…But if “a war against terror” is really in the works–and who doesn’t oppose “terror”?–what are the chances for an anti-war movement opposing terror? Well, it has to define the terror it opposes (“state sponsored” or otherwise) as coming from “terrorists” who claim to fight other “terrorists” in a shooting war. While terrorists may not be confined to “the coalition of the willing” (they can be found, for example, among the peoples of Iraq–as with the folks beheading victims in front of cameras), this anti-war movement should nonetheless be called a “coalition of the unwilling”–of those “unwilling” either to “terrify” or be “terrified”. It protests by saying “no” to the exercise or expression of terror in any form. Such a “coalition of the unwilling” happens to exist, and certainly complicates things for “the coalition of the willing” (i.e. the willing terrorists on all sides).

Posted by: alabama | Dec 15 2004 16:50 utc | 3

Yeah, but Alabama, this current “war” began as a war on “terrorism“. Is it just happenstance that the word got shortened to “terror”? It is a constant irk for me when terror is used instead of terrorism. The word change does change much. Terror is a feeling. Terrorism is an activity, or so they say. Just me with a few minutes to nitpick.

Posted by: Kate_Storm | Dec 15 2004 17:32 utc | 5

And being a member of the “not with us” crowd is giving aid and comfort to the enemy (by not being a part of the willing), and therefore, the friend of my enemy, if not the enemy.

Posted by: anna missed | Dec 15 2004 17:43 utc | 7

Some of todays news:
ACLU has documents about more torture cases in Iraq
Riverbend on fuel shortages in Iraq
Baghdad: New footage of Iraqi resistance attacks on US forces 17 MByte
Marines learn how to fight for Allah

The Pentagon is scrambling to make good its error and is putting troops through crash counter-terrorist courses. It wants combat-ready units to have more foreign language speakers and a greater understanding of local cultures.
…
One marine had returned only six weeks ago from a seven-month posting in Iraq. He will be going back soon. “It’s what I do,” he said. Had the course taught him anything he had not learnt in the field? “It’s helped me to know how the enemy thinks and appreciate how sophisticated they are.”
If he were in charge, how would he deal with the Iraqis? “I’d kill them all,” he replied. “They don’t know what democracy is.”

Air Force boosts number of supply flights
(The final blow [to his credability] was when Goering promised that the Luftwaffe would supply the surrounded German Sixth Army, trapped in Stalingrad, during the Soviet winter offensive.)
—
Kurt Richebächer: A New Illusion: The falling dollar

we expect that sharply weaker consumer spending will soon distinctly slow the U.S. economy. Two events in particular are putting the brakes on economic growth: first, the full stop of the income creation through tax cuts; and second, the waning of the housing and mortgage refinancing booms.
The risks are frightening.

‘Grand Theft Auto:’ game of the year
Oil Up 4 Pct, Heating Oil Supplies Fall
Dollar Declines as Investors Slow Purchases of U.S. Assets
—

Posted by: b | Dec 15 2004 18:02 utc | 9

My son is doing a project on Mark Twain, in helping him I came across this………. nothing ever changes.
Mine eyes have seen the orgy of the launching of the Sword;
He is searching out the hoardings where the stranger’s wealth is stored;
He hath loosed his fateful lightnings, and with woe and death has scored;
His lust is marching on.
I have seen him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps;
They have builded him an altar in the Eastern dews and damps;
I have read his doomful mission by the dim and flaring lamps —
His night is marching on.
I have read his bandit gospel writ in burnished rows of steel:
“As ye deal with my pretensions, so with you my wrath shall deal;
Let the faithless son of Freedom crush the patriot with his heel;
Lo, Greed is marching on!”
We have legalized the strumpet and are guarding her retreat;*
Greed is seeking out commercial souls before his judgement seat;
O, be swift, ye clods, to answer him! be jubilant my feet!
Our god is marching on!
In a sordid slime harmonious Greed was born in yonder ditch,
With a longing in his bosom — and for others’ goods an itch.
As Christ died to make men holy, let men die to make us rich —
Our god is marching on.

Posted by: Cloned Poster | Dec 15 2004 18:28 utc | 11

The awards ceremony yesterday for Bremer, et al., reminded me of Hitler promoting von Paulus to Field Marshall during Stalingrad. His logic was that no Field Marshall had ever surrendered. Of course, von Paulus didn’t have the option of resigning to pursue personal interests.

Posted by: biklett | Dec 15 2004 19:13 utc | 13

The precedent was the “War on Drugs.”
Nobody can decently or convincingly argue for generalised heroin use, or complete ‘drug’ liberation. So, one cannot oppose such a ‘war’.
Follows, drugs are SO BAD, that those who produce, sell, or are associated in any way with them, etc., become the enemy. Ergo, any action, including low-level military ones are appropriate for vanquishing this terrifying opponent, embodied in the mind of many MacWorld citizens as causing the rack and ruination of previously sweet teenagers and upright citizens, turning them into non-persons.
Yet, one cannot fight ‘drugs’ , as inactive material entities they do not qualify as an opposing force that must be fought.
(And most people in the West wouldn’t dream of fighting the obligatory drugs that doctors prescribe – there are good drugs and bad drugs…)
The fact that illicit drugs are a mainstay – to the tune of absolutely staggering dollar amounts – of the black or grey world economy is camouflaged; that the War on Drugs principally served to prop up authoritarian / corrupt / anti-democratic regimes is never mentioned. The voter, the Soccer Mom, the new immigant washing dishes, the ponderous doctor, sure of his Science, the middle class manager, all agree that Drugs must be fought.
And so it goes.
Terrorism.
Is the second step.
The concept is personalised, as what is targeted are actors – not plants but people who are violent, throw bombs, etc.
Strangely, now, the War on Drugs has been forgotten, a previous Evil goes down the drain…
Meanwhile, the US has devastated a huge country, while exactly, I have read, one American has died in terrorist attacks since 9/11. (It might be more, but no matter.)

Posted by: Blackie | Dec 15 2004 19:31 utc | 15

via Josh Marshall

George W. Bush, international economist: “There’s a trade deficit. That’s easy to resolve: People can buy more United States products if they’re worried about the trade deficit.”
From comments just now in the Oval Office with Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi. And I’m told it was a bit difficult to tell whether or not he was joking.

Posted by: b | Dec 15 2004 20:52 utc | 17

December 15, 2004
“They Laughed at Him and Kicked Him More”
Who Killed Baha Mousa?
By ROBERT FISK
The Independent
Baha Mousa, 26, was working as a hotel receptionist in Basra 14 months ago when British troops surrounded the building and arrested seven men. They were taken to a British base and were reportedly hooded and beaten. Two days later, Mousa was dead. His family was given $3,000 in compensation and rejected a further $5,000. What they wanted was justice. Yesterday, after more than a year of official stonewalling, his relatives won a ‘historic’ ruling to force the MoD to hold an independent inquiry. Will the truth now be known?
Yesterday’s ruling offers Mr Mousa’s family the prospect of a proper investigation into the shameful, outrageous death of their 26-year-old son, who was arrested in front of his Iraqi police colonel father. Documents obtained by The Independent show beyond any doubt that Mr Mousa was killed in British Army custody. He was one among many whose deaths the British Ministry of Defence has tried to forget.
Two senior High Court judges ruled in favour of Mr Mousa’s family, saying the United Kingdom’s obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights extended to “outposts of the state’s authority” in foreign lands; a subsequent inquiry will ask whether there had been an unlawful killing. The Mousa family could be entitled to damages from the British Government if Articles 2 and 3 of the Convention–which guarantee the right to life and freedom from torture and inhuman and degrading treatment–were breached.
British soldiers of the Queen’s Lancashire Regiment surrounded a Basra hotel in September last year following information that weapons were being kept in the building. One of the owners was later arrested. When Daoud Mousa, an Iraqi police colonel, turned up at the hotel, he discovered his son lying on the ground with his hands tied behind his back. He told The Independent his son had seen British soldiers looting the hotel safe and that a British officer had later ordered the soldiers to hand the cash back and that they should be disarmed. Baha Mousa’s father later claimed the British troops involved decided to revenge themselves upon his son because he had revealed the theft. In their written judgment yesterday, Lord Justice Rix and Mr Justice Forbes criticised “the dilatoriness of the investigative process” conducted by the Special Investigation Branch (SIB) of the Royal Military Police, stating it was difficult to say whether the SIB investigation “has been timely, open or effective”. Investigations by The Independentshowed that Mr Mousa repeatedly complained to his British attackers that he was having difficulty breathing.
Other Iraqi detainees were also reported to have been cruelly beaten. When Baha’s father, Daoud, and brother, Alaa, went to see another of those arrested, Kifah Taha, they did not know Baha had been killed.
“Kifah looked like half a human, he was so badly beaten,” Alaa said. “When we asked him about Baha, he said he didn’t know. Then he said: ‘I hope God will not show any human what I witnessed.”’
Colonel Daoud Mousa told The Independent after his son’s death that a British officer, a 2nd Lieutenant, promised that his son would be protected after his arrest. “Three days later, I was looking at my son’s body,” the colonel said. “The British came to say he had ‘died in custody’. His nose was broken. There was blood above his mouth and I could see the bruising of his ribs and thighs. The skin was ripped off his wrists where the handcuffs had been.”
Baha Mousa left two small boys, five-year-old Hassan and three-year-old Hussein. Both are now orphans, because Baha’s 22-year-old wife had died of cancer just six months before his own death.
When The Independent initially made enquiries about Baha Mousa’s death, British officers in Basra seemed unconcerned, referring all enquiries to the Ministry of Defence in London and repeating that the Queen’s Lancashire Regiment was no longer operating in Southern Iraq.
Not one of the prisoners taken at the hotel said he had been questioned about the alleged discovery of weapons in the building. The arrested men were taken to the former Iraqi secret service headquarters of Ali Hassann al-Majid, Saddam Hussain’s brutal cousin, known as “Chemical Ali” for his gassing of the Kurds of Halabja, which was now part of a British military compound.
One of the detainees was to recount to The Independent an appalling story of cruelty: “We were put in a big room with our hands tied and with bags over our heads.
“But I could see through some holes in my hood. Soldiers would come in, ordinary soldiers, not officers–mostly with their heads shaved, but in uniform–and they would kick us, picking on one after the other.
“They were kick-boxing us in the chest and between the legs and in the back. We were crying and screaming. They set on Baha especially and he kept crying that he couldn’t breath in the hood. He kept asking them to take the bag off and said he was suffocating.
“But they laughed at him and kicked him more. One of them said: ‘Stop screaming and you will be able to breathe more easily’
“Baha was so scared. Then they increased the kicking on him and he collapsed on the floor. None of us could stand or sit because it was too painful.”
Robert Fisk is a reporter for The Independent and author of Pity the Nation. He is also a contributor to CounterPunch’s hot new book, The Politics of Anti-Semitism.

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Dec 15 2004 21:36 utc | 19

“Terrorism” and “Red Scares”, separately or in combination, have been long-standing features of the US political landscape, recurring in roughly 25-30 year cycles from the Haymarket Affair of 1886 to Haig’s demagoguery or 1980-1982. They have served an important role at home and abroad in helping the business community and national elite in their struggle against effective labor organization and reformist political threats, and in favor of unconstrained business domination, enlarged arms budgets, and imperial expansion.
Red Scares have all had the effect of weakening labor and reform movements by unleashing irrational forces that divert attention from real issues and cast doubts on the patriotism and purposes of unionists and reformers.
– Edward Herman, The Real Terror Network: Terrorism in Fact and Propaganda, 1982

no labor organizations were invited to this week’s economic summit…boeing awarded $928 million missile defense contract this week…airline workers rally at white house on yuesday to blast cuts…organized labor vows to fight administration proposals on social security “reform”…

Posted by: b real | Dec 15 2004 21:54 utc | 21

Aigin…………. you’re an American. What can you do to stop it. Otherwise you are just another “roll over and die American”.

Posted by: Cloned Poster | Dec 15 2004 23:02 utc | 23

aigin
i think you have encapsulated what i call the ‘institution of fear’ very, very well. you have adressed the quotidien degradation for a ‘normal’ american. as a convinced anti imperialist almost since birth – i too am in wonder at this degradation. i never thought i would see the nakedness of imperialism in such a way. unashamed. proud. proud of its degredation. the media in an orgy of celebration of this state of shame (how any of the criminals can speak of a ‘liberal’ media is beyond me)
& then i am reminded by the post of b real – that this redscaring – this mccarthyism has a long history & just as people are starting to oppose the nature of mondialisation – the movement is being met with judicial & legislative force
i respect jérôme but cannot understand how anyone can defend the ‘benefits’ of this mondialisation. i see no benefits. & it has come with a moral degredation & an intellectual stupidity that is simply beyond belief
it is like being inside a particular bad half hour of hogans heroes after taking acid & forgetting who the ‘i’ is, who the ‘enemy’ is & what ‘is’ is
it is like this whole administration has swallowed a tonne of metamphetemines masturbating to the images of horror coming out of iraq & like any gang – one demanding the other – to do more – to be more degraded. the two ex homelkand security even approximate a photofit of that kind of barbarity
& it is like the post b did some time ago – how in germany – one began to live with one degradation – then another – then another – until they accumulated into your own authority or your own absence of authority – or the renouncement of responsibility – moral & civic. where we are so lost we seek eytmological sense of words whose facts are reproduced day after night
i am saddened by your post but at the same time illuminated by its considered expression
btw – that is not such a bad taste in music
still steel

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Dec 15 2004 23:34 utc | 25

Now I Like This Toon:
Bad-Assed Cat With a Story That Sticks

Posted by: FlashHarry | Dec 16 2004 0:02 utc | 27

Published on Wednesday, December 15, 2004 by CommonDreams.org
Killing Us Softly
The Cowardice of the Mainstream Press in the Face of American Wars
by Abhinav Aima
 
The shock and dismay over Gary Webb’s death this weekend has further driven home the notion that an unabashed and cowardly American media is killing its own, softly.
A decidedly authoritarian editorial process, dominated by the spokespersons for the who’s who in American society, has largely kept the media on the Right side of American wars. Two of those wars, the one against the Sandanista and the one against drugs, proved to be the undoing of Webb, who had the courage to buck the mighty press corps.
And the cowardice is not merely dating back to 1996. As this nation’s newspapers salivate over the possible trial of Pinochet over Operation Condor, no American newspaper listed in the Lexis-Nexis archives has yet published a story this past month that even dares to put the name Nixon in the same story as Pinochet. None. In the last 30 days!
The only two newspapers that show articles on the database putting Pinochet in context with Nixon are The Montreal Gazette and the Ottawa Citizen, both Canadian newspapers.
So why is it that the heavyweights of the American press can not bring themselves to examine Pinochet’s crimes in context of their own nation’s bankrupt policies ranging from the acts of September 11, 1973 to Operation Condor? Is it because some of them, indeed, served as speech writers and advisors to Nixon? How long do you have to be out of bed from the White House before the gum is wiped off your lips?
Surely 30 years should be enough time. But not so for The New York Times or the Washington post.
It is laughable that these newspapers expected to be taken seriously in their apology to the public for misleading them in the run-up to the Iraq war, when, in almost every American war, be it domestic or foreign, these newspapers have exhibited cowardice in not daring to be anything more than stenographers for the powers that be.
Sure, once or twice a year the giants of our industry will publish something that passes for a critical look at American foreign policy. The New York Times has published two reports this year that mention Nixon and Pinochet together, one of them was buried in Section E (Arts/Culture). The Post has published three, two of them were buried in the Style section. This record is all the more interesting when one considers that both these newspapers have published dozens of stories this year that mention Pinochet. The connection between Pinochet and Nixon, therefore, is clearly not an editorial priority for the Times and the Post.
So much for institutional memory and a perceptive press! And of course, at precisely the time when it is most important, and most newsworthy to revisit the flaws and foibles of American power, the hot shot editors seem to develop a particularly troublesome case of amnesia.
Of course, God forbid that the American mainstream press should develop an attitude to examine America first. The reasonable question is, will it ever report on Americans to blame when blame is justified? Or is their moral courage limited to endorsing the lesser of two evils once every four years?
Don’t take my word for it – give it a twirl. How many stories mentioning Hamid Karzai with Unocal in the last two years? One in Times, none in Post. How many reports that mention Karzai in this same time period? Over 350 in the Times, over 250 in the Post. Why is Karzai’s relationship with an American gas company relevant? Well, that would be the historical perspective now, wouldn’t it.
Why are most of American-sponsored foreign leaders usually former salesmen for gas, oil, weapons, drugs or any other commodity thereof? Don’t rely on the Times or the Post to tell you. Not when it was the anti-Sandanista Contras, and certainly not when it is the anti-Taliban Afghans.
As the only country with a First Amendment that requires constitutional protection of the freedom of the press, it never ceases to amaze me how readily American scribes prostitute their talents at the altars of power. Those that actually dare cast a skeptical eye rarely make a living out of it. And sadly, way too many die of it.
Abhinav K. Aima (aaima@d.umn.edu) is a journalism instructor at University of Minnesota, Duluth.

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Dec 16 2004 0:09 utc | 29

What activities does the ‘culture war’ implicate? Pornography has never been more available. The information commons persists and is enlarged by peer networking, intellectual property rights presently notwithstanding. FCC regulations of speech are limited to rf broadcast media. There are the regularly symbolic victories of hairy-knuckled creationists who manage to burn a few biology textbooks. Anti-gay and Anti-intellectualism is a danger. In the first, the overdue recognition of gay rights will be met with overt resistance, but this seems to me to be a sign of hope. Such resistance has always been the prelude to the success of civil rights. At least there is cynosure of the need for such rights. Anti-intellectualism is troublesome however. Much of the postwar antagonisms were mitigated by the GI Bill which permitted an entire generation of returning servicemen access to higher education. Going further back, the landgrant colleges (the ‘aggies’) of the nineteenth century provided education to commoners and this provided leadership for rural populism and the progressivism of the early 1900s. the culture wars in this sense pose a real danger for progressive politics and the maintenance and nourishment of the organic intellectual.
Outside of the anti-intellectual problem, the zeitgeist seems to me to be usually libertarian.

Posted by: slothrop | Dec 16 2004 1:21 utc | 31

Last post me.
Why does my “remember personal info?” occaisonally just not happen?

Posted by: juannie | Dec 16 2004 1:25 utc | 33

There’s probably already too many items on this thread but anyway, here’s an interesting article on Yushchenko by Justin Raimondo.
Justin Raimondo’s comments regarding the Ukrainian election have been linked to before and then somewhat discredited on a previous thread. However, to me he seems to me to be doing good research on the issues he chooses.
My purpose with this post is not so much the Ukrainian elections but the relative veracity of Raimondo’s commentaries.
Whoever commented before on Raimondo, care to reply?

Posted by: juannie | Dec 16 2004 1:52 utc | 35

From the post above, I believe the war om poverty came before the war on drugs. This war association with everything is bullshit. The war onn everything is pure propaganda to lull the American people into agreeing to war. If you repeat soemthing long enough they will believe. Waik up sheeple.
Speaking of bullshit, the SS debate is pure unadulterated bullshit. There is not a problem with SS. The problem is the Federal budget is only taking in 70 cents for every dollar spent. The SS fund is taking in $1.25 for every dollar in benefit payments. The Bushies just don’t want to tax the rich to make up the money owed the SS trust fund.
Ahh, what a life when your born a rich blue blood like Bushie and resent the other classes even getting a SS check.

Posted by: jdp | Dec 16 2004 2:49 utc | 37

Foucault:

In a sense, the power of normalization imposes homogeneity; but it individualizes by making it possible to measure gaps, to determine levels, to fix specialties and to render the differences useful by fitting them one to another. It is easy to understand how the power of the norm functions within a system of formal equality, since within a homogeneity that is the rule, the norm introduces, as a useful imperative and as a result of measurement, all the shading of individual differences.

Terrorism is that which can be excluded from this system of “formal equality.”

Posted by: slothrop | Dec 16 2004 4:16 utc | 39

aigin –
thank you for putting words to much of what i have been feeling as of late. if you or anyone else has thought about what can be done to fight this, please share. after participating in and organizing protests about our stolen election, writing letters to elected officials and editors who have turned a deaf ear, i am at a momentary loss as to what the next step should be. at this juncture the next step we take is quite critical as it seems we cannot count on those we have elected – beyond the handful of judiciary commmittee democrats investigating in ohio – to do the job we elected them to do. perhaps now that scott peterson has been sentenced and jesse jackson, conyers, et al have put a public face on what so many of us on the internet have been seen as a crisis for the past few weeks, we can count on the media to pay attention and report, but i i do not dare trust and wait for this to happen. it is now up to people as opposed to institutions to make a difference. so what is next? how to change the direction of this country? what to do wake up the sleeping/huddling masses? what will be the issue that beats fear/terror? i found myself thinking what more than fraudulent elections would cause americans to become outraged?? elections are afterall the bedrock of democracy. and what about our american concern for civil rights? but instead those who are speaking up are called dissidents, zealots, or as i was addressed in times square during the protest last week, “bastards.” they would prefer to live in denial.
how to cut through the fear? perhaps the challenges to our lifestyle will have to hit closer to home. twice in the last few days i have waited in line at the grocery store while mothers went through the difficult process of relinquishing items beyond the budget their food stamps allowed. it was $2.79 for a head of brocolloi today and that wasn’t even organic! perhaps when people cannot feed their famillies properly they will wake up . i ‘d rather not see it go that far, but have begun to wonder how much remains within our control? have been casting about for days wondering what to do, how to break down these walls, and i do not mean just the walls they are erecting around 1600 pennsylvania avenue, but the walls between people, the walls separating the media from reality, the walls between people i pass on the street, the ones who stonily walked by the protest as i asked them if democracy in this country is important to them. we marched en masse against the war in iraq and in smaller numbers against the war in afghanistan, and it meant nothing. the letters seem to accomplish little. so what next? boycotts? civil disobedience? it is becoming increasingly clear this country is controlled by corporations, what are the best strategies to fight them?
i wrote a post just after thanksgiving about how disturbing it was to spend time with family members who discussed sit coms rather than the election or iraq. i realize now how representative they are of the general population. they still think or want to think, as aigin described, just because they live in the u.s. that it is all okay. people still think it is enough just to vote or read the paper. when will they realize it doesn’t matter anymore what is in the paper because it is at best incomplete information or that your vote doesn’t mean anything if the election is rigged? if anyone has any thoughts, please pass them on – at the moment i am coming up blank.

Posted by: conchita | Dec 16 2004 5:18 utc | 41

This email just arrived late tonight about an ongoing project regarding a letter written to the people of Iraq and signed by thousands of Americans. Based on the frustrations I cited earlier, I do not know how effective it wil be, but it is a step and I thought others might also want to know about it.
**************************************
Some time ago, you and over 13,000 others signed an online Letter_to_the_Iraqi_People. The Letter was printed in four Iraqi newspapers and on the front page of two of them.
A final report on this project is at our website at http://lettertotheiraqipeople.org. Thank you very much for your cooperation!
Welcome to an independent, non-partisan, grassroots initiative undertaken by a group of friends residing mostly in New England.
Read the Final Report of this project (December 15, 2004)
at http://lettertotheiraqipeople.org/finalreport.htm
At a time when distrust, hatred, and violence escalate out of control in many parts of the world, we feel an urgent need to communicate people to people, and to do so as openly, honestly, and directly as we can. In that spirit, we offer this “open letter” to the people of Iraq from people of the United States.
We have sent an Arabic translation of this letter to a range of media outlets in Iraq. We also issued a press release concerning the letter to media outlets in the U.S. at the time the letter was sent to Iraq.
We recognize that this letter is only one small effort to restore the world and we believe that each of us must act in our own way to live up to the responsibility this letter names.
You may view one of the publications here at http://lettertotheiraqipeople.org/iraqpapr.jpg – the front page of an Iraqi newspaper, in which the Iraqi version and the English version of the Letter to the Iraqi People appear. If you expand the view you may be able to make out the English version, below the photo of five men. The Letter has been published in at least four Iraqi newspapers, and on the front page in two of them.
You may read some of the letters to the editor
http://lettertotheiraqipeople.org/iraqltrs.htm that appeared in that newspaper from Iraqi citizens. The Iraqi-to-English translations are a little rough in spots but adequately convey the sentiments of the writers.
THANK YOU! – The Project Team: Jo Comerford, Roger Conant, Melissa Elliott, Ann Gibson, Randy Kehler, Peter Lems, Mary McClintock, Rick McDowell, and Mary Trotochaud.
A LETTER TO THE PEOPLE OF IRAQ
We want to express our heartfelt apology and deep sorrow over our government’s invasion and continued occupation of your country. We are painfully aware of the enormous suffering it has caused – the killing, wounding, and harassment of so many Iraqi children and adults; the deaths and injuries to combatants on all sides; and the destruction of Iraqi infrastructures leaving millions without adequate water or power, homes or food.
Please know that we who have signed this letter and countless other Americans are deeply opposed to this aggression that has been carried out in our names.
We understand that words of sorrow and apology are not enough, and that as people of the United States we have a responsibility to do everything in our power to peacefully pressure our government to stop this war, end the occupation, make full reparations, and work in cooperation with the Iraqi people to repair the terrible damage that the war and occupation have caused. We pledge to you that we will make every effort to live up to this responsibility.
Finally, we want you to know that it is our sincere desire to live in peace with the people of Iraq. We believe it is possible for relations between our two countries to be based on honest and respectful dialog, a willingness to resolve our conflicts by nonviolent means, and a shared
commitment to our common humanity and the sacredness of all life.
Respectfully,
CLICK HERE TO SIGN THE LETTER
————————————————————————
Related links
* Fellowship of Reconciliation’s Iraq Photo Project
Show and tell Iraqis how you feel
* FaithfulAmerica’s Ad on Iraqi Television project
expressing sorrow for prisoner abuse
* American Friends Service Committee’s Iraq Aftermath
site Relief, Events, Stories, more
* Western Massachusetts office of AFSC
has been active in promoting this letter
* The Traprock Peace Center has a very active website
which has been very involved with Iraq
* Education for Peace in Iraq (EPIC)’s website
working for human rights and
humanitarian conditions in Iraq since 1998
————————————————————————
Over 13 thousand people from 50 states and DC signed the Letter.

Posted by: conchita | Dec 16 2004 6:54 utc | 43

alabama –
curious as to how you would view the grassroots action i wrote about earlier? is it an action of the “unwilling”? or would the fact that the letter is addressed to the iraqi people as a whole, which would therefore include those considered by some to be terrorists, disqualify it?
jj –
as i learned this past weekend you can be arrested for handing out flyers on the streets of new york if the flyers are related to a protest and you are not standing within the barricaded area designated for the protest. since when did the bill of rights limit the right to dissent to specific areas? what we have taken for granted as “rights” or “freedoms” are under alarming attack, and the sad thing is most of us don’t even realize it – to wit our most recent intelligence bill.

Posted by: conchita | Dec 16 2004 8:08 utc | 45

That was an excellent post, alabama.
And, no, I don’t know where in Europe we may end up.

Posted by: Pat | Dec 16 2004 9:33 utc | 47

A recent Los Angeles Times
article by Braun, Pasternak and (not Judith) Miller gives some hope that the print media
may not be completely supine, although the story has had earlier exposure on the net and in the European press.
It raises interesting questions about the exact state of the problems the U.S. is having in resupplying its troops via convoy from Kuwait:
if things are bad enough that Halliburton is subcontracting to the notorious arms dealer
Victor Bout, and indeed that the U.S. military was providing vouchers for use of military fuel
for the flights then the most pessimistic views about criminal complicity between government and mafia would seem to be confirmed. Bout is blacklisted by the State Department for his nefarious role in dealing arms in Africa; he was even condemned by an Israeli court (after long and presumably mutual profitable relations with the Mossad). It would
seem that Milo Minderbinder is alive and well in Iraq.

Posted by: Hannah K. O’Luthon | Dec 16 2004 10:57 utc | 49

Briefing above gets really surreal when the subject turns to armored vehicles and insurgent tactics.

Posted by: Elmer Fudd | Dec 16 2004 15:49 utc | 51

…For me, the paragon of the “unwilling” is Shakespeare’s Edgar: late in King Lear, he says, to no one in particular, “Bear free and patient thoughts”. Edgar, the ultimate activist, does exactly this throughout the play, and continues to do so after the last terrorist (Lear himself, perhaps?) falls by the wayside. And he closes the play with a speech that’s hard to understand:
The weight of this sad time we must obey,
Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say:
The oldest hath borne most; we that are young
Shall never see so much, nor live so long. (V, iii, 324-27).
By “obeying the weight,” Edgar doesn’t simply mean “putting up with” (not that there isn’t plenty to put up with). And if (or when) I can come up with a clearer understanding of these lines, conchita, I hope to volunteer a more pertinent response (strategically speaking) to your very valuable question!

Posted by: alabama | Dec 16 2004 18:31 utc | 53

@bama as to the question of terror vs virtue, a lot depends on how that word “virtue” is interpreted 🙂
A Talibanesque interpretation of the “virtuous” state requires domestic and State terror against women and gays. The “virtuous” state of good old Ancient Greece, “cradle of democracy” and yada yada, was built on a foundation of disenfranchised helot (peon) and slave labour — and if slavery is not a form of terrorism, what is? A state like Sparta conceived “virtue” as the disciplining and channelling of brute violence into State-sanctioned purposes, i.e. wielding terror abroad (US style, sorta). “Virtue” seems to mean “whatever the ruling class want the expendable cannon-fodder to value at this time,” and hence for me is not a very useful word.
If I were to define “virtue” in my own post-Enlightenment, post-Revolution(s), wannabe democratic terms, it might come down to something like Fairness — ideas like Due Process, Equality Before the Law, “no force no fraud,” freedom of information, defence of the commons, the restraint of brute violence, conscious resistance to the nasty human tendencies towards hereditary aristocracy, monopoly, clientelism, nepotism etc.
A State which practised these “Fairness” virtues, both at home and abroad, might be at less risk from certain kinds of terrorism — the terrorism that is the last resort of the impotent rage of the oppressed. But it would not be immune from the terrorism of those (possibly more powerful and better organised, though fewer) of those whose cheating, conniving, violence and looting must necessarily be repressed in order to practise these State virtues.
A “virtuous” America might run less risk of a 9/11 or armed domestic populist insurgency, and more risk of assassinations and coups engineered by powerful/wealthy interests or religious fanatic interests who have very different ideas of what “virtue” in a State consists of.
Meanwhile I have been thinking mischievously about corporations and their status as Persons under the Law… if corporations are persons under the law, then when they merge is that a marriage or a mating? and should they be required to have marriage licenses? if they merge without a marriage license, is any spinoff corporation-let an illegitimate child? and if they “kill off” a subsidiary to “downsize and streamline,” is that an abortion? it seems that their Personhood is very conveniently applied. surely the rampant promiscuity of corporate relationships, and their wholesale slaughter of their own and each others’ corporate children, should be big fat Moral Values targets for the rightwingnuts? I’m seriously considering an “Abstinence Only” program for corporate looters — and a strict “drinking age” limit too.

Posted by: DeAnander | Dec 16 2004 18:54 utc | 55

Saint-Just can be a very hard read, DeAnander, and also a very stimulating one (as we’re finding out). Over the space of eighteen short months, his thoughts on “terror” went in every imaginable direction, articulated with the lucidity of a true genius …..

Posted by: alabama | Dec 16 2004 19:49 utc | 57

I’m working with the oeuvres choisies, edited by Diony Mascolo, and published by the idées series of the nrf in May 1968 (!) . This edition was first published in 1946, with Mascolo using the pseudonym of “Jean Gratien”. It’s an extraordinary collection straight from the source (so to speak).

Posted by: alabama | Dec 16 2004 20:38 utc | 59

OT in O-two Thread:
Frank Rich is now the best columnist at the NYT: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/19/arts/19rich.html“>2004: The Year of ‘The Passion’

What is this about? How can those in this country’s overwhelming religious majority maintain that they are victims in a fiery battle with forces of darkness? It is certainly not about actual victimization. Christmas is as pervasive as it has ever been in America, where it wasn’t even declared a federal holiday until after the Civil War. What’s really going on here is yet another example of a post-Election-Day winner-takes-all power grab by the “moral values” brigade. As Mr. Gibson shrewdly contrived his own crucifixion all the way to the bank, trumping up nonexistent threats to his movie to hype it, so the creation of imagined enemies and exaggerated threats to Christianity by “moral values” mongers of the right has its own secular purpose. The idea is to intimidate and marginalize anyone who objects to their efforts to impose the most conservative of Christian dogma on public policy. If you’re against their views, you don’t have a differing opinion — you’re anti-Christian (even if you are a Christian).

Posted by: b | Dec 16 2004 23:03 utc | 61

I’m so sick of this shit.
There you go: terrorism is real. Just look. The CIA says so.
Part of the ‘coalition of the unwilling’s’ project is to demonstrate to people that osama might look like the of terror, but he’s really just another clever adumbration of elite power. I have no idea how to chip away at this popular materialization of terror.

Posted by: slothrop | Dec 16 2004 23:24 utc | 63

I’ve been a poor poster, filled with anger since after the US elections (as many in the EU), also problems in my personal life – apologies. Now I am back on some sort of even keel. CP, thanks for the Twain. Thanks to many others for great posts, I read them all for the first time since ages.
This, I thought, might interest:
Part (?) of the registering (enrolling, inscribing) of Iraqi voters is taking place here in Geneva.
Someone has to do it, they can’t.
That already shows how bizarre the projected Iraq elections are.
The UN and other have worked out very simple procedures for people to run their own elections. Some of these even bypass the use of a pencil – anyone can imagine all that.
These are not being applied, all has to be done with top security, with computers, in the modern style. But outside the country, with no control by the people who live there.
About 65% of those hired here to enter the Iraqi electoral rolls (based on what data? from where?) are Arabophones from N. Africa who cannot make sense of Iraai names and make lots of errors. The others are Iraqis and Iranians. Very few people have been hired to enter the Kurds – there are almost no unemployed Kurds here, so those lists will not get done. The work is taking place in a huge freezing hall with strict security measures.
Employees are not allowed:
To bring their own food
(Against Swiss Law as they do 8 to 12 hour stints – else the employer has to feed them for free or at a very low price..)
To wear jewellry or watches or bring in handbags
(difficult, too, from a legal pov)
To wear jackets – only sweaters are allowed
(the hall is not heated properly)
To take breaks
(toilet breaks are very limited – as in 5 mins per half day – and security people are present in the toilets)
Security controls take place every half hour!
Pauses are not paid for (10 min. toilet stop for women is deducted from pay, against the law.)
And so on — all these measures are justified by the sacrosant word “Security”.
One worker put it: “We are Arabs, so aren’t allowed to eat or pee.”
Many of the hired have quit, the Union(s) and the Bureau of Labor are aghast and cracking down, three petitions are circulating. For sure, the whole enterprise will collapse.
The contract was awarded to Manpower. Just an ordinary commercial tender. ManPower has a very bad reputation here: The pay is just at the minimum – about 15 dollars an hour, less than a cleaning lady earns, less (or just equal) to what teenage babysitters get. Manpower did say that the security measures “were required”. (??) Nobody seems to know how much they were paid and by whom.
What is amazing to me is how easily and smoothly any excuse for authoritarian BS and rip-offs slip in. A cancer that grows, spreading tentacles right from Iraq. Similarly, the existing silent agreement that Iraq is a hell-hole and there is nothing at all to be done about it, it is just an opportunity to earn big bucks. Add in, that Arabs are suspect, must be controlled, watched, etc.
Anyway, as you all knew, there will be no proper Iraq electoral rolls.

Posted by: Blackie | Dec 16 2004 23:32 utc | 65

that would be reading suggestions

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Dec 16 2004 23:44 utc | 67

conchita, no terrorist can, or does, “bear free and patient thoughts”.

Posted by: alabama | Dec 17 2004 5:01 utc | 69

Alabama, I do not come to these thoughts as the result of a course of theoretical study. My more empirical approach leads me to wonder – might it not depend on how terrorism is defined and who is defining it? In a fascist state, the unwilling who “hold free and patient thoughts” might be defined as terrorists simply because they are outside of the coalition of the willing. Taking this out of the abstract – do sign-carrying demonstrators (expressing their unwillingness to “terrify” or “be terrified”) waiting patiently within pens formed by metal police barricades, aka designated protest areas, constitute terrorists? In the minds of the mayor and police commissioner of New York this summer they did. The protesters were considered the other and were therefore classified as terrorists. In a fascist state are all who are engaged – willing and unwilling – terrorists then? Even the silent observers who do not overtly ascribe to either side by doing nothing become part of the willing simply by default. Simply by paying taxes and purchasing products made by the corporate state they are supporting state sponsored terrorism.

Posted by: conchita | Dec 17 2004 6:20 utc | 71

Make of these
antiwar Xmas carols what you will. I liked
“Hark, Hans Blix reporting back”.

Posted by: Hannah K. O’Luthon | Dec 17 2004 15:12 utc | 73

@ Dan of Steele
Khadduri informed me of his blog via
e-mail. It has quite a bit of interesting material. I had been in contact a couple of years ago when he wrote some on-line articles asserting that Iraq couldn’t possible have a nuclear program, and he should know, because he was active in their program when it did exist. I’ve never met him, but he seems to be a good, honest person, and quite naturally furious at what the Bush regime is doing to his country.
If anyone is interested in the latest emerging
Bush regime scandal (playing footsie in Iraq with
ex-KGB colonel, notorious mafioso and arms dealer Victor Bout) a trivial Google search gives
this link . Bout’s infamy is so great (and his Texas and Halliburton links so easily documented, cf. links from the above link) that it’s almost too easy to smell a rat and connect the dots. So much so, that a true conspiracy theorist would have to believe that it’s a false trail to dissuade us from believing in the pristine purity and adamantine honesty of our duly elected leaders.

Posted by: Hannah K. O’Luthon | Dec 17 2004 16:14 utc | 75

For those who delight in wallowing in the squalor of the Victor Bout–Halliburton mosh pit
the Yorkshire Ranter has some indispensable
facts and plausible conjectures. Sooner or later one of these scandals is going to stick, although I suspect that no “properly patriotic” American will object to dealing with the Russian mafia to assist “our boys” in Iraq, even if the brass can’t admit that they seem to be depending on the KGB-Mossad-Mafia man for
logistical support. American pragmatism or Milo Minderbinder?

Posted by: Hannah K. O’Luthon | Dec 17 2004 17:29 utc | 77

If I may change the wavelength, for another heart-warming tale of Globalization from DeAnander’s neighborhood (relatively):
December Currents: News from Water for All
“Privatization strikes farm-worker community in California, bills skyrocket. On Dec. 13, more than 50 residents of the small Salinas Valley town of Chualar gathered in the local elementary school cafeteria to discuss their water crisis. California American (Cal Am), a subsidiary of American Water Works, which is owned by the transnational RWE/Thames
Water, had recently purchased Chualar’s water system from Monterey County. Cal Am promised to provide water to this farm-worker community at a more affordable cost than the county, but in October, the company changed the rate structure from a flat rate of $21.60 per month to the
tiered rates of a wealthier subdivision in the same district. Monthly water bills shot up to $200 $300 for a number of families – amounting to a 1500% increase in the cost of water for some households. The local school’s bill increased from an average of $200 per month to approximately $2,000 per month. ”
And water hasn’t even gotten scarce yet. “Globalization” is organized, systematic theft.

Posted by: jj | Dec 17 2004 20:46 utc | 79

From the Washington Post this morning:
Bluster and Punishment
Friday, December 17, 2004; Page A32
“YISHAI ASIDO is an 11-year-old boy in Loudoun County [VA] who refused a class assignment last month to write a letter to U.S. Marines and, according to his teacher, said he wished that American soldiers — and ‘all Americans’ — would die. His offensive remark led the county sheriff’s office to dispatch two plainclothes officers to Yishai’s home, where, according to Yishai’s mother, they quizzed his parents on their political beliefs and asked whether they had taught him ‘anti-American values.’
“Let’s start with the caveats. We don’t know exactly what Yishai said on this occasion or may have said on past occasions. Yishai and his mother, Pamela Albaugh, deny that he wished death on ‘all Americans’ and say his remark about the troops was somewhat less violent than what the teacher reported. Nor do we know exactly what was said by the sheriff’s deputies who questioned Yishai’s parents –they are not talking. Furthermore, every school these days has to be vigilant about violent or vicious speech: It can be hurtful (plenty of Yishai’s schoolmates at Belmont Ridge Middle School near Leesburg have parents in the military) or worse.
[…]
“Perhaps the idea was to scare Yishai straight or to impress on him the indecency of his views. If so, there were probably better ways to deliver the message, starting with the teachers, guidance counselors, principal and other administrators at his school. Let the deployment of sheriff’s deputies to a schoolboy’s home be a last resort in the event of a specific, well-founded threat of violence.”
“To impress upon him the indecency of his views”? With a visit by detectives from the county sheriff’s office? The sheriff’s office does not say that the interview had any such purpose. (And my guess is that this was not it’s purpose.) The Post offers the possibility of this extraordinary motive on its own and then mildly suggests that “there were probably better ways to deliver the message” – in other words, that contracting with the local police department to impress upon citizens and residents the indecency of their views is not objectionable as a matter of principle, but is merely less preferrable to other, available means. The reader is left with the alarming impression that this is, in fact, a legitimate police function.
The power of the police derives from a monopoly on the use of force. What is a child, and his/her parents, to conclude when opinions and beliefs expressed in public (in this case, a county school) are met with an attempt at correction by an institution whose essential power is not that of persuasion, but compulsion? And yet this appalling scenario is one that the Post offers without examination, much less condemnation, of the ugly presumption underlying it. That the identification of ‘indecent’ opinion is inherently subjective is not the fundamental issue here. Even were ‘indecent’ views subject to objective definition, the state, through its police power, can have no mandate to enforce the expression of ‘decent’ thoughts, or to, as the Post suggests, take upon itself the responsibity of informing individuals that their stated opinions are not nice (or reflect ‘anti-American values’) and prevailing upon them to alter those opinions. Even when those individuals are eleven years old.
The editorial also begs the question of whether students ought to be given such an assignment in the first place. The actual gravity (one could use a more vivid word) and controversy of the Marine’s undertaking are well-nigh impossible for an 11-year-old to comprehend. And yet without that comprehension the assignment is either a meaningless exercise or, worse, one that encourages premature, unreflective, automatic expressions of support – and one by which some parents are bound, rightly, to be dismayed or offended. What’s the point?

Posted by: Pat | Dec 17 2004 21:25 utc | 81

when i read that article, i picked up her husband, an Israeli citizen who manages a Leesburg moving company was questioned mostly about his life in Israel and his more than four years in an elite combat unit. not sure if that holds any significance outside the context of the story itself other than that a lot of text has been written about israeli operatives & moving companies in the us over the past 3 yrs.

Posted by: b real | Dec 18 2004 9:56 utc | 83