|
Sowing Tribulation
sowing tribulation – detail
by anna missed
paint on wood,38"x27", 2005
full, uncompressed (140kb)—
Coalition aircraft flew 52 close air support missions Jan. 3 for Operation Iraqi Freedom. These missions included support to Coalition troops, infrastructure protection, reconstruction activities, and operations to deter and disrupt terrorist activities.
Royal Air Force GR-4s provided close air support to Coalition troops in contact with anti-Iraqi forces in the vicinity of Bayji.
Centcom, Air Componant Data
—
BAIJI – A U.S. air strike killed up to 14 members of a single family and wounded at least two people in an attack on a house in Baiji, 180 km (112 miles) north of Baghdad, on Monday night, an Iraqi security force spokesman said. Police in nearby Tikrit put the death toll at six. The U.S. military, responding to an inquiry, said aircraft had targeted a house after three men suspected of planting a roadside bomb were seen entering the building. They gave no death toll.
Reuters, Security incidents in Iraq, Jan. 3
—
The U.S. military on Friday announced the deaths of six more American troops killed in the recent barrage of violence that has swept Iraq, bringing to 11 the number of troops killed on the same day.
AP, 11 U.S. Troops Killed in One Day in Iraq, Jan. 6
Zawahri says US defeated in Iraq: Jazeera TV
Osama is obviously dead. Welcome back, jj. (Sorry for the juxtaposition) Didn’t know cloned poster and friendly fire were one and the same, believe loose shanks and tante aime are the same, though missing as of late. Hope r’giap is OK. Sometimes confuse b and b real. Who else is a body double? Sometimes I forget my real name. TGIF. LOL. AWOL. Sharon back in office would still be brighter than Bush, just as Wilson after his stroke was still brighter than McKinley. Sentience is vastly overrated; especially in leaders.
You can write like that Uncle, you can soar. Chris Floyd is Noam Chomsky on a speedball; Hunter Thompson and Alex Cockburn, shaken, not stirred.
previous thread:I’ve never understood Chomsky’s lack of profile here. there is the occasional thing in the New Yorker or some other such publication, but in the MSM he’s pretty much unknown, I remember Hannity spouting off one day about some anti-american MIT professor he said he’d like to debate (ha-ha), and saw him once on the Rose show once (in which at one point in the interview, Charlie stood up from his chair waving his arms all over the place exclaiming “do you know everything!?”) but thats pretty much it. It is suprising that givin his stature, and massive publication record (a few years ago I think he had 3 books on the best seller list at the same time) you’d think he would have been trotted out for ritual demonization by the mainstream yak-yaks — but not a peep — ever (except maybe Brooks, who occasionally whines about him). Even in scholarship, I’m only aware of one ( some austrailian guy) major and public critic.
So he either does’nt like to indulge in such media things, or he gets no takers. I do’nt know which
anna missed
Thirty five years ago he was a regular on the media criticizing the Vietnam War. But, he knew too much, the media couldn’t slide their lies past him like they do on NPR these days, and he became too effective a debater. NPR has lurched to the right, they will not interview anyone to the left of “dead center” as defined by power discourse (CSIS and Brookings), and even there will follow it up with three times as much wingnuts (AEI, Hoover, AIPAC, yadda, yaddda, yadda…stick with Stink Tanks, stay away from independent agendaed academics). They have learned to keep their interviews short and sweet, so they sound intellectual, but there is no room for historical context or depth, just the same 4 talking points for every argument, drilled into your consciousness like Orwell gone manic at Home Depot. The rest of the media, actually NPR too, made a conscious decision to shut him out of the discourse. After all, you can’t have someone talk about Vietnam and start with American actions in 1945 and 1954, we’re not suppossed to know that anything was happening then; or talk about Free Trade and begin with Adam Smith and David Ricardo and Mercantilism and the history of India’s forced de-industrialization at the hands of the British, and present day government support for(libertarian)high tech and bio tech, the actual function and historical results of the IMF and WTO and GATT, and the history of socializing risk and privatising profit: WE ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO KNOW THIS, it is not part of the American Enterprise Institute’s talking points.Far more dangerous to have him talk about Thought Control in Democratic societies, Manufacturing Consent, the five filter propaganda model for defining news, worthy and unworthy victims, the history of American professional journalism, etc. Yikes, you can’t have people hearing how political candidates are packaged and marketed exactly like soap or cars, and the history behind it, from Edward Bernays, etc. You can’t have people realizing that all so-called “debate” in political campaigns is pre-agreed upon by the parties, the few items the elite want up for discussion, to inflame emotions, and distract from the real agenda that the elite does agree upon: transfering wealth from the poor to the wealthy, keeping the people scared. We can’t have the sheeple on DKOS wondering why, despite clear majorities of the population in favor, issues like National Health Insurance, or exiting Iraq, or sustainable energy policies, or regulation of industry, or defering to the United Nations. No, we can’t have people dropping their blinders and thinking about these things. So-called Civilized “discourse” must be channelled in the interests of the elite.
So because of all all this, Noam is not asked to do extended interviews (who is, in this dumb society), and now refuses to do 30 second media spots, where editing can make anyone look ridiculous, and, most specifically, where all questions are setups and there is no time for historical context. For example, “Do you think President Bush’s aggresive prosecution of the War on Terror will diminish Muslim aggression, or do you think that they will still engage in terrorism because they hate our freedoms?” I mean, where do you start on a question like that? You have to deconstruct the so-called “War on Terror”, you have to define “freedom” and compare its application country by country, and first and foremost, you have to encapsulate a mini-history of the middle east as the sheeple know nothing about western hegemonic actions in shaping that region, then you have to introduce the concept of “state terorism”, then you need to discuss resource wars and trade policy, why the Arab countries have not developed their own oil support infrastructure (not accidental, but western mediated), but must rely on Slumberger and Halliburton and Koch Industries, etc. etc …….. That’s like reseving a table at the Four Seasons, bringing in your favorite sheep (not so outlandish when I lived in the Virgin Islands), finagling it into a chair, and force feeding it the whole prix fixe meal, from soup to nuts. If you take your eyes off the sheep for one moment it will be wandering off the graze on the tassels of the rug. It’s just too much for them! Far better to interview Kerry or Clinton, or Biden or Lieberman or even Gary Hart, so I hear, and have them answer the previous question with the canned non-sensical non-response, which people have heard so often that it goes down like Vicks cough syrup to a 15 year old craving his first hangover, “The President should have sent more troops in so we can win this the right way.” I mean, faced with this shit for forty years, I’m surprised Noam hasn’t committed suicide yet.
Charlie Rose did some of the same shit with Noam: asked leading questions and then interupted him every time Noam tried to historically contextualize the situation. When he declared that Noam “knows everything”, there was more than a touch of facetiousness, as everyone knows that Charlie Rose believes that he, himself, knows more than anyone. Noam was interviewed for a full hour about a year ago by the BBC, (You should be able to find it on a search) I believe they were reasonably respectful.
Noam speaks about a dozen times a year in the Boston area. He is incredibly generous in donating his time, always for free, speaking to support local progressive causes (past year: Dollars and Sense mag, Homeless project, Cispes, AFSC, among others). He generally stays, patiently anwering individuals questions, until the last person leaves, or is kicked out, or occaisionally, until his wife arrives to drag him out. I have recorded him over half a dozen times in that interval. Some of it ends up on Democracy Now, some on Radio4all.net. (If you like progressive radio, and can listen to mp3s, this is the world’s most valuable resource. If you are loaded, money-wise, please give them some. Their unparalled archive, free for downloading, can be a major force for informing the world and changing opinion–I have seen it here in Boston.) We also have a Boston Community Reporters Archive where we post things, but that is not open to the public, unfortunately. If there is any interest I could post a few of his recordings, or Howard Zinn, or Chip Berlet or others from Boston. There is also the Cambridge Forum and the Ford Forum for more mainstream recordings: Krugman, Jared Diamond, etc.
Posted by: Malooga | Jan 6 2006 23:24 utc | 17
Very well formulated, anna missed.
@noisette-
Chomsky espouses the softie-leftie view of 9/11 – blowback for US past bad acts. The ‘they hate our actions’ rationalisation…
I’m not sure what you are trying to say here. What other view do you espouse? Can you be clear and not cryptic as to how you see things.
For the sake of argument, I will assume that you are refering to the view of 9-11 as one enacted by the shadow government, or more charitably, as a facilitated event. A view which many of us here, including myself, hold.
I have been part of two discussions with Chomsky about this and he has also addressed this on his blog. (The Official 911 Story.) In short, the guy is 75 years old, doesn’t know how much longer he has left, sees the two most important threats facing mankind, as detailed in “Hegemony and Survival”, as being nuclear annihilation and environmental catastrophe and wants to spend the rest of his time convincing others of these dangers. He feels that the best way for him to convince others (that is, the average bub who hasn’t immersed himself in politics and activism) , especially given his prominence, whereby anything he states is gone over with a fine-toothed comb with the hope of discrediting him and therefore his whole body of work, is to stick to the commonly accepted evidentiary record to prove his case. Attempting to prove something, which will probably never be proveable, he sees as a sidetrack for him. He is not against others working on elucidating what went on behind the scenes of 9-11. But let him speak for himself:
The simple reason why I presume that the official story is probably true is that it seems to me by far the most credible one. I’ve explained why in earlier posts, and also why the whole matter is very far from high priority for me.
Since there is such a flood of letters about this matter, mostly to me personally, perhaps it is worth adding something that I’ve left out because I do not want to become embroiled in what seem to me pointless discussions, diverting energy from matters that seem to me far more important.
One of these is to focus attention on the Bush administration’s ongoing contributions to enhancing the risk of terrorism, including very serious terrorist attacks against the US. Even if the cyberspace and other conclusions about 9/11 were credible they would not begin to compare with Bush administration actions that are hardly controversial and that have or threaten far more hideous effects. In comparison with these clear cases, for which evidence is overwhelming from the most respectable mainstream sources, the involvement of the Bush administration in 9/11, if it could be supported, would amount to very little. To take an obvious example, consider the invasion of Iraq.
Quite apart from the massive crimes against Iraqis, the invasion was undertaken with the expectation, since amply confirmed, that it would increase the threat of jihadist terror of the kind that the Reaganites organized in the 1980s, as well as proliferation. Former defense secretaries (including McNamara) and prominent strategic analysts estimate the likelihood of nuclear terror in the US at about 50% in the next decade: alongside that, and its likely aftermath, 9/11 would pale into insignificance. And that’s the least of it. The policies of aggressive militarism and “transformation of the military” are, as predicted, driving potential rivals to react in ways that greatly enhance the risk of possibly terminal nuclear war, maybe by accident, maybe by leaking of WMD technology to terrorists, maybe in other ways.
All of these matters are well-established, rarely discussed, and vastly more significant that any possible Bush administration involvement in 9/11.
…I might perhaps add that this whole matter reminds of a DOD document on declassification a few years ago. It suggests that “interesting declassified material” such as information about the JFK assassination could be released and even posted on the internet as a “diversion,”
which might “reduce the unrestrained public appetite for `secrets’ by providing good faith distraction material.” The idea, according to the
(outstanding) British intelligence analyst who published the document, is that if investigators are absorbed with the grassy knoll they won’t probe into serious areas where they are unwelcome.
I can see disagreeing with his conclusion, and many of his aquaintainces do. But I see nothing ” softie-leftie” about his analysis of the situation. That seems to me to be a facile and smug ad hominem, not backed up by a countervailing argument.
I am as willing as any here to acknowledge the existence of false-flag terrorist operations. But to deny attacks by muslims and arabs against western interests as “the ‘they hate our actions’ rationalisation”, is ludicrous. Clearly, many people do hate our (western) actions, and are moved by them to retaliate.
Posted by: Malooga | Jan 8 2006 6:36 utc | 27
|
