Archive for the 'Militarism' Category

Jun 10 2007

Report Details CIA Prisons In Europe

Published by cyrano2 under Militarism, US Imperialism, Torture, CIA

By Joe Kay

6/10/07

A report released Friday by the Council of Europe confirms that the CIA has used interrogation centers in Europe, including in Romania and Poland, to secretly hold and torture prisoners captured in Afghanistan, Iraq and other parts of the globe.

The report is the most detailed description of a secret program initiated by the US government, with the collaboration of Europe. In addition to Poland and Romania, many European and other powers have taken part in the program, including Germany, Italy, Britain and Canada. An earlier report from the council released in June 2006 provided some information on the program, and singled out 14 European governments for complicity.

The report was prepared by Dick Marty, a rapporteur for the council, which is tasked with monitoring human rights in Europe. It was issued the same day as a trial began in Italy against CIA agents suspected of involvement in capturing one of the prison network’s victims (see today’s article on CIA trial in Italy).

“What was previously just a set of allegations is now proven,” the report began. Providing a portrait of lawlessness on an international scale, it noted, “Large numbers of people have been abducted from various locations across the world and transferred to countries where they have been persecuted and where it is known that torture is common practice. Others have been held in arbitrary detention, without any precise charges leveled against them and without any judicial oversight—denied the possibility of defending themselves. Still others have simply disappeared for indefinite periods and have been held in secret prisons, including in member states of the Council of Europe, the existence and operations of which have been concealed ever since.”

The CIA program examined by the report is merely one part of this broader system of detention and abuse (including Guantánamo Bay as well as the network of prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan). “We believe we have shown that the CIA committed a whole series of illegal acts in Europe by abducting individuals, detaining them in secret locations and subjecting them to interrogation techniques tantamount to torture,” Marty wrote.

The newest report by the Council of Europe is based on extensive testimony from current and former intelligence officials in Europe and the US. Marty also obtained raw data on flights in Europe in order to trace the movements of CIA planes transporting prisoners.

Known within the US government as the “High-Value Detainee Program,” the system of secret detention was established shortly after the attacks of September 11, 2001. A presidential directive signed at that time substantially increased the powers of the CIA, exploiting the “war on terror” to establish a network of prisons that could be used as part of future wars planned by the US.

In addition to Poland and Romania, the report indicates that there is some evidence that detention or processing centers were also located for some time in Diego Garcia, which is overseen by the UK but houses a US military base, and Thailand, which the report says was the location of the first CIA “black site” interrogation center.

But as the program was developed, it was Poland and later Romania that were the principal countries used by the CIA. In developing contacts with these countries—which were selected in part because of their economic dependency and their eagerness to establish relations with the US—the CIA sought to ensure unilateral control over the prisoners. The US intelligence agency established direct ties with the military of these countries, bypassing all but top-level civilian officials.

Of those who had knowledge of the program, the report singles out several high-ranking officials, including former Polish President Aleksander Kwansniewski and former Romanian President Ion Iliescu.

Agreements were reached with these countries in order to allow the CIA to operate outside any legal constraints of the host country. “I consider that the stated US policy has, in fact, on the pretext of guaranteeing security, intentionally created a framework enabling it to evade all accountability,” the report stated. The CIA sought deliberately to remove itself from “conventional democratic controls in the foreign countries.”

While those originally transferred to Poland were alleged top officials in Al Qaeda, including Abu Zubaydah and Khalid Sheikh Mohamed, the types of prisoners broadened as the program expanded. The report states that among those imprisoned in Romania were “leaders of branches of suspected ’support networks’ for the insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan” and “suspected leaders of terrorist factions in the Middle East,” in addition to leaders of the Taliban. These categories are broad enough to include anyone considered harmful to US interests in the Middle East.

As evidence of its assertion that secret CIA prison camps were operated in Poland and Romania between 2002 and 2005, the report cites the testimony of intelligence officials and the fact that flight recordings for CIA planes tend to correspond with the capture of significant prisoners by the US.

In addition, the team that prepared the report analyzed “hundreds of pages” of aeronautical data, which demonstrates that “in the majority of cases these CIA flights were deliberately disguised so that their actual movements would not be tracked or recorded….” Dummy flight plans were filed in order to disguise the destination of CIA-operated planes, an example of which can be found here.

The report also devotes a significant amount of space to depicting the conditions faced by prisoners caught up in the program. It describes truly horrendous conditions of isolation, psychological abuse and torture.

The conditions were designed deliberately to dehumanize prisoners and destroy their will. According to the report, prisoners were taken to their cell by “strong people who wore black outfits, masks that covered their whole faces, and dark visors over their eyes.” They were stripped and kept naked for weeks. A common feature at the beginning of the prison time was a four-month isolation regime. “During this period of over 120 days, absolutely no human contact was granted with anyone but masked, silent guards.”

Physical torture was also used. Prisoners were subjected to extreme temperatures, regulated by airflow from a single hole at the top of a prisoner’s cell. “There was a shackling ring in the wall of the cell, about half a metre up off the floor,” the report states. “Detainees’ hands and feet were clamped in handcuffs and leg irons. Bodies were regularly forced into contorted shapes and chained to this ring for long, painful periods.”

In addition, prisoners were subjected to sensory deprivation and overload. They were at times bombarded with loud music or other sounds, including “distorted verses from the Koran, or irritating noises—thunder, planes taking off, crackling laughter, the screams of women and children.”

Marty condemns in particular the role of European governments in facilitating the CIA program and attempting to obstruct the council’s investigations. “Many governments have done everything to disguise the true nature and extent of their activities and are persistent in their uncooperative attitude,” the report states. “Some European governments have obstructed the search for the truth and are continuing to do so by invoking the concept of ’state secrets.’ ” Within the later category, the report singles out in particular Germany and Italy. Many countries, as well as NATO, did not respond to questionnaires distributed by the investigation.

A further section of the report details the case studies of captured individuals that highlight the complicity of different governments, including Khaled El-Masri (Germany), Abu Omar (Italy) and Maher Arar (Canada).

European governments continue to deny involvement in or knowledge of the CIA interrogation program. The current Polish president, Lech Kaczynski, issued a statement that Poland has never housed a prison, and a similar statement was released by former Romanian President Iliescu.

Paul Gimigliano, a CIA spokesperson, claimed not to have read the report. Without explicitly denying its contents, he declared, in what amounted to a veiled threat, “Europe has been the source of grossly inaccurate allegations about the CIA and counterterrorism. People should remember that Europeans have benefited from the agency’s bold, lawful work to disrupt terrorist plots.”

Bush himself admitted in September 2006 the existence of the CIA prisons, at which he said an “alternative set of procedures” were used to interrogate detainees. However, he provided no information on where the prisons were located.

At the time, Bush insisted that there were no more prisoners at the secret facilities. However, he also insisted that the program was necessary and would have to be continued. In November 2006, Congress passed the Military Commissions Act with bipartisan support, granting the president wide latitude to authorize the CIA to use abusive interrogation methods. Last week, the New York Times reported that Bush is preparing to issue a new directive that will permit the CIA to continue abusing prisoners in countries around the world.

For full report, click here

Contributed by Isha Khan, who can be reached at bdmailer@gmail.com

2 responses so far

Jun 09 2007

Losing Afghanistan: Firepower Doesn’t Always Win Wars

By Ramzy Baroud

6/8/07

In a statement made available through the country’s Foreign Office, Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Khursheed Mahmood Kasuri chastised the “international community” for the “abandonment” of Afghanistan following the withdrawal of Soviet forces in 1989. In his estimation, it was this attitude that created the conditions which eventually culminated in the rise of the Taliban, the hosts of al-Qaeda.

The statement was reportedly made at the G-8 Foreign Ministers’ recent conference in Potsdam, Germany, according to Pakistan’s Daily Times. Kasuri was, expectedly, packaging his critique within a context specific to Pakistan’s own concerns: namely the 2.4 million Afghani refugees - according to UNHCR figures – and who have crossed the border into Pakistan seeking shelter and relative safety. Moreover, Pakistan, under consistent censure for allegedly failing to hunt down Taliban and al-Qaeda militants operating around its Western border, deployed 90,000 soldiers into those regions; border skirmishes, sporadic gun battles but increasingly sustained bombardment campaigns of tribal areas – suspected of being safe haven for al-Qaeda militants – have left thousands dead and wounded since the American war on Afghanistan in October 2001.

The tension created by Pakistan’s somewhat proxy role in reining in US foes is complicating the government’s mission in asserting itself as an independent entity whose main concern is the welfare of its own people. But tension in Pakistan, which runs through tribal and political lines, is hardly comparable to the simmering situation in Afghanistan itself, where anger directed at the Kabul government and its Coalition benefactors is boiling to the point that another violent upsurge is imminent.

Hamid Karazi, crown president of Afghanistan in charade elections to rule over a disjointed country and discontented population is still incapable of exercising his power beyond the municipal borders of the capital; but even that level of control is gradually more difficult to maintain as a spate of suicide bombers is promising to turn Kabul into another Baghdad. But since his ascent to power in October 2004, Karzai has little to show for, save endless pledges of financial support he solicited, 40 billion USD to be exact, out of which little arrived, and the money that was made available is hardly improving people’s lives – corruption in Afghanistan is, unsurprisingly, rife. Billions have been spent in Afghanistan nonetheless, by NATO/US forces on military equipment, whose firepower effectiveness is anything but debatable among Afghani civilians.

The BBC’s Alastair Leithead reported on May 31, “Afghans’ Anger over US Bombing” merely details one of many such incidents in which scores of innocent civilians are killed; such reports are ever more rare since they are simply not newsworthy – the worth of a news story from Afghanistan is measured by whether Coalition forces incurred causalities or not. The recent killings in the village of Shindand in the Zerkoh Valley, Western Afghanistan was harrowing by any standards. 57 were reportedly killed by American bombardment; half of the dead were women and children, according to Leithead; the bombardment also destroyed 100 homes, humble dwellings that are unlikely to be rebuilt soon.

“The bombardments were going on day and night. Those who tried to get out somewhere safe were being bombed. They didn’t care if it was women, children or old men,” said one of the survivors. But who would believe Mohammad Zarif Achakzai, who fled his mud house with his family under the relentless bombardment? Brig Gen Joseph Votel has simply dismissed the reports of civilian causalities. “We have no reports that confirm to us that non-combatants were injured or killed out in Shindand,” he said. And that is that.

Shindand is not under Taliban control, at least not yet. Much of the country, mostly in the south but increasingly elsewhere is falling under the control of Taliban extremists. The Taliban offers job security to the men and an opportunity for revenge and even martyrdom; in many parts of Afghanistan, such offers are exceedingly appealing.

Fearless British journalist Chris Sands of the Independent, one of very few journalists reporting from Taliban controlled areas, tells me that it’s only a matter of time before Afghanistan turns into an Iraq-like inferno. Indeed, Taliban’s regrouping efforts have been astonishingly successful as of late. Taliban militants have managed to ambush and kill 16 government police officers just hours after killing seven Coalition soldiers – including five Americans – by shooting down their chopper over the Helmand province on May 30. These confirmed numbers are often balanced out with unconfirmed government report of many Taliban’s militants killed by government forces; it’s often the case that these reports overlook the much higher number of civilian casualties.

Foreign powers are clearly failing in Afghanistan; they neither won hearts and minds nor contributed to the stability and rebuilding of the country in any meaningful way – 60 percent of the country’s economy is now dependent on narcotics exports. In fact, Afghanistan represents a perfect case of the proverbial “cut and run” that President George Bush avows not to commit in Iraq. Needless to say, the only assignment that the US and its allies seem seriously committed to is that of maintaining its military regime, predicated on the utter reliance of firepower regardless of the outcome.

Afghanistan’s two foreign military missions: Nato’s International Security Assistance Force (Isaf), with its 37,000 troops and the US-led Coalition: Operation Enduring Freedom are affectively losing their pseudo control over the country. Taliban is gaining strength and is regenerating, not because of their remarkable theological alternative to democracy, but precisely because all of the rosy promises made late 2001 and early 2002 yielded a most repressive regime, marred with corruption, insecurity, warlords, and incessant Coalition attacks on civilian localities throughout the country. When Afghans turn back into supporting the Taliban, one can only imagine how desperate they’ve become.

Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Kasuri is obviously right, though his intentions might be self-serving; “abandonment” is a befitting term to describe the so-called international community’s attitude towards Afghanistan; that abandonment brought the Taliban to power following the chaos resulting from the ousting of the Soviets and their puppet regime in 1989 – subsequent civil war in Afghanistan then killed more than 50,000 people in Kabul alone – is shaping a bizarrely similar scenario that is giving rise to the same loathed grouping; The Taliban could soon find itself in a strong bargaining position, that even the Americans themselves cannot ignore; the Taliban’s “Spring Offensive” might’ve been delayed, but the balance is clearly tipping in favor of the Taliban, in a war that promises more of the same sorrows.

-Ramzy Baroud is a Palestinian author and journalist. His latest volume: The Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a People’s Struggle (Pluto Press: London) is available at Amazon.com. He is the editor of PalestineChronicle.com and can be contacted at editor@palestinechronicle.com

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Jun 08 2007

Beyond PTSD: the Moral Casualties of War

Published by cyrano2 under Militarism, Moral Injury, Veterans, War

BY CAMILLO “MAC” BICA

6/4/07

According to a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, during the Iraq war, 56 percent of soldiers and Marines (henceforth I will use the term “soldiers” to include members of all branches, both male and female) have killed another human being, 20 percent admit being responsible for noncombatant deaths, and 94 percent had seen bodies and human remains.[i] According to Colonel Charles Engel, MD, MPH, director of the deployment health clinical center at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, between 15 and 29 percent of soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan will suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Because soldiers still on active duty are being deployed longer and more often to Iraq, experts say that the PTSD rate among Iraq veterans could well eclipse the 30% lifetime rate found in a 1990 national study of Vietnam veterans. While these numbers are staggering and should give any rational human being pause, the readjustment difficulties suffered by active duty military and veterans because of their experiences in Iraq are not exhausted by references to trauma and PTSD. Tragically, as soldiers experience the horror and cruelty of war, especially urban counterinsurgency war, the moral gravity of their actions – displacing, torturing, injuring, and killing other human being (henceforth “combat behavior”) – becomes apparent, soldiers suffer not only the effects of trauma, but what I will term “moral injuries,” i.e., debilitating remorse, guilt, shame, disorientation, and alienation from the remainder of the moral community.

The observation that some human beings become moral casualties because of their experiences in war is not new. Historically, many societies have recognized war’s deleterious moral effects and required returning warriors to undergo elaborate atonement and purification rituals, i.e., quarantine, penances, etc.[ii] These “therapies” provided the means and the opportunity to cope with the moral enormity of their actions in war. Tragically, the moral injuries of modern warriors, however, have been virtually ignored,[iii] overlooked, or disregarded by the conventional therapeutic community operating as it does within a Nietzschean-Freudian-Scientific legacy that views ethical concerns as clinically irrelevant – “autonomous man” ought [to] feel no guilt “nor bite of conscience” for his actions.[iv] Focusing, instead, upon stress and trauma, most moral symptoms presented by returning soldiers are either not taken seriously or assimilated under the diagnostic umbrella of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Consequently, the veterans receive the signal that an inability to forget, to put the war behind them, is either weakness or, perhaps worse, illness. Accordingly, veterans are advised to ignore what has occurred, to “de-responsibilitize,” i.e., to neutralize their feelings by accepting the “naturalness” of their behavior on the battlefield,[v] and/or to undergo a myriad of conventional therapies (psychoanalytic, behavioral, pharmacological, etc.) intended to enable them to deal with the stress and trauma of their experiences. In either approach, moral considerations are, for the most part, irrelevant.

Unfortunately, in most cases, moral injury neither responds well to medication nor can it be rationalized away. In fact, such methods, according to Robert Jay Lifton, tend to alienate them still further. Speaking about returning Vietnam Veterans, Lifton writes,

“The veterans were trying to say that the only thing worse than being ordered by military authorities to participate in absurd evil is to have that evil rationalized and justified by the guardians of the spirit . . . The men sought out chaplains and shrinks because of a spiritual-psychological crisis growing out of what they perceived to be irreconcilable demands in their situation. They sought either escape from absurd evil, or, at the very least, a measure of inner separation from it. Instead, spiritual-psychological authority was employed to seal off any such inner alternative.”[vi]

Such “therapeutic” advice as “forget it,” “live with it,” “act as though it never happened, or “don’t worry about it, human beings act that way in survival situations,” does little to alleviate the veteran’s moral pain and suffering.

As may be expected, the prevalence of moral injuries suffered by those who fought in a really ambiguous war, or in a counter insurgency/guerilla war, such as in Vietnam and Iraq, where, for example, the distinction between combatant and noncombatant is obscure at best, will be significantly greater and the symptoms more severe. However, all wars yield moral casualties. J. Glenn Gray, a philosopher, writes of his experiences as an Intelligence Officer during World War Two

“My conscience seems to become little by little sooted . . . .. (only) if I can soon get out of this war and back on the soil where the clean earth will wash away these stains! I have also other things on my conscience . . . A man named H., accused of being the local Gestapo agent in one small town was an old man of seventy . . . . I was quite harsh to him and remember threatening him with an investigation when I put him under house arrest . . . Day before yesterday word came that he and his wife had committed suicide by taking poison . . . The incident affected me strongly and still does. I was directly or indirectly the cause of their deaths. . . . I hope it will not rest too hard on my conscience, and yet if it does not I shall be disturbed also.”[vii]

Gray’s insights are especially valuable as they illustrate that even the actions and experiences of those involved in a “good” war and not directly confronting the enemy on the battlefield, can precipitate moral injury. Consequently, those military theorists who have argued that debilitating remorse, guilt, shame, etc., – what I have termed “moral injuries” – may be avoided by “educating” soldiers, probably convincing is better, about the justness and necessity of war and the “appropriateness” of their combat behavior,[viii] could benefit from Gray’s observations.

Psychologist and former Army Ranger, Lieutenant Colonel Dave Grossman[ix] and others have written extensively and insightfully regarding the profound debilitating effects of killing in war – combat behavior. However, for whatever the reason – probably the aforementioned scientific bias against acknowledging moral injuries or at least the propensity of not taking the possibility seriously – Grossman has alleged the etiology of such symptoms to be traumatic stress. Rachel MacNair agrees, postulating the existence of a variant of PTSD she terms “Perpetration-Induced Traumatic Syndrome (PITS).”[x] Both Grossman and MacNair argue that individuals who kill become traumatized as a consequence, not of being the victim of trauma as is the common interpretation of PTSD, but by being an active participant in causing trauma in others.

I find Grossman’s and MacNair’s conclusions problematic for the following reasons. After having been programmed by psychologically sophisticated military training and indoctrination techniques,[xi] and experiencing the grotesque life threatening conditions of service in Iraq, especially with repeated tours of duty, many, perhaps most, may view combat behavior as quite “normal” under the circumstances. Others may believe it betters their chances for survival and for returning home alive and intact. Still others may find having control over life and death empowering, exciting, exhilarating and as reinforcing the military stereotype of the elite warrior, “the toughest mother in the valley.” With appropriate “education,” many members of the military may be convinced, at least temporarily, that combat behavior in Iraq is justified, satisfying, and fulfilling as it brings freedom and democracy to a repressed people, and rids the world of evil-doers and terrorists. Consequently, convinced of its appropriateness, justness, and necessity, such combat behavior – causing trauma in others – may not be experienced traumatically by the warrior. That is not to say, however, that displacing, torturing, injuring or killing another human being, whether combatant or noncombatant, in a just or unjust war, does not have grave repercussions. While I applaud Grossman and MacNair for bringing attention to the likelihood of becoming symptomatic as a consequence of behavior in war (by virtue of what soldiers have done, not of what they have suffered), I regret their inability or unwillingness to recognize such distress as morally based. More important, however, their attempt to manipulate PTSD to accommodate moral injuries is more than just unfortunate, it does veterans a disservice by either allowing their injuries to be, at best, misdiagnosed and mistreated, at worst, ignored because they lack the crucial diagnostic criteria for PTSD (the traumatic event).

To correctly identify and adequately treat the injuries suffered by our servicemen and women in Iraq, we must appreciate the relevancy of moral values and norms to defining ourselves as persons, structuring our world, and rendering our relationship to it, and to other human beings, comprehensible. We must understand that these values and norms provide the parameters of our being - - what I term our “moral identity.” Most importantly, we must recognize that combat behavior often violates our moral identity and negatively impacts our self-esteem, self-image, and integrity causing debilitating remorse, guilt, shame, disorientation, and alienation from the remainder of the moral community – moral injury.

The monster and I are one.
I have feasted upon the flesh
of decaying corpses,
and with their blood
have quenched my thirst.
The transformation is complete
And I can never return.
Mea culpa, mea culpa,
Mea maxima culpa.[xii]

Acknowledging the existence of moral casualties in war by no means diminishes the importance or prevalence of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Rather, it enhances our understanding of the war experience and its devastating effects, expands our area of concern beyond trauma and PTSD, and allows us to more adequately meet the needs of our returning servicemen and women.

Endnotes

[i] These numbers were accurate as of July 1, 2004. I suspect, with the escalation of hostilities, that the percentages are even higher today.

[ii] For an interesting and detailed discussion of this subject, see Verkamp, Bernard J., The Moral Treatment of Returning Warriors in Early Medieval and Modern Times, (Scranton: University of Scranton Press, 1993).

[iii] A few notable exceptions include Robert Jay Lifton, Home From the War: Vietnam Veterans, Neither Victims nor Executioners, (New York, Basic Books), 1973; and Veterans Administration Psychiatrist and author Jonathan Shay, Achilles in Vietnam, (New York: Simon & Schuster), 1994; and Odysseus in America, (New York: Scribner), 2002.

[iv] Kaufman, Walter, Without Guilt and Justice, (New York: Dell, 1973), pp. 114, 117, 125, 132-133.

[v] Deresponsibilization attempts a “cure” by convincing the patient of the “naturalness” of his behavior under the conditions of war. Stephen Howard explains.

Under the overwhelming threat of annihilation, our priorities regress to the survival state; all higher priorities, all ethical and moral considerations lose relevance, and only the survival of the individual and the immediate group retain significance.

Once the veteran realizes our primitive natures, he can “at last place into context some of his actions which he cannot comprehend or accept in any other way.” Consequently, Howard concludes, the veteran will come to accept that, as his actions were quite natural, his guilt, shame, etc., is irrational and totally unwarranted.

[vi] Lifton, Robert J., Home from the War: Vietnam Veterans, Neither Victims nor Executioners, pps. 166-167.

[vii] J. Glenn Gray, The Warriors: Reflections on Men in Battle, pp. 175-6.

[viii] Kilner, Peter G., “Military Leaders Obligation to Justify Killing in War,” Military Review, vol. 72, no. 2, Mar-Apr 2004.

[ix] Dave Grossman, On Killing, (New York: Little, Brown, and Co.) 1995.

[x] MacNair, Rachel, Perpetration-Induced Traumatic Stress: The Psychological Consequences of Killing, (Westport, CT: Praeger), 2002.

[xi] Nor should we underestimate the influence of a young lifetime of playing extremely violent interactive “point and shoot” arcade and video games[xi] – many frighteningly similar to the military conditioning of recruits to kill. See Grossman, Dave, Stop Teaching Our Kids to Kill : A Call to Action Against TV, Movie and Video Game Violence, (New York, Crown), 1999.

[xii] Bica, Camillo “Mac”, war journal entry dated November 23, 1969.

Camillo “Mac” Bica, Ph.D., is a professor of philosophy at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. His focus is in Ethics, particularly as it applies to war and warriors. As a veteran recovering from his experiences as a United States Marine Corps Officer during the Vietnam War, he founded, and coordinated for five years, the Veterans Self-Help Initiative, a therapeutic community of veterans suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. He is a long-time activist for peace and justice, a member of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War, and a founding member of the Long Island Chapter of Veterans for Peace.

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May 31 2007

TRUMP PIMPS “MEMORIAL DAY” MISS UNIVERSE! OPRAH SHILLS “THE SECRET.” AND CINDY SHEEHAN WEEPS FOR US ALL!

By Gary Corseri

5/31/07

So I broke down and I watched the Miss Universe pageant.

It just happened to come on while I was finishing my late dinner. I hadn’t planned on it. Suddenly, there are these 77 gorgeous limbs, torsos and faces saying “Miss Denmark,” “Miss U.S.A.,” “Miss Angola,” “Miss India,” etc.

It’s a lot showier than when Bert Parks used to sing:

There she goes–Miss America.
There she goes–my ideal.

It’s also a lot more globalized. Blondes and white skin are quickly sidelined as the contest rolls on. My wife says, “How can anyone choose who is the most beautiful?” I suggest that each of the 77 gets a medal and that’s that.

But we watch anyway. We’re tired from our day of brain-work, and the little I’ve seen this Memorial Day of Brad what’s-his-name emoting about the ultimate sacrifice of our soldiers, or Diane Wiest acting the role of a brave mother sitting in the snow at Arlington cemetery, has convinced me that this particular mindless event has less claim on my pinched heartstrings and will provoke less sense of wallowing in pigs’ dung. (Of course, I’m wrong about this; but more on that later.)

Most of the women make you want to bite your knuckles and cry, how does God make such creatures?

For a moment, you can almost forget the war and the bullshit and the fact that all of this glittering beauty is being brought to you on Memorial Day by one of Capitalism’s major domos —Donald-The-Hair-Jackass-Trump.

Now, this is the first time I’ve seen this contest—or any contest—broadcast from Mexico City. It doesn’t take long to apprehend that all the pomp and glitter are excellent stage-propping for selling Mexico. So, we’re treated to scenes of Palenque and San Cristobal de las Casas in Chiapas state—but nothing about Commandante Zero and the struggle of los indios pobres in that same beleaguered territory. There’s Tulum and Cancun in the Yucatan, with the bathing-beauty Universe contestants frolicking in sand and surf, but nothing about “wetbacks” braving the desert badlands, scrounging for work in El Norte.

The stage heats up as scores of beauties are eliminated in a couple of fell swoops. This whole strange affair has started with all 77 dancing in individual enclosed cubicles or cell blocks, kind of like Elvis the Pelvis in “Jailhouse Rock.” But now, after flooding the stage with surfeits of estrogen and feminine pulchritude–observed from various angles and callipygian points of view—we’re down to the last ten.

Wife and I agree that Miss Venezuela is a statuesque goddess such as Praxiteles must have loved. But we’re both dubious the winner could be a Latina two years in a row.

Time limps on and the last five contestants linger nervously as la gente in the Mexican auditorium grows muy descontenta. When it’s clear that Miss Mexico is out of the comp, there’s genuine booing! The hapless hosts of this great charade are looking a little nervous on stage. The crowd is especially miffed at Miss U.S.A.—a cute-enough number with pixyish dimples to die for. The fact that she fell on her ass while sashaying in her evening wear has earned her no sympathy from this audience of Zapatistas! She deserves better, really, but it’s easy to understand how a few hundred years of La Conquista could sour the best of us. So there it is in black and white and color beamed to a billion TV sets all over the world as the former beloved Superpower is personified by a cute little woman being booed for her country’s sickening, noxious policies.

Soon, Miss Japan is crowned Miss Universe—do we really know there are no greater beauties in our galaxy, let alone our universe?—with a $250,000 Mikimoto pearl coronet. Not to take anything away from this bijin from the Land of the Rising Sun, but was the fix in when Mikimoto offered its crown? Or was the fix in when Donald The Hair-Brained determinate that a lot more tourists would come from Japan, flashing their yen, than from China, counting their renminbis? I was musing on this when I caught sight of the Donald sitting behind the judges wearing that beatific expression of arrogance he has down to a—well, what else?—a “T”!

Except, that’s when I got pulled in even deeper because his ears started to grow before my eyes, his nose elongated into a snout, and he started to he-haw!

“Did you hear that?” I asked my wife, but she had fallen asleep from all the excitement.

Soon, the hosts, the judges, the contestants–all were transforming before my eyes and he-hawing!

Terrified, I switched to TiVo to an episode of Oprah which I had missed. Ah, there she was in perfect Oprah mode—warm, cuddly, understanding—in short, the best Billionairess in the world, explaining the merits of a book called “The Secret” and how understanding the “Law of Attraction” had changed her life. It was at that very moment I learned why I had spent years sleeping under bridges and why I had failed at every golden opportunity to buy depressed real-estate and make millions. I hadn’t wanted it enough! I hadn’t visualized hard enough! I was attracting the wrong kind of energy! Oh, how I longed to be more like Oprah!

So I tried it, by God, right then and there. I wished for Bush and Blair and Olmert and Cheney to just disappear. And, poof!—they were gone.

I visualized the end of the reign of 946 billionaires in the world—and poof!—it was fact. I closed my eyes so tight they hurt and I squeezed my fists and my face got red and I wished for an end of Fascism, terrorism and war, and I opened my eyes and the world was new-made with robins singing and azaleas blossoming, a rainbow forming after gentle rain, and healthy children singing everywhere.

Except … I was dreaming.

In a corner of my dream, I heard someone weeping. It was a mother who had lost her son in an unnecessary war. Absolutely unnecessary—as most wars are.

People huddled around her, but no one could console her. She was very tired. She had tried so hard to awaken people. She had been very brave. No soldier had ever shown more courage. And now she felt broken. It had cost her so much.

And she was the most beautiful creature I have ever seen.

Gary Corseri’s is a senior contributing editor with Cyrano’s Journal Online (http://www.bestcyrano.org). His work has appeared at CounterPunch, CommonDreams, DissidentVoice, Cyrano’sJournalOnline, The New York Times, Village Voice, PBS-Atlanta and elsewhere. His books include Manifestations and A Fine Excess. He can be contacted at corseri@verizon.net.

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May 31 2007

Why I am Ashamed to be an American

By Doug Soderstrom

5/31/07

Having grown up in a small town in Central Kansas I was taught to believe that my country, the United States of America, was a land committed to justice and peace, a nation that one could count on to do the right thing, a country of civilized folks who had but one thing in mind…….. that of doing the will of God. I also began to realize that there is nothing wrong with feeling ashamed for having done something wrong, that such a response is a rather natural consequence of having violated one’s conscience, a voice from deep within that is no doubt a reliable guide for how a man (or woman) of true integrity ought to live his (or her) life. However, for those who seem to lack the capacity to feel ashamed, one can only wonder what must be wrong with them.

As I began to emerge into manhood there was an ever, ongoing flow of hints, subtle suggestions that things were not as I had been told. However, it wasn’t until our country vented its awful wrath upon a post 9-11 world that I began to realize that I had been misled. At that point I had no choice but to take a long, hard look at the history of our country, a thorough examination of what turned out to be a past drenched in the blood of our foes, foreign lands raped of their natural resources, democratically elected governments overthrown, an outrageous succession of egregious arrangements with tyrants and dictators from around the world, along with the fact that our nation is the only developed country in the world that utilizes the death penalty to kill its own people, and that we imprison more of our own people than any other nation in the world…… all of such having enabled me to gain a better understanding of why there are so many folks around the world who have become upset by our nation’s apparent willingness to abuse and exploit our fellow man. As a result of what I found, I have come to the conclusion that the vast majority of the American public is out of touch with reality, that such folks have unwittingly allowed themselves to have become mercilessly entangled in a world of fabrication and make-believe, a nation dominated by sheepish yes-men unwilling to face the fact that we, as a nation, are, and for some time have been, caught in a downward spiral of moral decline.

I have found it rather common for folks to become a bit upset with people like myself who occasionally pass judgment upon our country. In fact some have even told me that if I don’t like my country then perhaps I ought to consider leaving it. Such folks seem to believe that criticizing one’s country (one that has attained such a high standard of living…… as if such a thing should make a difference) is somehow unpatriotic. However, the last time I checked there seemed to be no relationship whatsoever between a nation’s quality of life and that of its moral standards. I have also found that individuals that tend to equate criticism of one’s country with that of being unpatriotic either do not understand the postulates upon which democracy is based or that their identity is so terribly intertwined with that of their nation that they have seemingly lost the capacity to reason in an objective manner. Finally, based upon my experience of having debated with such folks, it has become rather clear to me that most of these quislings have little or no education as well as being relatively uninformed as to what is going on in the world.

Now, if you don’t mind, allow me to take a look at a few things that tend to bother me regarding the country in which I just happen to have been born……. the United States of America.

I never cease to be amazed at how terribly ethnocentric the typical American tends to be. It is almost as if having been born in the United States confers upon one the right to think of himself as a privileged person, a contrived sense of status that no doubt lies at the very heart of everything that I will discuss in this paper. For example, consider religion…… the fact that the majority of Americans look upon Christianity as the one and only road that leads to salvation, every other faith a blind alley leading to the unending fires of Hell. Next is that of capitalism, a system having apparently received the blessing of God as the universally correct way of doing business. And then democracy, a political system that apparently no one in their right mind has a right to question. Of course there can be no doubt that democracy is certainly a stellar way of running a country, but must everyone in the world agree? Besides if the religious right (just as Moslems in Iraq) were to seize control, don’t you think that they (as fundamentalists) might be tempted to set up Christianity as the official religion in our country rather than that of running a democracy based upon the separation of church and state? Think about it……. fundamentalists are no doubt fundamentalists regardless of the color of “their stripes!” On the other hand, one must ask what right we (as citizens of a nation that is a mere 231 years from its own inception) have to tell folks living in countries not more than a hop, skip, and a jump from the “Garden of Eden” how they ought to live their lives. Ethnocentrism yes, but perhaps even worse than this is that which such narrow-mindedness almost always brings to pass; an unreasoning sense of arrogance generally referred to as that of the arrogance of ignorance!

Due to what appears to have been a rather serious lapse of judgment on the part of tens of millions of Americans, the voters, for whatever reason (perhaps it was a matter of fear), chose to place into power a President (a presidential administration) that: may well have laid the groundwork for 9-11 (the “new Pearl Harbor”) that, according to PNAC (Project for the New American Century) was needed in order to pave the way for our country’s military/economic takeover of the world; is in the preparatory stages of going to war with Iran (a conflict that will no doubt reign havoc upon our nation as well as that of the world); lied to the American people in regards to why we went to war with Iraq; lied to citizens in that our government has no intention of leaving Iraq given the fact that it is in the process of building as many as fourteen “Enduring Military Bases” (enough to house at least 100,000 soldiers) along with that of having built the world’s largest Foreign Embassy located in Baghdad (a 592 million dollar, 104-acre, 21-building complex); committed war crimes, crimes against humanity, as well as high crimes and misdemeanors for which several of our leaders should be impeached; condoned the systematic use of torture against prisoners; violated the first amendment of the U.S. Constitution by intentionally choosing to interfere with the free flow of information to the American people; enacted laws (such as that of the Patriot Act) that are seriously eroding our freedoms; through the use of the Military Commissions Act, granted the President the right to arbitrarily detain, imprison, and torture U.S. citizens at that of his own discretion (and without the right of Habeas Corpus!); allowed the President to disobey more than 750 U.S. laws through the use of so-called “signing statements”; through the passage of the Defense Authorization Act of 2007 set the stage for, essentially creating the likelihood that, our country might one day become a military dictatorship; allowed the United State’s military to develop an extremely sophisticated, website-based video game (America’s Army) to be used as a recruitment device that is teaching millions (perhaps as many as nine million) of our children to kill human beings with an increased degree of efficiency, all of such having desensitized our teenagers to kill others with little, or no, psychological pain; has enabled politicians to profit immensely from funds awarded to corporate enterprises associated with the military-industrial complex; bankrupted the nation by allowing the national debt to rise to nine trillion dollars in spite of the fact that the nation’s actual debt is a little over 59 trillion dollars due to the government’s use of unorthodox (essentially unethical if not illegal) accounting practices that intentionally disregard (essentially misinforming the American people with respect to) unfunded promises to reimburse (that is to repay) Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and an assortment of federal retirement programs; and has been absolutely unwilling to take responsibility for the fact that we, as a nation, have done more to destroy the ecosystem of our planet than anyone else on Earth.

For anyone who has taken the time to study the history of the human race, there can be no doubt that one of the primary, if not the primary, cause of harm is that of people taking up arms in the name of God. No one in their right mind can deny that Jesus, the Buddha, Mohammad, Confucius, or Lao Tse were men of good will. However, over the centuries the simple yet profound truths taught by these wonderfully wise men have been perverted beyond recognition. And, as far as the West is concerned, the greatest perversion has been that of the religious right’s willingness to accommodate the needs of neoconservatives in Washington D.C., a well-thought-out, although no doubt surreptitious, plan to allow the Bush-Cheney presidential administration to utilize their faith (a plan of salvation that rather conveniently ignores the teachings of Jesus, the fact that we should love rather than kill others) as a theologically-based (no doubt divinely inspired) justification for a cadre of militants all to ready to go to war in order that they might one day rule the world……. and all of such in exchange for political presence, an increased opportunity for the religious right to publicize a gospel of family values (a rather fabricated attempt to “sugarcoatedly-disguise” an undoubtedly well-documented ideology of out-and-out social-political conservatism). Looking back at history, there can be little doubt that much the same occurred in the 1980’s when Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority decided to align itself with Ronald Reagan’s tenure as President, and, before that, when Germanically-oriented Christians decided to go along with, and therefore to support, Adolph Hitler’s Nazi inspired efforts to rule the world.

Concerning the education (or shall I say the mis-education) of our children it is high time that we do the right thing, that we stop lying to our kids and begin telling them the truth. The school’s job is not to make “good citizens” of our children, for in doing such a thing our children end up being duped, conditioned, slowly but surely brainwashed, into becoming truckling sycophants, bootlicking followers of the status quo. As one who has taught college students for the past 41 years, the only task worthy of a teacher is that of teaching our kids how to think for themselves, critical thinking skills that might perhaps enable them to counter the outrageous mendacity of those in power, chauvinistic jingoes who would, through the use of propaganda, have our children believe a lie rather than that which is true.

Regarding our economy, a capitalistic enterprise focused upon one, and only one, thing (the enrichment of the rich euphemistically referred to as that of “the American Dream”), we, as Americans (those of us who are rather well-to-do), should be ashamed of ourselves, ashamed of having become an island of enormous wealth stationed in the midst of a poverty-ridden world (not to mention an ever-expanding proportion of our own people who are poor) in that we go to bed every night with a willingness to anesthetize ourselves to the needs of billions of folks whose lives are inextricably mired in an absolutely desperate attempt to simply survive. And then due to what appears to be a rather natural correlate of capitalism (activities that no doubt follow capitalism wherever it goes), the American people (folks so terribly possessed by that which they possess) have developed an apparently insatiable appetite to be rich (the capacity to consume anything and everything they want), the need to be constantly entertained, a near addictive fascination with sex, drugs, gambling, pleasure, power, and violence, and all of such no doubt nullifying any legitimate interest in the “finer things of life” such as that of developing a meaningful philosophy of life, a desire to understand what it means to be a human being, and that which might perhaps be worthy of our time here on Earth.

And then based upon the laws of our nation, lobbyists (highly paid representatives of the corporate world) have been granted the right to converge upon our elected officials for no other reason than to coerce them into conducting business in a manner that more often than not benefits the rich at the expense of the poor. We, as a people, have been led to believe that our votes count when in fact our ballots far too often elect congressmen, the majority of which, wait in hiding for a handout (a bribe) that will serve to fill their “electoral coffers,” and all of such in exchange for a simple promise to use their congressional powers to expedite the needs of their benefactors who in turn are far too likely to reward their compatriots with a well-paid, “post-retirement” position the purpose of which is to use their “congressional knowledge” to bribe those who have now taken their place; a revolving door of immense corruption that is no doubt destroying the foundations of a once democratic republic!

The final, and perhaps most important, reason why I am ashamed to be an American is due to the fact that we, more than any other people, have used our accumulated wealth (part of which comes from money earned from having sold more weapons of war to the rest of the world than the rest of the world combined) along with having developed the largest, most destructive military force (larger than the accumulated defense budgets of the rest of the world combined) since the beginning of time (next year’s defense budget will be nearly 700 billion dollars!), all the while realizing that if we had proven our love for God by using such funds to feed the hungry, medicate the sick, clothe the poor, house the homeless, and liberate the oppressed, we would have become a nation loved and revered by all…… rather than, as things have turned out, having become a land hated by nearly everyone in the world.

In conclusion, in order that you might understand where I am coming from, you need to realize that I do in fact have a bit of respect for my country, or at least for that which was envisioned by our forefathers, the founders of, what has turned out to be, a once great nation. However, just as we would with someone we love, we have no choice but to call attention to weakness, since in doing such a thing we give our loved ones an opportunity to address the problem. It is, and must be, the same with that of the land in which we have been born. If we truly care about our country, if we really do want our nation to flourish, then we should realize that we have not only the right, but, much more importantly, the responsibility, perhaps even, one might say, a moral responsibility to point out its deficiencies in order that it might once again be revived. For we must remember, as our nation goes, so do we……. in its flourishing we, as a people, will no doubt thrive, but in passing away, we, as a collective society, might well cease to exist.

Doug Soderstrom, Ph.D. is a psychologist and can be reached at dougsoderstrom@sbcglobal.net

104 responses so far

May 30 2007

Human Lives - Collateral Damage to A Political Calculus

by Rowan Wolf

5/30/07

The Democrats caved in and supported the supplemental occupation funding demanded by the Bush Cabal. The arguments apparently being that they a) didn’t have the votes to overcome a veto; b) they didn’t want to be blamed for the growing death and chaos; c) the belief this keeps Iraq the Republican’s adventure; d) perhaps - because the PSAs haven’t been signed yet. Regardless, the considerations were political - not moral - not responsive to the mandate that the November elections sent. The arguments now are that they can revisit the funding issue in September - 4 months from now - 122 days from June 1 to September 31. Given a rough average daily death toll of five US troops and 50 Iraqi civilians, that makes a low estimate of 6710 (610 US troops, 6100 Iraqi civilians) deaths for buckling on the funding.

Six thousand seven hundred and ten lives for a failure of will.

Six thousand seven hundred and ten lives for vested corporate interests.

Six thousand seven hundred and ten lives for a coward’s political strategy.

Damn the Democrats, and damn the Republicans. Their gamesmanship is being paid for in the blood of others. How dare they do this? How dare we let them do this?

This is NOT a war. It is an OCCUPATION. It is a bloody occupation to be sure, but an occupation all the same.

Once more the Bush Folk are talking about regime change - this time to clean the militia influence (Al-Sadar) out of the Iraqi Parliament. How exactly are they planning the removal of a democratically elected block of another government? Who is in charge? Is there even the illusion that the Iraqi government is independent to the U.S.?

Six thousand seven hundred and ten lives (and likely far more) as collateral damage for a political calculus that is doomed to fail no matter what.

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May 25 2007

The Iraq War: Hillary Clinton’s Achilles’ Heel?

By Joshua Frank

5/25/07

Senator Clinton is sure trying hard to court the antiwar vote while still sustaining a muscular U.S. foreign policy agenda as she runs for the presidency. On May 16, Hillary Clinton sided with 28 other senators in support for advancing legislation to cut off funding for the war in Iraq after March of 2008.

Despite her modest anti-war gesture, Clinton was still not willing to predict how she would side on similar legislation in the future. “I’m not going to speculate on what I’m going to be voting on in the future,” Clinton told reporters shortly after the vote. “I voted in favor of cloture to have a debate.”

Hours later Clinton changed her mind, and decided that she wanted to do more than start a debate on the matter. “I support the underlying bill,” she said. “That’s what this vote on cloture was all about.”

Even though the race for the White House is still in its infancy, Hillary Clinton has yet to take a coherent position on the Iraq war. If she were actually to believe in the bill’s “underlying” premise, than she’d likely know that she’d support cutting funding in the future. The senator from New York has also continually blamed President Bush for putting forward faulty information about Iraq’s WMD programs, as well as Saddam’s alleged ties to al Qaeda while he was in power. Clinton, like the rest of us, was lied to, and as a result she naively voted to give Bush the authority to invade Iraq to destroy Saddam’s regime.

But Clinton’s maneuvers to evade responsibility four years after the fact are meager, not to mention completely without merit. In fact Clinton sold the same lies and deceptions as the Bush cartel, which plunged us into this catastrophic war.

“In the four years since the inspectors left, intelligence reports show that Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical and biological weapons stock, his missile delivery capability, and his nuclear program,” Clinton said in October of 2002. “He has also given aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists, including al Qaeda members … It is clear, however, that if left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will continue to increase his capacity to wage biological and chemical warfare, and will keep trying to develop nuclear weapons.”

Perhaps Hillary was taking a line from her husband Bill’s repertoire, who as president bolstered the same case for disarming Hussein. “If Saddam rejects peace and we have to use force, our purpose is clear,” said President Clinton in February of 1998. “We want to seriously diminish the threat posed by Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction program.”

What WMD program? As United States weapons inspector Charles Duelfer explained in a fall 2004 report, Saddam Hussein had shut down Iraq’s chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons programs following the first Iraq war in 1991. And we knew it.

Hillary Clinton has tried to have it both ways on Iraq for several years. Voting for phased troop redeployment, while also supporting continued funding for the occupation. Her vote last week is surely not an indication of which way she’ll turn in the future.

The Iraq war to Hillary Clinton is more about political expediency than honesty or integrity, and it may well prove to be her Achilles’ heel over the course of the next year. Like President Bush, and so many other wayward politicians, Hillary is also to blame for the shameful bloodshed that plagues Iraq today.

Joshua Frank is co-editor of Dissident Voice and author of Left Out! How Liberals Helped Reelect George W. Bush (Common Courage Press, 2005), and along with Jeffrey St. Clair, the editor of the forthcoming Red State Rebels, to be published by AK Press in March 2008.

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May 25 2007

Cape of Good Hope: One Apartheid Regime Down; One More to Go

By Ramzy Baroud

5/25/07

I stand at the southernmost corner of Africa, the Cape of Good Hope. The grand mountains underneath and behind infuse a moment of spiritual reflection unmatched in its depth and meaning. Before me is an awe-inspiring view: here the Atlantic’s frigid waters gently meet the warm waters of the Indian Ocean. They meet but don’t collide. The harmony is seamless; the greatness of this view is humbling.

I was invited to South Africa to deliver a keynote speech at the ‘Al-Nakba’ conference, held in Cape Town. The journey led me to other cities. Many speeches, presentations, media interviews later, I sat with a borrowed computer and scattered thoughts: how can one reflect without the least sense of certainty, assuredness? I ought to try.

“Where are the Black Africans?” was the first question to come to mind as a friend’s car escorted me a distance from the Cape Town International Airport. I saw very few indications affirming that I was indeed in Africa as I gazed at the exaggeratedly beautiful surroundings of the airport. My friend needed not respond however, as the car soon hurriedly zoomed by a “squatters’ camp”; no slum can be compared to this, no refugee camp. Innumerable people are crammed in the tiniest and crudest looking ‘houses’ made of whatever those poor people could find laying around. It was not ‘temporary accommodations’, but permanent dwellings: here they live, marry, raise children and die.

It takes no brilliant mind to realize that Apartheid South Africa is still, in some ways, Apartheid South Africa. A lot has been done on the road to equal rights since the Africa National Congress (ANC) along with freedom fighters and civil society activists combined forces to defeat a legacy of 350 years of oppression, colonialism and – in 1948 – an officially sanctioned system of Apartheid, a system instilled by the white minority government to ethnically cleanse, confine and subdue the overwhelmingly black majority. True, the hundreds of Bantustans or ‘homelands’ in which the Blacks were locked, only to be allowed to leave or enter White areas – as servants – with a special pass, are no longer an officially recognized apparatus. The ‘presidents’ of those Bantustans – puppet rulers hand picked by White authorities – are long discredited. Now, South Africans, of all colors, ethnicities and religions select their own leaders, in democratic elections that are, more or less, reflective of the overall desires of the populace. But it takes much more than 13 years, and uncountable promises to reconcile the calculated inequality of centuries.

Despite a hectic schedule of two weeks, I made it a goal to visit as many squatters’ camps as I could. I followed the path of ethnic cleansing that took place in District Six in Cape Town; it was a Trail of Tears of sorts, a Palestinian Catastrophe. My grandparents, mother and father where dragged from their homes under similar circumstances in 1948 in Palestine. They too were not suitable to live within the same ‘geographic radius’ with those who had deemed themselves superior. Those who were forcibly removed from District Six have finally won their land back. Palestinians are still refugees. My grandparents are long dead, so is my mother. My father, a very ill and old man, is waiting in our old home in the refugee camp in Gaza. He refuses to yield, to capitulate.

I spoke at a technical college that was erected for Whites only on the exact same spot where thousands of Colored and Blacks were uprooted and thrown somewhere else, somewhere more discreet, more acceptable to the taste of Apartheid administrators. I paid a tribute to those resilient people who refused to embrace their inferior status, fought and died to regain their freedom and dignity. I saluted my people, who stood in solidarity with the fighters of South Africa. In our Gaza camps, we mourned for South Africa and we celebrated when Nelson Mandela was set free. My father handed out candy to the neighborhood kids. When Bishop Desmond Tutu visited Palestine, Israeli settlers greeted him with racist graffiti and chants across the West Bank. For Palestinians, this was a personal insult. Tutu is ours, just as Che Guevara, Martin Luther, Malcolm X, Mahatma Gandhi, Ahmad Yassin and Yasser Arafat were and still are.

On Robin Island, where Mandela and hundreds of his comrades were held for many years, I touched the decaying walls of the prison. Food in the prison was rationed on the basis of skin color. Blacks always received the least. But prisoners defied the prison system nonetheless; they created a collective in which all the food received would be shared equally amongst them. I tore a piece of my Palestinian scarf and left it in Mandela’s cell; its chipped, albeit fortified walls, its thin floor mattress still stand witness to the injustice perpetrated by some and the undying faith in one’s principles embraced by others. I visited every cell in Section A and B, touched every wall, read every name of every inmate: Christians, Hindus, Muslims and Bantus were all kept here, fought, died and finally won their freedom together. They referred to each other as comrades. Injustice is colorblind. So is true camaraderie.

I have never felt the sense of solidarity and acceptance that I felt in South Africa. There is an unparalleled lesson to be learned in this amazing place. There is a lot to be sorted out: a true equality to be realized, but a lot has also been done. A veteran ANC fighter thanked me for the arms and money supplied to his unit, and many other units, by the PLO in the 1970’s and 80’s; he said he still has his PLO uniform, tucked in somewhere in his little decrepit ‘house’ in one of the squatters’ camps dotting the city. It was a poignant reminder that the fight is not yet over.

Amongst the many names scribbled at the fenced wall at the helm of Cape of Good Hope, someone took the time to write “Palestine”. In the Apartheid Wall erected by Israel on Palestinian land in the West Bank, the South African parallel is expressed in more ways than one. The relationship cannot be any more obvious. The fight for justice is one, and shall always be.

-Ramzy Baroud is a Palestinian author and journalist. His latest volume: The Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a People’s Struggle (Pluto Press: London) is available at Amazon.com. He is the editor of PalestineChronicle.com and can be contacted at editor@palestinechronicle.com

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May 19 2007

War Without End & Now … The Permanent Soldier

Published by cyrano2 under Militarism, US Imperialism

The basic activity of this brain region is considered to be orchestration of thoughts and actions in accordance with internal goals.

The most typical neurologic term for functions carried out by the pre-frontal cortex area is Executive Function. Executive Function relates to abilities to differentiate among conflicting thoughts, determine good and bad, better and best, same and different, future consequences of current activities, working toward a defined goal, prediction of outcomes, expectation based on actions, and social “control” (the ability to suppress urges that, if not suppressed, could lead to socially unacceptable outcomes).

Many authors have indicated an integral link between a person’s personality and the functions of the prefrontal cortex. (Wikipedia)

By Rowan Wolf

George Bush told us that the “War on Terrorism” would be a “generational” war. It seems clear that means “war without end” which brings to mind George Orwell’s 1984. (Of course, there are a lot of things about the Bush cabal that brings that makes Orwell’s book look down right prophetic.) To fight the war without end would normally take a very large fighting force, but long before Rumsfeld’s lean, mean, high tech vision, the Pentagon has been deeply involved in creating future “warfighters.”

Remember the Kurt Russell movie Soldier? In “Soldier” Russell plays a genetically selected interplanetary soldier (war fighter) who get wiped out by a new generation genetically engineered model. Or maybe you remember Claude van Damme in Universal Soldier. The theme here is that soldiers who have been killed are “reanimated” and “enhanced” to become a super fighting force. Well, for quite some time the Pentagon has been working on creating the future “warfighter.”

A trip through the public portions of DARPA’s (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), is enlightening. I know that every time I visit, I can’t help but think “If this is what is public, then what are the classified programs?” DARPA has a wide ranging research program on “improving” soldiers. However, DARPA (and indeed DoD “vision” documents) rarely use the term “soldier.” They prefer the term “warfighter.” The goal of many of DARPA’s programs regarding warfighters is to improve them through a variety of means:

overcome muscle fatigue and lack of sleep;

directly convert “cellulose” into nutrients (grass and cardboard comes to mind);
interfacing human and machine as with the HAND program;

implanting nano-technology for a number of purposes.

Sharon Weinberger over at Wired wrote a fairly extensive article on a project that has gone out to bid colloquially referred to as “Luke’s Binoculars” (though officially known

as Cognitive Technology Threat Warning System (CT2WS)). This project involves merging a binocular function with extreme range and “threat detection” into the prefrontal lobe of warfighters’ brains (graphic from Wired above).

“Luke’s Binoculars” are not some long term, far future, research project. No, the bids have gone out with the goal of having them in use by Special Forces in three (3) years.

Now these projects - including the “binoculars” - seem fairly permanent to me. Once you have modified a warfighter, can they ever not be a warfighter? Do they then become a piece of military equipment? These projects certainly give the name “GI” (Government Issue) a whole new level of significance.

Are we really willing to commit people for life (not retirement) to be extended military equipment? Certainly the government seems willing to do so. Do we need permanent warfighters to fight a never ending war? Might such “enhanced” humans be useful in other areas besides war? Or might the technologies have uses beyond the military? I can think of a number of them actually. For example,workers that don’t need to rest and can eat the recycling to keep going. Of course, much like the warfighter, the worker must become property as well - another resource of service until removed from service - sort of a high tech version of Jennifer Government by Max Barry.

The implications of the direction being forged are into a future that I, personally, find terrifying. I can’t believe that we must be on this path. I must believe that we can, and will see the travesty we are becoming and turn aside

16 responses so far

May 16 2007

Mission Accomplished—For Iran

Published by cyrano2 under Militarism

by Ivan Eland 

5/16/07

With its usual tin ear for public relations, the Bush administration provided another “Kodak moment” of incompetent belligerence by yet again sending a high-level administration official to use an aircraft carrier as a prop for a hawkish rant. Vice President Dick Cheney did manage to refrain from displaying another “Mission Accomplished” banner during his address to the crew of the John C. Stennis, stationed 150 miles off Iran’s coast. But as Cheney warned Iran against disrupting oil transportation routes or getting nuclear weapons, the speech’s imagery also reminded the American public of President Bush’s previous fiasco on another aircraft carrier. Yet Cheney’s speech may have more adverse implications for U.S. security than Bush’s earlier public relations disaster.

In his address, Cheney rattled the saber against Iran by declaring,

“With two carrier strike groups in the [Persian] gulf, we’re sending clear messages to friends and adversaries alike. We’ll keep the sea-lanes open. We’ll stand with our friends in opposing extremism and strategic threats. We’ll disrupt attacks on our own forces. We’ll continue bringing relief to those who suffer, and delivering justice to the enemies of freedom. And we’ll stand with others to prevent Iran from gaining nuclear weapons and dominating this region.”

Cheney also warned that a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq would enhance Iran’s influence in the Persian Gulf region.

Although the backdrop of the speech was questionable from a domestic public relations point of view, Cheney’s coercion of Iran is worse from a policy perspective. Although Cheney’s address is part of a “good cop-bad cop” routine that also leaves the door open for U.S. negotiations with Iran over developments in Iraq, U.S. coercion against Iran has a track record of failure. The invasion of Iraq and other U.S. threats have caused the jittery Iranians to redouble their efforts to obtain nuclear weapons, as well as support Iran-friendly groups in Iraq. Additional U.S. intimidation or a military strike against Iran could push the Iranians to take the gloves off in Iraq or to block the route for transporting oil out of the Persian Gulf.

With regard to the latter, however, the somewhat more moderate Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice earlier concluded that such a scenario was unlikely because Iran also needs to ship its oil through the sea-lanes of the Strait of Hormuz.

Nonetheless, Iran does have potent means of retaliating if the United States makes good on its threats. Meanwhile, those threats and U.S.–led economic sanctions are painting the coiled Iranian snake into a corner.

There is something very hypocritical about Cheney’s concern that Iran could become the predominant influence in the Persian Gulf when the U.S. superpower has already tried to dominate the region. Similarly, the world’s greatest nuclear weapons state wants to deny Iran, which lives in a rough neighborhood, a few nuclear warheads. That is not to say that it would be good for the despotically ruled Iran to dominate the gulf region or to acquire nuclear weapons. But, from the perspective of the U.S. taxpayer, it might not be good policy for the United States to cast such a long shadow over the area or to have such a large nuclear arsenal containing thousands of warheads.

Finally, although it is true that a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq may strengthen Iran’s position in the region, the administration should have thought about that before it unwisely took down the major counterweight to Iran in that part of the world—a stable Iraq under Saddam Hussein. Hawkish administration supporters should learn from the Iraq debacle that every war is not patriotic or smart, especially if it helps a major adversary of the United States.

The stark reality is that sooner or later, Cheney’s empty threats aside, the United States will be compelled to withdraw from Iraq, and Iran will likely gain influence in the region and probably eventually obtain nuclear weapons. A fitting banner for Cheney’s aircraft carrier speech would have been, “Mission Accomplished—For Iran.”

Ivan Eland is Director of the Center on Peace & Liberty at The Independent Institute. Dr. Eland is a graduate of Iowa State University and received an M.B.A. in applied economics and Ph.D. in national security policy from George Washington University. He has been Director of Defense Policy Studies at the Cato Institute, and he spent 15 years working for Congress on national security issues, including stints as an investigator for the House Foreign Affairs Committee and Principal Defense Analyst at the Congressional Budget Office. He is author of the books, The Empire Has No Clothes: U.S. Foreign Policy Exposed, and Putting “Defense” Back into U.S. Defense Policy.Full Biography and Recent Publications

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