We are so lucky to be so close to your shores, so you can continue acting like our father or big brother. The laws of political gravitation and geography have certainly turned us into diplomatic realists. [We are so happy to be learning the terminology!]
We know that there are many things that the American government wants for our people in Cuba but your dogged respect of our sovereignty limits your freedom to tell us what to do. Of course, these are just the first steps in what you properly have called our necessary political transition.
The list below is part of a political roadmap as you like to say. We will be preparing a similar economic shopping list in the future in order to properly have a free economic system wide open to your highly responsible banks and financial institutions. We now realize that economic and social inequality has important political benefits. We have been wrong assuming that the poor should be involved in politics and we are certain that you will help us with that problem too. The poor should spend their time working on other things.
But let us begin with the political side of the equation: In order to have a "democratic opening" and a "multi-party elections" system in Cuba, the government of Cuba hereby requests of the Obama administration the following:
1. That Newt Gringrich and Sarah Palin be permitted to become Cuban citizens so that they may offer Cuba the proper guidance on how to set up political parties in the island. They will be put in charge of a two-party system. We realize that we do not need more than two parties, as you have shown the world through your example.
2. That the United States National Security Agency help the Cuban police modernize their surveillance technology so that we can better keep track of the congressmen we elect, as you do so well.
3. That the United States Congress lends a hand to the Cuban authorities in order to set up in Cuba a similar legal system to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, thus we can democratize listening to everyone's conversations. Cuba intends to ask the United States for appropriate funding in order to train personnel in the use of the equipment necessary.
4. That the United States Congress assist Cuba in setting up the legal system to allow the establishment of business lobbies within the Cuban political system. We are aware that members of Congress every day hear from the business interests and want to establish that influence in the island as well.
5. That the United States send a corps of privately financed lobby legislative coordinators to rewrite Cuban law, thereby bringing it into agreement with the lobbyist-written laws of the United States and freeing up our future elected officials to spend time fundraising for their media-intensive campaigns.
6. That Democratic and Republican parties from the United States set up training sessions on how to raise money from private commercial, financial interests to fund electoral campaigns. We do want the best politicians that money can buy.
7. That a team of the best Secretaries of States from around the United States be sent to Cuba to help mimic the process of stealing elections as done in Ohio, Florida and elsewhere. We are particularly interested in learning the unique methods by which poor and non-white people can be caged.
8. That the best private election counting companies from the United States who successfully have stolen elections be sent to Cuba in order to learn the best procedures to accomplish the same transparent methods that American democracy proclaims.
9. Since we are so new at this game of political democracy we expect to have a US Assistant to Democratization within our government in Havana. Since the United States government knows so much about such matters, we will pay the salary of the US government assigned person. We will provide that person with the rank of Minister within the Council of State. Moreover, the position will have the power to veto any decision that we Cubans make. After all, we do not want to make mistakes on such serious matters as building a properly functioning democracy - something that you Americans do so well.
10. Considering that we will start from no experience on these matters of free elections, we will appreciate it if you continue the funding of dissidents and through them help us choose the best candidates for our elections and in the process you can exercise your right to give media and financial support to the candidates you prefer for us.
11. Our mass media has not been free or balanced, like yours. Moreover, we like the idea of making the irrelevant important and vice versa.. Send us a team of Fox News to show our media how to build party mouthpieces and we will call the effort "justo y balanceado."
12. It is also urgent that you send a team of Harvard professors, as you did in 1902, to rewrite our history textbooks. We truly understand the need to forget the past in order to forge ahead. We know you want us to do that, and we are willing.
Two additional comments:
We think it is wonderful to have in the United States a black President. It is certainly much easier for us to have a black father figure up north, rather than a white one, telling us what we ought to do with all of our political institutions and economy. We are just ripe for the tutelage, a sort of "lowest-hanging fruit".[4] We are earnestly looking forward to the plucking.
We know we can not be manifested by destiny to become a great empire. God clearly chose only the United States for such an important role. But perhaps you could at least give us a few tips about expanding our reach. You took by war or intimidation all the land to the west of the original 13 British colonies -- and then some. Maybe we could pick up just a few Caribbean islands -- with your help, of course.
Nelson P Valdés is the Director of the Cuba-L Project. Ma Chetera, Saul Landau and Ned Sublette have contributed with suggestions and editorial comments to this piece.
lindorff, if you think this is crazy, try voting for one of the two major party candidates. oh yeah, you already did. well, good article in any case
What's With This "Enemies" BS?
The Meeting in Trinidad
By DAVE LINDORFF
President Obama deserves credit for breaking the half-century-long taboo in American politics of dealing with Cuba, and meeting with Raul Castro, Cuba’s current leader. He also deserves credit for dealing in a friendly manner with Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua and Hugo Chavez of Venezuela.
But what is this crap about “talking with” our enemies or with countries that have been “hostile” towards us?
It is certainly be true that America doesn’t like Communism, and doesn’t like having properties owned by its citizens taken over, which happened in the wake of the Cuban revolution, but nationalization is a right that many sovereign nations have exercised in their national interest, and besides that, what has Cuba ever done that would show it to be an enemy of the US?
Oh, there were those missiles that Castro was allowing the former Soviet Union to set up on Cuba’s shores back in 1962, but then that was only a tit for tat, because the US had already put nuclear-tipped Jupiter missiles in Turkey, aimed at the Soviet Union, and arguably the purpose of the missiles going to Cuba was to force the US to remove the Turkish-based missiles. In any event, Castro was acting less than two years after the US had backed an invasion of his island by soldiers who were seeking to overthrow his government.
Cuba has never attacked the US, never threatened the US, and never in fact was an enemy of the US, nor is it an enemy today. You want hostile? How about the role the US played in helping to fund the backers of a coup against the elected government of President Chavez, and the Bush administration’s hasty recognition of the coup leaders as the new government after they captured and arrested President Chavez, in an embarrassing incident that eventually collapsed, with the popular restoration of Chavez to the Presidential Palace when rank and file soldiers refused to follow their right-wing leaders.
These are “enemies” or “hostile powers”?
What planet do our leaders, including President Obama, live on?
Even Nicaragua, against which the US fought a proxy war, using Nicaraguan Contra forces based in Honduras and Costa Rica, was only an enemy of the US in the sense that the US was hell-bent in the 1980s on overthrowing its elected government. Nicaragua, except in the fevered minds of loopy right-wingers like Gen. John Singlaub and his Anti-Communist League, was never a threat to the US.
I’m happy that President Obama is willing to talk and make nice with the leaders of these three countries, but he hardly deserves much credit for doing what his predecessors should have done all along.
There is a hostile power in the Americas, but it is the US, which has a centuries-long history of meddling in and even overthrowing the elected governments of South American countries (Chile, Uruguay, Argentina, Guatemala, Brazil, Haiti, etc.), of propping up brutal fascist dictatorships like that of Augusto Pinochet in Chile, and of training vicious soldiers and police in the fine arts of torture and assassination at the School of the Americas.
Obama should drop the term “enemy” and “hostile power” from his lexicon. It just makes him look ridiculous.
The Meeting in Trinidad
By DAVE LINDORFF
President Obama deserves credit for breaking the half-century-long taboo in American politics of dealing with Cuba, and meeting with Raul Castro, Cuba’s current leader. He also deserves credit for dealing in a friendly manner with Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua and Hugo Chavez of Venezuela.
But what is this crap about “talking with” our enemies or with countries that have been “hostile” towards us?
It is certainly be true that America doesn’t like Communism, and doesn’t like having properties owned by its citizens taken over, which happened in the wake of the Cuban revolution, but nationalization is a right that many sovereign nations have exercised in their national interest, and besides that, what has Cuba ever done that would show it to be an enemy of the US?
Oh, there were those missiles that Castro was allowing the former Soviet Union to set up on Cuba’s shores back in 1962, but then that was only a tit for tat, because the US had already put nuclear-tipped Jupiter missiles in Turkey, aimed at the Soviet Union, and arguably the purpose of the missiles going to Cuba was to force the US to remove the Turkish-based missiles. In any event, Castro was acting less than two years after the US had backed an invasion of his island by soldiers who were seeking to overthrow his government.
Cuba has never attacked the US, never threatened the US, and never in fact was an enemy of the US, nor is it an enemy today. You want hostile? How about the role the US played in helping to fund the backers of a coup against the elected government of President Chavez, and the Bush administration’s hasty recognition of the coup leaders as the new government after they captured and arrested President Chavez, in an embarrassing incident that eventually collapsed, with the popular restoration of Chavez to the Presidential Palace when rank and file soldiers refused to follow their right-wing leaders.
These are “enemies” or “hostile powers”?
What planet do our leaders, including President Obama, live on?
Even Nicaragua, against which the US fought a proxy war, using Nicaraguan Contra forces based in Honduras and Costa Rica, was only an enemy of the US in the sense that the US was hell-bent in the 1980s on overthrowing its elected government. Nicaragua, except in the fevered minds of loopy right-wingers like Gen. John Singlaub and his Anti-Communist League, was never a threat to the US.
I’m happy that President Obama is willing to talk and make nice with the leaders of these three countries, but he hardly deserves much credit for doing what his predecessors should have done all along.
There is a hostile power in the Americas, but it is the US, which has a centuries-long history of meddling in and even overthrowing the elected governments of South American countries (Chile, Uruguay, Argentina, Guatemala, Brazil, Haiti, etc.), of propping up brutal fascist dictatorships like that of Augusto Pinochet in Chile, and of training vicious soldiers and police in the fine arts of torture and assassination at the School of the Americas.
Obama should drop the term “enemy” and “hostile power” from his lexicon. It just makes him look ridiculous.
there are things cuba needs to do?
President Obama: “And the fact that you had Raul Castro say he’s willing to have his government discuss with ours not just issues of lifting the embargo, but issues of human rights, political prisoners, that’s a sign of progress. And so, we’re going to explore and see if we can make some further steps. There are some things that the Cuban government could do. They could release political prisoners.”
they could release political prisoners? as we hold the cuban 5, we have the audacity (and not of hope) to tell them to free political prisoners? we have committed a 50 year crime against cuba, and yet there are things they can do to end our crime? imagine if cuba had an embargo against us, and then said we needed to take further steps, such as freeing mumia, before things could move forward. this is the language of lunacy, a lunacy so deeply embedded in our society as to seem the essence of normality.
it is not what they need to do, it is what we need to do. we need to apologize to them, we need to stop demonizing them, we need to pay them reparations, and then, we need to shut the fuck up.
they could release political prisoners? as we hold the cuban 5, we have the audacity (and not of hope) to tell them to free political prisoners? we have committed a 50 year crime against cuba, and yet there are things they can do to end our crime? imagine if cuba had an embargo against us, and then said we needed to take further steps, such as freeing mumia, before things could move forward. this is the language of lunacy, a lunacy so deeply embedded in our society as to seem the essence of normality.
it is not what they need to do, it is what we need to do. we need to apologize to them, we need to stop demonizing them, we need to pay them reparations, and then, we need to shut the fuck up.
Rahm Emanuel: Bush Officials, CIA Interrogators Will Not Be Prosecuted
Meanwhile, on Sunday, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel said the Obama administration opposes any effort to prosecute CIA interrogators who engaged in torture, as well Bush administration officials who authorized the use of torture. Rahm made the comment in an interview on ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos.
Rahm Emanuel: “He believes that people in good faith were operating with the guidance they were provided. They shouldn’t be prosecuted.”
George Stephanopolous: “But what about those who devised the policy?”
Rahm Emanuel: “Yeah, but those who devised the policy, he believes that they were—should not be prosecuted either. And it’s not the place that we go—as he said in that letter, and I would really recommend people look at the full statement—not the letter, the statement—in that second paragraph, ‘This is not a time for retribution. It’s time for reflection. It is not a time to use our energy and our time in looking back and in a sense of anger and retribution.’”
so, why don't we just free all the prisoners? for, if this is not a time for retribution, and if it's not a time for looking back in anger, why are we prosecuting street criminals and throwing them in jail? dig it, if you were just following orders, you shouldn't be prosecuted, and if you were giving the orders, you shouldn't be prosecuted either. for, you see, everyone was acting in good faith. but doesn't everyone always act in good faith? who thinks of themselves as committing crimes as they are doing so? and where are all the folks who were convinced that change had come to washington? where are the people who wept tears of joy when obama achieved victory? are they angry about this? or is it all just a football game, and now that the home team has won, we get to go home?
this exchange is really quite incredible. i don't think emanuel was ready for the second question. it was like he only had one answer in him. he had the following orders bit down, but he hadn't thought of what to say about those who were giving them the orders to follow, ie, those in power. it's as if the very idea of those guys being punished was so incredible to him as to not even be thought of.
you gotta hate continuity.
Meanwhile, on Sunday, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel said the Obama administration opposes any effort to prosecute CIA interrogators who engaged in torture, as well Bush administration officials who authorized the use of torture. Rahm made the comment in an interview on ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos.
Rahm Emanuel: “He believes that people in good faith were operating with the guidance they were provided. They shouldn’t be prosecuted.”
George Stephanopolous: “But what about those who devised the policy?”
Rahm Emanuel: “Yeah, but those who devised the policy, he believes that they were—should not be prosecuted either. And it’s not the place that we go—as he said in that letter, and I would really recommend people look at the full statement—not the letter, the statement—in that second paragraph, ‘This is not a time for retribution. It’s time for reflection. It is not a time to use our energy and our time in looking back and in a sense of anger and retribution.’”
so, why don't we just free all the prisoners? for, if this is not a time for retribution, and if it's not a time for looking back in anger, why are we prosecuting street criminals and throwing them in jail? dig it, if you were just following orders, you shouldn't be prosecuted, and if you were giving the orders, you shouldn't be prosecuted either. for, you see, everyone was acting in good faith. but doesn't everyone always act in good faith? who thinks of themselves as committing crimes as they are doing so? and where are all the folks who were convinced that change had come to washington? where are the people who wept tears of joy when obama achieved victory? are they angry about this? or is it all just a football game, and now that the home team has won, we get to go home?
this exchange is really quite incredible. i don't think emanuel was ready for the second question. it was like he only had one answer in him. he had the following orders bit down, but he hadn't thought of what to say about those who were giving them the orders to follow, ie, those in power. it's as if the very idea of those guys being punished was so incredible to him as to not even be thought of.
you gotta hate continuity.
obama, don't be wrong, be wright
Where’s Rev. Wright When You Need Him?
by Chris Hedges
Israel and the United States, which could be charged under international law with crimes against humanity for actions in Gaza, Iraq and Afghanistan, will together boycott the United Nations World Conference Against Racism in Geneva. Racism, an endemic feature of Israeli and American society, is not, we have decided, open for international inspection. Barack Obama may be president, but the United States has no intention of accepting responsibility or atoning for past crimes, including the use of torture, its illegal wars of aggression, slavery and the genocide on which the country was founded. We, like Israel, prefer to confuse lies we tell about ourselves with fact.
The Obama administration's decision not to prosecute CIA and Bush administration officials for the use of torture because it wants to look to the future is easy to accept if you were never tortured. The decision not to confront slavery and the continued discrimination against African-Americans is easy to accept if your ancestors were not kidnapped, crammed into slave ships, denied their religion and culture, deprived of their language, stripped of their names, severed from their families and forced into generations of economic misery. The decision not to discuss the genocide of Native Americans is easy if your lands were not stolen and your people driven into encampments and slaughtered. The doctrine of pre-emptive war and illegal foreign occupation is easy to accept if you are not a Palestinian, an Iraqi or an Afghan.
"The Obama administration's decision not to prosecute CIA and Bush administration officials for the use of torture because it wants to look to the future is easy to accept if you were never tortured."
To victims of oppression, the past is never over. It is not even past. Trauma, suffering and discrimination do not afford them that luxury. Generations bear the scars of whips and chains. They carry heavy physical and psychological burdens. And these burdens do not disappear when someone glibly decides to look to the future.
The conference in Geneva will discuss racism and continued segregation around the world, including in America, where African-Americans remain the nation's underclass. In addressing slavery, it will raise the issue of reparations, something we deem appropriate for Jewish victims of the Holocaust but not for African-Americans. And it will seek to force all nations to confront injustices they would rather keep hidden. But we are not ready to look.
The Obama administration at first refused to participate in the preliminary negotiations for the conference, chaired by Russia, Iran and Libya. It then agreed to attend for one week. It demanded the removal of references to Israel in the document outlining the goals of the conference. The references were removed. It also demanded other insidious changes, as Vernellia R. Randall, a University of Dayton Ohio law professor, pointed out. The Obama administration asked that the call for reparations for African-Americans be expunged. It insisted that the description of the transatlantic slave trade as "a crime against humanity" be cut. And it demanded the elimination of a call to strengthen the U.N. "Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent," which deals with the African diaspora.
The document, however, ratified "Durban I," which was the concluding document of the first World Conference Against Racism, held in South Africa in 2001. The 2001 document included a harsh condemnation of Israel for its treatment of the Palestinians. And this, finally, proved too much for Washington.
"Barack Obama knows full well that he risks nothing by disrespecting African Americans at will," wrote Glen Ford, the executive editor of The Black Agenda Report. "Across the Black political spectrum, so-called leadership seems incapable of shame or of taking manly or womanly offense at even the most blatant insults to Black people when the source of the affront is Barack Hussein Obama."
The United States, which has a museum to the Jewish Holocaust in Washington but has never found the moral courage to officially atone for its role in slavery and the genocide of Native Americans, perpetuates a disturbing historical amnesia. Our national myth and deification of the Founding Fathers studiously preclude an examination of the bloody conquest, open racism, misogyny, elitism and brutality that led to the country's establishment and that fester like an open wound.
We failed to fully participate in every world conference on racism, including those held in 1978, 1983 and 2001. Former Secretary of State Colin Powell and his delegation during the 2001 conference in Durban, South Africa, walked out because of what the Americans termed "Israel-bashing."
The Rev. Jeremiah Wright, on April 13, 2003, gave a 40-minute sermon called "Confusing God and Government." Only a clip from the sermon-the phrase "God Damn America"-made it onto the airwaves. It was repeated in endless loops on cable news channels and used to turn Wright into a pariah. Obama denounced his former pastor. The rest of the sermon, and especially the context in which the phrase was used, was ignored. Obama would be a better president if he listened to voices like Wright's and listened less to his pollsters and advisers.
The sermon was a cry from those who cannot forget what white and privileged Americans-as well as, now, the Obama administration-want us to ignore. It was a reminder that there are two narratives of America. And until these narratives converge, until we all accept the truth of our past, justice will never be done. We will continue until then to speak in two irreconcilable languages, one that acknowledges the pain of the past and seeks atonement and one that does not. We will continue to be two Americas.
"This government lied about their belief that all men were created equal," Wright told his congregation. "The truth is they believed that all white men were created equal. The truth is they did not even believe that white women were created equal, in creation nor civilization. The government had to pass an amendment to the Constitution to get white women the vote. Then the government had to pass an equal rights amendment to get equal protection under the law for women. The government still thinks a woman has no rights over her own body, and between Uncle Clarence [Thomas], who sexually harassed Anita Hill, and a closeted Klan court that is a throwback to the 19th century, handpicked by Daddy Bush, Ronald Reagan, Gerald Ford, between Clarence and that stacked court, they are about to undo Roe vs. Wade, just like they are about to undo affirmative action. The government lied in its founding documents and the government is still lying today. Governments lie."
" ... When it came to treating the citizens of African descent fairly, America failed," he said. "She put them in chains. The government put them in slave quarters. Put them on auction blocks. Put them in cotton fields. Put them in inferior schools. Put them in substandard housing. Put them in scientific experiments. Put them in the lowest-paying jobs. Put them outside the equal protection of the law. Kept them out of their racist bastions of higher education, and locked them into positions of hopelessness and helplessness.
"The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing ‘God Bless America.' Naw, naw, naw. Not God Bless America. God Damn America! That's in the Bible. For killing innocent people. God Damn America for treating us citizens as less than human. God Damn America as long as she tries to act like she is God and she is Supreme."
There will be no delegation from the United States at the U.N. conference on racism. Not this year. Maybe not for several years. But the day will come, I hope, when justice will finally conquer hate, when the truth will allow us to speak as one nation. We can, on that day, send a delegation led by the Rev. Wright as part of reconciliation.
© 2009 TruthDig.com
Chris Hedges writes a regular column for Truthdig.com. Hedges graduated from Harvard Divinity School and was for nearly two decades a foreign correspondent for The New York Times. He is the author of "American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America."
by Chris Hedges
Israel and the United States, which could be charged under international law with crimes against humanity for actions in Gaza, Iraq and Afghanistan, will together boycott the United Nations World Conference Against Racism in Geneva. Racism, an endemic feature of Israeli and American society, is not, we have decided, open for international inspection. Barack Obama may be president, but the United States has no intention of accepting responsibility or atoning for past crimes, including the use of torture, its illegal wars of aggression, slavery and the genocide on which the country was founded. We, like Israel, prefer to confuse lies we tell about ourselves with fact.
The Obama administration's decision not to prosecute CIA and Bush administration officials for the use of torture because it wants to look to the future is easy to accept if you were never tortured. The decision not to confront slavery and the continued discrimination against African-Americans is easy to accept if your ancestors were not kidnapped, crammed into slave ships, denied their religion and culture, deprived of their language, stripped of their names, severed from their families and forced into generations of economic misery. The decision not to discuss the genocide of Native Americans is easy if your lands were not stolen and your people driven into encampments and slaughtered. The doctrine of pre-emptive war and illegal foreign occupation is easy to accept if you are not a Palestinian, an Iraqi or an Afghan.
"The Obama administration's decision not to prosecute CIA and Bush administration officials for the use of torture because it wants to look to the future is easy to accept if you were never tortured."
To victims of oppression, the past is never over. It is not even past. Trauma, suffering and discrimination do not afford them that luxury. Generations bear the scars of whips and chains. They carry heavy physical and psychological burdens. And these burdens do not disappear when someone glibly decides to look to the future.
The conference in Geneva will discuss racism and continued segregation around the world, including in America, where African-Americans remain the nation's underclass. In addressing slavery, it will raise the issue of reparations, something we deem appropriate for Jewish victims of the Holocaust but not for African-Americans. And it will seek to force all nations to confront injustices they would rather keep hidden. But we are not ready to look.
The Obama administration at first refused to participate in the preliminary negotiations for the conference, chaired by Russia, Iran and Libya. It then agreed to attend for one week. It demanded the removal of references to Israel in the document outlining the goals of the conference. The references were removed. It also demanded other insidious changes, as Vernellia R. Randall, a University of Dayton Ohio law professor, pointed out. The Obama administration asked that the call for reparations for African-Americans be expunged. It insisted that the description of the transatlantic slave trade as "a crime against humanity" be cut. And it demanded the elimination of a call to strengthen the U.N. "Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent," which deals with the African diaspora.
The document, however, ratified "Durban I," which was the concluding document of the first World Conference Against Racism, held in South Africa in 2001. The 2001 document included a harsh condemnation of Israel for its treatment of the Palestinians. And this, finally, proved too much for Washington.
"Barack Obama knows full well that he risks nothing by disrespecting African Americans at will," wrote Glen Ford, the executive editor of The Black Agenda Report. "Across the Black political spectrum, so-called leadership seems incapable of shame or of taking manly or womanly offense at even the most blatant insults to Black people when the source of the affront is Barack Hussein Obama."
The United States, which has a museum to the Jewish Holocaust in Washington but has never found the moral courage to officially atone for its role in slavery and the genocide of Native Americans, perpetuates a disturbing historical amnesia. Our national myth and deification of the Founding Fathers studiously preclude an examination of the bloody conquest, open racism, misogyny, elitism and brutality that led to the country's establishment and that fester like an open wound.
We failed to fully participate in every world conference on racism, including those held in 1978, 1983 and 2001. Former Secretary of State Colin Powell and his delegation during the 2001 conference in Durban, South Africa, walked out because of what the Americans termed "Israel-bashing."
The Rev. Jeremiah Wright, on April 13, 2003, gave a 40-minute sermon called "Confusing God and Government." Only a clip from the sermon-the phrase "God Damn America"-made it onto the airwaves. It was repeated in endless loops on cable news channels and used to turn Wright into a pariah. Obama denounced his former pastor. The rest of the sermon, and especially the context in which the phrase was used, was ignored. Obama would be a better president if he listened to voices like Wright's and listened less to his pollsters and advisers.
The sermon was a cry from those who cannot forget what white and privileged Americans-as well as, now, the Obama administration-want us to ignore. It was a reminder that there are two narratives of America. And until these narratives converge, until we all accept the truth of our past, justice will never be done. We will continue until then to speak in two irreconcilable languages, one that acknowledges the pain of the past and seeks atonement and one that does not. We will continue to be two Americas.
"This government lied about their belief that all men were created equal," Wright told his congregation. "The truth is they believed that all white men were created equal. The truth is they did not even believe that white women were created equal, in creation nor civilization. The government had to pass an amendment to the Constitution to get white women the vote. Then the government had to pass an equal rights amendment to get equal protection under the law for women. The government still thinks a woman has no rights over her own body, and between Uncle Clarence [Thomas], who sexually harassed Anita Hill, and a closeted Klan court that is a throwback to the 19th century, handpicked by Daddy Bush, Ronald Reagan, Gerald Ford, between Clarence and that stacked court, they are about to undo Roe vs. Wade, just like they are about to undo affirmative action. The government lied in its founding documents and the government is still lying today. Governments lie."
" ... When it came to treating the citizens of African descent fairly, America failed," he said. "She put them in chains. The government put them in slave quarters. Put them on auction blocks. Put them in cotton fields. Put them in inferior schools. Put them in substandard housing. Put them in scientific experiments. Put them in the lowest-paying jobs. Put them outside the equal protection of the law. Kept them out of their racist bastions of higher education, and locked them into positions of hopelessness and helplessness.
"The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing ‘God Bless America.' Naw, naw, naw. Not God Bless America. God Damn America! That's in the Bible. For killing innocent people. God Damn America for treating us citizens as less than human. God Damn America as long as she tries to act like she is God and she is Supreme."
There will be no delegation from the United States at the U.N. conference on racism. Not this year. Maybe not for several years. But the day will come, I hope, when justice will finally conquer hate, when the truth will allow us to speak as one nation. We can, on that day, send a delegation led by the Rev. Wright as part of reconciliation.
© 2009 TruthDig.com
Chris Hedges writes a regular column for Truthdig.com. Hedges graduated from Harvard Divinity School and was for nearly two decades a foreign correspondent for The New York Times. He is the author of "American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America."
Sunday, April 19, 2009
obama, chavez, and castro
with the recent warm talk and hand shaking between the fellows mentioned above, i'm reminded of the old max roach album title "deeds, not words." yes, i agree with the recent reduction in restrictions in regards to cuba, and yes, i would like to see better relations between ourselves and cuba and venezuela, but who will get to determine how the relations are? if we babble on about "democracy" in cuba as we remain dominated by two corporate parties of war, if we pontificate about the importance of a "free press" as our own corporate media offers very little in the way of diversity in political and economic thought, and if we criticize them for political prisoners as we continue to house various former panthers, move members, mumia, peltier, the cuban 5, and many more, it would seem to me to be a one sided progress.
if close relations are to come, what kind of relations will they be? for years, we had very close relations with haiti, which remains the poorest nation in the americas. today, we are very close with columbia, a country with a horrendous human rights record. any relations we have must be ones that respect the full political and economic sovereignty of both cuba and venezuela. anything short of that will be criminal. as a bonus, it would be nice if we would issue an apology for the various crimes we have committed against cuba. how about a freeing of the cuban 5? how about a liberal aid package, with no strings attached, to cuba, as a small offer of apology for the 50 years of economic warfare we have practiced against them? how about an acknowledgement of the incredible achievements in education and health brought by the cuban revolution to cuba? the same goes for venezuela.
obama has shown better form than bush in regards to these issues. now, we need some content to go with it. the words are nice, but what of the deeds? ending the embargo is a no brainer. it shouldn't take years. we should exert no pressure on either country to change from within. their should be no strings attached to our engagement with either country.
let's see what happens. i confess to being negative, for i have seen the results of our "relations" with too many other nations to get too excited.
but hey, if the embargo were to end and cuba was to remain a society of the revolution, that would be a good thing.
if close relations are to come, what kind of relations will they be? for years, we had very close relations with haiti, which remains the poorest nation in the americas. today, we are very close with columbia, a country with a horrendous human rights record. any relations we have must be ones that respect the full political and economic sovereignty of both cuba and venezuela. anything short of that will be criminal. as a bonus, it would be nice if we would issue an apology for the various crimes we have committed against cuba. how about a freeing of the cuban 5? how about a liberal aid package, with no strings attached, to cuba, as a small offer of apology for the 50 years of economic warfare we have practiced against them? how about an acknowledgement of the incredible achievements in education and health brought by the cuban revolution to cuba? the same goes for venezuela.
obama has shown better form than bush in regards to these issues. now, we need some content to go with it. the words are nice, but what of the deeds? ending the embargo is a no brainer. it shouldn't take years. we should exert no pressure on either country to change from within. their should be no strings attached to our engagement with either country.
let's see what happens. i confess to being negative, for i have seen the results of our "relations" with too many other nations to get too excited.
but hey, if the embargo were to end and cuba was to remain a society of the revolution, that would be a good thing.
iraq is a hard place
Iraq in Fragments
April 18, 2009 By Dahr Jamail
Source: Foreign Policy In Focus
Dahr Jamail's ZSpace Page
Join ZSpace
"[W]hat lengths men will go in order to carry out, to their extreme limit, the rites of a collective self-worship which fills them with a sense of righteousness and complacent satisfaction in the midst of the most shocking injustices and crimes."
-Love and Living, by Thomas Merton
On Wednesday, March 25, Major General David Perkins of the U.S. military, referring to how often the U.S. military was being attacked in Iraq, told reporters in Baghdad, "Attacks are at their lowest since August 2003." Perkins added, "There were 1,250 attacks a week at the height of the violence; now sometimes there are less than 100 a week."
While his rhetoric made headlines in some U.S. mainstream media outlets, it was little consolation for the families of 28 Iraqis killed in attacks across Iraq the following day. Nor did it bring solace to the relatives of the 27 Iraqis slain in a March 23 suicide attack, or those who survived a bomb attack at a bus terminal in Baghdad on the same day that killed nine Iraqis.
Having recently returned from Iraq, I experienced living in Baghdad where people were dying violent deaths on a daily basis. Nearly every day of the month I spent there saw a car bomb attack somewhere in the capital city. Nearly every day the so-called Green Zone was mortared. Every day there were kidnappings. On good days there were four hours of electricity on the national grid, in a country now into its seventh year of being occupied by the U.S. military, and where there are now over 200,000 private contractors.
Upon returning home, I experienced the disconnect between that reality, lived by roughly 25 million Iraqis, and the surreal experience of living in the United States - where most media pretend the occupation of Iraq is either not happening, or uses the yardstick of decreased U.S. military personnel deaths in Iraq as a measure of success. In the words of Major General Perkins, "If you take a look at military deaths, which is an indicator of violence and lethality out there, U.S. combat deaths are at their lowest levels since the war began six years ago." But it's a less useful metric when one looks at the broader picture inside of Iraq: the ongoing daily slaughter of Iraqis, the near total lack of functional infrastructure, the fact that one in six Iraqis remains displaced from their homes, or that at least 1.2 million Iraqis have died as a result of the U.S.-led invasion and occupation of their country.
Seventy-two months of occupation, with over $607 billion spent on the war (by conservative estimates), has resulted in 2.2 million internally displaced Iraqis, 2.7 million refugees, 2,615 professors, scientists, and doctors killed in cold blood, and 338 dead journalists. Over $13 billion was misplaced by the current Iraqi government, and another $400 billion is required to rebuild the Iraqi infrastructure. Unemployment vacillates between 25-70%, depending on the month. There are 24 car bombs per month, 10,000 cases of cholera per year, 4,261 dead U.S. soldiers, and over 70,000 physically or psychologically wounded soldiers.
There 's no normal life in Baghdad. While it's accurate and technically correct to say there is less violence compared to 2006, when between 100 and 300 Iraqis were slaughtered on a daily basis, Iraq resembles a police state more than ever. U.S. patrols consisting of huge, lumbering mine-resistant vehicles rumble down streets congested with traffic. It's impossible to travel longer than five minutes without encountering an Iraqi military or police patrol - usually comprised of pickup trucks full of armed men, horns and/or sirens blaring. Begging women and children wander between cars at every intersection. U.S. military helicopters often rumble overhead, and the roar of fighter jets or transport planes is common. There's no talk of reparations for Iraqis for the death, destruction and chaos caused by the occupation.
Neighborhoods, segregated between Sunni and Shia largely as a result of the so-called "surge" strategy, provide a blatant view of the balkanization of Iraq. Neighborhoods of 300,000 people are completely surrounded by 10-foot high concrete blast walls, rendering normal life impossible. The fear of a resurgence of violence weighs heavy on Iraqis, as the current so-called lull in violence feels tenuous, unstable, and possibly fleeting. Nobody there can predict the future, and to hope for a sustained improvement in any aspect of life feels naive, even dangerous.
The title of the film "Iraq in Fragments" by James Longley, which was nominated for Best Documentary Oscar at the 2007 Academy Awards, best describes Iraq today. The country has been destroyed by decades of U.S. policy that has plagued Iraqis. Looking back only to 1980, we see the U.S. government supporting both Iraq and Iran during their horrible eight-year war. In 1991 we see George H. W. Bush's war against Iraq, and his, Bill Clinton's, and George W. Bush's oversight of 12-and-a-half years of genocidal economic sanctions that killed half a million Iraqi children. Today, under President Barack Obama, what is left of Iraq smolders in ruins, with no real end of the occupation in sight.
All of the recent talk of withdrawal from Iraq is empty rhetoric indeed to most Iraqis, who see the giant "enduring" U.S. military bases spread across their country, or the U.S. "embassy," the size of the Vatican City, in Baghdad. The gulf between the rhetoric of withdrawal and the reality on the ground spans the distance between Iraq and the United States, while the reality is pressed in the face of the Iraqi people each day the occupation continues.
April 18, 2009 By Dahr Jamail
Source: Foreign Policy In Focus
Dahr Jamail's ZSpace Page
Join ZSpace
"[W]hat lengths men will go in order to carry out, to their extreme limit, the rites of a collective self-worship which fills them with a sense of righteousness and complacent satisfaction in the midst of the most shocking injustices and crimes."
-Love and Living, by Thomas Merton
On Wednesday, March 25, Major General David Perkins of the U.S. military, referring to how often the U.S. military was being attacked in Iraq, told reporters in Baghdad, "Attacks are at their lowest since August 2003." Perkins added, "There were 1,250 attacks a week at the height of the violence; now sometimes there are less than 100 a week."
While his rhetoric made headlines in some U.S. mainstream media outlets, it was little consolation for the families of 28 Iraqis killed in attacks across Iraq the following day. Nor did it bring solace to the relatives of the 27 Iraqis slain in a March 23 suicide attack, or those who survived a bomb attack at a bus terminal in Baghdad on the same day that killed nine Iraqis.
Having recently returned from Iraq, I experienced living in Baghdad where people were dying violent deaths on a daily basis. Nearly every day of the month I spent there saw a car bomb attack somewhere in the capital city. Nearly every day the so-called Green Zone was mortared. Every day there were kidnappings. On good days there were four hours of electricity on the national grid, in a country now into its seventh year of being occupied by the U.S. military, and where there are now over 200,000 private contractors.
Upon returning home, I experienced the disconnect between that reality, lived by roughly 25 million Iraqis, and the surreal experience of living in the United States - where most media pretend the occupation of Iraq is either not happening, or uses the yardstick of decreased U.S. military personnel deaths in Iraq as a measure of success. In the words of Major General Perkins, "If you take a look at military deaths, which is an indicator of violence and lethality out there, U.S. combat deaths are at their lowest levels since the war began six years ago." But it's a less useful metric when one looks at the broader picture inside of Iraq: the ongoing daily slaughter of Iraqis, the near total lack of functional infrastructure, the fact that one in six Iraqis remains displaced from their homes, or that at least 1.2 million Iraqis have died as a result of the U.S.-led invasion and occupation of their country.
Seventy-two months of occupation, with over $607 billion spent on the war (by conservative estimates), has resulted in 2.2 million internally displaced Iraqis, 2.7 million refugees, 2,615 professors, scientists, and doctors killed in cold blood, and 338 dead journalists. Over $13 billion was misplaced by the current Iraqi government, and another $400 billion is required to rebuild the Iraqi infrastructure. Unemployment vacillates between 25-70%, depending on the month. There are 24 car bombs per month, 10,000 cases of cholera per year, 4,261 dead U.S. soldiers, and over 70,000 physically or psychologically wounded soldiers.
There 's no normal life in Baghdad. While it's accurate and technically correct to say there is less violence compared to 2006, when between 100 and 300 Iraqis were slaughtered on a daily basis, Iraq resembles a police state more than ever. U.S. patrols consisting of huge, lumbering mine-resistant vehicles rumble down streets congested with traffic. It's impossible to travel longer than five minutes without encountering an Iraqi military or police patrol - usually comprised of pickup trucks full of armed men, horns and/or sirens blaring. Begging women and children wander between cars at every intersection. U.S. military helicopters often rumble overhead, and the roar of fighter jets or transport planes is common. There's no talk of reparations for Iraqis for the death, destruction and chaos caused by the occupation.
Neighborhoods, segregated between Sunni and Shia largely as a result of the so-called "surge" strategy, provide a blatant view of the balkanization of Iraq. Neighborhoods of 300,000 people are completely surrounded by 10-foot high concrete blast walls, rendering normal life impossible. The fear of a resurgence of violence weighs heavy on Iraqis, as the current so-called lull in violence feels tenuous, unstable, and possibly fleeting. Nobody there can predict the future, and to hope for a sustained improvement in any aspect of life feels naive, even dangerous.
The title of the film "Iraq in Fragments" by James Longley, which was nominated for Best Documentary Oscar at the 2007 Academy Awards, best describes Iraq today. The country has been destroyed by decades of U.S. policy that has plagued Iraqis. Looking back only to 1980, we see the U.S. government supporting both Iraq and Iran during their horrible eight-year war. In 1991 we see George H. W. Bush's war against Iraq, and his, Bill Clinton's, and George W. Bush's oversight of 12-and-a-half years of genocidal economic sanctions that killed half a million Iraqi children. Today, under President Barack Obama, what is left of Iraq smolders in ruins, with no real end of the occupation in sight.
All of the recent talk of withdrawal from Iraq is empty rhetoric indeed to most Iraqis, who see the giant "enduring" U.S. military bases spread across their country, or the U.S. "embassy," the size of the Vatican City, in Baghdad. The gulf between the rhetoric of withdrawal and the reality on the ground spans the distance between Iraq and the United States, while the reality is pressed in the face of the Iraqi people each day the occupation continues.
Thursday, April 16, 2009
the world is a stage, the stage is a world, of entertainment
War as Entertainment
by Robert C. Koehler
OMG, pirates! Headlines around the country squealed with glee as our Navy SEALS - the Easter SEALS - took out the Somalian baddies, freed the newest American hero and helped President Obama with the "dodging of a PR bullet," as USA Today put it.
Meanwhile, "Pirates around the Indian Ocean vowed revenge," the New York Daily News chimed in, letting us know that we could have an exciting new war on our hands, as speculation continues that at least one of the old ones will be cancelled (someday). And if you think this sounds kind of like reality TV, well, it is. E! Online reported that "Spike TV has closed a deal with the U.S. Navy to chronicle pirate-hunting special forces in a new reality show, ‘Pirate Hunters: USN.'"
So fasten your seatbelts, America. This is why we maintain an annual defense budget of more than half a trillion dollars - to protect ourselves from "heavily armed but untrained and antsy youths," as Defense Secretary Robert Gates described them. The War on Pirates: an idea that's win-win-win. Military recruitment will soar; the dying media will rejuvenate (or at least go into remission) as it reports the play-by-play; and a depressed, fragmented nation will reunite around an enemy it can probably beat.
"It was," according to the Daily News, "something Hollywood could have scripted: three sharpshooters on the fantail of a destroyer, wearing night vision goggles as dusk settled over the sea, each drew a bead on one of the three teenage pirates standing 100 feet away in a pitching lifeboat aiming weapons at a bound (Capt. Richard) Phillips."
Excuse me, Hollywood?
The consensus reporting of this small but complicated crisis was transparent on this particular point. Hollywood not only could have but might as well have written this script. The plot is formulaic: a context (war) waiting for a pretext (outrage). The forces of inappropriate, mutually beneficial collusion are always churning, and the pirate story allowed them to consummate an unholy marriage in the nation's media outlets, which are ever prepared to pander for profit.
Here's my rule of thumb: Whenever the defense and entertainment industries seem to join hands - whenever the blood of dead Third Worlders is publicly cheered without restraint or the least compunction, and the activity is called patriotism - the only flag we ought to be waving is a red one.
One reason why war is a nonsensical "solution" to almost every problem the world is grappling with is that these problems tend to be interconnected and deeply tangled up at their roots. To bring serious firepower to bear on a random manifestation of this tangled mass of trouble does nothing but make matters worse.
A responsible media would have investigated and reported on some of the causes of Somalian piracy and given us a far more troubling story: the story of a country whose people became vulnerable to the world's worst predators - us, the civilized First World - after its last legitimate, or quasi-legitimate, government collapsed in 1991.
"Its 9 million people have been teetering on starvation ever since - and many of the ugliest forces in the Western world have seen this as a great opportunity to steal the country's food supply and dump our nuclear waste in their seas," Johann Hari wrote recently on Huffington Post.
Consider that, shortly after the devastating tsunami of December 2004, a United Nations report noted that people along Somalia's northeastern coast had begun suffering from "far higher than normal cases of respiratory infections, mouth ulcers and bleeding, abdominal hemorrhages and unusual skin infections," according to a story in the Times of London from March 2005. These were diseases "consistent with radiation sickness."
Two European companies, it turns out - one in Italy, one in Switzerland - had "contracted" with local Somalian warlords to dump the toxic waste of Europe into Somalia's waters. The industrial and hospital garbage included radioactive uranium, lead, cadmium and mercury, the Times reported. The companies paid the warlords $8 a ton for dumping privileges; in Europe, proper disposal and treatment of such waste would have cost as much as $1,000 a ton.
When the tsunami hit, the waves ripped open the leaky barrels of toxic waste and the Horn of Africa became an environmental disaster site. Starving, desperate Somalians - who had already seen fishing rights in their waters sold on the international market, depriving them of food and income - now inherited a toxic hell Europe would never have bequeathed on itself. And the world community didn't give a damn. Some Somalians, having run out of options, turned to piracy to survive, and perhaps extract a little revenge.
But none of this matters, right? The script is already written, the contract is signed and production is about to begin. Let's go to war, boys! Arrrrr . . .
Robert Koehler, an award-winning, Chicago-based journalist, is an editor at Tribune Media Services and nationally syndicated writer. You can respond to this column at bkoehler@tribune.com or visit his Web site at commonwonders.com
by Robert C. Koehler
OMG, pirates! Headlines around the country squealed with glee as our Navy SEALS - the Easter SEALS - took out the Somalian baddies, freed the newest American hero and helped President Obama with the "dodging of a PR bullet," as USA Today put it.
Meanwhile, "Pirates around the Indian Ocean vowed revenge," the New York Daily News chimed in, letting us know that we could have an exciting new war on our hands, as speculation continues that at least one of the old ones will be cancelled (someday). And if you think this sounds kind of like reality TV, well, it is. E! Online reported that "Spike TV has closed a deal with the U.S. Navy to chronicle pirate-hunting special forces in a new reality show, ‘Pirate Hunters: USN.'"
So fasten your seatbelts, America. This is why we maintain an annual defense budget of more than half a trillion dollars - to protect ourselves from "heavily armed but untrained and antsy youths," as Defense Secretary Robert Gates described them. The War on Pirates: an idea that's win-win-win. Military recruitment will soar; the dying media will rejuvenate (or at least go into remission) as it reports the play-by-play; and a depressed, fragmented nation will reunite around an enemy it can probably beat.
"It was," according to the Daily News, "something Hollywood could have scripted: three sharpshooters on the fantail of a destroyer, wearing night vision goggles as dusk settled over the sea, each drew a bead on one of the three teenage pirates standing 100 feet away in a pitching lifeboat aiming weapons at a bound (Capt. Richard) Phillips."
Excuse me, Hollywood?
The consensus reporting of this small but complicated crisis was transparent on this particular point. Hollywood not only could have but might as well have written this script. The plot is formulaic: a context (war) waiting for a pretext (outrage). The forces of inappropriate, mutually beneficial collusion are always churning, and the pirate story allowed them to consummate an unholy marriage in the nation's media outlets, which are ever prepared to pander for profit.
Here's my rule of thumb: Whenever the defense and entertainment industries seem to join hands - whenever the blood of dead Third Worlders is publicly cheered without restraint or the least compunction, and the activity is called patriotism - the only flag we ought to be waving is a red one.
One reason why war is a nonsensical "solution" to almost every problem the world is grappling with is that these problems tend to be interconnected and deeply tangled up at their roots. To bring serious firepower to bear on a random manifestation of this tangled mass of trouble does nothing but make matters worse.
A responsible media would have investigated and reported on some of the causes of Somalian piracy and given us a far more troubling story: the story of a country whose people became vulnerable to the world's worst predators - us, the civilized First World - after its last legitimate, or quasi-legitimate, government collapsed in 1991.
"Its 9 million people have been teetering on starvation ever since - and many of the ugliest forces in the Western world have seen this as a great opportunity to steal the country's food supply and dump our nuclear waste in their seas," Johann Hari wrote recently on Huffington Post.
Consider that, shortly after the devastating tsunami of December 2004, a United Nations report noted that people along Somalia's northeastern coast had begun suffering from "far higher than normal cases of respiratory infections, mouth ulcers and bleeding, abdominal hemorrhages and unusual skin infections," according to a story in the Times of London from March 2005. These were diseases "consistent with radiation sickness."
Two European companies, it turns out - one in Italy, one in Switzerland - had "contracted" with local Somalian warlords to dump the toxic waste of Europe into Somalia's waters. The industrial and hospital garbage included radioactive uranium, lead, cadmium and mercury, the Times reported. The companies paid the warlords $8 a ton for dumping privileges; in Europe, proper disposal and treatment of such waste would have cost as much as $1,000 a ton.
When the tsunami hit, the waves ripped open the leaky barrels of toxic waste and the Horn of Africa became an environmental disaster site. Starving, desperate Somalians - who had already seen fishing rights in their waters sold on the international market, depriving them of food and income - now inherited a toxic hell Europe would never have bequeathed on itself. And the world community didn't give a damn. Some Somalians, having run out of options, turned to piracy to survive, and perhaps extract a little revenge.
But none of this matters, right? The script is already written, the contract is signed and production is about to begin. Let's go to war, boys! Arrrrr . . .
Robert Koehler, an award-winning, Chicago-based journalist, is an editor at Tribune Media Services and nationally syndicated writer. You can respond to this column at bkoehler@tribune.com or visit his Web site at commonwonders.com
in love with leisure
Polls reveal that Americans are 20% happier on the weekends. And for good reason: We are overworked.
Americans are working so much, in fact, that we barely take vacation. Last year, half of all Americans took less than one week off for vacation. We’re the only industrialized country without laws guaranteeing paid vacation time.
But in these times of economic uncertainty, how can we justify taking a vacation?
I put this question to John de Graaf, director of Take Back Your Time and co-author of Affluenza: the All Consuming Epidemic. He was my guest today on WORT’s noon call in program, “A Public Affair.” (Click here to hear the show.) Take Back Your Time, de Graaf’s nonprofit, studies the overworked American.
“These are the times in which this type of break is even more important because people are really stressed,” says de Graaf. “It’s clear that vacations—breaks from the workplace—are key de-stressors and we have a lot of evidence for that.”
For starters, time off is essential for one’s health.
Evidence shows that people who don’t take regular vacations are sicker. If you are male, you are 30% more likely to suffer a heart attack and 21% more likely to die by any cause at an early age if you don’t take vacation. If you are female, the odds are worse. Women who don’t take vacations are about 50% more likely to suffer from heart disease than those who do.
“When we look at depression, the statistics are pretty alarming,” says de Graaf. “The Marshfield Clinic, based in Wisconsin, did a study of 1500 women over time and found that women who regularly do not take vacations are one-half to one-third more likely to suffer from depression as women who do regularly take vacations. And if women haven’t had a vacation in five or six years, they’re some eight times as likely to be depressed as those who regularly take vacations.”
The current economic crisis offers the chance to start a conversation about the wreckage created by thirty years of market fundamentalism, deregulation, and tax cuts for the rich. “What I see bubbling up today is a lot of openness to new ideas and to the sense that it’s not working and we have to go in a different direction,” says de Graaf. “I think we have to organize to do that. We have to talk to our friends and neighbors.”
And we’re going to have to push Obama, too. He met with Obama three years ago as part of a group of people to talk about work/life balance. He came away with the impression that Obama really understands the issue.
“His wife especially is very concerned about the work/life balance issue. But Obama is facing huge pushback from the other side,” says de Graaf.
“We have to support our President where he’s doing the right thing and be critical when he’s not,” adds de Graaf. “And I think the bailout and financial payoffs to Wall Street is one place where he’s not.”
It’s easy to think that paid time off is just a white-collar issue. But it’s quite the opposite, as those in the lowest paying jobs are less likely to have paid sick leave or paid vacation.
“Some 31% of low income workers don’t receive any paid vacation time. 37% of women who earn less than $40,000 get no paid vacation time. So it’s definitely the poorest folks who don’t get the time,” says de Graaf. “Our national polling shows the strongest support for paid vacation time coming from poor Americans, African-Americans, Latinos, Native Americans, young people, and women. These are the groups who really believe we need vacation law in the United States.”
Take Back Your Time is organizing a national Vacation Matters summit this summer in Seattle. “Times of economic crisis like the one we face today are also opportunities to envision the kind of economy and life we really want and to ask what really matters when it comes to quality of life,” says the Right2Vacation website.
Take Back Your Time and the Right to Vacation campaign were discussed in the U.S. House of Representatives in late March. Alan Grayson, Democratic Representative from Orlando, Florida, cited the group and it’s proposed Minimum Leave Protection Family Bonding and Personal Well Being Act, which would mandate three weeks of vacation every year. De Graaf will be meeting with Grayson’s staff in the next few weeks to move forward.
Paid vacation “is absolutely not an upper middle class issue,” says de Graaf. “This is an issue of social justice.”
Americans are working so much, in fact, that we barely take vacation. Last year, half of all Americans took less than one week off for vacation. We’re the only industrialized country without laws guaranteeing paid vacation time.
But in these times of economic uncertainty, how can we justify taking a vacation?
I put this question to John de Graaf, director of Take Back Your Time and co-author of Affluenza: the All Consuming Epidemic. He was my guest today on WORT’s noon call in program, “A Public Affair.” (Click here to hear the show.) Take Back Your Time, de Graaf’s nonprofit, studies the overworked American.
“These are the times in which this type of break is even more important because people are really stressed,” says de Graaf. “It’s clear that vacations—breaks from the workplace—are key de-stressors and we have a lot of evidence for that.”
For starters, time off is essential for one’s health.
Evidence shows that people who don’t take regular vacations are sicker. If you are male, you are 30% more likely to suffer a heart attack and 21% more likely to die by any cause at an early age if you don’t take vacation. If you are female, the odds are worse. Women who don’t take vacations are about 50% more likely to suffer from heart disease than those who do.
“When we look at depression, the statistics are pretty alarming,” says de Graaf. “The Marshfield Clinic, based in Wisconsin, did a study of 1500 women over time and found that women who regularly do not take vacations are one-half to one-third more likely to suffer from depression as women who do regularly take vacations. And if women haven’t had a vacation in five or six years, they’re some eight times as likely to be depressed as those who regularly take vacations.”
The current economic crisis offers the chance to start a conversation about the wreckage created by thirty years of market fundamentalism, deregulation, and tax cuts for the rich. “What I see bubbling up today is a lot of openness to new ideas and to the sense that it’s not working and we have to go in a different direction,” says de Graaf. “I think we have to organize to do that. We have to talk to our friends and neighbors.”
And we’re going to have to push Obama, too. He met with Obama three years ago as part of a group of people to talk about work/life balance. He came away with the impression that Obama really understands the issue.
“His wife especially is very concerned about the work/life balance issue. But Obama is facing huge pushback from the other side,” says de Graaf.
“We have to support our President where he’s doing the right thing and be critical when he’s not,” adds de Graaf. “And I think the bailout and financial payoffs to Wall Street is one place where he’s not.”
It’s easy to think that paid time off is just a white-collar issue. But it’s quite the opposite, as those in the lowest paying jobs are less likely to have paid sick leave or paid vacation.
“Some 31% of low income workers don’t receive any paid vacation time. 37% of women who earn less than $40,000 get no paid vacation time. So it’s definitely the poorest folks who don’t get the time,” says de Graaf. “Our national polling shows the strongest support for paid vacation time coming from poor Americans, African-Americans, Latinos, Native Americans, young people, and women. These are the groups who really believe we need vacation law in the United States.”
Take Back Your Time is organizing a national Vacation Matters summit this summer in Seattle. “Times of economic crisis like the one we face today are also opportunities to envision the kind of economy and life we really want and to ask what really matters when it comes to quality of life,” says the Right2Vacation website.
Take Back Your Time and the Right to Vacation campaign were discussed in the U.S. House of Representatives in late March. Alan Grayson, Democratic Representative from Orlando, Florida, cited the group and it’s proposed Minimum Leave Protection Family Bonding and Personal Well Being Act, which would mandate three weeks of vacation every year. De Graaf will be meeting with Grayson’s staff in the next few weeks to move forward.
Paid vacation “is absolutely not an upper middle class issue,” says de Graaf. “This is an issue of social justice.”
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
the president as protester
recently, president evo morales of bolivia went on a five day hunger strike to influence the passage of progressive laws which will act to strengthen the power of the poor. think of this; the president as underdog. the president as practitioner of civil disobedience. the tactics of gandhi and chavez used by a president! on the surface, it's stunning, but if one knows evo, it isn't really, for he comes from the struggle, and the struggle influences him always. the struggle continues, whether one is president or pauper. this evo digs.
i ask you to think about this for a second...the president as protester. the leader as social agitator and instigator of progressive change. for when leaders arise from mass movements, such a thing occurs. in our nation, people such as debs and wallace and nader and cleaver and gregory and davis have run for office, but have never come close to winning. they were protestors, but within the american political structure, they had no chance of ultimate victory.
ah, to be born bolivian, where democracy is not dead.
long live the hunger strike, and its most recent practitioner.
may more presidents and other people practice its profound power in a progressive period that hopefully lies ahead.
i ask you to think about this for a second...the president as protester. the leader as social agitator and instigator of progressive change. for when leaders arise from mass movements, such a thing occurs. in our nation, people such as debs and wallace and nader and cleaver and gregory and davis have run for office, but have never come close to winning. they were protestors, but within the american political structure, they had no chance of ultimate victory.
ah, to be born bolivian, where democracy is not dead.
long live the hunger strike, and its most recent practitioner.
may more presidents and other people practice its profound power in a progressive period that hopefully lies ahead.
when pricks protest
as it turns out, many of the people who protested today were angry white redneck types who want to secede and who think the federal government is run by communists. yes, they are mad at paying taxes, but they are not anti-war, nor do they seem to know that a great share of our taxes go to prosecute the very wars they tend to blindly support. in short, they appear to be the lumpen rabble that could push this nation to a more overt form of fascism. they already have the racist, sexist, anti-immigrant, nationalist, and homophobic beliefs. perhaps all they need are politicians to explicate those same ideologies. of course, the "brilliance" of our country is that our political and economic structures use the facade of liberty and equality to disguise deep injustices, but the lumpen care not for this "brilliance."
over 50 years ago, c. wright mills called america "a conservative country without a conservative ideology." in a sense, this is what makes it work, but angry, blue collar conservatives, as well as many members of the business and political elites, want a conservative ideology, and they believe its absense to be proof that america is not a conservative country. they fume about racial diversity, sexual depictions in the culture, the increasing acceptance of homosexuality, at the gains of women, and about immigrants, and they are hard at work in creating a culture and an ideology that speaks to their fascist tendencies. c wright's remark essentially holds up, but it has been challenged since the reagan years, and will continue to be in the coming years. the obama presidency, and the economic crisis will likely be the current excuses for their militancy, but they are no more than excuses. for who among them raised a voice during the eight years of the bush presidency? were our tax dollars not wasted from 2000 to 2008? did the economy not further decline during those years? did not bush himself advocate for the bailouts now being exclusively blamed on obama? (who also supported them, and should be criticized for having done so) this is why they are excuses and not reasons, for the radical white right will only incorporate reality when it serves their largely fantasy driven purposes. for surely, there was horrendous inflation in pre nazi germany, and germany was wrongly scapegoated and sanctioned by the victors of world war one. these grievances were real, but they served the ends of fantasy. fascism is not a total lie, but largely a lie which incorporates twisted truths. to a great extent, this is true of our own society, but these folks want to eliminate what little good currently exists, and replace it with a nightmare society of cultural rigidity and reactionism.
so today, it's the economy, but tomorrow it will be the horrors of hip hop, and the next day it will be evolution in the schools. it's whatever they can use to rally the troops.
i'm talkin about some scary motherfuckers.
over 50 years ago, c. wright mills called america "a conservative country without a conservative ideology." in a sense, this is what makes it work, but angry, blue collar conservatives, as well as many members of the business and political elites, want a conservative ideology, and they believe its absense to be proof that america is not a conservative country. they fume about racial diversity, sexual depictions in the culture, the increasing acceptance of homosexuality, at the gains of women, and about immigrants, and they are hard at work in creating a culture and an ideology that speaks to their fascist tendencies. c wright's remark essentially holds up, but it has been challenged since the reagan years, and will continue to be in the coming years. the obama presidency, and the economic crisis will likely be the current excuses for their militancy, but they are no more than excuses. for who among them raised a voice during the eight years of the bush presidency? were our tax dollars not wasted from 2000 to 2008? did the economy not further decline during those years? did not bush himself advocate for the bailouts now being exclusively blamed on obama? (who also supported them, and should be criticized for having done so) this is why they are excuses and not reasons, for the radical white right will only incorporate reality when it serves their largely fantasy driven purposes. for surely, there was horrendous inflation in pre nazi germany, and germany was wrongly scapegoated and sanctioned by the victors of world war one. these grievances were real, but they served the ends of fantasy. fascism is not a total lie, but largely a lie which incorporates twisted truths. to a great extent, this is true of our own society, but these folks want to eliminate what little good currently exists, and replace it with a nightmare society of cultural rigidity and reactionism.
so today, it's the economy, but tomorrow it will be the horrors of hip hop, and the next day it will be evolution in the schools. it's whatever they can use to rally the troops.
i'm talkin about some scary motherfuckers.
about 3 out of every 8 slices in our large tax dollar pizza is eaten by the war machine
Tax Resisters to Hold Day of Protest
And today is tax day. As millions scramble to mail in their last-minute returns, the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee says tax resisters will hold protests around the country to show their opposition to funding war. The day of protest is being called “The War Is Not Over.” A new study, meanwhile, from the National Priorities Project says that more than thirty-seven cents of every income tax dollar goes to military spending. By contrast, environment, energy and science spending projects split 2.8 cents of every tax dollar, while housing, community and food programs split 3.8 cents.
And today is tax day. As millions scramble to mail in their last-minute returns, the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee says tax resisters will hold protests around the country to show their opposition to funding war. The day of protest is being called “The War Is Not Over.” A new study, meanwhile, from the National Priorities Project says that more than thirty-seven cents of every income tax dollar goes to military spending. By contrast, environment, energy and science spending projects split 2.8 cents of every tax dollar, while housing, community and food programs split 3.8 cents.
imagine
Bolivian Vice President Álvaro García Linera: “If the oligarchy insults me, if they attack me, it means that I am doing my job. It means that I am defending the people. It means I am doing my constitutional duty of defending the homeland.”
could you imagine a politician in the u.s. speaking in such a way? a democrat or republican president or vp could never talk of an oligarchy in such a way, because they are part of the oligarchy. in fact, they would never use that phrase at all, because it acknowledges class and power differentials in the society. it speaks to the existence of a ruling class, and a mainstream, u.s. politician will never mention the existence of a ruling class.
a leader who makes statements like this is just what we need. more importantly, a social movement strong enough to produce leaders who make statements like this, which are then heard by, and influence, the masses, is what we need. look at this quote...if you are defending the people, then by definition, you are working against the ruling class. and you don't defend the people by throwing money at corporations. you don't defend the people by spending billions of their tax dollars to kill people in afghanistan, pakistan, and iraq. the oligarchy has the money and the power that the people need, and in order to get them, you need to expose the oligarchy for who and what they are. and that, of course, means making them angry. it means they will attack you with their entire arsenal, including the media. often, they control the army as well, or at least a portion of it. in other words, the system needs to be fought, and you don't fight it by throwing money at it and you don't fight it by having your campaign financed by it.
if we are interest in true democracy, we should be paying very close attention to what is going on in bolivia and venezuela. in both countries, leaders are in power who represent the people, who look like the majority, who think like the majority, and who most importantly, are attempting to implement policies that will improve the lives of the historically discriminated masses of workers, peasants, and the indigenous.
we have a lot to learn.
all we have to do is open our eyes.
could you imagine a politician in the u.s. speaking in such a way? a democrat or republican president or vp could never talk of an oligarchy in such a way, because they are part of the oligarchy. in fact, they would never use that phrase at all, because it acknowledges class and power differentials in the society. it speaks to the existence of a ruling class, and a mainstream, u.s. politician will never mention the existence of a ruling class.
a leader who makes statements like this is just what we need. more importantly, a social movement strong enough to produce leaders who make statements like this, which are then heard by, and influence, the masses, is what we need. look at this quote...if you are defending the people, then by definition, you are working against the ruling class. and you don't defend the people by throwing money at corporations. you don't defend the people by spending billions of their tax dollars to kill people in afghanistan, pakistan, and iraq. the oligarchy has the money and the power that the people need, and in order to get them, you need to expose the oligarchy for who and what they are. and that, of course, means making them angry. it means they will attack you with their entire arsenal, including the media. often, they control the army as well, or at least a portion of it. in other words, the system needs to be fought, and you don't fight it by throwing money at it and you don't fight it by having your campaign financed by it.
if we are interest in true democracy, we should be paying very close attention to what is going on in bolivia and venezuela. in both countries, leaders are in power who represent the people, who look like the majority, who think like the majority, and who most importantly, are attempting to implement policies that will improve the lives of the historically discriminated masses of workers, peasants, and the indigenous.
we have a lot to learn.
all we have to do is open our eyes.
happy tax day
just a quick look into how a significant portion of our tax dollars are spent.
No Coincidences in Iraq
April 14, 2009 By Dahr Jamail
Source: T r u t h o u t
Dahr Jamail's ZSpace Page
Join ZSpace
Following George W. Bush's example of keeping war funding off the books, President Barack Obama is seeking $83.4 billion in additional "emergency" funding for the American wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which, if approved, would bring the 2009 funding to around $150 billion and the overall costs of the two wars to nearly $1 trillion.
Obama was a harsh critic of the Bush administration tactic of avoiding placing the costs of both occupations in the overall military budget, yet now he is doing the same. This latest request is in addition to a $534 billion military budget the administration unveiled earlier in the week. That budget was for fiscal 2010, and was an increase over the last Bush administration military budget from 2009.
The move comes on the heels of Obama's surprise visit to Baghdad's airport on April 7, where he met with soldiers whom he praised for their "extraordinary achievement" in Iraq. If he is referencing something good, I must have missed it. But we can certainly point to other examples, each qualifying as an "extraordinary achievement" by the US military in Iraq. That the US invasion and occupation of Iraq has killed over 1.3 million Iraqis is certainly extraordinary. That the occupation has displaced one in six Iraqis from their homes also qualifies as extraordinary. That an entire country could be destroyed and made a worse place to live when compared to when it was ruled by a brutal dictator and suffered 12 years of genocidal sanctions is also extraordinary.
While the US military maintains 138,000 soldiers in Iraq, and there are over 200,000 private contractors enabling the occupation, and the president intends on keeping at least 50,000 US troops in Iraq indefinitely, Obama managed to keep a straight face whilst pressuring the Iraqi government to "take responsibility for their country" and adding that the United States has "no claim on Iraqi territory and resources."
All of this nice talk from President Obama, which he articulated just hours after a spate of bombings across Baghdad killed 15 Iraqis and wounded 27, was complimented by his and Bush's Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, who claimed that al-Qaeda in Iraq appeared to be making a "last gasp" attempt to foment sectarian violence in Baghdad. Those who have been following the news about the US occupation of Iraq closely over the last six years know all too well how many "last gasps" and "turning the corners" there have been - of which there are too many to count. This one is no different, and the fallacy of the statement was punctuated on April 10 in Mosul, when a suicide car bomb attack killed five US soldiers, along with two Iraqi troops.
Taking another page out of the Bush playbook for the occupation of Iraq, while speaking at Baghdad's airport, Obama also said the next 18 months are "going to be a critical period." Again, there have been more "critical periods" in Iraq throughout the occupation than I care to remember.
Two days after Obama's visit to Baghdad's airport, Gen. Ray Odierno told The Times that US combat troops may remain in Iraq's cities beyond the June 30 deadline mandated by the Status of Forces Agreement.
Of course, throughout all of this rhetoric, the glaring omission is any discussion about the massive "enduring" US military bases in Iraq and the US "embassy" that is the size of the Vatican City.
Meanwhile, the bloodletting and destruction of Iraq continues.
*April 10: ten Iraqis killed, 84 more wounded in attacks across the country. Five US soldiers (the single deadliest attack on US soldiers in over a year), two Iraqi soldiers killed in car bomb attack.
*April 9: six Iraqis killed, 19 wounded in attacks across the country. Tens of thousands demonstrate against the occupation in Baghdad on this 6th anniversary of the fall of Baghdad.
*April 8: ten Iraqis killed, 27 wounded. This was the third day in a row of significant bomb attacks in Baghdad. Another sign of the ongoing targeting of Awakening Group members by the Iraqi Government, three Awakening Council members were wounded during a bombing near Garma in Halibaja. (The Awakening Groups are a US-constructed Sunni militia. Each member was paid $300 per month of US taxpayer money until control of them was turned over to the Iraqi government last October. They had grown in strength to 100,000 men and were supposed to be absorbed into the government security apparatus, but are now being targeted by government forces on a regular basis. To date, less than a third have been given government jobs.)
*April 7: 15 Iraqis killed, 27 wounded in attacks across the country. In Fallujah, a suicide bomber rammed his car into a police checkpoint that killed one policeman and wounded nine Iraqis. An Awakening Council member was found dead in the Iskandariya district. The city is put on lockdown for two days following the attack.
*April 6: 45 Iraqis killed, 176 wounded and one US soldier killed. Baghdad suffers a devastating series of car bombings.
*April 5: 13 Iraqis killed, 34 wounded. In Baghdad, a senior Interior Ministry official was killed by gunmen while he was riding in his car with his family. Basra's governor barely survived a bomb attack. An Awakening Council member is killed in Kanaan, and another Awakening Council member is wounded by a bomb in Kirkuk.
When I began reporting on the US occupation of Iraq over five years ago, I quickly realized there were no coincidences in how events played out on the ground there.
On April 7, President Obama also urged the Iraqi government to do more to integrate Awakening Council members into government security forces. The Iraqi government has claimed (as does the US military) that Awakening forces have been infiltrated by al-Qaeda, Iraqi resistance members and remnants of the Ba'ath party. The Iraqi government has been carrying out ongoing targeted killings and abductions of Awakening Council members throughout Iraq for many months now.
Recently, there has been a large upswing of killings and detentions of Awakening Council members by the Iraqi government. If you think this has nothing to do with the recent upsurge of bombings and attacks across Iraq, think again.
No Coincidences in Iraq
April 14, 2009 By Dahr Jamail
Source: T r u t h o u t
Dahr Jamail's ZSpace Page
Join ZSpace
Following George W. Bush's example of keeping war funding off the books, President Barack Obama is seeking $83.4 billion in additional "emergency" funding for the American wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which, if approved, would bring the 2009 funding to around $150 billion and the overall costs of the two wars to nearly $1 trillion.
Obama was a harsh critic of the Bush administration tactic of avoiding placing the costs of both occupations in the overall military budget, yet now he is doing the same. This latest request is in addition to a $534 billion military budget the administration unveiled earlier in the week. That budget was for fiscal 2010, and was an increase over the last Bush administration military budget from 2009.
The move comes on the heels of Obama's surprise visit to Baghdad's airport on April 7, where he met with soldiers whom he praised for their "extraordinary achievement" in Iraq. If he is referencing something good, I must have missed it. But we can certainly point to other examples, each qualifying as an "extraordinary achievement" by the US military in Iraq. That the US invasion and occupation of Iraq has killed over 1.3 million Iraqis is certainly extraordinary. That the occupation has displaced one in six Iraqis from their homes also qualifies as extraordinary. That an entire country could be destroyed and made a worse place to live when compared to when it was ruled by a brutal dictator and suffered 12 years of genocidal sanctions is also extraordinary.
While the US military maintains 138,000 soldiers in Iraq, and there are over 200,000 private contractors enabling the occupation, and the president intends on keeping at least 50,000 US troops in Iraq indefinitely, Obama managed to keep a straight face whilst pressuring the Iraqi government to "take responsibility for their country" and adding that the United States has "no claim on Iraqi territory and resources."
All of this nice talk from President Obama, which he articulated just hours after a spate of bombings across Baghdad killed 15 Iraqis and wounded 27, was complimented by his and Bush's Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, who claimed that al-Qaeda in Iraq appeared to be making a "last gasp" attempt to foment sectarian violence in Baghdad. Those who have been following the news about the US occupation of Iraq closely over the last six years know all too well how many "last gasps" and "turning the corners" there have been - of which there are too many to count. This one is no different, and the fallacy of the statement was punctuated on April 10 in Mosul, when a suicide car bomb attack killed five US soldiers, along with two Iraqi troops.
Taking another page out of the Bush playbook for the occupation of Iraq, while speaking at Baghdad's airport, Obama also said the next 18 months are "going to be a critical period." Again, there have been more "critical periods" in Iraq throughout the occupation than I care to remember.
Two days after Obama's visit to Baghdad's airport, Gen. Ray Odierno told The Times that US combat troops may remain in Iraq's cities beyond the June 30 deadline mandated by the Status of Forces Agreement.
Of course, throughout all of this rhetoric, the glaring omission is any discussion about the massive "enduring" US military bases in Iraq and the US "embassy" that is the size of the Vatican City.
Meanwhile, the bloodletting and destruction of Iraq continues.
*April 10: ten Iraqis killed, 84 more wounded in attacks across the country. Five US soldiers (the single deadliest attack on US soldiers in over a year), two Iraqi soldiers killed in car bomb attack.
*April 9: six Iraqis killed, 19 wounded in attacks across the country. Tens of thousands demonstrate against the occupation in Baghdad on this 6th anniversary of the fall of Baghdad.
*April 8: ten Iraqis killed, 27 wounded. This was the third day in a row of significant bomb attacks in Baghdad. Another sign of the ongoing targeting of Awakening Group members by the Iraqi Government, three Awakening Council members were wounded during a bombing near Garma in Halibaja. (The Awakening Groups are a US-constructed Sunni militia. Each member was paid $300 per month of US taxpayer money until control of them was turned over to the Iraqi government last October. They had grown in strength to 100,000 men and were supposed to be absorbed into the government security apparatus, but are now being targeted by government forces on a regular basis. To date, less than a third have been given government jobs.)
*April 7: 15 Iraqis killed, 27 wounded in attacks across the country. In Fallujah, a suicide bomber rammed his car into a police checkpoint that killed one policeman and wounded nine Iraqis. An Awakening Council member was found dead in the Iskandariya district. The city is put on lockdown for two days following the attack.
*April 6: 45 Iraqis killed, 176 wounded and one US soldier killed. Baghdad suffers a devastating series of car bombings.
*April 5: 13 Iraqis killed, 34 wounded. In Baghdad, a senior Interior Ministry official was killed by gunmen while he was riding in his car with his family. Basra's governor barely survived a bomb attack. An Awakening Council member is killed in Kanaan, and another Awakening Council member is wounded by a bomb in Kirkuk.
When I began reporting on the US occupation of Iraq over five years ago, I quickly realized there were no coincidences in how events played out on the ground there.
On April 7, President Obama also urged the Iraqi government to do more to integrate Awakening Council members into government security forces. The Iraqi government has claimed (as does the US military) that Awakening forces have been infiltrated by al-Qaeda, Iraqi resistance members and remnants of the Ba'ath party. The Iraqi government has been carrying out ongoing targeted killings and abductions of Awakening Council members throughout Iraq for many months now.
Recently, there has been a large upswing of killings and detentions of Awakening Council members by the Iraqi government. If you think this has nothing to do with the recent upsurge of bombings and attacks across Iraq, think again.
Monday, April 13, 2009
U.S. Considers Striking Al-Shabab Camps in Somalia
In other news from Somalia, the Washington Post reports President Obama is being urged by some in the Pentagon to carry out strikes against camps by the Al-Shabab militant group in southern Somalia. Others in the administration oppose military strikes because there is no evidence the group is planning attacks outside Somalia.
Report: 687 Pakistani Civilians Killed by U.S. Drones Since 2006
The Pakistani newspaper The News is reporting U.S. bombing raids have killed 687 Pakistani civilians since 2006. During that time U.S. predator drones carried out 60 strikes inside Pakistan but reportedly just 10 of the strikes hit their actual targets.
man, are we really gonna bomb somalia again? well, now we have this pirate thing as a built in excuse to excuse whatever we do as "defensive." haven't we done enough to this impoverished land?
remember, pakistan is supposedly an "ally." we have killed nearly 700 pakistani civilians, and we continue to bomb them. so, only 10 out of the 60 strikes "hit their actual targets?" what are the actual targets? they tell us that our bombs have pinpoint accuracy, but now we learn that 5 out of every 6 bombs is missing its target. so, which is it? it seems to me, that in actuality, civilians are being targeted. whether that is the case or not, it is working out that way, as it must, for you can not bomb people and not target civilians.
how would we feel if another country sent pilotless aircraft over our cities, and killed 700 american citizens? would we excuse it because some people linked to terrorism live here, or because the leader of the country dropping the bombs is biracial?
just wondering.
In other news from Somalia, the Washington Post reports President Obama is being urged by some in the Pentagon to carry out strikes against camps by the Al-Shabab militant group in southern Somalia. Others in the administration oppose military strikes because there is no evidence the group is planning attacks outside Somalia.
Report: 687 Pakistani Civilians Killed by U.S. Drones Since 2006
The Pakistani newspaper The News is reporting U.S. bombing raids have killed 687 Pakistani civilians since 2006. During that time U.S. predator drones carried out 60 strikes inside Pakistan but reportedly just 10 of the strikes hit their actual targets.
man, are we really gonna bomb somalia again? well, now we have this pirate thing as a built in excuse to excuse whatever we do as "defensive." haven't we done enough to this impoverished land?
remember, pakistan is supposedly an "ally." we have killed nearly 700 pakistani civilians, and we continue to bomb them. so, only 10 out of the 60 strikes "hit their actual targets?" what are the actual targets? they tell us that our bombs have pinpoint accuracy, but now we learn that 5 out of every 6 bombs is missing its target. so, which is it? it seems to me, that in actuality, civilians are being targeted. whether that is the case or not, it is working out that way, as it must, for you can not bomb people and not target civilians.
how would we feel if another country sent pilotless aircraft over our cities, and killed 700 american citizens? would we excuse it because some people linked to terrorism live here, or because the leader of the country dropping the bombs is biracial?
just wondering.
what about the pittsburgh pirates
you know, i never got too excited about this story. it struck me as bullshit from the beginning. went to the house yesterday, and even my folks and bro were happy this captain guy was saved, but i couldn't get into it. first of all, he represents the states. he's in their waters, working for the man. secondly, look at how the u.s. and europe, have historically treated somalia, right up until the present day. we killed about 10,000 of them in the 90's, and now we care about the life of one guy? do the people who cared so much about this know about the stealing of somalian fish and the dumping of toxic wastes into somalian waters? of course not. that's not page one news, because it's happening to them, and it represents the smooth, normal functioning of european/american colonialism and imperial domination. we get to do what we want, and it ain't news. our violence is so mundane as to not be news. however, when they respond with violence, they are crazed lunatics who act in a vacuum, without reason. their actions never have a background. instead, they just spring up, a result of "cultural defects" or from a "breakdown of law and order."
our violence is built into the system. it is the natural result of a power structure hundreds of years old. but to the victims, it will never be natural. they recognize the violence for what it is, and from time to time, they respond to it with their own violence.
and when they do, we get to demonize them all over again. oh the wonders of being american and european, for your nationality means you are never at fault and the other guy is always wrong.
or so most of us think.
You Are Being Lied to About Pirates
April 13, 2009 By Johann Hari
Source: Huffington Post
Johann Hari's ZSpace Page
Join ZSpace
Who imagined that in 2009, the world's governments would be declaring a new War on Pirates? As you read this, the British Royal Navy - backed by the ships of more than two dozen nations, from the US to China - is sailing into Somalian waters to take on men we still picture as parrot-on-the-shoulder pantomime villains. They will soon be fighting Somalian ships and even chasing the pirates onto land, into one of the most broken countries on earth. But behind the arrr-me-hearties oddness of this tale, there is an untold scandal. The people our governments are labeling as "one of the great menace of our times" have an extraordinary story to tell -- and some justice on their side.
Pirates have never been quite who we think they are. In the "golden age of piracy" - from 1650 to 1730 - the idea of the pirate as the senseless, savage thief that lingers today was created by the British government in a great propaganda-heave. Many ordinary people believed it was false: pirates were often rescued from the gallows by supportive crowds. Why? What did they see that we can't? In his book Villains of All nations, the historian Marcus Rediker pores through the evidence to find out. If you became a merchant or navy sailor then - plucked from the docks of London's East End, young and hungry - you ended up in a floating wooden Hell. You worked all hours on a cramped, half-starved ship, and if you slacked off for a second, the all-powerful captain would whip you with the Cat O' Nine Tails. If you slacked consistently, you could be thrown overboard. And at the end of months or years of this, you were often cheated of your wages.
Pirates were the first people to rebel against this world. They mutinied against their tyrannical captains - and created a different way of working on the seas. Once they had a ship, the pirates elected their captains, and made all their decisions collectively. They shared their bounty out in what Rediker calls "one of the most egalitarian plans for the disposition of resources to be found anywhere in the eighteenth century." They even took in escaped African slaves and lived with them as equals. The pirates showed "quite clearly - and subversively - that ships did not have to be run in the brutal and oppressive ways of the merchant service and the Royal navy." This is why they were popular, despite being unproductive thieves.
The words of one pirate from that lost age - a young British man called William Scott - should echo into this new age of piracy. Just before he was hanged in Charleston, South Carolina, he said: "What I did was to keep me from perishing. I was forced to go a-pirating to live." In 1991, the government of Somalia - in the Horn of Africa - collapsed. Its nine million people have been teetering on starvation ever since - and many of the ugliest forces in the Western world have seen this as a great opportunity to steal the country's food supply and dump our nuclear waste in their seas.
Yes: nuclear waste. As soon as the government was gone, mysterious European ships started appearing off the coast of Somalia, dumping vast barrels into the ocean. The coastal population began to sicken. At first they suffered strange rashes, nausea and malformed babies. Then, after the 2005 tsunami, hundreds of the dumped and leaking barrels washed up on shore. People began to suffer from radiation sickness, and more than 300 died. Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, the UN envoy to Somalia, tells me: "Somebody is dumping nuclear material here. There is also lead, and heavy metals such as cadmium and mercury - you name it." Much of it can be traced back to European hospitals and factories, who seem to be passing it on to the Italian mafia to "dispose" of cheaply. When I asked Ould-Abdallah what European governments were doing about it, he said with a sigh: "Nothing. There has been no clean-up, no compensation, and no prevention."
At the same time, other European ships have been looting Somalia's seas of their greatest resource: seafood. We have destroyed our own fish-stocks by over-exploitation - and now we have moved on to theirs. More than $300m worth of tuna, shrimp, lobster and other sea-life is being stolen every year by vast trawlers illegally sailing into Somalia's unprotected seas. The local fishermen have suddenly lost their livelihoods, and they are starving. Mohammed Hussein, a fisherman in the town of Marka 100km south of Mogadishu, told Reuters: "If nothing is done, there soon won't be much fish left in our coastal waters."
This is the context in which the men we are calling "pirates" have emerged. Everyone agrees they were ordinary Somalian fishermen who at first took speedboats to try to dissuade the dumpers and trawlers, or at least wage a 'tax' on them. They call themselves the Volunteer Coastguard of Somalia - and it's not hard to see why. In a surreal telephone interview, one of the pirate leaders, Sugule Ali, said their motive was "to stop illegal fishing and dumping in our waters... We don't consider ourselves sea bandits. We consider sea bandits [to be] those who illegally fish and dump in our seas and dump waste in our seas and carry weapons in our seas." William Scott would understand those words.
No, this doesn't make hostage-taking justifiable, and yes, some are clearly just gangsters - especially those who have held up World Food Programme supplies. But the "pirates" have the overwhelming support of the local population for a reason. The independent Somalian news-site WardherNews conducted the best research we have into what ordinary Somalis are thinking - and it found 70 percent "strongly supported the piracy as a form of national defence of the country's territorial waters." During the revolutionary war in America, George Washington and America's founding fathers paid pirates to protect America's territorial waters, because they had no navy or coastguard of their own. Most Americans supported them. Is this so different?
Did we expect starving Somalians to stand passively on their beaches, paddling in our nuclear waste, and watch us snatch their fish to eat in restaurants in London and Paris and Rome? We didn't act on those crimes - but when some of the fishermen responded by disrupting the transit-corridor for 20 percent of the world's oil supply, we begin to shriek about "evil." If we really want to deal with piracy, we need to stop its root cause - our crimes - before we send in the gun-boats to root out Somalia's criminals.
The story of the 2009 war on piracy was best summarised by another pirate, who lived and died in the fourth century BC. He was captured and brought to Alexander the Great, who demanded to know "what he meant by keeping possession of the sea." The pirate smiled, and responded: "What you mean by seizing the whole earth; but because I do it with a petty ship, I am called a robber, while you, who do it with a great fleet, are called emperor." Once again, our great imperial fleets sail in today - but who is the robber?
Johann Hari is a writer for the Independent newspaper.
our violence is built into the system. it is the natural result of a power structure hundreds of years old. but to the victims, it will never be natural. they recognize the violence for what it is, and from time to time, they respond to it with their own violence.
and when they do, we get to demonize them all over again. oh the wonders of being american and european, for your nationality means you are never at fault and the other guy is always wrong.
or so most of us think.
You Are Being Lied to About Pirates
April 13, 2009 By Johann Hari
Source: Huffington Post
Johann Hari's ZSpace Page
Join ZSpace
Who imagined that in 2009, the world's governments would be declaring a new War on Pirates? As you read this, the British Royal Navy - backed by the ships of more than two dozen nations, from the US to China - is sailing into Somalian waters to take on men we still picture as parrot-on-the-shoulder pantomime villains. They will soon be fighting Somalian ships and even chasing the pirates onto land, into one of the most broken countries on earth. But behind the arrr-me-hearties oddness of this tale, there is an untold scandal. The people our governments are labeling as "one of the great menace of our times" have an extraordinary story to tell -- and some justice on their side.
Pirates have never been quite who we think they are. In the "golden age of piracy" - from 1650 to 1730 - the idea of the pirate as the senseless, savage thief that lingers today was created by the British government in a great propaganda-heave. Many ordinary people believed it was false: pirates were often rescued from the gallows by supportive crowds. Why? What did they see that we can't? In his book Villains of All nations, the historian Marcus Rediker pores through the evidence to find out. If you became a merchant or navy sailor then - plucked from the docks of London's East End, young and hungry - you ended up in a floating wooden Hell. You worked all hours on a cramped, half-starved ship, and if you slacked off for a second, the all-powerful captain would whip you with the Cat O' Nine Tails. If you slacked consistently, you could be thrown overboard. And at the end of months or years of this, you were often cheated of your wages.
Pirates were the first people to rebel against this world. They mutinied against their tyrannical captains - and created a different way of working on the seas. Once they had a ship, the pirates elected their captains, and made all their decisions collectively. They shared their bounty out in what Rediker calls "one of the most egalitarian plans for the disposition of resources to be found anywhere in the eighteenth century." They even took in escaped African slaves and lived with them as equals. The pirates showed "quite clearly - and subversively - that ships did not have to be run in the brutal and oppressive ways of the merchant service and the Royal navy." This is why they were popular, despite being unproductive thieves.
The words of one pirate from that lost age - a young British man called William Scott - should echo into this new age of piracy. Just before he was hanged in Charleston, South Carolina, he said: "What I did was to keep me from perishing. I was forced to go a-pirating to live." In 1991, the government of Somalia - in the Horn of Africa - collapsed. Its nine million people have been teetering on starvation ever since - and many of the ugliest forces in the Western world have seen this as a great opportunity to steal the country's food supply and dump our nuclear waste in their seas.
Yes: nuclear waste. As soon as the government was gone, mysterious European ships started appearing off the coast of Somalia, dumping vast barrels into the ocean. The coastal population began to sicken. At first they suffered strange rashes, nausea and malformed babies. Then, after the 2005 tsunami, hundreds of the dumped and leaking barrels washed up on shore. People began to suffer from radiation sickness, and more than 300 died. Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, the UN envoy to Somalia, tells me: "Somebody is dumping nuclear material here. There is also lead, and heavy metals such as cadmium and mercury - you name it." Much of it can be traced back to European hospitals and factories, who seem to be passing it on to the Italian mafia to "dispose" of cheaply. When I asked Ould-Abdallah what European governments were doing about it, he said with a sigh: "Nothing. There has been no clean-up, no compensation, and no prevention."
At the same time, other European ships have been looting Somalia's seas of their greatest resource: seafood. We have destroyed our own fish-stocks by over-exploitation - and now we have moved on to theirs. More than $300m worth of tuna, shrimp, lobster and other sea-life is being stolen every year by vast trawlers illegally sailing into Somalia's unprotected seas. The local fishermen have suddenly lost their livelihoods, and they are starving. Mohammed Hussein, a fisherman in the town of Marka 100km south of Mogadishu, told Reuters: "If nothing is done, there soon won't be much fish left in our coastal waters."
This is the context in which the men we are calling "pirates" have emerged. Everyone agrees they were ordinary Somalian fishermen who at first took speedboats to try to dissuade the dumpers and trawlers, or at least wage a 'tax' on them. They call themselves the Volunteer Coastguard of Somalia - and it's not hard to see why. In a surreal telephone interview, one of the pirate leaders, Sugule Ali, said their motive was "to stop illegal fishing and dumping in our waters... We don't consider ourselves sea bandits. We consider sea bandits [to be] those who illegally fish and dump in our seas and dump waste in our seas and carry weapons in our seas." William Scott would understand those words.
No, this doesn't make hostage-taking justifiable, and yes, some are clearly just gangsters - especially those who have held up World Food Programme supplies. But the "pirates" have the overwhelming support of the local population for a reason. The independent Somalian news-site WardherNews conducted the best research we have into what ordinary Somalis are thinking - and it found 70 percent "strongly supported the piracy as a form of national defence of the country's territorial waters." During the revolutionary war in America, George Washington and America's founding fathers paid pirates to protect America's territorial waters, because they had no navy or coastguard of their own. Most Americans supported them. Is this so different?
Did we expect starving Somalians to stand passively on their beaches, paddling in our nuclear waste, and watch us snatch their fish to eat in restaurants in London and Paris and Rome? We didn't act on those crimes - but when some of the fishermen responded by disrupting the transit-corridor for 20 percent of the world's oil supply, we begin to shriek about "evil." If we really want to deal with piracy, we need to stop its root cause - our crimes - before we send in the gun-boats to root out Somalia's criminals.
The story of the 2009 war on piracy was best summarised by another pirate, who lived and died in the fourth century BC. He was captured and brought to Alexander the Great, who demanded to know "what he meant by keeping possession of the sea." The pirate smiled, and responded: "What you mean by seizing the whole earth; but because I do it with a petty ship, I am called a robber, while you, who do it with a great fleet, are called emperor." Once again, our great imperial fleets sail in today - but who is the robber?
Johann Hari is a writer for the Independent newspaper.
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