A Tortured World
In a world where constitutional limits on the
power of the state are ignored, where wars of aggression can be fought with
impunity, where 100,000 civilians can be killed in virtual silence, where
individual liberty is being violated systematically and the grounds for a police
state are being laid, the first picture sums up the situation in 2003. The man
could be a victim of a cruel Ku Klux Klan taunt, or a Christ-like figure being
tormented, or Marianne (the French model for the Statue of Liberty) subdued at
last by the modern state. But we know what it is and what it
means.
The second picture shows a President Bush exposed for what he is in 2006. Perhaps there is some hope after all.
The next step is this:
The second picture shows a President Bush exposed for what he is in 2006. Perhaps there is some hope after all.
The next step is this:
Read More
Mon - April 23, 2007
Category: "Only in America"
In the Indy
Star
:
"The “In God We Trust” license plates that have quickly become a fixture on Indiana roads came under a legal attack today claiming the law authorizing them is unconstitutional for favoring that message over those on other plates.
The lawsuit (by the ACLU) filed in Marion Superior Court claims the state Bureau of Motor Vehicles gives preferential treatment to motorists wanting the plates, which also feature the American flag, because they don’t have to pay the $15 administrative fee that the agency collects on sales of most other Indiana specialty plates."
There is, of course, no plate for skeptics either at the full price or the subsidised price. Nor is there an "end the war" plate for much the same reasons. But you can buy Notre Dame, Purdue, and IU plates which says a lot about American interests and priorities. I wonder how they would charge for a plate like "Whom would Jesus bomb?" or "Whom would Jesus torture?" I'd pay a premium for the privilege.
"The “In God We Trust” license plates that have quickly become a fixture on Indiana roads came under a legal attack today claiming the law authorizing them is unconstitutional for favoring that message over those on other plates.
The lawsuit (by the ACLU) filed in Marion Superior Court claims the state Bureau of Motor Vehicles gives preferential treatment to motorists wanting the plates, which also feature the American flag, because they don’t have to pay the $15 administrative fee that the agency collects on sales of most other Indiana specialty plates."
There is, of course, no plate for skeptics either at the full price or the subsidised price. Nor is there an "end the war" plate for much the same reasons. But you can buy Notre Dame, Purdue, and IU plates which says a lot about American interests and priorities. I wonder how they would charge for a plate like "Whom would Jesus bomb?" or "Whom would Jesus torture?" I'd pay a premium for the privilege.
Posted at 10:08 PM Read More
FUBAR or plan G in Iraq
The film "Saving Private Ryan" taught me what the
great WW2 acronym FUBAR meant for the GIs. I stuck in on my office door at the
University of Adelaide for much the same reason. Phillip Carter in Slate
resurrects the term in reference to the ever failing "plans" which the US have
invented to fight the guerrilla war in Iraq. To counter those who now see the
immanent failure and urge that there be a "Plan B", Carter argues that there
have already been 6 plans in Iraq (A-F) all of which have failed miserably and
that there should be instead a Plan G (for "get of of Iraq"). According to Cater
the failed plans have been:
A. Rumsfeld's deeply flawed theory of "shock and awe"
B. the transition of security tasks to a new and smaller headquarters led by Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, and the transition of reconstruction to the nascent Coalition Provisional Authority, led by American proconsul L. Paul Bremer
C. in summer 2003—a combination of heavy-handed combat operations and token reconstruction efforts
D. a phased withdrawal and drawdown plan, which was contingent upon the successful transfer of security responsibility to Iraqi forces and the achievement of political milestones like the ratification of Iraq's Constitution
E. Operation Together Forward I and II. These joint pushes to secure Baghdad followed a "clear, hold, and build" strategy lifted straight from the counterinsurgency playbook
F. the current Petraeus plan —the surge—grew out of the recognition that Plans C, D, and E had created today's overlapping conflicts in Iraq, and that our best hope for Iraq was to establish some sense of security, which would enable the Maliki government to stabilize itself
I would add that the current plan seems to be to hold out until the change over to a Democratic regime in early 2009, dump the mess in their laps, and then blame them for the fiasco. A great Rovian scheme.
A. Rumsfeld's deeply flawed theory of "shock and awe"
B. the transition of security tasks to a new and smaller headquarters led by Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, and the transition of reconstruction to the nascent Coalition Provisional Authority, led by American proconsul L. Paul Bremer
C. in summer 2003—a combination of heavy-handed combat operations and token reconstruction efforts
D. a phased withdrawal and drawdown plan, which was contingent upon the successful transfer of security responsibility to Iraqi forces and the achievement of political milestones like the ratification of Iraq's Constitution
E. Operation Together Forward I and II. These joint pushes to secure Baghdad followed a "clear, hold, and build" strategy lifted straight from the counterinsurgency playbook
F. the current Petraeus plan —the surge—grew out of the recognition that Plans C, D, and E had created today's overlapping conflicts in Iraq, and that our best hope for Iraq was to establish some sense of security, which would enable the Maliki government to stabilize itself
I would add that the current plan seems to be to hold out until the change over to a Democratic regime in early 2009, dump the mess in their laps, and then blame them for the fiasco. A great Rovian scheme.
Posted at 09:49 PM Read More
Asia Times Online
The Asia Time
Online from Hong Kong has some excellent articles about the war in
Iraq and world politics. The radical journalist Pepe
Escobar is one of my favourites. He even looks like a radical
journalist should look like.
Part Che, part Peter Fonda. Or how about the film
"If.." by Lindsay Anderson.
In the latest issue you can read Pepe on how the US
is borrowing from the Israeli playbook by building walls of
Apartheid in Baghdad; Chan Akya
compares the killings at Virginia Tech and the sex scandal at the world bank in
a way the mainstream US press would not; and Leo Hadar from the Cato Institute
looks at the long-standing rivalry between the "political man" and the "economic
man". A key passage is:
"Nationalism and imperialism, two political forces that are so inimical to the values of classical liberalism, the preferred ideology of the Economic Man, seemed now to be the driving forces propelling American foreign policy, helping centralize more power in the hands of the imperial presidency and the national security state - following a path set by the American Civil War, the two World Wars and the Cold War in the last century, and producing countervailing anti-American forces around the world, that have served as a self-fulfilling prophecy. "Hey, they all out there hate us anyhow; so we need to isolate, punish and bomb these guys, and show them who the real boss here is." "
"Nationalism and imperialism, two political forces that are so inimical to the values of classical liberalism, the preferred ideology of the Economic Man, seemed now to be the driving forces propelling American foreign policy, helping centralize more power in the hands of the imperial presidency and the national security state - following a path set by the American Civil War, the two World Wars and the Cold War in the last century, and producing countervailing anti-American forces around the world, that have served as a self-fulfilling prophecy. "Hey, they all out there hate us anyhow; so we need to isolate, punish and bomb these guys, and show them who the real boss here is." "
Posted at 09:30 PM Read More
What don't we know now that we knew then?
Pierre Tristam discusses a recent Pew
poll which suggests that Americans in the internet era are less well
informed than they were 18 years ago. Here is a section from the
poll:
"In 1989, for example, 74% could come up with Dan
Quayle’s name when asked who the vice president is. Today, somewhat fewer
(69%) are able to recall Dick Cheney. However, more Americans now know that the
chief justice of the Supreme Court is generally considered a conservative and
that Democrats control Congress than knew these things in 1989. Some of the
largest knowledge differences between the two time periods may reflect
differences in the amount of press coverage of a particular issue or public
figure at the time the surveys were taken. But taken as a whole the findings
suggest little change in overall levels of public knowledge. The survey provides
further evidence that changing news formats are not having a great deal of
impact on how much the public knows about national and international
affairs."
Tristram then goes on to comment: "Yes, but just 37
percent of those surveyed could say that the Chief Justice is a conservative. In
1989, 30 percent could. Both figures are pitiful. The most knowledgeable
audiences? Those who watch the Daily Show. That doesn’t mean the Daily
Show is their source of substantial news. It means they have the most critical
minds that happen to include the Daily Show in their news diet."
The Australian
state governments have responded to a similar crisis of ignorance by
scrapping a trendy curriculum in Aussie high schools called "Study of Society
and the Environment" with the disciplines it replaced, namely history,
geography, and economics. One American wit, I think Ambrose Bierce, said the
"war is God's way of teaching American geography." Maybe a sound grounding in
history, geography,and economics will teach young Australians something about
the need for peace.
Posted at 09:11 PM Read More
Iraq war may cool war fever (temporarily)
Ivan Eland of the
Independent Institute is somewhat optimistic about the possibility
that the disasters in Afghanistan and Iraq will ween Americans off the habit of
seeing war and violence as the way to improve the world. I don't share that
view. If past history is anything to go by (1945 to present) I would give a
post-war "peace policy" 10 years at the most before the average American voter
"forgets" any past negative experience and falls for the wiles of the next
"patriotic", god-fearing president who comes along urging them to fight some
over-inflated enemy from whatever "axis of evil" is current. I further predict
that the same people who got the US into one failed war will, some 20 years
later (given the electoral cycles), be back running the war after the next war
(see Rumsfeld, Cheney, et al.), ad infinitum.
Posted at 09:00 PM Read More
The ugly American - the new red coats
One of my favourite books was entitled How Europe
Imaged and America Realised the Enlightenment. It was only a bit of an
exaggeration but contained a very large kernal of truth. This article show how
some ueber patriotic Americans like Dana
Rohrabacher (R-CA) have lost sight of this historical tradition. He
now lectures Europeans about the need for state kidnapping, torture, unchecked
monarchical power, empire, and war. I would ask the question, who are the new
Read Coats?
Posted at 08:39 PM Read More
The 9th amendement and rights most Americans never knew they had
The libertarian legal theorist Randy Barnett has
written about the "unenumerated rights" retained by the citizen in the 9th
Amendment of the US constitution. Now it seems that some lawyers on the left are
starting to take notice. Here is an extract from a new
book by Daniel A. Farber, "Retained by the
People: The 'Silent' Ninth Amendment and the Constitutional Rights Americans
Don't Know They Have" (Perseus Books, 2007).
Whilst a libertarian wouldn't agree with all his
retained rights he is on the right track. Here is a passage:
"Libertarians, who dislike government regulation of
all kinds, agree with part of my argument, and I have found much of their
historical research useful. They, too, would find the Amendment to be a source
of real legal guidance. But they swing too far in the opposite direction from
conservatives like Scalia. While Scalia wants the Ninth Amendment to protect
nothing, the libertarians want it to protect virtually everything. They see in
it the basis of a revolutionary return to the small government ideas of the
early nineteenth century. But this is a gross overreading of the Amendment. It
was meant to protect fundamental human rights, not just the right to do whatever
you want whenever you want."
He is correct to say that Justice Scalia "strictly"
interprets the constitution by recognizing only the rights enumerated, whereas a
true interpretation of "original intent' would have to offer some explanation
for the presence of the 9th amendment in the Bill of Rights and to what it
refers. Silence by Scalia...
Posted at 08:27 PM Read More
You can fool some of the people all the time
Here are two articles which show how many people
can be easily fooled. The first is about James
Randi, the magician and debunker of the paranormal, who shows how
well meaning but distracted journalists can be fooled through clever
improvisation. The second is by Chris
Hedges who shows some of the techniques used by fundamentalist
Christians to get converts. Both are instances of false magic and willing
gullibility.
Posted at 08:17 PM Read More
Wed - April 18, 2007
Doouble moral standards - Iran's invasion of Mexico
Noam Chomsky plays a useful mental
exercise to test how equally we exercise our moral sandards. He asks,
what if Iran had invaded Mexico (and Canada too)? I think a better example would
be, how would America react if China had invaded and occupied Mexico and Canada
the way the US has invaded and occupied Afghanistan and Iraq. Would the American
government as well as citizens go to the aid of fellow ethnic or religious
groups in those countries the way the Iranians may have done in Iraq? Of course.
QED.
Posted at 05:14 PM Read More
Chris Hedges on Christian Fascism
Another author is warning us about the dangers of
fascism in America. Chris
Hedges is worried that fundamentalist Christians are preparing for a
theocratic state. He has a short book on the subject,
American Fascists: The
Christian Right and the War on
America. In this article he
focusses on the crazies who believe in Armageddon, which they believe is on its
way in Iraq/Iran following biblical prophecy. A
passage:
"The global nightmare that leads to
the end of history is a visceral and disturbing expression of what believers
feel about themselves and our world. The horror of apocalyptic
violence—the final aesthetic of the movement—at once terrifies and
thrills followers. It feeds dark fantasies of revenge and
empowerment. This theology of despair is empowered by widespread poverty,
violent crime, incurable diseases, global warming, war in the Middle East and
the threat of nuclear calamity. All these events presage the longed-for
obliteration of the Earth and the glorious moment of Christ’s
return. But until then believers are told they must battle Satan.
And Satan comes in many guises. In churches across the United States
believers are being girded for a holy war, one as self-destructive as that
preached by radical Islam."
Posted at 05:08 PM Read More
Remember Maiwand
Eric Margolis reflects
on some lessons from history in Afghanistan. Here is the guts of the
article:
"The death last Sunday of six Canadian soldiers in
southern Afghanistan reminds us of Santayana’s famous maxim that those who
fail to study history are doomed to repeat it.
The soldiers were killed near Maiwand, a name meaning
nothing to most Westerners. But there, on July 27, 1880, during the bloody
Second Anglo-Afghan War, the British Empire suffered one of the worst defeats in
its colonial history.
Two years earlier the Raj (Britain’s Indian
Empire) had invaded Afghanistan for a second time. The British put Afghan puppet
rulers into power in Kabul and Kandahar.
Ayub Khan, son of Afghanistan’s former emir,
rallied 12,000 Pashtun (or Pathan) tribal warriors to fight an advancing British
force whose mission was, in London’s words, to “liberate”
Afghan tribes and bring them “the light of Christian civilization.”
Today, the slogan is “promoting democracy.” The fierce Afghan tribal
warriors routed the imperial force, composed of British regulars, including the
vaunted Grenadier Guards, and Indian Sepoy troops, after a ferocious battle. Sir
Arthur Conan Doyle used a British army doctor who fought at Maiwand as his model
for Sherlock Holmes’ companion, Dr. Watson.
I recall this epic Afghan victory against British
colonialism because understanding today’s war in Afghanistan requires
proper historical context. A century and a quarter after Maiwand, Pashtun
warriors of southern Afghanistan continue to resist another mighty world power
and its allies, who have been faithfully following the imperial strategy of the
old British Raj.
What we are really seeing is a war by Western powers
seeking to dominate the strategic oil corridor of Afghanistan, directed against
the Pashtun people who comprise half that nation’s population. Another 15
million live just across the border in Pakistan. What we call the
“Taliban” is actually a loose alliance of Pashtun tribes and clans,
joined by nationalist forces and former mujahedin from the 1980s anti-Soviet
struggle.
The U.S. and NATO are not fighting
“terrorists” in Afghanistan and they are certainly not winning
hearts and minds. They are fighting the world’s largest tribal people. The
longer the Westerners stay and bomb villages, the more resistance will grow.
Such is the inevitable pattern of every guerrilla war I have ever
covered.
If 160,000 Soviet troops and 240,000 Afghan Communist
soldiers could not defeat the Pashtuns in ten years, how can 50,000 U.S. and
NATO troops do better?"
Posted at 04:56 PM Read More
Wolfie in hot water
Rupert Cornwell
of the Independent revels in some lovely ironies revealed by the
behaviour of von Wolfowitz at the Weltbank:
"In contemplating the near-certain
downfall of Paul Wolfowitz, it's hard to know whether to laugh or cry. Does one
weep at the outrageous hypocrisy of it all: the president of the World Bank,
self-appointed apostle of "good governance" and scourge of corruption, caught in
a blatant act of nepotism and cronyism - exactly the vices he wants to stamp out
in the Third World countries his organisation lends money to?
Or does one roar with laughter at the
incongruity of it all: sex at the World Bank, as Wolfowitz the cerebral ideas
man (even if his ideas about Iraq were as misbegotten as they get) is brought
down by matters of the flesh, as he arranged promotions and lavish pay rises for
his girlfriend Shaha Riza?"
Posted at 04:52 PM Read More
pour encourager les autres - when do we get to shoot a few?
William Lind reminds
us that back in the good old days the Brits sometimes shot a
commanding officer who had badly screwed up a battle:
"In 1756, at the beginning of the Seven Year's War,
the French took the island of Minorca in the Mediterranean from the British.
Admiral Byng was sent out from London to relieve the island's garrison, then
under siege. He arrived, fought a mismanaged battle with the attending French
squadron, then retired to Gibraltar. Deprived of naval support, the garrison
surrendered. Byng was court-martialed for his failure, found guilty, and
shot."
The 20thC modern practice is shoot the lowest ranks
and promote the commanding officers to safety. Abu Ghraib anybody?
Posted at 04:48 PM Read More
Sassoon on the War
By SIEGRFRIED L. SASSOON
I am making
this statement as an act of wilful defiance of military authority, because I
believe that the war is being deliberately prolonged by those who have the power
to end it.
I am a soldier, convinced that I am acting on behalf
of soldiers. I believe that this war, upon which I entered as a war of defence
and liberation, has now become a war of aggression and conquest. I believe that
the purposes for which I and my fellow-soldiers entered upon this war should
have been so clearly stated as to have made it impossible to change them, and
that, had this been done, the objects which actuated us would now be attainable
by negotiation.
I have seen and endured the sufferings of the troops,
and I can no longer be a party to prolong these sufferings for ends which I
believe to be evil and unjust.
I am not protesting against the conduct of the war,
but against the political errors and insincerities for which the fighting men
are being sacrificed.
On behalf of those who are suffering now I make this
protest against the deception which is being practiced on them; also I believe
that I may help to destroy the callous complacence with which the majority of
those at home regard the continuance of agonies which they do not share, and
which they have not sufficient imagination to realize.
Siegfried L. Sassoon. July 1917
Posted at 04:42 PM Read More
Bill Moyers and the Lies that led to war - PBS April 25
David
Swanson reports the following:
"Bill Moyers has put together an amazing 90-minute
video documenting the lies that the Bush administration told to sell the Iraq
war to the American public, with a special focus on how the media led the
charge. I've watched an advance copy and read a transcript, and the most
important thing I can say about it is: Watch PBS from 9:00 to 10:30 PM on
Wednesday, April 25. Spending that 90 minutes will actually save you time
because you'll never watch television news again - not even on PBS, which comes
in for its own share of criticism."
Quite appropriate that it should air on ANZAC
Day...
Posted at 04:37 PM Read More
About David M. Hart
I was born and raised in Sydney, Australia and now work for a non-profit educational foundation in the US. Before moving to the US with my family I taught modern European history at the University of Adelaide, South Australia. I have studied at universities in Australia, Germany, the US, and Britain and consider myself a citizen of the world and a supporter of no particular nation state. [More]
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Published On: Apr 23, 2007 10:15 PM
Published On: Apr 23, 2007 10:15 PM