Abduction of American Reporter in Iraq Blacked Out By U.S. News Outlets firedoglake has more.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jan 10 2006 21:48 utc | 4

Noisette, I linked that article in the previous OT thread and I must agree, truly a fascinating if not frightening read.
On the prev thread also, Debs sez:
Just like Pappy before him who refused to assist the fundamentalists right after President Hussein had successfully prevented rogue elements of his army from assisting the Iranian takeover of Iraq, George W is not going to ride with the Islamo-facists.
GWB is just a passenger on this rollercoaster to hell, yes it is. Wait for Nukes over Tehran and Tel Aviv to be a broadway hit.
Meanwhile, Vlad the Slav is moving to checkmate maybe; but methinks he has cornered the European Queen, Ms. Merkel.

Posted by: Cloned Poster | Jan 10 2006 22:09 utc | 6

@ Uncle $cam
Both firedoglake and the american media seem pretty slow compared to Moon of Alabama Ten and half hours beats almost three days that’s for sure.

Posted by: Spotter | Jan 10 2006 22:50 utc | 8

George W. Bush’s latest thoughtful speech

The American people know the difference between responsible and irresponsible debate when they see [sic] it. They know the difference between honest critics who question the way the war is being prosecuted and partisan critics who claim that we acted in Iraq because of oil, or because of Israel, or because we misled the American people. And they know the difference between a loyal opposition that points out what is wrong, and defeatists who refuse to see that anything is right.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jan 11 2006 1:00 utc | 10

Uncle, that speech was pure and simple bullshit. That asshole must think he’s the national daddy scolding the kids for getting out of line at the dinner table.
Rove and company are going to do what they blamed dems for, for years. They are going to be the mommy and daddy party “to keep you poor little children safe from those bad ol terrist in the war on terra.”
They are in full campaign mode already and there will be a dog fight this year. Bush knows he needs to drive his poll numbers back up and the only wat to do that is to attack and try to make the opposition look like idiot. (With Joe Biden tht ain’t hard.) The dems have got to get f—ing dirty. This being nice is bullshit. I cannot believe that shithead Bushie thinks he can scold like we’re little goddam kids. That really boils my blood.

Posted by: jdp | Jan 11 2006 3:09 utc | 12

@jdp
The dems are the problem. Consider, The ratchet effect.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jan 11 2006 3:20 utc | 14

Tom Delay is who all of us want to be when we grow up.
thanks for cleaning up my last link uncle.this one is good for a laugh

Posted by: annie | Jan 11 2006 4:25 utc | 16

@jj
Unca, isn’t that the website you suggested the other night – & he’s deleted yr. comments?
jj, that is certainly not what I said. I said his comment posting policies were not to my likings. For example, he wants to micro-manage his comments section, which btw, he has every right to do (my personal preferences are not to control comments) having sd that, the composition of his work intrigues me. He seems to get the importance of looking past the binary strait-jacket we find ourselves in.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jan 11 2006 5:02 utc | 18

Army’s Iraq Work Assailed by Briton

A senior British officer has written a scathing critique of the U.S. Army and its performance in Iraq, accusing it of cultural ignorance, moralistic self-righteousness, unproductive micromanagement and unwarranted optimism there.
…
In an article published this week in the Army magazine Military Review, British Brig. Nigel Aylwin-Foster, who was deputy commander of a program to train the Iraqi military, said American officers in Iraq displayed such “cultural insensitivity” that it “arguably amounted to institutional racism” and may have spurred the growth of the insurgency. The Army has been slow to adapt its tactics, he argues, and its approach during the early stages of the occupation “exacerbated the task it now faces by alienating significant sections of the population.”

WaPo has a PDF of the original article. The brigadier is right in my view. In some cases he should have been even more pointed.
The dangerous core problem he points to:

The U.S. Army ’s habits and customs, whilst in some respects very obviously products of American society,are also strikingly distinct, much more so than most militaries,to the extent that some individuals almost seem like military caricatures, so great is their intent on banishing all traces of the civilian within. U.S. Army soldiers are not citizen soldiers: they are unquestionably American in origin, but equally unquestionably divorced from their roots. Likewise, most armies to some extent live apart from their host civilian environment, but the U.S. Army has traditionally been more insular than most…

Posted by: b | Jan 11 2006 8:25 utc | 20

jj, I looked at the link. My guess is that it is just made up. How would you answer that uestion anyway?
“Yes!” “Okay, you go to B company.”
“Never.” “Okay you go over to this other camp.”

Posted by: jonku | Jan 11 2006 10:12 utc | 22

Uncle $cam, that was a great link you posted about the ratchet effect:

“The dems are the problem. Consider, The ratchet effect.”

Most effective description I’ve heard so far about the evolving situation. If you pay attention you can see what is coming.
I plan to be optimistic about it, there will always be “us against them” but if one educates oneself one can see that one can be both us and them. Or at least communicate with both sides.
At any rate I enjoyed this new point of view about a physical model of the American polity. I have a federal election coming up and this information has helped me decide who to vote for.

Posted by: jonku | Jan 11 2006 10:30 utc | 24

What motivates your contacts to si9gn up?
Poverty and testosterone.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jan 11 2006 10:50 utc | 26

U$,
“responsible” criticism is stating that “we needed to send more troops”. “Irresponsible” criticism is asserting that we shouldn’t have sent them in the first place.
“Responsible” criticism is saying that Bush made a mistake, but qualifying that he erred on the side of safety & security. Irresponsible criticism is stating that Bush knew darn well what he was doing and lied about the reasons for doing so.

Posted by: ralphieboy | Jan 11 2006 11:17 utc | 28

It seems the English army is in revolt. They’re the English army, not the British army. Although the cannon-fodder comes from all over Britain the leadership is totally english. Yeah there’s probably a few Campbells or Maguires halfway up the command chain but there were Campbells at Culloden, fighting with the English.
I digress hopelessly once more because what I wanted to point out was the Gruniad story where an english general, Sir Chinless-Wonder or somesuch is demanding that his Prime Minister Tony Bliar be impeached.

“General Sir Michael Rose, commander of UN forces in Bosnia in 1994, writes in today’s Guardian: “The impeachment of Mr Blair is now something I believe must happen if we are to rekindle interest in the democratic process in this country once again”. Britain was led into war on false pretences, he says. “It was a war that was to unleash untold suffering on the Iraqi people and cause grave damage to the west’s prospects in the wider war against global terror.”

Cool eh. Only trouble is I seriously doubt the poms would have any formal protocol for impeaching a janitor mush less a Prime Minister. I imagine Bliar serves at her majesty’s pleasure or something and getting that pox ridden old hag to do anything for anyone who isn’t herself is a big ask.
It seems that the army has got the shits in the same way that the US military did just before xmas.
Something or other must have happened and they’ve started to realise they are working for a one way valve, that they are expected to show loyalty to until the death but if they get up the waterway without propulsion they are on their own.
Bliar and Co will run for cover, and on the way, if necessary, they will give the canoe another push up the creek.
The penny has finally dropped. It took a while but we need to remember english army officers have to sit an IQ test and anyone who scores over 80 is sent off to the limp wristed, long-haired R.A.F.

Posted by: Debs is dead | Jan 11 2006 12:31 utc | 30

Planning the PR exit strategy

Iraq’s armed national resistance is willing to support an honorable American troop withdrawal and recognize “the interests of the US as a superpower,” according to a Baghdad source with intimate knowledge of the insurgents. He was interviewed this week in Amman, where he had driven twenty hours from Baghdad for conversations.
I interviewed this source, who insisted on anonymity, to explore the political aims of the resistance movement against the US occupation. Is theirs only a decentralized military strategy, or is there a shared set of demands that might lead to peace? The source, who is known and respected by several American media outlets, comes from one of Baghdad’s once-mixed neighborhoods of Sunnis, Shiites, Kurds and Christians. In his mid-40s, he ekes out a living as a guide and translator for visiting reporters and occasional peace activists. The source spoke with urgency about the need for greater American understanding of the Iraqi resistance, so far faceless in the West.
While recent surveys show 80 percent of Iraqis supporting a US military withdrawal, opposition voices are rarely ever reported in American public discourse. Security conditions do not permit the insurgents to establish an overt political arm, like Sinn Fein in Northern Ireland. Meanwhile, American officials celebrate the large Iraqi voter turnout in the December 15 elections while not acknowledging that most of those same voters favor a US withdrawal. Instead of heeding the Iraqi majority, Newsweek reported that American military officials accused the insurgents of “cynically using the election process” in a new strategy they called “talk and fight.”
The United States can be accused of the same designs, continuing its air war and offensive ground operations while attempting to co-opt local insurgents into an alliance with the “coalition” (a k a “occupation”) forces against the jihadists linked with Abu Musab al- Zarqawi. The “sticking point” in this US gambit is the insurgents’ demand for a timetable for US troop withdrawal. If the United States secretly decides to withdraw, which is a distinctly remote scenario, an “invitation” might be arranged with a red carpet and flowers. Otherwise, the insurgency will continue to develop in response to the occupation.
While the insurgency is essentially decentralized and local, it seems capable of achieving a political consensus where necessary, as obviously demonstrated in the several-day cease-fire arranged so that Iraqis, including supporters of the insurgents, could vote on December 15. The source from Baghdad, who spoke knowingly of the various local resistance groups, emphasized that a consensus exit strategy already has emerged. It was in this context that he mentioned respecting such US superpower interests as access to oil and avoidance of humiliation. He also informally outlined a proposed framework for ending the conflict, including these steps:
* Immediate inclusion of more opposition voices in the current discussion of how to reform the constitution. Groups like the Islamic scholars and clerics, and the newly formed National Dialogue Council, could politically represent the implicit demands of the resistance.
* Citizen diplomacy, possibly including direct talks with some resistance leaders, outside of Iraq, if security obstacles can be overcome.
* An announced US timetable for troop withdrawals, as voiced by the Cairo conference organized by the Arab League in November, which also endorsed the legitimacy of “national resistance,” as opposed to the jihadist path represented by Al Qaeda of Mesopotamia.
* A transitional new caretaker government, including representation of the opposition as well as main Kurdish and Shiite parties now controlling the Baghdad regime.
* A deadline for “free and democratic” elections for an inclusive parliament.
* A peacekeeping force, under the United Nations, composed of units from countries not involved in the occupation–for example, France, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan, Egypt, Algeria, Sudan, Yemen and Morocco.
* Renewed economic reconstruction, including contracts with American countries. As another Iraqi explained, “We don’t want to drink our oil. We want to sell it on the market.”
* Removal of Saddam Hussein and high-ranked Baathists must not erase the Iraqi national state. The new government would determine whom to punish and whom to restore from the Baath era.
Most of Iraq’s half-million formal professional army personnel, rendered jobless by a 2003 US decree, would be restored to military service to insure stability and protection in Sunni areas. Recent reports in the New York Times confirm that Sunnis are underrepresented in Iraqi security forces, which are dominated by the Kurdish peshmerga and pro-Iranian Shiite Badr militias.
Failure to accept an agenda along these lines, in the source’s view, will guarantee a continued war of national resistance alongside the Zarqawi-inspired terrorism campaign. On the other hand, he said, if the end of occupation is negotiated politically, “the Zarqawi group would shrink and die, and if they didn’t all disappear, we would finish them off in six months.”

Posted by: Cloned Poster | Jan 11 2006 15:32 utc | 32

i read somewhere last month(probably linked from here) israel/us was determined to strike iran before shipment of the defense systems from russia and the herald link suggests this also.
are we in a race to attack before they aquire the abilities to defend promoting the illusion they are preparing an attack?

Russia has signed a deal with Iran to sell 29 of its TOR M-1 Anti-Aircraft/Anti-Missile systems, a development that will complicate any planned pre-emptive attack on the rogue nation’s nuclear facilities. Russian officials claim the Tor system is “a weapon of defense” and does not represent a danger to the U.S. as long as Washington does not attack Iran.
The 9K331 Tor [SA-15 GAUNTLET land-based, SA-N-9 naval version] low-to-medium altitude SAM system is capable of engaging not only aircraft and helicopters but also RPVs, precision-guided weapons and low flying cruise missiles. The sophisticated Tor system could ensure reliable protection for government, industrial and military sites.
clip
The Achilles heel of the system remains its inability to generate effective real-time early warning and acting as a fully integrated system. The small number of surveillance radars could be engaged using PGM, or low-flying Tomahawk cruise missile strikes. Plenty of low-level approaches could be maintained along the ‘creases’ in the widely-spread air defense network caused by Iran’s mountainous terrain. The lack of centralized control and C4I network responsible for an overall national air defense could be exploited by deception and electronic warfare techniques. The bureaucratic harmony, as well as inter-service rivalry and distrust will only make things worse. Yet, the potential existence of two newly arrived batteries of Almaz S-300PMU, could dramatically change the situation and pose a significant challenge to any aggressor, especially if coordinated with low-altitude Tor systems functioning as “anti-PGM” elements.

Posted by: annie | Jan 11 2006 18:03 utc | 34

The investigator then started taking off her clothes – the soldier with the camera was filming everything. When she was in her underwear, she stood on top of me. She took off her underpants, she was wearing a sanitary towel, and drops of her menstrual blood fell on me and then she assaulted me. I tried to fight her off but the soldiers held me down with the chains forcefully and ruthlessly so that they almost cut my hands. I spat at her on her face; she put her hand on her dirty menstrual blood that had fallen on my body and wiped it on my chest.
This shameless woman was wearing a cross on a chain. The cross had a figure of a crucified man on it. She raised the cross and kissed it, and then she looked at me and said that this cross was a present for you Muslims. She stained her hands with her menstrual blood and wiped my face and beard with it. Then she got up, cleaned herself, put her clothes back on and left the room…then the soldiers took my hands and tied them to my feet on the ground. All the soldiers left once they had taken my clothes from the corner of the room and left me in this state – tied up, naked and smeared with [] menstrual blood…

Posted by: annie | Jan 11 2006 18:32 utc | 36

would the military use bandera’s moral disengagement methods to train american soldiers to fire on the general public?
are those soldiers and doctors originally ‘good people’ ?the powerevil.pdf file your link attached mentions as factors genetics, personality,character,and pathological tendencies,and integrity. jj’s question about the poster who said the military asked about the willingness to kill americans and jonku’s assertion it was made up
“Yes!” “Okay, you go to B company.”
“Never.” “Okay you go over to this other camp.”
makes me wonder if in fact these traits and characteristics are determined early resulting in personel choices leading to torture are directed towards those whose traits are most pliable or degenerate.
where are all those video tapes? he said the americans filmed everything.

Posted by: annie | Jan 11 2006 19:15 utc | 38

If one puts any weight behind Paul Craig Roberts, then according to him -and in addition- just as Mono (I think) said, we, America, is being carved out like a pumpkin and the seeds spit in our face.
Will the US Need an IMF Bail Out?
Just as Greg Palast said they would. Paraphrasing, he said now that the IMF has raped all the poor third world countries it can, they will be turning to North America to privatize and rape her.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jan 11 2006 20:17 utc | 40

Here’s an impt detail from Roberts art:
In 2005 for the first time on record consumer, business, and government spending exceeded the total income of the country. Net national savings actually fell.
Anybody else worried that behind the scenes those in the know see the xUS econ.has only its proverbial fingernails to keep it from flying over the abyss.
(Peak Oil/Global Warming could just be a convenient myth to provide cover for the elite & misdirection for the justifiable rage of the rest of us. You’re not broke ‘cuz we stole Everything; but ‘cuz your greed is risking the planet…Misdirection…Keep funding the environmental conjecture papers and NO Economics papers, as soros does.)

Posted by: jj | Jan 11 2006 20:42 utc | 42

Having problems with Typepad… I’ll test here.

Posted by: Monolycus | Jan 11 2006 21:15 utc | 44

Oh, and Uncle, just to add, it will be the same Bankers that raped the world who “IMF rescue” the USofA.
Good business.

Posted by: Cloned Poster | Jan 11 2006 22:58 utc | 46

If everything is wrong, pointing out that nothing is right is being a realist, not a defeatist.

Posted by: Brian Boru | Jan 12 2006 4:49 utc | 48

Michio Kakutani offers an excellent review of Paul Bremer’s My Year in Iraq.
This has also been discussed at EuroTribune, where the 4-th comment seems right on
the snark.

Posted by: Hannah K. O’Luthon | Jan 12 2006 7:18 utc | 50

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A U.S. Army general who helped set up operations at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq has asserted his right not to incriminate himself in the courts-martial of two soldiers accused of mistreating detainees there, The Washington Post reported on Thursday.
The move by Major Gen. Geoffrey Miller is the first time he has indicated he might have information that could implicate him in wrongdoing, the newspaper said, citing military lawyers. Invoking the right does not legally imply guilt it said.
U.S. general invokes right in Iraq cases – paper

Posted by: GM | Jan 12 2006 8:12 utc | 52

There are at least two striking assertions in this
Debka file report:

Israel is tied down by its prime minister unconscious in hospital. Its chief of staff, Lt. Gen- Dan Halutz conceded Monday that the fight against Iran’s nuclearization must be an international effort in which Israel cannot take the lead.

The intelligence consensus reaching our sources is that within six weeks to two months, the centrifuges will have produced enough enriched uranium to build a single nuclear weapon. Tehran has reached this point of no-return with no real opposition.

Naturally this is to be read with the customary grain of salt. In view of the clearly polemical nature of the source, it may well be nothing more than a continuation of a long campaign of sabre rattling, but it could also be an “intelligence leak” justifying the long
planned and threatened strike against Iran’s nuclear
facilities. If so, it seems that we are being offered a
timetable and a certification that the action will be
a joint U.S.-Israeli operation. Iran may indeed have
a substantial, dispersed and well-hardened nuclear program, but, to coin a phrase, we really don’t want to find that the smokescreens created on both sides of this
contention have merged to become a “mushroom cloud”.

Posted by: Hannah K. O’Luthon | Jan 12 2006 16:39 utc | 54

@Hanna – The intelligence consensus reaching our sources is that within six weeks to two months, the centrifuges will have produced enough enriched uranium to build a single nuclear weapon. Tehran has reached this point of no-return with no real opposition.
The latest estimates from the CIA say some 10 years. The Israeli estimates were also in years horizont. This is typical DEBKA desinformation or propaganda.
Iran will start to use a few centrifuges to test. They first have to learn to use these. To get high enriched Uranium in any decent quantities they need thousands running for quite a while. Debka also doesn´t explain how Iran could do that with IAEA looking at every move they do.

Posted by: b | Jan 12 2006 18:33 utc | 56

Yes, I saw the PBS documentry “Country Boys” these past few nights. And despite the fact that a soap-opera story of the so-called “American Dream” (How is it different from any other Nation’s dream?) was forcibly molded from the film footage during two+ mammoth years of editing, and despite many other outrages (the complete omission of the role of politics in determining the lives of those filmed), I found it extraordinary TV. PBS is to be commended for having the courage to air six uninterupted hours of the lives of real people; the fact that they were also part of America’s bourgeoning unclass makes it more so.
The six-hour, three part documentary covers three years in the parallel lives of two troubled high school boys attending a special school in eastern Kentucky. The atmosphere of this corner of Appalachia is drilled into the viewer by seemingly endless picturesque cuts of train trestles spanning forested hills, interspersed with contrasting cigarette ads, the often inadvertently humorous messages on Church billboards, and the ubiquitous lawn ads for the apparently coveted local elective position of “Jailor.” Of course, we can’t omit mentioning the cameras loving gaze upon the endless variety of “Hillbilly lawn ornaments”: rusted out hulks of ancient vehicles, and various other industrial flotsam and jetsam.
The participants in this project, the two boys and their families, are also to be commended for having the courage to appear before the camera at their worst moments: having temper-tantrums and making angry short-sighted decisions. Of course, there arise the obvious ethical issues of having a wealthy film crew from Boston film someone staying home from school because he “doesn’t have a ride.” Also, be aware that for all the outward trappings of cinema verite, the script is carefully molded. The narrative flow is provided by off screen narration from the two boys. We are not told who actually wrote this “shaping” material, nor when it was recorded: Often a sense of perspective leads one to suspect that it was much later.
While there was the disturbing undercurrent, or leitmotif that “one is solely responsible for one’s own actions,” the film sensitively portrayed the village that it really takes to raise successful children. The role of caring adults–who must also work out their own problems at the same time–as well as the role of “special schools” were commendably emphasized.
The role of tax policy and economic development patterns were completely ignored except for the throwaway line at the beginning that the government chose to throw some welfare at a bunch of hillbillies they thought were too dumb to succeed. The result is a close-up and personal view that quickly loses focus when put in greater perspective. We never learn what the adults do for a living in this picturesque corner of the world. We never see any representative of the area’s main industry, coal mining, nor do we see the disfiguring effects of coal mining, the hilltop leveling and the immense pools of waste which periodically break free and flood whole valleys, the ugly, orange-yellow residue on river banks and rocks left by acid mine drainage, or the invisible but ever increasing background radiation caused by the combustion of uranium and other heavy metal “contaminants” of coal.
People seem to age much faster than people do where I live, though this seems to be largely attributed to drink and not smoking or the coal miner’s nemesis, Black-lung disease. (People sure drink enough where I live, but maybe it just preserves them in Boston.) The execrable diet of the American underclass, and its role in learning disabilities such as ADD, or degenerative disease, such as diabetes, is not commented upon, though the preponderance of 300 lb. cherubs wadling through this film guzzling sugar drinks is striking. It seems the only way to maintain your figure in eastern Kentucky is to become an alchoholic.
This is certainly not activist TV; in fact PBS is a master at producing programming that, depending upon your political viewpoint, you can take any message you want from: If you are a liberal, the need for more poverty programs; if you are a conservative, the role of religion in saving people. People are treated as people, sui generis, a unique one-off specimen of life that neither interacts with its environment, nor effects it by its actions. People here are two dimensional, possesing the attributes of shape and form, but not time and its effects. The history and development of the Appalachian region are not considered in their shaping these individuals, their beliefs, or their struggles. They are, almost absurdly, portrayed as just modern Americans.
Nevertheless, it is perhaps too easy to criticize a work as unique and challenging as this for what it doesn’t do. What it suceeds at achieving–giving us a close-up and intelligent and sympathetic view of real people facing challenges and growing up–in essense a cinematic bildungsroman, is an extraordinary accomplishment. It stands not just above, but in a completely different universe, from network TV.
“Country Boys” (The term “Country”, somewhat of a misnomer, is used as an allusive euphemism for “Hillbilly”) will inevitably be compared to the ’70’s PBS documentary of the upper-class Lowd family, who experience the coming out of their son. They are similar in style and technique, actually quite revolutionary TV technique in the 70’s. The 180 degree difference in subject matter may be variously interpreted as representing the immense political, economic and sociological changes the country has undergone in the past thirty years, arguably few for the better.
It can be argued that this film “Manufactures Consent”, or serves to normalize the existence of this class of people, so necesary to the functioning of the ruling elite, in the minds of the rest of the populace. True, examples of the extensive religious and educational indoctrination (only one student in an entire class believes that, in the case of incest, abortion is justified) the students receive is documented: One sees the “Science” teacher taking Darwin to task for going against the teachings of the Bible, with the ridiculously reductivist comment, “I know I’m certainly not descended from an Ape.” But she apparently neglects to present any of the overwhelming evidence, from any field, that the world is more than 5000 years old. Nor does she cover any of the many implications of Darwin’s Theory of Natural Selection. Most egregiously, she perpetuates the misunderstanding of what a scientific theory is. To quote from Wikipedia, “In scientific usage, a theory does not mean an unsubstantiated guess or hunch, as it often does in other contexts. Scientific theories are never proven to be true, but can be disproven. All scientific understanding takes the form of hypotheses, or conjectures. A theory is in this context a set of hypotheses that are logically bound together…In various sciences, a theory is a logically self-consistent model or framework for describing the behavior of a certain natural or social phenomenon, thus either originating from or supported by experimental evidence (see scientific method). In this sense, a theory is a systematic and formalized expression of all previous observations made that is predictive, logical, testable, and has never been falsified.” Having a Science teacher, however well meaning she appears to be, who is ignorant of scientific method is almost like having an English teacher who is illiterate. The fact that ignorance such as this has not been proscribed and enforced, by rigorous standards at the national level, can only be a sign of its willful perpetuation within targeted populations by the elite. There are only so-many scientific jobs to go around, and we watch the boys being shunted into a “trade” track.
On a personal level, growing up in the Northeast and going to college in the Northwest, I had never met people like that in my youth. It wasn’t until my early thirties, working construction in St. Croix after Hurricane Hugo, that I first met, lived and toiled intimately with people of that class and world-view. It was certainly eye-opening and challenging and left me with enough stories to fill a book (Like the night one friend got drunk, stole another friend’s pet pig, threw a party, inviting the pig owner, among others, and roasted the pig. The owner did not find out until he had cleaned his plate and commented on how succulent the pork was. Then the real action began, resulting in a vendetta that rivalled the Hatfields and McCoys. One friend was indeed a real decendent of the McCoys.) In the end, people like that were so different from me in values, outlook and opportunity, that we almost existed in two separate universes. I could inhabit their world, and their struggles, but I could also find myself at a cocktail party or art opening the next night with the governor. Nevertheless, the experience changed me in subtle ways, so that now I am never fully comfortable with people of my own class and background; I can see through their prejudices and illusions too easily. I have become the perenial outsider.
Seeing “Country Boys”, I cannot shake the sad realization that this country will never go begging for soldiers for imperial conquest as long as social conditions like those portrayed exist. The corrosive, but also coercive, effects of poverty are all too apparent. All the actions of all the liberal activists on the two coasts are like dust in the wind before this vast army of underprivledge. Bill Frist may indeed be their senator, but he comes from a different universe entirely: The lack of democratic representation that the Supreme Court’s 1976 Buckley v. Valeo decision–equating money with free speech, protected by the 1st amendment–has engendered, is all too obvious. It would be far more valuable than “Country Boys” to cover the effects of Frist’s positions upon this element of his constituency. The lack of true democratic representation that the poor and underprivledged of America face is a subject crying for mainstream treatment.

Posted by: Malooga | Jan 12 2006 21:49 utc | 58

Thanks. Must be my own two sweaters and ankle high slippers, as well as ski cap, keeping me warm! Seriously, when I post something like this and re-read it, I want to puke with all the mistakes and misphrasings I find I made.

Posted by: Malooga | Jan 13 2006 0:35 utc | 60

Thanks, Malooga. BTW, Frist is from Tennessee. Mitch McConnell is theirs’, though, and I think he is worse. And the perennial outsider is a good place to be even if a little lonely sometimes. Namaste.

Posted by: lonesomeG | Jan 13 2006 2:51 utc | 62

Frist is from Tennesee; I erred because his family’s Humana empire is based in Louisville. Kentucky also has the incomparable Senator Bunning, who raised being a 19 game winner to an artform (he did win 20 once), in the days of four pitcher rotations when it wasn’t so special. Last accomplishment: holding office while senile.
@anna missed-
through what struck me over and over again, was the manner in which the social and political content (behyond the obvious) was indeed communicated. Its as if this content was the heartbeat of the film, thumping away underneath the narrative like a bass line…
All very beautifully stated, and I agree with you completely. All part of the PBS mastery: You can see what you want in it. I think you are better able to see what you do because of your experience in the area. A young up and coming republican working in some war boom industry or financial services on the eastern corridor wouldn’t see any of that; just that they all seem pretty “stupid” in the film.
I guess when I think about the film juxtaposed against the history of the country, two great themes come to mind. One is the inexorable, and ever increasing rate of development and of change. Grow, grow, grow, and then move on.
Eastern Kentucky lies at the border between French and English claimed territory. To this day, there remain many French place names. Kentucky was originally settled some 12,500 years ago by hunter-gathers. The natives underwent five archeological stages of development, progressing to complex agricultural societies. Historical records show the area as populated by Shawnee and Iroquis, principally Cherokee. The first western exploration began a little over 300 years ago, about 1675. Over the next hundred years the fur trade with the Indians flourished. The first permanent western settlement occurred about 1775. Less than twenty years later, Kentucky was a state. Lincoln was born in Hardin County in 1809. By 1820 population began decreasing as people moved further westward. By 1840 the remaining Indians had been resettled in Northern Georgia, about the same time as the beginning of coal production in the state. The railroads came in 1870 and production boomed. The first mechanization was introduced in 1890, and coal boomed again. WWI brought even greater demands, and the towns we see in “Country Boys”, like Prestonsburg, the county seat, largely acquired their present appearance at that time. WWII brought further increases in production, mechanization, and the first trade groups and environmental regulations. The sixties, of course, were the heyday of environmental regulations, including the Federal Coal Mine Health and Safety Act, the Federal Clean Air Act, and the Federal Water Pollution Control Act. The seventies saw the formation of OPEC and increased demands: Kentucky becomes the leading coal production state in 1972. By the late eighties, after a mere 150 years of extraction, the party was coming to an end: Coal production peaked at 179.4 million tons, about 18% of US output, and then Wyoming surpassed Kentucky as the leading coal producing state (with Congressman Cheney representing “western Appalachia”). Population had been falling for years and the area was beginning to take on the state of advanced decrepitude we see in the film. In 1996, Elk were re-introduced into 14 East Kentucky Counties on post-mined lands, the only large free-ranging elk herd in the Eastern United States. Perhaps a sequel detailing the boys experiences in Iraq and Iran could be called the “Elk Hunter.”
It is a principle of Buddhism that the first Fact of existence is the law of change or impermanence. All that exists, from a mole to a mountain, from a thought to an empire, passes through the same cycle of existence–i.e. birth, growth, decay and death. Life alone is continuous, ever seeking self-expression in new forms. ‘Life is a bridge; therefore build no house on it.’ Life is a process of flow, and he who clings to any form, however splendid, will suffer by resisting the flow.
That all sounds great, but eternal change does not mean eternal growth. Yet mankind is trapped at a stage where one may say that “growth” is the only growth industry. If you want to displace and kill more people, if you want to extract more resources more quickly, if you want to move phantom flows of currency around the globe at the blink of an eye, if you want to sway the minds of more people with pretty lies, then the world is your oyster. There is nothing but opportunity.
But, if you see us as perched upon the manic edge of a steep precipice, as growth rapidly turns to shrinkage, as essential lifeforms become extinct, as resources are exhausted, as pollution interacts negatively with lifespan, as technologies increasingly spin out of control, then where are the growth opportunities. How do you do good for the planet without encouraging more growth? If you conserve energy, someone more growth oriented than you will burn it.
Here is a snippet from Canada’sGreen Party Review:

Probably the biggest issue that Greens have had to come to terms with is the economy. Traditional economics—-both capitalist and Marxist—-is totally and completely disconnected from the environment. In those few places where nature is even mentioned in economic discourse, it is seen as being totally peripheral to production. Capitalist thinkers believe that the fundamental source of all wealth is financial capital and human ingenuity, which implies that competitive innovation will solve all environmental problems. Marxists, on the other hand, see all wealth as coming from human labour. They believe that environmental problems are all fundamentally byproducts of human exploitation. This means that they believe that once the community owns the means of production instead of wealthy individuals or classes, environmental degradation will automatically disappear.
Greens reject both points of view.
All the historical examples that are used to argue that the economy can continue to grow exponentially came out of the 19th century experience of having a constantly expanding frontier where new resources to exploit were being found as quickly as anyone chose to prospect for them. But once the entire earth was brought into the modern economy, first through colonialism, then through globalization, this frontier simply ceased to exist. As of now, there simply are almost no more untapped resources left to find and exploit. The relevant historical examples are not that of 19th century England or America, but rather that of totally isolated cultures such as the Easter Islanders and Greenland Norse. Since both of these cultures failed with very nasty consequences for their citizens, Greens believe the prognosis for our society is far from optimistic.
We also reject the notion that Marxism is the answer. The Eastern block’s old “already existing socialism” was, if anything, worse for the environment than the capitalist West. The fundamental problem with rejecting the free market is that once this is done society begins to be managed according to political considerations instead of economic ones. And even if a socialist state existed that was based on democratic instead of authoritarian politics, there is no reason why the majority of citizens wouldn’t put their creature comforts ahead of environmental sustainability. As the Green philosopher Rudolph Bahro observed many years ago, the earth can sustain a small number of wealthy people living wasteful lives, but not billions of middle-class, unionized workers doing the same thing.
So, the question then becomes: Who do you want to be, one of a small number of wealthy elite, who you can join by consuming more resources even faster (what Bush terms the non-negotiable American Way), or one of the newly poor and disenfranchised, working at Taco Bell or as anna missed says, one of “the (professional type) characters, in all their well meaning intention, oblivious to either their own political empowerment or locked into a certain servitude and maintance of established political order i.e. the typical red state high usage of government programs — as long as they keep the burden on the individual as opposed to challenging the context.” That is, a social worker or a teacher peddling fool’s gold hope.
Sadly, very few of us get to be Chomskys or Naomi Kleins, to use the old lefty adage, “doing well, by doing good” warning others. Not many people want to hear that the sky is falling, especially during playoff season.
All of which brings up my second theme: decay and tragedy. To quote the website for “Country Boys”:
“David Sutherland’s exceptional film is really the story of the American dream seen though the eyes of two boys about to become men,” says Michael Sullivan, FRONTLINE’s executive producer for special projects. “It is an intimate journey through that exhilarating twilight of adolescence when our lives are poised between who we were born and who we could become. It is a story for everyone who remembers what it was like to be young.”
This story bears no resemblance to my memories of being young. And the two boys show precious little of the “exhilarating twilight of adolescence,” even, if I may be so crass, when they are about to get laid for the first time. Nor do they seem very confident about who they can become. It is really a sad story, in a sad land: More an American Tragedy than Dream.
It is a story of people left behind, in a land left behind, by a country that left them behind. And any dressing up of this tale in the glittering garb of Americana is only tawdry showmanship.
Only by facing the decay and tragedy head on, and being ruthlessly honest as to the causes, can this tragedy be redeemed. The solutions do not entail enlisting in the Army (what I predict Chris will do within a year), dying of alchoholism like Randall, teen age marriage, working at Taco Bell, or much else. And on a macro scale, they don’t include endless imperialism, or economic growth, or GMO crops, or having eight kids because your own life is meaningless.
Cody wants to do “something for Jesus”, and his preacher does seem like a positive male role-model, so I close with this thought: What would Jesus do trapped down in the Holler? How do we see through the pardigm to escape it?

Posted by: Malooga | Jan 13 2006 7:41 utc | 64

Malooga,
Just a couple of things that may add to your historical account in that this area, Southern Ohio, Eastern Kentucky, and West Virginia, was also the location (mid 19th – late19th century) of the first major iron ore production in the US, long before production was moved north (and East) to the Great Lakes cities and Pittsburg. Called the “Hanging Rock Iron Region” it pre-dated the coal age, and so used charcoal made from the hardwood forests to fire hand cut stone furnaces. Non-unionized company towns sprouted around the location of the operations of running the furnace and the cutting and processing thousands of acres of hardwood forests to this end. The workers most often were paid in script usable only in the company store. So there is a long history of both enviromental and human degredation that even pre-dates the rampent disregard by the coal industry, and its subsequent demise — which has led to the long and ongoing de-population of the area. You have to wonder, though whether a masked culture of if not servitude, or at least denial has arisin with such a long history — using the lexicon of religion as a justification of the status-quo, because in practical terms those with ambition are usually encouraged to leave, by their own family members and those in the “know”. Which in the end is its own testament to the viability of the culture in which you reside. So your prediction about Chris, and the military, is prescience givin his circumstance, and his ambition.

Posted by: anna missed | Jan 13 2006 10:31 utc | 66

Okay, I have to scream now.
I won’t scream “Wake up!’ because we’re already awake. So I think I will scream like this:
“Wheeearahar arhrr hoooe!”

Posted by: jonku | Jan 13 2006 10:40 utc | 68