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January 21, 2005
Really Open Thread
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Very interesting points from 4th generation warfare expert William Lind: Coming Unglued
On the ground in Iraq, America’s war is coming unglued. Most of the soldiers and Marines I’ve talked to who have recently returned say the situation is much worse than American newspapers report. Evidence of that came last December, as the U.S. moved to shift its resupply efforts from ground to air. Why? Because the Iraqi resistance controls so many of the roads, including the road from Baghdad’s Green Zone to the airport. “They have had a growing understanding that where they can affect us is in the logistics flow,” said Central Command’s Lt. Gen. Lance Smith. “They have gotten more effective in using IEDs. The enemy is very smart and thinking. It is a thinking enemy. So he changes his tactics and he becomes more effective.”
…
Back in Washington, the neo-con gang of adventurers who pushed us into this war is starting to come unglued. Leading neo-cons now nip at Mr. Rumsfeld’s ankles. Conservative ranks abound with rumors, with more hope than evidence behind them, that once Iraq holds its elections, the White House will declare victory and pull out.
…
Most significantly, if we look at the larger world, we see ever more states coming unglued, which is the root phenomenon of Fourth Generation war. The Saudi regime is in trouble, and its replacement will not be parliamentary democracy. Pakistan’s General Musharraf is one bomb away from his destiny, at which point al Qaeda will have nukes (if it doesn’t already). Russia’s President Putin is acting to strengthen the Russian state because he knows the state’s existence is on the line in Russia. In West Africa, the state is almost gone, and it is going in the rest of Africa. Most interestingly, as the next few months will likely show, the state is fracturing in Israel, a modern, Westernized country. That is how Fourth Generation war works: it pulls the state apart at the moral level. Soon, just as Arab is fighting Arab, Jew will be fighting Jew.
Just wondering when and how this will spread to our societies and what the consequences will be.
I listened to limblohard in the office today to see what he would say. Many articles were critical of Bushies speech yesterday including that airhead Peggy Noonan. Limbaugh was ranting and making it sound like dems were critical but it was mostly Bushes own party. Bush and his crew are total morons.
The US stock market looks like it will close down for the first three weeks in January for the first time since 1977. I believe the markets are scared by Bushies Iran war talk and the prolonged Iraq war.
It is my birthday this weekend, I will be 29 for the 17th time. Time is rushing by me so fast and I feel I have so much to accomplish yet. I am willing to fight the progressive fight until I die. Class warfare all the way.
Posted by: jdp | Jan 21 2005 20:33 utc | 2
i find this stmt from b’s extract very revealing, on many levels: The enemy is very smart and thinking. It is a thinking enemy. So he changes his tactics and he becomes more effective.
Posted by: b real | Jan 21 2005 20:44 utc | 3
In order to justify the “unglued” war effort, I predict a much more overtly cynical use of “clash of civilizations” rhetoric. We’re almost there. As Bush becomes more desperate, his speech writers will be more brazen in justifying the war effort as the inevitable fight between Islam and Judeo-Christianity.
Posted by: slothrop | Jan 21 2005 20:55 utc | 4
Things are going to get really weird as more directly religious justifications of this war are used at the obvious risk of polarizing domestic opinion and further setting the polity at each others’ throats.
Posted by: slothrop | Jan 21 2005 21:04 utc | 5
Did anybody notice that the US is currently trying to “do a Fallujah” (250,000 inhabitants) on Mosul (2,000,000 inhabitants)?
current date US troops launch raids near Mosul
Insurgents shelled a hospital in Mosul on Thursday where US and Iraqi forces had taken up positions in an annexes.
Doctors and patients fled, and no casualties were reported.
Hospital annex? – Geneva convention anyone?
from November 19, 2004 Troops raid Mosul hospital
In Mosul, Iraqi commandos, again backed by US forces, focused on the city’s al-Zaharawi hospital, which they cordoned off after receiving information that insurgents were using it to treat their wounded.
They stormed the building overnight and arrested three suspects, according to the US military. A US military spokesman said: “You can call it an insurgent hospital from what we found there. They probably just went in and took it over. There are a lot of things to be answered. The three detained will hopefully provide intelligence how all this worked.”
He said operations were continuing throughout Mosul, Iraq’s third largest city.
US forces took over the main hospital of Mosul, just like in Fallujah, but now there are serious counter attacks, unlike in Fallujah.
The US troops around Mosul have been raised to some 12,000 but they have obviously no control of anything there.
I can not find any source for what´s happening there and I wonder how many bombs they drop on Mosul.
The pseudo election campaign in Iraq is in full swing and here is just one facette Iraq defence minister says he will have Chalabi arrested before elections
b, I think Mosul is just too dangerous for proper reporting, so we’re not getting much yet. As Fisk has been saying, Iraq is too dangerous for reporters now.
But the elections will be fine. Don’t worry about that.
slothrop, Bush needs to do that anyway as part of the move towards theocratic authoritarianism. I feel like it’s Berlin 1935 or so, and no-one is listening. Setting the people against themselves, building paranoia, with us or agin us, the whole deal. You’ll hear more references to versions of manifest destiny as well. Oh, the death throes of the robber barons will not be pretty. All we can do is try to shelter the weak and keep away from the thrashing tentacles.
I’m very suspicious of the the whole 4th generation war thingy. It’s too neat a concept, and none of it is as new as they like to pretend: I sometimes think it’s ass covering for the theorists. “Oh, our old theories didn’t cover this because it’s new, not because we made a pile of stupid assumptions because all we ever studied was set-piece battles.” In any case, most of the states he’s talking about are highly artificial, in the sense they were imposed by colonial powers.
Happy 46th jdp.
And welcome to the second derivative of longevity club, AAA (Age Acceleration Anonymous).
I’m almost certain that I will never, at least in this incarnation, accomplish what my soul desires. I haven’t even yet fully discovered what that is though I suspect it has something to do with the progressive fight until death…
Maybe class lovefare all the way?
Posted by: Juannie | Jan 21 2005 22:41 utc | 9
people, you are scaring me. Can I stay on the “light” thread and ignore what you wrote here?
Posted by: Jérôme | Jan 21 2005 23:08 utc | 10
@colman slothrop, Bush needs to do that anyway as part of the move towards theocratic authoritarianism. I feel like it’s Berlin 1935 or so, and no-one is listening. you and I are definitely on same wavelength here. been feeling the 1930’s instant-replay sensation more and more acutely with each passing month since the Reichstag Fire, er, WTC hit.
Posted by: DeAnander | Jan 21 2005 23:14 utc | 11
@Jérôme
How ever you like, just stay on the “light” threads, some other things are just happening … unfortunatly some are not so “light” …
OTOH Paxton asserts theocratic authoritarianism is an alternative to fullblown fascism. one of the characteristics that distingushes them in his estimation is that fascism requires colonial wars and permanent mobilisation. if he’s right then BushCo is maybe hedging its bets — building the Dominionist structure even as it pursues its colonial wars?
Posted by: DeAnander | Jan 21 2005 23:16 utc | 13
The light thread was the last one Jérôme. Get used to it. Acceleration happens. In this plane, energy, your speciality, creates light. However I’ve been told that in the next plane there is always light at the end of the tunnel.
Posted by: Juannie | Jan 21 2005 23:27 utc | 14
Juannie, I think Jerome’s point is that around here, it’s always an oncoming train, even when there’s no train tracks…
I suspect Paxton (who I assume is the chap with the 14 classifying properties of facism or whatever) is wrong.
We will never see Facism again, exactly. History repeats the broad themes, not all the details. For colonial wars substitute crusades. The blood is the same colour either way.
In any case, I misspoke. I don’t really mean theocratic. The people behind it don’t have a theology, or a religion. Religiosity versus religion. I’m not sure what you call rule by people who pretend religion in order to enrich themselves: fraud maybe?
Deanander
Haven’t read the fascism book, but the discourses of fascism (law, nationalism, history) tend to universalist justifacations of power. In aftermath of 9/11, the clash of civilizations was muted in favor of chimerical tolerance and pragmatic response to the mostly external threat of terror. As these perceived entreaties to democratic rationalism fail, the administration will turn to stridently universal condemnations of Islam. This will mark a turning point to more virulent form of american fascism–one which may be used to vindicate domestic internment or even foreign pogrom.
Posted by: slothrop | Jan 21 2005 23:49 utc | 17
“Pogrom” is too strong a word. The model is Fallujah (and now Mosul?) razing in which entire cities become free fire zones and within which all males are marked as sunni insurgents to be killed. “Eradication of ethnic male population”
Posted by: slothrop | Jan 21 2005 23:56 utc | 18
While we might expect the rhetoric to turn more ugly, still the u.s. may succeed by further exploiting sunni/shia animus. In the long run, I’m sticking with some kind of Iraq partition. Of course, this ‘solution’ does nothing to impede our homegrown fascism and the pursuit of our holy war elsewhere.
It does seem certain the Iraq-sunnis are screwed, though.
Posted by: slothrop | Jan 22 2005 0:31 utc | 19
‘Coalition of the Willing’ quietly disbanded (it was getting embarrasingly smaller anyway)
Posted by: Anonymous | Jan 22 2005 0:53 utc | 20
@slothrop no the “fourteen points” guy was Dr Lawrence Britt [I have never figured out who this guy is/was or what his affiliations were, or where he got his doctorate or in what subject]. the 14 points article was popular first, I think, on the libertarian right (Free Inquiry magazine, does that count?) and then caught on, becoming a popular meme for a while. for some reason we really like numbered lists, I am not sure why. ten commandments, 95 theses, 14 points…
anyway, Paxton is a far more credentialled scholar. Foreign Affairs reviews as follows (excerpt) Paxton’s first book, “Vichy France,” has become the standard work in the field despite its once-controversial thesis (that the Vichy regime was not merely imposed by Nazis but had domestic roots); “The Anatomy of Fascism,” based on decades of research and teaching, is likely to prove just as authoritative. The in-depth bibliographical essay alone will guide scholars and graduate students for years to come.
Robert O. Paxton is Mellon Professor of Social Sciences Emeritus at Columbia University.
It’s a really good read, historically well informed, rich in refs and attribs, and (to me, perhaps due to my limited exposure to the topic) quite surprising in parts. I have learned quite a bit about the Mussolini regime that is new to me, for example. Your reading list is probably as daunting as mine, but I’d recommend adding this one to it.
i have spoken too harshly here too often but what i have sd i coming to a terrible fruition
i sense only the dark for the moment in a way unparalleled in my lifetime & i have been to some very dark places
i understand that in a real sense jérôme wants to see that light & how can anyone be faulted of good heart that tries to do so in our terrible times; they are unforgiving times
what i find difficult to understand is the 12 million people who marched all over the world are seeeming doing nothing in the face of the very real horror of iraq
in my worst times i feel the ‘endtimes’ of the imbecile christians is being forced upon all of us. that their pitiful & pathetic destiny has become our own
this war must be brought home – that is the only way – that this can be stopped – continual forms of resistance ate every level must be acted upon & supported
you in america must scream long & hard when your sons & daughters die & you should scream at the death of a people, of a nation
whatever iraq was – it was sovereign – so too is iran – no matter what i think of their politics – i will support the enemy of my enemies & the us policy is the principal enemy of humanity & is the real & only threat of world terror
al queda is just a group of gangsters like itt or gmh & the others who came with the eagle – there is no substantial difference – they both cause death & suffering. they both by their very nature rob from people – all that is real & organic
the monster who lead america to their own destruction – & it is destruction – america as a moral entity – does not exist – at all. it once perhaps represented something. not now
whatever it represents today is so sordid so tortuous in every sense of that word
“& i see this tide of murder
has no heartbeat
only the pulse of machines
& the military
showing their midwive faces
full of sweetness
oh god is this the world you created
for this your seven day of wonder & work” victor jara
ô i think of youi victor – this night – we are all going into the same stadiums whether we like it or not
(not so)still steel
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jan 22 2005 2:31 utc | 22
Posted by: Anonymous | Jan 22 2005 2:40 utc | 23
rgiap it may be that what unglues the Yanks in the end is the real monster under the bed that they refuse to believe in, as much as the imaginary monsters in the clothespress that they insist on believing in.
the US is now trying to censor a UN action plan by cutting any references to climate change as a potentially serious near-future problem, in compliance with BushCo ideological correctness.
there are two likely possibilities or perhaps three that I can see here…
1) BushCo is firmly in the grip of Rapturism and looking forward to the End Times, of which climate destabilisation, drought, flood and famine are “Signs”. so they are actively promoting environmental damage to “Bring ‘Im On” (the returning Christ that is).
2) BushCo is so firmly wedded to the neolib econ fantasy of infinite growth on a finite planet that any suggestion of limits to resources or the tolerance of climate and water systems to human disruption is ideological anathema, and must be denied regardless of realworld consequences. they cannot permit any information to be made public that would undermine their religio-ideological faith in Growth.
3) BushCo knows very well that climate destabilisation will cause major dislocations, possibly mass deaths, etc. — but they believe that these effects will be felt mostly in the third world, and will serve to “reduce the number of useless mouths” or (back to good old Henry K) “depopulate Asia”. they may believe, whether due to religious fantasy or some kind of vague geographical faith in the N Hemi, that the US will remain relatively unscathed or even benefit from climate destabilisation. or they may believe that the era of disruption will serve to shake out the “unfit” and the heavily armed and wealthy US will once again, as at the end of WWII be “last nation standing” and default hegemon.
there are probably variants on these themes. one or two decent F4s wandering across the Eastern Seaboard might help to wake them up — one would hope. my guess would be that if climate destab really takes off, no one including the US will have any money or labour power to waste on foreign adventurism.
since this is an open thread i wanted to share a part – a very short part of a play written through my reading of benjamin – was to give fascist a voice – because history has shown they never speak – in front of historical tasks they sd nothing – & i wanted one to speak – so i created him – it is a long play 5 hours – it is called terrible knowledge – & it tries to understand what drew men to genocide – unfortunately the basis of my play – could now be taken from its nazi histiography & easily be translated to an american voice – this is an excerpt of my character ‘heimman’ – an ovious conflation of heydrich/eichmann –
It was the best way. Early in the game it was better to be seen dispensing justice. We didn’t want to appear to be savages. Those who instantly wanted to put the Jews to the torch missed the point. Throw them at the world. Watch the world throw them back. There would be time. Europe was falling apart. Any fool could see where we were heading. Only those who wanted to hide their heads failed to see what direction we would take. We were going to do the dirty work for the whole of Europe — that rotting piece of meat left out in the garden for the dogs. In the beginning I stole ideas from their leaders. Took their ideas about creating a spiritual homeland. Turned it upside down. It had to serve our interests. Who in this world would have known ? Who would have cared ? No one said anything. Least of all the chosen ones. No they all held up their hands up like students in a yeshiva and said yes. Today these scoundrels lay the blame at my door. I’m the one who caused all their trouble. Yet they also had their hands in it from the beginning. I was a functionary and I had become an expert. Even they must admit that I expedited matters fairly quickly — concerning their welfare. My commitment to the work was beyond question. There were those who were offended by the zeal with which I took up these duties. Where are they now ? These fools who imagined the affairs of state would leave them with clean hands. One, Dr. Muller, a superior who wrote of this and that deportation. A cultured man. He would write reports as if he were writing a novel. Muller always seemed so taken with the task that I decided he should visit a camp. One that was still in construction. We drove there and all the way there he spoke of the holy task we were performing peppering the conversation with quotes of our learned predeccessors. How proud he was that he had been chosen to do this work. When we arrived at the camp we were treated to a large banquet by a vulgar little bavarian who had been placed in charge. He said our presence was fortunate since that very day they were expecting a transport and all the chambers were now in full flow. Would we like to see it — he said ? Of course — my superior replied. Wetting his pants at the thought. We watched as the transport was separated. Soon the selections took place. Broken up into those who still had a bit of work left in them and those that could go immediately. A doctor colleague with a riding crop just stood there picking and choosing. Those from the transports seemed unclear about what was happening to them. Though you could see in some of their eyes that they had grasped what was going on. These said goodbye to their friends and loved ones. You would have expected these people to break down. They didn’t. Once they were chosen they set about their task singlemindedlly. The ones who went to the washouse marched in formation. We followed them. We sat in a cubicle which was installed so you could have a clear view of what was happening in the washhouse. The washhouse was very full now. Almost to the brim. They shuffled against each other. Cattle — I thought. They looked like they were at some religious gathering. They seemed to stare everywhere except at each other. The gassing began. People looked up as if they were seeking some sort of guidance. Some realised what was happening and they began to scream. It wasn’t the type of scream. It wasn’t the type of scream one hears at a carcrash. It sounded almost operatic. It was a scream that sounded for all the world like it was being sung. It was like watching some perverse form of opera with a cast yelling and running at each other. A restrained pandemonium. People started to pull at each other. They were actually tearing at each other. Pulling and pushing like the other person was a door through which they could get out of this place. This was all happening very quickly — I must tell you. It was happening very fast. But for my superior and I it was like it was happening in slow motion. The screaming was so voluminous that is sounded for all the world like some mad opera being performed by inmates at an asylum. Then something very strange happened. People started piling themselves into heaps in the middle of the floor. They were going a bluish kind of colour. They were piling themselves into a perfect pyramid ripping at each other as they did so. This was a sight I could never forget. I was so taken with this sight. So in wonderment at the nature of human frailty that I had not noticed my superior was sitting there with his hands between his legs. Vomiting. he had vomited all over his uniform. He stank of the most wretched smell imaginable. There were tears in his eyes. I imagine from the retching he had obviouslly done. I tried to clean him up. I tried to talk to him. He was past speech. He could not be consoled. How a man could be involved in this work for so long — I thought — and only now see what it meant. Pathetic. I couldn’t muster any respect for him after that but he kept on with business as usual. These fools who would bore you day and night recounting our triumphs as if they were waging the war single handedly from the office. It made me laugh. At times I had no escape from their imbecility. Their endless chatter. Now this fellow runs an agricultural machinery business which has busines with the European Economic Community and with Israel. He is a man of influence now as he was then.. I read that he was involved in politics at a very high level. Heads some committee for the government on industrial democracy. Some of us came out of the war unscathed. Dust your jacket and get back on your feet. …….
i hope it has some relavance here
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jan 22 2005 3:05 utc | 25
RGiap:
Yes it is relevant. Very powerful. Thanks.
Posted by: A swedish kind of death | Jan 22 2005 3:30 utc | 26
jdp: Time is rushing by me so fast …
Welcome, JDP. It’s ever-decreasing circles at ever-increasing speeds from here on out. 😉
Posted by: Kate_Storm | Jan 22 2005 3:43 utc | 27
rememberinggiap: this war must be brought home – that is the only way – that this can be stopped – continual forms of resistance ate every level must be acted upon & supported
you in america must scream long & hard when your sons & daughters die & you should scream at the death of a people, of a nation
Yes. Indeed. You said it. Right on. You rock!
The why of the millions not yelling more is not that much of a mystery to me. People lose heart. Get discouraged. Feel tired to the bone. They also have to still content with the “everyday” of their lives, and sometimes that is over the top of their limit to bear the stress. They end up having to compartmentalize Iraq and the ShrubCo Cabal in order just to function in their daily lives. It is not for lack of worry or care or anger or outrage. It is more about “how do I do my life, and try to stop the killing of the people of Iraq.
In my brain I’m a torches and pitchforks kinda woman, while trying to stay in my pacifist heart. But… in my darkest moments, to quote Bruce Cockburn: “I’d make somebody pay.”
Posted by: Kate_Storm | Jan 22 2005 3:52 utc | 28
William Lind cited at the top is interesting as a libertarian. His ilk are so upset with George W Bush because his Administration is the latest 21st Century version of the all powerful State. You’d assume that WWI and WWII would have put a damper on forceful Wilsonian democratization. But, No. The USA led by a true believer is spreading more and more imperial freedom.
Except human beings have learned. Now there are blow-backs to neo-colonial quests. The ecosystem is spinning out of control with over population and resource depletion. Multi-National Companies are profiting by exploiting the cheapest labor and weakest environmental laws. Third world societies and USA’s Red States, screwed by business and governments, rather than whimpering, are using their religion and culture in a fanatic fight for self worth.
The astonishing thing about Sy Hersh’s revelations and the Vice President’s threats of Israeli air strikes on Iran’s Nuclear Sites is that not one reporter or pundit speculated about Iran’s counter responses. The affect of the closure of the Straits of Hormuz on a oil dependent Western society. The consequences of infiltration of a million Shiite Revolutionary Guards on 150,000 US troops in Iraq.
The overarching smerk is racial hubris. Persians will welcome bombing. Any invading Christians will be met with champagne and roses. The USA is the biggest, best and most freedom loving state in the world.
The question posed by William Lind is when will the fantasies come unglued. Only the National Guard has at this point.
Posted by: Jim S | Jan 22 2005 5:10 utc | 29
Oh boy, apparently Kaloogian’s at it again, with a new TV ad attacking Kofi Annan personally. apparently the ad accuses Annan of remaining on vacation (skiing in the US?) during the tsunami crisis. funny how these folks never count the days per year George spends on the ranch in Crawford, yet they pay very close attention to the job attendance of the UN chief. this is the “Move America Forward” gang of course… wingnuts deluxe. funny how the same TV networks that found the UCC “tolerance” ad “too controversial” have no problem airing Kaloogian’s smear campaigns… have heard the anti-Annan ad ran on CNN and weren’t they among those who turned down the UCC ad?
You seemed to have had an interesting evening here at MoA – lots of stuff to read.
Found this MISSING MONEY -Mystery in Iraq as $300 Million is Taken Abroad
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Jan. 21 – Earlier this month, according to Iraqi officials, $300 million in American bills was taken out of Iraq’s Central Bank, put into boxes and quietly put on a charter jet bound for Lebanon.
The money was to be used to buy tanks and other weapons from international arms dealers, the officials say, as part of an accelerated effort to assemble an armored division for the fledgling Iraqi Army. But exactly where the money went, and to whom, and for precisely what, remains a mystery, at least to Iraqis who say they have been trying to find out.
The $300 million deal appears to have been arranged outside the American-designed financial controls intended to help Iraq – which defaulted on its external debt in the 1990’s – legally import goods. By most accounts here, there was no public bidding for the arms contracts, nor was the deal approved by the entire 33-member Iraqi cabinet.
Well, there is one good thing that can be said about this US government, it will bring work to Hollywood for years to come. I guess with this kind of things happening – they will be able to make many weird movies and no one will be able to say this is unbelievable and fantasy as it actually happened.
Posted by: Fran | Jan 22 2005 7:47 utc | 31
remem.giap,
So well taken, when these assholes are confronted with the facticity of their idealism they are a convulsion of their own bile, so they revert back into their papers and ledgers, as those addicted to pornography — cannot bear real life.
Even Saddam personally did some of his own killing, I wonder if the neo-cons could do the same.
Posted by: anna missed | Jan 22 2005 9:20 utc | 32
remembereringgiap
You do see these things very clearly. I was already quite depressed and your play did nothing to raise my spirits. These are indeed very dark times.
Posted by: dan of steele | Jan 22 2005 14:11 utc | 34
Benjamin:
No, this much is clear: experience has fallen in value, amid a generation which from 1914 to 1918 had to experience some of the most monstrous events in the history of the world. … For never has experience been contradicted more thoroughly: strategic experience has been contravened by positional warfare; economic experience, by the inflation; physical experience, by hunger; moral experiences, by the ruling powers. A generation that had gone to school in horse-drawn streetcars now stood in the open air, amid a landscape in which nothing was the same except the clouds and, at its center, in a force field of destructive torrents and explosions, the tiny, fragile human body’.
In conversations w/ Brecht, in exile in Denmark, Benjamin discovered that fascism destroys experience and brings history to a standstill; dialectical thought is paralyzed and all means are legitimated to reproduce the same, identity; all difference crushed under the fuhrer’s boot.
Posted by: slothrop | Jan 22 2005 16:43 utc | 36
And often too late do we discover, like rgiap’s jailer, the poverty of experience to feel again. Extinguishment of beauty, reflection, experience, is crucial to the success of fascism.
We may have no auschwitz, yet, but who can deny the justification and even the heroism found in the act of torture of this levelling of all experience to the autonomic, reflexive destruction of the other in the videogame of power?
Before our very eyes.
Posted by: slothrop | Jan 22 2005 17:03 utc | 37
Brooks:
It’s the ideals that are real.
So much there to be amazed by, least of all the persistent divorce of history and the ‘despotisms’ that America will now embattle; as if, we americans were demigods standing all along on the sidelines of history awaiting our proper moment to enter and undo the foibles of humans.
Posted by: slothrop | Jan 22 2005 17:35 utc | 39
Not too heavy, for Jerome:
“Because we have acted in the great liberating tradition of this nation, tens of millions have achieved their freedom. And as hope kindles hope, millions more will find it. By our efforts we have lit a fire as well, a fire in the minds of men. It warms those who feel its power; it burns those who fight its progress. And one day this untamed fire of freedom will reach the darkest corners of our world.” Bush, inaugural.
Seems like a lot of work for a fire, so I looked it up.
The phrase the fire is in the minds of men is taken from Dostoevsky’s novel, The Possessed — that fire in the minds of men was not a yearning for liberty, but a nihilistic will to power that can only end in destruction, Raimondo explains.J.R.
It is also the title of a book by Billington: Fire in the Minds of Men – Origins of the Revolutionary Faith.
Intro: “I am inclined to believe that every system of belief which attracts a large human following must contain at least some aspiration for good within it. In the case of the revolutionary faith, I identified that positive strain at the end of my book with Rosa Luxemborg and her consistent belief in, and practice of, a non-duplicious movement for social justice transcending traditional national, ethnic, and gender boundaries. The revolutionary fire, Marxist underpinnings, and messianic utopianism of Rosa Luxemborg died long ago. But the substance of such an ideal – in a more moderate but no less passionate form – may continue to influence those who seek to reform of transform the liberal democracies of our time.” Clublet –Amazon
“Insurgent movements begin as ‘fire in the minds of men’. Insurgent leaders commit themselves to building a new world. They construct the organization to carry through this desire.”
Counterinsurgency – Official U.S. Overview and Techniques, Part 2, Field Manual Interim No. 3-07.22, etc. Link
So, possibly: Dosteyevsky –> Billington –> Army manual –> Bush!
(smile)
Posted by: Blackie | Jan 22 2005 17:41 utc | 40
jerome- I cannot access le speakeasy to reply to your comment.
rgiap- yes, very powerful. those screams, both real and imagined…I wonder how far the sounds of human atrocities have now broadcast themselves across the universe?
a small buck stood in my yard today for the longest time. I stared at him until he looked back at me. he’s the counterpoint to a dream I had just before Bush was elected, when a herd of buffalo once again owned the land where houses now stand.
I want to feel, in my bones, that this is the beginning of the end for Bush and his crew, and in some ways I do, knowing he is more hated than Nixon when he began his second term.
when Hitler knew he was defeated, however, he attempted to destroy the German people with forced marches from their towns. the worst is not yet over, I fear, but they will fall, and all who have supported them will be discredited.
I would hope they will also be charged with war crimes. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to see Osama and George in the docks together? Wouldn’t the majority of the world celebrate to see two who use religion to spread hatred and death convicted by the rule of law?
I know I would.
Posted by: fauxreal | Jan 22 2005 17:46 utc | 41
Getting more and more concerned of the way my country goes:
Report: Germany to expel hundreds
German officials are drawing up lists of hundreds of Muslims to be deported from the country under a new law making expulsions easier, the German weekly magazine Der Spiegel said on Saturday.
Der Spiegel said authorities were already using their powers under an immigration law introduced this month in conducting an operation dubbed “Aktion Kehraus” (“Action Sweep Out”).
The Interior Ministry declined to comment on the report beyond saying that deportations were a matter for Germany’s 16 federal states.
Under new rules, potential deportees will not be able to use normal legal channels to challenge an expulsion order. A special panel of the Federal Administrative Court will be responsible, with no right of appeal.
…
Interior Minister Otto Schily has suggested that evidence of training at an al-Qaida camp should be clear grounds for expelling a foreign national. Distributing videos calling for “holy war” could also be punished the same way.
Schily, a defense attorny in siome Baader-Meinhof terrorist cases has really turned into a bad, bad hawk.
Fortunatly, the last sentence, getting kicked out for distributing a video, will most probably not hold up in court. The “no right to appeal” is also not correct as appeals to the supreme courd will be possible. Anyhow this is a bad step.
Should their be a formal ability to ask guests to leave the house when they say it sucks and they consider to burn it down? Yes, in my view, but it should follow the same procedural paths that are used for the other inhabitants.
And this from a so called left government…
On pictures:
RGiap wrote: this war must be brought home – that is the only way – that this can be stopped –
Yes.
It would be not too difficult or expensive to do. One possibility is widely disseminating photos /videos of US butchered, maimed, dead, burning, crying, etc. in Iraq. (Link gives an agg. to varied way pix, scroll down, not familiar myself with these.)
The Abu Ghraib pictures showed Iraqis being abused and tortured, with Americans in positions of superiority — just like the ones posted by b right above, variations on the same theme.
They caused a stir in the US, but nothing much happened except that the thrashing of the Geneva Conventions moved forward apace (Gonzales, officaldom) and a few scapegoats received prison terms (wink, wink.) Pictures of US soldiers being tortured (and who can imagine that this does not happen? …) would mobilise public opinion against the war so strongly that the sadists who would want to exploit them for the opposite purpose would be drownded out (or so I think.)
Whether the idea is better than hopeless matters not at all.
It won’t happen, can’t.
Besides media-lock down, and State control (still very weak I think), most US citizens will not look at pictures, flyers, mailings, posters, banners, texts, symbols, when these are tainted with the suspicion of emanating from the fringes, conspiracy theorists, renegades, extremists, or even, in many cases, democrats. They will turn away, hiss or scream about liberals, or tremble with fear, close off.
Polarised on the source, terrified of the content, to them such pictures would be like child pornography, frightening, gratuitous, evil, to be refused and thrashed at all costs. Without being supported by, or sourced from authority (Fox, Rummy, etc), they cannot be examined or accepted.
Nobody will even try.
The Gvmt itself! has had poor success with atrocity pictures (hoping to stir up hate), and they learnt the lesson right off. (The Nick Berg beheading pictures, never repeated.)
Link
Posted by: Blackie | Jan 22 2005 20:39 utc | 46
rememberinggiap:al queda is just a group of gangsters like itt or gmh & the others who came with the eagle – there is no substantial difference – they both cause death & suffering. they both by their very nature rob from people – all that is real & organic
I detect we are deficient in aluminum here at MOA, so I’m going to inject a bit of formerly named tin foil on purpose to provoke … al queda is in my fevered brain a wholly “created” entity. A beauteous PR success. There are lots of on-line references to this. But how fantastic a false flag could there be? The creators are geniuses, and all who’ve bought the bridge are dupes.
Posted by: Kate_Storm | Jan 22 2005 21:59 utc | 47
Kate, when one man, Al Zarqawi, can succesfully lead an insurgency, when being supposedly one legged, and even dead against the might of the USA……. you do have a very valid point.
Posted by: Cloned Poster | Jan 22 2005 22:15 utc | 48
I really, really want to see “The Power of Nightmares” (the Brit TV show about Al Qaeda and similar Boogeymen). whatcha bet it’s banned in the US as “terrorist-friendly”? I know there is some way to get it with BitTorrent but it’s probably avi which I don’t think I can play..
@slothrop – please send me an e-mail, I have a message for you.
@fauxreal – what’s wrong with LS? Please send me (or Okie) an e-mail and we’ll try to sort it.
off for tonight.
Posted by: Jérôme | Jan 22 2005 23:11 utc | 50
jdp –
excuse me, I forgot to say earlier:
H A P P Y B I R T H D A Y !
Langs al hij leven
Langs al hij leven
Langs al hij leven
In de gloria!
In de glo-ri-a!
In de gloria!
Hip, hip, hip, Hoorah!
Hip hip hip, Hoorah!
Posted by: fauxreal | Jan 22 2005 23:43 utc | 51
de- you can read the transcript online it seems, via the links on the right side of this page.
…but you probably already knew that.
Posted by: fauxreal | Jan 22 2005 23:47 utc | 52
I wish we could edit our own comments before, say, fifteen minutes has passed..
anyway, Information Clearing House has the doc available in three parts as bit torrent and as a transcript.
Posted by: fauxreal | Jan 23 2005 0:30 utc | 53
Wow. I knew some of this stuff but by no means all:
America’s cultural peculiarities (as seen from Europe) are well documented: the nation’s marked religiosity, its selective prurience,[1] its affection for guns and prisons (the EU has 87 prisoners per 100,000 people; America has 685), and its embrace of the death penalty. As T.R. Reid puts it in The United States of Europe, “Yes, Americans put up huge billboards reading ‘Love Thy Neighbor,’ but they murder and rape their neighbors at rates that would shock any European nation.” But it is the curiosities of America’s economy, and its social costs, that are now attracting attention.
Americans work much more than Europeans: according to the OECD a typical employed American put in 1,877 hours in 2000, compared to 1,562 for his or her French counterpart. One American in three works more than fifty hours a week. Americans take fewer paid holidays than Europeans. Whereas Swedes get more than thirty paid days off work per year and even the Brits get an average of twenty-three, Americans can hope for something between four and ten, depending on where they live. Unemployment in the US is lower than in many European countries (though since out-of-work Americans soon lose their rights to unemployment benefits and are taken off the registers, these statistics may be misleading). America, it seems, is better than Europe at creating jobs. So more American adults are at work and they work much more than Europeans. What do they get for their efforts?
Not much, unless they are well-off. The US is an excellent place to be rich. Back in 1980 the average American chief executive earned forty times the average manufacturing employee. For the top tier of American CEOs, the ratio is now 475:1 and would be vastly greater if assets, not income, were taken into account. By way of comparison, the ratio in Britain is 24:1, in France 15:1, in Sweden 13:1.[2] A privileged minority has access to the best medical treatment in the world. But 45 million Americans have no health insurance at all (of the world’s developed countries only the US and South Africa offer no universal medical coverage). According to the World Health Organization the United States is number one in health spending per capita – and thirty-seventh in the quality of its service.
As a consequence, Americans live shorter lives than West Europeans. Their children are more likely to die in infancy: the US ranks twenty-sixth among industrial nations in infant mortality, with a rate double that of Sweden, higher than Slovenia’s, and only just ahead of Lithuania’s – and this despite spending 15 percent of US gross domestic product on “health care” (much of it siphoned off in the administrative costs of for-profit private networks). Sweden, by contrast, devotes just 8 percent of its GDP to health. The picture in education is very similar. In the aggregate the United States spends much more on education than the nations of Western Europe; and it has by far the best research universities in the world. Yet a recent study suggests that for every dollar the US spends on education it gets worse results than any other industrial nation. American children consistently under-perform their European peers in both literacy and numeracy.[3]
this is the kind of accounting that matters to me, dunno about the rest of yez. and the stock response is that, yeah, life is cushy in Europe but it’s stagnant and hidebound, or impersonal and bureaucratic…
Very well, you might conclude. Europeans are better – fairer – at distributing social goods. This is not news. But there can be no goods or services without wealth, and surely the one thing American capitalism is good at, and where leisure-bound, self-indulgent Europeans need to improve, is the dynamic generation of wealth. But this is by no means obvious today. Europeans work less: but when they do work they seem to put their time to better use. In 1970 GDP per hour in the EU was 35 percent below that of the US; today the gap is less than 7 percent and closing fast. Productivity per hour of work in Italy, Austria, and Denmark is similar to that of the United States; but the US is now distinctly outperformed in this key measure by Ireland, the Netherlands, Norway, Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, …and France.[4]
America’s longstanding advantage in wages and productivity – the gift of size, location, and history alike – appears to be winding down, with attendant consequences for US domination of the international business scene. The modern American economy is not just in hock to international bankers with a foreign debt of $3.3 trillion (28 percent of GDP); it is also increasingly foreign-owned. In the year 2000, European direct investment in the US exceeded American investment in Europe by nearly two fifths. Among dozens of emblematically “American” companies and products now owned by Europeans are Brooks Brothers, DKNY, Random House, Kent Cigarettes, Dove Soap, Chrysler, Bird’s Eye, Pennzoil, Baskin-Robbins, and the Los Angeles Dodgers.
Europeans even appear to be better at generating small and medium-size businesses. There are more small businesses in the EU than in the United States, and they create more employment (65 percent of European jobs in 2002 were in small and medium-sized firms, compared with just 46 percent in the US). And they look after their employees much better[…]
this is definitely not a picture I had of Europe — the small-business aspect. and since I happen to believe that small businesses are (or can be) more creative, interesting, dynamic, competitive, responsive to customers, and generally fun-compatible this is really interesting. who’d-a thought, Euroland less of a Dilbert nightmare than Amurka.
anyway, Judt writes well, I am glad to see him take Rifkin down a peg or two (Rifkin is bursting with great ideas but he irritates me for the same reasons Judt cites here), and it’s a thought provoking book review… I wish he wouldn’t repeat the old bromide about “generating” wealth though — wealth is only ever temporarily concentrated, not generated. it’s an entropic universe, for heaven’s sake… [grumpy old noises]
While you were in Iraq: North Korea: ‘We have the Atom Bomb’
Posted by: Anonymous | Jan 23 2005 2:48 utc | 56
another extract from my play ‘terrible knowledge’ – it is a dark offering i make – but at this moment – all that i feel i am capable of :
They do not know me. When I worked for their police the people under interrogation though that I was an American. Most think I am an eccentric old man who chooses to live out his life in a snakepit. They do not move away from me as they once did. I have changed the nature of history. This is certain. One cannot think of my country without remembering me. Yet I cannot speak or I know what will happen. They want me to shut up. To keep quiet. These insects who admonish me because I am still not ashamed of what I have done. They cannot make me forget. I remember. I remember every day. I remember every moment. I have photographs of it all in my head. When I speak a picture passes before my eyes. I can pick out this or that. I can locate where I was. Why am I here ? Who will answer me? They are the men without honour. They are the men without homes. They forget. Yet I see them all line up in front of him. Worshipping him. I am a simple man but there is no place for worship in my heart. He was a tool. As a tool in changing our history he had no equal. That was all. He had made mistakes but these men were borne in mistakes. It was 1943. I am standing in a hospital block. With a doctor. I have come to seem om over some administrative matter. An account I remember of how many Poles we could send him for medical experiments. He was going through them at a rate of knots. It seems we had only given him a few thousand and the next week he would be asking for more. I knew his experiments were valuable. I didn’t have to be told a sob story to give him a few more thousand. It was simply an administrative manner. He was not looking after his records. That is a crime I am not prepared to put up with. He was an educated man. He knew how to put pen to paper. It was unforgiveable that he allowed this lapse to occur in the records. It didn’t matter to me how many he took. Or how quickly they went. It t didn’t interest me at all. We would have been prepared to tip the whole of Poland in his laboratory if that’s what he wanted. I was seeing him because he had allowed nearly nine months to pass without making full reports for the records. How many. And from where. Ages. Sex. What particular experiments. Results of tests. Cause of death. He had slopped around the books like a Ruhr mineworker. It was shameful. I had to clear up this business before it got any worse. I was not prepared to put up with it. He had to be reprimanded. Imagine. He had been responsible for I suppose about 50,000. No. It was 60,000. Yes. I remember — 60,000. Unbelievable. The task of fixing his records was going to be a nightmare. Others would have faked it. It was not in my nature to do so. We would have to go back over all the records. Einsatzgruppen reports. The official minutes of Judenrat meetings in the ghetto. Transports. Departures and arrivals. Absolutely incredible. A gargantuan task you can imagine. This doctor’s name. Dr Otto Stahlecker. A brilliant man. A complete genius. Top in his field. Excellent work. Much valued assistance to the war effort and to future scholarship. He was assisted in his work by a large chemical company that was very interested in his research. Had set up this establishment. A job for him after the conflict certainly. All these men had an eye on work they would do after our troubles were over. One of his assistants had me wait for him in his office. Pristine on one level. It was absolutely chaotic on the other. Everything in the room seemed to be arranged by a man of stern character except there were papers in every imaginable place. Unbelievable. The room otherwise could have passed for my own except he had a framed photograph of Pope Pius on the wall with a quote neatly typed underneath it. It said of our war on the Russians that this was a war of high minded gallantry in defense of the foundations of Christian culture. But those papers. It was like a whoosh of wind had brought a mountain of papers to land in this otherwise orderly office. I was irritated by this carelessness so I went about the office picking them up and putting them into neatly ordered piles. His information was all over the place. A little folder had notes on what experiments he had carried out on a gypsy family from Belgium. From these notes he had carried out experiments on the whole family. 24 people I believe. Time of arrival. Time of death. What they died from. A most interesting report. I was reading it and he came in. Saying something to the effect that he was pleased to see I was interested in his work. I nodded assent and I introduced myself even though it was clear he knew who I was. I have to see you on certain matters I told him. They cannot wait any longer. I told him in the gravest possible terms that he had to get his house in order or I would bring a whirlwind down on him. I don’t care what you do to the filthy scum I said. Just put it on paper and put that paper through the proper channels. Do this work as quickly as you are getting through them or I will descend on you like the devil. You want more don’t you I said. Certainly. Yes, of course. It is of the utmost importance he said. I am a scientist. There can be no question of the transports stopping he said. I have much to be thankfull for. I am happy that you have found my work important enough. Then do your paperwork I screamed at him. Do it immediately. If I had to chase people like you all over the place the real work would never get done. Am I making myself perfectly clear. It would be a most unpleasant experience for both of us if I had to return here to clear up these affairs. He was most chastened. Offering me this and that to placate me. He wasn’t at the university now I thought. He was amongst the minds of our nation. We were blessed with genius who had a sincere love for the nation in their heart. It would take us to lofty places. Of this I was sure
i am rereading the piece because it will be performed in denmark – & the terrible resonances – i wrote it during the ‘first’ gulf war & it was very filtered by the iran contra hearings & all their liars – north pointdexter et al – & the filth are still there taking our hearts apart & rubbing our noses in their shit
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jan 23 2005 2:54 utc | 57
those photos b are like those taken by the police battallions & einsatzgruppen – they are chillingly close – fear squalor destruction death
as dylan sd what’s the price for going through all these things twice
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jan 23 2005 3:02 utc | 58
Mother Cosmos, rememberinggiap… it makes it hard to breathe.
Posted by: Kate_Storm | Jan 23 2005 3:40 utc | 59
Dear Gawd the Americans are losing it… totally losing it…
Help, I’m stuck in a bad adaptation of a Philip K Dick novel…
stan goff’s latest ends w/ a similar conclusion to that expressed in this thread by Blackie – it’s time for some new, not-so-selective, perception management That’s our job now, I’m thinking. To make them see what they don’t want to see.
to see means to see in relation – rudolf arnheim
thank you, rememberinggiap, for sharing those extracts
Posted by: b real | Jan 23 2005 6:50 utc | 62
Middle of the night … socks scared off:
Outcry over creation of GM smallpox virus
Hardliner slips into the team
Commandos Get Duty on U.S. Soil as Antiterrorism Efforts Expand (NY Times – you might need to go to Bugmenot.com for a login and password)
W and Dostoevsky
Posted by: Kate_Storm | Jan 23 2005 11:17 utc | 63
Addition to the NYT article Kate linked to above with some interesting documents:
Codenames – DECIPHERING U.S. MILITARY PLANS, PROGRAMS AND OPERATIONS IN THE 9/11 WORLD
Also a Washington Post article (via TheSunHerald) confirms the recent Hersh piece on secret DoD troops and intelligence and prepares for Cuba:
Pentagon reinterprets law to expand Rumsfeld’s role
The Pentagon, expanding into the CIA’s historic bailiwick, has created a new espionage arm and is reinterpreting U.S. law to give Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld broad authority over clandestine operations abroad, according to interviews with participants and documents obtained by The Washington Post.
The previously undisclosed organization, called the Strategic Support Branch, arose from Rumsfeld’s written order to end his “near total dependence on CIA” for what is known as human intelligence. Designed to operate without detection and under the defense secretary’s direct control, the Strategic Support Branch deploys small teams of case officers, linguists, interrogators and technical specialists alongside newly empowered special operations forces.
…
According to an early planning memorandum to Rumsfeld from Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the focus of the intelligence initiative is on “emerging target countries such as Somalia, Yemen, Indonesia, Philippines and Georgia.” Myers and his staff declined to be interviewed.
…
“Operations the CIA runs have one set of restrictions and oversight, and the military has another,” said a Republican member of Congress with a substantial role in national security oversight, declining to speak publicly against political allies. “It sounds like there’s an angle here of, ‘Let’s get around having any oversight by having the military do something that normally the [CIA] does, and not tell anybody.’ That immediately raises all kinds of red flags for me. Why aren’t they telling us?”
…
Four people with firsthand knowledge said defense personnel have already begun operating under “non-official cover” overseas, using false names and nationalities.
…
One scenario in which Pentagon operatives might play a role, O’Connell said, is this: “A hostile country close to our borders suddenly changes leadership. We would want to make sure the successor is not hostile.”
The last reference is to Cuba of course.
Rumsfelds new HumInt branch is lead by Col. George Waldroup (WaPo Some Question Background of Unit’s Leader – Inexperienced Personnel Cited As a Risk to Espionage Work) who has not much training in intelligence but is a rabit anti-Cuban: Elian Plus One – An INS agent discloses blatant anti-Cuban sentiment surrounding last year’s raid, and apparent attempts at a coverup. The result? He’s threatened.
Top management set the tone, Ramirez claims. He has a picture of a flag he says hung in the office of assistant district director George Waldroup long before — and after — the Gonzalez raid. Above it a bumper sticker reads, “American by birth, Texan by the grace of God.” The green-and-yellow flag sports a version of the Miami city seal and six bananas. “Banana Republic,” it reads. Many of South Florida’s Hispanics consider that term to be a blatant anti-Cuban slur.
As soon as something happens to Castro, these guys will take over Cuba.
The trial ballon for more US troops to Iraq is hidden in this WaPo piece U.S. Plans New Tack After Iraq Elections
“We have to train the Iraqi security forces to stand on their own. Can resources already in Iraq be shifted over from offensive operations to handle training of the Iraqi forces, or are we going to have to send over more people specifically for that mission?” said a Pentagon official familiar with Iraq policy. “The more you train the Iraqis, the better off everyone will be, but to shift people away from offensive operations has its obvious drawbacks.”
i’ve got permission to create coffee table books for several actual coffee houses here in new orleans.this thread has had some great(and some horrible)links tonight.rgiaps play very moving.i’m adding some quotes from hitlers speaches among others of his ilk.pictures from iraq,some riverbend posts,info on use of depleted ur. etc.(the conservatives will also creating their own book)i want mine to make people stop think cry and just overall find themselves effected in some way.any suggestions appreciated.thanks.
also jerome i have never been able to manage to post on le speakeasy,and seem to get lost in the maze at times(from earlier)
Posted by: onzaga | Jan 23 2005 12:09 utc | 66
if you have something good and dont want to waste space here email me at eufafba@cox.net,this came to me after the protest here thursday so i made the rounds and asked if this was acceptable and got a thumbs up.not a bad idea maybe we can start doing this all over the US i think it might be a good way to reach those who have no clue what is being done in their names. soma kicking can no longer hit the keys,back to the shadows.
Posted by: onzaga | Jan 23 2005 12:32 utc | 67
I have started aEurope vs America thread over at Le Speakeasy (I hope that the discussion can go on on this topic for more than a few days, which is why i put the thread over there).
Also go see my Kos diary on the same subject.
Posted by: Jérôme | Jan 23 2005 13:48 utc | 69
DeAnander,
The Ford Synn looks like a motoring fort for the nobles in America to travel from their gated communities to the inner sanctums of the inner cities where they steal from the rable. On the way they must make sure they don’t see the rable and in case the rable approaches them they can intomb their rolling fortrice to keep them out.
Man am I cynical. But I have no reason lately that would change my attitude any other way.
b: I love the Bushie flag in the dog shit. Germans do have a since of humor. I think it’s great.
Posted by: jdp | Jan 23 2005 15:04 utc | 70
b- reminds me of the poster that I saw with Bush on one side, Hitler on the other, and the words:
same shit, different asshole.
Posted by: fauxreal | Jan 23 2005 15:12 utc | 71
De: Europe IS small business, basically, despite all the Zola and Dickens stuff of old about big factories and a few behemoths of transnational corporations that come from there. IMHO, any successful economic and job policy there has to be based on the fact that big companies are of limited interest and should specifically target small business. Of course, the drawback is that it’s tougher to have strong unions, and since their numbers have been seriously reduced even in big businesses, it’s quite bad. (not that trade unions are that effective in the US, where they should be).
That Ford car is an abomination. I don’t have any other word for it. Beside, this stuff can still easily be taken down with a RPG shot, so it’s just window-dressing for stupid gated communities.
GM smallpox? They’re too confident and begin to act openly; that may be their downfall. This crap is the deadliest shit humans ever had to deal with, and only barely known future crap like the bird flu or some unknown nasty bugs of the next centuries may compete with it. Even the Black Plague was less scary and damaging than smallpox let loose in a totally unexposed population. Death ratio of 60-90%.
B: Cuba or Venezuela. Both probably. My opinion has always been that a move in Haiti was just the prologue to an action in Cuba; better surround the whole island before doing something funny there. That said, I’m not sure the locals would welcome the Marines with roses. And moving against Castro, even despite his moderately bad PR image abroad, would be very bad right now – openly moving against Chavez would be political suicide, nearly as bad in PR as attacking Iran unprovoked.
Posted by: Clueless Joe | Jan 23 2005 17:19 utc | 72
perhaps that new ford vehicle will come in handy for those engaged in dissapearing people locally, once we get to that stage. sorta strikes me as a paddywagon…
Posted by: b real | Jan 23 2005 18:16 utc | 73
the ford vehicle is an obscenity. I know it when I see it 🙂
scary talk around here lately. it’s making my neck hairs prickle. death squads inside the US? look out, Judi Bari. look out, Medea. hell, look out, all of us. tinkering with the smallpox germ? that’s prima facie evidence of the Death Cult right there.
I watched “Children of Heaven” last night (Iranian film) and it made many impressions on me… deep sorrow for the impact of the Mullah Regime on the life of the people (the little girls chanting in unison their love for the State and the Leader, the streets populated almost exclusively by men, the very few women walking hurriedly, swathed in black)… the maddening reminder that gated communities are nothing new and are the same, the same, the same the world over… the pathos and heroism of poverty, and its damages… and above all the realisation that these alleys, these suburbs, these people could be the next to be obliterated by US bombs.
I felt last night as though no consideration of my own — career, family, retirement — was more important than whatever it takes to stop the US before the next invasion, the next bombing campaign. if we must have a complete economic crash, if we must be bought up at pennies on the dollar and colonised by China, if we must suffer a world boycott and shunning as a rogue nation, if we must have civil war — if that is what it takes to stop the imperial fantasy, then so be it. through the magic of film I was able to see the faces and hear the voices of the next set of civilian victims, the music of their language, the grace and squalor of their architecture, the laughter of children and the good manners of elderly shopkeepers, the posturing of the wealthy and the determination of the impoverished. the shredding of all that humanity by our Stupid Bombs and our grotesque anti-personnel mines and our deliberate wielding of disease and malnutrition as weapons of war — it is unbearable to contemplate. it was unbearable the first time and the second time and the third time and every time. how shall we bear it yet again? how can we stop the tide of yapping triumphalism, of cynical corporate conquistadorism, of what mike rivero or mickey z might call flag-waving moronity?
how, while Americans slaver and drool over heavily armoured SUVs with built-in entertainment centres?
DeA,
Seen from CH (the picky Arrogant Swiss!), spending in the US on education – health – disability – unemployment – early childhood care (and so on) is garbled and inefficient, expensive and misguided.
Why? Pork. US taxes are very high, the money is pissed away to anyone, no efforts are made at setting up principles, coordinating, saving, thinking things out, being rational and kind. Ideology often trumps practicality or common sense.
Just one example: Children from poor families cost a bundle, more than your middle class manager ever dreamed – thousands of dollars per year. I know one expert who advices on individual cases – he is paid 200 dollars an hour. (No precise numbers, sorry.)
Rather than decent, sanitary housing, and some child care arrangement that makes sense, in that it keeps the child cheerful and alive, in school, provided with food that is healthy and suitable (meaning *not* the US agri. surplus force fed – which really happens, mostly in the form of processed meat and cheese and sugary drinks and desserts), *expert* measures are applied.
Mothers are given diet sheets and monitored, ordered to become PC. They should also, when single, go and work, thus ensuring that their children are left alone, even when sick. Employers will make no concessions. As mothers cannot handle these demands, more expert medical and intrusive psychological advice will be offered. All of it completely beside the point.
Nobody will force the poor families landlords to provide decent heat or repair (mold, asbestos, toxic pesticides, water infliltrations, etc.) as that would be interfering in another sphere – the sacrosanct economy.
Nobody will say to a poor mother: Obviously, without a functioning car and decent child care when you are gone you cannot hold down a job. Medicos dont care about cars! Bus routes are not their problem. Decent child care? Duh – mothers are supposed to do it.
Children die of asthma in the US – after huge costs, expensive medication, even hospitalisation….
Just one example I am rabid about.
Posted by: Blackie | Jan 23 2005 18:50 utc | 75
DeA, with posts like your latest on this thread and others (Stoy had a similar one on another thread), it is – in addition to the fact that Europeans are quite impotent when it comes to inflicting harm on the US – impossible for any reasonable person to wish that people like you are harmed. And there are so many of you. I hope it won’t take a world boycott or a Chinese colonisation or a civil war or anything else to stop the imperial madness. It ought to crumble under its own pretensions and bigotry. And, primarily, I don’t even wish this for your sake, but for my own.
Posted by: teuton | Jan 23 2005 19:12 utc | 76
DeA, with posts like your latest on this thread and others (Stoy had a similar one on another thread), it is – in addition to the fact that Europeans are quite impotent when it comes to inflicting harm on the US – impossible for any reasonable person to wish that people like you are harmed. And there are so many of you. I hope it won’t take a world boycott or a Chinese colonisation or a civil war or anything else to stop the imperial madness. It ought to crumble under its own pretensions and bigotry. And, primarily, I don’t even wish this for your sake, but for my own.
Posted by: teuton | Jan 23 2005 19:12 utc | 77
@blackie no quarrel here. the US is in general idiotically [I use the word in the classical sense] determined to ignore the old saying about an ounce of prevention being worth a pound of cure. but I suspect this is inherent in the capitalist system, because there is always more profit, more career opportunity, more middlemen involved in the cure than in the prevention. prevention is simply not as profitable a business as endless, flailing, self-defeating bandaids and imperfect “cures”.
the medical industry in the US is huge, and a huge chunk of it is dedicated to solving problems artificially inflicted by itself and other industries. they all feed each other in an endless ponzi scheme. Illich was so very right about this aspect of late industrial capitalism — “expertisation” and professionalisation becoming dysfunctional and counterproductive, systems being set up for maximum money-squeezing rather than efficiency of delivered service.
zBs, the average US prisoner costs the taxpayer $30K/year to house, feed, and abuse. remember how many of ’em we have per 100K pop? there are millions of people in the US (outside prison, or at least outside prison walls) trying to live on a salary of less than $30K/year. we are not willing to give those people assistance, but we are willing to spend whatever it takes to keep someone behind bars for years for cannabis possession or shoplifting. why? because the prison industry is profitable — not to the taxpayer who pays its operating costs, but to the army of incarceration professionals who staff it, the construction companies who build new prisons, the suppliers of uniforms and shop rags and institutional fodder, and of course the corporations who get to use prison labour at below market wages for their private gain. the “prison industrial complex” is another of those insane scams — shell games, ripoffs, scandalous embezzlements of public funds — that make the US the hideously dysfunctional Disneyland it is today.
it seems to me axiomatic in a monetist, capitalist society that the worst, least efficient way of doing anything will generate the most “GDP” and therefore present the most opportunity for profiteering and cream-skimming. better yet is to do things so badly that they must be done several times over! so I think it is inevitable that in a culture oriented to private profit as its structural principle, the quality and efficiency of all services and infrastructure, and the value per dollar of all public works, will decline precipitously even as the value per dollar and the feature-richness (though probably not the inherent quality) of superficial consumer goods may rise. as long as we do things in the way that “generates” the most profit, we will do things in a stupid, inefficient, self-defeating way. the efficient way is frugal, elegant, forward-thinking, minimising of effort and risk — all that would limit the opportunities for profiteering.
in the US, there is No Accounting For Waste.
end of rant. it makes me rabid too…
DeA, right, I know, I was just trying , with concrete examples, to illustrate the mismatch between High Costs and Poor Results in the US, in the social and health area. (Schooling, too.)
Bunch of scammers… Illich did illuminate it…
No, a US prisoner costs around 22, 000 dollars per year.
(- not worth quarelling about the sums – just figs. read here and there – big regional, situational variation -)
As you pointed out:
Many work, thus earning money first of all for their bosses (large or local companies that subcontract), but for themselves too, cutting their incarceration costs to the taxpayer by a little. Prison biz in the US is a huge money earner, a sure investment (not detailed in bank fliers..)
Lock the workers up, get the taxpayer to pay for their housing and food, and pay them a pittance. China does the same by the way. The only two ‘large’ or ‘semi-developed’ countries that do that, afaik. Walmart sells goods from both, afaik, but the money trail is murky.
The pertinent part of “capitalism”, here, is the “laissez-faire.”
Posted by: Blackie | Jan 23 2005 20:01 utc | 80
DeA,
Thought the link to the Ford vehicle said it all — a combination of Brinks truck, armored car, and Pope-Mobile –money, military, and morality. Sad commentary to think this would be popular, a people so fear laden to desire such an illusion. Do you think you could get one with the presidential seal painted on the hood?
Posted by: anna missed | Jan 23 2005 20:13 utc | 81
ANANOVA – Police in Germany are hunting pranksters who have been sticking
miniature US flags into piles of dog poo in public parks. Josef Oettl,
parks administrator for Bayreuth, said: “This has been going on for about
a year now, and there must be 2,000 to 3,000 piles of excrement that have
been claimed during that time.” The series of incidents was originally
thought to be some sort of protest against the US-led invasion of Iraq.
And then when it continued it was thought to be a protest against
President George W. Bush’s campaign for re-election. . . Legal experts say
there is no law against using faeces as a flag stand and the federal
constitution is vague on the issue.
Link
Posted by: biklett | Jan 23 2005 20:45 utc | 82
Any comments on the news about this allegedly impending
oil pact between Venezuela and China? Sounds like the last thing the US can afford over the next years.
Posted by: teuton | Jan 23 2005 22:03 utc | 83
Teuton – Canada and Venezuela will ALWAYS be in the US ‘ sphere of influence, because, quite simply, if the US Army needs to take the assets (in a situation of open conflict with China), it will (or simpler- it can prevent anyone else from getting it)
Having commercial ties or even pipelines to the Pacific still makes sense for Canada in Venezuela – by offering another outlet for their demand, it ensures that in times of peace, the US pay the full market price for the asset, and not just the price they can force through their monopsony (sole buyer) position.
Posted by: Jérôme | Jan 23 2005 22:41 utc | 84
Feed the Dogs Well and Start Collecting: American Foreign-Policy Comedy Hour Is Coming Your Way.
Posted by: Anonymous | Jan 24 2005 3:00 utc | 85
OK this is funny, really.
Remember in 2001 when BushCo, acting on a request (in writing!) from Exxon, twisted arms to get the scientist Robert Watson deposed as chair of the IPCC because he took global warming too seriously? The Bushies lobbied (including threatening to withhold aid or commit trade war) several vulnerable countries and managed to get their hand picked guy, Pachauri, into the position. It was a minor scandal in the scientific community at the time, and an early sign of the strong-arm style, corporate coddling, and obfuscatory intentions of the US regime.
Well now Pachauri, having reviewed 4 more years of data, has this to say (and BushCo must be fuming):
He told delegates: “Climate change is for real. We have just a small window of opportunity and it is closing rather rapidly. There is not a moment to lose.” […] He added that, because of inertia built into the Earth’s natural systems, the world was now only experiencing the result of pollution emitted in the 1960s, and much greater effects would occur as the increased pollution of later decades worked its way through. He concluded: “We are risking the ability of the human race to survive.”
Which just shows to go ya. Sometimes you can rig the game and put your own ringer in place of an honest scientist, and damned if your own ringer doesn’t unexpectedly grow a backbone and tell the truth after all.
There is one tiny corner of Cuba that will forever America be. It is a place where innocent people are held without charge for years, beyond international law, human decency and the mythical glow of Lady Liberty’s torch. It is a place where torture is common, beating is ritual and humiliation is routine. They call it Guantánamo Bay.
…
You would think that if the Americans are truly interested in expanding freedom and ending tyranny in Cuba, let alone the rest of the world, Guantánamo Bay would be as good a place to start as any. But the captives in Guantánamo should not ask for the keys to their leg irons any time soon. Ms Rice was not referring to the outpost of tyranny that her boss created in Cuba, but the rest of the Caribbean island, which lives in a stable mixture of the imperfect and the impressive.
In short, while the US could liberate a place where there are flagrant human rights abuses and over which they have total control, it would rather topple a sovereign state, which poses no threat, through diplomatic and economic – and possibly military – warfare that is already causing chaos and hardship.
Posted by: Fran | Jan 24 2005 8:53 utc | 87
I posted about this before, but it still makes me rabid – a word used on another thread and a new addition to my English vocabulary.
For the record: “U.S. declares Iraqis can not save their own seeds”
“As part of sweeping “economic restructuring” implemented by the Bush Administration in Iraq, Iraqi farmers will no longer be permitted to save their seeds, which include seeds the Iraqis themselves have developed over hundreds of years. Instead, they will be forced to buy seeds from US corporations. That is because in recent years, transnational corporations have patented and now own many seed varieties originated or developed by indigenous peoples. In a short time, Iraq will be living under the new American credo:
Pay Monsanto, or starve.
Posted by: Fran | Jan 24 2005 11:00 utc | 88
Neocons Rewrite History
Now smug with their victory and mandate, the Neocons are now rewriting the history of America to omit any signs of the left or any opposition. Long before the Bush II campaign, historical revisionist action groups such as “Wallbuilders,” a fundamentalist Christian historical revisionist organization, has pumped out all kinds of myths that “prove” the founding father intended America to be a “Christian-only” nation. For a decade its founder, David Barton, has has quite a cult following in the let’s-program-our kids home school movement. The fact that he has been a overnight guest in the White House during the Bush’ first term (a night or two in the Lincoln Room) shows the tremendous power Barton now exercises over a home school propaganda empire (just do a web search for “Wallbuilders” and see how many hit you get!). Barton spins his web with church seminars and punchy, out of context quotes (occasionally made up) from the founding fathers and later 19th century political rhetoric during the post Civil War religious revival. Among other howlers, you’ll find that Barton claims both Jefferson and Thomas Paine were conservative Christians whose holy legacy was stolen by the left. It is nonsense through and through but that never stopped the Sun Myung Moon funded religious right before!
Here’s a link to a critque of Barton’s myth machine:
Link to Sects, Lies and Videotape
And a link to the Barton’s organization:
Link to Wallbuilders
But the lunacy doesn’t stop there! Bush and his neocon myth makers are also attacking more recent history. Recently, the adminstration had ordered that the eight minute video show at the Lincoln Memorial edit out all images or Vietnam War protesters, pro-gay rallies, and other events of the left “because Lincoln would have never supported them!” Peer organization is, as far as I know, the only organization that is trying to make this public and put a stop this absurd censorship. I’ve provided a link.
Link to Peer Organization article
It makes me wonder what’s next? Book burnings? Late night torch lit parades? Crystal Night in Blue States? Bush Youth? The latter appears to be happening with neocon brainwashing their children both with Barton’s nonsense and highly partisan children’s books (such as Help: A Liberal is Under my Bed! The 49’ers (those who do not support Bush) are already weary of the propaganda and manipulation. Its not letting up after the election. In my opinion, its getting worse!
Posted by: Diogenes | Jan 24 2005 12:47 utc | 89