id
int64 5.11k
4.34M
| gender
stringclasses 2
values | age
int64 13
48
| topic
stringclasses 40
values | sign
stringclasses 12
values | date
stringlengths 2
18
| text
stringlengths 4
790k
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
4,196,327 | male | 24 | indUnk | Pisces | 16,August,2004 | urlLink Home night sky |
4,196,327 | male | 24 | indUnk | Pisces | 16,August,2004 | urlLink Goofy trees |
4,196,327 | male | 24 | indUnk | Pisces | 16,August,2004 | urlLink NYC |
4,196,327 | male | 24 | indUnk | Pisces | 16,August,2004 | urlLink Art museum |
4,196,327 | male | 24 | indUnk | Pisces | 16,August,2004 | Kirkatron , the album I'm listening to, is not one of Rahsaan's best albums, although 'Serenade to a Cuckoo' and 'Bagpipe Medley' are two wild little songs. And any Rahsaan album is certainly more than worth listening to. If you're ready to be knocked down by Rahsaan's genius in one shot, go straight to Natural Black Inventions: Root Strata . My progression went like this: We Free Kings Rip, Rig and Panic (this and the next one are together on 1 disc) Now please don't you cry, beautiful Edith Dog Years in the Fourth Ring Natural Black Inventions: Root Strata A Standing Eight (this is his last three albums, The Return of the 5,000 Lb. Man , Kirkatron , and Boogie-Woogie String Along For Real all together on 2 discs) As I said, the idea of any of Rahsaan's music being 'bad' seems absurd. My favorites of the above are We Free Kings , Rip, Rig and Panic , and Natural Black Inventions . I'm just listening to all of A Standing Eight now. |
4,196,327 | male | 24 | indUnk | Pisces | 16,August,2004 | I was about to write some responses to what I wrote about Rahsaan. But then 'Bagpipe Medley' came on. Holy shit. Okay. . . It's over. The main potential problem I see with using Rahsaan as a unifying theme in the way I was thinking about is that it's very individualistic. It seems odd to celebrate one individual as a way of building a sense of community. That's a cult! Maybe it would be better to have a group of people as the opening theme. I'm going to try to find out more about Rahsaan and the people around him, his childhood, etc. Maybe he can be celebrated in a less individual-focused, more community-centered way. . . . After 'Bagpipe Medley' was a recording of urlLink Mary McLeod Bethune speaking . . . (. . . for more on Mary McLeod Bethune, check out Let it Shine: Stories of Black Women Freedom Fighters by Andrea Davis Pinckney) |
4,196,327 | male | 24 | indUnk | Pisces | 16,August,2004 | So how's this for an opening-of-the-year, classroom-culture-building, positive theme? urlLink Rahsaan Roland Kirk as a messenger of hope, of infinite possibility: If Rahsaan could be, then anything is possible. The power of human will. He would become the class hero (hopefully the first of many), part of the family lore--the start of the family lore. Our shared appreciation and valuing of him would actually help create the whole notion of the class as a group, as a family. . . . listening to 'Serenade to a Cuckoo' from Kirkatron . . . |
4,196,327 | male | 24 | indUnk | Pisces | 16,August,2004 | Politics is never simple, so I feel compelled to write about Jim McGreevy again, if only so people don't think I'm not up on the whole story. I won't go into it here, but basically it sounds like another case of an adulterous and corrupt politician. But that's just one layer of it and not (as my father insisted in a heated debate with my mother and me) THE story. As far as I'm concerned, the more interesting part of the story is the fact that a politician in a powerful, elected office came out. I think it's pretty unprecedented. Anyway, in spite of the corruption, one layer of the story is simply a man's struggle with his identity and the eloquent, sensitive way in which he described his struggle. It's not an issue of defending McGreevy, it's just about understanding his situation on as many levels as possible. Reality is complicated, layered, and multifaceted, but not everybody sees the world this way. Is this yet another Blue/Red difference? |
4,196,327 | male | 24 | indUnk | Pisces | 12,August,2004 | That's the Willie Nelson song that just ended. It's from Crazy: The Demo Sessions . I bought this CD a bit after it came out, a few months ago. I listened to it over and over again the first couple of days, but barely at all since then. It's full of biting lyrics that just cut to the core, like Yesterday as I talked with a friend in town I forgot to remember that you'd gone. For a moment I found myself smiling But a moment isn't very long. . . .Oooh, now 'Crazy' is on. . . . The album is all demos of songs Nelson wrote. They were recorded in the early 60s before he was famous (and when he had short hair and wore suits). A lot of the songs are just him and his acoustic. Some have small bands, with steel guitar, piano, and drums. I'm actually skipping most of the acoustic stuff now because they're so damn depressing, and I'm not in the mood for depressing music. I'm definitely in a steel guitar mood. I'm in a sort of heavy guitar, Western mood. I might listen to some Neil Young next, either Sleeps with Angels or Broken Arrow . Then I'm going to watch a movie, either The Searchers or Unforgiven . Odds and ends. . . (1) Anyone see the weird 'Metro/Retro' ads in The Times today? The first one was a picture of Michael Moore in one corner of the page and Mel Gibson in the opposite corner. The Moore picture said 'METRO' in big white letters and the Gibson picture said 'RETRO.' The only other text was this URL at the bottom of each picture: urlLink http://retrovsmetro.org The next one was a picture of windmills on p. A18 (Can you guess? It said 'METRO.') Then on p. A20 were some oil wells (RETRO). The last one had two pictures, one on top of the other: Newt Gingrich and Hillary Clinton. Check out the site--don't get too excited, but it's worth looking at. (2) Mee goreng noodles from Asia@Cafe at 8th and Washington are so so good. (I suggest getting them without the chicken and shrimp, just tofu.) (3) I had a great fortune tonight: You will soon be crossing the great waters. I mean that's got some real heft to it, real drama. . . . We shall see. . . . . . Neil Young just came on. . . 'Big Time' . . . Gonna leave the pain behind Gonna leave the fools in line Gonna take the magic potion Gettin in an old black car Gonna take a ride so far To the land of suntan lotion (4) Have you ever had a fresh fig? I had only ever had dried figs before, until a few days ago. They're wonderful!!! (Unfortunately, I think they're kind of like fresh apricots, in that maybe only 1 in 5 are actually good--but the good ones. . . damn!) |
4,196,327 | male | 24 | indUnk | Pisces | 11,August,2004 | I was just on the phone with my mom a little while ago, and she told me about the press conference she was watching. Jim McGreevy, the governor of New Jersey, just announced that he was gay, had had an affair with a man, and was resigning as governor. My mother was really taken with his speech, just very impressed with his courage, dignity, and eloquence. I just read the speech. My mother was right. Here's one of the more powerful parts of the speech--McGreevy describing how he 'passed' as straight: I forced what I thought was an acceptable reality onto myself, a reality which is layered and layered with all the, quote, good things, and all the, quote, right things of typical adolescent and adult behavior. Yet, at my most reflective, maybe even spiritual level, there were points in my life when I began to question what an acceptable reality really meant for me. Were there realities from which I was running? Which master was I trying to serve? He said, At a point in every person's life, one has to look deeply into the mirror of one's soul and decide one's unique truth in the world, not as we may want to see it or hope to see it, but as it is. And so my truth is that I am a gay American. I really think his words have resonance for all of us, and they definitely transcend the specifics of the issue at hand. Go Jim. Go Mom. Here's the full text of the speech: urlLink http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/12/nyregion/12TEXT-MCGR.html |
4,196,327 | male | 24 | indUnk | Pisces | 11,August,2004 | I came very very close to being picked for a jury today. It was very disappointing that I wasn't. I felt rejected. The whole experience was a mixture of the goofiness that inevitably results when a large group of adults are forced into an unknown bureaucratic situation and a serious sense that we were performing a genuinely valuable (maybe even sacred) civic function. Yes, I recognize how ridiculous that last part sounds. And, no, I don't believe that that sentiment was shared by many of my peers. After going through metal detectors just inside the Criminal Justice Center, I was led to a line of people waiting to get into the jury room. I signed in and was told to take 2 questionnaires to fill out. Altogether there were a couple hundred people in the room, sitting in chairs with fold-out desks, like in a college lecture hall. Eventually, the chipper lady who was in charge put on a video to help us answer the questions. On the video, a judge read and explained each of the 30 or so questions on the questionnaires (one for criminal cases and one for civil cases). A couple of times, a new judge came on, I guess for variety. We were then greeted by the Jury Commissioner and a judge ('one of the best we have,' the chipper hostess said). We were led to believe that their presence was a special treat. The commissioner said, 'Good morning!' and then repeated it with tone to indicate that he wanted a better response from us jurors--you know, the way a school principal does. Eventually, jurors were called in groups of 40 or 60 to go to courtrooms. I was Juror #3 in the third group, a group of 40 that was to report to a courtroom in City Hall for a civil case. One of the highlights of the day was watching everybody line up in a double line ('Get a buddy,' the chipper lady said.). One woman even asked the guy in front of me to switch with her so she could be with her friend. Then we walked, in our lines , out of the building and across the street to City Hall. It was like a field trip! After some confusion and a group of us waiting outside the wrong courtroom, we ended up in Courtroom 696. A short, older woman was in charge. There were lawyers moving around trying to look important, and there was much waiting. One of the plaintiff's lawyers finally addressed us and explained that the case involved a woman who had taken the diet drug Phen-Fen (is that how you spell it?). She was suing Wyeth, the large pharmaceutical company. The lawyer and his client were from Texas, but Wyeth is based in the Philly area. The woman had some sort of heart problem, specifically with her valves, I think. The lawyer asked us a series of questions. If our answer was yes, we had to raise our hand and say our juror number. He asked if we had ever worked for Wyeth or another pharmaceutical company. But he also asked more personal questions, like whether we had any heart problems and even if we had ever taken Phen-Fen. (I was very embarrassed, but I had to publicly admit that, yes, Phen-Fen is the reason I'm so skinny.) One of the opposing lawyers got up and asked his series of questions (including whether a corporation would start off at a disadvantage in our minds just because it was a large corporation--I didn't raise my hand). Then, after more waiting, we were called one-by-one into a room in the corner of the courtroom to be questioned further. It was pretty intimidating. There were 7 or 8 lawyers (from both sides), some sitting and some standing. The room was not large, so they were all pretty close to me. The old woman was there too, though, so I wasn't worried. I explained some of my answers on the questionnaire, telling them that my father was an attorney and formerly a prosecutor. I explained what kind of law my father practiced, and one of the lawyers asked me if anything he ever discussed with me had influenced my opinion about personal injury cases. I answered no. They also asked me where I teach and what grade. They didn't seem to have any problems with me, and I really thought that I'd be picked. I was definitely in the minority of people who hadn't answered yes to any of the questions they asked us as a group, so I thought I had a really good shot. (I imagine I was also one of the few people who actually wanted to get picked.) Anyway, here's the climax (which, alas, is somewhat anticlimactic). The old woman announced the 10 chosen jurors by number and seated them in the jury box. I was not one of them. But then one of the lawyers asked her to announce the jurors' names. She said, 'Juror #2 is Matthew Feldman.' I got very excited and said, 'I'm Matthew Feldman.' I then asked very eagerly, 'Am I Juror #2?' She said, 'You were almost Juror #2.' Apparently, she had been reading from an older list, which I guess means that I had been selected and then vetoed by one of the lawyers. So there you have it. Even the judicial system toys with my mind. Other notes. . . I ended up not even reading any of either of my books, just the newspaper. The Times happened to have almost a full page's worth of puzzles today, on the Op-Ed page. I did some of them, but some things just didn't quite click. In the courtroom, I was sitting next to a woman who's a Head Start teacher at the school where I taught summer school. I didn't know her, but we talked about the principal, the contract dispute, etc. Sitting on the other side of me in the courtroom (and also sitting next to me in the Jury Room) was an interesting and talkative guy. We made wise-ass comments to each other about stuff going on and had a discussion about personal responsibility, corporate greed, and the legitimacy of personal injury cases. Later, when we were back in the Jury Room waiting for our $9 checks (yeah, that's right), we lamented the sinister presence of cheese curls and grape soda in the hands of ghetto children. That's just how the conversation started--actually, we had a good discussion about urban schools/parent ed./etc. I thought he was only a little older than me, but then he mentioned that he'd grown up in North Philly 30 years ago. |
4,196,327 | male | 24 | indUnk | Pisces | 11,August,2004 | I just watched An American in Paris . As I sat down at the computer afterwards, I started mindlessly fiddling on my thumb piano and. . . out came the first four notes of 'Our Love Is Here To Stay' ('It's ver-y clear'). I wasn't trying to play anything, but it just came out. Pretty neat, huh? So, the movie. . . . I should first say that, for the most part, I don't really like musical movies. The exceptions are Singin' in the Rain , which is one of my favorite movies of any kind, and On the Town , which has great Leonard Bernstein music and is surprisingly clever and subversive. I was trying to think of other musicals I like. A couple recent ones-- Moulin Rouge (I loved it the first several times I saw it, but I'm less into it now) and Chicago (it definitely did some fun new things). Anyway, both Singin' in the Rain and On the Town have Gene Kelly. He's in An American in Paris , of course, and my father's told me, 'If you like Singin' in the Rain , you should see An American in Paris .' I enjoyed An American in Paris , but I'll be fine if I don't see it again. I can appreciate the dancing and recognize the quality of (some of) the music, but that's about it. Singin' in the Rain and On the Town offer a lot more. It's not that they're deep or anything. But they actually work as films, as opposed to just scenes put together. Some of the music and singing wasn't quite there either. The French guy who's supposed to marry Gene Kelly's girl is not pleasant to listen to or watch (maybe that's the point, but we still have to sit through it). And I have to say, it's hard for me to enjoy some of the Gershwin songs that jazz singers have recorded ('Our Love Is Here to Stay,' 'S'Wonderful'). I know these might even be the 'original' versions, but once you've heard Ella Fitzgerald sing a song, there's not much use in listening to Gene Kelly do it. This sounds very negative but, as I said, on the whole I did enjoy the movie. Maybe it's easier for me to criticize than to praise. There's also the fact that the very act of writing about something tends to shape my opinion of it. The process of writing becomes indistinguishable from the process of constructing an opinion. (Was that last sentence hyper-intellectual nonsense?) Thoughts during the movie. . . -Maybe I should be more like Gene Kelly--smooth, goofy, charming. . . -What does the prevalence of online socializing (IM, friendster, blogging, etc.) mean for the future of love at first sight? -Someone with strong homophobic feelings would not be able to watch this movie without--well, without expressing his homophobic feelings. Why wasn't that the case when the movie was made? (Or was it?) Gotta go to sleep. I have to be up early tomorrow for jury duty. I'm actually looking forward to it. I'll bring both books I'm reading ( The Dew Breaker and Stupidity and Tears ) and the newspaper. I also expect it to be a good place to people-watch. It should be an interesting assortment of people. |
4,196,327 | male | 24 | indUnk | Pisces | 10,August,2004 | urlLink This is me sending a picture to my blog. Wait, no--this is a tree. urlLink |
4,196,327 | male | 24 | indUnk | Pisces | 10,August,2004 | So why does it say that on top of my blog? It turns out it's a link to a March of Dimes page with tips for what spouses of expecting mothers should do. But it's definitely an interesting question to have at the top of my blog. (Yes, I was looking at my own blog.) It's a little disconcerting. Almost like a challenge: 'No? You're not a new dad? Why not?' Well, at least that's the way I took it. Make of that what you will. I just bought a bunch of CDs at Philly Record Exchange. All jazz. The past couple of days I've been listening to more jazz, but prior to that I hadn't been listening to so much jazz. I've been in the mood for sort of straight-ahead, hard-bop type stuff. This is what I bought: Jimmy Smith - Cool Blues (from '58, with Blakey and Lou Donaldson) Charlie Persip & the Jazz Statesmen (Freddie Hubbard, Ronnie Matthews, Ron Carter, & others) Curtis Fuller - Blues-ette ('59, with Benny Golson, Tommy Flanagan, Jimmy Garrison, and Al Harewood) Rahsaan Roland Kirk - A Standing Eight (his last 3 albums on 2 discs) Sun Ra - Somewhere Else Okay, so I know those last two aren't exactly 'straight-ahead.' I'm listening to Jimmy Smith now (actually an Eddie McFadden guitar solo). I listened to a couple tracks from the Charlie Persip. He's a drummer who played with Dizzy in the 60s (and maybe late 50s). I saw him at the Clef Club a couple of years ago with Archie Shepp--one of the 2 or 3 best shows I've ever been to. Archie was incredible--he came out all dapper in a dark suit and fodora. He looked so damn dignified. And he played mostly standards--not at all what I'd expected. He even sang a little bit. He was incredible, and Charlie Persip blew our minds, playing all kinds of crazy stuff, even throwing in some hip hop beats. I haven't listened to the Sun Ra or Rahsaan discs yet, which I suppose are the more interesting stuff. At least, I have less of an idea of what to expect from them. Maybe I'll blog about them after I listen. I almost bought a Charles Gayle CD, but I decided to put it off. I don't think I've ever heard him, but I think it's the kind of stuff that you really have to just sit down and listen to, eyes shut, for a half-hour or so. I used to do that all the time, with everything , but not so much lately. If I'm not doing that now, though, when I have a lot of free time, when will I be doing it? During the schoolyear, I find it hard to clear my mind enough to listen like that. Thoughts about my kids and the day always intrude. Maybe I'll change that come September. Off to read. I was going to go get coffee and read in the Italian Market, but it's looking kind of nasty out, so maybe I'll just stay here. I'm reading The Dew Breaker , by Edwidge Danticat. It's a collection of inter-connected stories that take place in Haiti and Brooklyn. It's fantastic, really beautiful writing, the kind of stories you want to re-read as soon as you finish. |
4,196,327 | male | 24 | indUnk | Pisces | 10,August,2004 | I'm not exactly sure why I decided to start this blog, but I think it might be fun. It gives me another choice when I feel like communicating with no one in particular. There's my tape recorder, which I started using on a roadtrip a couple of years ago (the idea being that I could talk into it while I drove). I go through periods where I use it a lot, but not so much lately. Then there's my journal, which is mostly for school-related stuff. It has thoughts about specific things that happen in school, but it's more for ideas about things that I want to happen in my classroom. I think I have this conception in my mind of the perfect classroom--I guess it's more like a dream that's always evolving and, thus, somewhat hard to pin down. Anyway, my journal is the closest I've come to a tangible expression of this vision. There's also my little notebook, which is for little tiny tidbits, from the mundane ('disks--at least 10') to the practical but not mundane ('study New Orleans funeral parades with class') to the clever but maybe not practical ('Teach: Petra Haden --> multitracking --> synthesis/analysis'). It also has shopping lists, music to check out, movies to see, books to read, phone numbers, etc. So the blog is yet another option, which means that sometimes I'll be paralyzed and not be able to figure out where to communicate with no one/myself/strangers. Time to make dinner--pasta with zucchini sauce. |
3,482,062 | male | 15 | Student | Pisces | 28,May,2004 | Well, 3 weeks (or is it 2) and then we have tests. Great feeling isn't it. Or should I say freaky. People say review a lot, but when you look at the amount, you go under something commonly notified as 'stress', and as this is our first time the effect is even greater. 'But,' the doctor says 'meditate, perform yoga, and everything will be alright child, but is that really the case?' No, well see you, sometime next week! |
3,482,062 | male | 15 | Student | Pisces | 28,May,2004 | Welcome to thesquarerootofnine.blogspot.com. This website was published today, yes, today. Freaky isn't it, how the internet has expanded so much; so much 'free' stuff. Well, do share you thoughts. Oh, and please refrain from swearing. |
3,482,062 | male | 15 | Student | Pisces | 29,July,2004 | urlLink The Official Omega1989 Resource This page apparently proves to be a shocker, especially now that it has introduced the rules to 'Stealth Chess, Discworld Style', Enjoy! |
3,482,062 | male | 15 | Student | Pisces | 31,July,2004 | |
3,482,062 | male | 15 | Student | Pisces | 30,July,2004 | urlLink Googlism THE FIRST OFFICIAL POST EVERY HAS HIT THE ROADS TO HEAVEN. WELL I JUST THOUGHT I'D SEND THIS UNBELIEVABLY CRAZY SITE TO ALL OF YOU GUYS...WELL JUST CHECK IT OUT AND IT'LL EXPLAIN ITSELF! THANKS, BLOG ADMINISTRATOR, SMIK |
3,482,062 | male | 15 | Student | Pisces | 30,July,2004 | Well...This is officially the first post to give this blogspot it's way into the future. Well it's main use is going to be for all the 10th Graders (2004/2005), which includes me. Well for all of you who have a clue about what I'm writting about so far, there's going to be 'radical' stuff happening here, that's as long as you participate. Many articles and updates! [Some] Grade 9 Students Gather For An End Of The Year Picture Including Me (On The Ground, To The Right) Thanks To Zahra For The Picture! |
3,482,062 | male | 15 | Student | Pisces | 09,August,2004 | It's 11:40pm (DSM time), As Shezeens MSN nickname reads we're 'Six days' away from school. For me the feelings great! I actually can't wait...though of course there's going to be a lot of work, dang! I guess this worlds pretty much crazy... Somehow I can't resist to say -- 'Live Life To The Fullest' 'On The 16th Of February Penguins Are Going To Fly, And The Square Root Of -1 Is Going To Exist In The Minds Of Many' -- Just Remember That |
3,482,062 | male | 15 | Student | Pisces | 02,August,2004 | Well I will be having my last dinner today before I leave to South Africa. We're going to some restaurant with my Grandparents...I hope the food's good. I've packed all my stuff, at least that's what I thought, it turns out that my mum's complaining about me putting an amount too small to suit the needs of the trip...well I guess that's life. Um... I thought I'd just bring up a current running issue. You see the fact is that I can't run this web-blog on my own because there's going to be a lot of stuff happening next year. So I atleast need one volunteer (who knows how to use blogs) who can help me run this 'Grade 10 -- The Garbage' blog. If you are interested in helping e-mail me at urlLink [email protected] (without the 'z', which is a prevention method used for anti-spamming). If I don't find anyone, I guess I can manage the blog on my own... Anyway, here's a picture I've been working on lately (using Jasc Paint Shop Pro 7.04) (69.1KB)... 'Matthew Franzen At The Elementary School' |
3,558,872 | female | 47 | Education | Cancer | 09,June,2004 | My neat son just called me from DC to hear the horses hooves as the processional carrying President Reagan's body went past. It was strange because I was watching it on TV and they were going up a tree-lined path at the Capitol Bldg. When I called Steve back, he told me he was under the trees, away from the crowds. He's off to get in line for the viewing. What tales he'll be able to tell is grandchildren! |
3,558,872 | female | 47 | Education | Cancer | 07,June,2004 | I am sad over the loss of President Reagan. I believe he was just one of us who went on to change the world. I wish only the best for his family. I pray they may get through this sad time and know that the nation truly loved and appreciated him. |
3,558,872 | female | 47 | Education | Cancer | 06,June,2004 | I had to create this to be able to respond to my son's blogs. I hope I remember my address so I can come back and add more! |
3,558,872 | female | 47 | Education | Cancer | 20,July,2004 | Never paint your living room because it's never as simple as that. This past spring I decided to paint the grungy, fireplace smudged walls in my living room. So once summer came, and I had time to actually paint, I proceeded to my nearby paint store and brought home the pre-requisite 55 paint sample sticks. Needless to say, I could not decide which color to use, so my mother suggested I call a designer who could come up with a plan for my living space that I could work toward in order to have the Martha Stewart room. I met with Donielle and she said a plan would be ready within a week. Well, I needed to paint the walls, but Donielle was still planning my room, so I called her twice and finally pinned her down on a color , which turned out to be a two color, ragged-on paint application in my lovely large 25 X 14 room. I worried and fretted over this two step process, until my sister finally showed me how this was not brain surgery and I could always re-do anything I messed up, so one week later my walls look great, but unfortunately, this aggravated my carpal tunnel symptoms, so now I'm looking at surgery sometime in August. Anyhow, back to the living room, I have now waited four weeks, and have no plan from Donielle, BUT my mother suggested I change the carpet to a lovely green. I did, and she was right! And not because she is always right, but this time she is actually right. Because the carpet is green and the walls are a darker shade than before, I need to change the curtains, and buy a new beige leather chair, as the blue stuffed chair I have is too dark, add a ficus tree in the corner, and order an upholstered bench for under the window. Oh, and because the living room is connected to the kitchen, I'll need to change the wallpaper in there, because it has no green. When I moved the furniture into the kitchen to have the carpet installed, my linoleum stretched, so now I need new. I'm thinking a wood laminate might be nice. Also, my foyer now seems too light, so I'll probably have to hire a painter to paint it since I cannot reach up into the stairwell to paint. So, like I said, never paint your living room. |
1,241,231 | male | 37 | Technology | Aries | 23,February,2003 | Hi and Welcome to my Blog. I am new to this, so please ignore any blog etiquette stuff ups! To start with, some favourite quotes on the US and foreign policy: 'The enormous gap between what US leaders do in the world and what Americans think their leaders are doing is one of the great propaganda accomplishments of the dominant political mythology. ' -- Michael Parenti, political scientist and author Never before in modern history has acountry dominated the earth so totally as the United States does today. America is now the Schwarzenegger of international politics: showing of fmuscles, obtrusive, intimidating. The Americans, in the absence of limits put to them by anybody or anything, act as if they own a kind of blank check in their McWorld. -- Der Spiegel, Germany's leading newsmagazine, 1997 I will never apologize for the United States of America. I don't care what the facts are. -- George Bush, Speaking as vice president in the context of the shooting down of an Iranian passenger plane by an American ship, taking 290 lives, Newsweek, August 15, 1988 Throughout the world, on any given day, a man, woman or child is likely to be displaced,tortured,killed or 'disappeared', at the hands of governments or armed political groups. More often than not, the United States shares the blame. -- Amnesty International, 1996 'Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger.' -- Herman Goering at the Nuremberg Trials |
1,241,231 | male | 37 | Technology | Aries | 31,March,2003 | Feature article of the day: 'Liberation' is not freedom Iraqis mistrust the intentions of the West, and a history of failures supports their attitude Avi Shlaim Sunday March 30, 2003 The Observer The fierce resistance that British and American troops have encountered must have come as a very unpleasant surprise to Tony Blair and George Bush. They assumed Saddam Hussein was so unpopular and isolated that the Iraqi people would welcome the troops as liberators and help them to overthrow his regime. But the popular uprising has not materialised. However much they detest Saddam's regime, a great many Iraqis view he coalition forces asinvaders rather than liberators. Our leaders gravely underestimated the force of Iraqi nationalism. Blair and Bush seem unaware, or only dimly aware, of the crucial role Iraqi history plays in shaping popular attitudes to the conflict. Iraqis are not an inert mass whose sentiments can be switched on and off to serve the agenda of outside powers. They are a proud and patriotic people with a long collective memory. Britain and America feature as anything but benign in this collective memory. Blair has repeatedly emphasised the moral argument behind the resort to force to depose an evil dictator. Over the past century, however, Britain rarely occupied the high moral ground in relation to Iraq. The US has even less of a claim on the trust and goodwill of the Iraqi people after its calamitous failure to support the popular insurrection against Saddam and his henchmen in March 1991. Iraq was only one element in the victors' peace which was imposed on the Middle East in the aftermath of World War I without any reference to the wishes of the people. Iraq's borders were delineated to serve British commercial and strategic interests. Originally, Iraq was made up of two Ottoman provinces: Basra and Baghdad. Later, the oil-bearing province of Mosul was added, dashing hopes of Kurdish independence. The logic behind the enterprise was summed up by one observer as follows: 'Iraq was created by Churchill, who had the mad idea of joining two widely separated oilwells, Kirkuk and Mosul, by uniting three widely separated peoples: the Kurds, the Sunnis and the Shias.' The man hand-picked by Britain to rule over this unwieldy conglomerate was Faisal, a Hashemite prince from Arabia and one of the leaders of the Arab Revolt against the Ottoman Turks. After the French evicted Faisal from Syria and put an end to his short-lived kingdom, Britain procured the throne of Iraq for him as a consolation prize. It cleared his path by neutralising opposition, deporting the leading contender and organising a plebiscite in which 96 per cent of the people were implausibly said to have voted for Faisal as king. The 1921 settlement not only sanctioned violent and arbitrary methods: it built them into the structure of Iraqi politics. Its key feature was lack of legitimacy: the borders lacked legitimacy, the rulers lacked legitimacy and the political system lacked legitimacy. The settlement also introduced anti-British sentiment as a powerful force in Iraqi politics. In 1941, Rashid Ali al-Gailani led a nationalist revolt against Britain which was put down by force. In 1958, as a direct result of its folly over Suez, Britain witnessed the defenestration of its royal friends in Baghdad in a bloody military coup. In 1980, Saddam attacked Iran. During the eight years of the Iran-Iraq War, Britain and its Western allies increasingly tilted towards Iraq. The Scott inquiry of 1996 documented the Thatcher Government's duplicitous record in selling arms to Iraq and in providing military credits. A billion pounds of taxpayers' money was thrown away in propping up Saddam's regime and doing favours to arms firms. It was abundantly clear Saddam was a monster in human form. Britain did not manufacture this monster, but it turned a blind eye to the savage brutality of his regime. Britain also knew Saddam had chemical and biological weapons because Western companies sold him all the ingredients necessary. Saddam was known to be gassing Iranian troops in their thousands in the Iran-Iraq War. Failure to subject Iraq to international sanctions allowed him to press ahead with the development of weapons of mass destruction. In March 1988, Saddam turned on his own people, killing up to 5,000 Kurds with poison gas in Halabja. Attacking unarmed civilians with chemical weapons was unprecedented. If ever there was a time for humanitarian intervention in Iraq, it was 1988. Yet no Western government even suggested intervention. Neither was an arms embargo imposed on Iraq. In 1990, Britain belatedly turned against Saddam only because he trod on our toes by invading Kuwait. He had a point when he said Kuwait was an artificial creation of British imperialism. But Iraq's other borders were no less arbitrary than the border with Kuwait, so if that border could be changed by force, the entire post-World War I territorial settlement might unravel. The main purpose of the Anglo-American intervention against Iraq was not to lay the foundation for the 'New World Order' but to restore the old order. The fact that the UN explicitly authorised the use of force in Resolution 678 - 'the mother of all resolutions' - made this an exercise in collective security and gave it legitimacy in the eyes of the world, including most Arab states. On 28 February 1991, Papa Bush gave the order to cease fire. Britain was informed of this decision but not consulted. The declared aims of Operation Desert Storm had been achieved: the Iraqi army had been ejected from Kuwait and the Kuwaiti government was restored. But Saddam kept his deadly grip on power. After the ceasefire, Bush encouraged the Iraqi people to rise up, only to betray them when they did so. When the moment of truth arrived, Bush recoiled from pursuing his policy to its logical conclusion. His advisers told him Kurdish and Shia victories in their bids for freedom may lead to the dismemberment of Iraq. Behind this theory lay the pessimistic view that Iraq was not suited for democracy and that Sunni minority rule was the only formula capable of keeping it in one piece. Once again, the Iraqis were the victims of cruel geopolitics. In order to topple Saddam, it was not necessary for the allies to continue their march to Baghdad, my hometown. It would have been sufficient to disarm the Republican Guard units as they retreated from Kuwait through the Basra loop. This was not done. They were allowed to retain their arms, to regroup and to use helicopters to ensure the survival of Saddam and his regime. The Kurds in the North were crushed and fled to the mountains. The Shias in the South were crushed and fled to the marshes. In calling for Saddam's overthrow, Bush Snr evidently had in mind a military coup, a reshuffling of Sunni gangsters in Baghdad, rather than establishing a freer and more democratic political order. As a result of his moral cowardice, he snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. Saddam stayed in power and continued to torment his people, while Kuwait remained a feudal fiefdom. A quick, decisive war was followed by a messy peace. Few wars in history had achieved their immediate aims so fully and swiftly, yet left behind so much unfinished business. The war's aftermath was a reminder that military force, when used to tackle complex political problems, is merely a blunt instrument. The war also demonstrated that Americans are better at sharp, short bursts of military intervention than at sustained political engagement aimed at fostering democracy in the Middle East. This inglorious history of Western involvement in Iraq goes a long way to explaining why the Iraqi people are not playing their part in our script for the liberation of their country. This is why Blair, in his press conference last Tuesday, was so anxious to persuade ordinary Iraqis that this time Britain is determined to overthrow Saddam. He directed his appeal particularly at the Shia Muslims who make up 60 per cent of Iraq's 24 million people. 'This time we will not let you down,' he pledged solemnly. But it is naive to expect mere words to erase the bitter legacy of the past. Given their own experience of oppression by Saddam and betrayal by the Western powers, it is only natural that ordinary Iraqis prefer to let the two sides fight it out among themselves. Avi Shlaim is professor of international relations at Oxford University and author of 'The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World'. Guardian Unlimited Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003 |
1,241,231 | male | 37 | Technology | Aries | 30,March,2003 | |
1,241,231 | male | 37 | Technology | Aries | 30,March,2003 | |
1,241,231 | male | 37 | Technology | Aries | 28,March,2003 | Gruesome toll grows as army grinds to a halt Lucky... Saja Jaafar, 3, lies in a Baghdad hospital after surviving the bombing of the al-Naser market in the Shuwaila district. Photo: AFP Silver stars and red tracer fire lit the sky as the Al Shualla people washed their dead - as many as 58 of them were slaughtered when a bomb exploded in their little marketplace. Some carried blanket-draped coffins through darkened alleyways, others strapped them to the roofs of battered cars. But from all houses the same teary cries drifted into the chilly night: 'There is no god but God.' As each family group left the mosque, the men faced Mecca in prayer and the lights of passing cars etched the outline of their women, standing in tight knots off to the side. Iraqi officials insist this bomb, the second in 48 hours to hit a civilian market, was dropped by a US or British jet. The Americans are investigating; they say they don't know. But the suffering and the grief radiating from a small crater in this impoverished Shi'ite neighbourhood in Baghdad will make it harder for ordinary Iraqis to see the US-led invasion force as an army of liberation, rather than one of conquest. At the Al-Noor Hospital, 500metres from the marketplace in north-west Baghdad, tearful men held each other in their arms as distraught women yelled the names of the dead. A man, sobbing with grief, called over and over: 'That man! That man!' Relatives said he was referring to President George Bush, who, in Washington, appeared to be warning of more setbacks before victory in saying: 'We are now fighting the most desperate units of the dictator's army. The fierce fighting under way will demand further courage and further sacrifice, yet we know the outcome of this battle.' In the face of stiff resistance and severe front-line problems - security and logistic - US commanders have now decided on a pause of up to six days in their advance on Baghdad. The Al Shualla carnage came on a day in which the US seemed to put aside its undertaking not to damage Iraq's infrastructure: waves of strikes, including the first confirmed use of 4700-pound (2100 kilogram) bunker-buster bombs, destroyed much of Baghdad's telephone system. In Al Shualla, at 6.30pm, people were busy in the market. Ghannun Hussein was waiting for his 59-year-old father with the vegetables for their evening meal when he heard the whoosh of a missile. Standing by his father's hospital bed later, he said: 'I heard the explosion. I ran. All the people were on the ground; people's arms and legs were cut off, there was too much blood.' Najin Abdula, who works at the hospital, raced to the scene: 'There was the body of a man with no head. I stopped cars in the traffic to get them to bring the injured to the hospital.' Then he opened the door of a morgue refrigerator for The Sun-Herald . Inside were five bodies. One young man had half his head blown away; the nose of another was gone and his flesh and clothing were torn. As family members and hospital staff, many in tears, worked feverishly, survivors who could talk spoke of their split-second encounter with war. Khalid Jabar Hussein, 49, with shrapnel in his arm, wrist and leg, said: 'First I heard an aircraft and then the missile coming at us and I don't know anything after that. I fell down.' Sajaja Jaafur, one of five in her family who were injured, lay in her bed, crying with pain as she tried to turn to face her mother. Her lovely olive skin was torn, there was a tube in her nose and a blood-stained dressing around her abdomen. Samaan Kadhim,52, sedated with a bad gash on his back, said:'This was a civilian area, there were no soldiers. It was just a market.' In the midst of all this, Dr Ahmed Sufian lashed out: 'Our floors are covered with blood of our people, the walls are splashed with blood. Why, why, why? Why all this blood? I'm a doctor, but I can't understand such things. They say [they] come to free us? Is this freedom?' There was no overt support for Saddam Hussein, but all blamed the US for the bombing. There was no hostility towards western reporters invited by families to witness their grief. 'America did this to us,' said 50-year-old Kadhim Ali. 'Why does it hate the Iraqi people?' This story was found at: http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/03/29/1048653903996.html |
1,241,231 | male | 37 | Technology | Aries | 28,March,2003 | War Thoughts Following are some good articles I have read over the last few days. Enjoy. How to save Brand America As Iraqis quake in justified terror, Americans fret about the threat to their 'values' and wonder why they are so widely disliked. Here one friend of America lists the reasons... and the remedy Henry Porter Sunday March 23, 2003 The Observer urlLink See the online article here On Friday evening a spokesman from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in Los Angeles explained that it was important to continue with a scaled-down Oscar ceremony 'when American values were under attack'. As his statement was relayed by the BBC we learned that American B52s had dropped their payload over Iraq and that hundreds of cruise missiles were striking at Baghdad. The TV screen began to pulse with livid blooms from the explosions. I can't have been the only one to wonder how the man from the Academy had produced the classic response of victimhood when at that very moment American values were being unambiguously asserted at the heart of Saddam's regime. That night's bombing will be remembered in the Arab world for a generation or more. No one in the Middle East can possibly fail to take the lesson about the reach and precision of US military might, let alone the determination to use it. But once the hostilities are over in Iraq, the greatest challenge to the American Imperium is to replace some of the fear that the bombing has inspired with a reputation for fairness and doing what it has promised in Iraq and Palestine. Last year, before Bush had decided to act on Iraq, the White House commissioned a report from advertising and media executives on the way America was seen in the world. The report shook Bush. Even America's allies characterised the US as arrogant, self-aborbed and hypocritical. Bush reacted by setting up an office of global communications in the White House, removing the responsibility for selling 'Brand America' from the State department. It duly began work last autumn. If selling the US presented problems last year, the task is vastly more difficult today. A country which stands for individual freedom and whose people are so eager to do the right thing - even though, as Churchill observed, they may explore all other options beforehand - is now considered by millions to be halfway between behemoth and pariah. Americans are amazed by the slide in their standing, particularly after the attacks of 9/11. Last year Congressman named Henry Hyde asked: 'How is it that a country that invented Hollywood and Madison Avenue has allowed such a destructive and parodied image of itself to become the intellectual coin of the realm?' The short answer to this is that Hollywood and Madison Avenue are used to sell the American dream to Americans and a once-receptive audience outside the US. They are not remotely equipped to address the deep rifts in policy and purpose which have opened up between the United States and the rest of the world. Like it or not, America is seen as greedy and domineering, and this is a dangerous development for all those who believe that liberal democracy depends on America's success and acceptance in the world. In the two-and-half years since Bush came to power after a disputed Florida count involving just 170,000 unreadable ballot papers, attitudes have greatly sharpened, partly because Bush's mandate remained unconvincing but also because of the unapologetic nature of his regime. The exercise of power came to the new administration as second nature. Many of its members - Cheney, Ashcroft, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz - were veterans of up to four previous Republican administrations. In exile they had seized the idea - in a way Clinton never chose to - that the power of the US, financially, technologically and militarily, could and should be deployed to consolidate American dominance in the twenty-first century. At the same time, Bush seemed a second-rate figure and his unshakeable self-satisfaction was hard to attribute to any achievement or intellectual distinction. Instead, he appeared to be the passive beneficiary of his father's career. And George Junior seemed to be a man so untroubled by his actions that he was in bed and asleep 45 minutes after addressing the nation on TV this week. To many this was the action of a man too breezily unimaginative to envisage the bombardment that would take place over Baghdad. Unfair maybe, but that is how it looked. Another characteristic of the administration which is responsible for the new levels of anti-Americanism is that it not only disdains meaningful consultation with lesser powers, it does not even bother to go through the motions. When Roosevelt returned from Yalta he stopped off in Egypt to consult and explain. When America was building the alliance for the 1991 Gulf war, Secretary of State James Baker toured the Middle East to reassure Turkey and its Arab neighbours. Bush, on the other hand, has no knowledge of the Middle East and his Secretary of State Colin Powell has mostly remained in Washington and New York these past months to make sure that Rumsfeld, Cheney and Wolfowitz didn't make a grab for US foreign policy. But it would be wrong to blame Bush and co for America's reputation today. Since the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the victory of the 1991 Gulf war there has been a gradual increase in what historian and author Margaret Macmillan, in her book, Peacemakers , calls 'American exceptionalism'. 'Faith in their own exceptionalism,' she writes, 'has sometimes led to a certain obtuseness on the part of Americans, a tendency to preach at other nations rather than listen to them, a tendency to assume that American motives are pure where those of others are not.' The habit of exceptionalism came to the fore during the Clinton era when despite a seemingly amenable diplomatic stance there were many occasions when America opted out. It was of course Clinton's government that failed to sign a treaty banning landmines because US personnel might be compromised in the Korean demilitarised zone. Clinton also refused to ratify the treaty to set up the International Criminal Court in Rome. Why? Because America believes its international responsibilities as chief peacekeeper and enforcer placed its citizens at unusual risk of prosecution. In his first months of the Bush presidency the US opted out the Kyoto agreement to limit carbon emissions and the Anti-Ballistic Missiles treaty on the grounds that it wanted to develop a missile defence system. Last summer plans to provide the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention with inspection powers were blocked by the Bush administration - which, given the pretext for going to war on Iraq, certainly seems a bit rich. Across a broad range of activities America either asserted its right to special privileges or simply declared itself to be above the law. The most starkly hypocritical example was when in March last year the free trade enthusiasts of the Republican administration capitulated to demands by US steel makers to impose tough new tariffs on steel imports. At the same time America, as a country which strongly advocated a plan to reduce subsidies and tariffs in farming around the world, insisted on its right to give $100 billion in subsidies to its own farmers. It has become clear that America has been shrewdly manipulating many agendas in its own interests. Some of these initiatives are so obscure or technical that they never reach the public consciousness, but they are important nonetheless. For instance, in January last year Professor Robert Hunter Wade of the London School of Economics pointed out that the US had manipulated 'the World Trade Organisation to commit to a General Agreement on Trade in Services that will facilitate a global market in private health care, welfare, pensions, education and water, supplied - naturally - by US companies, and which will undermine political support for universal access to social services in developing countries'. Later in the same article he says: 'Globalisation and global supervisory organisations enable the United States to harness the rest of the world to its own rhythms and structures.' In other words, we are dancing to the American tune, probably much more than any of us in the cushioned West appreciate. In the developing world, however, there is a strong yet ill-defined sense that living standards are kept low in order to allow Americans to consume far more than they actually produce. It would be unfair to reach these harsh conclusions without pointing out that America does provide much aid and expertise to the developing world and pours billions of dollars into peacekeeping operations. Still there is a gathering conviction that America is, to use the word of the moment, in state of persistent non-compliance on too many protocols, agreements, treaties and conventions to number. And that cannot be a good thing for the reputation of the US, nor an impression easily reversed by a few eager young men selling Brand America. To a fond outsider like myself, America has become perplexingly inconsistent. Though this administration talks up democratic values it actively supports dictatorships in Pakistan and central Asia, and wobbled when a democratically elected government was threatened with a coup in Venezuela. Too often the Bush government's principles are forgotten in the cause of political expedience. And this has been true during the fight against terrorism at home where suspects have been arrested and isolated from the normal judicial process without a qualm. I've been amazed how quickly Americans have gone along with the loss of treasured and symbolic rights and saddened that the American media has not done more to oppose the authorities. It is difficult to overestimate the shock that 9/11 delivered to the American psyche. Security has become a national obsession. It seems odd to the outside world that while US troops were being deployed in the Gulf, Americans were stocking up on bottled water and tape to seal their homes from chemical weapons attacks. There is something rather panicky and self-obsessed about the US today and it is in this atmosphere that any challenge to the government or security agencies is immediately classed as unpatriotic. Americans will bridle at these observations, but as Philip Roth pointed out in October, since 9/11 they have indulged in 'an orgy of national narcissism and a gratuitous victim mentality which is repugnant'. Now the bombs have rained on Baghdad it is time for America to stop worrying about its values being under attack and to re-engage with the world, showing the openness and generosity that was once so admired. That is the only way to reinvigorate Brand America. Empire State, a novel by Henry Porter about a US/UK counter-terrorist operation, is published by Orion in September. The great charade As the West prepares for an assault on Iraq, John Pilger argues that 'war on terror' is a smokescreen created by the ultimate terrorist ... America itself John Pilger Sunday July 14, 2002 The Observer urlLink See the online article here It is 10 months since 11 September, and still the great charade plays on. Having appropriated our shocked response to that momentous day, the rulers of the world have since ground our language into a paean of cliches and lies about the 'war on terrorism' - when the most enduring menace, and source of terror, is them. The fanatics who attacked America came from Saudi Arabia and Egypt. No bombs fell on these American protectorates. Instead, more than 5,000 civilians have been bombed to death in stricken Afghanistan, the latest a wedding party of 40 people, mostly women and children. Not a single al-Qaeda leader of importance has been caught. Following this 'stunning victory', hundreds of prisoners were shipped to an American concentration camp in Cuba, where they have been held against all the conventions of war and international law. No evidence of their alleged crimes has been produced, and the FBI confirms only one is a genuine suspect. In the United States, more than 1,000 people of Muslim background have 'disappeared'; none has been charged. Under the draconian Patriot Act, the FBI's new powers include the authority to go into libraries and ask who is reading what. Meanwhile, the Blair government has made fools of the British Army by insisting they pursue warring tribesmen: exactly what squaddies in putties and pith helmets did over a century ago when Lord Curzon, Viceroy of India, described Afghanistan as one of the 'pieces on a chessboard upon which is being played out a great game for the domination of the world'. There is no war on terrorism; it is the great game speeded up. The difference is the rampant nature of the superpower, ensuring infinite dangers for us all. Having swept the Palestinians into the arms of the supreme terrorist Ariel Sharon, the Christian Right fundamentalists running the plutocracy in Washington, now replenish their arsenal in preparation for an attack on the 22 million suffering people of Iraq. Should anyone need reminding, Iraq is a nation held hostage to an American-led embargo every bit as barbaric as the dictatorship over which Iraqis have no control. Contrary to propaganda orchestrated from Washington and London, the coming attack has nothing to do with Saddam Hussein's 'weapons of mass destruction', if these exist at all. The reason is that America wants a more compliant thug to run the world's second greatest source of oil. The drum-beaters rarely mention this truth, and the people of Iraq. Everyone is Saddam Hussein, the demon of demons. Four years ago, the Pentagon warned President Clinton that an all-out attack on Iraq might kill 'at least' 10,000 civilians: that, too, is unmentionable. In a sustained propaganda campaign to justify this outrage, journalists on both sides of the Atlantic have been used as channels, 'conduits', for a stream of rumours and lies. These have ranged from false claims about an Iraqi connection with the anthrax attacks in America to a discredited link between the leader of the 11 September hijacks and Iraqi intelligence. When the attack comes, these consorting journalists will share responsibility for the crime. It was Tony Blair who served notice that imperialism's return journey to respectability was under way. Hark, the Christian gentleman-bomber's vision of a better world for 'the starving, the wretched, the dispossessed, the ignorant, those living in want and squalor from the deserts of northern Africa to the slums of Gaza to the mountain ranges of Afghanistan.' Hark, his 'abiding' concern for the 'human rights of the suffering women of Afghanistan' as he colluded with Bush who, as the New York Times reported, 'demanded the elimination of truck convoys that provide much of the food and other supplies to Afghanistan's civilian population'. Hark his compassion for the 'dispossessed' in the 'slums of Gaza', where Israeli gunships, manufactured with vital British parts, fire their missiles into crowded civilian areas. As Frank Furedi reminds us in The New Ideology of Imperialism , it is not long ago 'that the moral claims of imperialism were seldom questioned in the West. Imperialism and the global expansion of the western powers were represented in unambiguously positive terms as a major contributor to human civilisation.' The quest went wrong when it was clear that fascism was imperialism, too, and the word vanished from academic discourse. In the best Stalinist tradition, imperialism no longer existed. Today, the preferred euphemism is 'civilisation'; or if an adjective is required, 'cultural'. From Italy's Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, an ally of crypto-fascists, to impeccably liberal commentators, the new imperialists share a concept whose true meaning relies on a xenophobic or racist comparison with those who are deemed uncivilised, culturally inferior and might challenge the 'values' of the West. Watch the 'debates' on Newsnight. The question is how best 'we' can deal with the problem of 'them'. For much of the western media, especially those commentators in thrall to and neutered by the supercult of America, the most salient truths remain taboos. Professor Richard Falk, of Cornell university, put it succinctly some years ago. Western foreign policy, he wrote, is propagated in the media 'through a self righteous, one-way moral/legal screen [with] positive images of western values and innocence portrayed as threatened, validating a campaign of unrestricted violence'. Perhaps the most important taboo is the longevity of the United States as both a terrorist state and a haven for terrorists. That the US is the only state on record to have been condemned by the World Court for international terrorism (in Nicaragua) and has vetoed a UN Security Council resolution calling on governments to observe international law, is unmentionable. 'In the war against terrorism,' said Bush from his bunker following 11 September, 'we're going to hunt down these evil-doers wherever they are, no matter how long it takes.' Strictly speaking, it should not take long, as more terrorists are given training and sanctuary in the United States than anywhere on earth. They include mass murderers, torturers, forme and future tyrants and assorted international criminals. This is virtually unknown to the American public, thanks to the freest media on earth. There is no terrorist sanctuary to compare with Florida, currently governed by the President's brother, Jeb Bush. In his book Rogue State , former senior State Department official Bill Blum describes a typical Florida trial of three anti-Castro terrorists, who hijacked a plane to Miami at knifepoint. 'Even though the kidnapped pilot was brought back from Cuba to testify against the men,' he wrote, 'the defence simply told the jurors the man was lying, and the jury deliberated for less than an hour before acquitting the defendants.' General Jose Guillermo Garcia has lived comfortably in Florida since the 1990s. He was head of El Salvador's military during the 1980s when death squads with ties to the army murdered thousands of people. General Prosper Avril, the Haitian dictator, liked to display the bloodied victims of his torture on television. When he was overthrown, he was flown to Florida by the US Government. Thiounn Prasith, Pol Pot's henchman and apologist at the United Nations, lives in New York. General Mansour Moharari, who ran the Shah of Iran's notorious prisons, is wanted in Iran, but untroubled in the United States. Al-Qaeda's training camps in Afghanistan were kindergartens compared with the world's leading university of terrorism at Fort Benning in Georgia. Known until recently as the School of the Americas, it trained tyrants and some 60,000 Latin American special forces, paramilitaries and intelligence agents in the black arts of terrorism. In 1993, the UN Truth Commission on El Salvador named the army officers who had committed the worst atrocities of the civil war; two-thirds of them had been trained at Fort Benning. In Chile, the school's graduates ran Pinochet's secret police and three principal concentration camps. In 1996, the US government was forced to release copies of the school's training manuals, which recommended blackmail, torture, execution and the arrest of witnesses' relatives. In recent months, the Bush regime has torn up the Kyoto treaty, which would ease global warming, to which the United States is the greatest contributor. It has threatened the use of nuclear weapons in 'pre-emptive' strikes (a threat echoed by Defence Minister Geoffrey Hoon). It has tried to abort the birth of an international criminal court. It has further undermined the United Nations by blocking a UN investigation of the Israeli assault on a Palestinian refugee camp; and it has ordered the Palestinians to replace their elected leader with an American stooge. At summit conferences in Canada and Indonesia, Bush's people have blocked hundreds of millions of dollars going to the most deprived people on earth, those without clean water and electricity. These facts will no doubt beckon the inane slur of 'anti-Americanism'. This is the imperial prerogative: the last refuge of those whose contortion of intellect and morality demands a loyalty oath. As Noam Chomsky has pointed out, the Nazis silenced argument and criticism with 'anti German' slurs. Of course, the United States is not Germany; it is the home of some of history's greatest civil rights movements, such as the epic movement in the 1960s and 1970s. I was in the US last week and glimpsed that other America, the one rarely seen among the media and Hollywood stereotypes, and what was clear was that it was stirring again. The other day, in an open letter to their compatriots and the world, almost 100 of America's most distinguished names in art, literature and education wrote this: 'Let it not be said that people in the United States did nothing when their government declared a war without limit and instituted stark new measures of repression. We believe that questioning, criticism and dissent must be valued and protected. Such rights are always contested and must be fought for. We, too, watched with shock the horrific events of September 11. But the mourning had barely begun when our leaders launched a spirit of revenge. The government now openly prepares to wage war on Iraq - a country that has no connection with September 11. 'We say this to the world. Too many times in history people have waited until it was too late to resist. We draw on the inspiration of those who fought slavery and all those other great causes of freedom that began with dissent. We call on all like-minded people around the world to join us.' It is time we joined them. This is a revised extract from The New Rulers of the World , by John Pilger, published by Verso. To order a copy, for 8 plus p&p (rrp 10), call the Observer Books Service on 0870 066 7989. The last thing the US wants is democracy in Iraq Nick Cohen Sunday July 28, 2002 The Observer urlLink See the online article here Although everyone is lining up for or against a war on Iraq, few are asking what the war would be for. We know it would be against Saddam Hussein's dictatorship. But what will the Americans and their British sidekicks be fighting to replace the tyrant with? It's impossible to say with certainty, but most reports from Washington suggest that Bush wants another tyrant and Blair will concur. The alternative is the Iraqi National Congress, a loose and fractious coalition, but one which, for all its faults, is committed to democracy. The CIA and State Department hate it and the bad example a liberated Iraq would give to the repressed people of Saudi Arabia. The hostility has relented a little - the State Department has agreed to meet the INC on 9 August. We'll have to see what happens, but Iraqi exiles believe the CIA has a list of 15 approved generals from which a new leader will be picked. The prime candidate was General Nizar al-Khazraji, the army chief of staff when Iraq invaded Kuwait, and the highest-ranking military defector. He lives in exile in Copenhagen and had nothing to fear except Hussein's assassins until a Kurdish refugee saw him in the street. In a scene straight out of Marathon Man, the refugee cried that this was the man who had levelled his village. The Danish Justice Ministry is now investigating charges that al-Khazraji was up to his neck in the 'Anfal' campaign of 1988 (named after the cheery chapter in the Koran on the spoils of war). Uncounted numbers of Kurds were driven from their homes and tens of thousands died in prison camps. Al-Khazraji denies the charges, and many Kurdish leaders are working on the 'my enemy's enemy principle' and don't give a damn what he did. If the US goes for a military hardman, it is likely to find a general against whom plausible allegations of war crimes can be made. The alternative is a democratic, federal Iraq, which gives rights to the Kurds and Shias currently suffering under the apartheid rule of the Sunni minority, and places the military under civilian control. The INC says neither Downing Street nor the Foreign Office has raised a voice in support of its democratic dream. If anything, the Brits are more fanatical supporters of infinite injustice in the Gulf than the Yanks. |
1,241,231 | male | 37 | Technology | Aries | 28,March,2003 | A Wilful Blindness Those who support the coming war with Iraq refuse to see that it has anything to do with US global domination. By George Monbiot. Published in the Guardian 11th March 2003 The war in Afghanistan has plainly brought certain benefits to that country: thousands of girls have gone to school for the first time, for example, and in some parts of the country women have been able to go back to work. While over 3000 civilians were killed by the bombing; while much of the country is still controlled by predatory warlords; while most of the promised assistance has not materialised; while torture is widespread and women are still beaten in the streets, it would be wrong to minimise the gains that have flowed from the defeat of the Taliban. But, and I realise that it might sound callous to say it, this does not mean that the Afghan war was a good thing. What almost all those who supported that war and are now calling for a new one have forgotten is that there are two sides to every conflict, and therefore two sets of outcomes to every victory. The Afghan regime changed, but so, in subtler ways, did the government of the United States. It was empowered not only by its demonstration of military superiority but also by the widespread support it enjoyed. It has used the licence it was granted in Afghanistan as a licence to take its war wherever it wants. Those of us who oppose the impending conquest of Iraq must recognise that there's a possibility that, if it goes according to plan, it could improve the lives of many Iraqi people. But to pretend that this battle begins and ends in Iraq requires a wilful denial of the context in which it occurs. That context is a blunt attempt by the superpower to reshape the world to suit itself. In this week's Observer, David Aaronovitch suggested that, before September 11, the Bush administration was 'relatively indifferent to the nature of the regimes in the Middle East'1. Only after America was attacked was it forced to start taking an interest in the rest of the world. If Aaronovitch believes this, he would be well-advised to examine the website of the Project for the New American Century2, the pressure group established, among others, by Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Jeb Bush, Paul Wolfowitz, Lewis Libby, Elliott Abrams and Zalmay Khalilzad, all of whom (except the president's brother) are now senior officials in the US government. Its statement of principles, signed by those men on June 3 1997, asserts that the key challenge for the United States is 'to shape a new century favorable to American principles and interests'3. This requires 'a military that is strong and ready to meet both present and future challenges; a foreign policy that boldly and purposefully promotes American principles abroad; and national leadership that accepts the United States' global responsibilities.'4 On January 26 1998, these men wrote to President Clinton, urging him 'to enunciate a new strategy', namely 'the removal of Saddam Hussein's regime from power.'5 If Clinton failed to act, 'the safety of American troops in the region, of our friends and allies like Israel and the moderate Arab states, and a significant portion of the world's supply of oil will all be put at hazard.' They acknowledged that this doctrine would be opposed, but 'American policy cannot continue to be crippled by a misguided insistence on unanimity in the UN Security Council.'6 Last year, the Sunday Herald obtained a copy of a confidential report produced by the Project in September 2000, which suggested that blatting Saddam was the beginning, not the end of its strategy. 'While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein.'7 The wider strategic aim, it insisted, was 'maintaining global US pre-eminence'. Another document obtained by the Herald, written by Paul Wolfowitz and Lewis Libby, called upon the United States to 'discourage advanced industrial nations from challenging our leadership or even aspiring to a larger regional or global role'8. On taking power, the Bush administration was careful not to alarm its allies. The new president spoke only of the need 'to project our strength with purpose and with humility'9 and 'to find new ways to keep the peace'10. From his first week in office, however, he began to engage not so much in nation-building as in planet-building. The ostensible purpose of Bush's missile defence programme is to shoot down incoming nuclear missiles. The real purpose is to provide a justification for the extraordinarily ambitious plans - contained in a Pentagon document entitled Vision for 2020 - to turn space into a new theatre of war, developing orbiting weapons systems which can instantly destroy any target anywhere on earth11. By creating the impression that his programme is merely defensive, Bush could justify a terrifying new means of acquiring what he calls 'full spectrum dominance' over planetary security. Immediately after the attack on New York, the US government began establishing 'forward bases' in Asia. As the assistant Secretary of State Elizabeth Jones noted, 'when the Afghan conflict is over we will not leave Central Asia. We have long-term plans and interests in this region'12. The US now has bases in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgystan, Tajikistan and Georgia. Their presence has, in effect, destroyed the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation which Russia and China had established in an attempt to develop a regional alternative to US power. In January, the US moved into Djibouti, ostensibly to widen its war against terror, while accidentally gaining strategic control over the Bab Al Mandab - one of the world's two most important oil shipping lanes. It already controls the other one, the Strait of Hormuz. Two weeks ago, under the same pretext, it sent 3000 men to the Philippines. Last year it began negotiations to establish a military base in Sao Tom and Principe, from which it can, if it chooses, dominate West Africa's principal oilfields. By pure good fortune, the US government now exercises strategic control over almost all the world's major oil producing regions and oil transport corridors. It has also used its national tragedy as an excuse for developing new nuclear and biological weapons13, while ripping up the global treaties designed to contain them. All this is just as the Project prescribed. Among other enlightened policies, it has called for the development of a new generation of biological agents, which will attack people with particular genetic characteristics14. Why do the supporters of this war find it so hard to see what is happening? Why do the conservatives who go beserk when the European Union tries to change the content of our chocolate bars look the other way when the US seeks to reduce us to a vassal state? Why do the liberal interventionists who fear that Saddam Hussein might one day deploy a weapon of mass destruction refuse to see that George Bush is threatening to do just this against an ever-growing number of states? Is it because they cannot face the scale of the threat, and the scale of the resistance necessary to confront it? Is it because these brave troopers cannot look the real terror in the eye? I have decided from now on to attach references to my articles. These may not always appear immediately, due to time constraints. The references for this article are as follows: 1. David Aaronovitch 9 March 2003. Thank the Yank. The Observer. 2. http://www.newamericancentury.org/ 3. http://www.newamericancentury.org/statementofprinciples.htm 4. ibid 5. http://www.newamericancentury.org/iraqclintonletter.htm 6. ibid 7. Since publishing this article, Ive been given the URL for this document, which turns out to be publicly available. It is called Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources For a New Century, and it can be downloaded at http://www.newamericancentury.org/publicationsreports.htm 8. Cited by Neil Mackay, 15 September 2002. Bush planned Iraq 'regime change' before becoming President. Sunday Herald. 9. Remarks By The President To State Department Employees, February 15, 2001. The White House. 10. Remarks By The President To Students And Faculty At National Defense University, May 1, 2001. The White House. 11. http://www.spacecom.af.mil/usspace 12. Sergey Ptichkin and Aleksey Chichkin, 22 January 2002. Russia 'Encircled' by US, NATO When Afghan Operation Over. Rossiyskaya Gazeta. 13. See for example Paul Richter, March 9, 2002. U.S. Works Up Plan for Using Nuclear Arms. The Los Angeles Times; and Edward Hammond, 21 September 2001. Averting Bioterrorism Begins with US Reforms. The Sunshine Project. http://www.sunshine-project.org/publications/pr/pdf/pr190901b.pdf 14. On page 72 of the document Rebuilding America's Defenses (ibid)is the following sentiment: And advanced forms of biological warfare that can target specific genotypes may transform biological warfare from the realm of terror to a politically useful tool. This is merely a glimpse of the possibilities inherent in the process of transformation, not a precise prediction. Whatever the shape and direction of this revolution in military affairs, the implications for continued American military preeminence will be profound. As argued above, there are many reasons to believe that U.S. forces already possess nascent revolutionary capabilities, particularly in the realms of intelligence, command and control, and longrange precision strikes. Indeed, these capabilities are sufficient to allow the armed services to begin an interim, short- to medium-term process of transformation right away, creating new force designs and operational concepts designs and concepts different than those contemplated by the current defense program to maximize the capabilities that already exist. http://www.monbiot.com/dsp_article.cfm?article_id=566 |
1,241,231 | male | 37 | Technology | Aries | 27,March,2003 | The Moral Calculus of Killing 'Precision Bombing' and the American Definition of Innocence by Tim Wise; March 24, 2003 Imagine if you will that an enemy nation--for the sake of argument, let's say North Korea, or China--were to attack the United States. And let's say they launched missiles and dropped bombs specifically on Washington D.C., having targeted the White House, Capitol Building, and Pentagon, and destroyed these facilities. And let's say that they took special care not to hit Georgetown, or Adams Morgan, or Tenleytown, or any of a number of residential areas surrounding the government installations that comprise an overwhelming share of the District's real estate. And let's say that they also bombed perhaps a dozen other military installations around the nation, seeking to destroy American weapons, our war-making capacity, and the soldiers themselves who make up the backbone of the nation's defense capabilities. And let's say that in the process, only a small number (relatively speaking) of non-combatant and non-governmental employees were killed or injured. Now ask yourself, if such a horrible tragedy were to transpire, would there be even one American citizen who would accept from the North Korean or Chinese government any of the following: 'We are going to extraordinary lengths to avoid the loss of innocent civilian life.' 'Never before have weapons been used in war that were so precise, allowing us to target military and government installations without harming residential areas.' 'We take very seriously the need to protect the innocent from harm.' Somehow, I can't imagine that any reader would answer yes; would say that it was alright to bomb and destroy government buildings, or soldiers, as if somehow such acts would constitute the height of combat morality. After all, on 9/11 the hijackers of al-Qaeda attacked the ultimate military target--the Pentagon--as well as a symbol of American economic power, not residential neighborhoods. Yet our anger was palpable, and no one was seeking to legitimize the horror of that day just because condos and two-car garages went largely if not completely unaffected. Yet despite all of this, when U.S. Defense Department and military officials say these exact same things, we are to accept it without question. To hear American spokespersons tell it, the fact that our own military is focusing on destroying Iraqi government buildings, Presidential palaces and military installations--along with the troops serving in those installations--and being careful not to kill 'innocent civilians' is evidence that our ethical superiority extends even to the way we make war. To listen to Messrs Rumsfeld, Cheney and Bush, or Generals like Tommy Franks, or retired Generals like the ones who have become special consultants to the media networks for the course of this war, any civilians who die are terrible tragedies, to be sure, but certainly not intentional. As if this makes their families feel any better. As if it would make the families of Americans feel better to know that the Chinese missile that landed in Rockville was meant for the State Department. Likewise, the underlying and unquestioned assumption beneath all of the rhetoric about trying to protect innocent life, is that anyone working for the government (of Iraq, at least) is not innocent; and that anyone wearing an Iraqi military uniform is not innocent either; that their lives are expendable. This, even though we would never accept a standard of morality that placed such a low premium on the lives of our own soldiers, or even bureaucrats, despite how much we tend to resent the latter during peacetime. And the reason we reject such a bifurcation of the innocent and the guilty for our own nation, despite being asked to accept it for others, is that we know that those soldiers and bureaucrats are human beings, with families, and histories, and homes, and hopes, and fears. They are our children, our parents, our cousins, our friends, our spouses and lovers. So too with their counterparts in Iraq, or any other nation, as much as we like to overlook this inconvenient reality. Oh sure, some might say, they're human beings too, but they are serving a brutal and corrupt leader, who was put in office without the support of most of his own citizens, and who ignores the plight of millions of his own people who do without adequate food or shelter, who live in abject poverty. As such, they are implicated in the leader's actions, and thus become legitimate targets of our air campaign. But of course other nations could say the same about our military and government officials too. To millions around the globe--whether one agrees with them or not--the President of the United States is a brutal and corrupt leader, most assuredly elevated to office without the support of most American citizens, and who does very little to address such issues as poverty, homelessness or hunger within his own nation. Does that mean that every soldier is an agent of Bush's agenda? How about everyone in a government job? And what about those who are lifelong civil servants and have perhaps served several leaders through several different policy agendas? Ironically, if anything, American soldiers and government officials would be more legitimate targets than those in Iraq, if for no other reason than the relative freedom enjoyed by those of us in the U.S., compared to those who live under Saddam's brutal rule. Iraqi soldiers are largely conscripts, forced to serve irrespective of their own beliefs. Iraqi government officials are for the most part those who have sought out the only jobs in that nation with any real security or steady paycheck, again, not necessarily because they support the dictator but because their options are quite limited. And if they despised Saddam they certainly wouldn't be able to say so. On the other hand, there is no conscription in the United States, and opportunities outside of government are probably far more secure than those inside, given the general anti-government mood of the nation's political leadership and the budget cuts they seek on a regular basis. While it is true that there is something of an economic draft in this country, whereby poor and working class folks become soldiers in order to get a decent paycheck or education, or training, it is also the case that there is still more freedom to choose such a path (or not do so) here than in the place we are currently bombing. Yet still, we act as if their soldiers and bureaucrats are something other than innocent, while ours--even those who really wanted to 'serve their country'--are the epitome of that same innocence. We lost over 50,000 soldiers in Southeast Asia from the early 1960's until 1975, not one of them an 'innocent civilian,' and yet there is a black granite wall not far from the President's back door that attests to just how precious we consider them to have been; how unacceptable most believe their deaths to have been. So even if civilian deaths are kept to a minimum in Iraq--and this remains to be seen of course--the destruction of government and military officials and facilities will be viewed in that place no differently than the same kind of destruction would be viewed here. Just as Americans were furious at the airplane-bombing of the Pentagon on 9/11, and just as they would be incensed at the bombing of the White House or Capitol, so too will millions of Iraqis and Muslims throughout the Middle East be enraged by our cavalier destruction of Iraq's state apparatus. That we can't understand that, or can't recognize the fundamental double-standard at work in proclaiming our own official 'officials' off limits to foreign adversaries, but insisting on our right to target the same elsewhere, bespeaks a certain arrogance, a certain supremacist mindset, and even a certain racism in a case such as this, making it impossible to believe that lives are equally innocent and worthy. At the end of the day, the moral calculus used by the United States in this war is no better or worse than that employed by any other nation. We are not exceptional. We are not particularly more humane. We are not to be applauded for not intentionally targeting civilians, just as such applause would be inappropriate if extended to another nation attacking us. After all, it should be remembered that we didn't necessarily target civilians in the first Gulf War either, but roughly 75,000 died anyway according to estimates made by U.S. Census officials, world health experts and the UN, largely due to destruction of water treatment facilities and electrical grids. Oh, and it should probably be remembered that those facilities were targeted on purpose, according to Defense Department documents, even though it was known that their destruction would result in widespread suffering and epidemics. So until we apologize for the slaughter of innocents--even using our very limited conception of the term--during the first Gulf War, we are hardly in a position to claim moral superiority during the second. Tim Wise is a writer, antiracist activist and father. He can be reached at [email protected] http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=40&ItemID=3314 |
1,241,231 | male | 37 | Technology | Aries | 27,March,2003 | By the way, many other good articles by George Monbiot can be found at hi website: http://www.monbiot.com/ |
1,241,231 | male | 37 | Technology | Aries | 27,March,2003 | ZNet | Terror War Good Wars, Cold Wars by Mickey Z; March 24, 2003 On Feb. 10, 2003, the headline of my hometown tabloid, the New York Post, was a single word: SACRIFICE. Below was a photo of the American Cemetery in Normandy, France. To the right (in more ways than one), columnist Steve Dunleavy began his discourse: 'As I gaze out at this cemetery-the final resting place of nearly 10,000 American kids who made the ultimate sacrifice to save France from Hitler-my heart fills with rage. Where are French now, as Americans prepare to put their soldiers on the line to fight today's Hitler, Saddam Hussein? Talking appeasement. Wimping out. How can they have forgotten?' In one short paragraph, Dunleavy had managed to tie together a wide swath of tried and true propaganda tactics. The dead are ' kids who made the ultimate sacrifice.' They weren't drafted into a war to kill other humans; they set out to 'save France from Hitler.' Since Saddam Hussein is 'today's Hitler,' the mistake of 'appeasement' could only be made those who have 'forgotten' old lessons. 'Comparing the leader with Hitler is a good start because of the instant images that Hitler's name provokes,' explains historian Phillip Knightley. Vanquishing the epitome of evil has granted Uncle Sam and his boys the freedom to intervene practically at will across the globe ever since. After all, who could question U.S. motives when it saved the world from Hitler? This humanitarian spin, forged on the battlefields of the Second World War, cloaks U.S. policy in the benevolent robes of 'The Good War.' Another current similarity to WWII is the patronizing and racist presupposition that the Iraqis are either unwilling or unable to challenge American might. After a day of 'unexpected' setbacks (March 23, 2003), however, General Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff changed his tune, admitting: 'Clearly they are not a beaten force. This is going to get a lot harder.' This brings to mind U.S. attitudes towards the Japanese before Pearl Harbor. With clear signals that Japan was planning what Dubya might dub a 'preemptive war,' why were the Americans caught with their pants down on December 7? Never underestimate the collective power of arrogance and bigotry: 'Many Americans, including Roosevelt, dismissed the Japanese as combat pilots because they were all presumed to be 'near-sighted',' writes Kenneth C. Davis. 'There was also a sense that any attack on Pearl Harbor would be easily repulsed.' Anti-war protestors in Germany took notice of a third Good War parallel when they held up signs that compared Baghdad to Dresden. The terror bombing of large cities (Dresden, Hamburg, Tokyo, etc.) is nothing new. The U.S. engaged in 'shock and awe' campaigns long before the term was coined. As Huxley said, 'The propagandist's purpose is to make one set of people forget that certain other sets of people are human.' Once your opponent has been demonized, such behavior is not only accepted; it's demanded. After WWII, the much-ballyhooed Marshall Plan served to line the pockets of U.S. corporations through lucrative reconstruction contracts. Europe was provided with over $12 billion in loans and grants between 1948 and 1951. In 1949 alone, one-third of U.S. exports to Europe was paid for with Marshall Plan funds. A March 23, 2003 New York Times article entitled, 'Which Companies Will Put Iraq Back Together?' brought us back to the future as reporter Diana B. Henriques declared: 'War began last week. Reconstruction starts this week. That, at least, is how it looks to government contract officers, who in the coming days plan to give American companies the first contracts to rebuild Iraq, a task that experts say could eventually cost $25 billion to $100 billion... The United States plans to retain control over the occupation and reconstruction of Iraq, allowing the administration to decide how it will spend the money needed to repair the country... The companies that have been invited to bid on the work include some of the nation's largest and most politically connected construction businesses. Among them are Halliburton, where Vice President Dick Cheney served as chief executive from 1995 until mid-2000; the Bechtel Group, whose ranks have included several Republican cabinet alumni; and Fluor, which has ties to several former top government intelligence and Pentagon procurement officials.' There is one more1945/2003 connection I'd like to end with: Since 1989, we've lived in a one-superpower world. While pining for the Evil Empire-its fail-safe excuse for foreign entanglement-the United States has predictably intensified its already prodigious rate of military interventions. Eschewing the standard M.O. of secrecy and disinformation, post-Cold War presidents have become increasingly bold in detailing their war crimes before they are even committed. Such arrogance can only be chalked up to a feeling of invulnerability that comes with being the only muscle on the block. Concurrently, the unfortunately-named 'anti-globalization' movement has taken center stage, forcing corporate heads to re-think where and when they meet. Also, as the build-up in Iraq commenced, peace rallies of astonishing size have been held in cities across the globe. The largest peace movement in the history of mankind is in full effect...today. The U.S. came out of WWII in a position of unprecedented power but soon found itself butting heads with a second superpower. Post-Iraq, American leaders and their corporate owners also have a superpower to contend with-the people-and this Cold War will be much different. Mickey Z. is the author of The Murdering of My Years: Artists and Activists Making Ends Meet (www.murderingofmyyears.com ) and an editor at Wide Angle (www.wideangleny.com ). He can be reached at: [email protected] . |
1,241,231 | male | 37 | Technology | Aries | 27,March,2003 | I am a fan of George Monbiot and saw this on Znet also: http://zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=40&ItemID=3318 One Rule For Them... Does The US Support The Geneva Convention Or Doesn't It? by George Monbiot; March 25, 2003 Suddenly, the government of the United States has discovered the virtues of international law. It may be waging an illegal war against a sovereign state; it may be seeking to destroy every treaty which impedes its attempts to run the world, but when five of its captured soldiers were paraded in front of the Iraqi television cameras on Sunday, Donald Rumsfeld, the US defence secretary, immediately complained that 'it is against the Geneva Convention to show photographs of prisoners of war in a manner that is humiliating for them.'1 He is, of course, quite right. Article 13 of the third convention, concerning the treatment of prisoners, insists that they 'must at all times be protected ... against insults and public curiosity.'2 This may number among the less heinous of the possible infringements of the laws of war, but the conventions, ratified by Iraq in 1956, are non-negotiable. If you break them, you should expect to be prosecuted for war crimes. This being so, Rumsfeld had better watch his back. For this enthusiastic convert to the cause of legal warfare is, as head of the defense department, responsible for a series of crimes sufficient, were he ever to be tried, to put him away for the rest of his natural life. His prison camp in Guantanamo Bay, in Cuba, where 641 men (nine of whom are British citizens) are held, breaches no fewer than 15 articles of the third convention. The US government broke the first of these (article 13) as soon as the prisoners arrived, by displaying them, just as the Iraqis have done, on television. In this case, however, they were not encouraged to address the cameras. They were kneeling on the ground, hands tied behind their backs, wearing blacked-out goggles and ear phones. In breach of article 18, they had been stripped of their own clothes and deprived of their possessions. They were then interned in a penitentiary (against article 22), where they were denied proper mess facilities (26), canteens (28), religious premises (34), opportunities for physical exercise (38), access to the text of the convention (41), freedom to write to their families (70 and 71) and parcels of food and books (72).3 They were not 'released and repatriated without delay after the cessation of active hostilities' (118), because, the US authorities say, their interrogation might, one day, reveal interesting information about Al Qaeda. Article 17 rules that captives are obliged to give only their name, rank, number and date of birth. No 'coercion may be inflicted on prisoners of war to secure from them information of any kind whatever.' In the hope of breaking them, however, the authorities have confined them to solitary cells and subjected them to what is now known as 'torture lite': sleep deprivation and constant exposure to bright light.4 Unsurprisingly, several of the prisoners have sought to kill themselves, by smashing their heads against the walls or trying to slash their wrists with plastic cutlery.5 The US government claims that these men are not subject to the Geneva Conventions, as they are not 'prisoners of war', but 'unlawful combatants'. The same claim could be made, with rather more justice, by the Iraqis holding the US soldiers who illegally invaded their country. But this re-definition is itself a breach of article 4 of the third convention, under which people detained as suspected members of a militia (the Taliban) or a volunteer corps (Al Qaeda) must be regarded as prisoners of war. Even if there is doubt about how such people should be classified, article 5 insists that they 'shall enjoy the protection of the present Convention until such time as their status has been determined by a competent tribunal.'6 But when, earlier this month, lawyers representing sixteen of them demanded a court hearing, the US Court of Appeals ruled that as Guantanamo Bay is not sovereign US territory, the men have no constitutional rights. Many of these prisoners appear to have been working in Afghanistan as teachers, engineers or aid workers. If the US government either tried or released them, its embarrassing lack of evidence would be brought to light. You would hesitate to describe these prisoners as lucky, unless you knew what had happened to some of the other men captured by the Americans and their allies in Afghanistan. On 21 November 2001, around 8,000 Taliban soldiers and Pashtun civilians surrendered at Konduz to the Northern Alliance commander General Abdul Rashid Dostum. Many of them have never been seen again. As Jamie Doran's film 'Afghan Massacre - Convoy of Death' records, some hundreds, possibly thousands, of them were loaded into container lorries at Qala-i-Zeini, near the town of Mazar-i-Sharif, on 26 and 27 November.7 The doors were sealed and the lorries were left to stand in the sun for several days. At length, they departed for Sheberghan prison, 120 km away. The prisoners, many of whom were dying of thirst and asphixiation, started banging on the sides of the trucks. Dostum's men stopped the convoy and machine-gunned the containers. When they arrived at Sheberghan, most of the captives were dead.8 The US special forces running the prison watched the bodies being unloaded. They instructed Dostum's men to 'get rid of them before satellite pictures can be taken.'9 Doran interviewed a Northern Alliance soldier guarding the prison. 'I was a witness when an American soldier broke one prisoner's neck. The Americans did whatever they wanted. We had no power to stop them.'10 Another soldier alleged, 'They took the prisoners outside and beat them up and then returned them to the prison. But sometimes they were never returned and they disappeared.'11 Many of the survivors were loaded back into the containers with the corpses, then driven out to a place in the desert called Dasht-i-Leili. In the presence of between 30 and 40 US special forces, both the living and the dead were dumped into ditches. Anyone who moved was shot. The German newspaper Die Zeit investigated the claims and concluded that 'No one doubted that the Americans had taken part. Even at higher levels there are no doubts on this issue.'12 The US group Physicians for Human Rights visited the places identified by Doran's witnesses and found that they 'all ... contained human remains consistent with their designation as possible gravesites.'13 It should not be necessary to point out that hospitality of this kind also contravenes the third Geneva convention, which prohibits 'violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture', as well as extra-judicial execution. Donald Rumsfeld's department, assisted by a pliant media, has done all it can to suppress Jamie Doran's film,14 while General Dostum has begun to assassinate his witnesses.15 It is not hard, therefore, to see why the US government fought first to prevent the establishment of the International Criminal Court and then to ensure that its own citizens are not subject to its jurisdiction. The five soldiers dragged in front of the cameras yesterday should thank their lucky stars that they are prisoners not of the American forces fighting for civilisation, but of the 'barbaric and inhuman' Iraqis. www.monbiot.com References: 1. Donald Rumsfeld, 23 March 2003. Transcript of CBS Face The Nation. United States Department of Defense. http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Mar2003/t03232003_t0323sdcbsface.html 2. Convention (III), relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War. Geneva, 12 August 1949. 3. These were the conditions in Camp X-Ray. In Camp Delta, to which the prisoners have been moved, most of these omissions still appear to apply, and their confinement has become still stricter, though they are now permitted to exercise for two 15-minute sessions a week (Katty Kaye, 11 January 2003. No fast track at Guantanamo Bay. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/low/world/americas/2648547.stm). The Convention suggests that they should be able to exercise freely. 4. Duncan Campbell, 25 January 2003. US interrogators turn to 'torture lite'. The Guardian. 5. Frank Gardner, 24 August 2002. US bides its time in Guantanamo. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/low/world/from_our_own_correspondent/2212874.stm 6. Convention (III), as above. 7. Afghan Massacre - Convoy of Death, now available on video from ACFTV, Studio 241, 24-28 St Leonards Road, Windsor, SL4 3BB, United Kingdom. All published details checked on March 24th 2003 with Jamie Doran. 8. ibid. 9. ibid. 10. ibid. 11. ibid 12. Giuliana Sgrena and Ulrich Ladurner, Masar-i-Scharif Whrend des Afghanistan-Feldzugs gab es in Masar-i-Scharif ein Massaker. Zeugen sagen, US-Soldaten htten daran mitgewirkt. Ein Beweis ist das noch nicht. Eine Spurensuche. Die Zeit. No date given. The cited text appeared, in translation in: Peter Schwarz, 29 June 2002. Further evidence of a massacre of Taliban prisoners. http://www.wsws.org/articles/2002/jun2002/afgh-j29.shtml 13. Physicians for Human Rights, 2002. Preliminary Assessment of Alleged Mass Gravesites in the Area of Mazar-I-Sharif, Afghanistan, January 16-21 and February 7-14. PHR, Boston and Washington DC. 14. Bill Vann, 12 February 2003. Film exposing Pentagon war crimes premieres in US. http://www.wsws.org/articles/2003/feb2003/afgh-f12.shtml 15. Jamie Doran, 24 March 2003, pers comm. |
1,241,231 | male | 37 | Technology | Aries | 27,March,2003 | And another good article from John Pilger. Published on ZNet. Six Days Of Shame by John Pilger; March 26, 2003 TODAY is a day of shame for the British military as it declares the Iraqi city of Basra, with a stricken population of 600,000, a 'military target'. You will not read or hear those words in the establishment media that claims to speak for Britain. But they are true. With Basra, shame is now our signature, forged by Blair and Bush. Having destroyed its water and power supplies, cut off food supply routes and having failed to crack its human defences, they are now preparing to lay siege to Iraq's second city which is more than 40 per cent children. What an ignominious moment in British history. Here is an impoverished country under attack by a superpower, the United States, which has unimaginable wealth and the world's most destructive weapons, and its 'coalition' accomplice, Britain, which boasts one of the world's best 'professional' armies. Believing their own propaganda, the military brass has been stunned by the Iraqi resistance. They have tried to belittle the militia defending Basra with lurid stories that its fighters are killing each other. The truth is that the Iraqis are fighting like lions to defend not a tyrant but their homeland. It is a truth the overwhelming majority of decent Britons will admire. The historical comparison Tony Blair and his propagandists fear is that of the British defending themselves against invasion. That happened 60 years ago and now 'we' are the rapacious invaders. Yesterday, Blair said that 400,000 Iraqi children had died in the past five years from malnutrition and related causes. He said 'huge stockpiles of humanitarian aid' and clean water awaited them in Kuwait, if only the Iraqi regime would allow safe passage. In fact, voluminous evidence, including that published by the United Nations Children's Fund, makes clear that the main reason these children have died is an enduring siege, a 12-year embargo driven by America and Britain. As of last July, $5.4billion worth of humanitarian supplies, approved by the UN and paid for by the Iraqi government, were blocked by Washington, with the Blair government's approval. The former assistant secretary general of the UN, Denis Halliday, who was sent to Iraq to set up the 'oil for food programme', described the effects of the embargo as 'nothing less than genocide'. Similar words have been used by his successor, Hans Von Sponeck. Both men resigned in protest, saying the embargo merely reinforced the power of Saddam. Both called Blair a liar. And now Blair's troops are firing their wire-guided missiles to 'soften up' Basra. I have walked the city's streets, along a road blown to pieces by a US missile. The casualties were children, of course, because children are everywhere. I held a handkerchief over my face as I stood in a school playground with a teacher and several hundred malnourished youngsters. The dust blew in from the southern battlefields of the 1991 Gulf War, which have never been cleaned up because the US and British governments have denied Iraq the specialist equipment. The dust, Dr Jawad Al-Ali told me, carries 'the seeds of our death'. In the children's wards of Basra's main hospital, deaths from a range of hitherto unseen cancers are common and specialists have little doubt that up to half the population of southern Iraq will die from cancers linked to the use of a weapon of mass destruction used by the Americans and British - uranium tipped shells and missiles. ONCE again, the Americans are deploying what Professor Doug Rokke, a former US Army physicist, calls 'a form of nuclear weapon that contaminates everything and everyone'. Today, each round fired by US tanks contains 4,500 grams of solid uranium, whose particles, breathed or ingested, can cause cancer. This, and the use by both the Allies of new kinds of cluster bombs, is being covered up. Once again, the British public is being denied the reality of war. Images of bandaged children in hospital wards are appearing on TV but you do not see the result of a Tornado's cluster bombing. You are not being shown children scalped by shrapnel, with legs reduced to bloody pieces of string. Such images are 'not acceptable', because they will disturb viewers - and the authorities do not want that. These 'unseen' images are the truth. Iraqi parents have to look at their mutilated children, so why shouldn't those of us, in whose name they were slaughtered, see what they see? Why shouldn't we share their pain? Why shouldn't we see the true nature of this criminal invasion? Other wars were sanitised, allowing them to be repeated. If you have satellite TV, try to find the Al Jazeera channel, which has distinguished itself with its coverage. When the Americans bombed Afghanistan, one of their 'smart' bombs destroyed the Al Jazeera office in Kabul. Few believe it was an accident. Rather, it was a testimony to the channel's independent journalism. Remember, it is not those who oppose this war who need to justify themselves, regardless of Blair's calls to 'support our troops'. There is only one way to support them - bring them home without delay. In 1932, Iraqis threw out their British colonial rulers. In 1958, they got rid of the Hashemite monarchy. Iraqis have shown they can overthrow dictators against the odds. So why have they not been able to throw out Saddam? Because the US and Britain armed him and propped him up while it suited them, making sure that when they tired of him, they would be the only alternative to his rule and the profiteers of his nation's resources. Imperialism has always functioned like that. The 'new Iraq', as Blair calls it, will have many models, such as Haiti, the Dominican Republic and Nicaragua, all of them American conquests and American ruled until Washington allowed a vicious dictatorship to take over. Saddam only came to power after the Americans helped install his Ba'ath Party in 1979. 'That was my favourite coup,' said the CIA officer in charge. Keep in mind the cynicism behind these truths when you next hear Blair's impassioned insincerity - and when you glimpse, if you can, the 'unacceptable' images of children killed and mangled in your name, and in the cause of what the Prime Minister calls 'our simple patriotism'. It's the kind of patriotism, wrote Tolstoy, 'that is nothing else but a means of obtaining for the rulers their ambitions and covetous desires, and for the ruled the abdication of human dignity, reason and conscience.' |
1,241,231 | male | 37 | Technology | Aries | 27,March,2003 | Amid the carnage, questions By Paul McGeough Baghdad March 28 2003 The six cars, bumper-to-bumper against the curb in Al Sha'ab, are carbonised - charred metal now, devoid of all colour and fabric. The power of the blasts flipped another; all that remains of its tyres are the wire coils that ran through the rubber. Yes, we are in a war zone. But Al Sha'ab is a civilian quarter, a maze of hard-working, hole-in-the-wall mechanics and electricians. And the attacking US-led military promised it would spare civilians. The Pentagon says that it did not target the marketplace and has left open the possibility that two bombs that fell here on Wednesday morning could have been either American or Iraqi. But there is no way around the grotesque in this story. There is no nice way to write about how 28-year-old Hisam Madloon, a guard, finds on the pavement the severed head of his boss, Sermat the electrician. Or of how one of his workmates thinks that a gnawed hand, severed at the wrist, might belong to Tahir, an expert on hot-water systems. How can anyone tell whose are the brains found lying just near the door into one of the workshops? Or be able to recognise the remains of the mechanic who was working under one of the cars when it became a fireball? How will the news be broken to relatives that two bombs have obliterated a family of five because fate had them driving through this part of town at 11.30am on Wednesday? People like Sermat and Tahir keep going to workin Al Sha'ab, on the road north from Baghdad. Madloon was asleep, but 55-year-old Salah Yousif was walking up the street. He says: 'I heard the planes overhead and then, two bombs, four seconds apart.' In the city, I heard two short booms. By the time I got to Al Sha'ab, the last of the dead and injured had been taken away. Blood ran in the muddied street and the facade was ripped from many of the shops. Buildings and cars on both sides were charred black and there were two shallow craters on and next to the roadway. A dozen charred cars lay amid the rubble. Most of the 17 people who died were in cars in the traffic; many of the 45 injured were pedestrians or local workers and residents. 'Welcome, welcome,' I'm told by Yousif the witness. He says: 'The Americans always claim they are defending us, but they do the opposite. That is why Saddam is on the right side, fighting this evil. He gives us strength and we give him strength.' Madloon says that the pregnant woman who lives in this apartment is dead and that the pavement was littered with body parts. 'They said they would attack the army, but this is a civilian area. Why do they do it? Do they know that Iraqis don't change, that we are Iraqis and that we will not change for America?' he says. The law of averages says the US was always going to present Iraq with a propaganda gift. But such has been Iraqi impatience that journalists have come away from some civilian damage tours around Baghdad with more questions than answers. Most of the patients in the hospital they took us to after Baghdad's first night of bombing seemed to have been injured by Iraqi anti-aircraft fire. The orphanage they took us to before the Al Sha'ab bombing did not add up. The Iraq Family Village, home to more than 500 orphans of all ages, is a huge sprawling place, with walled and wired compounds and one building that stood apart from the rest because of what looked like inordinately large air-conditioning units on the roof. Five days ago, its laundry was bombed. But the Al Sha'ab bombing is the sort of mistake that will play on the minds of Iraqis who might be on the verge of breaking with Saddam. They expect brutality from him - if they step out of line. But they were all minding their own business yesterday when they got it from the US. Army Major-General Stanley McChrystal, vice-director for operations for the Joint Staff, told a Pentagon briefing: 'Coalition forces did not target a marketplace, nor were any bombs or missiles dropped or fired' in that district. 'We don't know for a fact whether it was US or Iraqi. We'll continue to look and see if we missed anything. Another possibility is that Iraqi anti-aircraft artillery or an Iraqi anti-aircraft missile falling back to earth was responsible.' This story was found at: http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/03/27/1048653803767.html |
1,241,231 | male | 37 | Technology | Aries | 27,March,2003 | This is an Article from the Australian yesterday which took my fancy. You can find it online at http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,6187347%255E12272,00.html A bogged-down cakewalk THE story thus far. In 1991 a large and largely landlocked nation, coveting its neighbour's coastline as much as its oil, planned an invasion. One secular Arab nation against another. Religion was irrelevant. The invader had in the past enjoyed the goodwill of Washington. So it mentioned its plans to the US ambassador and, far from receiving a stern admonishment, might have felt he'd got the diagonal nod. But the world was so appalled by its thuggery and the US so concerned for the stability of neighbours such as Saudi Arabia that an impressive coalition was cobbled together, endorsed by the UN, to drive them out. For all the arrogance of the leader, a man notorious for his brutalities and his ambitions to become the greatest pan-Arabic leader since Nasser, what followed was a rout. The retreat of his army became a turkey shoot. At least 100,000 of his troops were slaughtered as, burdened by the loot they'd stolen, they headed for home. The US failed to press its advantage and stopped short of Baghdad. Ever since they've been steaming with anger. Given the shock and awe of bin Laden's attacks on New York and Washington, a group of so-called neo-cons, who'd been dreaming of revenge, conflate the issue of a war against terror with a war against Iraq. Deaf to regional concerns and unwilling to be honest brokers in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict they decide to use the Pearl Harbor of September 11 as their excuse. They prepare for the biggest military action in half a century. Aghast at the new US foreign policy the pre-emptive strike the wider world protests. Washington tries some inept and insincere diplomacy characterised by bullying, bribery and blundering to achieve UN backing. They fail ignominiously. So the US goes it alone. Almost alone. Because the British and, astonishingly, the Australians sign up. And why not? The enemy is a tawdry, run-down nation that's been pulverised in the first Gulf War, pauperised by a decade of sanctions and effectively disarmed by a decade of UN weapons inspections. The loyal PMs are promised a quick, clean, 24-hour war. Massive bombings of Baghdad will lead to implosion of the regime. There will be mass defections, mass surrenders, insurrection. Baghdad will be transformed into a Disneyland democracy. Not only will Hussein's hierarchy be shocked and awed by US might but so will recalcitrants in the region. It will be a war without mistakes, a war without body bags, a war that will demonstrate the US's dominance of the 21st century. More importantly, it will be a demonstration war, a rehearsal for future pre-emptive interventions. That is why the Australian PM thinks it's a good idea to go along for the ride. Consider the pay-offs in the electorate, in military protection, in trade deals. But things start to go wrong, with the examples of US miscalculations and ineptitudes that bring back memories of fiascos and failures from Vietnam to Somalia via the Bay of Pigs. As critics warn, the war isn't a series of set pieces in the desert but promises a Stalingrad-style battle in the city. From day one, the so-called Arab street gets increasingly restless and angry with rulers who've agreed to facilitate Washington's war. Even neighbours who detest Hussein's regime are outraged by the behaviour of the US bully. And what is the big excuse? The weapons of mass destruction? They're neither found nor deployed. Yes, Baghdad will fall. (After all, if Hussein won't follow the script, the US can always nuke him.) But it's time to ask the question the question that should have kept us out of this mess in the first place. What's in it for us? Apart from troubles we didn't have and certainly don't need. Apart from moving up the al-Qa'ida hit list, we're on the nose in the region with neighbouring Muslim countries seeing us as US lapdogs. Not bad for the first six days of a war that was meant to be surgical, a foregone conclusion. Another turkey shoot. A cakewalk. Fish in a barrel. And where will we be in a fortnight? In a month? In a year? Up the Euphrates without a paddle? Internationally regarded as a nation of 20 million affluent whites in an endless ocean of brown and yellow faces? A nation with just one big and powerful friend? Don't miss the next exciting episode. |
1,241,231 | male | 37 | Technology | Aries | 26,March,2003 | Found this great article on the Observer Website. I think he hits the nail on the head regarding why the world is no pro-American. What do you think? How to save Brand America As Iraqis quake in justified terror, Americans fret about the threat to their 'values' and wonder why they are so widely disliked. Here one friend of America lists the reasons... and the remedy Henry Porter Sunday March 23, 2003 The Observer On Friday evening a spokesman from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in Los Angeles explained that it was important to continue with a scaled-down Oscar ceremony 'when American values were under attack'. As his statement was relayed by the BBC we learned that American B52s had dropped their payload over Iraq and that hundreds of cruise missiles were striking at Baghdad. The TV screen began to pulse with livid blooms from the explosions. I can't have been the only one to wonder how the man from the Academy had produced the classic response of victimhood when at that very moment American values were being unambiguously asserted at the heart of Saddam's regime. That night's bombing will be remembered in the Arab world for a generation or more. No one in the Middle East can possibly fail to take the lesson about the reach and precision of US military might, let alone the determination to use it. But once the hostilities are over in Iraq, the greatest challenge to the American Imperium is to replace some of the fear that the bombing has inspired with a reputation for fairness and doing what it has promised in Iraq and Palestine. Last year, before Bush had decided to act on Iraq, the White House commissioned a report from advertising and media executives on the way America was seen in the world. The report shook Bush. Even America's allies characterised the US as arrogant, self-aborbed and hypocritical. Bush reacted by setting up an office of global communications in the White House, removing the responsibility for selling 'Brand America' from the State department. It duly began work last autumn. If selling the US presented problems last year, the task is vastly more difficult today. A country which stands for individual freedom and whose people are so eager to do the right thing - even though, as Churchill observed, they may explore all other options beforehand - is now considered by millions to be halfway between behemoth and pariah. Americans are amazed by the slide in their standing, particularly after the attacks of 9/11. Last year Congressman named Henry Hyde asked: 'How is it that a country that invented Hollywood and Madison Avenue has allowed such a destructive and parodied image of itself to become the intellectual coin of the realm?' The short answer to this is that Hollywood and Madison Avenue are used to sell the American dream to Americans and a once-receptive audience outside the US. They are not remotely equipped to address the deep rifts in policy and purpose which have opened up between the United States and the rest of the world. Like it or not, America is seen as greedy and domineering, and this is a dangerous development for all those who believe that liberal democracy depends on America's success and acceptance in the world. In the two-and-half years since Bush came to power after a disputed Florida count involving just 170,000 unreadable ballot papers, attitudes have greatly sharpened, partly because Bush's mandate remained unconvincing but also because of the unapologetic nature of his regime. The exercise of power came to the new administration as second nature. Many of its members - Cheney, Ashcroft, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz - were veterans of up to four previous Republican administrations. In exile they had seized the idea - in a way Clinton never chose to - that the power of the US, financially, technologically and militarily, could and should be deployed to consolidate American dominance in the twenty-first century. At the same time, Bush seemed a second-rate figure and his unshakeable self-satisfaction was hard to attribute to any achievement or intellectual distinction. Instead, he appeared to be the passive beneficiary of his father's career. And George Junior seemed to be a man so untroubled by his actions that he was in bed and asleep 45 minutes after addressing the nation on TV this week. To many this was the action of a man too breezily unimaginative to envisage the bombardment that would take place over Baghdad. Unfair maybe, but that is how it looked. Another characteristic of the administration which is responsible for the new levels of anti-Americanism is that it not only disdains meaningful consultation with lesser powers, it does not even bother to go through the motions. When Roosevelt returned from Yalta he stopped off in Egypt to consult and explain. When America was building the alliance for the 1991 Gulf war, Secretary of State James Baker toured the Middle East to reassure Turkey and its Arab neighbours. Bush, on the other hand, has no knowledge of the Middle East and his Secretary of State Colin Powell has mostly remained in Washington and New York these past months to make sure that Rumsfeld, Cheney and Wolfowitz didn't make a grab for US foreign policy. But it would be wrong to blame Bush and co for America's reputation today. Since the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the victory of the 1991 Gulf war there has been a gradual increase in what historian and author Margaret Macmillan, in her book, Peacemakers , calls 'American exceptionalism'. 'Faith in their own exceptionalism,' she writes, 'has sometimes led to a certain obtuseness on the part of Americans, a tendency to preach at other nations rather than listen to them, a tendency to assume that American motives are pure where those of others are not.' The habit of exceptionalism came to the fore during the Clinton era when despite a seemingly amenable diplomatic stance there were many occasions when America opted out. It was of course Clinton's government that failed to sign a treaty banning landmines because US personnel might be compromised in the Korean demilitarised zone. Clinton also refused to ratify the treaty to set up the International Criminal Court in Rome. Why? Because America believes its international responsibilities as chief peacekeeper and enforcer placed its citizens at unusual risk of prosecution. In his first months of the Bush presidency the US opted out the Kyoto agreement to limit carbon emissions and the Anti-Ballistic Missiles treaty on the grounds that it wanted to develop a missile defence system. Last summer plans to provide the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention with inspection powers were blocked by the Bush administration - which, given the pretext for going to war on Iraq, certainly seems a bit rich. Across a broad range of activities America either asserted its right to special privileges or simply declared itself to be above the law. The most starkly hypocritical example was when in March last year the free trade enthusiasts of the Republican administration capitulated to demands by US steel makers to impose tough new tariffs on steel imports. At the same time America, as a country which strongly advocated a plan to reduce subsidies and tariffs in farming around the world, insisted on its right to give $100 billion in subsidies to its own farmers. It has become clear that America has been shrewdly manipulating many agendas in its own interests. Some of these initiatives are so obscure or technical that they never reach the public consciousness, but they are important nonetheless. For instance, in January last year Professor Robert Hunter Wade of the London School of Economics pointed out that the US had manipulated 'the World Trade Organisation to commit to a General Agreement on Trade in Services that will facilitate a global market in private health care, welfare, pensions, education and water, supplied - naturally - by US companies, and which will undermine political support for universal access to social services in developing countries'. Later in the same article he says: 'Globalisation and global supervisory organisations enable the United States to harness the rest of the world to its own rhythms and structures.' In other words, we are dancing to the American tune, probably much more than any of us in the cushioned West appreciate. In the developing world, however, there is a strong yet ill-defined sense that living standards are kept low in order to allow Americans to consume far more than they actually produce. It would be unfair to reach these harsh conclusions without pointing out that America does provide much aid and expertise to the developing world and pours billions of dollars into peacekeeping operations. Still there is a gathering conviction that America is, to use the word of the moment, in state of persistent non-compliance on too many protocols, agreements, treaties and conventions to number. And that cannot be a good thing for the reputation of the US, nor an impression easily reversed by a few eager young men selling Brand America. To a fond outsider like myself, America has become perplexingly inconsistent. Though this administration talks up democratic values it actively supports dictatorships in Pakistan and central Asia, and wobbled when a democratically elected government was threatened with a coup in Venezuela. Too often the Bush government's principles are forgotten in the cause of political expedience. And this has been true during the fight against terrorism at home where suspects have been arrested and isolated from the normal judicial process without a qualm. I've been amazed how quickly Americans have gone along with the loss of treasured and symbolic rights and saddened that the American media has not done more to oppose the authorities. It is difficult to overestimate the shock that 9/11 delivered to the American psyche. Security has become a national obsession. It seems odd to the outside world that while US troops were being deployed in the Gulf, Americans were stocking up on bottled water and tape to seal their homes from chemical weapons attacks. There is something rather panicky and self-obsessed about the US today and it is in this atmosphere that any challenge to the government or security agencies is immediately classed as unpatriotic. Americans will bridle at these observations, but as Philip Roth pointed out in October, since 9/11 they have indulged in 'an orgy of national narcissism and a gratuitous victim mentality which is repugnant'. Now the bombs have rained on Baghdad it is time for America to stop worrying about its values being under attack and to re-engage with the world, showing the openness and generosity that was once so admired. That is the only way to reinvigorate Brand America. Empire State, a novel by Henry Porter about a US/UK counter-terrorist operation, is published by Orion in September. Guardian Unlimited Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003 http://www.observer.co.uk/worldview/story/0,11581,920151,00.html |
1,241,231 | male | 37 | Technology | Aries | 30,April,2003 | Look into the eyes of Ali Ismail Abbas: what do you see? April 30 2003 This is the story of Ali Ismail Abbas. Ali is the 12-year-old boy who had the misfortune to be at home in Iraq when a United States rocket arrived. According to one newspaper report, the 'hovel' he lived in was destroyed. So were his father and his five-months pregnant mother. He lost his brother. Some of his sisters were injured. Cousins and other relatives were also killed. The number of relatives who died varies from report to report. What happened to Ali himself is not in dispute. After the terrible explosion, Ali woke up, soaked in blood, his sheets on fire. The Times of London reported that Jon Lee Anderson, the New Yorker correspondent who saw him in hospital, was shown a photograph of Ali before his treatment, his body blackened, one of his hands 'a twisted, melted claw. The other arm had apparently been burned off at the elbow... two long bones were sticking out of it.' That is not the photograph of Ali that we see now, however. We see photographs of Ali after his arms were amputated, the stumps and his body swathed in bandages, his face somehow unscathed, his eyes... What do we see in his eyes? Almost all of us will retain images of this invasion of Iraq. There is the shot of a dead child, taken by Akram Saleh of Reuters, his or her face like porcelain, intact, appearing strangely at peace as only the dead can, but the rest of the head and body bound together, as if to stop bits falling out. There is the symbolism of statues toppling, footage of crowds (with one person wearing a Beckham shirt), a mother sobbing next to her injured toddler, suspects stripped and kneeling in the dirt, a boy liberating a bag of sugar as big as he is. The blood on a BBC cameraman's lens. Those are my images. You will have yours. The full cruelty and catastrophe of war has become something we cannot avoid. We are assaulted by it even when we try to avoid it. Susan Moeller, an American journalism professor, describes us all as 'passive receivers of images'. That is akin to blaming the victim. The images home in on us, no matter how much we duck and weave. They are wrapped around our papers, they are inserted into television programs, even our children's programs are 'updated'. Children have always suffered massive damage in war. Even when they are not themselves killed or maimed like Ali, they lose mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters. As in my parents' families, in the London Blitz, they lose uncles and aunts and other relatives, both actual and potential. The world has a long history of treating children cruelly. Children worked as chimney sweeps, encouraged to work faster by the fires lit under them. Children were used to dip pottery figures into poisonous lead glaze. Slain infants, it was believed, could benefit sterile women, cure disease. Buried in the foundations of buildings, dead children strengthened the structure. The unwanted child was abandoned. Children were mutilated to alter their appearance. Perhaps our new technologies have provided new ways of using children. Most of us will now have an image of Ali Ismail Abbas, although it is hard to believe that the images we see are sanitised. We do not see (but can read about) his arm that looked like, in Jon Lee Anderson's words, 'something that might be found in a barbecue pit'. Perhaps we are shown what it is believed we can tolerate, what is judged to be useful, what is required to show that he has been rescued. As ABC TV's Media Watch observed, Ali's future is brighter 'with the help of The Daily Telegraph, 'his rescue was organised by The Courier-Mail team', 'by the Herald Sun's team', 'by The Australian'. Many newspapers claim a part in his recovery. Several charities and other papers have claimed his image. London's Evening Standard and the Daily Mirror are reported to be using his face and torso to raise money for good causes. What do we see when we look at the photographs of Ali? What do we see and think when we look into his eyes? I see the confusion and random cruelty of war. I see a child who, in the words of his uncle, 'wants to be normal again' but can never be. I look for other children's eyes, other bodies, other children we should be caring for but are not. I think, such are our relations to children, that we need a particular child to 'adopt'. Just as we 'adopted' the bruised and battered face of Daniel Valerio, dead and beyond repair, so we 'adopt' Ali Ismail Abbas who can never be mended. Perhaps, at heart, we tend to be indifferent to the present suffering of children in general, of children who need our help every day, but we find it difficult to ignore a child, a clearly identified, named, photographed, damaged and distant or dead child. I wonder what Ali Ismail Abbas is thinking. I think of the words he has said, his anger at being repeatedly exposed to the stares of strangers. I wonder if we do this to him because he is 12 years old and because he is an Iraqi. After all, that is how he came to lose his arms, skin, parents, family and home. I reflect upon our sensitivities to photographs of 'our' soldiers as prisoners. I wonder if any of the newspapers and charities have thought to ask his permission to use his photograph around the world in this way. Perhaps we use his photograph rather than that of a wounded adult because we do not feel we have to ask a child. Perhaps some of us believe that, after all he has lost, he will not miss his dignity and privacy. I wonder if Ali Ismail Abbas knows that, perhaps, we need him more than he needs us, that he is helping us more than we can ever help him, that we didn't want to do what we have done, that we really don't know what to do now. I see Margaret Drabble's words, in The Millstone, that we claim that children forget and recover so readily because we dare not contemplate the fact that, in reality, they will always remember, they will never forget. That is perhaps another part of the story of Ali Ismail Abbas. Dr Chris Goddard is head of social work in the school of primary health care at Monash University and director of the Child Abuse and Family Violence Research Unit, a joint initiative with Australians Against Child Abuse. Email: [email protected] |
1,241,231 | male | 37 | Technology | Aries | 26,April,2003 | |
1,241,231 | male | 37 | Technology | Aries | 04,April,2003 | America brings Darth Vader to the desert From Daniel McGrory in southern Iraq THE American infantryman controlling the checkpoint on the road to al-Nasiriyah was clad in so much body armour he looked like Darth Vader. Dark goggles covered most of his face, a khaki scarf was wrapped around his nose and mouth. His M16 assault rifle was pointed at the windscreen of the saloon car, which was clearly being driven by a young woman who had young children in the backseat. This did not stop the young soldier from screaming at the occupants to step out of the vehicle and move to the side of the road. How much of that muffled command the frightened woman understood was unclear, but as she hesitated and tried to comfort the youngest of her children, who was trying to clamber over the seat towards her, the infantrymen yelled even louder. It was difficult to tell who was the more nervous. Rifles remained trained on the mother and children, who were made to stand 60ft away from their car while it was searched. There was no attempt to explain to the woman why this was necessary, but American patrols appear to treat everyone now as if they are suicide bombers. You would not expect British commanders to criticise their allies publicly, but troops who have witnessed Americans at close quarters in this war are baffled at their approach to Iraqi civilians. British troops manning checkpoints in Safwan, Umm Qasr, al-Zubayr and Rumaillah were ordered yesterday to replace helmets with berets. A British military spokesman said: It looks less aggressive, makes us appear more open and friendly. One captain in the Royal Marines, watching a US unit monitor a checkpoint, said: The Americans are still behaving like invaders, not liberators. They behave as if they hate these people. Indeed, many American troops speak as though they do. You often hear them describe Eye-rakis in disparaging language. One US officer in charge of delivering humanitarian aid earlier this week likened the crush of people waiting to get hold of food and water to a pack of stray dogs. His troops idea of crowd control was to lash at those pushing to the front of the queue with fists and rifle butts, even firing shots into the air. When Irish Guards were nearly mobbed by a crowd trying to grab the food that they were delivering to al- Zubayr this week, Major David Hannah urged his men to keep calm and to get the people to sit down. They need to have their dignity respected, and while this is a sticking plaster approach we need to make better contacts with locals to ensure the food goes to the needy, he said. British units have asked local worthies, such as hospital directors, teachers and anybody untainted by association with the regime, to distribute food aid as they see fit. British commanders are appalled at how the Americans pulverise anything from afar before daring to set foot out of their armoured vehicles. This was no better illustrated than in the first skirmish of the land war, where the American 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit was handed what should have been the easy capture of the seaport of Umm Qasr. Royal Marine officers watched incredulously as their US compatriots bombed and shelled the town for five days. There is no doubt that the experience of nearly 30 years policing Ulster has taught British forces that the only way to root out gunmen is to patrol on foot, searching house by house. They did this in Bosnia, in Sierra Leone and Afghanistan. The rhetoric of US soldiers is often provocative. When an American colonel was asked by The Times what the role of the Fifth Corps would be, he replied: We are going in there, we are going to root out the bad guys and kill them. His men, grouped around him, grunted, whooped and punched the air as if they were watching a football match. A British officer who saw this exchange shook his head and walked away, saying: We are working from a different script but you wont get anyone in Whitehall to admit it. urlLink |
1,241,231 | male | 37 | Technology | Aries | 02,April,2003 | Nicholson of 'The Australian' newspaper: urlLink www.nicholsoncartoons.com.au |
1,241,231 | male | 37 | Technology | Aries | 01,April,2003 | Todays Cartoons This cartoon was found at urlLink http://www.stuff.co.nz/inl/common/imageViewer/0,1445,101998,00.jpg This cartoon was found at urlLink http://www.theage.com.au/ffxImage/urlpicture_id_1048354625375_2003/03/26/toon2603.jpg This cartoon was found at urlLink http://www.theage.com.au/ffxImage/urlpicture_id_1048354581270_2003/03/25/toon2503.jpg This cartoon was found at urlLink http://www.theage.com.au/ffxImage/urlpicture_id_1048354508514_2003/03/24/toon2303,0.jpg |
1,241,231 | male | 37 | Technology | Aries | 01,April,2003 | A drive straight into death April 2 2003 As an unidentified four-wheel-drive vehicle came barrelling towards an intersection held by troops of the US Army's 3rd Infantry Division, Captain Ronny Johnson grew alarmed. From his position at the intersection, he was heard on the radio to one of his forward platoons of M2 Bradley fighting vehicles, alerting it to a potential threat. 'Fire a warning shot,' he ordered as the vehicle kept coming. Then, with increasing urgency, he told the platoon to shoot into its radiator. 'Stop (messing) around,' Captain Johnson yelled into the company radio network when he saw no action being taken. Finally, he shouted: 'Stop him, Red 1, stop him.' That order was immediately followed by the loud reports of cannon fire. About half a dozen shots were heard. 'Cease fire,' Captain Johnson yelled over the radio. Then, as he peered into his binoculars from the intersection on Highway 9, he roared at the platoon leader: 'You just (expletive) killed a family because you didn't fire a warning shot soon enough.' So it was that on a warm, hazy day in central Iraq, the fog of war descended on Bravo Company. Fifteen Iraqi civilians were packed inside the Toyota, along with as many of their possessions as the vehicle could hold. Ten, including five children who appeared to be under five, were killed, Captain Johnson's company reported. Of the five others, one man was so severely injured he was not expected to live. According to the Pentagon, the vehicle was fired on after the driver ignored shouted orders and warning shots. A statement said the vehicle was a van carrying '13 women and children'. The statement claimed seven were killed and two injured. In Doha, Qatar, US Central Command issued a statement, saying: 'In light of recent terrorist attacks by the Iraqi regime, the soldiers exercised considerable restraint to avoid the unnecessary loss of life.' The shooting is being investigated. Back at the scene, Sergeant Mario Manzano, 26, a medic with Bravo Company of the division's 3rd Battalion, 15th Infantry Regiment, said: 'It was the most horrible thing I've ever seen, and I hope I never see it again.' He said one wounded woman sat in the vehicle holding the mangled bodies of two of her children. 'She didn't want to get out of the car,' he said. The tragedy cast a pall over the company as it sat on this stretch of Highway 9 at the intersection of a road leading to Hilla, about 20 kilometres to the east, near the Euphrates River. Dealing with the gruesome scene was a new experience for many of the soldiers. They debated how the tragedy could have been avoided. Several said they accepted the platoon leader's explanation to Captain Johnson on the military radio that he had fired two warning shots, but that the driver failed to stop. And everybody was edgy since four US soldiers were blown up by a suicide bomber on Saturday at a checkpoint much like theirs, only 30 kilometres to the south. The soldiers of Bravo Company had their own reasons to be edgy. The Bradley tank of the 3rd Battalion's operations officer, Major Roger Shuck, had been fired on with a rocket-propelled grenade a few kilometres south of Karbala. Throughout the day, Iraqis lobbed mortar volleys. It was in the late afternoon after this day defending their positions that the men of Bravo Company saw the blue Toyota coming down the road. After the shooting, US medics evacuated survivors to US lines south of Karbala. One woman escaped without a scratch. Another, who had superficial head wounds, was flown by helicopter to a US field hospital when it was found she was pregnant. Lieutenant-Colonel Stephen Twitty, the 3rd Battalion commander, gave permission for three survivors to return to the vehicle and recover the bodies of their loved ones. 'They wanted to bury them before the dogs got to them,' said Corporal Brian Truenow, 28. To try to prevent a recurrence, Captain Johnson ordered signs be posted in Arabic to warn people to stop well short of the Bradleys. Before the signs could be erected, 10 people with white flags walked down the road and were allowed to walk around the Bradleys. And the war continued. - Washington Post This story was found at: urlLink http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/04/01/1048962756979.html |
1,241,231 | male | 37 | Technology | Aries | 01,April,2003 | Allies split over battle for hearts and minds April 2 2003 Cracks are appearing between British and American commanders that have serious implications for operations in Iraq. Senior British military officers are dismayed by what they see as the failure of US troops to try to fight the battle for hearts and minds. They are also appalled by reports that US marines killed Iraqi civilians, including women and children, as they seized bridges outside Nasiriyah in southern Iraq. 'You can see why the Iraqis are not welcoming us with open arms,' a senior British defence source said on Monday. General Sir Mike Jackson, the head of the army, drove home the point at a press conference in London on Friday. 'We have a very considerable hearts and minds challenge,' he said. 'We are not interested in gratuitous violence.' British and American troops 'must convince the Iraqis of their good intentions', echoed British Armed Forces Minister Adam Ingram. It was not clear whether he was referring to any particular incident. British officers have described the very different approach between UK and US soldiers by pointing to Umm Qasr, the Iraqi port south of Basra and the first urban area captured by US and British marines. 'Unlike the Americans, we took our helmets and sunglasses off and looked at the Iraqis eye to eye,' a British officer said. While British soldiers 'get out on their feet', Americans, he said, were reluctant to leave their armoured vehicles. When they did - and this was the experience even in Umm Qasr - US marines were ordered to wear their full combat kit. One difference emphasised by senior British military sources was the attitude towards 'force protection'. A British defence source added: 'The Americans put on more and more armour and firepower. The British go light and go on the ground.' British defence sources contrast the patient tactics of their troops around Basra and what they call the more brutal tactics of American forces around Nasiriyah. US marines there appeared to have fired indiscriminately, with orders to shoot at civilian vehicles. Unlike their American counterparts, British commanders have said they will not change their tactics following the suicide bombing attack last week on a group of US marines in Nasiriyah. The British military put the difference in approach down to decades of training as well as experience, first in insurgencies in Malaya, then in Northern Ireland and peacekeeping operations in the Balkans. Sir Roger Wheeler, former head of the army, points to the 'experience, awareness, and skill', particularly important among non-commissioned officers such as corporals and sergeants. What is striking is the emphasis British military figures put on the differences between their approach and that of the Americans on the ground. They have gone out of their way to draw attention to nervous, 'trigger-happy' US soldiers. US marines in Nasiriyah have said they had asked British troops for instructions on urban warfare. They began using new tactics in operations around the town yesterday when they started searching suburbs block by block. British military sources are now concerned that the experience in peacekeeping and unconventional warfare of British troops will mean they will be in Iraq long after the Americans have left, even for years, in policing and humanitarian operations. The concern among military chiefs is that the experience will mean the US will want to get out of places even quicker, leaving the British and others to continue fighting the battle for hearts and minds. - Guardian This story was found at: urlLink http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/04/01/1048962756690.html |
1,241,231 | male | 37 | Technology | Aries | 01,April,2003 | Iraqi civilian deaths mount The remnants of cluster bombs litter Hilla, where more than 30 civilians have died. (AFP) At least 30 civilians have died and 310 were injured in coalition air strikes on the outskirts of a farming town south of Baghdad, a local hospital director says. The deaths are part of a mounting Iraqi civilian death toll that is stoking international unease with the US-led war. The hospital director in the farming town of Hilla, 80 kilometres south of Baghdad, Murtada Abbas, says coalition bombings near the town have killed 33 people, including women and children. He was speaking at the Hilla hospital, where a large number of children lay wounded under blankets on the floor due to a shortage of beds. 'Horror' A spokesman for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), Roland Huguenin-Benjamin, says the bombings around Hilla are a 'veritable horror'. 'Our four-member team went to Hilla hospital south of Baghdad and what it saw there was a horror,' Mr Huguenin-Benjamin said. 'There were dozens of smashed corpses.' He says he believes the air attacks have left 'dozens of dead and 450 injured'. 'We're asking about the type of weapons used in these air strikes,' he said. 'There were women and children. All of them are civilians, farmers and their families who were on their fields or at home.' At the hospital, 23-year-old Mohammad Karim explained that when residents 'saw the warplanes flying at very low altitude, they rushed out of their homes toward the nearby plantation fields'. 'Then it started raining cluster bombs everywhere,' he said. 'People were being slaughtered like sheep.' At the scene of the bombing, dozens of what seemed to be parts of cluster bombs equipped with small parachutes were peppered over a large area, an AFP correspondent said. Iraqi soldiers were seen collecting the debris, which witnesses said coalition warplanes had dropped over the neighborhood. The soldiers poured fuel on the ordnance and set it on fire to destroy it. Dozens of homes were devastated in the bombing that also killed donkeys, dogs and chickens. Rocket attack In the nearby Haidariya region, fifteen members of one family were killed late on Monday when their truck was blown up by a rocket from a US Apache helicopter, the sole survivor of the attack says. Razek al-Kazem al-Khafaji, sitting among 15 coffins in the local hospital, says he lost his wife, six children, his father, his mother, his three brothers and their wives. US officers say marines have taken a key canal bridge in the Hilla area and have taken about 50 Iraqis prisoner as part of the drive toward Baghdad. An AFP correspondent travelling with the troops says they were backed by artillery and two B-52 heavy bombers in their drive to take the canal. Major Cal Worth says the Iraqis put up a fight but could not hold them off. 'There was good resistance initially,' he said. 'But again we finished them up, we continue to push on according to schedule.' Scores of tanks and armoured personnel carriers were seen rumbling towards the canal near Hilla. An intelligence officer put the size of the Iraqi force at between 300 and 400, a mixture of regular armed forces and militia loyal to President Saddam Hussein. Baghdad deaths, checkpoint shootings Iraqi Information Minister Mohammad Said al-Sahhaf says the British and US air strikes on Baghdad account for a further 19 people dead and more than 100 wounded since Monday evening. US troops have admitted killing seven women and children when they opened fire on a civilian vehicle at a military checkpoint at Najaf on Monday. On Tuesday, troops killed an unarmed driver who was speeding towards a roadblock near Shatra in southern Iraq. International commentators and officials say the incidents are likely to fuel vocal international opposition to the war and deal a severe blow to the US-led force's bid to win the trust of the Iraqi people. 'If such scenes become routine ... the political war for Iraq could be lost even before the military one is won,' the New York Times warned in an editorial. The British Government has admitted for the first time that Iraqi civilians may see US-British forces as villains, not liberators. 'We know that for the moment we will be seen as the villains,' Home Secretary David Blunkett said on BBC television. 'We knew that from the reaction before the conflict started.' 'Tragic accident' The European Commission has called the checkpoint killings 'a horrible and tragic incident'. 'It is not an isolated incident. Too many civilians have already lost their lives in this war,' the EC said. US Navy Lieutenant Commander Charles Owens says the troops opened fire at the checkpoint near Najaf 'as a last resort'. He says the civilian vehicle failed to stop at a military post despite repeated warning shots fired by US troops. Four people in the vehicle escaped unharmed. The Washington Post quotes US Army 3rd Division Captain Ronny Johnson as shouting over the radio to his men after the shooting: 'You just (expletive) killed a family because you didn't fire a warning shot soon enough.' A US military investigation has been opened. White House spokesman Ari Fleischer says US President George W Bushregrets the deaths of Iraqi civilians but 'recognises that most innocents have been lost in this war at the hands of Saddam Hussein and his henchmen'. US troops are on edge after a suicide car bomb attack near Najaf killed four soldiers on Saturday. Iraqi Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan has warned that more than 3,000 Arab volunteers are ready to carry out such suicide missions against the US-led coalition. This story was found at: urlLink |
1,241,231 | male | 37 | Technology | Aries | 01,April,2003 | urlLink Tuesday, April 1: According to plan - Tom Scott |
1,241,231 | male | 37 | Technology | Aries | 05,May,2003 | Iraqi rage grows after Fallujah massacre By Phil Reeves in Fallujah 04 May 2003 Nearly a week after troops from the 82nd Airborne Division randomly opened fire on a crowd of demonstrators here, prompting the US military to announce an inquiry, commanders have yet to speak to the doctors who counted the bodies. Nor, by late yesterday, had US commanders been to the home of a 13-year-old boy who was among the dead, even though it is located less than a mile from the main American base in Fallujah, a conservative Sunni town 35 miles west of Baghdad. The Americans' conduct over the Fallujah affair and their highly implausible version of events has compounded the anger in Iraq over the killings, in which 13 people died after being hit by a hail of US bullets outside a school which the troops were occupying. It combines all the worst elements of the occupation: panicky troops firing at Iraqis instead of seeking to engage with them or understand their circumstances, then insisting that local people have no cause for anger. The US military's case was enshrined in a 290-word statement issued by its Central Command (Centcom) in Qatar the day afterwards, Tuesday, issued when the interest of the world's media was at its height. This stated that the 'parachuters' from the 82nd Airborne Division opened fire in self-defence after being shot at by around 25 armed civilians interspersed among 200 demonstrators and positioned on the neighbouring rooftops. It spoke of a 'fire-fight'. Witnesses interviewed by The Independent on Sunday stated that there was some shooting in the air in the general vicinity, but it was nowhere near the crowd, which comprised mostly boys and young men who descended on the school at around 9pm to call for the US troops to leave the premises. Gunfire in the air is commonplace and the Fallujah demonstration coincided with Saddam Hussein's birthday. But there is a consensus among Iraqi witnesses on two issues. There was no fire-fight nor any shooting at the school. And the crowd although it had one poster of Saddam and may have thrown some stones had no guns. The evidence at the scene overwhelmingly supports this. Al-Ka'at primary and secondary school is a yellow concrete building about the length and height of seven terraced houses located in a walled compound. The soldiers fired at people gathered below them. There are no bullet marks on the facade of the school or the perimeter wall in front of it. The top floors of the houses directly opposite, from where the troops say they were fired on, also appear unmarked. Their upper windows are intact. The day after the bloodbath, US soldiers displayed three guns which they said they had recovered from a home opposite, but this proved nothing. Every other Iraqi home has at least one firearm. Centcom also refused to confirm that the soldiers from the 82nd Airborne who raked the crowd had killed or injured unarmed civilians. Although it conceded that this was possible, it described the deaths of unarmed people as 'allegations' and estimated the toll at seven injuries, all people who were armed. Yet a mile from the US army's base is the home of 13-year-old Abdul Khader al-Jumaili. The boy had tagged along with the demonstration as it passed by his home, having spotted some of his friends. He was shot in the chest, and died in hospital a few hours later. His house No 3 Al-Monjazat Street is easy to find. Dozens of relatives gathered there for three days of mourning amid an atmosphere of quiet anger, grief and indignation. 'The Americans are just lying,' said his father, Abdul Latif al-Jumaili, a clerk. 'You can see it for yourself,' he added, showing a photograph of his son. 'He was just a boy.' The affair has angered British Army officials who believe that the US troops lack the vital experience which the British acquired painfully at first in Northern Ireland. 'Don't talk to me about the US army,' said one British military source. 'Let's just say that they face a very steep leaning curve.' The Americans will be hoping that the damage will be repaired once they establish stability and the economy gets going. But they will find no consolation from the signals being sent to them in Fallujah. On Wednesday night, someone fired two grenades into their compound, a former Baath party building, injuring seven soldiers. A banner was hanging from the front gate of the mayor's office next door: 'Sooner or later, US killers, we'll kick you out.' Outstanding cases: Still waiting for an explanation The battlefields are littered with the bodies of those who got in the way, were targeted for the wrong reasons, or were the victims of ill intent. Here are some outstanding cases: The incident: Terry Lloyd, ITN reporter, killed near Basra on 22 March. Cameraman Fred Nerac and translator Hussein Osman are still missing. What happened: ITN vehicles caught between Iraqis and US forces, though it is not clear who fired first. Strenuous ITN efforts to establish fate of the two missing men, without success. US military appears highly reluctant to co-operate. Since then: Colin Powell promised Nerac's wife he would do everything possible, but formal investigation only opened last Monday. Press watchdog Reporters sans Frontires says US shows no interest in a serious inquiry. The incident: British soldiers killed by US 'friendly fire'. What happened: Worst incident was an attack on clearly marked Scimitar light tanks on 28 March by US A-10 Thunderbolt aircraft in broad daylight, killing one soldier and wounding three. Since then: Pentagon has withheld all information about the names of the offending pilots and the unit they belonged to. British officials say joint investigation with Americans is 'still ongoing'. No details made public. The incident: An unknown number of Iraqis, including women and children, shot down at US checkpoints by guards afraid of suicide attacks. What happened: Ten people, including five children, killed outside Najaf on 30 March by high-explosive shell. Commander heard shouting: 'You just killed a family because you didn't fire a warning shot soon enough!' Since then: US officials defended troops, saying warning shots were ignored. The men did 'absolutely the right thing', General Peter Pace said. Not clear if any further inquiry has taken place. The incident: Al-Jazeera reporter Tarek Ayoub, Reuters cameraman Taras Protsyuk and Spanish TV cameraman Jose Couso killed as US troops move into Baghdad. What happened: Al-Jazeera and Abu Dhabi television offices bombed from the air. Reuters man killed by US tank round fired at Palestine Hotel. Al-Jazeera, also hit in Basra and during Afghanistan war, believes it was deliberately targeted; similar accusations made about hotel attack. Since then: Soldiers said to be responding to hostile fire eyewitnesses disagree. No other information forthcoming. The incident: Two unknown Iraqi soldiers apparently shot, execution-style, by vengeful Marine, Gus Covarrubias, after mortar shell exploded near him. What happened: Covarrubias himself told the story to his local paper in Las Vegas, saying he ordered soldier he believed to have fired the mortar to turn around, then shot him in the back of the head. He then chased and shot a second man. Since then: Covarrubias interviewed by Naval Criminal Investigative Service, but no decision yet made whether to investigate him for war crimes. Andrew Gumbel http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=402964 |
1,241,231 | male | 37 | Technology | Aries | 02,May,2003 | In Voice of the Mirror, Friday 2 May 2003: True battle is the fight for peace GENERAL Tommy Franks, who led the US military operation in Iraq, said yesterday that the war is over. He should read the report in the Mirror today from our reporter Chris Hughes. Hughes was one of few media witnesses to the second shooting in 24 hours at Fallujah. This time, two Iraqis died and 16 were wounded. His report makes clear the aggressive and threatening behaviour of the protesters. But Hughes also says he saw no weapons among them and the only shots he saw or heard came from the Americans. The shooting of unarmed Iraqis is not only a disgrace but has terrifying implications. Enormous hatred is already being directed at the US forces - and that will surely spill over towards the British. Our own troops have behaved immaculately. Early in the war, those of our forces who were not involved in fighting replaced their helmets with berets. They have done everything to reassure the local population so a potentially explosive situation could be avoided. But there are certain to be many Iraqis who have not experienced the British way of doing things and believe our forces are the same as the nervy, trigger-happy Americans. This conflict is far from over. We can only hope that needless loss of life can be avoided in future and the invading forces come home as soon as possible. And here is the article by Chris Hughes: urlLink TWO KILLED IN NEW IRAQ DEMO SHOOTING May 1 2003 From Chris Hughes In Al-Fallujah. Pictures by Julian Andrews IT started when a young boy hurled a sandal at a US jeep - it ended with two Iraqis dead and 16 seriously injured. I watched in horror as American troops opened fire on a crowd of 1,000 unarmed people here yesterday. Many, including children, were cut down by a 20-second burst of automatic gunfire during a demonstration against the killing of 13 protesters at the Al-Kaahd school on Monday. FIRST SHOTS: Soldier opens fire on crowd yesterday They had been whipped into a frenzy by religious leaders. The crowd were facing down a military compound of tanks and machine-gun posts. The youngster had apparently lobbed his shoe at the jeep - with a M2 heavy machine gun post on the back - as it drove past in a convoy of other vehicles. A soldier operating the weapon suddenly ducked, raised it on its pivot then pressed his thumb on the trigger. Mirror photographer Julian Andrews and I were standing about six feet from the vehicle when the first shots rang out, without warning. We dived for cover under the compound wall as troops within the crowd opened fire. The convoy accelerated away from the scene. Iraqis in the line of fire dived for cover, hugging the dust to escape being hit. We could hear the bullets screaming over our heads. Explosions of sand erupted from the ground - if the rounds failed to hit a demonstrator first. Seconds later the shooting stopped and the screaming and wailing began. One of the dead, a young man, lay face up, half his head missing, first black blood, then red spilling into the dirt. MAYHEM: Iraqis run for cover and others dive to the ground to escape bullets His friends screamed at us in anger, then looked at the grim sight in disbelief. A boy of 11 lay shouting in agony before being carted off in a car to a hospital already jam-packed with Iraqis hurt in Monday's incident. Cars pulled up like taxis to take the dead and injured to hospital, as if they had been waiting for this to happen. A man dressed like a sheik took off his headcloth to wave and direct traffic around the injured. The sickening scenes of death and pain were the culmination of a day of tension in Al-Fallujah sparked by Monday's killings. The baying crowd had marched 500 yards from the school to a local Ba'ath party HQ. We joined them, asking questions and taking pictures, as Apache helicopters circled above. The crowd waved their fists at the gunships angrily and shouted: 'Go home America, go home America.' We rounded a corner and saw edgy-looking soldiers lined up along the street in between a dozen armoured vehicles. All of them had automatic weapons pointing in the firing position. As the crowd - 10 deep and about 100 yards long - marched towards the US positions, chanting 'Allah is great, go home Americans', the troops reversed into the compound. On the roof of the two-storey fortress, ringed by a seven-foot high brick wall, razor wire and with several tanks inside, around 20 soldiers ran to the edge and took up positions. TRAGEDY: Shot man lies dead in the street as blood pours from his head wound A machine gun post at one of the corners swivelled round, taking aim at the crowd which pulled to a halt. We heard no warning to disperse and saw no guns or knives among the Iraqis whose religious and tribal leaders kept shouting through loud hailers to remain peaceful. In the baking heat and with the deafening noise of helicopters the tension reached breaking point. Julian and I ran towards the compound to get away from the crowd as dozens of troops started taking aim at them, others peering at them through binoculars. Tribal leaders struggled to contain the mob which was reaching a frenzy. A dozen ran through the cordon of elders, several hurling what appeared to be rocks at troops. Some of the stones just reached the compound walls. Many threw sandals - a popular Iraqi insult. A convoy of Bradley military jeeps passed by, the Iraqis hurling insults at them, slapping the sides of the vehicles with their sandals, tribal leaders begging them to retreat. The main body of demonstrators jeered the passing US troops pointing their thumbs down to mock them. Then came the gunfire - and the death and the agony. After the shootings the American soldiers looked at the appalling scene through their binoculars and set up new positions, still training their guns at us. An angry mob battered an Arab TV crew van, pulling out recording equipment and hurling it at the compound. Those left standing - now apparently insane with anger - ran at the fortress battering its walls with their fists. Many had tears pouring down their faces. Still no shots from the Iraqis and still no sign of the man with the AK47 who the US later claimed had let off a shot at the convoy. I counted at least four or five soldiers with binoculars staring at the crowd for weapons but we saw no guns amongst the injured or dropped on the ground. A local told us the crowd would turn on foreigners so we left and went to the hospital. There, half an hour later, another chanting mob was carrying an open coffin of one of the dead, chanting 'Islam, Islam, Islam, death to the Americans'. We left when we were spat at by a wailing woman dressed in black robes. US troops had been accused of a bloody massacre over the killings of the 13 Iraqis outside the school on Monday. Three of the dead were said to be boys under 11. At least 75 locals were injured in a 30-minute gun battle after soldiers claimed they were shot at by protesters. Demonstrators claimed they were trying to reclaim the school from the Americans who had occupied it as a military HQ. The crowd had defied a night-time curfew to carry out the protest. |
1,241,231 | male | 37 | Technology | Aries | 10,June,2003 | Life on the razor's edge This story was found at: http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/06/01/1054406072441.html June 2 2003 The label on my shaving cream describes a product with almost magical properties. Its fatuous promises and pseudo-scientific excesses are staggering. 'Unique microcapsule Dual Delivery System protects and lubricates skin throughout the shave giving excellent razor glide.' Furthermore, it guarantees a 'pain- free shave', which will leave my skin 'super cool and refreshed'. At least, I think that's what it says. My eyes are still watering from the sting of the shaving cream. The world of men's shaving products has gone mad. From the advertising campaigns, it's increasingly hard to tell the difference between a razor and a piece of super-charged military hardware. Even the shaving lotion ads sound like propaganda. Over the years, razors have ceased being merely blades for hacking away at whiskers. Razors are now 'shaving systems' and they're marketed like the latest gadget from your friendly neighbourhood arms dealer. Hell, they don't even call them blades any more - 'flexible micro fins that deliver unprecedented shaving closeness'. With its independently suspended, triple-blade comfort edge, advanced indicator and lubricating strip, this isn't shaving - this is warfare. Shock and Awe for your jaw. Television ads feature athletic, military types, flying jet aircraft, their square chins as slippery-smooth as Teflon. Shaving isn't just a daily drag: with the right product, you'll be tall, you'll be aggressively masculine and you'll get laid twice a day. The razor has been glamorised and fetishised out of all proportion. It's the ultimate James Bond gadget. This marketing strategy may be ridiculous, but it clearly works. Last year, Gillette made $US893 million ($A1.35billion) just from their blades and razor sales. This figure was 16per cent up on the previous year. Much of this is attributable to the popular MACH3 razor, which Gillette boasts is the 'most advanced shaving system in the world'. This redoubtable razor is protected by 35 patents, and is probably the most extreme example of technological overkill. Even the MACH3 handle is a design miracle, featuring 'knurled elustomeric crescents' for 'better handling'! New products come and go like pop stars. For 20 years, I have vainly pursued a decent shave, and I have come to the conclusion that there are only two types of razor - the diabolical (disposable) and the dastardly (all the others). Yet I keep turning up to the shaving section in aisle six of my supermarket in the futile hope that the latest flashy product will provide the answer to my prayers. Is there something fundamentally wrong with me? Is all this ever-escalating razor arms race a form of brainwashing? Internet sites offer masses of tips and remedial assistance for frustrated blade shavers. Mostly, they argue that successful shaving, like climbing Everest, all comes down to the right equipment and a faultless technique. Having tried every blade on the market, and every cream and lotion from sorbolene to KY jelly, I can only assume that it's my technique that sucks. An English shaving site offers this advice for the perfect shave: first, apply a compress of steaming hot towels to your face. Follow this with a light application of hair conditioner, underneath a deftly applied layer of shaving cream. Shave in short strokes with the direction of hair growth, rinsing the razor after each stroke in a lukewarm preparation of water infused with tea tree oil. Now repeat the process, this time shaving against the direction of hair growth. The entire ritual takes just under an hour to achieve, so thanks for the tip, guys, but I'm due back on planet Earth. Mind you, it might beat the alternative. I'm one of the few men alive who cuts himself with an electric razor. Whoever invented these useless devices was either a consummate practical joker or an employee of Bastards Incorporated. Let this be known: electric razors don't work. Electric razors are like attacking your face with an orbital sander. Electric razors abrade the skin, making your cheeks resemble poor quality suede. Electric razors leave embarrassing patches of hair so that your chin looks like it has alopecia. Electric razors are the work of Satan. Consider these statistics. The man who shaves daily has about 20,000 shaves to look forwards to in a lifetime. The latest in razor technology will set you back about $260 per year. Add the cost of shaving cream and that means about $17,000 over the course of a life. Wouldn't you rather put that money into real estate? No wonder so many men have stopped shaving on a daily basis. You can save yourself about $10,000 by shaving once a week. Unfortunately, it's no good telling yourself that Brad Pitt or George Clooney look good with a five o'clock shadow. Brad and George also take home 40 million bucks a year and have the faultless jawlines of Greek gods. They're not real people. You and I go a week without shaving and we look like dirty bums. Shaving is ancient. Primitive man used sharpened stone tools to scrape away at his beard. In those days, shaving could be life threatening. One moment of lost concentration and you'd lose your lips. But has there been much progress? There's a new razor on the market that boasts of blades, sorry, 'fins which are individually mounted on highly responsive springs ... that automatically adjust to facial contours'. Yes, those fins adjust to and follow the rugged contours of one's face with the dogged persistence of an Exocet missile. Problem is, you still cut yourself and you can still feel the hair left behind after it has 'glided effortlessly' down your chin. I suspect a sharpened piece of flint mounted on a stick would do a similar job. I can see the marketing now. 'Genuine gnarled eucalyptus twig facilitator incorporating a retro blade crafted from a revolutionary piece of specially chipped stone.' I like the sound of that. An honest shave. Who cares if my face looks like it's covered in smallpox? Or should that be 'knurled elustomeric crescents'? |
1,241,231 | male | 37 | Technology | Aries | 06,June,2003 | Best Of The Blogs What a Tangled Web We Weave . . . . . . when first we practice to deceive! Posted by billmon at May 29, 2003 03:20 AM From: urlLink http://billmon.org.v.sabren.com/archives/000172.html 'Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction.' Dick Cheney urlLink Speech to VFW National Convention August 26,2002 'Right now, Iraq is expanding and improving facilities that were used for the production of biological weapons. ' George W. Bush urlLink Speech to UN General Assembly September 12, 2002 'If he declares he has none, then we will know that Saddam Hussein is once again misleading the world.' Ari Fleischer urlLink Press Briefing December 2, 2002 'We know for a fact that there are weapons there.' Ari Fleischer Press Briefing January 9, 2003 'Our intelligence officials estimate that Saddam Hussein had the materials to produce as much as 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent. ' George W. Bush State of the Union Address January 28, 2003 'We know that Saddam Hussein is determined to keep his weapons of mass destruction, is determined to make more.' Colin Powell urlLink Remarks to UN Security Council February 5, 2003 'We have sources that tell us that Saddam Hussein recently authorized Iraqi field commanders to use chemical weapons -- the very weapons the dictator tells us he does not have.' George W. Bush urlLink Radio Address February 8, 2003 'If Iraq had disarmed itself, gotten rid of its weapons of mass destruction over the past 12 years, or over the last several months since (UN Resolution) 1441 was enacted, we would not be facing the crisis that we now have before us . . . But the suggestion that we are doing this because we want to go to every country in the Middle East and rearrange all of its pieces is not correct.' Colin Powell urlLink Interview with Radio France International February 28, 2003 'So has the strategic decision been made to disarm Iraq of its weapons of mass destruction by the leadership in Baghdad? . . . I think our judgment has to be clearly not.' Colin Powell urlLink Remarks to UN Security Council March 7, 2003 'Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised.' George W. Bush Address to the Nation March 17, 2003 'Well, there is no question that we have evidence and information that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction, biological and chemical particularly . . . all this will be made clear in the course of the operation, for whatever duration it takes.' Ari Fleischer Press Briefing March 21, 2003 'There is no doubt that the regime of Saddam Hussein possesses weapons of mass destruction. And . . . as this operation continues, those weapons will be identified, found, along with the people who have produced them and who guard them.' Gen. Tommy Franks urlLink Press Conference March 22, 2003 'I have no doubt we're going to find big stores of weapons of mass destruction.' Defense Policy Board member Kenneth Adelman Washington Post , p. A27March 23, 2003 'One of our top objectives is to find and destroy the WMD. There are a number of sites.' Pentagon Spokeswoman Victoria Clark urlLink Press Briefing March 22, 2003 'We know where they are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat.' Donald Rumsfeld urlLink ABC Interview March 30, 2003 'Obviously the administration intends to publicize all the weapons of mass destruction U.S. forces find -- and there will be plenty. ' Neocon scholar Robert Kagan Washington Post op-ed April 9, 2003 'But make no mistake -- as I said earlier -- we have high confidence that they have weapons of mass destruction. That is what this war was about and it is about. And we have high confidence it will be found.' Ari Fleischer Press Briefing April 10, 2003 'We are learning more as we interrogate or have discussions with Iraqi scientists and people within the Iraqi structure, that perhaps he destroyed some, perhaps he dispersed some. And so we will find them.' George W. Bush urlLink NBC Interview April 24, 2003 'There are people who in large measure have information that we need . . . so that we can track down the weapons of mass destruction in that country.' Donald Rumsfeld Press Briefing April 25, 2003 'We'll find them. It'll be a matter of time to do so.' George W. Bush Remarks to Reporters May 3, 2003 'I'm absolutely sure that there are weapons of mass destruction there and the evidence will be forthcoming. We're just getting it just now. ' Colin Powell urlLink Remarks to Reporters May 4, 2003 'We never believed that we'd just tumble over weapons of mass destruction in that country.' Donald Rumsfeld urlLink Fox News Interview May 4, 2003 'I'm not surprised if we begin to uncover the weapons program of Saddam Hussein -- because he had a weapons program. ' George W. Bush Remarks to Reporters May 6, 2003 'U.S. officials never expected that 'we were going to open garages and find' weapons of mass destruction.' Condoleeza Rice Reuters Interview May 12, 2003 'I just don't know whether it was all destroyed years ago -- I mean, there's no question that there were chemical weapons years ago -- whether they were destroyed right before the war, (or) whether they're still hidden.' Maj. Gen. David Petraeus, Commander 101st Airborne Press Briefing May 13, 2003 'Before the war, there's no doubt in my mind that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, biological and chemical. I expected them to be found. I still expect them to be found.' Gen. Michael Hagee, Commandant of the Marine Corps Interview with Reporters May 21, 2003 'Given time, given the number of prisoners now that we're interrogating, I'm confident that we're going to find weapons of mass destruction.' Gen. Richard Myers, Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff urlLink NBC Today Show interview May 26, 2003 'They may have had time to destroy them, and I don't know the answer.' Donald Rumsfeld Remarks to the Council on Foreign Relations May 27, 2003 'For bureaucratic reasons, we settled on one issue, weapons of mass destruction (as justification for invading Iraq) because it was the one reason everyone could agree on.' Paul Wolfowitz Vanity Fair interview May 28, 2003 'It was a surprise to me then, it remains a surprise to me now, that we have not uncovered weapons, as you say, in some of the forward dispersal sites. Believe me, it's not for lack of trying. We've been to virtually every ammunition supply point between the Kuwaiti border and Baghdad, but they're simply not there. ' Lt. Gen. James Conway, 1st Marine Expeditionary Force Press Interview May 30, 2003 'Do I think we're going to find something? Yeah, I kind of do, because I think there's a lot of information out there.'' Maj. Gen. Keith Dayton, Defense Intelligence Agency Press Conference May 30, 2003 |
1,241,231 | male | 37 | Technology | Aries | 06,June,2003 | Following found at urlLink http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0306/S00033.htm BANALITY, BOMBAST, AND BLOOD John Chuckman June 3, 2003 The saga of America's Private Lynch, no matter what the details of her movie-set escape prove to be, adds only banality to needless bloodshed in Iraq. Another young American woman, Marla Ruzicka, went largely ignored. Ms. Ruzicka runs a non-profit organization that works to make accurate counts of a war's civilian dead. It is small wonder Ms. Ruzicka is not given the same coverage as Private Lynch, since, based upon detailed field work in Iraq, she says that between five and ten thousand civilians were killed. Generally in wars, total casualties, which include wounded, crippled, and lost, are many times the number killed, often as high as ten times. I do not know what the appropriate ratio is for Iraq, but it's not hard to see that the United States killed and hurt a great many innocent people in a few weeks of 'precision' war. Of military losses, poor boys drafted to defend their homes, we as yet have no good estimate. In the first Gulf War, between sixty and one hundred thousand Iraqi soldiers were slaughtered. With Iraq's population being less than ten percent that of the United States, such losses must be multiplied by ten to get some feel for their impact on the society. So while Americans, thirty years later, still weep at the Vietnam Memorial in Washington - a monument representing about sixty thousand deaths over ten years of war - they have inflicted on Iraq, in just three weeks, that same proportionate loss - all of them civilians. The one-sided slaughter of soldiers in the first Gulf War represented the equivalent of the U.S. having sustained between half a million and a million deaths just over a decade ago. No society recovers easily from such losses of its youth. In a real war, a war in which most people agree there is some powerful motivating cause, the fate of an individual soldier like Private Lynch becomes almost unimportant. Soldiers in real wars are reduced to just about the status of soldier-ants in a war between two ant-nests. But the public can be mercurial when it comes to invasions with flimsy excuses and gas-bag ideology. Public support can shift quickly or melt away entirely, so a little juicing-up may be prescribed. Besides, when there is almost no real news being reported, as was true in America for Iraq, you need a little something to satisfy the chips-and-television crowd anxious to be informed from their couches. Since America's modern warriors are limited to follow-up after missiles and bombs have reduced everything to a vision of hell, much of the touching stuff that once inspired the home front is missing. There are no more pitiful and tragic images of young Americans falling in what seems a worthy cause. So the Pentagon's prisoner-liberation simulation, like its staged statue-toppling in Baghdad, so suggestive of news photos at end of World War Two, served several purposes. Is this how a great power behaves in the early part of the 21st century? Especially a power that enjoys reminding us at every opportunity - I suppose because it is so easy for the rest of the world, just watching its actions, to forget - that America stands for human rights and democratic principles? Yes, unfortunately, that is exactly how it behaves. Only, the complete picture is bleaker still. Mr. Bush at the G-8 summit in Evian, France - a summit he considered not even attending and at which, in any event, he cut short his stay - made an effort at grand-poohbah statesman with, 'We can have disagreements, but that doesn't mean we have to be disagreeable,' a lifelessly trite line, but one certainly ranking at the peak of this President's eloquence. Just a few days before (May 30), Bush abandoned the session with reporters that customarily precedes a G-8 summit, perhaps reflecting advisors' concerns that he would blow it with his anger when questioned about recent events. He left the session for his tactful National Security Advisor, Condoleezza Rice, to blow. On the subject of Canada, Ms. Rice gave us, 'I think there was disappointment in the United States that a friend like Canada was unable to support the United States in what we considered to be an extremely important issue for our security [Emphasis is mine].' Does Ms. Rice read the newspaper? Her words about security come within days of reports of an interview with the Pentagon's Paul Wolfowitz in which he admits the business about weapons was an excuse for invading Iraq. His admission only punctuated weeks of reports about American forces not finding anything remotely suspicious and America's hack chorus of national columnists swelling their breasts to a theme about weapons not being important after all. Canada has never stinted in helping Americans. Canada is the kind of neighbor any sensible people would want. But helping a scheme for 'regime change' in someone else's country, unsupported by international law, is not quite the same thing as helping Americans. Canada was never called a poor friend for not helping in the many shadowy 'regime changes' the United States has conducted across the Caribbean and Latin America. Canada's values and interests do not lie that way. Why was the situation suddenly so different for an unthreatening small country on the other side of the planet? The tough answer is that the United States government felt alone and naked in what it was doing over Iraq. It desperately sought international approval, which it did not get, leaving the harsh ideologues in the White House both embarrassed and angry at being embarrassed. Ms. Rice went on to say differences with Canada had put bilateral relations through 'some difficult times,' and 'that disappointment will, of course, not go [away] easily. It will take some time, because when friends are in a position where we say our security's at stake, we would have thought, as we got from many of our friends, that the answer would have been, 'Well, how can we help?' ' Does any honest person reading her words find them in keeping with Bush's G-8 stuff about 'not being disagreeable'? They are clearly disagreeable, provocative, and even petty. But Ms. Rice went even further concerning Germany, 'I can't answer the question of whether personal relations between the President and the Chancellor will ever be the same. We will have to see.' As for France, 'there were times when it appeared that American power was seen to be more dangerous than perhaps Saddam Hussein,' Ms. Rice said. 'I'll just put it very bluntly, we simply didn't understand it.' Well, to put it also very bluntly, American power, when it is used to bully others, in fact is more dangerous, far more dangerous, than Saddam Hussein ever was. 'We have been allies in great struggles in world wars,' Ms. Rice said of the French. 'The United States gave its blood to liberate France.' The United States gave its blood to defeat rivals Germany and Japan. Liberating countries like France was incidental, although the French have always scrupulously, respectfully maintained America's battlefield cemeteries and commemorated America's efforts as few others do. The historical fact is President Roosevelt considered governing postwar France in a very high-handed manner. He pretty much detested De Gaulle, and France's empire was something the Roosevelt people never stopped sneering at and preaching about while merrily working to build one of their own. The situation was far murkier and less heroic than Ms. Rice would have you understand, but her purpose was to put another country on the defensive, not to teach history. Are the world's statesmen so dense they do not understand true danger when they see it? Do they deliberately embrace evil? Of course not. Then, why Ms. Rice's language if the need for invading Iraq was clear? Precisely because the need was not clear, and it has only become even less clear now. Manipulative language here is a substitute for thought - we are given a form of aggressive marketing rather than an honest product - a practice to which this administration is addicted. Just a week before the G-8 summit, another Bush-administration bully, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, gave us his version of 'not being disagreeable.' Rumsfeld informed the French air force that it would not be welcome at two upcoming international exercises. Rumsfeld's version of 'not being disagreeable' included declaring that the United States would heavily cut its involvement with the Paris Air Show, traditionally the world's most important show for aviation technology. As a Pentagon official so agreeably put it, 'With troops eating military rations in the dust in Iraq, it's not appropriate for officers to be wined and dined in Paris.' Doesn't that sound reasonable? So, do you think they've stopped wining and dining in expensive Georgetown restaurants over all the fat new Pentagon contracts being handed out these days? Or do they just quietly put aside that disagreeable stuff about dust and rations on such happy occasions? Do you think they served military freeze-dried rations at the President's recent $18-million dollar fundraiser? America's top diplomat, that disappointing baritone of dissimulation, Colin Powell, has gone around for weeks uttering threats and slights towards France. A couple of weeks ago, he said the United States would reconsider its links with France following disagreement over Iraq. Does that sound anything like being 'not disagreeable'? On CBC Radio some weeks ago, there was a fascinating little story. There is a manufacturer in Quebec who actually makes some of the fancy cowboy boots beloved in Texas. During the height of American irritation over Iraq, this boot-maker was asked by his Texas customer to supply a written statement that he did not personally support Canada's policy towards war in Iraq. Can you imagine an American's furious response at being asked such an inappropriate, private, personal matter in a business transaction? In effect, he was asked to supply a kind of pledge of allegiance to someone else's foreign policy. Something corrupt, dirty, and destructive is taking hold of America, choking even ordinary business with the sewerage of ideology. How does one talk of neighborliness, love of freedom, or democratic-mindedness while behaving like a blackmailer? |
1,241,231 | male | 37 | Technology | Aries | 31,July,2003 | America Is a Religion There is no more dangerous notion than that of America the Divine By George Monbiot. Published in the Guardian 29th July 2003 'The death of Uday and Qusay,' the commander of the ground forces in Iraq told reporters on Wednesday, 'is definitely going to be a turning point for the resistance.'1 Well, it was a turning point, but unfortunately not of the kind he envisaged. On the day he made his announcement, Iraqi insurgents killed one US soldier and wounded six others. On the following day, they killed another three; over the weekend they assassinated five and injured seven. Yesterday they slaughtered one more and wounded three. This has been the worst week for US soldiers in Iraq since George Bush declared that the war there was over. Few people believe that the resistance in that country is being coordinated by Saddam Hussein and his noxious family, or that it will come to an end when those people are killed. But the few appear to include the military and civilian command of the United States armed forces. For the hundredth time since the US invaded Iraq, the predictions made by those with access to intelligence have proved less reliable than the predictions made by those without. And, for the hundredth time, the inaccuracy of the official forecasts has been blamed on 'intelligence failures'. The explanation is wearing a little thin. Are we really expected to believe that the members of the US security services are the only people who cannot see that many Iraqis wish to rid themselves of the US army as fervently as they wished to rid themselves of Saddam Hussein? What is lacking in the Pentagon and the White House is not intelligence (or not, at any rate, of the kind we are considering here), but receptivity. Theirs is not a failure of information, but a failure of ideology. To understand why this failure persists, we must first grasp a reality which has seldom been discussed in print. The United States is no longer just a nation. It is now a religion. Its soldiers have entered Iraq to liberate its people not only from their dictator, their oil and their sovereignty, but also from their darkness. As George Bush told his troops on the day he announced victory, 'wherever you go, you carry a message of hope - a message that is ancient and ever new. In the words of the prophet Isaiah, 'To the captives, 'come out,' and to those in darkness, 'be free.''2 So American soldiers are no longer merely terrestrial combatants; they have become missionaries. They are no longer simply killing enemies; they are casting out demons. The people who reconstructed the faces of Uday and Qusay Hussein carelessly forgot to restore the pair of little horns on each brow, but the understanding that these were opponents from a different realm was transmitted nonetheless. Like all those who send missionaries abroad, the high priests of America cannot conceive that the infidels might resist through their own free will; if they refuse to convert, it is the work of the devil, in his current guise as the former dictator of Iraq. As Clifford Longley shows in his fascinating book Chosen People, published last year, the founding fathers of the USA, though they sometimes professed otherwise, sensed that they were guided by a divine purpose.3 Thomas Jefferson argued that the Great Seal of the United States should depict the Israelites, 'led by a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night'.4 George Washington claimed, in his inaugural address, that every step towards independence was 'distinguished by some token of providential agency'.5 Longley argues that the formation of the American identity was part of a process of 'supersession'. The Catholic Church claimed that it had supplanted the Jews as the elect, as the Jews had been repudiated by God. The English Protestants accused the Catholics of breaking faith, and claimed that THEY had become the beloved of God. The American revolutionaries believed that the English, in turn, had broken their covenant: the Americans had now become the chosen people, with a divine duty to deliver the world to God's dominion. Six weeks ago, as if to show that this belief persists, George Bush recalled a remark of Woodrow Wilson's. 'America,' he quoted, 'has a spiritual energy in her which no other nation can contribute to the liberation of mankind.'6 Gradually this notion of election has been conflated with another, still more dangerous idea. It is not just that the Americans are God's chosen people; America itself is now perceived as a divine project. In his farewell presidential address, Ronald Reagan spoke of his country as a 'shining city on a hill', a reference to the Sermon on the Mount.7 But what Jesus was describing was not a temporal Jerusalem, but the kingdom of heaven. Not only, in Reagan's account, was God's kingdom to be found in the United States of America, but the kingdom of hell could also now be located on earth: the 'evil empire' of the Soviet Union, against which His holy warriors were pitched. Since the attacks on New York, this notion of America the divine has been extended and refined. In December 2001, Rudy Giuliani, the mayor of that city, delivered his last mayoral speech in St Paul's Chapel, close to the site of the shattered twin towers. 'All that matters,' he claimed, 'is that you embrace America and understand its ideals and what it's all about. Abraham Lincoln used to say that the test of your Americanism was ... how much you believed in America. Because we're like a religion really. A secular religion.'8 The chapel in which he spoke had been consecrated not just by God, but by the fact that George Washington had once prayed there. It was, he said, now 'sacred ground to people who feel what America is all about'.9 The United States of America no longer needs to call upon God; it is God, and those who go abroad to spread the light do so in the name of a celestial domain. The flag has become as sacred as the Bible; the name of the nation as holy as the name of God. The presidency is turning into a priesthood. So those who question George Bush's foreign policy are no longer merely critics; they are blasphemers, or 'anti-Americans'. Those foreign states which seek to change this policy are wasting their time: you can negotiate with politicians; you cannot negotiate with priests. The US has a divine mission, as Bush suggested in January, 'to defend ... the hopes of all mankind',10 and woe betide those who hope for something other than the American way of life. The dangers of national divinity scarcely require explanation. Japan went to war in the 1930s convinced, like George Bush, that it possessed a heaven-sent mission to 'liberate' Asia and extend the realm of its divine imperium. It would, the fascist theoretician Kita Ikki predicted, 'light the darkness of the entire world'.11 Those who seek to drag heaven down to earth are destined only to engineer a hell. George Monbiot's books Poisoned Arrows and No Man's Land are republished this week by Green Books. www.monbiot.com References: 1. Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, Commander, Coalition Ground Forces, 23rd July 2003. Briefing on the Confirmation of the Deaths of Uday and Qusay Hussein http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Jul2003/g030723-D-6570C.html 2. President George W Bush, 1st May 2003. Address to troops on the USS Abraham Lincoln 3. Clifford Longley, 2002. Chosen People: the big idea that shapes England and America. Hodder and Stoughton, London. 4. Thomas Jefferson, cited in Longley, ibid. 5. George Washington, cited in Longley, ibid. 6. President George W Bush, 21st May 2003. Remarks to the United States Coast Guard Academy, New London, Connecticut. 7. Ronald Reagan, cited in Longley, ibid. 8. Rudy Giuliani, cited in Longley, ibid. 9. ibid 10. President George W. Bush, 28th January 2003. State of the Union Address. The US Capitol. 11. Kita Ikki, cited in Piers Brendon, 2000. The Dark Valley: a panorama of the 1930s. Pimlico, London. urlLink http://www.monbiot.com/dsp_article.cfm?article_id=595 |
1,241,231 | male | 37 | Technology | Aries | 27,August,2003 | Read of the day: urlLink http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,5673,1029259,00.html Beware the bluewash The UN must not let itself be used as a dustbin for failed American adventures George Monbiot Tuesday August 26, 2003 urlLink The Guardian The US government's problem is that it has built its foreign policy on two great myths. The first is that it is irresistible; the second is that as time advances, life improves. In Iraq it is trapped between the two. To believe that it can be thwarted, and that its occupation will become harder rather than easier to sustain as time goes by, requires that it disbelieves all that it holds to be most true. But those who oppose its foreign policy appear to have responded with a myth of equal standing: that what unilateralism cannot solve, multilateralism can. The United Nations, almost all good liberals now argue, is a more legitimate force than the US and therefore more likely to succeed in overseeing Iraq's reconstruction and transition. If the US surrendered to the UN, this would, moreover, represent the dawning of a fairer, kinder world. These propositions are scarcely more credible than those coming out of the Pentagon. The immediate and evident danger of a transition from US occupation to UN occupation is that the UN becomes the dustbin into which the US dumps its failed adventures. The American and British troops in Iraq do not deserve to die any more than the Indian or Turkish soldiers with whom they might be replaced. But the governments that sent them, rather than those that opposed the invasion, should be the ones that have to answer to their people for the consequences. The vicious bombing of the UN headquarters in Baghdad last week suggests that the jihadis who now seem to be entering Iraq from every corner of the Muslim world will make little distinction between khaki helmets and blue ones. Troops sent by India, the great liberal hope, are unlikely to be received with any greater kindness than western forces. The Indian government is reviled for its refusal to punish the Hindus who massacred Muslims in Gujurat. The UN will swiftly discover that occupation-lite is no more viable than occupation-heavy. Moreover, by replacing its troops, the despised UN could, in one of the supreme ironies of our time, provide the US government with the escape route it may require if George Bush is to win the next election. We can expect him, as soon as the soldiers have come home, to wash his hands not only of moral responsibility for the mess he has created, but also of the duty to help pay for the country's reconstruction. Most importantly, if the UN shows that it is prepared to mop up after him, it will enhance his incentive to take his perpetual war to other nations. It should also be pretty obvious that, tough as it is for both the American troops and the Iraqis, pinned down in Iraq may be the safest place for the US army to be. The Pentagon remains reluctant to fight more than one war at a time. One of the reasons that it has tackled Iran and North Korea with diplomacy rather than missiles is that it has neither the soldiers nor the resources to launch an attack until it can disentangle itself from Iraq. It is clear, too, that the UN, honest and brave as many of its staff are, possesses scarcely more legitimacy as an occupying force than the US. The US is now the only nation on the security council whose opinion really counts: its government can ignore other governments' vetoes; the other governments cannot ignore a veto by the US. In other words, a handover to the UN cannot take place unless George Bush says so, and Bush will not say so until it is in his interests to do so. The UN, already tainted in Iraq by its administration of sanctions and the fact that its first weapons inspection mission (Unscom) was infiltrated by the CIA, is then reduced to little more than an instrument of US foreign policy. Until the UN, controlled by the five permanent members of the security council, has itself been democratised, it is hard to see how it can claim the moral authority to oversee a transition to democracy anywhere else. This problem is compounded by the fact that Britain, which is hardly likely to be perceived as an honest broker, is about to assume the council's presidency. A UN mandate may be regarded by Iraqis as bluewash, an attempt to grant retrospective legitimacy to an illegal occupation. None of this, of course, is yet on offer anyway. The US government has made it perfectly clear that the UN may operate in Iraq only as a subcontractor. Foreign troops will take their orders from Washington, rather than New York. America's occupation of Iraq affords it regional domination, control of the second biggest oilfields on earth and, as deputy defence secretary Paul Wolfowitz has hinted, the opportunity to withdraw its troops from Saudi Arabia and install them in its new dependency instead. Republican funders have begun feasting on the lucrative reconstruction contracts, and the Russians and the French, shut out of the banquet, are being punished for their impudence. Now that the US controls the shipping lanes of the Middle East and the oilfields of central Asia and West Africa, it is in a position, if it so chooses, to turn off the taps to China, its great economic rival, which is entirely dependent on external sources of oil. The US appears to be seeking to ensure that when the Iraqis are eventually permitted to vote, they will be allowed to choose any party they like, as long as it is pro-American. It will give up its new prize only when forced to do so by its own voters. So, given that nothing we say will make any difference to Bush and his people, we may as well call for a just settlement, rather than the diluted form of injustice represented by a UN occupation. This means the swiftest possible transition to real democracy. Troy Davis of the World Citizen Foundation has suggested a programme for handing power to the Iraqis which could begin immediately, with the establishment of a constitutional convention. This would permit the people both to start deciding what form their own government should take, and to engage in the national negotiation and reconciliation without which democracy there will be impossible. From the beginning of the process, in other words, the Iraqi people, not the Americans, would oversee the transition to democracy. This is the logical and just path for the US government to take. As a result, it is unlikely to be taken. So, one day, when the costs of occupation become unsustainable, it will be forced to retreat in a manner and at a time not of its choosing. Iraq may swallow George Bush and his imperial project, just as the Afghan morass digested the Soviet empire. It is time his opponents stopped seeking to rescue him from his self-destruction. George Monbiot's book The Age of Consent: A Manifesto for a New World Order is published by Flamingo. urlLink www.monbiot.com Guardian Unlimited Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003 |
1,241,231 | male | 37 | Technology | Aries | 26,August,2003 | Read urlLink this in the Australian today. Unusually good article for a Murdoch paper! Poison of the 'I don't want to know' syndrome 26aug03 WE all know it's happening. A slow-motion catastrophe is afflicting Western democracy. A growing indifference to politics deriving from feelings of futility and cynicism. For example. People are inured to scandal. They expect duplicity from the political class on all sides of politics. And they don't seem to care. In fact, they're beyond caring. They've learned to live with the duplicitous and dishonourable. Scepticism may be healthy but cynicism like this is carcinogenic. It kills the body politic. There's a feedback loop that has politicians and their spin doctors driving the opinion polls while the opinion polls drive the politics. Consequently, faith in the polity, the media, the system, in democracy itself, is rapidly eroding. In the US, symptoms include fewer and fewer citizens feeling compelled to vote. In a nation where it's non-compulsory, even presidents are elected by a depressingly small percentage of the electorate. It's approaching the point where only the white middle class bothers to pull the levers in those voting machines. And you see it or rather you don't see it in Australia. In a phenomenon rarely discussed. Here we're driven to the ballot box by the threat of a fine. But although compulsory voting ensures a high turnout, it's low energy. People vote with indifference rather than enthusiasm. The fact that a prime minister might have a 55 or 65 per cent approval rating doesn't prove that that approval is particularly approving. It simply demonstrates that, when forced to make a choice, voters go for what they perceive as the lesser of evils. John Howard's ratings don't prove that Australia likes him very much or holds him in high regard. The figures simply mean the voters cop him. Had approval ratings been available in the era of a Chifley or a Curtin they'd have measured something different than the approval rating for a Keating or a Howard. The figures might look similar or identical, but they don't indicate the same depth of feeling. It's like the devaluation of the dollar. A dollar still looks like a dollar, is still symbolised by the '$'. But a dollar isn't what it used to be. And nor, necessarily, is the '%'. We live in a devalued democracy where, increasingly, people are disengaged. Disengagement. A term that social researcher Hugh Mackay detects again and again in his political seismology. Compounding this detachment is the paradox of living in a society that boasts the quality of its communications, either remaining or becoming ignorant on almost every issue. Thus recent polls show that legions of Americans still believe that Saddam Hussein and his secular Baath Party were in bed with al-Qa'ida, that Hussein was one of the architects of the September 11 attacks. Millions are convinced that those WMD were used against US troops as they moved towards Baghdad. And, moreover, that the weapons have been found. All evidence and information to the contrary is filtered out and the finest filter of all is, yes, disengagement. Those Ridley Scott images of brave lads in great lumbering uniforms and great lumbering tanks are all you need to know. Of course, the modern state has weapons of mass distraction at its disposal knowing that the attention span of the media, even the quality media, is about a fortnight while that of the public seems to be shrinking to nanoseconds. The state knows that the media bombardment means we rapidly forget; that today's great dollops of news bury yesterday's news, let alone the news of the month before. People live in a constant state of now, with decreasing historical understanding or context. Best of all, governments know that, by and large, people don't want to know. Australians didn't want to 'know' the truth of the boatpeople. They wanted to 'know' that they were queue-jumpers, illegals or even terrorists. They wanted to know that the dangers posed by Hussein's WMD were sufficient reason for going to war and even if they now know they were conned, they don't want to know. They're more interested in what goes on in The Block, Big Brother and the shopping mall than what's happening in the hallowed halls of government. And because voters seem increasingly indifferent to the moral and ethical issues that not so long ago galvanised public opinion, politicians believe they can get away with more. With murder. What does it matter if you're caught over 'kids overboard' or WMD or back-room deals on ethanol? No worries, no trubs. You'll get away with it. Thus our leaders are leading us and we are leading our leaders further and further down that road of disengagement. And political leadership becomes followship as, like ducks in a row, governments acquiesce to the US. The best that can be said about Australia is that it takes a leading role in following. |
1,241,231 | male | 37 | Technology | Aries | 22,August,2003 | Found this interesting article at the Guardian: urlLink http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/story/0,3605,1022663,00.html Brutal reality hits home Since Vietnam, the public has only seen a sanitised version of war. But the internet, with its unfettered access, has changed all that. Sean Dodson reports Sean Dodson Thursday August 21, 2003 The Guardian The warning comes before the image. A two-paragraph disclaimer justifying some of the most gruesome images of war you are likely to see. The first image is of a boy with his legs blown off. Then there is another child - face in close-up - with streams of blood pouring down his young face. The next is the head of a horribly burned man swathed in white bandages. It is followed by the swollen neck of a peace protester, the victim of wood pellets fired from a gun in Oakland. The website adds that the suspects are policemen. These images - and some far, far worse - come courtesy of a New Zealand website that describes itself as a 'fiercely independent internet news agency'. For several months, Scoop Media has been publishing the kind of graphic images you rarely see in mass circulation newspapers or on western television. And, until now, rarely on the internet. Ever since Roger Fenton, a founder of the Royal Photographic Society, covered the Crimean war armed with a box camera and a letter of introduction from Prince Albert, photojournalism has been an essential part of war reporting. Fenton's aim, and that of Prince Albert, was to provide a set of images that would restore public confidence in an unpopular war. The role of the war photographer was set. But by the time of the Vietnam war, photography as a propaganda tool had backfired. Horrific images of the conflict turned the US public against the war. Since then, in each subsequent war, the public has been presented with images far less graphic. The recent war in Iraq was no different, with a straw poll by MediaGuardian.co.uk at the war's height indicating that few UK picture editors were willing to risk upsetting readers with pictures of fatalities, even if they were in the background. As Phillip Knightley wrote in the First Casualty: The War Correspondent as Hero and Myth-Maker from the Crimea to Kosovo: 'Although in most cases the camera does not lie directly, it can lie brilliantly by omission.' 'To sanitise the reality of warfare is abhorrent,' explains Scoop's editor, Alastair Thompson. 'To censor images of capture, of death, as a consequence of war, is wrong. If Scoop were to do so, it would be subscribing to the glitzy rah rah Hollywood-facade-style of reportage that the mainstream United States-based media has become obsessed with.' The Qatari news network, al-Jazeera, painted no such picture during the war. And it could have provided a counterbalance for western audiences. But its English language website was inaccessible during much of the conflict. A denial of service attack on the site, allegedly the target of belligerent hackers, shut it down, preventing a western audience from seeing a far more bloody portrait of Iraq. That website is now under wraps, preparing itself for a relaunch later this year. Even if you can't speak a word of Arabic, the internet allows you less fettered access to the realities of war. You don't even have to look hard. Simply type 'war graphic image iraq' into Google and you can see some of the most terrible images imaginable. Many are from IndyMedia sites, alternative news networks and Arab stations, but there are stranger bedfellows, too. Among Google's returns will be a site called Babykiller.com, built by US anti-abortionists who rage against the war by cataloguing pictures of child atrocities. The left-wing Scoop Media has some surprising company. Viewing these sites throws up a number of moral dilemmas. Are you being voyeuristic? Are the websites perversely triumphal? Are they simply preaching to the converted, providing nothing but war pornography? What about notions of taste and decency? 'Are taste and decency relevant standards when considering war?' asks Thompson. 'War is horrible, it is grotesque, revolting and deeply disturbing. Why should it be any different for the public, in whose name the mayhem is being waged? This is not to say we did not have misgivings about publishing some images, we did.' Each news organisation, be it a website, a newspaper or a television station, has debates about what images to show. The images of the bloated heads of the dead Uday and Qusay Hussein were only published in the Guardian and on its website, Guardian Unlimited, after much heated debate. But even when television does portray war in all its graphic and uncensored detail, it holds it at arms' length. Channel 4's excellent The True Face of War was screened at 11.20pm. As one viewer wrote on the Channel 4 website: 'However distressing - and I can hardly write this through my tears - this programme should be shown at PRIME time.' It is worth remembering, there is no prime time on the internet. There is only choice. Although military censorship and hacker attacks can disrupt it, a more graphic face of war is bleeding on to the internet and coverage of war may be never the same. Relevant links http://scoop.co.nz/mason/features/?s=warimages www.babykiller.com www.robert-fisk.com/iraqwarvictims_mar2003.htm www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=31709 Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003 |
1,241,231 | male | 37 | Technology | Aries | 10,August,2003 | This is a bit of a laugh: In a spoof titled 'The Case for Regime Change,' the editorial cartoonist and columnist Ted Rall describes the case for military intervention to change the regime in Washington. The Case for Regime Change NEW YORK--Making the case for United Nations intervention against the United States, Iranian President Mohammad Khatami told the organization yesterday that military action will be 'unavoidable' unless the U.S. agrees to destroy its weapons of mass destruction. In a much-anticipated speech to a special session of the U.N. General Assembly held in Brussels, Khatami launched a blistering attack against American leader George W. Bush, accusing him of defying U.N. resolutions and using his country's wealth to line the pockets of wealthy cronies at a time when the people of his country make do without such basic social programs as national health insurance. 'Nearly two years ago, the civilized world watched as this evil and corrupt dictator subverted the world's oldest representative democracy in an illegal coup d'tat,' said Khatami. 'Since then the Bush regime has continued America's systematic repression of ethnic and religious minorities and threatened international peace and security throughout the world. Thousands of political opponents and ordinary citizens have been subjected to arbitrary arrest and imprisonment. Basic civil rights have been violated. This rogue state has flouted the international community on legal, economic and environmental issues. It has even ignored the Geneva Conventions on the treatment of prisoners of war by denying that its illegal invasion of Afghanistan--which has had a destabilizing influence throughout Central Asia--was a war at all.' Khatami said the U.S. possesses the world's largest arsenal of nuclear weapons, weapons 'that, when first developed, were used immediately to kill half a million innocent civilians just months after acquiring them. No nation that has committed nuclear genocide can be entrusted with weapons of mass destruction.' 'Bush has invaded Afghanistan and is now threatening Iraq. We cannot stand by and do nothing while danger gathers. We can't for this tyrant to strike first. We have an obligation to act pre-emptively to protect the world from this evildoer,' Khatami said. As delegates punctuated his words with bursts of applause, Khatami noted that U.S. intelligence agencies had helped establish and fund the world's most virulent terrorist organizations, including Al Qaeda, and the Taliban regime that harbored them. 'The U.S. created the Islamist extremists who attacked its people on September 11, 2001,' he stated, 'and Bush's illegitimate junta cynically exploited those attacks to repress political dissidents, make sweetheart deals with politically-connected corporations and revive 19th century-style colonial imperialism.' Khatami asked the U.N. to set a deadline for Bush to step down in favor of president-in-exile Al Gore, the legitimate winner of the 2000 election, the results of which were subverted through widespread voting irregularities and intimidation. 'We favor not regime change, but rather restoration and liberation,' he said. In addition, Khatami said, the U.S. must dismantle its weapons of mass destruction, guarantee basic human rights to all citizens and agree to abide by international law or 'face the consequences.' Most observers agree that those 'consequences' would likely include a prolonged bombing campaign targeting major U.S. cities and military installations, followed by a ground invasion led by European forces. 'Civilian casualties would likely be substantial,' said a French military analyst. 'But the American people must be liberated from tyranny.' Khatami's charges, which were detailed in a dossier prepared by French President Jacques Chirac, were dismissed by a representative of the American strongman as 'lies, half-truths and misguided beliefs, motivated by the desire to control a country with oil, natural gas and other natural resources.' National Security Minister Condoleezza Rice denied that the U.S. maintains weapons of mass destruction and invited U.N. inspectors to visit Washington to 'see for themselves that our weapons are designed only to keep the peace, subject of course to full respect for American sovereignty.' The U.N. is expected to reject any conditions for or restrictions on arms inspections. Experts believe that the liberation of the United States will require a large ground force of European and other international troops, followed by a massive rebuilding program costing billions of euros. 'Even before Bush, the American political system was a shambles,' said Prof. Salvatore Deluna of the University of Madrid. 'Their single-party plutocracy will have to be reshaped into true parliamentary-style democracy. Moreover, the economy will have to be retooled from its current military dictatorship model--in which a third of the federal budget goes to arms, and taxes are paid almost exclusively by the working class--to one in which basic human needs such as education and poverty are addressed. Their infrastructure is a mess; they don't even have a national passenger train system. Fixing a failed state of this size will require many years.' ------- (Ted Rall's latest book, a graphic travelogue about his recent coverage of the Afghan war titled 'To Afghanistan and Back,' is now in its second edition. Ordering and review-copy information are available at nbmpub.com.) ------- urlLink http://www.zeal.com/exit.jhtml?cid=10159836&wid=101891320&so=&xr=/website/profile.jhtml%3Fcid%3D10159836%26wid%3D101891320 |
1,241,231 | male | 37 | Technology | Aries | 05,August,2003 | I think its time to have a bit of a bash on SUVs. I was driving home from Phillip Island on Saturday and some tosser with his family in a Nissan Patrol with massive bull bars decided to sit on my bumper, as I was only going the speed limit. When he passed he did the same to the next car in front, a small hatch back. It was so obvious that he was out to intimidate passenger cars with his bull-barred monster. Clearly he has a small penis. Following is a great article I came across this evening: Big Babies SUV Killers Beg for Mercy By: Ted Rall For more than a decade, citizens who drive normal-size cars have been bullied, poisoned, and murdered by drivers of sport utility vehicles. Now they're being asked to like it. 'Did My Car Join Al Qaeda?' asks Woody Hochswender in the New York Times. 'Where I live, about 100 miles north of New York City, at least half of all the vehicles you see on the road are SUV's or other light trucks. They make a great deal of sense. This is not just because we have plenty of long, steep driveways and miles and miles of dirt roads.' 'According to their enemies, SUV drivers aren't just road hogs; they're also sociopaths who are overcompensating for deep-seated feelings of inferiority. I resent being psychoanalyzed this way. I'm after traction, not dominance, OK?',' writes Walter Kirn in Time magazine. The road hog set is up in arms over TV ads that call their souped-up steroidwagons anti-Christian, anti-American, and pro-terrorist. SUV's have had their windows smashed in Washington, been spray-painted with anti-war slogans in Massachusetts and set ablaze by the lot full in Pennsylvania. Environmental groups sell SUV 'tickets', and bumper stickers that read 'As a matter of fact, I do own the road,' encouraging activists to stick them on the gas hogs. Opponents call SUV's wasteful, polluting, and dangerous to other drivers. Because these fuel-inefficient leviathans now comprise a quarter of new car sales, and big models like the GMC Yukon and Chevrolet Suburban only get 12 miles per gallon, all of the air-quality improvements made during the 70's and 80's have been erased. 'But a car's miles-per-gallon rating is only one measure of fuel efficiency', argues Hochswender. 'Miles driven is another. People who drive light trucks quickly learn not to drive around aimlessly.' He's wrong. There's zero evidence that SUV drivers drive fewer miles than other motorists. And even if some have trained themselves to eliminate frivolous miles, then driving a more efficient vehicle those lesser lengths is an opportunity for further improvement. Consider this startling fact: the SUV is the only reason the United States has been unable to comply with the Kyoto Accord on air pollution. Even more irritating to non-SUV drivers is the sense of being pushed around - and off - the roads by 9,000-pound gorillas. No one needs the results of a formal 'crash compatibility' test to tell them that their Toyota Corolla will fair poorly in a close encounter with a Ford Expedition. The fact is you're more than twice as likely to die in a crash with an SUV than with another sedan. 'Four-wheel-drive vehicles allow workers to get to and from their jobs, and parents to transport their children safely to school, sporting events, ballet classes, and the rest', defends Hochswender. But every SUV added to the traffic on the road decreases the likelihood of someone else's kids arriving alive at school or ballet class. It's basic physics, the law of conservation of momentum to be exact. SUV drivers increase their own security at the expense of other drivers. Ironically, it's even worse than that. SUV's not only endanger the occupants of smaller cars - they kill their own drivers in roll-overs at triple the rate of other vehicles, according to Jeffrey Runge, head of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. It's unfortunate if an SUV driver kills himself, but the real issue is what he does to others. Granted, no consumer is innocent. The Gap T-shirt you buy at the mall is produced by children toiling under exploitative conditions overseas. Microsoft software is packaged by prisoner slave labor. Of course, if you were truly virtuous you'd skip even that sexy hybrid Prius and its holier-than-thou 50 mpg rating and just bike to work. But it's hard to argue with Union of Concerned Scientists director Jason Mark's conclusion that, as socially-responsible purchasing decisions go, SUV's 'represent the worst'. Short of opening a shooting range next door to a daycare center, buying an SUV is perhaps the single most antisocial act an ordinary American can commit. And as resentment against this egocentrism coalesces into anger, SUV owners are becoming defensive. Kirn again: 'Nothing takes the pleasure out of driving like the suspicion that at every four-way stop, someone in a fuel-efficient compact is sneering at my moral deficiencies. I want to scream: 'But I live on a dirt road! I have a farm! See all the mud on my fenders! I need this rig!'' What I would scream back, if I met Kirn, would be this: 'What did you people do 20 years ago?' Back in the days before SUV's, farmers drove pick-ups and the rest of us drove cars. The soccer mom with a gaggle of kids drove a low stationwagon or slow minivan. Nowadays, the overwhelming majority of SUV's are plying our highways and suburban streets. Fewer than 1% will ever be driven off-road. Why are SUV owners surprised that nobody likes them? Americans have long defined themselves by the cars they drive; is it unreasonable to assume that someone who drives an oversized gas guzzler is a selfish, aggressive lout? People buy SUV's because they're imposing, so they can see over smaller cars. Is it shocking that drivers whose sight lines are blocked by these hulking machines, and who are blinded at night by the headlights of great overbearing tailgaters, are resentful? More and more SUV drivers are coming out of stores to find their vehicles 'keyed', stickered, or worse, and SUV's are replacing fur coats as the spray paint target of choice. Sure it sucks, but can SUV owners complain? Vandalizing property is a mere misdemeanor next to willfully endangering other people's lives and hastening the demise of the planet. 'What are we supposed to do now, turn our SUV's in?' asks Hochswender. Well, yeah. And quit whining because everybody hates you. ------- Ted Rall is the author of Gas War: The Truth Behind the American Occupation of Afghanistan, an analysis of the Trans-Afghanistan Pipeline and the motivations behind the war on terrorism. Ordering information is available at amazon.com and barnesandnoble.com. urlLink Ted Rall: Big Babies Also: urlLink http://solai.netfirms.com/forum/articles/trall-7.html |
1,241,231 | male | 37 | Technology | Aries | 05,August,2003 | How many Americans will die for oil? August 4 2003 George Bush has given oil companies carte blanche in Iraq. This will lead to disaster, writes Kenneth Davidson. Is Iraq's oil good enough reason for one or two of America's 148,000 occupying forces to die in Iraq each day over the next four years? The answer is probably no, if the growth of dissident military communities such as the 'Bring Them Home Now!' lobby is any indication. Resentment among the troops, and their families, about their being stuck in Iraq after the war has not been helped by the failure of the Bush Administration to come up with weapons of mass destruction, and President George Bush's response to reports that attacks on occupying troops were increasing ('bring 'em on'). But what would the occupying forces and their families make of Bush's executive order 13303, promulgated without fanfare in May, which gives sweeping powers to US oil companies operating in Iraq while granting immunity to them for the consequences of any of their actions in exploiting the oil. In a report last month for the US Democratic legal think tank Government Accountability Project (GAP), the legal director, Tom Devine, said that in terms of legal liability, 13303 'cancels the concept of corporate accountability and abandons the rule of law . . . (It) is a blank cheque for corporate anarchy. Its sweeping, unqualified language places the industry above domestic and international law for anything related to commerce in Iraqi oil.' The immunity is unconstrained. The opening sentence decrees that 'any judicial process' is 'null and void'. Section 1 (b) shields the value 'of any nature whatsoever' if it is 'related to' the 'sale or marketing of . . . all Iraqi petroleum and petroleum products' or 'interests'. According to Devine: 'That means all corporate activities with roots or any connection to Iraqi oil. It covers everything from extraction through transportation, advertising, manufacture, customer service, corporate records and payment of taxes. It covers compliance with contractual obligations involving Iraq that industry enters into with the US Government in postwar Iraq. The scope can be further expanded to virtually all oil-related commerce, by blending Iraqi oil with domestic supplies for any commercial transaction.' The executive order applies to US 'persons' (including corporations or other organisations) who 'come into possession or control' of anything relevant to Iraqi oil or oil products. Devine comments: 'Translated from the legalese, this is a licence for corporations to loot Iraq and its citizens.' The order is built on UN Security Council resolution 1483, which ended sanctions against Iraq and led to the establishment of the Development Fund for Iraq - into which the $1.7 billion of Iraqi money from the UN Oil-for-Food program and all proceeds from future sales of Iraqi oil and gas will be placed. The development fund is controlled by Paul Bremer, who is in charge of the US occupation of Iraq, and it will be overseen by a board that includes representatives of the UN, the World Bank and the IMF. Critics of the development fund point out that the money from past and future Iraqi oil sales deposited in the fund will be used to leverage US public and private loans to rebuild the Iraqi infrastructure and to develop Iraq's huge oil reserves. According to Devine, executive order 13303 violates UN resolution 1483 rather than implementing it. While the UN resolution granted limited immunity for oil-related reconstruction activities, it made clear these immunities did not extend beyond 'the initial purchaser' for misconduct beyond 'privileges and immunities enjoyed by the United Nations' and for 'any legal proceedings in which recourse to such proceeds or obligations is necessary to satisfy liability for damages assessed in connection with an ecological accident, including an oil spill, that occurs after the date of the is resolution'. The companies, which will be operating on seed capital provided by Iraqi oil and the US taxpayer, will have had cancelled their civil and criminal liability abroad and domestically, as well as their normal liability for spending of US taxpayers' money. According to Devine: 'Under the executive order there is no accountability to the taxpayers for taxpayer-supported spending by . . . firms with US contracts . . . It cancels liability for civil fraud in government contracts under the False Claims Act, the most effective anti-fraud statute. In short, the order is a blank cheque for pork-barrel spending.' It is also a recipe for intensified conflict between the occupiers and the occupied. The question is, for how long will US troops be prepared to risk death for Bush's Texas oil mates? Kenneth Davidson is a staff columnist. Email: [email protected] This story was found at: urlLink http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/08/03/1059849273357.html |
1,241,231 | male | 37 | Technology | Aries | 02,August,2003 | Uday and Qusay are dead. There has been quite abit of comment about this on the web. The arab world has been offended by the dead being paraded on tv by a gloating US administration. Now they want to bring Sadam in alive. Nicholson of 'The Australian' newspaper: urlLink http://www.nicholsoncartoons.com.au/ |
1,241,231 | male | 37 | Technology | Aries | 02,August,2003 | Here's another cool link. More from Michael Moore. This appears to be a blog based around the tone of the film Bowling for Columbine which I saw last night (it is great) urlLink Bowling for Columbine : Get Involved : Operation Oily |
1,241,231 | male | 37 | Technology | Aries | 02,August,2003 | White frights He's a joker not a philosopher, a film-maker not a statesman, but Michael Moore has diagnosed the source of the world's ills. It's Stupid White Men - from the Thief in Chief who stole the presidential election, to the company chairman who pollutes the planet, to the car salesman who sells you the dud car. Here, he sorts out the villains and the fall guys Michael Moore Saturday March 30, 2002 The Guardian I don't know what it is, but every time I see a white guy walking towards me, I tense up. My heart starts racing, and I immediately begin to look for an escape route and a means to defend myself. I kick myself for even being in this part of town after dark. Didn't I notice the suspicious gangs of white people lurking on every street corner, drinking Starbucks and wearing their gang colours of Gap turquoise or J Crew mauve? What an idiot! Now the white person is coming closer, closer - and then - whew! He walks by without harming me, and I breathe a sigh of relief. White people scare the crap out of me. This may be hard for you to understand - considering that I am white - but then again, my colour gives me a certain insight. For instance, I find myself pretty scary a lot of the time, so I know what I'm talking about. You can take my word for it: if you find yourself suddenly surrounded by white people, you better watch out. Anything can happen. As white people, we've been lulled into thinking it's safe to be around other white people. We've been taught since birth that it's the people of that other colour we need to fear. They're the ones who'll slit your throat! Yet as I look back on my life, a strange but unmistakable pattern seems to emerge. Every person who has ever harmed me in my lifetime - the boss who fired me, the teacher who flunked me, the principal who punished me, the kid who hit me in the eye with a rock, the executive who didn't renew TV Nation, the guy who was stalking me for three years, the accountant who double-paid my taxes, the drunk who smashed into me, the burglar who stole my stereo, the contractor who overcharged me, the girlfriend who left me, the next girlfriend who left even sooner, the person in the office who stole cheques from my chequebook and wrote them out to himself for a total of $16,000 - every one of these individuals has been a white person. Coincidence? I think not. I have never been attacked by a black person, never been evicted by a black person, never had my security deposit ripped off by a black landlord, never had a black landlord, never had a meeting at a Hollywood studio with a black executive in charge, never had a black person deny my child the college of her choice, never been puked on by a black teenager at a Mtley Cre concert, never been pulled over by a black cop, never been sold a lemon by a black car salesman, never seen a black car salesman, never had a black person deny me a bank loan, and I've never heard a black person say, 'We're going to eliminate 10,000 jobs here - have a nice day!' I don't think that I'm the only white guy who can make these claims. Every mean word, every cruel act, every bit of pain and suffering in my life has had a Caucasian face attached to it. So, um, why is it exactly that I should be afraid of black people? I look around at the world I live in - and, I hate to tell tales out of school, but it's not the African-Americans who have made this planet such a pitiful, scary place. Recently, a headline on the front of the Science section of the New York Times asked Who Built The H-Bomb? The article went on to discuss a dispute between the men who claim credit for making the first bomb. Frankly, I could have cared less - because I already know the only pertinent answer: 'It was a white guy!' No black guy ever built or used a bomb designed to wipe out hordes of innocent people, whether in Oklahoma City, Columbine or Hiroshima. No, friends, it's always the white guy. Let's go to the tote board: Who gave us the black plague? A white guy. Who invented PBC, PVC, PBB, and a host of chemicals that are killing us? White guys. Who has started every war America has been in? White men. Who invented the punchcard ballot? A white man. Whose idea was it to pollute the world with the internal combustion engine? Whitey, that's who. The Holocaust? That guy really gave white people a bad name. The genocide of Native Americans? White man. Slavery? Whitey! US companies laid off more than 700,000 people in 2001. Who ordered the lay-offs? White CEOs. You name the problem, the disease, the human suffering, or the abject misery visited upon millions, and I'll bet you 10 bucks I can put a white face on it faster than you can name the members of 'NSync. And yet, when I turn on the news each night, what do I see again and again? Black men alleged to be killing, raping, mugging, stabbing, gangbanging, looting, rioting, selling drugs, pimping, ho-ing, having too many babies, fatherless, motherless, Godless, penniless. 'The suspect is described as a black male... the suspect is described as a black male... THE SUSPECT IS DESCRIBED AS A BLACK MALE...' No matter what city I'm in, the news is always the same, the suspect always the same unidentified black male. I'm in Atlanta tonight, and I swear the police sketch of the black male suspect on TV looks just like the black male suspect I saw on the news last night in Denver and the night before in LA. In every sketch he's frowning, he's menacing - and he's wearing the same knit cap! Is it possible that it's the same black guy committing every crime in America? I believe we've become so used to this image of the black man as predator that we are forever ruined by this brainwashing. In my first film, Roger & Me, a white woman on social security clubs a rabbit to death so that she can sell him as 'meat' instead of as a pet. I wish I had a nickel for every time in the past 10 years that someone has come up to me and told me how 'horrified' they were when they saw that 'poor little cute bunny' bonked on the head. The scene, they say, made them physically sick. The Motion Picture Association of America gave Roger & Me an R [18] rating in response to that rabbit killing. Teachers write to me and say they have to edit that part out of the film, if they want to show it to their students. But less than two minutes after the bunny lady does her deed, I included footage of a scene in which police in Flint, Michigan, shot a black man who was wearing a Superman cape and holding a plastic toy gun. Not once - not ever - has anyone said to me, 'I can't believe you showed a black man being shot in your movie! How horrible! How disgusting! I couldn't sleep for weeks.' After all, he was just a black man, not a cute, cuddly bunny. The ratings board saw absolutely nothing wrong with that scene. Why? Because it's normal, natural. We've become so accustomed to seeing black men killed - in the movies and on the evening news - that we now accept it as standard operating procedure. No big deal! That's what blacks do - kill and die. Ho-hum. Pass the butter. It's odd that, despite the fact that most crimes are committed by whites, black faces are usually attached to what we think of as 'crime'. Ask any white person who they fear might break into their home or harm them on the street and, if they're honest, they'll admit that the person they have in mind doesn't look much like them. The imaginary criminal in their heads looks like Mookie or Hakim or Kareem, not little freckle-faced Jimmy. No matter how many times their fellow whites make it clear that the white man is the one to fear, it simply fails to register. Every time you turn on the TV to news of another school shooting, it's always a white kid who's conducting the massacre. Every time they catch a serial killer, it's a crazy white guy. Every time a terrorist blows up a federal building, or a madman gets 400 people to drink Kool-Aid, or a Beach Boys songwriter casts a spell causing half a dozen nymphets to murder 'all the piggies' in the Hollywood Hills, you know it's a member of the white race up to his old tricks. So why don't we run like hell when we see whitey coming toward us? Why don't we ever greet the Caucasian job applicant with, 'Gee, uh, I'm sorry, there aren't any positions available right now'? Why aren't we worried sick about our daughters marrying white guys? And why isn't Congress trying to ban the scary and offensive lyrics of Johnny Cash ('I shot a man in Reno/just to watch him die'), the Dixie Chicks ('Earl had to die'), or Bruce Springsteen ('I killed everything in my path/I can't say that I'm sorry for the things that we done'). Why the focus on rap lyrics? Why doesn't the media print lyrics such as the following, and tell the truth? 'I sold bottles of sorrow, then chose poems and novels' (Wu-Tang Clan); 'People use yo' brain to gain' (Ice Cube); 'A poor single mother on welfare... tell me how ya did it' (Tupac Shakur); 'I'm trying to change my life, see I don't wanna die a sinner' (Master P). African-Americans have been on the lowest rung of the economic ladder since the day they were dragged here in chains. Every other immigrant group has been able to advance from the bottom to the higher levels of our society. Even Native Americans, who are among the poorest of the poor, have fewer children living in poverty than African-Americans. You probably thought things had got better for blacks in this country. After all, considering the advances we've made eliminating racism in our society, one would think our black citizens might have seen their standard of living rise. A survey published in the Washington Post in July 2001 showed that 40%-60% of white people thought the average black person had it as good or better than the average white person. Think again. According to a study conducted by the economists Richard Vedder, Lowell Gallaway and David C Clingaman, the average income for a black American is 61% less per year than the average white income. That is the same percentage difference as it was in 1880. Not a damned thing has changed in more than 120 years. Want more proof? Consider the following: Black heart attack patients are far less likely than whites to undergo cardiac catheterisation, regardless of the race of their doctors. Whites are five times more likely than blacks to receive emergency clot-busting treatment after suffering a stroke. Black women are four times more likely than white women to die while giving birth. Black levels of unemployment have been roughly twice those of whites since 1954. So how have we white people been able to get away with this? Caucasian ingenuity! You see, we used to be real dumb. Like idiots, we wore our racism on our sleeve. We did really obvious things, like putting up signs on rest-room doors that said WHITES ONLY. We made black people sit at the back of the bus. We prevented them from attending our schools or living in our neighbourhoods. They got the crappiest jobs (those advertised for NEGROES ONLY), and we made it clear that, if you weren't white, you were going to be paid a lower wage. Well, this overt, over-the-top segregation got us into a heap of trouble. A bunch of uppity lawyers went to court. They pointed out that the 14th Amendment doesn't allow for anyone to be treated differently because of their race. Eventually, after a long procession of court losses, demonstrations and riots, we got the message: if you're going to be a successful racist, better find a way to do it with a smile on your face. We even got magnanimous enough to say, 'Sure, you can live here in our neighbourhood; your kids can go to our kids' school. Why the hell not? We were just leaving, anyway.' We smiled, gave black America a pat on the back - and then ran like the devil to the suburbs. At work, we whites still get the plum jobs, double the pay, and a seat in the front of the bus to happiness and success. We've rigged the system from birth, guaranteeing that black people will go to the worst schools, thus preventing them from admission to the best colleges, and paving their way to a fulfilling life making our caffe lattes, servicing our BMWs, and picking up our trash. Oh, sure, a few slip by - but they pay an extra tariff for the privilege: the black doctor driving his BMW gets pulled over continually by the cops; the black Broadway actress can't get a cab after the standing ovation; the black broker is the first to be laid off because of 'seniority'. We whites really deserve some kind of genius award for this. We talk the talk of inclusion, we celebrate the birthday of Dr King, we frown upon racist jokes. We never fail to drop a mention of 'my friend - he's black...' We make sure we put our lone black employee up at the front reception desk so we can say, 'See - we don't discriminate. We hire black people.' Yes, we are a very crafty, cagey race - and damn if we haven't got away with it! I wonder how long we will have to live with the legacy of slavery. That's right. I brought it up. SLAVERY. You can almost hear the groans of white America whenever you bring up the fact that we still suffer from the impact of the slave system. Well, I'm sorry, but the roots of most of our social ills can be traced straight back to this sick chapter of our history. African-Americans never got a chance to have the same fair start that the rest of us got. Their families were wilfully destroyed, their language and culture and religion stripped from them. Their poverty was institutionalised so that our cotton could get picked, our wars could be fought, our convenience stores could remain open all night. The America we've come to know would never have come to pass if not for the millions of slaves who built it and created its booming economy - and for the millions of their descendants who do the same dirty work for whites today. It's not as if we're talking ancient Rome here. My grandfather was born just three years after the Civil War. That's right, my grandfather. My great-uncle was born before the Civil War. And I'm only in my 40s. Sure, people in my family seem to marry late, but the truth remains: I'm just two generations from slave times. That, my friends, is not a 'long time ago'. In the vast breadth of human history, it was only yesterday. Until we realise that, and accept that we do have a responsibility to correct an immoral act that still has repercussions today, we will never remove the single greatest stain on the soul of our country Michael Moore, 2002. These are edited extracts from Stupid White Men, by Michael Moore, published by HarperCollins World at 18.99. To order a copy for the special price of 16.99 (plus p&p), call the Guardian book service on 0870 066 7979. urlLink http://books.guardian.co.uk/extracts/story/0,6761,676072,00.html |
1,241,231 | male | 37 | Technology | Aries | 08,September,2003 | Hi everyone. I have created a new blog to replace this one over at urlLink http://uber-kiwi.tripod.com/blog/ Reason is I have more control over images, and YOU can provide feedback. |
1,241,231 | male | 37 | Technology | Aries | 27,March,2004 | As the title says, its according to FHM readers. I'll have to make up my own list. Anyway, here are my personal favourites from the FHM list: Britney Spears Angelina Jolie Holly Valance Delta Goodrem |
1,241,231 | male | 37 | Technology | Aries | 23,March,2004 | And another NZ / Naura / Tampa Story, also in the SMH. They must be trying to embarass the Howard govt in the election year. Similar story, but also a good read. Some highlights/teaser quotes: New Zealand has created new lives for the refugees that Australia abandoned to the Pacific solution Only five months ago, Bushra Al Aridhi expected to die in the place she calls the jail - Australia's offshore processing centre on Nauru. Today, she is pregnant with her second child and beginning a new life, with the husband she feared she would never see again, in a timber house overlooking Wellington Harbour in New Zealand's North Island. (UberKiwi's note: I lived in Wellinngton for two years. It sucks. The weather is crap - its is either raining, or blowing a gale, or both. Sometimes you get a nice day - in the city, but everyone lives in the hills surrounding Wellington where its damp and misty and 5 degrees cooler than the city. Freeze your arse off. No room in the hills - all the house have been in-filled - your back patio is someone elses fron decking, and you park your car at the bottom of a hill, and then hike up to your house. Apologies to my family who live in Wellington.). Bushra and her daughter, Hawra, spent two years and three months on Nauru, detained under Australia's Pacific solution, a warning of what others might expect if they tried to to get into Australia illegally. Meanwhile, her husband, Ahmed, endured a miserable freedom in Brisbane; he had his liberty, having been granted refugee status and a temporary protection visa (TPV) by Australia, but under the Howard Government's hardline policy, he had no prospect of ever being reunited with his wife and daughter. -------- While Australia has gone to extreme lengths to separate families in a bid to shut down the people-smuggling trade (denying, for example, any prospect of family reunion to those who came by boat after the Tampa), New Zealand has gone to extraordinary lengths to put families back together and give them a future. Aside from the 131 asylum seekers New Zealand almost instantly accepted from the Tampa in 2001, it has quietly taken about 270 asylum seekers from Australia's offshore processing centres at Nauru and Manus Island. They are being reunited with more than 360 immediate family members after New Zealand missions to Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran. Reuniting refugee families represents one of the most ambitious, delicate, challenging and complex family reunion projects ever undertaken by New Zealand immigration. ----- Regarding Nauru detention: For Bushra and others interviewed by the Herald, Nauru became the jail for broken spirits. The stifling heat and lack of fresh water, combined with the numbing uncertainty and the regular disappointment of rejection, aged their bodies prematurely and twisted their minds. 'It was a horrible situation,' says Sajjad Sarwari, who has been reunited with his brother Ali's family in Hamilton, south of Auckland. 'We should not call Nauru a detention centre or a camp. It is a hellhole. I am really sorry for those who are still there, worried about them.' ------ Latifa Ali, reunited with her husband, Jawed, in Hamilton (UberKiwi note: Hamilton is not bad - bloody hot and humid, but better than Wellington. Apolgies now to my family members who live in Hamilton and Wellington) , says the worst moments for young mothers were having to wait for a bucket of salt water to wash their babies, and being rejected for asylum - not once but twice - despite the fact that their husbands' claims had already been accepted. Although, the Government insists the women were assessed and rejected as refugees according to the UNHCR's refugee test, the UNHCR has consistently argued that spouses and minor children of recognised refugees should be given refugee status. ------- Each of the families expresses gratitude to New Zealand and Susan Harris Rimmer, the UNHCR official who put their case to the NZ Government. Bushra reveals that she has conceived since being reunited. The baby is due in six months and, if it is a girl, they will call it Susan. --------- Ahmed says he would like to return to Australia to visit friends and thank those who employed and helped him during his three years in Brisbane, but not while the Howard Government is in power. Though the couple will be entitled to New Zealand citizenship in three years and therefore be able to settle legally in Australia, they insist their loyalty will always be to New Zealand and their future is there. 'This country has given me, my family, a new life, a good life,' beams Bushra Al Aridhi. 'Freedom! Freedom!' ----------- |
1,241,231 | male | 37 | Technology | Aries | 23,March,2004 | And another NZ / Naura / Tampa Story, also in the SMH. They must be trying to embarass the Howard govt in the election year. Similar story, but also a good read. Some highlights/teaser quotes: New Zealand has created new lives for the refugees that Australia abandoned to the Pacific solution Only five months ago, Bushra Al Aridhi expected to die in the place she calls the jail - Australia's offshore processing centre on Nauru. Today, she is pregnant with her second child and beginning a new life, with the husband she feared she would never see again, in a timber house overlooking Wellington Harbour in New Zealand's North Island. (UberKiwi's note: I lived in Wellinngton for two years. It sucks. The weather is crap - its is either raining, or blowing a gale, or both. Sometimes you get a nice day - in the city, but everyone lives in the hills surrounding Wellington where its damp and misty and 5 degrees cooler than the city. Freeze your arse off. No room in the hills - all the house have been in-filled - your back patio is someone elses fron decking, and you park your car at the bottom of a hill, and then hike up to your house. Apologies to my family who live in Wellington.). Bushra and her daughter, Hawra, spent two years and three months on Nauru, detained under Australia's Pacific solution, a warning of what others might expect if they tried to to get into Australia illegally. Meanwhile, her husband, Ahmed, endured a miserable freedom in Brisbane; he had his liberty, having been granted refugee status and a temporary protection visa (TPV) by Australia, but under the Howard Government's hardline policy, he had no prospect of ever being reunited with his wife and daughter. -------- While Australia has gone to extreme lengths to separate families in a bid to shut down the people-smuggling trade (denying, for example, any prospect of family reunion to those who came by boat after the Tampa), New Zealand has gone to extraordinary lengths to put families back together and give them a future. Aside from the 131 asylum seekers New Zealand almost instantly accepted from the Tampa in 2001, it has quietly taken about 270 asylum seekers from Australia's offshore processing centres at Nauru and Manus Island . They are being reunited with more than 360 immediate family members after New Zealand missions to Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran. Reuniting refugee families represents one of the most ambitious, delicate, challenging and complex family reunion projects ever undertaken by New Zealand immigration. ----- For Bushra and others interviewed by the Herald, Nauru became the jail for broken spirits. The stifling heat and lack of fresh water, combined with the numbing uncertainty and the regular disappointment of rejection, aged their bodies prematurely and twisted their minds. 'It was a horrible situation,' says Sajjad Sarwari, who has been reunited with his brother Ali's family in Hamilton, south of Auckland. 'We should not call Nauru a detention centre or a camp. It is a hellhole. I am really sorry for those who are still there, worried about them.' ------ Latifa Ali, reunited with her husband, Jawed, in Hamilton (UberKiwi note: Hamilton is not bad - bloody hot and humid, but better than Wellington. Apolgies now to my family members who live in Hamilton and Wellington) , says the worst moments for young mothers were having to wait for a bucket of salt water to wash their babies, and being rejected for asylum - not once but twice - despite the fact that their husbands' claims had already been accepted. Although, the Government insists the women were assessed and rejected as refugees according to the UNHCR's refugee test, the UNHCR has consistently argued that spouses and minor children of recognised refugees should be given refugee status. ------- Each of the families expresses gratitude to New Zealand and Susan Harris Rimmer, the UNHCR official who put their case to the NZ Government. Bushra reveals that she has conceived since being reunited. The baby is due in six months and, if it is a girl, they will call it Susan. --------- Ahmed says he would like to return to Australia to visit friends and thank those who employed and helped him during his three years in Brisbane, but not while the Howard Government is in power. Though the couple will be entitled to New Zealand citizenship in three years and therefore be able to settle legally in Australia, they insist their loyalty will always be to New Zealand and their future is there. 'This country has given me, my family, a new life, a good life,' beams Bushra Al Aridhi. 'Freedom! Freedom!' ----------- |
1,241,231 | male | 37 | Technology | Aries | 23,March,2004 | Nice story in the urlLink Sydney Morning Herald. Just shows the difference between a New Zealand government, and the redneck fascist Australian government. John Howard is, as Mark Latham says, a suck hole. They were the kids Australia didn't want, so New Zealand gave them a home 'We are 40 boys, 40 minds, 40 characters, but one family.' Aside from the 131 who were almost instantly accepted from the Tampa in 2001, New Zealand has quietly taken about 270 asylum-seekers from Australia's offshore processing centres at Nauru and Manus Island. They are being progressively reunited with more than 360 immediate family members. At Auckland airport yesterday were the families of 11 of the boys. Now they are being reunited with their families and have a future, thanks to an extraordinary display of generosity of spirit by the New Zealand Government and the country's volunteer agencies - and the determination and staying power of the 40 boys who were accepted as unaccompanied minors. The contrast with Australia's treatment was underscored when the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Ruud Lubbers, addressed the families. 'It's a miracle that you survived and then were welcomed here in New Zealand. It's even more of a miracle that the people of New Zealand make it possible now that you come here to see your sons, to see your family and to live together with them here.' The New Zealand Government decided within months of taking the Tampa boys to offer their immediate families resettlement. A mission to Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran finally went ahead late last year with the help of the UNHCR and the Organisation for International Migration. ...Ms Sutherland says the boys have already repaid New Zealand's kindness. 'They're bright, they're clever, they're engaging. They're just amazing kids with amazing stories and amazing families. If we all just said 'no' to them, we would never have known what potential had passed us by.' The New Zealand Prime Minister, Helen Clark, goes further. 'We're very proud of them. We love the kids who came and try to make it work for them. These boys have just responded so well to being here and they'll be great citizens.' |
1,241,231 | male | 37 | Technology | Aries | 23,March,2004 | Came across a very interesting WebLog by a staffer at the SMH - published on the SMH site. Latest: urlLink Howard at end of credibility line on Iraq |
1,241,231 | male | 37 | Technology | Aries | 18,March,2004 | This week I have been entertained by the governments response to a comment made by the Australian Federal Police Chief's comment, after the Madrid train bombing, that Australia's role in the Iraq war could mke Australia a greater terrorist target. Of course this is common sense. However it is election year, and comments like this freak out the government. Check out the headlines as the story unfolded: urlLink Coalition nations terrorist targets: AFP chief March 14, 2004 Spain's role in the US-led coalition of the willing had increased its likelihood of being a terrorist target, Australian Federal Police (AFP) Commissioner Mick Keelty said today. Two hundred people died and close to 1,500 were injured when 10 bombs detonated by remote control tore through trains during the morning rush hour in Madrid on Thursday. Mr Keelty was commenting shortly before reports emerged that al-Qaeda had claimed responsibility for the attacks. Mr Keelty told the Nine Network that if the bombings were the work of Islamic terrorists, it raised serious issues for those involved in the Iraq war. 'If this turns out to be Islamic extremists responsible for this bombing ... it is more likely to be linked to the position that Spain and other allies took on issues such as Iraq,' Commissioner Keelty said. 'And I don't think anyone has been hiding the fact that we do believe, ultimately, that one day whether it be in one month's time, one year's time or 10 years' time, something will happen [in Australia] and no one can guarantee it won't. 'And I think there is a level of honesty that has to exist here as to what the problems are here, not only in Australia but in the region.' More detail urlLink in this link Those comments then caused a storm! urlLink Iraq hasn't increased threat: PM March 15, 2004 - 5:05PM John Howard says Australia's involvement in the Iraq war has not increased the risk of a terror attack in the nation. The Prime Minister also said there was no direct link between Australia and the bombings in Madrid...... Mr Howard also challenged Australian Federal Police Commissioner Mick Keelty, who on Sunday said the Madrid bombings may have been linked to Spain's support for the United States in the Iraq war. Mr Keelty also said Australia would probably one day be the target of a terrorist attack. Mr Howard said Mr Keelty's comments were 'not a conclusion I would have reached' but denied he had lost confidence in the police commissioner. 'He's in charge of operational police matters and the question of this analysis is not something that comes directly in that area,' Mr Howard said. urlLink PM slams Keelty over terror threat remarks John Howard has rejected suggestions by the Australian Federal Police Commissioner, Mick Keelty, that the Madrid bombings may be linked to Spain's involvement in the invasion of Iraq, if they proved the work of Islamic terrorists. The Prime Minister said yesterday that it was 'far too early' to make conclusions about who was responsible for the attacks. Mr Keelty's views - which implied that Australia could be at greater risk of terrorist attack as a result of its role in Iraq - were also dismissed by the Attorney-General, Philip Ruddock, who said the comments were 'fairly simplistic', 'inappropriate', and unsupported by evidence. ..... Mr Howard said Mr Keelty's view was not a conclusion he would have reached, and that different countries, irrespective of the stance they had taken on Iraq, had been the subject of terrorist attacks. He said he retained confidence in Mr Keelty and that it was perfectly possible for him 'to reach a different view from somebody on an issue without lacking confidence in that person's overall ability to do his job'. However Mr Howard also appeared to rebuke Mr Keelty, saying he was 'in charge of operational police matters and the question of this analysis is not something that directly comes in that area'. urlLink Terror attack 'inevitable': FBI A terrorist attack on Australia was inevitable, and the nation was clearly more of a target because of its alliance to the United States, a senior FBI counter-terrorism expert said today. The assessment of the FBI's executive assistant director of counter terrorism John Pistole backs comments by Australian Federal Police Commissioner Mick Keelty that, if Islamic extremists were behind the Madrid bombings, it was likely because of Spain's pro-US position on Iraq. The remarks by Keelty, whose views are supported by terrorism experts, clash with those of Prime Minister John Howard, who insists Australia's involvement in the war against Iraq have little bearing on its standing as a terror target. Mr Pistole, in Sydney to address a counter-terrorism summit, was asked today on Sydney radio if Australia's involvement with the US-led Coalition of the Willing made it more of a terrorist target than other western nations. 'I think it does, clearly from the perspective of being a good target in Iraq,' Mr Pistole told 2UE. urlLink Cosgrove slams Keelty over terror AUSTRALIA was under threat from terrorists because of its national identity, not because of troop deployments, Defence Force Chief General Peter Cosgrove said today. General Cosgrove today sided with the government, which has rejected the view of Australian Federal Police (AFP) Commissioner Mick Keelty over potential terrorist threats to Australia..... General Cosgrove said today that while he often agreed with Mr Keelty's point of view, he did not share his attitude to this particular issue. urlLink Opposition 'disturbed' at reports police chief chastised The leader of opposition Labor Party, Mark Latham, says he is disturbed by reports that the Australian Federal Police commissioner, Mick Keelty, was harangued by staff from the Prime Minister's Office after weekend comments on terrorism. Mr Keelty said the Madrid bombings were likely to be linked to the country's involvement in the war against Iraq, and that could make Australia a more likely terrorist target. 'The Australian' newspaper says Mr Keelty was chastised by senior members of Mr Howard's staff after making the claim. Mr Latham says the police commissioner should be given the respect he deserves. 'If the head of our Australian Federal Police has got something to say about the safety and security of the country we should listen,' he said. 'To have intervention calls haranguing him from the prime minister office is totally inappropriate,' he said. urlLink Cop backs down over terror claims THE nation's top police officer today backed away from comments suggesting Australia was a bigger terrorist target because of its backing of the United States-led war against Iraq. The views of Australian Federal Police Commissioner Mick Keelty - made in the wake of the Spanish train bombings which killed around 200 people - have been at odds with the federal government. Prime Minister John Howard insists that the threat of a terror attack is not heightened by involvement in the war. Mr Keelty late today issued a statement clarifying comments he made on Sunday. 'I regret that some of my words have been taken out of context,' he said. urlLink Labor alleges PM pressure on Keelty A senior member of Prime Minister John Howard's staff has been accused by the Opposition of trying to intimidate Australia's top police officer, Federal Police Commissioner Mick Keelty. On Sunday Mr Keelty suggested that Australia's involvement in the war on Iraq could have increased the likelihood of a terrorist attack at home. Mr Keelty was reportedly telephoned by Mr Howard's chief-of-staff and chastised for contradicting the Government's position that the war did not increase the risk of such an attack. Labor foreign affairs spokesman Kevin Rudd said that if Mr Howard's chief-of-staff, Arthur Sinodinis, had sought to politically intimidate the commissioner then the staffer's position had become untenable. Mr Rudd said the federal police was Australia's top counter-terrorism agency and what had happened was enormously disturbing. 'Mr Keelty is a professional... the Australian people have confidence in professionals who simply tell it like it is and don't stick to a political script,' Mr Rudd said. 'This is a most disturbing development as far as the real war on terrorism in this country is concerned.' ... urlLink Downer backs off Keelty criticisms Foreign Minister Alexander Downer has backed away from comments in which he appears to accuse Australia's top policeman of expressing Al Qaeda propaganda. Australian Federal Police Commissioner Mick Keelty has issued a statement to clarify his views on the Madrid bombings. The Government has spent three days criticising Mr Keelty for saying that if Al Qaeda was behind the Madrid attack, then it was likely to be linked to Spain's support for the Iraq war. Yesterday, Mr Downer, trying to defuse the row, made comments that made it worse. 'He is just expressing a view which reflects a lot of the propaganda we're getting from Al Qaeda,' Mr Downer said. Labor says the Government has placed Mr Keelty under extraordinary public pressure. Homeland security spokesman Robert McClelland says the situation is outrageous. 'I think Alexander Downer should quite frankly go and take a cold shower,' Mr McClelland said. 'He should not have been put in this position where he had to issue any statement in any way shape or form.' Later Mr Downer told the ABC's Lateline program his comments were misinterpreted. 'In no way was I intending to reflect on Mr Keelty,' Mr Downer said. 'He is an outstanding Australian. 'He'll go down in history as one of the great police commissioners and I certainly have no intention of reflecting on him and his professionalism.' And Mr Downer has welcomed Mr Keelty's statement in which he says his comments have been taken out of context. Mr Keelty now says terrorism seeks to attack Australian values regardless of our involvement in East Timor, Afghanistan or Iraq. He says he does not want the row to detract from the work of the AFP. urlLink DOWNER ACTS TO HEAL RIFT WITH POLICE CHIEF The Foreign Mininster Alexander Downer has dismissed claims that he suggested the Australian Federal Police Commissioner Mick Keelty had fallen victim to al-Qaeda propaganda. At the same time Mr Keelty is playing down remarks he made after the terrorist bombings in Madrid. He says a suggestion that they were the result of Spain's support for the war in Iraq and Australia was more at risk as a result have been taken out of context. He says terrorism will seek to attack the values central to Australia 's way of life, regardless of the nation's involvement in Iraq, Afghanistan or East Timor. Mr Downer has gone out of his way to heal any rift between Mr Keelty and the Federal Government by praising his efforts in the fight against terrorism. He says he's done a wonderful job and is an outstanding Australian. urlLink Top cop sledging is un-Australian: McLelland Criticism of Federal Police Commissioner Mick Keelty by the government was un-Australian, a Labor frontbencher said today. Prime Minister John Howard criticised Mr Keelty for saying the Madrid train bombings may have been linked to Spain's involvement in the Iraq war. .... Earlier, Foreign Minister Alexander Downer had accused Mr Keelty of falling victim to al-Qaeda propaganda. After Mr Keelty clarified his remarks, Mr Downer said Mr Keelty would go down in history as one of Australia's great police commissioners. Labor homeland security spokesman Robert McLelland said the government's criticism of Mr Keelty had been outrageous. 'Cabinet minister after cabinet minister has lined up to take a potshot at him because of the comments that he's made,' Mr McClelland told ABC radio. 'That is entirely un-Australian and I think that the pressure he has been put under is quite outrageous, quite frankly.' urlLink PM praises police chief PRIME Minister John Howard today praised Australian Federal Police Commissioner Mick Keelty despite their differences over the links between the terrorist attack in Spain and the war in Iraq. Mr Howard said Mr Keelty did his job extremely well. 'I have total confidence in the police commissioner, I think he's doing an excellent job,' the Prime Minister told radio 5DN in Adelaide urlLink PM sought Keelty backdown JOHN HOWARD's office urged Federal Police Commissioner Mick Keelty to issue a clarification on Tuesday following three days of political controversy over his weekend remarks linking the Madrid bombings to Spain's presence in Iraq. The Australian understands a statement issued by Mr Keelty late on Tuesday, where he said his original comments were taken out of context, was made after a request from the Prime Minister's office. Mr Howard's office last night refused to comment and directed media inquiries to the AFP. An AFP spokeswoman last night declined to comment. The Australian also understands that Mr Keelty was so concerned about the effect of government attacks on his reputation that he seriously considered resigning. urlLink Cosgrove, Keelty heal rift on terror AUSTRALIAN Defence Force chief Peter Cosgrove has assured Police Commissioner Mick Keelty of his total support in a bid to heal a rift which threatened relations between Australia's top two security agencies. General Cosgrove contacted Mr Keelty yesterday to clarify comments he made about the police chief's interpretation of intelligence on the terrorist threat after a barrage of Government criticism had left the commissioner contemplating resignation...... he television comments had prompted a telephone call from prime ministerial adviser Arthur Sinodinos immediately after the interview. Prime Minister John Howard then cast doubt on Mr Keelty's judgment and Foreign Minister Alexander Downer accused him of spreading al-Qaida propaganda. They later praised him and said he had their total support. Senior police officers are understood to have been shocked at the Government's unprecedented behaviour towards a police commissioner. At a meeting in Sydney yesterday, state police commissioners drafted a statement condemning the politicisation of national security but dropped the reference at Mr Keelty's request. Mr Howard rejected suggestions the Government had put pressure on Mr Keelty. urlLink Former police commissioner backs Keelty One of Australia's most senior former police chiefs has backed Federal Police Commissioner, Mick Keelty. Bob Falconer, a former police commissioner in Western Australia and deputy commissioner in Victoria, says Mick Keelty was right to say that if Islamic extremists were responsible for the Madrid bombing, then it was more likely to be linked to Spain's support for the Iraq war. Mr Falconer told Alexandra Kirk, as Australia's top policeman the Federal Police Commissioner must be able to speak freely and frankly on the dangers facing Australia without political approval urlLink PM and top cop shake hands John Howard and Mick Keelty shook hands twice to bring public closure to a spat that still leaves questions over political interference in policing........ But Mr Howard said no 'improper' contact had been made, and denied suggestions he was politicising the issue of terrorism. 'That's a claim I would completely reject,' he said. 'I have been very careful to respect the operational independence of the AFP. 'I have not sought in any way to influence the advice the AFP or ASIO (Australian Security Intelligence Organisation) give me.' Mr Keelty would continue to be free to 'express his views as he sees fit', Mr Howard said. However, a former WA police commissioner suggested this week's political storm might hinder Mr Keelty from doing so. 'The next time he or others might be less free and frank in their professional capacity and more prone to have to check out their views and position on things with the government of the day,' Bob Falconer told ABC radio. 'And then that means there's a possibility that it's some sort of political manipulation of the commissioner's point of view. 'I think the troubling thing to me is the inference that Mick Keelty has got some sort of smack behind the scenes and has then had to readjust his statement.' The federal Opposition called on the government to 'butt out' of policing matters. 'The police have to be independent of party politics,' Labor leader Mark Latham told 3AW radio in Melbourne. 'If you start playing politics with Australia's security you weaken it and if police are not independent it just creates a lot of confusion and uncertainty about what sort of information we are actually receiving. 'If someone like Mr Keelty has something to say to the Australian people he has to say it without fear or favour.' Entertaining Satirical Comment from urlLink Please do not adjust your reality set, normal service will resume : It was reported earlier this week that Mick Keelty, the Federal Police Commissioner, believed the war in Iraq has made Australia more of a terrorism target. Keelty asserts, and the Herald accepts, that he was not aware at the time of the Government's new prohibition on stating the bleeding obvious The Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer, was quoted this week calling Keelty 'a moron who is in the pocket of terrorists'. Downer now asserts, and the Herald accepts, that he had not realised at the time that Keelty was back in the pocket of the Government. He now believes the commissioner to be, instead, 'a genius without peer in the world of policing'. urlLink Iraq reprisal: US envoy at odds with PM The Madrid train bombings were probably carried out in reprisal for Spain's support of the Iraq war, says the US ambassador to Australia, Tom Schieffer. Mr Schieffer also suggested that the attack was part of an al-Qaeda attempt to split the nations of the West and undermine commitment to the war on terrorism. The concession that the attack could have been a reprisal over Iraq puts the ambassador at odds with the Prime Minister, John Howard, by echoing comments a week ago by the Australian Federal Police Commissioner, Mick Keelty. urlLink PM confirms Keelty talk on terror PRIME Minister John Howard today confirmed he and members of his office talked to Australian Federal Police Commissioner Mick Keelty about his comments on Spain's terrorist attack and the Iraq war. But Mr Howard said there had been nothing improper about the conversations with Mr Keelty..... Mr Howard said he along with other members of his staff had spoken to Mr Keelty after he expressed his view on Channel Nine's Sunday program on March 14. 'There were discussions last week between myself, my chief of staff, the secretary of my department and the commissioner,' he told Parliament. 'Those discussions arose from the commissioner's interview on Channel Nine on Sunday the 14th of March, 2004. 'There was nothing at all improper about those discussions. 'They respected fully the operational role and the independence of the Australian Federal Police.' So he was lying earlier when he said they didn't. urlLink Latham blasts Downer as a 'rotten lousy disgrace' Opposition leader Mark Latham today launched a furious attack on Foreign Minister Alexander Downer in Parliament, calling him a 'rotten lousy disgrace' for likening federal police chief Mick Keelty's comments to al Qaeda propaganda. 'You disgrace, you rotten lousy disgrace,' he said, before withdrawing the comment. He also said prime minister John Howard's actions were a disgrace to his high office. ... Mr Latham moved to censure Mr Howard for compromising the the public standing and independence of Mr Keelty and failing to rule out further political interference with the AFP in the future. He also accused the government of jeopardising national security by playing politics with Australia's federal police. advertisement advertisement But Mr Howard denied suggestions the government did not respect the Australian Federal Police and the role of the commissioner. 'I hold the Federal Police Commissioner in high regard,' Mr Howard said. 'Let us put aside any suggestion ... that I as Prime Minister or anybody else in this government is anything other than respectful of the AFP.' He said Mr Keelty was not rebuked, and faced no improper contact from the prime minister's office or department. 'The AFP commissioner was not rebuked. The AFP commissioner was not treated improperly,' Mr Howard said. 'The AFP commissioner made a statement. 'There has been no muzzling of the AFP commissioner.'... Mr Latham said Mr Howard had compromised the role and independence of the AFP commissioner and compromised the right of the Australian people to know the truth. He said Mr Keelty had been punished by the government for telling the Australian people that the government's policy on Iraq had made the country more of a terrorist target. 'That's the thing this prime minister didn't want the Australian people to be told by the commissioner: that while Australia was a target at the time of September 11, his government's policy on Iraq has made things worse,' Mr Latham said. Mr Latham said Mr Howard had reacted to Mr Keelty's comments by trying to manipulate the truth. 'That's the reflex action of someone whose been in politics too long,' he said. 'Someone who's been in politics playing an old style of manipulating and trying to control the truth and the flow of information at any cost.' urlLink I did not gag police chief - Howard Under fire in Parliament yesterday, Mr Howard confirmed for the first time his staff had spoken directly to Mr Keelty about last week's comments. But he refused to disclose what was said and denied carpeting the Australian Federal Police commissioner. 'There has been no muzzling of the AFP commissioner,' the PM told Parliament. urlLink Keelty aftermath wakes Mr Muscle-Up MR Muscle-Up re-emerged, as we knew he eventually must, at 3.17pm in the House of Representatives. 'You are a disgrace, you are a rotten, lousy disgrace,' roared Mark Latham. His opprobrium was directed at Alexander Downer who, during last week's fiasco over Mick Keelty's public musings on terrorism, made the idiotic statement that the police chief had been 'expressing a view that reflects a lot of the propaganda we're getting from al-Qa'ida'. The Foreign Minister's refusal to publicly retract this appalling choice of words – apparently Downer apologised to Keelty in private – prompted Latham to emerge from his slumber. 'What a disgraceful thing to say about a good man,' he railed during a censure motion against the Prime Minister. Earlier, Latham had fired eight straight questions at John Howard, trying to corner the PM into revealing all. Howard stonewalled, insisting his conversations with the police chief were confidential. Later, the PM would describe his chat with Keelty – rebuked by Howard's office minutes after last Sunday's TV interview and browbeaten into releasing a clarification – as a 'normal, natural thing'. If the Labor leader had shown glimpses of antsiness in questions, the censure motion had Mark Lithium reverting to something approaching trademark Latham. The Opposition Leader twice berated Howard as acting like 'someone who's been around too long'. After 'the folly of Iraq', the doctrine of pre-emption espoused pre-war by the Coalition was 'hidden away in the attic like a mad uncle'. 'This is a government of control freaks out of control,' seethed Latham. 'They can't stomach the truth.' As historic blasts go, this registered low-to-medium on the Lathameter, but after the lassitude of recent months it seemed almost volcanic. urlLink Keelty 'did not tender resignation' AUSTRALIAN Federal Police Commissioner Mick Keelty did not tender his resignation at any time last week, Prime Minister John Howard said today. But Mr Howard would not answer directly a question by Opposition Leader Mark Latham as to whether he, or his office, was aware Mr Keelty was considering his resignation. 'At no time did the commissioner tender his resignation,' Mr Howard told Parliament. urlLink Howard's tight rule by proxy You would think a government determined to introduce democracy to Iraq could tolerate a little dissent in its own backyard. Free and fearless speech is a hallmark of democracy. It is under totalitarian regimes that people dare not express their real opinions..... urlLink Bad call of a Keystone Cop routine ...The Government's humiliation of Mick Keelty this week was about politics, pure and simple, not national security. Here was a Prime Minister behaving badly in the cause of self-interest, not the public interest. If you've forgotten what a political leader coming apart under the remorseless mental pressure of evolving defeat looks like, think about John Winston Howard these past three months. It all began with the accursed Mark Latham, of course. The bizarre pantomime of Keelty's persecution is only the latest in a string of prime ministerial mini-disasters and lousy judgements since Latham's ascension on December 2 rudely knocked Howard right out of his political comfort zone. .... .... You can see what got up Howard's nose. He hated the bit about Iraq. Most people think Keelty was doing no more than stating the obvious. That is, quite simply, that Australia's support for the US-led invasion and occupation of Iraq - forget about the issue of the Government's breathtaking mendacity and duplicity over motive - heightened the risk that sometime, somewhere, within Australia, we'd cop a terrorist bombing, too. Unlike Australia, Spain did not send troops until after the invasion. And then, like Australia, it sent only a symbolic force. Keelty's reasoning was unexceptional. It just wasn't very politic, now our Prime Minister is in electoral trouble and seemingly, with a huge bucket of money in each hand, getting more desperate each passing week as the published opinion polls get steadily more buoyant for Latham and his mob. Latham's soaring personal standing in particular has Government sphincter muscles in spasm everywhere. It took another 48 hours, until publication of The Australian on Tuesday, before we learnt about Sinodinos's phone call. That was the first we knew of Howard sooling his most senior adviser onto the man his Government had appointed AFP commissioner three years ago. And when this column phoned Howard's senior staff spokesman, Tony O'Leary, later that day, he confirmed Sinodinos had phoned Keelty about the Iraq remark - a 'potential media problem', he called it - and said Sinodinos had made the call only after a 'conversation' with Howard. Later that day a Canberra source asserted Howard's office had again been 'heavying' Keelty over the phone at the Sydney terrorism conference, if we can aptly call it that. Keelty apparently was told, very firmly, to stay away from the press. What we still didn't know was that Howard's people also had been hugely busy insisting Keelty issue a 'clarifying' statement. In other words, they apparently wanted him to lie about it. What other 'clarification' could 'they' possibly have meant? Keelty issued 'his' clarifying statement late on Tuesday afternoon. Only it was not his statement. I'm told it was drafted either by the Prime Minister's office or by staff of the Attorney-General, Philip Ruddock, before being 'vetted' by Howard's office. Whatever, Keelty was told he was to issue the statement without amendment. It was extraordinarily demeaning.... Talk about grovelling humbug. None of Keelty's words had been 'taken out of context'. All that had happened is that, in telling the truth, Keelty had contradicted his Prime Minister. Shocking. Howard has been shrilly asserting since Sunday that Australia's military and political support for the US in Iraq had nothing to do with the threat to Australia as a terrorist target, heightened or otherwise. Good heavens, no. Now the police chief who dared to suggest on national TV that the Prime Minister has no clothes was dutifully back on the same song sheet as Howard and his Government, even including that quick-footed politician in uniform, General Cosgrove. All happy mates together again. In Adelaide on Thursday, where Howard, with the inevitable bucket of money, went wandering like a lost sheep most of the week, he got tackled on ABC local radio by the one issue that had been hounding him right across the media since the weekend. Q: Prime Minister, did your office urge AFP Commissioner Keelty to issue a clarification over his remarks linking the Madrid bombings to Spain's involvement in Iraq? Howard: I'm not going to comment. Why not? - Because I'm not commenting on it. You can't say whether Mr Keelty's statement on Tuesday was made after a request from your office? - I don't have any comment on those matters. He made a statement, the statement speaks for itself. I really don't have anything further to say. But isn't it legitimate for Australians to know whether there was any pressure applied from a political office on a law officer? - Look, I can assure you there has been no improper communications in relation to the role of the Police Commissioner. We totally respect his complete authority and independence in relation to confidential operational police matters.' But if you don't tell us whether or nor that contact was made ...? - I am telling you there has been nothing improper. Very clever. Brave, too. Note how precisely Howard chose his words. The entire episode smacks of the most ham-fisted and desperate of his prime ministership. Talk about a career in crisis. urlLink Keelty calls for unity PRIME Minister John Howard has denied pressuring Australian Federal Police Commissioner Mick Keelty into making a statement clarifying his comments linking the Madrid bombing to Spain's support for the war in Iraq. Mr Howard has confirmed his office had contact with Mr Keelty following his comments but denied that equated to putting political pressure on the country's top policeman. Opposition Leader Mark Latham unsuccessfully moved to censure Mr Howard in parliament over the row with Mr Keelty. But Mr Keelty has called for unity in the fight against terror. In a speech to a Sydney security conference, Mr Keelty avoided the row and made no mention of the impact of Iraq on terror threats to Australia. He said unity between the government, police and business was the key to fighting terrorist threats. 'The power of a united front will ensure that future generations will read about terrorism in their history books rather than in their daily newspapers,' Mr Keelty said. |
1,241,231 | male | 37 | Technology | Aries | 18,March,2004 | Just got the following from emailnation (The Nation's email service). Several Democratic members of Congress, including Senators Carl Levin and Ted Kennedy, have recently assembled compilations of George W. Bush's lies leading up to the invasion of Iraq. The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace put out a report in January that presented a good sampling of the best--or worst--of the Administration's false remarks about Iraq's WMD and the al Qaeda-Saddam relationship. But the prize goes to Representative Henry Waxman, who has just released a report that identifies 237 specific misleading statements made by Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Colin Powell, and Condoleezza Rice in 125 separate public appearances. For more, read David Corn's new Capital Games urlLink http://www.thenation.com/capitalgames/index.mhtml?bid=3&pid=1321 And don't miss Corn's best-selling book, The Lies of George W. Bush, for a full account of the falsehoods, fibs and fabrications of the Bush presidency. Also worth reading is Corn's recent Cap. Games posting explaining why anyone who gives a damn about politics, policy, and public affairs ought to wish CSPAN a very happy 25th birthday. urlLink http://www.thenation.com/capitalgames/index.mhtml?bid=3&pid=1312 For info on The Lies of George W. Bush: urlLink http://www.bushlies.com/ |
1,241,231 | male | 37 | Technology | Aries | 17,March,2004 | urlLink By shifting his focus to Saddam Hussein, George Bush did Osama bin Laden a big favour , writes Paul Krugman. Teaser quotes: The Bush Administration, which baffled the world when it used an attack by Islamic fundamentalists to justify the overthrow of a brutal but secular regime, and which has been utterly ruthless in its political exploitation of September 11, must be very, very afraid. ...Bush, while eager to invoke September 11 on behalf of an unrelated war, has shown consistent reluctance to focus on the terrorists who actually attacked America, or their backers in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. This reluctance dates to Bush's first months in office. Why, after all, has his inner circle tried so hard to prevent a serious investigation of what happened on September 11? After September 11, terrorism could no longer be ignored, and the military conducted a successful campaign against al-Qaeda's Taliban hosts. But the failure to commit sufficient US forces allowed Osama bin Laden to escape. After that, the Administration appeared to lose interest in al-Qaeda; by mid-2002, bin Laden's name had disappeared from Bush's speeches. It was all Saddam, all the time. |
1,241,231 | male | 37 | Technology | Aries | 15,March,2004 | urlLink Marking the front line in the war on crashes By Malcolm Schmidtke, Gay Alcorn January 20, 2004 Even modern-day passenger cars cannot adequately protect their occupants at impact speeds above 30 to 50 km/h when rigid trees and poles are involved. - Monash University study The burly engineering professor is standing beside what is arguably one of Victoria's safest roads, Princes Freeway, fingering the blunt end of a crash barrier beneath an overpass in Werribee. The concrete block is off the side of the road but end-on to the oncoming traffic. 'When someone comes off the road and they hit this,' he says, moustache bristling, 'they would be wiped out. Nothing would be left of the car. This is a classic landmine.' Their focus on these inadvertent instruments of death and injury reflects an increasing awareness within the road safety community that roadsides are the next big thing in the battle against the road toll - and that they require a different approach from the assault on speed. With speed, the focus has been on the individual - to change aberrant behaviour through blame and punishment. With roads, it is assumed that average law-abiding individuals have faults and frailties but that when they make errors they should not have to pay with their lives. The other significant difference is that while one approach raises money, the other costs - a lot. |
1,241,231 | male | 37 | Technology | Aries | 09,March,2004 | urlLink On the edge of lunacy. British foreign aid is now targeted at countries willing to sell off their assets to big business Teaser: Aid has always been an instrument of foreign policy. During the cold war, it was used to buy the loyalties of states that might otherwise have crossed to the other side. Even today, the countries that receive the most money tend to be those that are of greatest strategic use to the donor nation, which is why the US gives more to Israel than it does to sub-Saharan Africa. .... But foreign policy is also driven by commerce, and in particular by the needs of domestic exporters. Aid goes to countries that can buy our manufacturers' products. Sometimes it doesn't go to countries at all, but straight to the manufacturers. A US government website boasts that 'the principal beneficiary of America's foreign assistance programs has always been the United States. Close to 80% of the US Agency for International Development's contracts and grants go directly to American firms.' .... What we see here, in other words, is a revival of an ancient British charitable tradition. During the Irish potato famine, the British government made famine relief available to the starving, but only if they agreed to lose their tenancies on the land. The 1847 Poor Law Extension Act cleared Ireland for the landlords. Today, the British government is helping the corporations to seize not only the land from the poor, but also the water, the utilities, the mines, the schools, the health services and anything else they might find profitable. And you and I are paying for it. |
1,241,231 | male | 37 | Technology | Aries | 09,March,2004 | This report in urlLink The Guardian urlLink American troops are killing and abusing Afghans, rights body says Teaser: US troops in Afghanistan are operating outside the rule of law, using excessive force to make arrests, mistreating detainees and holding them indefinitely in a 'legal black hole' without any legal safeguards, a report published today says. Having gone to war to combat terrorism and remove the oppressive Taliban regime, the United States is now undermining efforts to restore the rule of law and endangering the lives of civilians, Human Rights Watch says. Its military forces have repeatedly used deadly force from helicopter gunships and small and heavy arms fire during 'what are essentially law-enforcement operations' to arrest suspected criminals in residential areas where there is no military conflict, the report says. 'The use of these tactics has resulted in avoidable civilian deaths and injuries, and in individual cases may amount to violations of international humanitarian law.' |
1,241,231 | male | 37 | Technology | Aries | 09,March,2004 | urlLink Damaging children, in our name There must be a day of reckoning for those behind the policy of detaining children, writes Marc Purcell. Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone claims she is at last moving to release children from detention centres (as reported in The Age on Saturday). Good. But why didn't this decision come years ago? Moreover, the figures the minister uses are fudged; many more people remain incarcerated than she claims are released; families are being deliberately split up as a result of Government policy; and the duress put on children is still appalling. |
1,241,231 | male | 37 | Technology | Aries | 09,March,2004 | urlLink The land of the free finds a nation going cheap Americans are the chosen people; America is nature's nation; America is the Christian nation; America is the millennial nation; and America is the innocent nation. America, the innocent nation, which, because of its special status as God's chosen, Christian, nation, can do no wrong and must, by definition, always be right, is enough to put the wind up any right-thinking person. But America as nature's nation? What can that possibly mean? Well, according to Hughes, it means that the US embodies the self-evident truth that free-market capitalism is in harmony with the natural order. To resist it is self-defeating, futile and wicked. |
1,241,231 | male | 37 | Technology | Aries | 09,March,2004 | urlLink Guantanamo: a symbol of US loss of values The US does not believe the old rules apply in the war against terror. The word Guantanamo has become shorthand throughout the world for American arrogance. urlLink Guantanamo and the acronyms of despair Guantanamo Bay, where the US military is holding suspected terrorists like Australian David Hicks, is coming increasingly under the spotlight, especially from Americans themselves. A picture of despair, privation and dubious interrogation methods is emerging. Michael Mori's attack this week on the legal processes was particularly important because it was the first public criticism from within the military establishment. urlLink US holds children despite pressure The United States has held three child detainees at its military base in Guantanamo Bay for more than a year and the Pentagon said today it has no plans to move or free them, despite international pressure. Nothing to compare though with Australia's detention of children (see earlier blog entries). |
1,241,231 | male | 37 | Technology | Aries | 09,March,2004 | Now I have dug up those articles I promised - ones that I came across in the last couple of months that I didn't get around to posting. urlLink This article, from the Sydney Morning Herald discusses the content of two recently released books that investigates the Bush and Cheney's crony capitalism - how they made money in the past, and their current corporate interests: Teaser Quotes: ...Vice-President, Dick Cheney, who even while in office receives hundreds of thousands of dollars in 'deferred payments' from his old company, Halliburton, a giant oil services conglomerate which now has the lion's share of (untendered) Pentagon contracts to rebuild Iraq. 'It is a simple fact that George Bush and Dick Cheney got rich through pretty much the same tricks, albeit on a smaller scale, as those that enriched Enron and other scandal-ridden corporations,' |
1,241,231 | male | 37 | Technology | Aries | 09,March,2004 | In my world news meanderings last night I also came across urlLink this story from the New York Times . A Murdoch paper, but none the leass a good article. Iraq is missing many of its men and children - not just from Collateral damage, but locked up by the yanks. Teaser excerpts: 'Iraq has a new generation of missing men. But instead of ending up in mass graves or at the bottom of the Tigris River, as they often did during the rule of Saddam Hussein, they are detained somewhere in American jails. ..'American forces are still conducting daily raids, bursting into homes and sweeping up families. More than 10,000 men and boys are in custody. According to a detainee database maintained by the military, the oldest prisoner is 75, the youngest 11.' 'It took the Americans five minutes to take my son,' said Fadil Abdulhamid. 'It has taken me more than three weeks to find him.' 'Several men recently released from American jails in Iraq have said they were kicked in the head, choked and put in cold, wet rooms for days at a time. The American authorities declined to comment on the charges, pending the outcome of an investigation. Last month, they suspended 17 enlisted men and officers, including a battalion commander and a company commander, after abuse allegations surfaced at Abu Ghraib prison, where thousands of prisoners are being held. ' Definitely worth a read. Makes the goings on at Guantanamo even more believeable. |
1,241,231 | male | 37 | Technology | Aries | 09,March,2004 | After a foray into blogging at tripod, I return here, as blogger has a better API for posting entries. Following on from my last post at urlLink http://uber-kiwi.tripod.com/blog , this article appeared in the guardian: urlLink Revealed: the full story of the Guantanamo Britons I came across this story urlLink reading Russell Brown's 'Hard News' column - a column of the online NZ news site scoop.co.nz. The article, originally published on the site urlLink PUBLICADDRESS.NET brings together some good information on Guantanamo. Note that during this last gulf war, scoop was one of the only western news web sites to show pictures of 'Collateral Damage' in Iraq, and I find it worth subscribing to their email news service. Russell Brown is a columnist for the reputable New Zealand current affairs magazine urlLink 'The listener' |
1,241,231 | male | 37 | Technology | Aries | 09,March,2004 | I was a bit dissapointed with the F1 race this weekend. I spent most of Sat and Sunday watching the supporting races, the F1 practice and qualifying sessions, and then the race. I think the F1 season will once again belong to Ferrari - their car is miles ahead of everyone else, to the point that I think this year is going to be boring again. So the best racing on TV in Aussie this year is likely to come from the the V* Supercars. I am looking forward to next year when Juan Pablo gets a fast car. Though Raikonnen and Coultard were both off the pace this weekend. urlLink The Herald Sun agrees with me. |
1,241,231 | male | 37 | Technology | Aries | 16,April,2004 | urlLink Remembering Rachel Corrie : 'Rachel is the American woman who was crushed to death by an Israeli D-9 bulldozer in Rafah, Gaza Strip, on March 16, 2003. The bulldozer, like all the bulldozers used by the Israeli army, is manufactured by Caterpillar--an American company--and sold to the Israeli government as part of its military aid package. Rachel was defending the home of a Palestinian physician, with just her body and her defiance, when the driver put the lever into gear and drove forward and then backward, crushing Rachel beneath the blade not once, but twice. Immediately, allegations of tunnels under the home were used to malign Rachel's extraordinary courage. However, no tunnels were ever located. These facts did not stop the Israeli army from demolishing this house two months ago, along with dozens of other homes in Rafah, in the latest wave of home demolitions carried out by US-built Caterpillar bulldozers. Following Rachel's death, many of us expected the US government to investigate what happened and to work to bring those responsible to justice. After all, just a day after Daniel Pearl's kidnapping in Pakistan, FBI agents were dispatched to Karachi to help with that investigation. But the US government remains silent, as neither the FBI nor the State Department nor Congress has mandated an independent investigation.' See the link for the full story. |
1,241,231 | male | 37 | Technology | Aries | 14,April,2004 | Change the channel - Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt's advice to Iraqis who see TV images of innocent civilians killed by coalition troops. The website urlLink Iraqi Body Count is keeping a record of Civilians reported killed by military intervention in Iraq. Todays count: 8,865 - 10,715. Afghanistan was something similar - I'll have to see if I can track that down. I'll get the World Trade Center attack numbers to - I think there is a bit of disparity. |
1,241,231 | male | 37 | Technology | Aries | 14,April,2004 | In 'The Nation' today: urlLink The Sharon-Bush Axis of Occupation : 'Sharon will give Bush's declining popularity a boost when he helps the US President reframe our current war against the people of Iraq as a struggle against terrorism. For thirty-seven years Israeli governments have used that approach to justify their own occupation of the West Bank and Gaza--and it has worked politically to convince many Israelis to ignore the evidence that it is the occupation that causes the terror and not vice versa. President Bush may hope that Americans can be convinced that the United States should follow Israel's example and respond to both terror and legitimate resistance with heightened repression. Israel has just assassinated the leading sheik associated with Hamas terrorism, and the Sharon government has refined a technique of collective punishment so that over the years it has punished millions of Palestinians for the acts of a handful of terrorists. While Sharon's policies have actually generated an increase in the number of Israelis hurt by terror, the impression of 'standing tough' has worked to retain his popularity among many Israelis who have become convinced that Israel has every right to hold on to the West Bank. If the strategy works for Sharon, it might work for Bush's adventure in Iraq as well--if Bush can find a way to convince Americans that the Israeli strategy America seems to be following in Iraq is precisely the way to stand strong against terror.' |
1,241,231 | male | 37 | Technology | Aries | 14,April,2004 | urlLink Anthony Shadid detailed in the Washington Post today , the US Marine siege of Fallujah has produced a powerful backlash in Baghdad and the rest of Iraq. Hospitals report as many as 600 Iraqi civilians have been killed by US troops so far, while media accounts this morning suggest an escalation of violence with US F-15 jet fighters firing cannons at unidentified targets in the city. |
1,241,231 | male | 37 | Technology | Aries | 14,April,2004 | I was thinking back to this article I mentioned earlier in this blog, and the comment about Order 39: urlLink Iraq Under the U.S. Thumb : '' The laws include Mr. Bremer's Order 39, which drastically changes Iraq's previous constitution to allow foreign companies to own 100 per cent of Iraqi assets (except in natural resources), and to take 100 per cent of their profits out of the country, paving the way for massive privatizations.' When you think of this in conjunction with the fact that urlLink British foreign aid is now targeted at countries willing to sell off their assets to big business , it makes all this World Bank, foreign aid stuff that I always thought was great looks like a sham. These superpower funded aid agencies just seem to be a cover for taking over the assets of poor countries. Block their trade, wait for them to go bust, and then go in and clean up. |
1,241,231 | male | 37 | Technology | Aries | 14,April,2004 | Published on Friday, April 9, 2004 by the Los Angeles Times BAGHDAD - April 9, 2003, was the day this city fell to U.S. forces. One year later, it is rising up against them. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld claims that the resistance is just a few 'thugs, gangs and terrorists.' This is dangerous, wishful thinking. The war against the occupation is now being fought out in the open, by regular people defending their homes an Iraqi intifada. 'They stole our playground,' an 8-year-old boy in Sadr City told me this week, pointing at six tanks parked in a soccer field next to a rusty jungle gym. The field is a precious bit of green in an area of Baghdad that is otherwise a swamp of raw sewage and uncollected garbage. Sadr City has seen little of Iraq's multibillion-dollar 'reconstruction,' which is partly why Muqtader Sadr and his Al Mahdi army have so much support here. Before U.S. occupation chief L. Paul Bremer III provoked Sadr into an armed conflict by shutting down his newspaper and arresting and killing his deputies, the Al Mahdi army was not fighting coalition forces; it was doing their job for them. After all, in the year it has controlled Baghdad, the Coalition Provisional Authority still hasn't managed to get the traffic lights working or to provide the most basic security for civilians. So in Sadr City, Sadr's so-called 'outlaw militia' can be seen engaged in such subversive activities as directing traffic and guarding factories. It was Bremer who created Iraq's security vacuum; Sadr simply filled it. But as the June 30 'handover' to Iraqi control approaches, Bremer now sees Sadr and the Al Mahdi as a threat that must be eliminated at any cost to the the communities that have grown to depend on them. Which is why stolen playgrounds were only the start of what I saw in Sadr City this week. At Al Thawra Hospital, I met Raad Daier, an ambulance driver with a bullet in his abdomen, one of 12 shots he says were fired at his ambulance from a U.S. Humvee. At the time of the attack, according to hospital officials, he was carrying six people injured by U.S. forces, including a pregnant woman who had been shot in the stomach and lost her baby. I saw charred cars, which dozens of eyewitnesses said had been hit by U.S. missiles, and I confirmed with hospitals that their drivers had been burned alive. I also visited Block 37 of the Chuadir District, a row of houses where every door was riddled with holes. Residents said U.S. tanks drove down their street firing into homes. Five people were killed, including Murtada Muhammad, age 4. And Thursday, I saw something that I feared more than any of this: a copy of the Koran with a bullet hole through it. It was lying in the ruins of what was Sadr's headquarters in Sadr City. A few hours earlier, witnesses said, U.S. tanks broke down the walls of the center after two guided missiles pierced its roof. The worst damage, however, was done by hand. Clerics at the Sadr office said soldiers entered the building and shredded photographs of Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the top Shiite cleric in Iraq. When I arrived at the destroyed center, the floor was covered with torn religious texts, including copies of the Koran that had been ripped and shot through with bullets. And it did not escape the notice of the Shiites here that hours earlier, U.S. soldiers had bombed a Sunni mosque in Fallouja. For months, the White House has been making ominous predictions of a civil war breaking out between the majority Shiites, who believe it's their turn to rule Iraq, and the minority Sunnis, who want to hold onto the privileges they amassed under Saddam Hussein. But this week, the opposite appeared to have taken place. Both Sunnis and Shiites have seen their homes attacked and their religious sites desecrated. Up against a shared enemy, they are beginning to bury ancient rivalries and join forces against the occupation. Instead of a civil war, they are on the verge of building a common front. You could see it at the mosques in Sadr City on Thursday: Thousands of Shiites lined up to donate blood destined for Sunnis hurt in the attacks in Fallouja. 'We should thank Paul Bremer,' Salih Ali told me. 'He has finally united Iraq. Against him.' Naomi Klein is author of urlLink 'Fences and Windows: Dispatches From the Front Lines of the Globalization Debate' (Picador, 2002). Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times |
1,241,231 | male | 37 | Technology | Aries | 14,April,2004 | Recent Articles by Naomi Kline urlLink Iraq Under the U.S. Thumb The White House Wants to Make the Iraqis Seem to Be Out of Control, Incapable of Governing Without US Direction' ....On March 19, an anti-occupation march designed as a show of unity between Sunni and Shia Muslims was much smaller than organizers had hoped, and no wonder: Less than three weeks ago, 70 people were killed in a horrific attack on the same Shia mosque where demonstrators were meant to gather. To underscore the threat, U.S. occupation chief Paul Bremer chose the day of the planned protests to predict that more such major attacks were likely 'when you have masses of Shia together.' Those who dared to show up despite the warnings glanced around nervously, while men armed with Kalashnikovs lined the streets and rooftops, looking for signs of trouble..... ...It now looks almost certain that Iraq's first 'sovereign' government will be created by a process even less democratic than the abandoned caucus system: The U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council will simply be expanded in size. This body is so discredited here that it is called the 'governed council,' but widespread objections have so far been drowned out by the nightly attacks. Mr. Bremer has also managed to use the terrorist attacks to make sure that Iraq's next government will be able to do nothing but implement his orders. Earlier this month, his plan to push through an interim constitution seemed doomed, with several members of the Governing Council refusing to sign the contentious document. But after the devastating attacks on Shia religious sites on March 2, Iraqi leaders came under pressure to sign the document as a show of national unity and stability. The interim constitution, signed two weeks ago, states that, 'The laws, regulations, orders, and directives issued by the Coalition Provisional Authority . . . shall remain in force.' The laws include Mr. Bremer's Order 39, which drastically changes Iraq's previous constitution to allow foreign companies to own 100 per cent of Iraqi assets (except in natural resources), and to take 100 per cent of their profits out of the country, paving the way for massive privatizations. Defying Mr. Bremer's orders won't be an option after the 'handover.' The interim constitution clearly states that the only way these laws can be changed is by a three-fourths vote by the Iraqi transitional government. According to the same constitution, that body won't exist until elections are held in early 2005. In other words, on June 30, the occupation won't end, it will simply be outsourced to a group of hand-picked Iraqi politicians with no democratic mandate or sovereign power. With its new Iraqi face, the government will be free from the ugly perception that Iraq's national assets are being auctioned off by foreigners, not to mention being unencumbered by input from Iraqi voters who might have ideas of their own. .... urlLink The U.S. is Sabotaging Stability in Iraq ....make no mistake: This is not the 'civil war' that Washington has been predicting will break out between Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds. Rather, it is a war provoked by the U.S. occupation authority and waged by its forces against the growing number of Shiites who support Muqtada al-Sadr..... ....The trouble began when Mr. Bremer closed down Mr. al-Sadr's newspaper last week, sparking a wave of peaceful demonstrations. On Saturday, Mr. Bremer raised the stakes further by sending coalition forces to surround Mr. al-Sadr's house near Najaf and arrest his communications officer. Predictably, the arrest sparked immediate demonstrations in Baghdad, which the Iraqi army responded to by opening fire and allegedly killing three people. It was these deaths that provoked yesterday's bloody demonstrations. At the end of the day on Sunday, Mr. al-Sadr issued a statement calling on his supporters to stop staging demonstrations 'because your enemy prefers terrorism and detests that way of expressing opinion' and instead urged them to employ unnamed 'other ways' to resist the occupation, a statement many interpret as a call to arms. On the surface, this chain of events is mystifying. With the so-called Sunni triangle in flames after the gruesome Fallujah attacks, why is Mr. Bremer pushing the comparatively calm Shia south into battle? Here's one possible answer: Washington has given up on its plans to hand over power to an interim Iraqi government on June 30, and is now creating the chaos it needs to declare the handover impossible. A continued occupation will be bad news for George Bush on the campaign trail, but not as bad as if the handover happens and the country erupts, an increasingly likely scenario given the widespread rejection of the legitimacy of the interim constitution and the U.S.-appointed government. It's a plan that might make sense in meetings in Washington, but here in Baghdad it looks like pure madness. By sending the new Iraqi army to fire on the people it is supposed to be protecting, Mr. Bremer has destroyed what slim hope it had of gaining credibility with an already highly mistrustful population. On Sunday, before storming the unarmed demonstrators, the soldiers could be seen pulling on ski masks, so they wouldn't be recognized when they returned to their neighborhoods. Meanwhile, Mr. al-Sadr is having his hero status amplified by the hour. ... |
1,241,231 | male | 37 | Technology | Aries | 14,April,2004 | Sarajevo on the Euphrates: An Eyewitness Account From Inside the US siege of Falluja by Dahr Jamail My friends made several trips in and out of no man's land, and even spoke to the Marines. But on the last trip US sharpshooters blew out the vehicle's tires. My friends were forced to retreat, leaving a pregnant woman trapped in her house. Falluja, Iraq, a low-rise, mostly Sunni city of about 200,000, has become this war's Sarajevo. I was there on Saturday and Sunday during what was supposed to be a cease-fire. Instead of calm, I found a city under siege from American artillery and snipers. At one of the city's clinics I saw dozens of freshly wounded women and children, victims of US Marine Corps munitions. Hospital officials report that more than 600 Iraqis have now been killed, most of them civilians. Two soccer fields in Falluja have been converted to graveyards.... ...The Americans have bombed one hospital, and were sniping at people who attempted to enter and exit the other major medical facility. So there were effectively only two small clinics that were safe to care for the hundreds of wounded. (Along with the one we visited, there is one set up in a mechanic's garage.).... ...The ambulance--the only one left in this part of town, all the others having been destroyed by the Marines--already had three bullet holes from a US sniper through the front windshield on the driver's side. The previous driver was out of action; a US sniper's bullets had grazed his head not long ago. The clinic staff hoped that having English-speaking Westerners on board would allow the vehicle to retrieve more wounded..... ...My friends made several trips in and out of no man's land, and even spoke to the Marines. But on the last trip US sharpshooters blew out the vehicle's tires. My friends were forced to retreat, leaving a pregnant woman trapped in her house..... This article is an edited excerpt from urlLink Jamail's weblog for the New Standard News. |
1,241,231 | male | 37 | Technology | Aries | 14,April,2004 | Occupation forces in Iraq have used F16 fighter planes to bomb the Nizal neighbourhood in Falluja, Aljazeera TV's correspondent has reported. ' The US military has denied it is targeting civilians An estimated 125 people are buried in this sports field, turned cemetery. Up to 600 people have been killed in the six-day siege of Falluja. |
1,241,231 | male | 37 | Technology | Aries | 14,April,2004 | April 10, 2004, ... The 160,000 occupation forces, backed by mass destruction technology, are now deemed insufficient in the fight against the Sunni diehards and the Shiite unrepresentative extremists. Furthermore, many thousands of foreign fighters have indeed come 'flooding' into Iraq - not terrorists sent by bin Laden but mercenaries hired by the occupation authorities. Their role is to carry out dangerous tasks, to help reduce US Army casualties. This is in addition to the Pentagon's Israeli-trained special assassination squads. Iraqis now believe that some of the recent assassinations of scientists and academics were perpetrated by these hit squads. A similar campaign of assassinations in Vietnam claimed the lives of 41,000 people between 1968 and 1971. The unleashing of F-16 fighter bombers, Apache helicopter gunships and 'precisely' targeted bombs and tank fire on heavily populated areas is making the streets of Baghdad, Fallujah and the southern cities resemble those of occupied Palestine. Sharon-style tactics and brutality are now the favoured methods of the US-led occupation forces - including the torture of prisoners, who now number more than 10,000. Opposing Saddam's tyranny was never the same thing as welcoming invasion and the tyranny of occupation. There is little doubt that the resistance will spread to new areas of Baghdad and the south, with the intense anti-occupation feelings of the people turning into more militant forms of protest.... .... many Iraqis have decided that the peaceful road to evict the occupiers is not leading anywhere. They didn't need Sadr to tell them this. They were told it loudly and brutally a few days ago by a US Abrams tank, one of many facing unarmed demonstrators not far from the infamous Saddam statue that was toppled a year ago. The tank crushed to death two peaceful demonstrators protesting against the closure of a Sadr newspaper by Paul Bremer, the self-declared champion of free speech in Iraq. The tragic irony wasn't lost on Iraqis. Nor did they fail to notice article 59 of the new US-engineered constitution, which puts the new US-founded Iraqi armed forces under the command of the occupation forces, which will, in turn, be 'invited' to stay in Iraq by the new sovereign government after the 'handover of power' in June. This occupation force will be backed by 14 large US military bases and the biggest US embassy in the world, tellingly based at Saddam's republican palace in Baghdad..... |
1,241,231 | male | 37 | Technology | Aries | 14,April,2004 | From April 13, 2004 An eight-month-old girl is closely watched by guards. Her parents' crime is to have asked for freedom, writes Chris Goddard. excerpt: ....This time I have seen something that I should never have seen. I have been to see an eight-month-old girl, small for her age, smiling at her parents, soon to be walking, her every move watched by guards. I have seen an infant behind grey wires and electric fences, in a high-security prison on the edge of Australia's dead heart. I have seen her parents found guilty, without trial, of wanting freedom. I have seen parents so proud of their first-born, but so close to despair. I have seen an infant given a number. I have seen a baby girl kept in a cage...... Dr Chris Goddard is interim director of Monash University's national research centre for the prevention of child abuse. |
1,241,231 | male | 37 | Technology | Aries | 14,April,2004 | urlLink Atrocity in Fallujah - Robert Fisk: 01 April 2004 : 'Atrocity in Fallujah By Robert Fisk - 01 April 2004 urlLink http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/story.jsp?story=507171 urlLink http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article5974.htm (Full Story) 'The bodies were hanging upside down on each side of the bridge. They had no hands, no feet, one had no head.' My old Iraqi friend had been driving into Fallujah just after the massacre, the stoning, the burning. He was shaking as he told me what he saw. 'They were hanging upside down above the highway, on the old railway bridge which bridge, now a road bridge. The people of Fallujah were just driving over the bridge as if nothing was happening, right past the bodies.' The bridge is on the west side of the Sunni Muslim city, across the Euphrates river, and the corpses had been tied to the girders about six feet above the road. 'When we left, there were no helicopters, no police, no soldiers, it all seemed quite normal; except for the bodies. They were burnt brown. I couldn't tell if they were men or women.' |
1,241,231 | male | 37 | Technology | Aries | 11,May,2004 | AFP is running a story saying British soldiers have fired on and killed Iraqi civilians, including an eight-year-old girl, in situations where there was apparently no serious threat and in many cases the British army has not even investigated the incidents, human rights group urlLink Amnesty International said in a report. Amnesty cited the case of eight-year-old Hanan Saleh Matroud, who was fatally shot in the stomach in Karmat Ali on August 21, 2003 while soldiers from Company B of the 1st Battalion of the Kings' Regiment were patrolling the town. It quoted an eyewitness as saying: 'Hanan was standing in the alley about 60 to 70 metres (yards) from the armoured vehicle. Suddenly a soldier aimed and fired a shot which hit Hanan in her lower torso'. Two months later the British army sent a letter to the girl's family acknowledging: 'A soldier concerned for his own safety and the safety of his patrol fired a warning shot into the air in an attempt to disperse... stones throwers.'...... See the Amnesty urlLink Press Release More Amnesty International urlLink news regarding IRAQ |
1,241,231 | male | 37 | Technology | Aries | 27,June,2004 | GREAT article about the role of the media, in particular Rupert Murdoch's News Corp papers (not just The Australian) by Antony Loewenstein in the Sydney Morning Herald today. A thorough cover of the role of the Media in pushing the case for war, both here and in the US. urlLink Sleeping lies dogging the media over Iraq |
1,241,231 | male | 37 | Technology | Aries | 28,July,2004 | Wow. Big news day today. This must be a record for posts in one day. urlLink Kerry blames Bush for 'world animosity' - World - www.theage.com.au : 'An anti-American slogan on a boat in Australia has caused a stir in the US election campaign. Presidential candidate John Kerry, on the opening day of the Democratic National Convention, said today the United States had not been such a target of world animosity since the Vietnam War era. Kerry was responding to a questioner who asked how he would heal division around the world. The woman said she had just flown back from Australia where she had seen a sign on a boat that said: 'Improve world order, kill an American today'. The comment generated a lengthy, heated discussion of US foreign policy.' |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.