Marisacat

Chris Hedges is up with a new essay.  Rather a tough one too.  I gather he has had it, to the proverbial “up to here”. 

I want to preface that political assessment, however, with an Al-Ahram opinion piece from Joseph Massad,

 Subverting Democracy:

[I]n the midst of all this, Orientalist fantasies of the so- called exceptionalism of the Palestinian situation are being offered by Western pundits and their Palestinian and Arab “secular”, read pro-American, counterparts. These experts seem to have forgotten the history of collaboration among the oppressed amidst tragedy and oppression, from the Judenrats and the Kapos, to Vietnam’s Thieu, Angola’s UNITA, South Africa’s Buthelezi, Mozambique’s RENAMO, Nicaragua’s Contras, and Lebanon’s South Lebanese Army under Saad Haddad and Antoine Lahd. The Palestinian situation is indeed the rule and not the exception.

The only exception that the Middle East offers to world politics is the disproportionate imperial interest that its oil has attracted, and the unprecedented international support given to its Jewish settler colony, the two being intrinsically connected. It is not the Arab world that is exceptional but American strategy in the region and the anachronistic nature of its Jewish settler-colony. The resistance of Western pundits and their Arab servants to learn this is their resistance to any analysis that aims at resisting imperial rule.

In the case of Palestine, the US support of the Palestinian Pinochet, in the tradition of US propaganda, is presented as support FOR democracy, while the Palestinian democratic government’s defence of itself against this subversion and thuggery as a coup against democracy.  [snip]

It is hard to pick a passage from the Hedges, if you read the whole you will see why.

A Declaration of Independence from Israel

[U].S. foreign policy, especially under the current Bush administration, has become little more than an extension of Israeli foreign policy. The United States since 1982 has vetoed 32 Security Council resolutions critical of Israel, more than the total number of vetoes cast by all the other Security Council members. It refuses to enforce the Security Council resolutions it claims to support. These resolutions call on Israel to withdraw from the occupied territories.

There is now volcanic anger and revulsion by Arabs at this blatant favoritism. Few in the Middle East see any distinction between Israeli and American policies, nor should they. And when the Islamic radicals speak of U.S. support of Israel as a prime reason for their hatred of the United States, we should listen. The consequences of this one-sided relationship are being played out in the disastrous war in Iraq, growing tension with Iran, and the humanitarian and political crisis in Gaza. It is being played out in Lebanon, where Hezbollah is gearing up for another war with Israel, one most Middle East analysts say is inevitable. The U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East is unraveling. And it is doing so because of this special relationship. The eruption of a regional conflict would usher in a nightmare of catastrophic proportions.  …

Israel is reaping economic as well as political rewards from its lock-down apartheid state. In the “gated community” market it has begun to sell systems and techniques that allow the nation to cope with terrorism. Israel, in 2006, exported $3.4 billion in defense products—well over a billion dollars more than it received in American military aid. Israel has grown into the fourth largest arms dealer in the world. Most of this growth has come in the so-called homeland security sector.

  
A Palestinian carrying the body of a killed boy after Israeli mobile artillery fired shells at Beit Lahiya in the northern Gaza Strip July 6, 2006. [via E Intifada:  MaanImages/Mohamed al-Zanon]

“The key products and services,” as Naomi Klein wrote in The Nation, “are hi-tech fences, unmanned drones, biometric IDs, video and audio surveillance gear, air passenger profiling and prisoner interrogation systems—precisely the tools and technologies Israel has used to lock in the occupied territories. And that is why the chaos in Gaza and the rest of the region doesn’t threaten the bottom line in Tel Aviv, and may actually boost it.

Israel has learned to turn endless war into a brand asset, pitching its uprooting, occupation and containment of the Palestinian people as a half-century head start in the ‘global war on terror.’ ”

They are not alone in the “brand asset” business for war.

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An earlier Joseph Massad opinion piece in Al-Ahram   [week of May 20, 2004]

Imperial Mementos:

As thousands of Iraqi civilians have already been killed, tens of thousands injured and tens of thousands more imprisoned (according to Donald Rumsfeld, the number is 44,000 Iraqis detained since the occupation started), the recent pictures of torture and sexual sadism are hardly the worst that the Americans have inflicted on the Iraqi people during the last 14 years under the pretext of liberating them from Saddam. Indeed, even in the matter of torture itself, the Abu Ghraib prison, according to Baghdad’s Red Cross (ICRC) spokesperson Nada Doumani, “is but the tip of the iceberg.”

Under Saddam’s tyrannical rule, human rights organisations continued to monitor the situation in Iraq, but since 9 April 2003, the Americans have refused to allow them to do so, as confirmed by US- imposed Iraqi minister of human rights, Dr Abdul- Baset Turki, who resigned in early April in protest. He had submitted his reports of human rights violations to Iraq’s new dictator, Paul Bremer, but to no avail.

It has been suggested that the pictures of torture were not only going to be used to record the humiliation of the prisoners and to blackmail them, but also as mementos for American and British soldiers to take home with them to show to their families and friends. In such a case, the soldiers clearly believe that their families and friends would enjoy the pictures just as much as they do, which speaks volumes about American and British racism.

Whatever the real usefulness of the pictures for the American torturers, for Iraqis and the rest of the world, the pictures will serve as mementos of America’s unyielding sadism against those who have the misfortune of living under its occupation.

The pictures prove that the content of the word “freedom” that American politicians and propagandists want to impose on the rest of the world is nothing more and nothing less than America’s violent domination, racism, torture, sexual humiliation, and the rest of it.

Mementos – and memento mori, I would say.

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Well, you did not think this post would be a ‘grilled Nathan’s hot dog on a bun’, did you?

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LA Times is up with a look at the number of contractors in Iraq. Privatisation of our wars is moving swiftly.  From garbage hauling, latrine digging, contruction and weapon systems maintenance - to paid protection for convoys, fuel lines and personages.

Quick snip from the Fact Box:

Contractors in Iraq

There are more U.S.-paid private contractors than there are American combat troops in Iraq.

Contractors: 180,000

U.S. troops: 160,000

    
US military and a US recruited Iraqi on the street in Baghdad

ah … on page 1 we are told:

Adding an element of potential confusion, no single agency keeps track of the number or location of contractors.

In response to demands from Congress, the U.S. Central Command began a census last year of the number of contractors working on U.S. and Iraqi bases to determine how much food, water and shelter was needed.

That census, provided to The Times under the Freedom of Information Act, shows about 130,000 contractors and subcontractors of different nationalities working at U.S. and Iraqi military bases.

However, U.S. military officials acknowledged that the census did not include other government agencies, including the U.S. Agency for International Development and the State Department.

Page 2 tells us that USAID claims about 53,000 contractors in Iraq. Another 7k claimed by some other agency (State claims not to know how many, but of 5k at the Embassy, a bare 300 are DOS staff – gee I can add, can’t you?) and, whooops! there we are:  

180K.

And!… a retired mil officer adds this juicy tidbit (which is just common sense):

“We don’t have control of all the coalition guns in Iraq. That’s dangerous for our country,” said William Nash, a retired Army general and reconstruction expert. The Pentagon “is hiring guns. You can rationalize it all you want, but that’s obscene.”

Yes we have ourselves a hot, hot money-making war. A big one. The very best kind.  Tonight’s roll call on PBS News Hour was 20, I think.  Several sargeants, more than one staff sargeant and the usual number of very young men.  One from the Marianas. 

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Well. There are other things…

Democracy NOW! is repeating a Pete Seeger hour long segment from 2004… as I was reading the transcript I spied this:

[B]ut he [Seeger's father], in those early days, linked up with the Communist movement. He and Aaron Copland and Henry Cowell and Marc Blitzstein. They had a thing they called the Composers’ Collective. After all, in Russia they had collectives this and collective that. And there, they decided, as skilled musicians, they would compose the new music for the new society. Well, their attempts were laughable. Aaron Copland put music to a poem by Alfred Hayes, same man who wrote “Joe Hill” — “Into the Streets May 1st.” But only a very expert singer could sing it, tremendous range, and only a very expert pianist could accompany it properly. Of course, no proletariat ever sang him. [snip]

Once, when I was about 20, I had come in at Newark airport, crossing the great open concourse on a sunny day, the high glass floor to ceiling wall to my left, I suddenly heard Aaron Copland’s Fanfare for the Common Man peal forth.

Devoid of noxious patriotism (tho composed during war, in ‘42), nationalism and no jingoism, it was a tremendous and tremendously wonderful moment.

I’d like to think it was an American moment.

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UPDATE, 7:41 pm — balmy evening in San Francisco

heh diddle diddle the cat’s in the fiddle:

Geez, Armando, don’t pull your … (3.00 / 1)

…bullshit on me. You answer the question you asked of me and then attack me for the answer you put in my mouth?

My view is not that he be impeached for invoking executive privilege. My view is that he be impeached because we know he will drag this out in the courts – courts, as you are aware, that are far more conservative than in 1972-74, when they were ruling on Nixon. He (and Cheney) can’t claim executive privilege in an impeachment trial.

by Meteor Blades on Tue Jul 03, 2007 at 12:51:38 PM EST
[ Parent ]

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Re: Geez, Armando, don’t pull your … (none / 0)

Impeached because we KNOW what Bush will do, which is perfectly legal?

WTF? I think I treated you too fairly.

by Big Tent Democrat on Tue Jul 03, 2007 at 12:57:36 PM EST
[ Parent ]

yummy conflab over in the Center Ring (well not quite, side diaries) at MyDD.  Anyone who misses him, BTD has been popping up the odd diary over there.  Breaking out of the swaddling clothes at TalkLeft, imo.  Who would not want to…

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OH, STOP!  STOP!!

Liberal Catnip over at Mo Betta Meta is ringside at the conflab… and is catching more tart (not to say tarty) comments than I am…

As a former FPer (3.00 / 1)

I can tell you that it was well understood what types of issues should merit careful consideration before writng a FP post taking a posiiton on them.

Of course there are a myriad of important issues where FPers would disagree. Those were open for debate and the outside world consequences were largely minimal.

Impeachment is not one of those issues. It is too hot and too potentially harmful for a FPer to just throw out outlandish ill thought out posts as Meteor Blades did.

He should express his opinion on THAt topic in the diaries, not on the FP.

by Big Tent Democrat on Tue Jul 03, 2007 at 11:04:27 AM EST

Still directing traffic, Big Boy?

Is the NetRoots insured for a return engagement?  Corner men should step up now.  Is there a doctor in the House? (we know there are attorneys, LOL)

Heh.

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UPDATE, 12:12 am Thursday

lucid has a rumination on the flux in the non-aligned blogs…

I’m quite happy to let the light/sound wash over me, to pretend the moments of beauty in my life flush away the moments of horror in the life of another. I can be a selfish sonofabitch.

 I can also play a James Brown funk riff on the guitar until you’re numb in the teeth.

But I can never turn away.

and Madman went to hear live music on the eve of the 4th…

I will cling to the hope that maybe we can turn away from our disasterous course, buoyed by the mood at that wonderful concert. It’s a small life jacket, but with the waves of corruption and jingoism and bigotry still deeply ingrained in a boisterous, aggressive minority, enabled by a vicious Republican machine, I’ll cling to it for a while. It’s all I have on this unhappy 4th. 

… and you know those wild bohemiens, they have threads!

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