“I’d have killed a thousand if I had bullets enough.”
Well, an army psychiatrist purportedly went off his rocker and shot a bunch of folks in Fort Hood, Texas. I say purportedly, because there is only one thing about this case we can be absolutely certain of. The army will lie. The US military is under absolutely no obligation to tell the truth about anything, has every incentive to lie, and has been caught in lie after lie after lie. All they have to do is flood the airwaves with their version of events, the media will dutifully parrot it, and people will believe it. Then later if the truth comes out, it will be buried in the back pages and most people won’t even hear about it, let alone believe it. Humans are funny that way, they will believe the first thing they hear, and pretty much never revisit the issue. I’m not of course saying there aren’t some fine honourable folks in the military, in fact some of the finest human beings I have ever known were career military. The modern US military is a business though, and their business is selling endless war. For the purpose of getting endless war spending and endless war contracts. And they do a fine job of it, aided and abetted by a lying media and lying government. Smedly Butler said it best, “War is a racket.”
Knowing this, it makes it hard to come to any real conclusions about the shooting itself. And as well, it’s going on very risky ground to draw any conclusions from a single incident. Some guy lost it and shot some people, hopefully there’s not much more to it than that. However, while the incident itself can’t tell us anything, the reaction to it can. And there it’s both interesting and depressing. A big deal will be made about the heroics of it all. It’s a pretty good bet that the alleged lone shooter survives, he won’t ever see the light of day again, let alone a civilian lawyer. It’s fascinating how quickly initial reports of multiple shooters and many friendly fire deaths almost instantly morphed into the lone shooter and heroic defence story. It’s almost uncanny how that always happens in incidents like this. Note previous paragraph about lies.
There will be a certain amount of Muslim bashing, that goes without saying. There will be a discussion about the combat stress our troops are suffering from, but all in a “support our troops context.” There won’t be a whole lot of discussion about why our troops are going halfway around the world to get their heads fucked up in wars to protect western corporate access to Asia’s oil and gas. That we won’t be discussing. It’s like watching doctors treating a man who has his hand stuck in a blender, but no one dares suggest it would be a lot easier to treat him if he would just pull his hand out of the blender. Basically a terrible tragedy that likely has some relation to our overseas wars will be used to justify same. Sigh.
As others have pointed out, the people who died in Texas won’t be counted as casualties of war. If war is such a great thing, why do we go to such great lengths to disguise and hide the true cost of it? I’d like to see a public debate on that some day. I’m pretty sure than when people act evasive, it means they have something to hide. God rest the souls of all the victims of these stupid wars, wherever they fell. War is bad, peace is good, how the hell did we ever forget that?
“War is a racket. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.”
—Smedley Butler
“The direct use of force is such a poor solution to any problem, it is generally employed only by small children and large nations.”
—David Friedman
“What a cruel thing is war: to separate and destroy families and friends, and mar the purest joys and happiness God has granted us in this world; to fill our hearts with hatred instead of love for our neighbors, and to devastate the fair face of this beautiful world.”
—Robert E. Lee, letter to his wife, 1864
(The above image is claimed as Fair Use under US copyright law. It’s not being used for profit, is central to illustrating the post, ands is arguably a historically important image. Credit and copyright: AP Photo. It’s a picture of Howard Unruh, modern America’s first mass shooter, the day after his shooting. On Sept 6 1949 Howard meticulously shot and killed 13 people. He too was a war veteran, though in his case it seems he was just crazy. Crazy people usually aren’t very dangerous, the exception being paranoid schizophrenics like Howard. He is quoted in the title of this post. My only point here, restated, is that killing people really is nuts … but using people’s senseless deaths to justify killing more people, now that’s not nuts, that’s evil. Welcome to the “war on sanity.”)
Obama wins the Nobel Peace Prize and other random nonsense
I haven’t written lately because I have been sinking into despair at the state of the world. Or more specifically at the general state of mental acuity in the world, especially what I see in the USA. I did some research recently and discovered that 15% of American’s think the government was complicit in 9/11. OK, well, that’s not too alarming. Some 40-50% of Americans believe in ghosts, UFOs, or Bigfoot. OK, that’s a little alarming, since there is zero empirical evidence for the existence of any of these. And then the kicker, about 60% of Americans have doubts about the Theory of Evolution. Yes, you read that right, we’re doomed.
Clearly the American educational system has failed in a big way. Evolution is easily one of the most well supported scientific theories ever. More than a century of observation and experiment has established Evolution so firmly that there aren’t even any competing scientific theories. (“God did it” isn’t a scientific theory, no matter how much scientific jargon is used.) I didn’t look it up, but judging from what I read on line, there is also similar disbelief about the Big Bang Theory. And while the Big Bang is not as well established as Evolution, again, it’s the best theory we currently have that explains the evidence we observe in the universe around us.
What’s worse, is that there just seems to generally be a wave of anti-intellectual and anti-science sentiment sweeping the nation. I remember as a kid when science was almost worshipped and Americans were proud of our scientific achievements. Granted it’s not a good thing to accept anything blindly, including the pronouncements of scientists. Still, without science we’d still be living in some version of the middle ages where if one kid out of three grew up you were lucky, and if you saw your sixtieth birthday it was almost a miracle. Is that really what people want? Apparently some do. Jesus is my health care plan. Sigh.
I blame the TV and the Internet myself. Despite its promise, I am starting to think that the Internet is the greatest mass dumbing down device in history. Idiotic ideas that never would have made it past the fliers-stuck-on-your-windshield stage now get world wide exposure … and adherents. And the mainstream media has played right into this with a plethora of shows like “Ghost Hunter” that dress up silly posturing as “science.” News flash people, if you see it on TV, it’s fake. Calling something a “reality show” doesn’t make it real for God’s sake.
Sometimes I am starting to think I wandered through some interdimensional portal into an alternate Earth where everything is the opposite of sensible. Then I wake up and turn on my computer … and Obama has won the Nobel Peace prize. I’m sure Obama was equally surprised, though I see he had no trouble taking the ball and running with it. Granted this is going to drive the Rush Limbaugh crowd wild, but anything about Obama drives them wild. Is this proof of a terrible liberal conspiracy? I mean, Bush bombed people and invaded countries and did exactly what Obama has done for the past nine months for eight years, how come he didn’t get the Nobel Peace Prize? Who knows. What I do know, is this is no big deal. In fact it’s a wonderful example of how committees will often make far riskier decisions that if a single person calls the shots. It sounds counter-intuitive, but tons of research has borne it out, a committee member will often back a far riskier idea than they would if there was no committee, because the risk of failure is spread out among the entire committee. And anyhow, the Nobel Prize organization is a private organization, they can give the prize to anyone. Well, good for Obama, let’s hope he lives up to it.
Speaking of liberal conspiracies, the worst liberal conspiracy of all has been uncovered. Liberals, not content with using a time machine to insert Obama’s birth announcement into Hawaiian newspapers in 1961, have pulled off an even greater feat. Yes, they actually went hundreds of years into the past and inserted liberal and socialist jargon into the bible! Proof of this is that the bible contained socialist jargon hundreds of years before socialism was invented! No, I’m not making this up, well, not most of it. I did make up the time machine part, but some conservatives have actually started to rewrite the bible to eliminate its liberal bias. My mind, formerly reeling, boggles uncontrollably. The absurdity of rewriting your own holy book to conform to your own ideology is so obvious and transcendent that it hardly needs comment. Hopefully this won’t start a trend. What’s next? The Walmart Bible?
Have a great weekend everyone.
(The above image is claimed as Fair Use under US copyright law. It’s not being used for profit and it’s use here in no way interferes with the copyright holders commercial use of the image, arguably the opposite. It’s a picture of an upside down house built by Polish artist Daniel Czapiewski in Szymbark. Poland. Credit and copyright: Javno. As final proof that the world is upside down today, while writing this post I dopped a piece of toast on the floor … where it landed … butter side up! I rest my case.)
Israel’s Generous Offer
This is the “final offer” Israel put on the table for Yasser Arafat at the Camp David Peace conference in 2000. This was the offer that Arafat refused, and was soundly pilloried in the west for doing so. I mean, he was offered something like 91% of the occupied territories, what more do the Palestinians want?
Well, let’s look at Israel’s so called final offer. I’m sorry the map above is in French, it’s the best I could find. Israel’s offer wasn’t in writing so is subject to interpretation, this version is the most generous I could find. Note first that the so called “sovereign” state of Palestine is divided into at least 3 regions, 4 counting the Gaza Strip, with passage of goods and people between them subject to Israel’s control. Israel would keep all the orange regions, and see all those red triangles? Those are Israeli settlements, they would stay. The striped area would be “temporarily” under Israel’s control, with no date as to its eventual return. And in any case, Israel would control the borders around and the airspace above the Palestinian State. The Palestinian state would also be permanently demilitarized. And Israel would retain control of about 80% of the west Bank’s water.
In other words, if the Palestinians lived peacefully on their reservations completely surrounded by Israel, completely at Israel’s mercy, and with Israeli settlements scattered among them … why, they could call themselves independent! This wasn’t an offer of independence, this wasn’t even an offer at all, since this offer is basically what exists now. The occupation repackaged, some deal. No one would accept an offer like that. The black homelands established by South Africa during the apartheid era were more viable than this plan.
And this is the best offer Israel has ever offered the Palestinian? After Arafat refused it and returned to Palestine a hero, the western press went into overdrive blaming Arafat for the “failure” of the peace talks. Even Carter to his eternal shame parroted the Israeli line. Of course he was pretty pissed, he and the Israelis had been eager to get the Palestinians to sign off on some sort of peace deal. So much for his legacy. At least he had the stones to point out later that what the Palestinians live under now is at least as bad as the South African system of apartheid.
The ridiculous thing about this is that Israel is bargaining with stolen property, if their offers can be described as bargaining to begin with. Israel invaded and occupied the West Bank and the Gaza strip in 1967. Since then Israel has refused to annex them, has refused to withdrawal, has built all sorts of illegal settlements on them, and hasn’t negotiated with the Palestinians with anything even resembling good faith. And yet somehow it’s all the Palestinians fault? This occupation is one of the planet’s longest standing injustices, and yet in the western press it is continually portrayed as some sort of situation where Israel has been reasonable and restrained while the “Palestinian violence” is the problem. Yet the Israeli violence, which exceeds Palestinian violence by a factor of a hundred or more, is somehow ignored or even justified. It’s the Palestinians who are living under Israeli occupation, not vice versa.
At least some voices in Israel are calling for a halt to the madness, Israel has to make a just peace with the Palestinians, not bomb them into submission. It’s been more than 40 years since Israeli tanks rolled into the West Bank and Gaza strip, and the more I study the situation the more one sided the public narrative, at least in the USA, seems. In a subsequent post I will talk about the various offers the Palestinians and Arabs have made, yes, they have made very substantive offers. You won’t hear that on Fox.
(The above image is claimed as Fair Use under US copyright law. It’s not being used for profit, it’s the best image available to illustrate the post, and it’s a low resolution copy of only a section of the original image. Credit and copyright: Jerusalem Task Force. I’m going to be posting a number of Palestine posts, because so much of the violence that has wracked the Middle East since World War Two has it’s roots in this mess. Even if it’s only for my own edification and amusement.)
90 years ago today the War to End All Wars ended, ushering in the decades of peace and prosperity the world has enjoyed since.
“We set to work to bury people. We pushed them into the sides of the trenches but bits of them kept getting uncovered and sticking out, like people in a badly made bed. Hands were the worst; they would escape from the sand, pointing, begging – even waving! There was one which we all shook when we passed, saying, “Good morning,” in a posh voice. Everybody did it. The bottom of the trench was springy like a mattress because of all the bodies underneath…”
—Leonard Thompson – quoted in Ronald Blythe, Akenfield
Nice picture eh? He won’t be in any parades. On the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the the eleventh month in 1918 the Allies signed an armistice with Germany, thus bringing The Great War to an official end. In western Europe at least, fighting continued in parts of the Middle East and Russia for some years to come. The armistice did mark the end of the terrible trench warfare on the western front, where millions of German, French, and British troops marched into machine gun and artillery fire to be mowed down like so many stalks of wheat. Countless lives sacrificed to capture and recapture tiny amounts of cratered land, possibly the largest and most pointless military slaughter in history.
Today the war is all but forgotten. For one thing, the veterans are almost all long dead, there’s maybe ten left alive in Europe. In fact most people alive today probably never even met a Great War veteran. For another thing, the Great War was eclipsed by World War Two just a generation later. While the slaughter in World War Two was not as concentrated as that if World War One, it did kill far more people and left a vastly wider swath of destruction. In a very real sense though, World War Two was a continuation of World War One. Heck, numerous wars including the War in Iraq trace their roots to World War One.
As one might expect, The War to End All Wars didn’t turn out anything like anyone expected. Wars almost never turn out the way they were expected, or more importantly, the way the people promoting the war claimed. In the case of World War One, leaders confidently predicted that the war would be over in months, the troops would be home for Christmas. Well, they weren’t, though some managed to celebrate Christmas anyhow in the famous 1914 Christmas Truce.
So November eleventh was celebrated as Armistice Day in Allied Countries after the war. After World War Two it turned into Veterans Day in the USA and Remembrance Day in the British Commonwealth. It’s a day to remember the lost in all wars, and the sacrifice they made. In Berkeley the University of California recently cut down a grove of trees that had been planted to commemorate the alumni who died in The Great War. And in all the debate and controversy and protests about cutting down these trees, no one even mentioned that. Even the Wikipedia article doesn’t mention it. So much for remembering those that fell in the Great War: go off to foreign land, die for your country, have a tree planted in your memory…and less than a century later they cut it down to build a sports complex. Some remembrance.
In any event, this isn’t an article about honouring Veterans, at least not in the traditional way. The best way to honour our veterans is to make sure their children and children’s children don’t become veterans. And to do that is to remember that ultimately there is nothing glorious about war, War is grown men murdering each other en mass in despicable ways. War is possibly the most shameful thing humans do that separate us from the beasts. War is a terrible sick cancer in our collective souls. Those who promote war and urge war are the sickest of them all, especially those who tell us we have “no choice.” Free will and making choices are one of the best things about being human, there is always a choice.
I say let us remember and honour our past and future veterans by choosing war last, not first.
(The above image is claimed as Fair Use under US copyright law. It’s not being used for profit, and in any event I strongly suspect it is an image in the public domain, the photographer who took it is long in his grave. It’s a photograpgh of a French trench during the war, and is not a staged image. There was no need to stage horrible images in World War One, there were more than enough real ones to be had. God rest the souls of all who died in that most terrible of wars and all wars.)
Georgia Preys on my Mind
The town centre of Tskhinvali, Ossetia's capital, in better times.
I’m having a hard time getting over how propaganda is simply being passed on by the American media as if it were fact, and the whole Georgia crisis is portrayed pretty much exactly the way the Bush administration wants it portrayed. And like so many mindless droids, Americans watch the “news” and think they are informed and have meaningful opinions about the topic. As they say in the computing world, “garbage in, garbage out.” If the facts one absorbs are in error, any conclusions one reaches are going to be erroneous as well. I know this has happened before in US history: the Vietnam War, the Gulf War, the invasion of Iraq…all were preceded by a web of lies…but this is the first time I have been paying so much attention to it (being a maniacal blogger has a few upsides, who knew?) so I’ve been watching the process both nationally and locally as both the media and many of my acquaintances absorb and regurgitate crap spewed forth by the Bush administration.
And one of the most egregious re-writings of reality that is taking place is the Georgian assault on Tskhinvali, the capital of a de facto independent South Ossetia for 17 years. There’s a wonderful example in this Kansas City editorial. There’s no doubt that the Georgian army started this mess by a launching a full scale surprise military assault on Tskhinvali on August 8, hours after announcing a comprehensive cease fire and using the opening of the Olympics as cover. Damage in Tskhinvali was widespread, civilian targets came under fire, dozens of people (possibly hundreds) were killed, including a dozen Russian peacekeeping troops. The article makes light of the Georgian attack, exaggerates the Russian’s actions, makes the simply outrageous untrue claim that Russia occupied “most of Georgia,” and just in general drips contempt toward the Russians. It could have been written by the White House, yet people reading will think this is journalism.
I could also go into Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili’s undemocratic rise to power aided by massive American meddling. Followed by America arming him to the teeth and doing everything it could to urge him to use military force settle his issues with Ossetia and Abkhazia (and thus into a military confrontation with Russia,) but it’s too depressing and I’ll leave it for another day. On the plus side there’s still some in the media trying to take a more nuanced view of the situation, and the foreign media is a bit more balanced. The most depressing thing to me at least, aside from the horrors released on civilians on all sides, is how the USA is simply putting spin on it and moving ahead with its agenda. No matter how badly their sophomoric foreign policy blows up in their faces, the people running Washington just borrow more money and redouble their efforts as if nothing had happened. It would be a terrible strategy for running a business, as national policy it’s an unfolding catastrophe.
While on the topic of mass brainwashing, how the hell did the USA ever get into a situation where our leaders promised us wars..and people liked it? What ever happened to politicians who promised us peace and prosperity? There was a time in America when “should we go to war?” was a serious public debate. No longer, now our candidates are falling over themselves with macho posturing. We managed to avoid war with Russia during the Cold War, over confrontations that were far more serious and dangerous to US interests than Georgia, yet now we’re going to have a showdown with the Russians over a minor country most Americans have never even heard of? I don’t think many Americans realize what a war is, let alone how much of a catastrophe a war with Russia would be.
Oh well, tomorrow a post about Golden Ages, and how ours is almost over. Then back to fallout and golf club wielding mutants. Unless another of Bush’s foreign policy land mines blows up somewhere in the world.
(The above image is claimed as Fair Use under US copyright law. It’s not being used for profit, it is central to illustrating the post, and its use here does not in any way interfere with the copyright holder’s commercial use of the image, arguably the opposite. Credit and Copyright: Joshua Kucera. The above image of Tskhinvali was taken on 5 May 2007, before the recent war. The city had somewhere between 10,000 and 30,000 inhabitants, sources vary. I just chose it because this could be the centre of a small town almost anywhere, in fact it looks like many towns I passed through in my recent trip across the western USA. Real town, real people, real lives, site of a real war.)
Shinichi’s Tricycle
Shinichi Tetsutani was a three year old boy who loved to ride his new red tricycle. 63 years ago this day he was riding his trike in his front yard. He was playing with his friend Kimiko. It was 8:15 in the morning. A quarter mile away there was a bright flash in the sky. Shin was badly burned and buried in the debris of his house. He was still alive when his parents dug him out, his hands still gripping the handlebars of his trike. They were unable to get to his two sisters in time as the wreckage of their home burned. Shin died that night. The next day his parents buried their children in their front yard, they thought they were too young to be buried in a lonely grave far from home. Shin’s friend Kimiko had also been killed in the blast, so they were buried together, holding hands. Shin’s beloved trike was buried with him.
Shin’s parents lived on in their rebuilt home for decades, knowing their children were nearby was of some solace. Then in the eighties they decided to dig them up and bury them in a proper grave. They had forgotten about the trike, and were surprised when they found it. Their children were re-buried, the trike went to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, where it is on permanent display. A museum devoted to peace, and the memories of the more than two hundred thousand people who died in the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and 9, 1945.
The atomic bombings are easily among the worst war crimes in history, and like all great crimes, they are surrounded by a wall of lies. If the Japanese had gotten the bomb and used it on San Francisco, the perpetrators of the act would have been hung as war criminals, their barbaric crime elaborated in every textbook in America for all eternity. Because of lies, and let’s face it, racism, these crimes are little known in the USA, and for the most part cared about even less. In most American’s minds killing white civilians is an atrocity, killing brown and yellow civilians is payback.
The first lie is that the atomic bombings “saved American lives.” A figure of half a million dead GIs who would have died in the invasion of Japan is routinely bandied about as if it was fact. The absurdity of this number cannot be overstated. The Japanese navy, army, air force, factories, and cities had been utterly destroyed by four years of warfare. Japan was, literally, defenceless. Yet we are to believe that the invasion of Japan would have resulted in twice as many Americans dead than had died in the entire war? It’s beyond ludicrous: the official army estimates for casualties in the invasion of Japan was 46,000. Then of course the perverted idea that it’s OK to slaughter woman and children to save the lives of soldiers, an idea worthy of Osama Bin Laden, is simply glossed over and ignored. If Japanese soldiers had killed American women and children to save the lives of their soldiers, how many Americans would regard their actions as justified?
Another layer of the lies is that the atomic bombings were necessary to end the war. No, they weren’t. The war was over, Japan had been trying to surrender for a year. The only thing that kept the war going was American politician’s insistence that the Japanese surrender unconditionally. No conquerer in history has ever insisted on an enemy’s unconditional surrender, to do so would force them to fight to the last man, what is the point of that? Every person who died in the last year of the War in the Pacific died because of Truman’s arrogance and pride, and the pride of other politicians surrounding him. It’s really even worse than that, since the Japanese were defeated, their homeland starving, they would have surrendered eventually without either nuclear bombing or an invasion. The unthinkable is retroactively justified by simply ignoring inconvenient alternatives.
And it was Truman and company. To our military leader’s credit, they were appalled by the decision to use the bomb and argued against it. Including Eisenhower and MacArthur. The idea that the bombing was a military “necessity” is kind of hard to support when the military itself argued otherwise. That’s modern America though, a land where the “history” our children are taught is so fraught with lies and omissions that it would make Goebbels proud. One could even make the case that this “history” is part and parcel of why even today the death of innocent brown people in foreign lands at our military’s hands barely registers on the national consciousness, and even when it does is considered justified by many.
Am I trying to make some case against America and its people? No. I am trying to point out that warriors deliberately killing little children is always wrong, no matter who the soldiers are, no matter what the war, no matter what the context, no matter what anyone says. Killing children is a crime, not an act of war. Anyone who says differently is at best misinformed. At best.
God rest their little souls. God grant us the wisdom to never do this again. God help us all through the dark days ahead.
(The above images are claimed as Fair Use under US copyright law. And in any event, I’m pretty sure the copyright holder’s won’t object to my use of them here.)
Did Bush Blink?
In what can only be described as a breathtaking about face, there are reports that the USA will be establishing limited diplomatic relations with Iran, including sending diplomats to Tehran for the first time in nearly thirty years. The US is also breaking with policy and sending a top diplomat to European talks with Iran. The claim is that we are doing this to show how the USA and Europe are united in their opposition to Iran’s nuclear program, but since the Iranians seem unlikely to agree to our demands at this point, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that the USA has blinked in our standoff with Iran.
This isn’t getting much attention in the western press, but I think it’s an important development for a number of reasons. The main one being that if this is true and the USA does send diplomats to Iran, it pretty much signals the end of any attack on Iran by the USA or Israel. I mean, unless Bush is pre-positioning hostages to be seized in the event of hostilities, I can’t imagine American diplomats in Iran as being anything other than the start to normal relations. We made our peace with communist China and Russia, maybe peace with Iran is now around the corner?
And boy, if I was wrong about an attack on Iran, I’m happy to be wrong. It would certainly prove my oft repeated points about how difficult it is to predict the future, and no matter how much ones knows about a topic, a person’s understanding is always limited. Only the profoundly ignorant think they know all the answers about a complex subject like world affairs and foreign relations.
Aside from celebrating stepping back from the abyss, it’s also very curious trying to understand why Bush has suddenly backed down. Granted maybe these reports are exaggerated, and maybe this is some Machiavellian maneuver to get Iran to drop its guard or set it up for some pretext to attack, but for the sake of argument let’s assume Bush has blinked, and that elations with Iran are going to improve. What could have caused this abrupt change?
One of the possibilities is pictured above. Those are reportedly Russian jets now stationed in Armenia, where they act as a deterrent to Turkey…and have been patrolling Iranian airspace at Iran’s request. And Sunday Iran and Russia are signing a comprehensive energy agreement that basically means that Iran will be supplying much of Europe’s natural gas via Russia. The Russians announced some time ago that they would consider an attack on Iran to be an attack on Russia, and they have apparently quietly put their money where their mouth is.
Another possibility is that the rich and powerful may have finally put their foot down and told the Bush administration that there needs to be a diplomatic solution to this problem, because the costs of a war with Iran could be devastating to our already struggling economy. In the final analysis foreign policy is about control of wealth and resources, and national governments usually act in their own selfish interest despite flowery rhetoric about human rights or democracy. I’m not ready for ten dollar a gallon gas, and I’m pretty sure GM isn’t thrilled about the idea either. “What’s good for GM is good for America” may be a truism, but in this case it might be very close to the mark.
Of course, what about Israel? Well, despite their threats, they have also recently begun to do the unthinkable, talk with their enemies. In fact more than that, they have exchanged prisoners with Hezbollah. Hardliners in Israel and elsewhere are apoplectic about this, since Israel exchanged hundreds of prisoners and bodies for two dead Israeli soldiers, but this isn’t about horse trading, it’s about diplomacy. This signals that Israel and Hezbollah can negotiate with each other, and that on some level at least Israel is trying to normalize relations with Lebanon.
Trying to step back and look at the big picture, I suspect that while this is good news simply because the threat of war is receding, it’s bad news for America. In fact some have even suggested that basically this signals surrender in the War on Terror, which is a euphemism for the War for Oil. I think that might be a bit of a stretch, but I do think it signals the beginning of the retreat from the New American Century. The USA is not going to be able to dominate the world, in fact Iraq is likely the high water mark of the American Empire. Could this even be a sign that reality based thinking has finally become fashionable in the Bush administration?
Nah. Have a great weekend everyone.
(The above image of a Russian Sukhoi Su-30 is claimed as Fair Use under US copyright law. It’s not being used for profit and is central to illustrating the post. I have no idea who to credit it too, the Russian military? Those are Su-30s and that is Mt Ararat in the background, so I think it’s an authentic photo. Russia is re-emerging as a major regional military, economic, and political power; and yes, we can blame Bush and Mr Clinton for that.)
FREEDOM ROCKS IN BERKELEY
After going by the demonstration and counter-demonstration in Berkeley today, I am pleased to report that there is still hope for the republic. There was lots of furious rhetoric, but for the most part people were remarkably calm and well behaved. And while the main groups were on opposite sides of the street, people from both sides circulated without being hassled. The closest I saw to problems was one veteran who attacked a girl speaking about the injustices suffered by native Americans. He got no further than kicking her bike before other veterans intervened and calmed him down. It was nice to see.
There were a thousand or more people there. And probably every cop in Berkeley. The cops were looking both bored and annoyed. I felt for them, I’ve done security before, any shift where one is on one’s feet all day gets real old real fast. And their uniforms looked hot and it was a sunny day. At least this wasn’t like the sixties where the crowds were hassling the cops, they had to be thankful for that. I suppose some of them did look like they’d like to bash a few heads, but no heads were bashed that I know of.
Both sides were well represented in the crowd. In fact I was surprised that the folklore about peace protesters all being old hippies simply wasn’t true, if anything young people were far more common in the antiwar crowd than the support-the-troops crowd. In fact an awful lot of the support-the-troops crowd appeared to be old bikers and old veterans and what not from out of town. And it was clear that a good percentage of the crowd were just there out of curiosity. And every news van in the Bay Area was there, in fact newspeople were so ubiquitous that they were having trouble finding people who were willing to be interviewed!
Lots of flags, again mostly on the support-the-troops side. Oddly enough the antiwar crowd seemed to be more organized, superficially one might think the veterans would be more organized, but their crowd was far more ad hoc than the peace groups. Many of them have been protesting together for years, no doubt that explains why they were more organized. The support-the-troops side had a bigger sound system though. The antiwar crowd had more and better signs and visual aids, but relied on bullhorns rather than a sound system. Yes, it was quite the scene.
My favourite sign said “I couldn’t afford a real sign.” Yes, not everyone was taking sides. There was me for example, I was wearing my camouflaged marine cap (yes, I know, a hat is a “cover” in Marine Corps parlance.) On it I had my “It’s Been Fun But I Must Return To The Mother Ship Now” button. I got a few funny looks, but nobody really knew what to make of me. Which was kind of the point, I had sympathy for points both sides were making, and didn’t want to be seen as partisan.
In any event I didn’t stay for the city council meeting, but alls well that ends well. They voted to rescind their letter of a few weeks back, and while they did not formally apologize to the Marines, most council members and the major agreed the letter was a mistake, and that the city council should pass resolutions opposing the war, not opposing the Marine Corps. And the council did say they owned service people an apology. That’s good enough for me and I am going to guess it will be good enough for all but extremists. I can think of other politicians who have never admitted any mistakes, but I digress.
Code Pink is now going to try to get an initiative on the ballot for the next election condemning the Marine Corps and asking them to leave Berkeley. Which is what they should have done in the first place, instead of trying to pull an end run by pressuring the city council in the first place. I don’t think it will pass, but hey, that’s what democracy is all about. Put it to a vote.
According to the news there were a few scuffles and misdemeanour arrests, and I guess a flag was burned…damaging two bicycles. Several of the media reports I have seen exaggerated the few minor problems there were and the negative attitudes expressed. Heck, the media would have been thrilled if there had a been a riot, I’m pretty sure it cost a lot of money to fly those news helicopters overhead (there were three at one point) and a peaceful crowd of 2000 people can’t have been a very exciting shot. All in all though I can only say I was impressed by how the vast majority of people on both sides of the issue comported themselves, and if TV news showed people screaming at each other, those incidents were the exception, not the rule.
Freedom of speech rocks, seeing it in person made me proud of my city, my country, and the military men and women who serve it.
Semper Fi.
(The above image is claimed as Fair Use under US copyright law. It is not being used for profit and it is central to illustrating the post. It is also a low resolution version of the original image and its use here in no way detracts with the copyright holder’s commercial use of the image, arguably the opposite. Credit: Chronicle/Kim Komenich. The building in the background is Berkeley’s old city hall, built in 1909. And no, I do not appear to be in any media pictures I have seen, but there will be other demonstrations.)
“Code Pink” vs “MoveAmericaForward”
Today is the showdown between Code Pink/antiwar activists and MoveAmericaForward and others regarding the Marine Corps Recruiting Center in Berkeley. Ah, the smell of tear gas in the morning! Has the sixties returned to Berkeley? Of course not, the sixties are dead and gone, times change. History may reflect the past, history may resemble the past, but history never repeats itself. Those who forget this are living in the past. Each day is built on top of all the days before, each event in history is the sum of what came before. The view backwards as we stumble into the future may be familiar, but the road ahead is always unknown and always new.
Philosophical and metaphysical ramblings aside, despite my previous rant, I have changed my opinion on this matter. I will not be attacking any crowds of protesters. I know, it must be annoying to some that I change my mind, but what can I say, I am trying to lead by example. Plus, I have always believed that one of the signs of sanity was the ability to change one’s mind when presented with reasonable argument. And annoyingly enough, I still think I’m sane.
Basically, upon further thought, I’ve decided that both sides in this dispute have their points. Worse though, both sides in this dispute are being cynically used by the powers that be to further their agenda. Great. More divisiveness, let’s fight among ourselves while the ultra rich rob the country blind and pursue a military spending empire the likes of which the world has never known. Yeah, that’s going to be productive.
For their part, MoveAmericaForward is part of the “support the troops” scam. Why is it a scam? because it’s the same as a prior generation’s scam, the so called “family values” shtick. Why are these scams? Because they imply that anyone who disagrees with their agenda is “against the troops” or “anti-family.” By claiming you are “for” something that virtually all Americans are for…it makes it possible to claim that people who disagree with you are “anti-troop” and “anti-family.” The beauty part of course is one doesn’t actually have to make the claim that your opponents are against the values all Americans hold dear, one just claims to be “pro-whatever” and let people make the implication themselves. Slicker than whalesh*t really.
And of course misguided antiwar types act as a wonderful target for the pro-war crowd. Granted the ultra pro-war people target everyone, even Senator McCain is taking flak for not being conservative enough. (My mind is still reeling over that one.) Code Pink though has taken the cake so to speak by attacking the USMC. They might as well be printing Marine Corps recruiting posters. When antiwar protests don’t have broad support among mainstream liberals, they’re doing the cause more harm than good.
So I will drop by today to see what’s going on, but I doubt there will be anyone protesting both sides. (If there is, maybe I’ll join them.) I did write letters to the mayor and my city council member asking them to change their mind on the issue. I still adamantly think that the city should not have taken sides and provided city support to a protest group, but I’m not going to join what is effectively a pro-war pro-Bush protest just because I side with them on this particular issue.
And divide and conquer is how the ruling elite stays in power. While people are all worked up over what can only be described as a minor issue in the greater scheme of things, the real issues go unnoticed. I mean, Americans and Iraqis are still dying daily in the model democracy we are supposedly building in Iraq, our government is so bankrupt it’s frightening, and the economy is going down the tubes…and we’re demonstrating over a recruiting office? That makes sense.
Searching for an image to use for this post I came across this site. After viewing it I feel sick and sad. Since when was hatred an American value? One of my theories is that the more rabid and one sided people are about an issue…the more they are using it to compensate for their own inadequacies and insecurities. People make fun of Rodney King for saying “Why can’t we all get along?” I guess because so many of us love to hate.
(The above image is claimed as Fair Use under US copyright law. It is not being used or profit and is central to illustrating the post. Credit: PipelineNews.org)
My Cats are Plotting Against Me
OK, so I let my cats out a few hours before dawn. Awhile later I hear the sound of fighting cats in the yard. I figure it’s the stripy orange guy, he fears nothing and will fight any cat on the planet. While I am getting dressed I can hear the fight is getting closer…moments later a cat flees into the apartment. Who got thrashed? The stripy orange guy! WTF? While I am contemplating this peculiar development…my fluffy black cat, the most non-violent cat on the planet, Gandhi’s cat reincarnated…runs out the door and proceeds to beat the crap out of the intruding cat! I’m like: Oh My God. Did aliens sneak in during the night and swap my cat’s brains? Are they trying to drive me insane?
Makes me think, I can’t even figure out two animals with brains the size of walnuts, and I’m going to make meaningful observations on a world of six billion people? To add insult to injury, I was wondering the other day why I always felt like an idiot around this tenant at a client’s house. So out of curiosity I googled her name. Well, turns out I feel like an idiot around her because compared to her I’m a chimp. Sigh. She won a Nobel Prize at seventeen or some such, yeesh. Sometimes I envy people of average intelligence, most of them seem blissfully unaware that there are people much smarter than them. I on the other hand am just smart enough to know how limited I am compared to people who are really smart.
Oh well. Could be worse. I could be on the Berkeley city council. Yes, some of them are backpedaling over their hasty decision to subsidize Code Pink in their efforts to get a Marine Corps Recruiting Center kicked out of Berkeley. Not surprising, I mean, some of them must have at least some interest in running the city…and having millions of dollars in federal funding cut off because of their using city resources to help a protest group is going to hurt. Anyone heard that Code Pink is offering to pay two million dollars for the parking space the city gave them? I didn’t think so.
In any event I walk by there every day and usually there is nothing going on. I’ve pretty much calmed down about the issue, it mostly makes me mad cause it’s all so dumb and counterproductive and divisive. I understand the protester’s point of view, but their message would play a lot better in Peoria if they chained themselves to a gas station. And the city simply shouldn’t be giving city resources to select protest groups, did they think through the consequences of that at all? In any event, the story once again made CNN, great. There will be a huge protest and counter protest on the 12th, I’ll be there and report all about it. And no, I don’t plan on attacking any protesters, but anything is possible when mobs form.
I have been updating my Countdown to War with Iran page as new ideas and information crop up. I’m still very worried that Bush will indeed attack Iran before he leaves office. From any reasonable standpoint it’s a pretty crazy idea and far riskier than our adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan, but unfortunately to a large extent decisions in the Bush administration are made by a committee of powerful advisers. And it’s not widely known, but groups will take riskier decisions than individuals will. Basically with a group people know on some level that they can avoid taking personal responsibility if things go bad, a strong central leader can’t make that rationalization as easily. And of course in the Bush administration it appears that no one ever takes responsibility for any failure whatsoever…so an attack on Iran is a definite possibility until Bush is out of office.
And speaking of taking responsibility, I’ve decided that Bush’s “surge” in Iraq has nothing to do with Iraq, it’s actually a trap for Bush’s domestic political opponents. First of all there really is no surge, adding a few extra tens of thousands of men for awhile is just a drop in the bucket. The reality is that Sadr’s Mahdi Army, the largest insurgent group in Iraq, declared a cease fire last August, so Bush knew the violence would be dropping some. So the Bush administration quickly invented the “surge” to take credit for it.
The beauty part was no matter what happened, they were golden. The violence dropped of course, though not nearly so much as is commonly portrayed. And now that the compliant media has bought into it and many Americans believe “the surge is working,” no matter what happens the war proponents make out like bandits. IE if violence stays at the merely horrible levels they are at now, they can claim the surge is working as the election approaches. And if violence flairs up again, as it might very well do, why…it’s the liberals fault for not supporting the surge! So, sadly, I suspect that the only result of the surge will be to propel another militarist, likely McCain, into the White House this fall. And frankly, I have a sneaking suspicion that’s all the surge was ever intended for in the first place.
Have a great weekend everyone.
(The above image is claimed as Fair Use under US copyright law. It is only a portion of the original image, low resolution, and converted to grey scale. Its use here does not interfere with the copyright holder’s use of the original image, arguably the opposite. Credit: Copyright © 1995 Art Shaman. The full size colour version of the above image can be viewed here: Digital Artwork Gallery Four. Cats, sigh.)
