[This is not--I repeat not--from the Onion or any other source of satirical news. Events are rapidly outstripping satire and soon we will be making fun of ourselves in reverse...]

"We ought to be beating our chests every day. We ought to look in a mirror and get proud and stick out our chests and suck in our bellies and say: 'Damn, we're Americans!'," Jay Garner told reporters, saying that Iraq's oil fields and other infrastructure survived the war almost intact.

(Yahoo! News)

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - The retired general overseeing Iraq's postwar reconstruction said on Wednesday that his fellow Americans should beat their chests with pride at having toppled Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) without destroying the country's assets.

"We ought to be beating our chests every day. We ought to look in a mirror and get proud and stick out our chests and suck in our bellies and say: 'Damn, we're Americans!'," Jay Garner told reporters, saying that Iraq's oil fields and other infrastructure survived the war almost intact.

Garner, who was speaking after talks with visiting Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in Baghdad, took the media to task for emphasizing anti-American demonstrations and dissent in the wake of the three-week U.S. led war that deposed Saddam.

His comments came after U.S. troops opened fire for the second time this week on an angry crowd protesting against the U.S. presence in the town of Falluja, west of Baghdad. Iraqi hospital officials said two men were killed in the latest incident. At least 13 died in shooting on Monday, they said.

Garner said the war was fought in a way that prevented Saddam's forces from setting fire to its oilfields and had largely preserved Iraq's infrastructure intact:

"I was planning on the oilfields being torched, a huge humanitarian crisis and a monumental reconstruction task, " he said.

"There is no humanitarian crisis ... and there's not much infrastructure problem here, other than getting the electrical grid structure back together."

The situation in Baghdad was improving every day and power had been restored to about half of the city, he said.

The U.S. military is increasing its presence in the Iraqi capital to boost security and help in wiping out pockets of resistance from diehard Saddam supporters.

[Very interesting, critical lecture by MSNBC correspondent Ashleigh Banfield that's gotten her into some trouble. It's basically a call to end the practice of embedded journalism for reasons that are might be too esoteric for a lecture like this, but really cross over into issues of technology and media that a lot more "highbrow" pomo thinkers have been pondering, perhaps a bit too passively, for years. This is an excerpt -- the rest follows (click "more"). I lifted the whole thing from Alternet so that comments could be left here about it.]

[...] That said, what didn't you see? You didn't see where those bullets landed. You didn't see what happened when the mortar landed. A puff of smoke is not what a mortar looks like when it explodes, believe me. There are horrors that were completely left out of this war. So was this journalism or was this coverage-? There is a grand difference between journalism and coverage, and getting access does not mean you're getting the story, it just means you're getting one more arm or leg of the story. And that's what we got, and it was a glorious, wonderful picture that had a lot of people watching and a lot of advertisers excited about cable news. But it wasn't journalism, because I'm not so sure that we in America are hesitant to do this again, to fight another war, because it looked like a glorious and courageous and so successful terrific endeavor, and we got rid oaf horrible leader: We got rid of a dictator, we got rid of a monster, but we didn't see what it took to do that.

Editor's Note: The following is the text of MSNBC correspondent Ashleigh Banfield's Landon Lecture given at Kansas State University, Manhattan, Kansas, on April 24. Her comments sparked a media controversy which reportedly prompted her NBC employers to severely reprimand Banfield. While she has not commented on the issue, an NBC spokeswoman told reporters Monday, "She and we both agreed that she didn't intend to demean the work of her colleagues, and she will choose her words more carefully in the future."

Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. President. That was a very kind introduction. I would love to say that I'm a hero and was able to save this woman, but she was fine. I just gave her a quick checkover and she was just fine. But it was quite an adventure, nonetheless, and Chuck and I have a story to tell for the rest of time.

Thank you so much, by the way, for inviting me to be here. This is a real treat and a real honor. The last time I was in Manhattan, Kansas, there were a lot of other stories that were making top headlines, not the least of which were the anniversary of 9/11, the continued hunt for Osama bin Laden, the whereabouts of Elizabeth Smart, and what was to become of Saddam Hussein; and we have some resolution on very few of these stories, but we certainly know at least what Saddam Hussein is not up to these days, and it's leading Iraq.

So I suppose you watch enough television to know that the big TV show is over and that the war is now over essentially – the major combat operations are over anyway, according to the Pentagon and defense officials – but there is so much that is left behind. And I'm not just talking about the most important thing, which is, of course, the leadership of a Middle Eastern country that could possibly become an enormous foothold for American and foreign interests. But also what Americans find themselves deciding upon when it comes to news, and when it comes to coverage, and when it comes to war, and when it comes to what's appropriate and what's not appropriate any longer.

I think we all were very excited about the beginnings of this conflict in terms of what we could see for the first time on television. The embedded process, which I'll get into a little bit more in a few moments, was something that we've never experienced before, neither as reporters nor as viewers. The kinds of pictures that we were able to see from the front lines in real time on a video phone, and sometimes by a real satellite link-up, was something we'd never seen before and were witness to for the first time.

And there are all sorts of good things that come from that, and there are all sorts of terrible things that come from that. The good things are the obvious. This is one more perspective that we all got when it comes to warfare, how it's fought and how tough these soldiers are, what the conditions are like and what it really looks like when they're firing those M-16s rapidly across a river, or across a bridge, or into a building.

There were a lot of journalists who were skeptical of this embedding process before we all embarked on this kind of news coverage before this campaign. Many thought that this was just another element of propaganda from the American government. I suppose you could look at it that way. It certainly did show the American side of things, because that's where we were shooting from. But it also showed what can go wrong.

It also gave journalists, including Al-Jazeera journalists and Arab television journalists and Arab newspaper journalists, who were also embedded, it also gave them the opportunity to see without any kinds of censorship how these fights were being fought, how these soldiers were behaving, what the civil affairs soldiers were doing, and what the humanitarian assistants really looked like. Was it just a line we were being fed, or were they really on the ground with boxes of water and boxes of food?

So for that element alone it was a wonderful new arm of access that journalists got to warfare. Perhaps not that new, because we all knew what it looked like at Vietnam and what a disaster that was for the government, but this did put us in a very, very close line of sight to the unfolding disasters.

That said, what didn't you see? You didn't see where those bullets landed. You didn't see what happened when the mortar landed. A puff of smoke is not what a mortar looks like when it explodes, believe me. There are horrors that were completely left out of this war. So was this journalism or was this coverage-? There is a grand difference between journalism and coverage, and getting access does not mean you're getting the story, it just means you're getting one more arm or leg of the story. And that's what we got, and it was a glorious, wonderful picture that had a lot of people watching and a lot of advertisers excited about cable news. But it wasn't journalism, because I'm not so sure that we in America are hesitant to do this again, to fight another war, because it looked like a glorious and courageous and so successful terrific endeavor, and we got rid oaf horrible leader: We got rid of a dictator, we got rid of a monster, but we didn't see what it took to do that.

I can't tell you how bad the civilian casualties were. I saw a couple of pictures. I saw French television pictures, I saw a few things here and there, but to truly understand what war is all about you've got to be on both sides. You've got to be a unilateral, someone who's able to cover from outside of both front lines, which, by the way, is the most dangerous way to cover a war, which is the way most of us covered Afghanistan. There were no front lines, they were all over the place. They were caves, they were mountains, they were cobbled, they were everything. But we really don't know from this latest adventure from the American military what this thing looked like and why perhaps we should never do it again. The other thing is that so many voices were silent in this war. We all know what happened to Susan Sarandon for speaking out, and her husband, and we all know that this is not the way Americans truly want to be. Free speech is a wonderful thing, it's what we fight for, but the minute it's unpalatable we fight against it for some reason.

That just seems to be a trend of late, and l am worried that it may be a reflection of what the news was and how the news coverage was coming across. This was a success, it was a charge it took only three weeks. We did wonderful things and we freed the Iraqi people, many of them by the way, who are quite thankless about this. There's got to be a reason for that. And the reason for it is because we don't have a very good image right now overseas, and a lot of Americans aren't quite sure why, given the fact that we sacrificed over a hundred soldiers to give them freedom.

Well, the message before we went in was actually weapons of mass destruction and eliminating the weapons of mass destruction from this regime and eliminating this regime. Conveniently in the week or two that we were in there it became very strongly a message of freeing the Iraqi people. That should have been the message early on, in fact, in the six to eight months preceding this campaign, if we were trying to win over the hearts of the Arab world.

That is a very difficult endeavor and from my travels to the Arab world, we're not doing a very good job of it. What you read in the newspapers and what you see on cable news and what you see on the broadcast news networks is nothing like they see over there, especially in a place like Iraq, where all they have access to is a newspaper called Babble, if you can believe it. It's really called Babble. And it was owned by well, owned and operated by Uday, who you know now is the crazier of Saddam's sons. And this is the kind of material that they have access to, and it paints us as the great Satan regularly, or at least it used to. I'm sure it's not in production right now. And it's not unlike many of the other newspapers in the Arab world either. You can't blame these poor sorts for not liking us. All they know is that we're crusaders. All they know is that we're imperialists. All they know is that we want their oil. They don't know otherwise. And I'll tell you, a lot of the people I spoke with in Afghanistan had never heard of the Twin Towers and most of them couldn't recognize a picture of George Bush.

So you're dealing with populations who don't know better and who are very suspect as to who these news liberators are, because every liberator before has justreeked havoc upon their lives and their children and their world. So I wasn't the least bit surprised to see these marches and these pilgrimages in the last few days telling the Americans, "Thanks for the freedom to march to Najaf and Karbala, but get out." You know, this wasn't that big of a surprise. I think it may be a surprise though to the Pentagon. I'm not sure that they were ready to deal with this many dissenters and this many supporters of an Islamic regime, like next door in Iran.

That will be a very interesting story to follow in the coming weeks and months, as to how this vacuum is filled and how we go about presenting a democracy to these people when – if we give them democracy they probably will ask us to get out, which is exactly what many of them want.

But it's interesting to be able to cover this. There's nothing in the world like being able to cross a green line whenever you want and speak to both sides of a conflict. I can't tell you how horrible and wonderful it is at the same time in the West Bank and Gaza and Israel. There are very few people in this world who can march right across guarded check points, closed military zones, and talk to Palestinians in the same day that they almost embedded with Israeli troops, and that's something that we get to do on a regular basis.

And I just wish that the leadership of all these different entities, ours included, could do the same thing, because they would have an eye opening experience, horrible and wonderful, all at the same time, and it would give a lot of insight as to how messages are heard and how you can negotiate. Because you cannot negotiate when someone can't hear you or refuses to hear you or can't even understand your language, and that's clearly what's happening in a lot of places in the world right now, the West Bank, Gaza and Israel, not the least of which there's very little listening and understanding going on. Our language is entirely different than theirs, and I don't just mean the words. When you hear the word Hezbollah you probably think evil, danger, terror right away. If I could just see a show of hands. Who thinks that Hezbollah is a bad word? Show of hands. Usually connotes fear, terror, some kind of suicide bombing. If you live in the Arab world, Hezbollah means Shriner. Hezbollah means charity, Hezbollah means hospitals, Hezbollah means welfare and jobs.

These are not the same organizations we're dealing with. How can you negotiate when you' re talking about two entirely different meanings? And until we understand – we don't have to like Hizbullah, we don't have to like their militancy, we don't have to like what they do on the side, but we have to understand that they like it, that they like the good things about Hizbullah, and that you can't just paint it with a blanket statement that it's a terrorist organization, because even when it comes to the militancy these people believe that militancy is simply freedom fighting and resistance. You can't argue with that. You can try to negotiate, but you can't say it's wrong flat out.

And that's some of the problems we have in dealing in this war in terror. As a journalist I'm often ostracized just for saying these messages, just for going on television and saying, "Here's what the leaders of Hezbullah are telling me and here's what the Lebanese are telling me and here's what the Syrians have said about Hezbullah. Here's what they have to say about the Golan Heights." Like it or lump it, don't shoot the messenger, but invariably the messenger gets shot.

We hired somebody on MSNBC recently named Michael Savage. Some of you may know his name already from his radio program. He was so taken aback by my dare to speak with Al -Aqsa Martyrs Brigade about why they do what they do, why they're prepared to sacrifice themselves for what they call a freedom fight and we call terrorism. He was so taken aback that he chose to label me as a slut on the air. And that's not all, as a porn star. And that's not all, as an accomplice to the murder of Jewish children. So these are the ramifications for simply being the messenger in the Arab world.

How can you discuss, how can you solve anything when attacks from a mere radio flak is what America hears on a regular basis, let alone at the government level? I mean, if this kind of attitude is prevailing, forget discussion, forget diplomacy, diplomacy is becoming a bad word.

I'm fascinated to find out how we are going to diplomatically fix what's broken now in Iraq because nobody thinks Jay Garner is going to be a leader for Iraq. They don't want him to be a leader. He says he doesn't want to be a leader, but he sure as heck wants to put a leader in there that is akin with our interests here in America so that we don't have to face this trouble again. Clearly it's the same kind of idea we had in Afghanistan with Hamid Karzai. You know, they all look at him as a puppet, we look at him as a success story. Again, two different languages being spoken and not enough coverage of that side.

Again, I'm not saying support for that side. There are a lot of things that I hate about that side but there's got to be the coverage, there's got to be the journalism, and sometimes that is really missing in our effort to make good TV and good cable news.

When I said the war was over I kind of mean that in the sense that cards are being pulled from this famous deck now of the 55 most wanted, and they're sort of falling out of the deck as quickly as the numbers are falling off the rating chart for the cable news stations. We have plummeted into the basement in the last week. We went from millions of viewers to just a few hundred thousand in the course of a couple of days.

Did our broadcasting change? Did we get boring? Did we all a sudden lose our flair? Did we start using language that people didn't want to hear? No, I think you've just had enough. I think you've seen the story, you've' seen how it ended, it ended pretty well in most American's view; it's time to move on.

What's the next big story? Is it Laci Peterson? Because Laci Peterson got a whole lot more minutes' worth of coverage on the cable news channels in the last week than we'd have ever expected just a few days after a regime fell, like Saddam Hussein.

I don't want to suggest for a minute that we are shallow people, we Americans. At times we are, but I do think that the phenomenon of our attention deficit disorder when it comes to watching television news and watching stories and then just being finished with them, I think it might come from the saturation that you have nowadays. You cannot walk by an airport monitor, you can't walk by most televisions in offices these days, in the public, without it being on a cable news channel. And if you're not in front of a TV you're probably in front of your monitor, where there is Internet news available as well.

You have had more minutes of news on the Iraq war in just the three-week campaign than you likely ever got in the years and years of network news coverage of Vietnam. You were forced to wait for it till six o'clock every night and the likelihood that you got more than about eight minutes of coverage in that half hour show, you probably didn't get a whole lot more than that, and it was about two weeks old, some of that footage, having been shipped back. Now it's real time and it is blanketed to the extent that we could see this one arm of the advance, but not where the bullets landed.

But I think the saturation point is reached faster because you just get so much so fast, so absolutely in real time that it is time to move on. And that makes our job very difficult, because we tend to leave behind these vacuums that are left uncovered. When was the last time you saw a story about Afghanistan? It's only been a year, you know. Only since the major combat ended, you were still in Operation Anaconda in not much more than 11 or 12 months ago, and here we are not touching Afghanistan at all on cable news.

There was just a memorandum that came through saying we're closing the Kabul bureau. The Kabul bureau has only been staffed by one person for the last several months, Maria Fasal, she's Afghan and she wanted to be there, otherwise I don't think anyone would have taken that assignment. There's just been no allotment of TV minutes for Afghanistan.

And I am very concerned that the same thing is about to happen with Iraq, because we're going to have another Gary Condit, and we're going to have another Chandra Levy and we're going to have another Jon Benet, and we're going to have another Elizabeth Smart, and here we are in Laci Peterson, and these stories will dominate. They're easy to cover, they're cheap, they're fast, you don't have to send somebody overseas, you don't have to put them up in a hotel that's expensive overseas, and you don't have to set up satellite time overseas. Very cheap to cover domestic news. Domestic news is music news to directors' ears.

But is that what you need to know? Don't you need to know what our personality is overseas and what the ramifications of these campaigns are? Because we went to Iraq, according to the President, to make sure that we were going to be safe from weapons of mass destruction, that no one would attack us. Well, did everything all of a sudden change? The terror alert went down. All of a sudden everything seems to be better, but I can tell you from living over there, it's not.

There are a lot of people who hate us, and it only takes one man who's crazy enough to strap a bunch of suicide devices onto his body to let us know that he can instill fear in even a place like Manhattan. You know, you're not immune from it. One suicide bomb in a mall in a small town in America can paralyze this country, because every small town will think it's vulnerable, not just New York, not just D.C., not just L.A., everybody. And we may not be far from that, and I'm desperately depressed that it's come to this, that it's come to the American shores in the worst way.

I was under the second tower when it came down in New York City on September 11th. I have a real stake in this, and I've got two friends whose remains haven't been found yet at the Trade Center, and that stays with you for quite awhile. It's important that we continue to want to know what happens overseas when we leave. It's important to demand coverage of these things. It's important because your safety and your future and your world and your children will depend on this stuff.

If we had paid more attention to Afghanistan in the '80s we might not have had 9-11. If we hadn't left it in such a mess, we might not have had 9-11 and three thousand people would be alive to talk to you today. If we do the same thing in lraq it is possible that without you even knowing, a brand new federation is formed where deals are made in secret, because the leadership is not allowed to talk about America in good ways, the street would blow up. Because that's essentially what happens everywhere else in the Arab world right now. You can't talk about making deals and allowing the Americans to use your military bases or you will be out like the Shah. Not in the election, of course, but you'd be out like the Shah. And most of these people worry about that. I'm very concerned that Iraq may end up the same way.

There was a reporter in the New York Times a couple days ago at the Pentagon. It was a report on the ground in Iraq that the Americans were going to have four bases that they would continue to use possibly on a permanent basis inside Iraq, kind of in a star formation, the north, the south, Baghdad and out west. Nobody was able to actually say what these bases would be used for, whether it was forward operations, whether it was simple access, but it did speak volumes to the Arab world who said, "You see, we told you the Americans were coming for their imperialistic need. They needed a foothold, they needed to control something in central and west Asia to make sure that we all next door come into line."

And these reports about Syria, well, they may have been breezed over fairly quickly here, but they are ringing loud still over there. Syria's next. And then Lebanon. And look out lran.

So whether we think it's plausible or whether the government even has any designs like that, the Arabs all think it's happening and they think it's for religious purposes for the most part. Again, most of them are so uneducated and they have such little access to media, what they do get is a very bad story, and there's no reason why they shouldn't be afraid as they are. You know, they just don't have the luck that we do of open information.'

One of the things I wanted to mention about the technology of this war, because I know that we've got questions that we want to get to, so I'll just tell you a little bit about some of the technology and how that's changed, perhaps not only how the fighters behave, but how we see things.

The tanks and the vehicles that are used in the front lines are so high tech that an artillery engineer can actually pinpoint a target that looks like a tiny stick man on a screen and simply destroy the target without ever seeing a warm body.

Some of the soldiers, according to our embeds had never seen a dead body throughout the entire three-week campaign. It was like Game Boy. I think that's amazing in two different ways. It makes you a far more successful warrior because you can just barrel right along but it takes away a lot of what war is all about, which is what I mentioned earlier. The TV technology took that away too. We couldn't see where the bullets landed. Nobody could see the horrors of this so that we seriously revisit the concept of warfare the next time we have to deal with it.

I think there were a lot of dissenting voices before this war about the horrors of war, but I'm very concerned about this three-week TV show and how it may have changed people's opinions. It was very sanitized.

It had a very brief respite from the sanitation when Terry Lloyd was killed, the ITN, and when David Bloom was killed and when Michael Kelley was killed. We all sort of sat back for a moment and realized, "God, this is ugly. This is hitting us at home now. This is hitting the noncombatants." But that went away quickly too.

This TV show that we just gave you was extraordinarily entertaining, and I really hope that the legacy that it leaves behind is not one that shows war as glorious, because there's nothing more dangerous than a democracy that thinks this is a glorious thing to do.

War is ugly and it's dangerous, and in this world the way we are discussed on the Arab street, it feeds and fuels their hatred and their desire to kill themselves to take out Americans. It's a dangerous thing to propagate.

I hope diplomacy is not dead. I hope that Colin Powell at one point would like to continue revisiting the French. I hope that he has success in Syria at some point with Basha Assad.

Whenever that meeting is going to happen, and I sure hope we focus on the Middle East, and I sure hope that some kind of peace plan is revisited and attention is paid – American attention is paid to the plight of the Israelis and the Palestinians on an equal basis and that some kind of resolution is made there, because that is the root of so much of the anger. For right or wrong, it's the selling point of all the dictators and despots and leaders overseas. They use that as a pawn any chance they get. Osama loves to sell the Palestinian's cause. I don't even think he cares a hoot about the Palestinians, believe it or not, but he uses it for his cult following to increase his leadership. That is something that we don't understand the power of overseas, and we must. And television has to play a better part in that.

We haven't been back to the West Bank since Operation Defensive Shield last year. It's been a good solid year since we gave you wall-to-wall coverage on what's been going on in the West Bank and Gaza. Hell, we just raided Rafa again. I mean, the Israelis had an incredible raid in Rafa, one of the deadliest in years, but it barely made headlines here.

Again, it is crucial to our security that we are interested in this, because when you are interested I can respond. If I put this on the air right now, you'll turn it off and we'll lose our numbers, as we're finding we're losing now the numbers being so much lower than they were last week.

There is another whole phenomenon that's come about from this war. Many talk about it as the Fox effect, the Fox news effect. I know everyone of you has watched it. It's not a dirty little secret. A lot of people describe Fox as having streamers and banners coming out of the television as you're watching it cover a war. But the Fox effect is very concerning to me.

I'm a journalist and I like to be able to tell the story as I see it, and I hate it when someone tells me I'm one-sided. It's the worst I can hear. Fox has taken so many viewers away from CNN and MSNBC because of their agenda and because of their targeting the market of cable news viewership, that I'm afraid there's not a really big place in cable for news. Cable is for entertainment, as it's turning out, but not news.

I'm hoping that I will have a future in news in cable, but not the way some cable news operators wrap themselves in the American flag and patriotism and go after a certain target demographic, which is very lucrative. You can already see the effects, you can already see the big hires on other networks, right wing hires to chase after this effect, and you can already see that flag waving in the corners of those cable news stations where they have exciting American music to go along with their war coverage.

Well, all of this has to do with what you've seen on Fox and its successes. So I do urge you to be very discerning as you continue to watch the development of cable news, and it is changing like lightning. Be very discerning because it behooves you like it never did before to watch with a grain of salt and to choose responsibly, and to demand what you should know.

That's it. I know that there's probably a couple questions. No one's allowed to ask about my hair color, okay? I'm kidding, if you want to ask you can. It's a pretty boring story. But I just wanted to say thank you, and let's all pray and hope in any way that you pray or hope for peace and for democracy around the world, and for more rain this summer in Manhattan. Thank you all.

AlterNet: MSNBC's Banfield Slams War Coverage

by James Carroll

''FORGETFULNESS is the way to exile,'' the legend reads at Yad Vashem. ''Remembrance is the way to redemption.'' Yad Vashem is the Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem, and today is Holocaust Remembrance Day. Jews everywhere pause to think of the Six Million, and in Israel itself everything stops for a long moment of silence. If Jews have a reason to remember what happened in the heart of Europe between 1933 and 1945, how much more so do non-Jews. Remembrance can advance narrow agendas -- revenge, exceptionalism, victimhood, guilt -- but remembrance can also lead to understanding and change. Memory is a main source of moral awareness, a way of finally coming to terms with what we do without meaning to, a way of facing the truth that even apparently virtuous action can be grounded in prejudice or selfishness. More than that, memory as moral reflection can offer, in the political philosopher Hannah Arendt's phrase, ''the possible redemption from the predicament of irreversibility.''

In relation to the Holocaust, this means that non-Jews remember that greatest of moral failures in order to grasp the full meaning of the anti-Semitism that led to it. The point of doing that, of course, is to repent of such prejudice and to root out its sources. Remembrance is thus an offer of freedom from the tyranny not only of the past but of the present: Things need not be what they are. Moral memory creates a better future.

The permanent relevance of this way of thinking becomes clear when we apply it to the looming conflict between the United States and North Korea. This is not to make comparisons with the Holocaust but rather to learn from the mode of moral awareness that the Holocaust makes possible.

As the confrontation between Washington and Pyongyang escalates, achieving ''redemption from the predicament of irreversibility'' takes on a global urgency. Americans owe it to the near and far future to remember that this conflict originated as a Cold War proxy fight between the United States and the Soviet Union -- a brutal explosion of misunderstanding and miscalculation for which both sides bore responsibility.

Unfolding between 1950 and 1953, the Korean War reinforced the worst impulses of America's belligerent insecurity. It drove the development of the H-bomb and made decision makers deaf to the pleas of scientists like Robert J. Oppenheimer, who wanted to stop it. That Oppenheimer was then himself a Red Scare scapegoat defines the extent of the tragedy, for the Korean War was waged at home, too. It piqued the fever of the anti-Communist paranoia that blinded American policy makers for a generation, leading not only to Vietnam but to a decades-long misperception of Soviet intentions and capabilities.

When Dwight D. Eisenhower became president in January 1953, he escalated the rhetoric of threat in a way that fixed the Cold War as a permanent feature of international relations. When Stalin died that March, Eisenhower refused an opening offered by the new Soviet leader, Georgi Malenkov. Instead, Ike conveyed his readiness to resolve the Korean conflict by using nuclear weapons -- ''without inhibition in our use of weapons'' is the phrase he used in his memoirs -- so that when the Chinese and Soviets finally did agree to a truce that July, Washington could miss the signal that a post-Stalin communism would be different.

Assuming that Moscow and Beijing had bowed before the threat of nuclear war, Washington took their yielding as confirmation of its deadly choice to build American influence around the bomb. That justified a shocking growth in US dependence on nuclear weapons, the significance of which has been made clear to me by writers like John Steinbrunner, James T. Patterson, and Janne E. Nolan. In 1950, the United States possessed about 250 nukes; a decade later that figure had mushroomed to something like 10,000. Moral memory requires us to recognize that growth itself as the central failure of America's response to the Cold War.

Now the bomb is the point of conflict between the United States and North Korea. If Americans had done a better job of reckoning with the moral legacy of our own nuclear dependency, we would see more clearly how Pyongyang's unacceptable nuclear agenda originates in Washington. US officials would be less moralistic, and all Americans would grasp the tragedy of our post-Cold War renewal of dependence on the nuclear arsenal.

None of this is to exempt from judgment the corrupt tyranny that presides over North Korea. Nor is it to downplay the threat represented by North Korean nuclear blackmail. But the conflict between Washington and Pyongyang is by no means a simple matter of good versus evil. The present danger springs from America's actions as much as from North Korea's, and only a full reckoning with the blind foolishness of that past, however well intentioned it was, can prepare for a different, wiser future.

Memory and Moral Awareness in Korea

[I saw this in a restaurant window when I was in Santa Cruz -- anyone know what this is about (i.e. what's the group, or is it a joke)?]

The Anti-War Movement's Work Has Just Begun--but it Needs Historical Context

By Bill Weinberg, editor of the on-line weekly World War 3 Report.

"Beware of those who speak of the spiral of history," wrote Ralph Ellison in Invisible Man, "they are preparing a boomerang. Keep a steel helmet handy."

Actually, those who are preparing boomerangs don't usually tip their hands. While the US media portray an Iraq liberated from dictatorship, press commentators in the Arab world see a replay of the aftermath of World War I, when European powers divided the Middle East, granting themselves easy access to oil resources. In the official climate of self-congratulation, we urgently need to raise questions about how Saddam Hussein came to be in the first place.

In 1916, with the First World War still raging, Britain and France signed the secret Sykes-Picot agreement to divide the Turkish Ottoman Empire, which then controlled most of the Middle East. Under the deal, Iraq fell within the British sphere, and the following year it was in British hands. When the borders were formalized with League of Nations approval in 1920, Britain came close to threatening war with France to keep oil-rich Iraq under its control. The Brits stayed long enough to install a compliant government--brutally putting down Arab and Kurdish uprisings in the process. Ironically, use of poison gas against the Kurds was first pioneered by Winston Churchill, then the United Kingdom's colonial secretary.

The British-installed King Faisal Ibn Hussein was of the same Hashemite dynasty that still rules Jordan--a tribe from the Arabian desert which Britain groomed for power. Under Faisal's reign, the Iraq Petroleum Company had a sweet deal, paying pennies for each barrel. The company was a joint Anglo-American venture, whose major partners were British Petroleum, Standard Oil of New Jersey (today Exxon) and Shell. Bechtel of San Francisco was called in to build the oilfields in the 1950s.

This was the beginning of US interest in Iraq. But when the country became a pawn in Washington's Cold War chess games, things began to spin out of control.

In 1958, the Egypt of Arab nationalist strongman Gamal Nasser joined with Syria to declare a United Arab Republic--seen as a challenge to Israel and the West. The US pressured the conservative Hashemite regimes in Iraq and Jordan to reply by forming their own pro-West "Arab Union." But the move only sparked a coup d'etat and simultaneous popular uprising which toppled the Iraqi monarchy. Bechtel executive George Cooley Jr. was beaten to death by an angry mob in streets of Baghdad. The left-nationalist Abd al-Karim Qasim took power.

With the monarchists now discredited, the US began cultivating a rival--and bitterly anti-communist--Arab nationalist group, the Baath Party, in a bid to destabilize Qasim. In 1959, the young Saddam Hussein was part of a CIA-backed Baathist hit squad that attempted to assassinate Qasim.

In February 1963, the Baathists took power in a bloody coup, and unleashed a reign of terror on Iraq's left, as well as the long-suffering Kurds in the north. The CIA, which had been monitoring the Iraqi left, provided the names of who to round up--as it would later do in Indonesia and Chile. The CIA director at the time was John McCone, a longtime Bechtel executive.

The carnage didn't last long. A November counter-coup brought a Nasserist regime to power. But the Baathists returned to power in a 1968 counter-counter coup.

Once entrenched in power, the Baathists proved less conciliatory to Western interests. In 1972, they nationalized the oil industry, sending BP, Exxon and Shell packing. That same year they signed an aid pact with the USSR. The romance between Baghdad and Washington was only rekindled in 1979 when Saddam Hussein instrumented his own coup within the Baathist regime, declaring himself "supreme ruler" after killing his rivals.

The coup came at a propitious time for the ambitious autocrat. That same year, the Shah of Iran, a US ally, was toppled by Ayatollah Khomeini's revolution. The US and its allies Saudi Arabia and Kuwait agreed that Khomeini's Iran needed to be humbled. Saddam, nurturing visions of himself as savior of the Arab world, was itching to sacrifice his conscripts. US National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski gave a "green light" to Saddam's invasion of Iran in a 1980 meeting with the dictator and Saudi Arabia's King Fahd in Kuwait.

The US "tilted" to Iraq in the grueling war with Iran, arming Saddam's regime-as did the Soviets and French. In 1983, the US removed Iraq from the list of terrorist nations and re-established diplomatic relations, with White House envoy Donald Rumsfeld finessing the overtures to Saddam. The corporations were also eager to get back in. In 1988, when Saddam gassed the Kurdish city of Halabja, instantly killing 5,000 civilians, the US-Iraq Business Forum--including Exxon, Mobil, Lockheed, Westinghouse and Xerox--advocated against economic sanctions. A bill to impose sanctions never made it out of Congress.

Saddam's 1991 invasion of Kuwait had roots in Baghdad's accusations that Kuwait had not followed through on promised war reconstruction aid after Iraq had fought Iran for eight brutal years. But the move proved a disaster for his country, resulting in yet further war damage followed by a decade of harsh sanctions--a definite end to the romance with Uncle Sam.

Now Saddam is gone, but Iraq is devastated and occupied by foreign troops. Former Shell executive Philip J. Carroll is the top candidate to oversee Iraqi oil production under Pentagon auspices. Bechtel has won the contract to rebuild the oil fields. Retired Gen. Jay Garner, appointed to oversee the civil administration of occupied Iraq, made a small fortune in the arms industry. Ahmed Chalabi, reportedly the Pentagon's favorite as leader of post-Saddam Iraq, is the scion of a banking family that underwrote Iraq's Hashemite monarchy. He pledges that if he comes to power he will give US oil companies preferential treatment and cancel Saddam's oil deals with the French and Russians. Pentagon advisor Richard Perle, meanwhile, is said to favor an actual Hashemite restoration in Iraq.

In other words, we appear to be back to 1917. Only this time the US is top dog in the Anglo-American alliance, and there is no cover of legality from the UN, successor to the League of Nations.

The anti-war movement which brought out millions around the globe on Feb. 15 has suffered a grave propaganda defeat in the TV footage of Saddam's statue falling to a cheering crowd. Equivocation by some activists on the horrific realities of Saddam's regime has not served the movement well. Throughout the years of opposing sanctions and war moves, the movement's criticism of Saddam has generally been lukewarm at best. Sanctions-resisters and "human shields" traveled to Iraq with nary a peep of protest against the dictatorship. Worse still, anti-war activists allowed self-appointed "leaders" such as Ramsey Clark --who routinely dismissed human rights allegations against Saddam as "propaganda"--to speak on our behalf. These are errors we are now paying for.

Claims that the statue incident was "staged" miss the point and smack of sore-loserism. Even if it was staged, it wasn't the only Saddam statue or poster to come down. And is unrealistic to deny that many--probably most--Iraqis are celebrating the fall of Saddam, even at the hands of a foreign invader.

But Arabs celebrated the fall of the Ottomans in 1917 too--and that victory is exactly what brought us the unpopular British occupation of Iraq, the oil cartel-friendly monarchy, the ugly backlash, Saddam Hussein and, finally, the current situation. In the anti-US protests which have now emerged in Baghdad, the most frequent banner slogan is "No to Saddam, No to America."

Those of us who marched on Feb. 15 need to rethink and remobilize. We need to oppose the occupation, as well as expansion of the war to Syria or Iran. We need to find pro-democracy, anti-occupation forces in Iraq, or in exile, to work with and support--forces which oppose imperialist designs on their homeland and imposition of a foreign-backed technocratic elite, but also oppose establishment of an Islamic state. After generations of harsh dictatorship, these forces are likely to be fairly marginal. It is our job to help amplify their voices. Our most difficult and important job is to challenge the official triumphalism and raise the hard questions about where this neo-colonial venture is taking us--to serve as a metaphorical steel helmet against Bush's historical boomerang.

Bill Weinberg is editor of the on-line weekly World War 3 Report.

Revealed: How the road to war was paved with lies
Intelligence agencies accuse Bush and Blair of distorting and fabricating evidence in rush to war
By Raymond Whitaker

The case for invading Iraq to remove its weapons of mass destruction was based on selective use of intelligence, exaggeration, use of sources known to be discredited and outright fabrication, The Independent on Sunday can reveal.

(The Independent)

The case for invading Iraq to remove its weapons of mass destruction was based on selective use of intelligence, exaggeration, use of sources known to be discredited and outright fabrication, The Independent on Sunday can reveal.

A high-level UK source said last night that intelligence agencies on both sides of the Atlantic were furious that briefings they gave political leaders were distorted in the rush to war with Iraq. "They ignored intelligence assessments which said Iraq was not a threat," the source said. Quoting an editorial in a Middle East newspaper which said, "Washington has to prove its case. If it does not, the world will for ever believe that it paved the road to war with lies", he added: "You can draw your own conclusions."

UN inspectors who left Iraq just before the war started were searching for four categories of weapons: nuclear, chemical, biological and missiles capable of flying beyond a range of 93 miles. They found ample evidence that Iraq was not co-operating, but none to support British and American assertions that Saddam Hussein's regime posed an imminent threat to the world.

On nuclear weapons, the British Government claimed that the former regime sought uranium feed material from the government of Niger in west Africa. This was based on letters later described by the International Atomic Energy Agency as crude forgeries.

On chemical weapons, a CIA report on the likelihood that Saddam would use weapons of mass destruction was partially declassified. The parts released were those which made it appear that the danger was high; only after pressure from Senator Bob Graham, head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, was the whole report declassified, including the conclusion that the chances of Iraq using chemical weapons were "very low" for the "foreseeable future".

On biological weapons, the US Secretary of State, Colin Powell, told the UN Security Council in February that the former regime had up to 18 mobile laboratories. He attributed the information to "defectors" from Iraq, without saying that their claims – including one of a "secret biological laboratory beneath the Saddam Hussein hospital in central Baghdad" – had repeatedly been disproved by UN weapons inspectors.

On missiles, Iraq accepted UN demands to destroy its al-Samoud weapons, despite disputing claims that they exceeded the permitted range. No banned Scud missiles were found before or since, but last week the Secretary of State for Defence, Geoff Hoon, suggested Scuds had been fired during the war. There is no proof any were in fact Scuds.

Some American officials have all but conceded that the weapons of mass destruction campaign was simply a means to an end – a "global show of American power and democracy", as ABC News in the US put it. "We were not lying," it was told by one official. "But it was just a matter of emphasis." American and British teams claim they are scouring Iraq in search of definitive evidence but none has so far been found, even though the sites considered most promising have been searched, and senior figures such as Tariq Aziz, the former Deputy Prime Minister, intelligence chiefs and the man believed to be in charge of Iraq's chemical weapons programme are in custody.

Robin Cook, who as Foreign Secretary would have received high-level security briefings, said last week that "it was difficult to believe that Saddam had the capacity to hit us". Mr Cook resigned from the Government on the eve of war, but was still in the Cabinet as Leader of the House when it released highly contentious dossiers to bolster its case.

One report released last autumn by Tony Blair said that Iraq could deploy chemical and biological weapons within 45 minutes, but last week Mr Hoon said that such weapons might have escaped detection because they had been dismantled and buried. A later Downing Street "intelligence" dossier was shown to have been largely plagiarised from three articles in academic publications. "You cannot just cherry-pick evidence that suits your case and ignore the rest. It is a cardinal rule of intelligence," said one aggrieved officer. "Yet that is what the PM is doing." Another said: "What we have is a few strands of highly circumstantial evidence, and to justify an attack on Iraq it is being presented as a cast-iron case. That really is not good enough."

Glen Rangwala, the Cambridge University analyst who first pointed out Downing Street's plagiarism, said ministers had claimed before the war to have information which could not be disclosed because agents in Iraq would be endangered. "That doesn't apply any more, but they haven't come up with the evidence," he said. "They lack credibility."

Mr Rangwala said much of the information on WMDs had come from Ahmed Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress (INC), which received Pentagon money for intelligence-gathering. "The INC saw the demand, and provided what was needed," he said. "The implication is that they polluted the whole US intelligence effort."

Facing calls for proof of their allegations, senior members of both the US and British governments are suggesting that so-called WMDs were destroyed after the departure of UN inspectors on the eve of war – a possibility raised by President George Bush for the first time on Thursday.

This in itself, however, appears to be an example of what the chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix called "shaky intelligence". An Iraqi scientist, writing under a pseudonym, said in a note slipped to a driver in a US convoy that he had proof information was kept from the inspectors, and that Iraqi officials had destroyed chemical weapons just before the war.

Other explanations for the failure to find WMDs include the possibility that they might have been smuggled to Syria, or so well hidden that they could take months, even years, to find. But last week it emerged that two of four American mobile teams in Iraq had been switched from looking for WMDs to other tasks, though three new teams from less specialised units were said to have been assigned to the quest for "unconventional weapons" – the less emotive term which is now preferred.

Mr Powell and Mr Bush both repeated last week that Iraq had WMDs. But one official said privately that "in the end, history and the American people will judge the US not by whether its officials found canisters of poison gas or vials of some biological agent [but] by whether this war marked the beginning of the end for the terrorists who hate America".

by Joy-Ann Lomena Reid

The Dixie Chicks episode has indeed been shameful ... for America.

The Republican Party and its handmaidens in the press is enforcing a McCarthyist, enforced groupthink that would put the old Soviet Union (or the old Iraq,) to shame. No one -- no elected official, no private citizen and certainly no member of the entertainment industry -- is permitted to say an unkind word about George W. Bush. To do so is to be labeled a treasonous parasite living off the freedoms purchased for this country in blood. But don't those freedoms guarantee us the right to criticize all we want? If not, what exactly has the blood of our fallen soldiers bought?

Perhaps the case was best made by a Republican president -- Theodore Roosevelt -- who said, "Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the president or any other public official."

Roosevelt expanded on that theme when he wrote in an editorial for the "Kansas City Star" newspaper on May 7, 1918 -- while World War I raged -- that:

"The President is merely the most important among a large number of public servants. He should be supported or opposed exactly to the degree which is warranted by his good conduct or bad conduct, his efficiency or inefficiency in rendering loyal, able, and disinterested service to the Nation as a whole. Therefore it is absolutely necessary that there should be full liberty to tell the truth about his acts, and this means that it is exactly necessary to blame him when he does wrong as to praise him when he does right. Any other attitude in an American citizen is both base and servile. To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or any one else. But it is even more important to tell the truth, pleasant or unpleasant, about him than about any one else."

That quote was used by a member of the Dixie Chicks -- the girl group that sparked a country music revolution when lead singer Natalie Maines declared onstage before a UK concert audience that the groups was "ashamed that the president of the United States is from Texas."

That comments ripped through the country music world, prompting outraged fans to hold CD burnings, some even taking their kids out to the parking lot to publicly stomp on the group's product and likeness -- creating eerie images of exuberant violence-as-family-outing, that should be a shameful reminiscence for the South. Led by right wing press and political figures, otherwise peaceable Americans heaped scorn, verbal abuse and, ultimately, vandalism and even death threats on the three young women, who have topped the charts as the top selling girl group in music history. Country radio stations and even whole networks -- including, not surprisingly, the rabidly right wing Clear Channel conglomerate -- yanked the group's songs from playlists. Backlash songs promoting the war in the most muscular terms hit the airwaves, and the man who originally recorded the group's hit "traveling soldier" re-released the song to capitalize on the Dixie Chicks ban-wagon.

And if the images of people burning and breaking perfectly good CDs that they already paid for (thus -- and work with me here, country fans -- the Chicks already profited from,) wasn't bizarre enough, the world was treated to a bile-spitting display of American intolerance unlike anything those of us who didn't live through the McCarthy era have ever seen. The Chicks joined Hollywood celebrities like Sean Penn and Susan Sarandon as objects of hatred and ridicule by Americans who accused them of selling out the troops -- willfully ignoring the ad nauseum statements of support for the fighting men and women of the U.S. armed forces that were issued by the antiwar celebrities. But the snide ridicule directed at the Hollywood set (who had the odd event canceled or who became the butt of endless late-night TV jokes,) was nothing compared to bitter, violent reaction to the Chicks.

And then there was the hour-long, televised rebuke of the women Thursday night, in which ABC News correspondent Diane Sawyer repeatedly pressed, in tisking, school-marm fashion, for just one more apology to Bush. Maines heroically resisted the attempts to reduce her to a wicked child, who surely must realize that it isn't nice to criticize her betters, but the interview ought to go down in history with the House Committee on Un-American Affairs hearings for its daring presumption of guilt. What many of the rest of us still don't get, is just what Maines is guilty of: Feeling ashamed? Being from Texas? Or speaking her mind?

Add the whole, sorry mess together and the world is left with an image of America at its ugliest -- a nation so intolerant of dissent that those who engage in it are literally said, by a shrill few, to be sure, but loudly and without repercussion, to be deserving of death. What? Are we living in the United States or Communist Cuba?

Have we as a nation become so sensitive, and our democracy so brittle, that we cannot countenance any aspersion on the president, any questioning of his policies, or any doubts about his judgment? Recall that fewer than half of those who voted -- and fewer then one quarter of those who were eligible to vote -- chose George W. Bush as president, and prior to 9/11 there were sufficient doubts about his leadership to cause his own party's leadership to carp about the "smallness" of the Bush presidency.

Of course, all that changed after Sept. 11. Now there is nothing bigger than the presidency of George W. Bush, and like the reign of Fidel, it has been placed beyond reproach by the Right, even when the issues on the table (as was the case with Iraq), have nothing whatsoever to do with the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.

Republicans defend their ideological lynching of the opposition by saying that the Chicks and others erred by airing their grievances against Bush during wartime -- and overseas, at that. But since when is it unpatriotic to criticize the Commander in Chief -- where ever you happen to be standing -- while the nation is at war? Republicans certainly didn't hold back on Franklin Delano Roosevelt while he prosecuted what is still the conflict of the 20th century, and haters of John F. Kennedy kept right on sneering at him even as the Cuban missile crisis loomed. It certainly wasn't considered unpatriotic for the likes of Tom Delay and other Republicans (who excused themselves from military service during the Vietnam conflict) to fulminate against President Bill Clinton while our fighter pilots were in the air over Kosovo, or on the ground in Mogadishu. Perhaps it's only unpatriotic to criticize the president when he is a Republican.

Meanwhile, in Britain (the constitutional monarchy from whom we liberated ourselves in 1776), members of the press heaped scorn on Prime Minister Tony Blair in the runnup to the Iraq war. The criticism leveled at Blair -- who enjoyed less than 50 percent support for the invasion before it began -- would have been unthinkable in the United States, where a docile press corps coos at Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and can barely conjure a tough question for Bush during his rare live press conferences ("Mr. President, how does your faith get you through the rough times...?") The press finds its mettle against White House spokesman Ari Fleischer, but the free thought rarely finds its way into the columns or on-air reports that follow. Blair, on the other hand, was lampooned before the war by the UK Mirror and other tabloids as George W. Bush's poodle; and depicted on Mirror covers smooching George W. Bush on the lips or dripping blood from vampire fangs.

During the fighting in Iraq, Americans interesting in hearing the plain facts about the conflict -- including both the victories and the difficulties, casualties and destruction that are the natural outgrowth of war -- were forced to turn to such outlets as the Guardian of London newspaper, the Canadian Broadcast Corporation or the BBC. ABC News and CNN provided rare bastions of credible journalism late at night (as did several newspapers), but for much of the time, U.S. coverage of the war often disintegrated into the same chest-thumping, jingoistic drivel that litters the Fox network, whose reports often look like a "Saturday Night Live" parody of state television in Egypt or Ba'athist Iraq.

The cheerleading on the American cable and television networks led BBC chief Greg Dyke to deride the bulk of U.S. war coverage as "shocking" and "gung ho." This, as Dyke and others are fighting to keep right-wing media conglomerates like Clear Channel from spreading like a virus across the UK.

With that as a backdrop, it is of little wonder the American public came to expect absolute conformity of thought from everyone in public life. And I suppose the American press -- of which I am a member -- deserves some of the blame for the Dixie Chicks hysteria.

But just because it isn't surprising doesn't mean it isn't shameful. Grow up, country music fans. Grow up, America. George W. Bush is not Fidel, and this ain't Cuba.

Whistling Dixie

[This is the second of the Shufu interview plays posted here -- a short explanation of what these are have already been posted as a preface to the first play, "Interview with a Civilian".]

"Interview with an Expert"

A TV Studio
November 2002

Two people sitting.

INTERVIEWER
Hi Akie
Nice to meet you.

EXPERT
Nice to meet you too

INTERVIEWER
Your clothes is very nice

EXPERT
Thank you

INTERVIEWER
How do you feel
Today

EXPERT
I’m a little nervous
It is my first time
To be on
Such a big program

INTERVIEWER
No don’t worry about
Camera

EXPERT
Okay

INTERVIEWER
You spend
Your house

                Pause.

                Thinking.

Make yourself at home

EXPERT
Oh! Okay

                The EXPERT relaxes.

INTERVIEWER
So

Mmmm

Now

EXPERT
What time
What time
What time
Does this program start?

INTERVIEWER
Thirty seconds
I’m nervous

EXPERT
Don’t worry about it

INTERVIEWER
Start. Okay.

                Pause.

                THEY wait.

                The "Camera" starts.

Hello this is Kyoka
I introduce audience Akie
Akie is specialist in

                Pause.

Arab region

                THEY laugh.

This time
We think about
The United States versus Iraq
So Akie
What do you think about president Hussein

EXPERT
President Hussein

INTERVIEWER
Do you think he is
Hero in Iraq

EXPERT
I guess he is hero in Iraq
But
Iraq

                Pause.

I don’t many things in Iraq
I saw
I watched TV about Iraq
Many Iraqis
Agree with his policy
And

                Beat.

It is my opinion
We should know
We should know
Many politician policy
United States policy
And Iraq’s policy
And third government policy
What should I say
Third world world policy
President Hussein is a little bit

                Pause.

Despotic
He seems des
He seems despotic o me but
I guess he
He had anything
So Iraqis
Agree with him.
I guess

INTERVIEWER
So
Do you think Iraqis need
Strong leader like President Hussein
Because so many Arab countries
Eehhhhh…
Doesn’t have
Doesn’t have
Natural resources
And ah…
In the future
They don’t have oil

Iraq
Doesn’t have
Sea
And…
They want to

EXPERT
Yeah

INTERVIEWER
Need
The sea

EXPERT
Yeah
Iraq is not an affluent

                Beat.

Not rich country
Want strange leader
I guess
So
For example
In North Korea
In Afghanastan
In Afghanastan
It’s different I guess
He is terrorist
Osama Bin Ladin
If these country have many food
or many

                Looking up in dictionary.

Or many resources
Resources
They won’t they don’t have
Weapons
Which can kill many people
For example biological weapons or nuclear weapons
But they want to
Food or money or anything
But they cannot have them
So they
They run
They use armed force
To rich country or
They want to get them
So they use armed force
Against another country
So they need
They need
Strange hero

INTERVIEWER
When Iraq attacked Kuwait

                Beat.
Iraq
Iraq’s religion
Is different between
Different than Kuwait

EXPERT
Ohhhhhhh…

INTERVIEWER
What do you think
This point?

                Pause.

INTERVIEWER
So
Some Islam religion
ehhh…
Islam religion
Doesn’t agree
Another religion
So somethings
They attack
Some
Country for example

                Beat.
Somalia
And
Bosnia

                THEY laugh.

I’m sorry

EXPERT
I guess
I guess
Iraq attacked Kuwait
Because they don’t
Many oils
Because they want
To get
A lot of money so
Every want to get
Many money and grow up
In strange country
Strange country
Expand their country
I guess Iraq want to
Get sea
For oil

INTERVIEWER
So Iraq get natural power
They want to get more natural resources

EXPERT
To build up national strength
Iraq attack Kuwait and get seat
And they want to build up
National strength

INTERVIEWER
Okay.

Wjay do you think of
The U.S.’ policy to Iraq?

EXPERT
I disagree
I disagree the United States and its support
Will attack Iraq

INTERVIEWER
Why
Do you agree

EXPERT
Disagree

INTERVIEWER
-Disagree with US policy

EXPERT
Because
Because using armed force

                Pause.

It’s my opinion
I guess using arm force
Give birth to terrorism

INTERVIEWER
Hmmmm…

EXPERT
I guess
People in
People in
The world
Every people in the world
Have a
Have a
Have plenty of food
Or everything
If every people in the world
Have plenty of food and everything
We will
We won’t
We won’t have war

                Beat.

INTERVIEWER
Hm!?

EXPERT
If every people
Of the world
Have plenty of food and everything-

INTERVIEWER
-Oh-okay-

                THEY laugh

EXPERT
We won’t have war

INTERVIEWER
I think so
What do you think?

Few Arab countries agree with the U.S,
Policy
Why did they agree with the U.S. policy

EXPERT
Because they
They want to
They want to
Another oil field

INTERVIEWER
I’m sorry
What do you mean?

EXPERT
If one of them
They have-

INTERVIEWER
They want

The United States’ money

EXPERT
Mmmm…
Yes
I agree with your opinion

INTERVIEWER
The last question
Do you think the U.S. government like to interfere
In other countries

EXPERT
Yes I think so that

INTERVIEWER
Why do you think so?

                Pause.

EXPERT
The United States
We need
We need leader
But the United States
A little bit

                Pause.

A little bit
The United States interferes too much
I guess
But too much

What should I say?

I wish we have another way
Out of using armed force
I don’t know that because
I am not genius
But we have another way
I believe

INTERVIEWER
Thank you

EXPERT
Your welcome

Time to send Toby Keith and Lee Greenwood overseas for a real battle of the bands...

PESHAWAR, April 22 (OneWorld) - In Pakistan's Northwest Frontier Province (NWFP), the U.S-led war on Iraq has fuelled the growth of a thriving music industry, based on rabble-rousing, anti-American audio cassettes, which analysts fear will give a fillip to Islamism.

As during the 1991 U.S. attack on Iraq, and ten years later in Afghanistan, this time too poets in the local Pashto language, are working overtime to arouse anti-Western sentiments among the province's orthodox Pashtoon tribes.

(Yahoo! News)

PESHAWAR, April 22 (OneWorld) - In Pakistan's Northwest Frontier Province (NWFP), the U.S-led war on Iraq has fuelled the growth of a thriving music industry, based on rabble-rousing, anti-American audio cassettes, which analysts fear will give a fillip to Islamism.

As during the 1991 U.S. attack on Iraq, and ten years later in Afghanistan, this time too poets in the local Pashto language, are working overtime to arouse anti-Western sentiments among the province's orthodox Pashtoon tribes.

Not that the locals need much incitement. Just to get the measure of the province's already strong anti-American sentiment, two years ago thousands of volunteers went to bordering Afghanistan to fight against U.S troops alongside the Taliban.

As most people in far flung areas of this Islamist province lack access to sources of entertainment, audio cassettes churned out by a host of local musicians and poets are effortlessly filling the void.

All these songs contain a common thread - they express solidarity with Iraqis and equate America with Satan. As one song goes, "A devil has emerged from his filthy den and has endangered humanity's peace. Alas, there is no one to stop his cruelties."

Clearly, music companies seem to have struck the right chord. For the recently produced cassettes are moving off the shelves faster than companies can replace them. "We sold audio cassettes on Iraq in the thousands," says the owner of Peshawar's Muhammad Wali Music Center, Haji Mubarak Jan.

Jan's company specialises in the production of traditional tribal Pashto music, but the Iraq war, and the 2001 Afghanistan war earlier, spawned a new genre dubbed anti-U.S. music.

The fever has spread to Pashtoons in other cities as well. "My brother owns a music center in Karachi which also sold thousands of such cassettes to Pashtoons working there," says Jan.

Despite a ban imposed in NWFP by the ruling Islamist alliance, the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA), on playing music in public transport and places, many drivers listen to cassettes about Iraq in their vehicles.

Passengers aren't complaining. "People hate America for its attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq, so they like it when we play cassettes containing anti-American sentiments," says Ahmad Gul, a coach driver in Peshawar, the capital of NWFP.

Famous tribal singers weave anti-American songs with traditional Pashto music to vent their emotions. And this time, it's not just America that is their target. Arab leaders too are the target of their ire.

As one lyric goes, "O King Fahd, you allowed the infidels to enter, now they will pollute the Holy Land of the Muslims." The reference clearly is to the Saudis who have allowed thousands of U.S troops to be stationed in their country.

"These cassettes are in great demand, and now we plan to produce a number of other volumes of such songs," says Jan.

Most of the music produced is revolutionary in spirit, accompanied by loud and energetic songs, which never fail to arouse the people. They are penned in the common man's language, lucid and down to earth.

Part of their appeal lies in the fact that they stress the immediacy of the threat to Muslims. Take a prime example - "Today Baghdad and Karbala are burning, tomorrow you will be deprived of Mecca. O Muslim, why have you let your sword rust?"

Though they have little in common, Saddam Hussain and Osama Bin Laden are regular favorites among songwriters. So some of these poems contain panegyrics in their honor.

As one songwriter says, "People are not concerned with the political and religious status of these two, they just regard them as heroes of Islam."

In one particular album, displaying Saddam Hussein praying on the cover even as enemy bombers circle menacingly overhead, the lyrics run, "Brave Saddam Hussein is standing before the enemy. He has destroyed a large number of their aircraft."

Of course, in this part of the world one cannot escape a dose of Islamic fundamentalism. Some cassettes are having a good run despite the fact that they contain lyrics unaccompanied by any music.

They have been produced by the local Taliban (students of religious seminaries) who consider music un-Islamic.

Jan says most of the patrons of hate-American cassettes spring from the poor class or tribal areas bordering Afghanistan.

One of the biggest markets for these cassettes are Afghan refugees living in camps in NWFP as well as those returning to Afghanistan.

As poet Muhammad Wali, puts it, "People feel emotionally satisfied when they listen to songs condemning the U.S. and U.K. They get inspiration, hope and strength from them. So we have no other option but to represent their feelings in our productions."

The singers arouse people's emotions by announcing, "Flames have engulfed Baghdad, and the sacred soil of Karbala is burning. The soil of holy prophets is being bombed but I can't do anything. I am helpless and brutalized at the hands of the devil."

Pointing towards the real motive of the American attack on Iraq, they say, "President Bush is the oil thief who painted Iraq with blood."

Says singer Hidayat Shah, whose new album hit the market recently, "I write poetry to awaken the Muslims from their deep slumber. During the U.S. attack on Iraq in 1991 we released several albums which encouraged us to produce more this time," he says.

Shah says his object is not pecuniary. "It is not my business. I consider it a jehad and a religious obligation," he maintains.

Shah's zeal is unwavering. "I have sung and written more than 1,000 revolutionary poems since the American invasion of Iraq last time," he claims.

Cassettes filled with hate speeches have also proliferated. Speeches by religious leaders condemning America and its allies are fast gaining popularity. The most popular of these is religious scholar Maulana Muhammad Amir, popularly known as Maulana Bijli Ghar for his firebrand speeches.

Political analysts say these cassettes cannot be taken lightly. They believe they will impact Pashtoons for a long time to come.

Renowned political analyst and lawyer Barrister Baacha says the emotional nature of the lyrics will make people - especially Afghans - more pro-Taliban and pro-Osama.

"The Afghans consider the attack on Iraq the start of another crusade. They will become prey to pro-Taliban elements, thus blocking the way for reformation of the orthodox Pashtoon society," Baacha comments.

He says the American attack on Afghanistan acted as a catalyst to bring together religious parties to form the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA). The alliance won the October general elections in the Pashtoon-dominated NWFP and Balochistan provinces.

"Such poetry will certainly help the MMA strengthen its roots in Pashtoon society," he observes.

"Britain's battles with the Pashtoons before 1947 in pre-partition India are still alive in Pashto folk poetry," says Baacha, adding that the attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq would also be remembered for generations.

He predicts, "Just as Ayatullah Khomeini's messages on audio cassettes paved the way for an Islamic revolution in Iran, the revolutionary poems and lyrics being disseminated today would inculcate a revolutionary sentiment among the Pashtoons."

7:00 Thursday, May 1
50 Washington Square South
New York City

With poems by Badr Shakir as-Sayyab, Abdul Wahab al-Bayati,
Nazik al-Malaika, Buland al-Haidari, Saadi Youssef, Lamia Abbas Amara,
Sargon Boulus, Fadil al-Azzawi, Sadiq al-Sayigh, Yusef al-Sayigh, Hisham
Shafiq, Sinan Antoon, and Mahmoud Darwish

And an introduction by Lebanese novelist Eias Khoury

Sponsored by the NYU Department of Middle Eastern Studies and Kevorkian Center for Middle Eastern Studies

By Jason Halperin

Two weeks ago I experienced a very small taste of what hundreds of South Asian immigrants and U.S. citizens of South Asian descent have gone through since 9/11, and what thousands of others have come to fear. I was held, against my will and without warrant or cause, under the USA PATRIOT Act. While I understand the need for some measure of security and precaution in times such as these, the manner in which this detention and interrogation took place raises serious questions about police tactics and the safeguarding of civil liberties in times of war.

That night, March 20th, my roommate Asher and I were on our way to see the Broadway show "Rent." We had an hour to spare before curtain time so we stopped into an Indian restaurant just off of Times Square in the heart of midtown. I have omitted the name of the restaurant so as not to subject the owners to any further harassment or humiliation.

We helped ourselves to the buffet and then sat down to begin eating our dinner. I was just about to tell Asher how I'd eaten there before and how delicious the vegetable curry was, but I never got a chance. All of a sudden, there was a terrible commotion and five NYPD in bulletproof vests stormed down the stairs. They had their guns drawn and were pointing them indiscriminately at the restaurant staff and at us.

with CIRCUS AMOK / THE TRACHTENBURG FAMILY SLIDESHOW PLAYERS/ JANEANE GAROFALO/ DANNY KELLY / JOHN DYER / RAQUY DANZIGER / and more

An evening of art, music, and discourse. Featuring: Talks by: Lee Gough from Military Families Speak Out, John Kim from Veterans for Peace, L.A. Kauffman from United for Peace & Justice, Janeane Garofalo ...and more! Music by: The Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players, Danny Kelly, John Dyer, Raquy Danziger & Friends Sound & Visual Art by: Josh Goldberg, April Koester, DJ Andrew Performance by: Circus Amok, Chelsea Peretti Plus: Films, videos, and art installations by local artists.

"Peace cannot be kept by force, it can only be achieved by understanding." --Albert Einstein

Tuesday, May 6
7pm-midnight $8
70 N. 6th St. Brooklyn, NY 11211 718.782.5188

SAVE THE DATE!!! MAKE YOUR TRAVEL PLANS NOW!!!

NATIONAL CONFERENCE
United for Peace and Justice Coalition

June 6-8, Chicago

On June 6-8, United for Peace and Justice will hold a National Conference in Chicago. Representatives of local and national peace and justice groups from across the U.S. will come together to assess the new challenges and opportunities we face in stopping the Bush administration’s program of permanent war. It is time to develop plans for coordinated action over the next 6-12 months. We invite all organizations affiliated with or interested in joining UFPJ to send a representative to participate in this important meeting. (See info at bottom for how to become a member group of UFPJ.)

United for Peace and Justice formed in October 2002 to bring together a broad range of organizations throughout the United States to coordinate our work against the U.S. war on Iraq. Activities organized by UFPJ organizations and activists—-including the Feb. 15 mobilization in NYC, in which 500,000 people participated, and the jointly organized Feb. 16 demonstration in San Francisco, attended by 250,000--have been instrumental in resisting the Bush administration’s empire-building agenda.

(PLEASE NOTE: For multiple reasons, the conference will not be on May 24-26, as had been initially planned at a March 9 meeting in Washington, D.C.)

Now more than ever, it’s critical that we strategize about how to build a stronger grassroots movement for peace, democracy, and justice. At this conference organizers and activists will have the opportunity to grapple with these questions and more:

--Will Bush soon wage “pre-emptive” wars on Syria, Iran, or North Korea?
--What strategy and tactics will help us build the power needed to end the U.S. occupation of Iraq?
--What action should we take to end the U.S. role in sustaining Israel’s occupation of Palestinian lands and repressive regimes from Colombia to the Philippines—all in the name of “fighting terror?”
--How do we attract and retain the involvement of diverse communities and sectors at a moment when many feel demoralized by Bush’s invasion of Iraq or unclear about next steps?
--Does the intersection of an economic crisis at home and the diversion of billions of federal dollars to the military create new opportunities to organize and build the leadership of communities of color in the movement?
--How do we fight against the detentions and deportations of immigrants, the attacks on our civil liberties, and the possibility of a PATRIOT Act II?

Over 3 full days, we will use plenary sessions, breakout groups, and workshops to

1) Strengthen ties between local and national peace and justice groups across the U.S.
2) Assess the political landscape we face (Bush’s war agenda—its impact abroad and at home; strengths and weaknesses of our movement)
3) Develop coordinated campaigns and action plans (involving mass actions, direct action, grassroots lobbying, etc.)
4) Develop a 6-12 month structure to help us implement those plans
5) Elect UFPJ leadership

The first day is tentatively planned to be educational, with presentations, panels and workshops on a range of topics relating to Iraq, the “war on terrorism,” and movement-building. These discussions will provide a framework for making decisions on action plans and how we’ll organize our work on the second and third days.

UFPJ is committed to ensuring grassroots participation at this vital meeting, occurring at a critical juncture for our movement. Therefore, UFPJ will cover a large percentage of the costs of either travel or the conference. We are in the process of finalizing conference logistics and scholarship plans and will send out an update shortly.

In the meantime, we encourage you to make transportation plans ASAP.

---------------------
FOR MORE INFORMATION:

United for Peace and Justice
http://www.unitedforpeace.org/

To become a member group of UFPJ:
United for Peace & Justice welcomes the participation of any and all national, regional and local groups who share our goals and wish to work with others. Email andrea@globalexchange.org

To receive email updates, go to
http://www.unitedforpeace.org/email.php

Contact us at:
http://www.unitedforpeace.org/contactus.php
New York City 212-603-3700

To make a tax-deductible donation, go to
http://unitedforpeace.org/donate

by John Chuckman

My subject is Franklin Graham, one of President Bush's very-public religious confidants. Franklin's father, Billy, served President Nixon in a similar capacity. Billy's efforts were crowned with a kind of earthly immortality: he's on those White House tapes in the National Archives sharing anti-Semitic remarks with Nixon and never flinching or clearing his throat over the idea of using atomic bombs in Vietnam.

Franklin has pretty well replaced his ailing father in leading the huge Billy Graham organization. You may wonder about religious ministries being handed down like fifteenth-century dukedoms, but the practice is fairly common in America, and several of the nation's big ministries - the type of outfits that might be characterized as Las Vegas Showstoppers for Jesus - have been handed down in this fashion. This happens in American politics, too. After all, a hand-me-down evangelist serves a hand-me-down President who ran against (and lost the popular vote to) a hand-me-down politician from Tennessee.

It's not that Americans accept aristocracy, but in a nation of insanely-frenzied consumers, an established brand name always still has some juice worth squeezing.

The youthful Franklin seems to have been a bit of a trial for his mom and dad, reportedly exhibiting more interest in sowing oats than saving souls. He had an obsession with guns one could interpret as slightly at odds with the message of the Prince of Peace. He may just have been reflecting the quaint traditions of America's Appalachian subculture - his home is the mountains of North Carolina - when he once cut down a tree by blasting away at it with an automatic weapon (I did not make this up). Apparently, he used to be fond of giving automatic pistols as gifts.

Well, at some point, I guess the lad realized he was burning out and going nowhere, and automatic weapons are expensive when you like to give the very best, so Franklin had something like the President's road-to-Damascus experience. I doubt he recalled Henry the Fourth's saying Paris was worth a mass (Henry of Navarre became King of France by adopting Catholicism). It would have weighed heavily that dad's ready-made, super-slick organization offered a handsome, steady income, all expenses paid, especially if Franklin had come to recognize that his next-best career option might be itinerant bingo caller.

Redemption is one of America's great ongoing themes. It's the spiritual extension of all the plastic surgery, injections, drugs, youth-inducing potions, diets, and tales of lives changed by lotteries or get-rich-quick schemes, but it does have to be the right kind of redemption. None of your consolations of philosophy, peace of the Buddha, wisdom of the Great Spirit, or following the Prophet will do. Lives lived decently and peacefully from beginning to end are not admired because they don't make juicy entertainment.

The approved American redemption-story template includes years of inflicting hell on others, often by abusing whisky or drugs, finally being overcome by frightful (drug-induced or otherwise) visions of going to hell yourself, and then spending the rest of your life annoying every person who crosses your path with the opinion that he or she does not know the truth. About 85% of the nation's country-and Western singers and about 95% of its evangelists spend their declining years sharing such tales in magazines, tapes, interviews, and sermons. It's a major industry.

This is all by way of background to Franklin's words about his new mission. I suppose it's possible Franklin thinks Nazareth is a trailer park somewhere in North Carolina or Texas which would account for his thinking that the people in the Middle East haven't heard about Jesus, but, in any event, Franklin is now going to tell them about Jesus, at least his gun-totting Appalachian version. Well, almost, but Franklin has probably been advised that proselytizing for conversion from Judaism is against the law in modern Israel. With a Bush-appointed Proconsul, that kind of law shouldn't get in the way of bringing the good word to Iraqis, although he'll be a bit late to save the souls of those smashed and broken by American bombs.

Franklin's organization, Samaritan's Purse, claims that it intends only to bring relief services and not evangelism to Iraq, but how valid can this claim be? The Billy Graham organization for decades has worked only to convert people to its narrow notion of Christianity. It has been criticized even by other Christians for the nature of its work - cranking out converts like sausages in a vast Midwestern meat-packing plant. Perhaps when Franklin created his offshoot relief organization, Samaritan's Purse, it was in part a response to this kind of criticism.

Franklin's own words on Islam over the last year hardly resemble a second Albert Schweitzer yearning to help fellow beings. His tone is militaristic and has the same nasty, parochial feel as the President's "us and them." One looks in vain for any generosity of spirit associated with the words of Jesus.

"We're not attacking Islam but Islam has attacked us. The God of Islam is not the same God. He's not the son of God of the Christian or Judeo-Christian faith. It's a different God, and I believe it is a very evil and wicked religion."

Franklin here makes no distinction between the nineteen individuals responsible for 9/11 and the world's hundreds of millions of Muslims, yet he seems never to have made the same kind of connections between criminals of other religious backgrounds and the religions themselves. Did the IRA's outrages elicit such comments about Catholicism?

"the persecution or elimination of non-Muslims has been a cornerstone of Islam conquests and rule for centuries."

I suppose it would be foolish to expect any sensible perspective on history from a man of Franklin's limited learning. The work of people calling themselves Christians in countless wars, religious persecutions, and exterminations just since the Renaissance dwarfs the volume of spilled blood in all the rest of human history. The Holocaust, the African slave trade, and the extermination of many aboriginal peoples were the work of people calling themselves Christians.

"I believe it is my responsibility to speak out against the terrible deeds that are committed as a result of Islamic teaching."

Why should it be his responsibility to speak against these particular deeds and no others? Franklin certainly is not known as an advocate for the world's abused and downtrodden. One does not find him shouldering this responsibility over other terrible deeds, a number of them the dirty work of his own government. No, his time goes to "crusades," the word used for decades by the Billy Graham organization to describe its assembly-line salvation gatherings.

The denomination with which the Graham family generally has been associated, the Southern Baptists, has an ugly history in the United States. Extreme segregationists founded this denomination to keep blacks out of their churches and a century later, through the Civil Rights revolution of the 1950s and 1960s, Southern Baptists were better known for opposing Dr. King's work than supporting it. The denomination's official view on a woman's role in marriage is among the most parochial in the United States. Incidentally, the Southern Baptists' Mission Board also aims at providing aid in Iraq. Jerry Vines, former president of the Southern Baptists, described the Prophet Muhammad not very long ago as a "demon-possessed pedophile."

"There is no escaping the unfortunate fact that Muslim government employees in law enforcement, the military and the diplomatic corps need to be watched for connections to terrorism."

These are the words of a man teaching suspicion and fear rather than understanding and brotherhood. One has to ask what such comments have to do with evangelism or Christianity, but American fundamentalists often ignore Jesus' clear teaching on the matter and put their visions of government and secular affairs at the heart of sermons and pronouncements. This suggests that politics, and a particularly nasty kind of politics, is at least as much a driving force here as religion.

Franklin recently gave a Good Friday service at the Pentagon. Reading that, I had the absurd image of an early Christian preacher praying for Rome's Tenth Legion. True, there were probably no Christian legionaries at the time, but the fact remains that the purpose of the Pentagon is exactly the same as that of the legions, professional killing for the state and its policies, a purpose totally incompatible with any words of Jesus.

But of course, the more apt comparison would be a few centuries later when the legions did their bloody work for a so-called Christian empire.

John Chuckman can be reached at: chuckman@counterpunch.org

THE PRESIDENT: Good afternoon. Welcome to the first-ever awards ceremony for the "Civilian Warmonger Medals of Armchair Valor" (view medal). I can't tell you how gonzo happy I am to personally honor these famous folks, each of whom so bravely absorbed the combat from the terrifying vantagepoint of overstuffed La-Z-Boys, feverishly pumping their crotch triggers in time to the thumping score of FOX NEWS warnography, then obediently chastising anyone who dared voice opinions that weren't in my fucking script!

Before we get to the goods though, I want to thank our corporate sponsors for providing us with this little banquet. So let's give a Texas-sized shout-out to the good folks at Pepsico's Taco Bell division! (Applause.) I'll tell you, nothing says "Mexcellence" to me like the all-new "JDAM Gordita Supreme" - guaranteed to deliver a precision-guided payload of cheez-drenched Camel Asada straight to your clammy, dimpled American ass.

And now, without further AH-DOOOO – the coveted "Civilian Warmonger Medals of Armchair Valor" go to the following fearless, two-faced Americans...

Madison Independent Media Center: newswire/11758

A shocking French ad campaign that portrays famous French journalists as murder victims to drive home the dangers journalists face and the importance of defending press freedom may be adapted to run in the U.S. and around the world.

'Make it travel'

"As soon as I saw it, I thought 'We've got to make it travel,' " said Bob Isherwood, worldwide creative director at Publicis Groupe's Saatchi & Saatchi.

Saatchi's Paris office created three graphic print and poster ads, one featuring leading TV journalist Christine Ockrent with a bullet hole in her forehead. The other two ads show male TV journalists -- Emmanuel Chain, who is in charge of a Sunday evening news magazine program, and Guillaume Durand, who hosts Campus, a popular literary talk show -- one apparently with a slashed throat and the other shot to death in a parking lot.

[I wonder how many of these kids are leprodologists...]

Gil Scott-Heron may never have realized just how relevant his critique of the appropriation of revolutionary images would still be 30 years after recording his seminal composition, "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised." While he skillfully broached the apparent trendiness and decontextualized politics of being a revolutionary in the early 1970s, one can only imagine his reaction to the commodification of revolutionary icons today.

Thirty-five years after dying an anonymous death in a remote region of Bolivia – the culmination of a lifelong struggle for justice and against exploitation by First World countries – Ché Guevara has reappeared on $20 T-shirts and on posters in college frat houses in the Land of the Free Market. The Latin American revolutionary has paradoxically become an icon in the heart of capitalism, stripping his image of his ideology and allowing any kid from the suburbs to transform himself into a revolutionary – a true hero of the people.

[This is not technically a "poem" but a theater piece in verse-like format. Madelyn Kent has been creating a series of "interviews" with her collaborators -- female Japanese students of English -- by asking them to research topics and speak about them, recording their words with some of the grammatical eccentricities intact. These plays are performed in a very slow, suspended pace that resembles butoh in its stillness, but also, to my mind, parts of that Werner Herzog film Heart of Glass for which the actors were all hypnotized.]

"Interview with a Civilian"

April 9, 2003

CIVILIAN

I think

His action
Was
mmm...

                Pause.

Too soon
He should have
Waited until
The rest of the world
Support
The United States
Before he acted
He he

                Pause.

With military action

                STATIC/NOISE.

I’m
An Iranian
Living in
Morocco
I was born in Iran
And my family
Was
Kinda rich
And
We

                Beat.

My family was living happily
And enjoying
Enjoying

                Beat.

That
Our country is
Was getting modern

                STATIC/NOISE

My father
Was
My father owned company of carpet

                Pause.

And
But
Revolution

                Beat.

Came

                Beat.

And

                Beat.

                Hands.

That circumstances were changed

                Beat.

And
People hated
People suddenly
Showed hatred
For

                Beat.

Something related to America
Or Western country
And our family was seen

                Beat.

As enemy
And when
At that time I was sixteen
And it’s good time
And my father said it’s good time to go
Abroad to study
So I went to Britain to study

                Beat.

I’ve never gone back
To Iran
Yet

                Beat.

But someday I will go back to Iran
I want to go back

                STATIC/NOISE

Now I teach
I teach

                Hand out.

At school
And
I also
Some volunteer work
In Morocco

                STATIC/NOISE

Our students
Are
mmm...
thinking about Bush as a

                Pause.

Selfish leader
And he is

                Beat.

Arrogant

                Beat.

One of my student
Is thirteen and
She
She came from
mmm...
Lebanon
And her father was
Soldiers, soldier
A soldier
And was killed in the war
She said
She hated President Bush
And she said
Wanted to show the real vision
Of the war
Because she thought
President Bush has never
Has never known

                Beat.

How
It was like
In
The battlefield

                STATIC/NOISE

I think
There must have been something

                Hands crossed

That

                Beat.

                Hands together.

He felt he was weakling
And felt
Inferior to other people
Because
We see
He just want
To show his

                Beat.

Power?
And

                Pause

And he really we think he really wants
To win
Just not only for the war
But everything

                Pause.

I think
Including his life
mmm...
He
mmm...

                Beat.

He
I think he
He has never
Thought
That
But other people see he
Wants to be
Someone who
Knows
Who knows everything about the world
mmm...
and he thinks
he knows everything

                STATIC/NOISE

I wish
I wish
That
All the country
Which
Countries which
Has have
Weapons and
I mean nuclear or some other weapons
I want those countries
Get together
And talk

                STATIC/NOISE

I hope
My country
Iran
Has
Some main role
To lead the region
And

                Beat.

Maintain
The situation
I mean I think
mmm... (head side)
I don’t think it’s getting better
Now
Because the war happened
And we see
I mean the Arab’s see
Our people has
Been
Have been
Discriminated
Looked down
And some people feel
Humiliated
Those feelings
(Hands)
could
motivate
some people
act
act wrong things
like terrorist attacks

                STATIC/NOISE

Maybe it’s difficult
To ("verb")
Democracy in my country
I think
We going to happen
But United States shouldn’t
Shouldn’t do
Shouldn’t force their way
To us
But we should take time to
(Hand pats)
bring bring
about

                Beat.

We have to
We have to
Step
By ourselves
We have to learn
Step by step

                STATIC/NOISE

I don’t want people
To become
Like America
We are not America
So we
We should
We should make
Our own style
Of democracy

                Pause.

I want
I want to
Help
People
Who want
More
Information

                Pause.

And I just
What could I do
I can’t
(nod)
providing

                Beat.
The
Information that people
Don’t know yet

                Beat.

People don’t know
The outside of the world
There

                STATIC/NOISE

I miss
I miss about
Market
Crowded market

                Beat.

I touched that
Grains
That

(Hands)

is in
sack
many many
there were many many sacks
In the street
and there were
small birds
gathering the grains
and

                Beat.
I
I want
I want to buy some
Candy
It smells like
Mildew (thinking)
And
Tumeric

                Pause.

The birds
It looked like

                Pause.

Sparrows
But they were not beautiful

                Beat.

They
Looked
They looked

(looking up)

mmm...

Their feathers looked
Dry
Ruffled
I saw
The
A bird
It was

                Beat.

Really
Hard
Hard to

                Beat.

Concentrated
In
Picking
One grain that
It might like
And

                Beat.

It was
It was
It was
Small and
Messy
But I couldn’t
But I couldn’t
Help watching
It

(hands together, namaste)

and then it
jumped in
the sack
so I felt
I felt

(Hand on heart)

I felt good.

Here's a reasonbly silly, low-tech Flash piece that shows how one suburban man is taking the fight to the... dinner table?

Dear Friend of United for Peace and Justice,

As the Bush administration declares "victory" in Iraq and begins the saber-rattling against other possible targets (like Syria), our movement for peace and justice faces serious challenges. During this new phase of our work, we must not forget all that we've achieved, despite our inability to prevent the war on Iraq. In a few short months, a massive and multifaceted grassroots movement for peace and justice has taken root in every corner of this country. Our movement is well positioned to continue challenging the disastrous direction of our government's foreign policy and the misguided and discriminatory domestic priorities of the Bush administration.

We have much work ahead of us. For instance, we must demand an honest accounting of what happened in Iraq during this war: how many innocent Iraqis have been killed? what devastation is yet to unfold for millions more as a direct result of the descruction and damage of this war?

United for Peace and Justice opposes the U.S. military occupation and colonization of Iraq. We urge action that will shed light on the corporations with close ties to the Bush Administration that will reap profits from the post-war, post-sanctions reconstruction. And there are other issues that need to be addressed. As we move forward, our work should include educational campaigns; for example, focusing on the federal budget (why is there always money for military spending but never enough for domestic social programs?) and on U.S. global foreign policy. At the same time we will continue to organize public protests ranging from marches and rallies to nonviolent direct actions targeting military contractors and federal sites. Our web site is a vital tool for sharing resources and information and we hope your local group will continue to post the activities you plan at http://www.unitedforpeace.org

Following are some articles that might provide food for thought on the question of where the peace and justice movement should go from here. We hope you will share with them with others, use them as the basis for discussions within your peace groups and among your friends and family, and let us know about other articles you think should be shared.

Talking Points: After the Fall of Saddam
By Phyllis Bennis, Institute for Policy Studies http://www.ips-dc.org/iraq/talkingpoints.htm

Why the Anti-War Movement Was Right
By Arianna Huffington, April 16, 2003 http://www.ariannaonline.com/columns/files/041603.html

What We Do Now; A Peace Agenda
By David Cortright in The Nation, April 21, 2003 http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20030421&s=cortright&c=1

Response to the above article
by Phyllis Bennis and John Cavanagh of the Institute for Policy Studies http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20030421&s=bennis

Response to the above article
by Bill Fletcher Jr. of United for Peace and Justice and TransAfrica Forum http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20030421&s=fletcher

Response to the above article
by Medea Benjamin of Global Exchange and CodePink http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20030421&s=benjamin

In peace and solidarity,
Andrea Buffa
Leslie Cagan
Bill Fletcher Jr.
for United for Peace and Justice

----------------------------------

TO SUBSCRIBE OR UNSUBSCRIBE:
http://www.unitedforpeace.org/email.php

UNITED FOR PEACE AND JUSTICE (212) 603-3700

The war in Iraq is over; the U.S. occupation of Iraq has now begun. In an unnecessary war, victory is never sweet: American soldiers, Iraqi civilians, and Iraqi soldiers lost their lives in a conflict that never should have happened. That's not victory, that's tragedy.

The hawks in the Bush Administration see this as a vindication of their belligerent world view. Never mind that we haven't found any weapons of mass destruction; never mind that Iraqi democracy (or even security) is nowhere in sight. The hotter heads have prevailed: pre- emptive unilateralism is now the official policy of the U.S.. Vice President Cheney, Secretary Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, and Richard Perle are now thinking even bigger about the "projection of American power." In the chilling words of a senior official close to the Bush administration, "Anyone can go to Baghdad. Real men go to Tehran."

Folks, we just have to stop this madness, and there's really only one way to do that: We need to throw these bums out. The good news is that over the last few months, we've built a base that just may be large enough to succeed. MoveOn's total membership is now over 1.3 million. We've taken out ads, written letters, delivered mountains of petition signatures, and taken action in hundreds of cities. And now we need to turn our attention toward one goal: regime change in the USA, the best way to repudiate Bush's policy of war.

Are you in? If you're willing to help show Bush the door in 2004, just click below. We'll count you among the participants in this next phase of the peace movement.

http://www.moveon.org/pac/newpres

We'll throw out Bush and the Republicans using every means available: by registering a wave of new voters, by organizing to make sure they get to the polls on election day, by raising enough money to compete with the President's mountain of special interest money, and by volunteering for political campaigns. We'll make it easy for you to play a part.

President Bush believes he doesn't have to listen to the American public -- which, even during war, has overwhelmingly been skeptical or strongly resistant to the idea of an American empire. He has decided that his faith in the military takes precedence over his faith in democracy. The election in 2004 is our chance to take our democracy back.

Polls show overwhelmingly that American's do not trust President Bush to revive the failing economy. They're just as concerned with the Administration's assault on civil rights, civil liberties and the environment. Last week in New Orleans, Presidential Advisor Karl Rove said that this will be a "close, competitive" race. If all of us get involved, it won't just be tight. We'll win.

And that will go down in history. It will demonstrate that we mean what we say -- that we have the passion and the commitment to see our approach to foreign policy through. It will demonstrate that politicians who seek to curry favor through belligerence face political consequences, and that those who advocate a reasonable, multilateral foreign policy will be rewarded. And it will set the stage for an American policy that leads the world into a cooperative and safe future.

Let's elect a new President in 2004, and put an end to the politics of unnecessary war.

Sincerely,

--Carrie, Eli, Joan, Peter, Wes, and Zack
The MoveOn Team
April 24th, 2003

(Gothic News Service, 04/20) Easter morning, drivers along Highway 185 in Texas - the one that leads right by the President's White House in Crawford ­ found themselves treated to a brand new roadside attraction. Five SUVs ­ each one from a different manufacturer - are spaced 10 feet apart and stuck nose first at 65-degree angles into the earth. Only the back side doors, windows and rear ends remain revealed, each of the vehicle¹s alternatively royal blue, butterscotch gold, white, and cherry red colors oddly glowing like fresh spring growth in the face of the rising sun.

More curiously, on a small northern pathway from the SUV vista stop ­ on what is normally an arid, some say Biblical landscape ­ is the emergence of a large, circular Oak Grove that includes picnic tables at the open center and several winding paths into private alcoves with small benches under the awnings of the robust trees. Perhaps equally spectacular, extending out for several acres behind the SUV spectacle, are the parallel, reflective solar energy panels that rotate at different angles to best catch the sun's rays at different points of the day. Visitors are welcome to pedal the site's free bicycles up and down paths that extend in several directions across the horizon.

In the roadside parking area ­ on a stand shaped out of SUV hood ­ a small brochure printed on recycled paper provides some information about the site:

-- The solar panels steel rotational supports are one hundred per cent constructed from shredded SUV metal. Granulated glass and shredded synthetic upholstery units constitute the reflective material and chemical agents required to produce solar energy.

-- Bicycle frames, wheels and gears are also created from recycled SUVs. One
SUV will create 1000 bicycle frames and parts.

-- Individuals and families are welcome to donate their SUVs to the Ranch Recycling Center located at Crawford town limits. Free van transportation to your destination and back home is provided to donors.

-- Under the auspices of Solar Utility Vendor Inc. (SUV Inc.) the company provides energy through out Texas and adjoining states for community electrical, fuel and heating systems.

Easter Morning featured an egg hunt in the Grove with both adults and children fanning out across the paths to find blue, red, gold, and green eggs in and around the trees. Each egg also bore a stencil printed "RECYCLE" message. Egg shell waste cans were set up at the exit with fresh painted advice, "Partake of the egg and recycle as you wish. Shells hells convert to biodegradable plastic for practical use."

Houston art critics have been quick to claim the new site¹s significance. "This is a great contemporary re-interpretation of the both practical and sublime use of the traditional religious shrine," one said. "It's a magical combination of high-tech modern materials used to produce both illumination and power co-leveraged with the Oaks healing, restive and regenerative power. Joseph Beuys, the German artist who planted trees, and the Texas Ant Farm's Cadillac Ranch are influences here ­ but SUV Inc.¹s commitment to recycling, non-fossil fuel commitment, and implicit reverence for nature as a human partner is a clear artistic step forward to community, national and world health."

The Crawford White House refused to publicly comment on the value of the site other than to express its concerns about either pagan religious and/or terrorist uses. It is also not known whether the President¹s ranch will buy into SUV Inc.¹s solar power unit. At last look, on Easter morning, families were stopping ­ many in SUVS - to join in the egg hunt, picnic and quietly contemplate on Grove benches while man took advantage of bikes to pedal towards the horizon on the special paths between the illuminated panels.

© Gothic News Service
May be freely distributed through out the web.

LOS ANGELES—Fox executives Monday unveiled their latest reality-TV venture, Appointed By America, a new series in which contestants vie for the top spot in Iraq's post-war government.

"Get ready, America, because you're about to choose the man—or woman—who will lead Iraq into an exciting democratic future," said Fox reality-programming chief Mike Darnell, introducing the show at a press conference. "Will it be Ahmed Chalabi, leader of the exiled Iraqi National Congress? Or General Tommy Franks, commander of the allied forces? Or maybe Roshumba Williams, the Macon, GA, waitress with big dreams and an even bigger voice? Tune in Tuesdays at 9 to see."

Describing the new show as "American Idol meets the reconstruction of Afghanistan," Darnell said Appointed By America will feature contestants squaring off in a variety of challenges, including a democracy quiz, a talent competition, and nation-building activities that will demonstrate their ability to lead a bombed-out, war-ravaged Mideast country.

A panel of celebrity judges will help eliminate two contestants each week, leaving one lucky winner the undisputed leader of Iraq at the end of the season. Viewers can participate by casting phone-in votes, although Darnell noted that voting is restricted to calls originating from within the continental U.S.

U.S. General Jay Garner (Ret.) will host the show under the auspices of the Pentagon. The three celebrity judges, Darnell said, will be choreographer and former Chrysalis recording artist Toni Basil, internationally renowned hairstylist Vidal Sassoon, and television star Kevin Sorbo.

"They really get into it," Darnell said. "Just wait until you see the fur fly between Sassoon and Basil."

Fox entertainment president Gail Berman said the network was inspired to create the show after witnessing its news division's ratings success over the past few months.

"Fox did such huge numbers with its war coverage, we figured, 'Why not find a way to keep this good thing going?'" Berman said. "I'm confident that our loyal Fox News viewers will find that reconstruction can be just as thrilling as destruction."

The first episode has already been taped in front of a live studio audience, though results will remain classified until airtime. The winner of Appointed By America will be sworn in as president of Iraq on June 24 in a gala two-hour season finale broadcast live from Baghdad.

According to Berman, Fox received more than 3,000 applicants for the show during an open casting call. While most of the hopefuls were American or Iraqi, some 600 aspiring rulers from more than 100 nations auditioned for the coveted 20 finalist spots. Contestants included a San Diego interior decorator, a Philadelphia inner-city schoolteacher, and a peshmerga fighter from the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan.

Contestant Kymbyrley Lake, a cashier from Garland, TX, said she has a "good feeling" about her chances.

"I just really believe I am going to win this show," Lake said. "I feel it in my heart that Jesus is going to grant me the chance to help all these people. Ever since I was a little girl, I've dreamed of doing something to help bring about a more peaceful world."

Lake just might get her chance. Inside sources say she was among the top five vote-getters in the first episode, with Kurdistan Democratic Party official Fawzi Hariri and pre-Saddam Iraqi minister Adnan al-Pachachi—both early odds-on favorites—scoring low points for stage presence.

At a Pentagon briefing Monday, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz gave his blessing to Appointed By America.

"It is great that Fox will play a vital role in post-war Iraq," Wolfowitz said. "Heck, we didn't really know what we were going to do."

BASRA -- Fast food giants Pizza Hut and Burger King have set up their first franchises inside war-torn Iraq, even as many aid convoys waited on the borders for the war to officially end.

The arrival of the two restaurants - sited inside giant trailers on a British military base near Basra - won a rapturous welcome from soldiers, whose limited range of rations lost their appeal many weeks ago.

But some officers were less keen on the new arrivals, which are due to start selling food tomorrow.

"I would prefer we got decent showers and toilets sorted out first," muttered one high-ranking officer.

Fastfood outlets are common in US bases, including Camp Doha in Kuwait, but it is believed to be the first time they have been sited inside a British military base.

Another officer, who was directly involved in the franchise process, said: "It's an Americanism, we usually have them off the base, but because it is still a war zone we have to give them protection."

Permission to open the restaurants was granted through the British Army and they will be run by existing franchise holders from Kuwait, with a percentage of any profits going to charity.

But soldiers waiting for a brewery franchise to be awarded are set for a disappointment as military chiefs have already vetoed any alcohol being sold on the base, which is home to almost 8000 British soldiers.

The Kuwaiti franchise holders provided staff and raw materials and the Army escorted them into Iraq, although it is understood it will not provide constant escorts for the supply runs.

A spokesman for the two restaurants, Atef Bassent, said: "I hope we will do good business here."

By Evelyn Nieves

ARCATA, Calif. -- This North Coast city may look sweet -- old, low-to-the-ground buildings, town square with a bronze statue of William McKinley, ambling pickup trucks -- but it acts like a radical.

Arcata was one of the first cities to pass resolutions against global warming and a unilateral war in Iraq. Last month, Arcata joined the rising chorus of municipalities to pass a resolution urging local law enforcement officials and others contacted by federal officials to refuse requests under the Patriot Act that they believe violate an individual's civil rights under the Constitution. Then, the city went a step further. This little city (pop.: 16,000) has become the first in the nation to pass an ordinance that outlaws voluntary compliance with the Patriot Act.

"I call this a nonviolent, preemptive attack," said David Meserve, the freshman City Council member who drafted the ordinance with the help of the Arcata city attorney, city manager and police chief.

The Arcata ordinance may be the first, but it may not be the last. Across the country, citizens have been forming Bill of Rights defense committees to fight what they consider the most egregious curbs on liberties contained in the Patriot Act. The 342-page act, passed by Congress one month after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, with little input from a public still in shock, has been most publicly criticized by librarians and bookstore owners for the provisions that force them to secretly hand over information about a patron's reading and Internet habits. But citizens groups are becoming increasingly organized and forceful in rebuking the Patriot Act and the Homeland Security Act for giving the federal government too much power, especially since a draft of the Justice Department's proposed sequel to the Patriot Act (dubbed Patriot II) was publicly leaked in January.

Both the Patriot Act and the Homeland Security Act, which created the Cabinet-level department, follow the Constitution, says Justice Department spokesman Mark Corallo. Federal law trumps local law in any case, which would mean Arcata would be in for a fight -- a fight it wants -- if the feds did make a Patriot Act request. LaRae Quy, a spokeswoman for the San Francisco FBI office, whose jurisdiction includes Arcata, said that the agency has no plans to use the Patriot Act in Arcata any time soon, but added that people misunderstood it. Although some people feel their privacy rights are being infringed upon, she said, the agency still has to show "probable cause for any actions we take."

But to date, 89 cities have passed resolutions condemning the Patriot Act, with at least a dozen more in the works and a statewide resolution against the act close to being passed in Hawaii.

"We want the local police to do what they were meant to do -- protect their citizens," said Nancy Talanian, co-director of the Bill of Rights Defense Committee in Florence, Mass., which gives advice to citizens groups on how to draft their own resolution.

Although cities across the country passed antiwar resolutions before the attack on Iraq with little notice from the administration, Talanian said that the anti-Patriot Act resolutions are "not quite as symbolic" as those that passed against the war.

"Normally, the president and Congress don't pay that much attention when it comes to waging war," she said. "But in the case of the Patriot Act, the federal government can't really tell municipalities that you have to do the work that the INS or the FBI wants you to do. The city can say, 'No, I'm sorry. We hire our police to protect our citizens and we don't want our citizens pulled aside and thrown in jail without probable cause.' "

In Hawaii, home to many Japanese Americans who vividly recall the Japanese internments during World War II, Democratic state Rep. Roy Takumi introduced a resolution on the Patriot Act as a way to raise debate, he said. Although the resolution may be seen as symbolic, he said, "states have every right to consider the concerns of the federal government and voice our opinions. If a number of states begin to pass similar resolutions, then it raises the bar for Congress, making them realize our concerns. I hope to see what we've done here plays a role in mobilizing people to take action."

Lawmakers and lobbyists on both ends of the political spectrum are beginning to sound more alarms about the antiterrorism act, which gave the government unprecedented powers to spy on citizens. Rep. Bernard Sanders (I-Vt.) has introduced a bill, the "Freedom to Read Protection Act" (H.R. 1157), that would restore the privacy protections for library book borrowers and bookstore purchases. The bill has 73 co-sponsors.

Earlier this month, Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.), the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, and Rep. John Conyers Jr. (Mich.), the ranking Democrat, asked the Justice Department for more information on the government's use of the Patriot Act to track terrorists, questioning what "tangible things" the government can subpoena in investigations of U.S. citizens.

Sensenbrenner and Conyers sent an 18-page letter to Attorney General John D. Ashcroft, challenging the department's increased use of "national security letters" requiring businesses to hand over electronic records on finances, telephone calls, e-mails and other personal data.

They questioned the guidelines under which investigators can subpoena private books, records, papers, documents and other items; asked whether the investigations targeted only people identified as agents of a foreign power; and asked the attorney general to "identify the specific authority relied on for issuing these letters."

The Justice Department said it is working on the request.

But citizens groups, worried about a timid Congress, are not waiting for their elected officials to act before launching a campaign against the proposed sequel to the Patriot Act, the "Domestic Security Enhancement Act." The Idaho Green Party has begun the Paul Revere Project to stop Patriot Act II before it can be passed.

The proposed addendum to the Patriot Act, which the Justice Department has insisted is only a draft of ideas, would enlarge many of the controversial provisions in the first Patriot Act. It would give the government authority to wiretap an individual and collect a person's DNA without court orders, detain people in secret and revoke citizenship, among other powers.

The proposed sequel to the act has galvanized communities in a bottom-up, grass-roots way, Talanian said. "Before a community votes on resolutions, they engage in forums and petitioning to show the town council they want this. After, communities band together and do things like visit the offices of their entire congressional delegations and say our communities have these concerns and now we are asking you to help."

In Arcata, where forums drew little debate, the new law is an unqualified hit. It passed by a vote of 4 to 1, but has what looks like near-unanimous approval from residents.

Meserve, a weather-worn builder and contractor in his fifties who wears a ponytail and flannel shirts, hasn't felt so popular since he won his council seat running on the platform, "The Federal Government Has Gone Stark, Raving Mad."

"The ordinance went through so easily that we were surprised," he said. "We started going up to people asking what they thought. They thought, 'great.' It's our citywide form of nonviolent disobedience."

The fine for breaking the new law, which goes into effect May 2, is $57. It applies only to the top nine managers of the city, telling them they have to refer any Patriot Act request to the City Council.

The US military has revealed it is holding juveniles at its high-security prison for terrorists at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, known as Camp Xray.

The commander of the joint task force at Guantanamo, Major General Geoffrey Miller, says more than one child under the age of 16 is at the detention centre.

However, Maj Gen Miller has revealed little more about their welfare.

Maj Gen Miller says the US is holding "juvenile enemy combatants" at the centre, confirming rumours of children being held.

He has refused to reveal how many there are, their exact ages or their countries of origin.

He says they are being well cared for and are kept in facilities separate to adult prisoners.

The children are still being interrogated and will continue to be held at Guantanamo.

About 660 prisoners are in the camp.

They have not been tried or convicted of any offence but are being held as part of what the US calls its war on terror.

abc.net

From the NY Times Obituary:

"If I had to be called something," she wrote in 1991 in her autobiography, "I Put a Spell on You," "it should have been a folk singer because there was more folk and blues than jazz in my playing."

And a set of lyrics to remember and think forward with...

(Everybody knows... goddam)

Go Limp

Alex Comfort, Nina Simone

Oh Daughter, dear Daughter,
take warning from me
and don't you go marching
with the N-A-A-C-P.
For they'll rock you and roll you
and shove you into bed.
And if they steal your nuclear secret
you'll wish you were dead.

(refrain:)
Singin too roo la, too roo la, too roo li ay.
Singin too roo la, too roo la, too roo li ay.

Oh Mother, dear Mother,
no, I'm not afraid.
For I'll go on that march
and I'll return a virgin maid.
With a brick in my handbag
and a smile on my face
and barbed wire in my underwear
to shed off disgrace.

(Refrain)

One day they were marching.
A young man came by
with a beard on his cheek
and a gleam in his eye.
And before she had time
to remember her brick...
they were holding a sit-down
on a nearby hay rig.

(Refrain)

For meeting is pleasure
and parting is pain.
And if I have a great concert
maybe I won't have to sing those folk songs again.
Oh Mother, dear Mother
I'm stiff and I'm sore
from sleeping three nights
on a hard classroom floor.

(Refrain)

One day at the briefing
she'd heard a man say,
"Go perfectly limp,
and be carried away."
So when this young man suggested
it was time she was kissed,
she remembered her brief
and did not resist.

(Refrain)

Oh Mother, dear Mother,
no need for distress,
for the young man has left me
his name and address.
And if we win
tho' a baby there be,
he won't have to march
like his da-da and me.


Backlash Blues

Langston Hughes, Nina Simone

Mr. Backlash, Mr. Backlash
Just who you think I am
You raise my taxes, freeze my wages
And send my son to Vietnam

You give me second class houses
And second class schools
Do you think that alla colored folks
Are just second class fools
Mr. Backlash, I'm gonna leave you
With the backlash blues

When I try to find a job
To earn a little cash
All you got to offer
Is your mean old white backlash
But the world is big
Big and bright and round
And it's full of folks like me
Who are black, yellow, beige and brown
Mr. Backlash, I'm gonna leave you
With the backlash blues

Mr. Backlash, Mr. Backlash
Just what do you think I got to lose
I'm gonna leave you
With the backlash blues
You're the one will have the blues
Not me, just wait and see

Mississippi Goddam

Nina Simone (1963)

The name of this tune is Mississippi Goddam
And I mean every word of it

Alabama's gotten me so upset
Tennessee made me lose my rest
And everybody knows about Mississippi Goddam

Alabama's gotten me so upset
Tennessee made me lose my rest
And everybody knows about Mississippi Goddam

Can't you see it
Can't you feel it
It's all in the air
I can't stand the pressure much longer
Somebody say a prayer

Alabama's gotten me so upset
Tennessee made me lose my rest
And everybody knows about Mississippi Goddam

This is a show tune
But the show hasn't been written for it, yet

Hound dogs on my trail
School children sitting in jail
Black cat cross my path
I think every day's gonna be my last

Lord have mercy on this land of mine
We all gonna get it in due time
I don't belong here
I don't belong there
I've even stopped believing in prayer

Don't tell me
I tell you
Me and my people just about due
I've been there so I know
They keep on saying "Go slow!"

But that's just the trouble
"do it slow"
Washing the windows
"do it slow"
Picking the cotton
"do it slow"
You're just plain rotten
"do it slow"
You're too damn lazy
"do it slow"
The thinking's crazy
"do it slow"
Where am I going
What am I doing
I don't know
I don't know

Just try to do your very best
Stand up be counted with all the rest
For everybody knows about Mississippi Goddam

I made you thought I was kiddin' didn't we

Picket lines
School boy cots
They try to say it's a communist plot
All I want is equality
for my sister my brother my people and me

Yes you lied to me all these years
You told me to wash and clean my ears
And talk real fine just like a lady
And you'd stop calling me Sister Sadie

Oh but this whole country is full of lies
You're all gonna die and die like flies
I don't trust you any more
You keep on saying "Go slow!"
"Go slow!"

But that's just the trouble
"do it slow"
Desegregation
"do it slow"
Mass participation
"do it slow"
Reunification
"do it slow"
Do things gradually
"do it slow"
But bring more tragedy
"do it slow"
Why don't you see it
Why don't you feel it
I don't know
I don't know

You don't have to live next to me
Just give me my equality
Everybody knows about Mississippi
Everybody knows about Alabama
Everybody knows about Mississippi Goddam

That's it!

Nobody's Fault but Mine (alternate from "Saga of the Good Life and Hard Times")

Nina Simone

Ah, nobody's fault but mine
Nobody's fault but mine
If I die and my soul be lost
Nobody's fault but mine

I had a mother who could pray
I said I had a mother who could pray
Nobody's fault but mine

Hey now

I had a mother who could sing
I had a mother who could sing
If I die and my sould be lost
It's nobody's fault but mine

Nobody's fault but mine.
Nobody's
If I die and my soul be lost now
If I die and my soul be lost now
If I die and my soul be lost now
If I die and my soul be lost
Nobody's fault but mine

Consummation

(1967) Nina Simone

And now we are one
Let my soul rest in peace
At last it is done
My soul has been released
For thousands of years
My soul has roamed the earth
In search for you
So that someday I could give birth

To know joy, joy, joy, joy
Joy and peace is mine
Peace divine
And now we give thanks
Give thanks for each other
At peace forever
For it is done

One feature of the war in Iraq was the speed and immediacy with which many events were reported by the media. Some of these turned out to be not quite what they seemed, others are still surrounded by confusion. Was this the fog of war, effects-based warfare, propaganda, or error? BBC News Online has created a list of points where discrepancies in reporting remain, such as the following:

Scuds

Coalition account: On day one of the war, 20 March, military spokesmen for the US and UK announce that "Scud-type" missiles have been fired into Kuwait. This was significant because Iraq was banned from having Scuds or other missiles of a similar range under UN resolutions.

Clarification:Three days later US General Stanley McChrystal reports: "So far there have been no Scuds launched."

The Guardian is running a similar article, titled "War Watch":

In due course, questions will be asked about the clashing interests of the military and the media and the role of war propaganda in the pursuit of a swift victory against Saddam Hussein's regime.

Umm Qasr was "taken" at least nine times before it was...taken. An uprising in Basra evaporated without trace. Chemical Ali may or may not have been found dead. And most extraordinarily today, it transpires that the Saddam torture morgue seized upon by troops as evidence of the regime's horrors may in fact be completely erroneous. The Iraqis said they were victims of the Iran-Iraq war and it looks as if they may be telling the truth.

WASHINGTON -- Ed Vuillamy

Plans to build a pipeline to siphon oil from newly conquered Iraq to Israel are being discussed between Washington, Tel Aviv and potential future government figures in Baghdad.

The plan envisages the reconstruction of an old pipeline, inactive since the end of the British mandate in Palestine in 1948, when the flow from Iraq's northern oilfields to Palestine was re-directed to Syria.

Now, its resurrection would transform economic power in the region, bringing revenue to the new US-dominated Iraq, cutting out Syria and solving Israel's energy crisis at a stroke.

It would also create an end less and easily accessible source of cheap Iraqi oil for the US guaranteed by reliable allies other than Saudi Arabia - a keystone of US foreign policy for decades and especially since 11 September 2001.

Until 1948, the pipeline ran from the Kurdish-controlled city of Mosul to the Israeli port of Haifa, on its northern Mediterranean coast.

The revival of the pipeline was first discussed openly by the Israeli Minister for National Infrastructures, Joseph Paritzky, according to the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz .

The paper quotes Paritzky as saying that the pipeline would cut Israel's energy bill drastically - probably by more than 25 per cent - since the country is currently largely dependent on expensive imports from Russia.

US intelligence sources confirmed to The Observer that the project has been discussed. One former senior CIA official said: 'It has long been a dream of a powerful section of the people now driving this administration [of President George W. Bush] and the war in Iraq to safeguard Israel's energy supply as well as that of the United States.

'The Haifa pipeline was something that existed, was resurrected as a dream and is now a viable project - albeit with a lot of building to do.'

The editor-in-chief of the Middle East Economic Review , Walid Khadduri, says in the current issue of Jane's Foreign Report that 'there's not a metre of it left, at least in Arab territory'.

To resurrect the pipeline would need the backing of whatever government the US is to put in place in Iraq, and has been discussed - according to Western diplomatic sources - with the US-sponsored Iraqi National Congress and its leader Ahmed Chalabi, the former banker favoured by the Pentagon for a powerful role in the war's aftermath.

Sources at the State Department said that concluding a peace treaty with Israel is to be 'top of the agenda' for a new Iraqi government, and Chalabi is known to have discussed Iraq's recognition of the state of Israel.

The pipeline would also require permission from Jordan. Paritzky's Ministry is believed to have approached officials in Amman on 9 April this year. Sources told Ha'aretz that the talks left Israel 'optimistic'.

James Akins, a former US ambassador to the region and one of America's leading Arabists, said: 'There would be a fee for transit rights through Jordan, just as there would be fees for Israel from those using what would be the Haifa terminal.

'After all, this is a new world order now. This is what things look like particularly if we wipe out Syria. It just goes to show that it is all about oil, for the United States and its ally.'

Akins was ambassador to Saudi Arabia before he was fired after a series of conflicts with then Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, father of the vision to pipe oil west from Iraq. In 1975, Kissinger signed what forms the basis for the Haifa project: a Memorandum of Understanding whereby the US would guarantee Israel's oil reserves and energy supply in times of crisis.

Kissinger was also master of the American plan in the mid-Eighties - when Saddam Hussein was a key US ally - to run an oil pipeline from Iraq to Aqaba in Jordan, opposite the Israeli port of Eilat.

The plan was promoted by the now Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and the pipeline was to be built by the Bechtel company, which the Bush administration last week awarded a multi-billion dollar contract for the reconstruction of Iraq.

The memorandum has been quietly renewed every five years, with special legislation attached whereby the US stocks a strategic oil reserve for Israel even if it entailed domestic shortages - at a cost of $3 billion (£1.9bn) in 2002 to US taxpayers.

This bill would be slashed by a new pipeline, which would have the added advantage of giving the US reliable access to Gulf oil other than from Saudi Arabia.

The latest installation of This Modern World takes on US policies on Iraqi reconstruction ... click here for the full strip.

[from biPlog:]

You will not be able to stay home, dear Netizen.
You will not be able to plug in, log on and opt out.
You will not be able to lose yourself in Final Fantasy,
Or hold your Kazaa download queues,
Because revolution is not an AOL Keyword.

Revolution is not an AOL Keyword.
Revolution will not be brought to you on Hi-Def TV
Encrypted with a warning from the FBI.
Revolution will not have a jpeg slideshow of Dubya
Calling the cattle and leading the incursion by
Secretary Rumsfeld, General Ashcroft and Dick Cheney
Riding nuclear warheads on their way to Iraq,
Or North Korea, or Iran.

Revolution is not an AOL Keyword.
Revolution will not be powered by Microsoft on
The Next-Generation Secure Computing Base
And will not star Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee
Or Larry Lessig and Martha Stewart.

Revolution will not promise penile enlargement.
Revolution will not get rid of spam.
Revolution will not earn you up to $5000 a month
Working from home, because revolution is not
An AOL Keyword, Brother.

There will be no screen grabs of you and
Jeeves the Butler one-click shopping at My Yahoo,
Or outbidding a shady grandma on eBay for
That refurbished iPod 20-gig.
MSNBC.com will not predict election results in Florida
Or fact-check the Drudge Report.
Revolution is not an AOL Keyword.

There will be no webcast of Wil Wheaton boxing
Barney the Dinosaur on the dancefloor at DNA.
There will be no mob- or wiki- blog of Richard Stallman
Strolling through Redmond in a medieval robe and halo
As St. iGNUcious of the Church of Emacs
That he has been saving
For just the proper occasion.

Survivor, The Osbournes, and Joe Millionaire
Will no longer be so damned relevant, and
People will not care if Carrie hooks up again with
Mr. Big on Sex and the City because Information
Wants To Be Free even while Knowledge Is Power.
Revolution is not an AOL Keyword.

There will be no final pictures from inside the
World Trade Center in the instant replay.
There will be no final pictures from inside the
World Trade Center in the instant replay.

There will be no RealVideo of 2600-reading,
Linux-booting white hat hacktivists
And Mickey Mouse in the public domain.
The theme song will not be written by Jack Valenti or
Hilary Rosen, nor sung by Metallica, Dr. Dre,
Christina Aguilera, Matchbox 20, or Blink-182.
Revolution is not an AOL Keyword.

Revolution will not be right back after
Pop-up ads about eCommerce, eTailers, or eContent.
You will not have to worry about a
Cookie in your browser, a bug in your email, or a
Worm in your recycling bin.
Revolution will not run faster with Intel inside.
Revolution, dude, is not getting a Dell.
Revolution will increase your Google rank.

Revolution is not an AOL Keyword, is not an AOL Keyword,
Is not an AOL Keyword, is not an AOL Keyword.
Revolution will be no stream or download, dear Netizen;
Revolution must still be live.

*See generally Gil Scott-Heron, The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.

Tony Blair is facing the threat of a fresh rebellion from Labour backbenchers who are growing increasingly alarmed that the failure to uncover weapons of mass destruction in Iraq will confirm that the war was illegal.

As a 1,000-strong Anglo-American task force of inspectors prepares to search hundreds of suspicious sites, Labour MPs are demanding an inquiry to establish whether MI6 misled ministers about Iraq's weapons programme.

Backbench Labour MPs who feel they were duped into backing the war on the basis of questionable intelligence want the cross-party Commons intelligence and security committee to carry out an investigation. One well-placed former minister said: "The intelligence committee is raring to challenge the veracity of what the security services told them about Saddam Hussein's chemical weapons. They were told what he had and where it was. There may be a perfectly innocent explanation for all this, but they don't seem to be able to find the stuff."

Britain and the US are so desperate to uncover a 'smoking gun' to justify the war against Iraq that they have drawn up a list of 146 sites to be inspected in Iraq. A team of civilian scientists and military forces, dubbed Usmovic because they are a US-led rival to the UN's Unmovic inspection force, will interview up 5,000 Iraqi scientists.

US forces have begun to interrogate General Amir al-Saadi, the head of Iraq's weapons programme, who surrendered last weekend. But General Tommy Franks, the commander of US forces in the Gulf, attempted to lower expectations when he warned that it may take a year to uncover details of Iraq's arsenal.

Such comments are causing alarm in the Commons. Lindsay Hoyle, the Labour MP for Chorley, who voted in favour of war because of Mr Blair's chilling warnings about Iraq's banned weapons, said: "We were led to believe that the Iraqis could fire them within 45 minutes. If that was the case where have they vanished to? We were told there was hard evidence."

David Hinchliffe, chairman of the Commons health committee, said: "For many of us who talked to ministers there was an implication that more was known. Therefore a lot of people are anxious to establish the truth."

His remarks were echoed by the former defence minister Doug Henderson, who warned that the war would in retrospect be deemed illegal if no banned weapons were found, because the military action was taken under UN resolutions calling for Iraq to disarm.

"If by the turn of the year there is no WMD then the basis on which this was executed was illegal," he said.

MPs are also starting to ask questions about the conduct of the intelligence services. They want to see the evidence that persuaded members of the Commons intelligence committee to back government efforts to win round waverers before the war began. One MP is telling committee members: "You kept saying you wished you could tell us, so now will you tell us?"

Critics suspect that Downing Street may have hyped up the intelligence reports about Iraq's banned weapons. They point to last month's resignation speech by Robin Cook, in which the former foreign secretary said: "Iraq probably has no weapons of mass destruction in the commonly understood sense of the term."

Such doubts were echoed yesterday by a three-star Iraqi general who told the Guardian in Baghdad that the country had purged itself completely of weapons of mass destruction after the 1991 Gulf war.

The general, who worked in the chemical weapons section of the Iraqi military for more than 30 years and asked not to be identified, insisted that gas masks, anti-contamination suits and atropine injectors had been intended to protect Iraqis rather than for offensive use. "We do not have any kind of forbidden weapons," he said.

Describing the use of chemical weapons by Iraq against Iran in the 1980s as "abnormal", he said the country had possessed weapons of mass destruction as a deterrent against its neighbours.

"If I have nerve gas and I know the Americans have a better version, it would be stupid of me to use it against them," he said. "The concept of having this kind of weapon was just to try to protect ourselves against others who had them, like the Israelis and the Iranians."

The doubts about Iraq's WMD programme mean that some Labour MPs will be sceptical even if a 'smoking gun' is uncovered. Mr Hinchliffe said there was a "cynical view" among Labour MPs that the coalition inspectors will doctor the evidence.

Britain wants to reassure critics by appointing an international body on the lines of the Northern Ireland disarmament commission to verify any weapons finds.

But the former cabinet minister Gavin Strang said the coalition should go all the way by allowing UN inspectors back into Iraq. "I do not understand why we have not been able to allow Hans Blix to go back in," he said.

SAN JOSE -- Wired reports that The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency cut off grant money for helping to develop a secure, free operating system (OpenBSD, a cousin of Linux) less than two weeks after top programmer Theo de Raadt made anti-war statements to a major newspaper.

Problems started when the Globe and Mail published a story in which de Raadt was quoted as saying he was "uncomfortable" about the funding source.

"I try to convince myself that our grant means a half of a cruise missile doesn't get built," he said.

Within days, de Raadt received an e-mail from Jonathan Smith, a computer science professor at the University of Pennsylvania and the grant's lead researcher, expressing discomfort over the statements. Shortly after, Smith notified de Raadt of the cancellation.

"A tenured professor was telling me not to exercise my freedom of speech," de Raadt said.

Smith declined to comment on the matter, and DARPA did not return telephone messages Friday. De Raadt's suspicions about the cancellation could not be confirmed.

The $2.3 million grant had funded security improvements to the OpenBSD operating system since 2001 as well as related projects.

OpenBSD, a variation of Unix designed for use on servers, is touted as so secure that its default installation has had only one bug in the past seven years. Thousands of copies of OpenBSD have been downloaded in the past six months.

De Raadt estimates about 85 percent of the DARPA grant has been spent, with about $1 million being used to pay for OpenBSD developers. Much of the work has been handled by a team of 80 unpaid volunteers.

Another $500,000 of the money funded the work of United Kingdom-based researchers on a related project called OpenSSL, which is used to encrypt data. DARPA, which oversees research activities for the Pentagon, is best known for developing the network that evolved into the Internet.

By Andrew Gumbel

Hans Blix, the chief United Nations weapons inspector, returns to the Security Council this week – not to update the member nations on the hunt for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, but rather to pile pressure on the United States to let the UN back into the post-war reconstruction process.

The 74-year-old Swede, who spoke so even-handedly about Iraqi compliance in the run-up to the US-led invasion, has not so much been shunted aside by the Americans as ritually humiliated. His team of inspectors, whose competence was constantly questioned by an impatient Bush administration, has been replaced lock, stock and barrel by a much larger US team which is showing no inclination even to seek his opinion.

Worse, the Americans have sought to poach several dozen of the UN's brightest inspectors from under his nose. The leader of the US team, called the Iraq Survey Group, is himself a former UN man, Charles Duelfer, who has been sharply critical of Mr Blix's leadership.

But Mr Blix has a trump card up his sleeve. To date, at least, the United States has been deeply embarrassed by its inability to find any significant trace of the Iraqi weapons programmes it went to war over. In other words, when Mr Blix told the world earlier this year that the Iraqis were co-operating with what promised to be a lengthy process, he was almost certainly telling it how it was.

And although Mr Blix probably won't be saying "I told you so" when he addresses the Security Council on Tuesday, he will at least speak with some authority when he urges the military victors in Iraq to let the UN back in and help certify that, post-Saddam, the country is indeed free of biological, chemical and nuclear arms.

"I think the world would like to have a credible report on the absence or eradication of the programme of weapons of mass destruction," he told the BBC last week. "We would be able not only to receive the reports of the Americans and the Brits of what they have found or not found, but we would be able to corroborate a good deal of this."

The United Nations has several ways it can take advantage of the growing controversy over Iraq's illegal weapons programmes – or lack of them. One is simply to reassert the authority of the inspection team and to point out its usefulness as an independent arbiter. The clear implication of Mr Blix's interview was that the US, on its own, cannot report credibly and should not have the right to dictate its terms. As he also said last week: "We're not dogs on a leash."

Another possible strategy stems from the wording of the Security Council resolution on economic sanctions on Iraq. The sanctions can only end, Resolution 687 says, if the UN certifies the country to be free of illegal weapons. Several countries, notably Russia, have suggested this clause could be used as leverage to give the UN a more significant role in post-war Iraq.

The Bush administration is busy looking for ways to end the sanctions without this UN imprimatur. The Iraqi people "have suffered enough", the Deputy Secretary of Defence, Paul Wolfowitz, argued – a line that is not without irony, since for years the United States insisted that sanctions were not responsible for Iraqi suffering, Saddam Hussein was.

One senses a certain enjoyment in UN circles as America squirms. Another former weapons inspector, David Albright, said: "They said the UN inspectors were bumbling idiots and can't find anything. Now these guys are looking like bumbling idiots that can't find anything."

The American search teams found nothing on the Iraqis' front-line defences during the assault on Baghdad – a logical place for chemical or biological weapons to be deployed if they existed. They found nothing in the prime locations pinpointed by their own intelligence agencies.

And they have come up empty even after capturing and questioning several of Saddam's top science advisers. The latest of these, a VX gas expert called Emad Husayn Abdullah al-Ani, gave himself up on Friday.

The BBC was the only mainstream news agency that had half a clue about how to harness the power of blogging during the Iraq war. Now, the BBC war reporters are shutting their blog down. Visit the site for their final impressions of what it was like to report on this war.

From reporter Jonathan Marcus:

There were two press operations going on at CentCom headquarters in Doha.

The first was the over-arching American press operation, very much a public relations exercise.

Within that there was a much smaller British press operation, very different in tone but struggling to try to get some real information out because of the tutelage of the Americans over the whole thing.

This was the fascinating thing about this war: you had this absolute avalanche of material from our BBC colleagues in Baghdad and with the actual units in the field.

But in a strange sort of way a lot of it was like looking though a keyhole at a very small piece of the war.

At CentCom we were faced with the problem of deciphering all this information.

People wanted to know: "What does it all mean?", "Is it going wrong?", "Is it not going wrong?", "What does this particular bit of action mean?"

Pulling all that together proved dramatically difficult in this particular campaign, which is precisely what I think the Pentagon wanted.

They were prepared to allow this extraordinary vision of what modern warfare is like at grass-roots level, but I think they were very happy that journalists did have to struggle to put the pieces together.

And we did not even see most of what went on in Iraq; there were no embedded people out in the west, in much of the north, and so on.

Of course the military came away from the war thinking it was a jolly good system. The real test is when the war goes badly.

This war went very well for the coalition, and this highly intrusive press arrangement served them, because it was largely reporting on success - dramatic movement, collapsing Iraqi formations and so on.

If things had gone very differently, perhaps in Whitehall and in the Pentagon they would not have been quite so enamoured with this system.

Excellent article By Yahya Sadowski (an associate professor at the American University of Beirut, Lebanon) in Le Monde Diplomatique on the complexities of getting Iraq oil production running again ... and the mistake that the US government made in assuming that the expenses of the war could be easily paid for by tapping into oil revenues:

In January the Pentagon formed its own planning group, under the leadership of Douglas Feith, to study what it should do with Iraq's oil after the liberation of Baghdad. Within a month this group learned just enough about oil economics to retreat in horror from the neo-conservatives' earlier proposals. Initially, officials at the Pentagon and the White House assumed that they would be able to recoup the costs of the war by dipping into Iraq's oil revenues. If they needed more money, all they had to do was to open the pipeline taps.

But when they did the maths, they made unpleasant discoveries. Expanding Iraq's production will not only take time, it will also be very expensive. Just rescuing Iraq's existing facilities (repairing wells and pipes about to fail and already doing long-term damage to reservoirs) will cost more than $1bn, even if Saddam does not deliberately destroy them as part of a scorched earth strategy. Raising oil production back to 3.5MBD will take at least three years and require $8bn investment in facilities and another $20bn of repairs to the ravaged electrical grid that powers the pumps and refineries. Increasing production to over 6MBD would cost $30bn more.

These are not small sums for a country only earning $15bn a year from oil exports. Yet they represent only a tiny fraction of the costs that the US had been hoping could be covered by Iraqi oil exports. No one knows exactly how much the invasion of Iraq will cost the Pentagon, but the Bush administration's own estimates begin at $100bn.

The US administration has cited many causes to justify its war against Iraq. Curbing weapons of mass destruction - so why not tackle nuclear North Korea? Combating terrorism - but Iraq is not even on the US State Department list of major terrorist supporters. Deterring threats to neighbouring states -well, the US cheered last time Saddam invaded Iran, and would probably do so again. Even liberating women - but Iraqi women are better represented in their government and military than US women. Most people suspect that the US has more material interests.

The popular slogan, "no war for oil", is closer to the truth than is Washington's propaganda. The Bush administration cares about Iraq (as it has never cared about Pakistan, an unstable dictatorship with nuclear weapons and a plenitude of terrorists) because Iraq is in the middle of two-thirds of the world's oil reserves. Baghdad is positioned to influence both the price and the availability of oil, the ultimate strategic commodity fuelling both the global economy and the US military.

Because of the "no war for oil" slogan, many people imagine a simplistic scenario, thinking that Washington has been acting to further the interests of US oil companies in grabbing Iraq's reserves. The reality is more complex, although not more charitable. The Bush circle does have close ties to the oil industry. But Bush and his advisers are linked to only a marginal subsection of that industry, and neither he nor his team actually know much about oil or its economics. Despite the months of planning military and political futures for Iraq, the US administration is only now beginning to grasp the most elementary facts about Iraq's potential role in the oil industry.

Within the Bush circle, those with the clearest vision for Iraqi oil are the same people who have led the drive for war against Iraq - the neo-conservative cabal of the deputy defence secretary, Paul Wolfowitz; Douglas Feith, the undersecretary of state for defence; Lewis Libby, the secretary general to the vice president; and their friends. As part of their grand plan for using a "liberated" Iraq as a base from which to promote democracy and capitalism across the Middle East, they want Baghdad to explore for new reserves, rapidly increase production capacity and quickly flood the world market with Iraqi oil. They know that this would lead to an oil price crash, driving it to $15 a barrel or less. They hope that this collapse will stimulate economic growth in the US and the West, finally destroy Opec (the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries), wreck the economies of "rogue states" (Iran, Syria, Libya), and create more opportunities for "regime change" and democratisation.

At first glance, this storyline seems plausible. Iraq has proven oil reserves of 112bn barrels and, since many analysts believe this figure could be doubled using new exploration technologies, its reserves might prove comparable to those of Saudi Arabia (245bn barrels). What allows the Saudis to play swing producer, adjusting output to help enforce Opec prices, is not their reserves but their 10+MBD (million barrels per day) production capacity. Iraq's capacity today is barely 2.5MBD, and, even before the 1991 Gulf war and subsequent embargo crippled Iraqi facilities, it never produced more than 3.8MBD. But the US neo-conservative cabal believes that Baghdad could increase capacity by another 2MBD within three years, perhaps even reaching 6MBD by 2010, particularly if Iraq privatises its fields, turning them over to multinational companies with the technology and capital to expand production quickly.

Yet when the cabal touted this plan in autumn 2002, they were opposed worldwide. It threatened many of Washington's friends, including Mexico, Canada, Norway, Indonesia, Russia, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. Saudi officials made it clear that they would defend Opec, if necessary by increasing their own production to the point where few firms would have any incentive to risk capital exploring for more Iraqi oil. Iraq's émigré opposition groups, including the neo-conservatives' allies in the Iraqi National Congress, also opposed the idea of privatising Iraqi oil. Regardless of their politics, they understand that oil is Iraq's only real asset and feel strongly that they should retain control of it.

Most surprisingly, there was also resistance from the Bush family itself, which has not always had happy experiences in the oil industry (Bush Junior's own firm, Arbusto Oil, went bankrupt). Bush Junior does have a network of personal ties, not to the multinational oil companies but to the independent businesses: dozens of small firms, many headquartered in Texas, that make their money pumping oil within the US or its continental shelf. These firms all need high oil prices to survive. The cost of producing a barrel of oil in Saudi Arabia may be as low as $1.50, but dredging a barrel out of the Gulf of Mexico may cost $13 or more. The last thing the independents want is a price collapse. Their demise, as their patriotic lobbyists are quick to point out, would leave the US overwhelmingly dependent on unreliable imports of foreign oil.

Multinational companies - giants such as Exxon-Mobil, British Petroleum, Shell, Total and Chevron-Texaco - have diversified sources of production and have less to fear from a price collapse. But the US administration does not listen to them (most are not even American). When Bush Junior was elected, they lobbied hard for a repeal of the Iran-Libya sanctions act and other embargos that curbed their expansion of holdings in the Middle East. The Bush team rebuffed their pleas and Vice-President Dick Cheney produced his 2001 national energy policy that focused on opening new areas within the US for energy exploration (1).

The key to this policy, the proposal to permit drilling in the Alaska national wildlife refuge, delighted the independents but did nothing for the multinationals, who felt that the public relations damage they would suffer from destroying the park would more than offset the value of its modest oil reserves. (Middle East oilfields, such as Iraq's Majnun field, typically contain 10+bn barrels; whereas Oil & Gas Journal estimates that the Alaskan refuge contains only 2.6bn barrels of recoverable oil.)

Economic reality finally rebutted the neo-conservative plan. In January the Pentagon formed its own planning group, under the leadership of Douglas Feith, to study what it should do with Iraq's oil after the liberation of Baghdad. Within a month this group learned just enough about oil economics to retreat in horror from the neo-conservatives' earlier proposals. Initially, officials at the Pentagon and the White House assumed that they would be able to recoup the costs of the war by dipping into Iraq's oil revenues. If they needed more money, all they had to do was to open the pipeline taps.

But when they did the maths, they made unpleasant discoveries. Expanding Iraq's production will not only take time, it will also be very expensive. Just rescuing Iraq's existing facilities (repairing wells and pipes about to fail and already doing long-term damage to reservoirs) will cost more than $1bn, even if Saddam does not deliberately destroy them as part of a scorched earth strategy. Raising oil production back to 3.5MBD will take at least three years and require $8bn investment in facilities and another $20bn of repairs to the ravaged electrical grid that powers the pumps and refineries. Increasing production to over 6MBD would cost $30bn more.

These are not small sums for a country only earning $15bn a year from oil exports. Yet they represent only a tiny fraction of the costs that the US had been hoping could be covered by Iraqi oil exports. No one knows exactly how much the invasion of Iraq will cost the Pentagon, but the Bush administration's own estimates begin at $100bn (see Iraq: misreading the vital signs). The Congressional Budget Office guesses that the price of maintaining US troops in Iraq will be between $12bn and $45bn annually. Iraq's outstanding foreign debts, which total over $110bn, would need $5-12bn a year to service. Once US officials discovered this, they began lobbying to have these debts, held largely by Arab states, Russia and France, forgiven after the war. Outstanding claims against Iraq for its invasion of Kuwait total about $300bn, although the United Nations agency responsible for collecting them does not think Iraq will have to pay more than $40bn - again, because the US is beginning to lobby Kuwait to drop its indemnity (2). No one knows how much humanitarian assistance will cost - but even in peacetime Iraq imports $14.5bn of food and medicine each year.

Even in the most optimistic scenarios, these costs are far beyond Iraq's ability to pay. The US will have to fund much of the bill for war (including any payments that Turkey may extract for cooperation) and try to get its allies to share the costs of the rest. Driving down the price of oil only makes this task more daunting. So the neo-conservatives, and the Iraqi opposition, supported by independent oil price hawks and Pentagon planners, have now abandoned the idea of breaking Opec. Instead, they are searching for ways to maximise Iraq's future oil revenues.

Their first step has been a quiet agreement to keep the technocrats of Iraq's current oil ministry in place, rather than trying to de-Ba'athise them, and to delegate most policy matters to them. This means that the engineers who make the production decisions, and the negotiators who haggle the contracts, will be the people with the most experience and information, rather than Pentagon officials, who are hardly famous for their bargaining skills. This also means that Iraq's oil will not be privatised. Instead, Iraqi technocrats will try to maximise revenues in the same way their counterparts do in Saudi Arabia or Kuwait: by offering foreign oil firms just enough profit, in very stringent production-sharing contracts, to keep them interested in investing.

The Iraqis and their US proconsuls will want to encourage as much competition among the foreign oil firms as they can, since this is the key to good terms. The US has hinted that it might retaliate against states, particularly Russia and France, that did not support its policy by denying them access to Iraqi oil after the war. This is a hollow threat. The Russians have already made the biggest single investment in Iraqi oil precisely because they are willing to take on riskier ventures than Western firms. Their capital and enthusiasm may prove critical to increasing the profitability of Iraqi oil. Also, Total has invested more than the Russians, and is well positioned to expand Iraqi production. Shell also has a major stake; and British Petroleum, which used to dominate the country, is also eager for a stake.

The US will discover that opening the bidding for what oilmen call the "Iraqi Klondike" as wide as possible will not only maximise revenues but also defuse the charge that the US is just land-grabbing. This does not mean that US oil companies will lack a role. If the political situation stabilises quickly (that is a very big if), Exxon-Mobil and Chevron-Texaco will join the bidding, and even smaller firms, such as Conoco, may participate by joining consortia to spread the risk.

But the only sector in which the Americans are actually likely to dominate is in services subcontracts, where US firms such as Halliburton (which Cheney used to run) and Schlumberger already enjoy global pre-eminence for economic reasons. US firms will not monopolise Iraqi oil; it will be surprising if they eventually control more than half of the production.

Multinational oil companies, US and other, have plenty to be ashamed of, from their despoliation of the Niger Delta to their support for state terrorism in Indonesia. But they have not been pushing for a war against Iraq. The Bush administration planned its campaign against Baghdad without input from these companies, and apparently without a clue about the basics of oil economics.

Oil appears in Washington's calculations about Iraq as a strategic rather than an economic resource: the war against Saddam is about guaranteeing American hegemony rather than about increasing the profits of Exxon.

There's no need to manufacture Fark any more -- the media's already doing that for us too.

Smoking Gun posted the following on April 16:

While all news organizations prepare obituaries in advance of the deaths of famous individuals, the folks at CNN inadvertently gave the Internet-surfing public a chance to preview how the network's web site would note the demise of Vice President Dick Cheney [viewable on the Smoking Gun site], Ronald Reagan, and a few other prominent figures. Until earlier this afternoon, a CNN server housed mock-ups of web pages announcing the yet-to-happen deaths. The CNN pages, which were discovered by the intrepid folks at fark.com, were yanked about 20 minutes after being exposed (though TSG was able to grab a few of the pages for posterity's sake). The premature obituaries, housed in a publicly accessible area of the CNN server and searchable via Google, were apparently the work of Peter Rentz, a senior multimedia designer at CNN. The mock-ups are virtually identical to the obituary design currently used by CNN when a notable person dies. (Elements of the obit template that CNN used for the Queen Mum can be seen in the Cheney design.) In addition to Cheney and Reagan, CNN also prepped online farewells to Fidel Castro, Bob Hope, Pope John Paul II, Nelson Mandela, and Gerald Ford.

From Richard Lloyd Parry in al-Nasiriyah
for The Times Online

THE rescue of Private Jessica Lynch, which inspired America during one of the most difficult periods of the war, was not the heroic Hollywood story told by the US military, but a staged operation that terrified patients and victimised the doctors who had struggled to save her life, according to Iraqi witnesses.

Doctors at al-Nasiriyah general hospital said that the airborne assault had met no resistance and was carried out a day after all the Iraqi forces and Baath leadership had fled the city.

Four doctors and two patients, one of whom was paralysed and on an intravenous drip, were bound and handcuffed as American soldiers rampaged through the wards, searching for departed members of the Saddam regime.

An ambulance driver who tried to carry Private Lynch to the American forces close to the city was shot at by US troops the day before their mission. Far from winning hearts and minds, the US operation has angered and hurt doctors who risked their lives treating both Private Lynch and Iraqi victims of the war. “What the Americans say is like the story of Sinbad the Sailor — it’s a myth,” said Harith al-Houssona, who saved Private Lynch’s life after she was brought to the hospital by Iraqi military intelligence.

“They said that there was no medical care in Iraq, and that there was a very strong defence of this hospital. But there was no one here apart from doctors and patients, and there was nobody to fire at them.”

Dr Harith was on duty when Private Lynch was brought to al-Nasiriyah general by Iraqi soldiers a few days after her capture on March 23. She was a member of a 15-member US Army maintenance company convoy that was ambushed after taking a wrong turn near the city.

At the time, she was suffering from a head injury, a broken leg and arm, a bullet wound to her leg, a pulmonary oedema and her breathing was failing. In a hospital inundated with war casualties with few drugs, her condition was stabilised and she regained consciousness.

“She was very frightened when she woke up,” Dr Harith, 24, a junior resident at the hospital, said. “She kept saying: ‘Please don’t hurt me, don’t touch me.’ I told her that she was safe, she was in a hospital and that I was a doctor, and I never hurt a patient.”

Private Lynch’s military guards would allow no other doctor to tend to her and Dr Harith formed a friendship with her. She talked to him about her family, including her arguments about money with her father, and about her boyfriend, a Hispanic soldier named Ruben.

Dr Harith went outside the hospital during the bombing to get supplies of Private Lynch’s favourite drink, orange juice, and struggled to persuade her to eat.

“I told her she needed to eat to recover, and I brought her crackers, but her stomach was upset. She said as a joke: ‘I want to be slim.’

“I see (many) patients, but she was special. She’s a very simple person, a soldier, not well-educated. But she was very, very nice, with a lovely face and blonde hair.”

The Iraqi intelligence officers told the hospital that Private Lynch would soon be transferred to Baghdad, a prospect that terrified her.

After her condition stabilised, they ordered Dr Harith to transfer Jessica to another hospital.

Instead he told the ambulance driver to deliver her to one of the American outposts that had already been established on the ouskirts of the city.

“But when he reached their checkpoint, the Americans fired at him,” he said.

On April 1 the local Baathists fled al-Nasiriyah for Baghdad and arrived at the hospital looking for their prize captive. Dr Harith moved her to another part of the hospital, and other doctors told the soldiers that he was away.

“They said that they thought Jessica had died, and they didn’t know where she was,” he said. In their haste and confusion the soldiers left, leaving behind only a few critically injured soldiers.

The American “rescue” operation came on the night of April 2. The hospital was bombarded and soldiers arrived in helicopters and, according to the hospital doctors, in tanks that pulled up outside the hospital.

Most of the doctors fled to the shelter of the radiology department on the first floor.

“We heard them firing and shouting: ‘Go! Go! Go! Go!’ ” Dr Harith said. One group of soldiers dug up the graves of dead US soldiers outside the hospital, while another interrogated doctors about Ali Hassan al-Majid, the senior Baath party figure known as Chemical Ali, who had never been seen there. A third group looked for Private Lynch.

US soldiers videotaped the rescue, but among the many scenes not shown to the press at US Central Command in Doha was one of four doctors who were handcuffed and interrogated, along with two civilian patients, one of whom was immobile and connected to a drip. “They were doctors, with stethoscopes round their necks,” Dr Harith said.

“Even in war, a doctor should not be treated like that.”

Unluckiest of all was Abdul Razaq, one of the hospital administrators, who took shelter from the bombardment in Private Lynch’s room, believing that he would be safe.

He was seized and taken with the US soldiers on their helicopter to their base, where he was held for three days in an open-air prison camp.

“When he left his skin was the colour of yours,” another doctor, Mahmud, said. “When he came back, he was black.”

Bizarrely, the rescuers cut open a special bed, designed for patients with bed sores, which had been provided for Private Lynch’s use.

“They took samples of sand out of it,” Dr Harith said. “It was the only bed like it that we have, the only one in the governorate.”

Today, the hospital struggles on without adequate supplies of drugs and without running water or mains electricity.

“There are two faces to Americans,” Dr Harith said. “One is freedom and democracy, and giving kids sweets. The other is killing and hating my people. So I am very confused. I feel sad because I will never see Jessica again, and I feel happy because she is happy and has gone back to her life. If I could speak to her I would say: ‘Congratulations!’”

by MICHEL GUERRIN
for Le Monde

Translated for CounterPunch by NORMAN MADARASZ

Laurent Van der Stockt, a photographer working for the Gamma agency and under contract for the New York Times Magazine, followed the advance of the 3/4 Marines (3rd battalion, 4th regiment) for three weeks, up to the taking of Baghdad on April 9. He was accompanied by New York Times Magazine editor, Peter Maas. Born in Belgium in 1964, Laurent Van der Stockt mainly works in conflict zones: the first Gulf War, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Chechnya, Africa and the Occupied Territories. This is his eyewitness account of the Marines' march to Baghdad:

"Everything began at the Kuwait/Iraq border. I forced my way into the country and arrived at Safwan. American soldiers had seized the opportunity to tear up portraits of Saddam Hussein on the main street. They were doing this right in front of the local inhabitants, whose elation quickly vanished. The soldiers obviously didn't imagine that it was up to the Iraqis to be doing this, or that it was humiliating for them. These were the same soldiers who would topple down Saddam's statue in Baghdad three weeks later...

I understood that the Marines' general strategy was to not waste any time. In the cities they crossed, the Marines had to make a show of force. Then they would resume their advance by going as fast as possible up by the east through the desert, and avoid any contact with the population. It takes an effort to picture what an army looks like as it advances through the sands. It's an anthill. It's more than a city on the march. It's a world whose extremities are never seen. It's a cutting edge, mechanical version of Julius Caesar's army.

During the first few days, with colleagues from the New York Times and Newsweek, I tried to follow the convoys in a SUV by playing hide-and-seek. We were spending a lot of time then with the 1 500 Marines of the 3/4, commanded by Colonel Bryan P. McCoy. His troops gave us water, gas and food. In exchange for their tolerance, we respected the rules to not pass the convoy and to camp at such and such a place. We were just barely tolerated. The colonel could see that the 'few jokers were behaving well'. He knew we had experienced more wars than his own troops.

For McCoy, we were obviously interesting right from the start. We were the ones who could tell his story. Trust settled in between us. He let us drive at the head of the convoy. The Marines are generally less privileged than the army. They're trained to do the dirty work, the less honorary jobs. They have the oldest tanks, and the least up-to-date M16 rifles. They themselves translate 'USMC' (United States Marine Corps) by United States Misgodded Children, i.e. the US' forgotten children, forgotten by God.

Their motto is 'Search and Kill'. The 'Kilo' unit is nicknamed 'Killer Kilo'. The words 'Carnivore' or 'Blind Killer' are painted on their tanks. McCoy could snap with a 'Shame on You' -- a smile flashing across his face -- to the sniper who had just finished telling him: 'I've got eight, Sir, but only five'. Literally meaning: I've shot eight, but only five of them are dead.

I've never seen a war with so few 'returns'. The Iraqi army was like a ghost. It barely existed. Over the three weeks, I only saw the adversary fire a few short-range rockets and a few shots. I saw deserted trenches, a dead Iraqi soldier lying next to a piece of bread and some old equipment. Nothing that really made you feel that there was a real confrontation going on, nothing comparable to the massiveness of the means at the Americans' disposal.

On April 6, we were at the outskirts of Baghdad, facing a strategic bridge the Americans called 'the Baghdad Highway Bridge'. Residential zones were now much greater in number. American snipers got the order to kill anything coming in their direction. That night a teenager who was crossing the bridge was killed.

On the morning of April 7, the Marines decided to cross the bridge. A shell fell onto an armored personnel carrier. Two marines were killed. The crossing took on a tragic aspect. The soldiers were stressed, febrile. They were shouting. The risk didn't appear to be that great, so I followed their advance. They were howling, shouting orders and positions to each other. It sounded like something in-between a phantasm, mythology and conditioning. The operation was transformed into crossing the bridge over the River Kwai.

Later, there was some open terrain. The Marines were advancing and taking up position, hiding behind mounds of earth. They were still really tense. A small blue van was moving towards the convoy. Three not-very-accurate warning shots were fired. The shots were supposed to make the van stop. The van kept on driving, made a U-turn, took shelter and then returned slowly. The Marines opened fire. All hell broke loose. They were firing all over the place. You could hear 'Stop firing' being shouted. The silence that set in was overwhelming. Two men and a woman had just been riddled with bullets. So this was the enemy, the threat.

A second vehicle drove up. The same scenario was repeated. Its passengers were killed on the spot. A grandfather was walking slowly with a cane on the sidewalk. They killed him too (SEE PHOTO IN LE MONDE). As with the old man, the Marines fired on a SUV driving along the river bank that was getting too close to them. Riddled with bullets, the vehicle rolled over. Two women and a child got out, miraculously still alive. They sought refuge in the wreckage. A few seconds later, it flew into bits as a tank lobbed a terse shot into it.

Marines are conditioned to reach their target at any cost, by staying alive and facing any type of enemy. They abusively make use of disproportionate firepower. These hardened troops, followed by tons of equipment, supported by extraordinary artillery power, protected by fighter jets and cutting-edge helicopters, were shooting on local inhabitants who understood absolutely nothing of what was going on.

With my own eyes I saw about fifteen civilians killed in two days. I've gone through enough wars to know that it's always dirty, that civilians are always the first victims. But the way it was happening here, it was insane.

At the roughest moment, the most humane of the troops was called Doug. He gave real warning shots. From 800 yards he could hit a tire and, if that wasn't enough, then the motor. He saved ten lives in two hours by driving back civilians who were coming towards us.

Distraught soldiers were saying: 'I ain't prepared for this, I didn't come here to shoot civilians.' The colonel countered that the Iraqis were using inhabitants to kill marines, that 'soldiers were being disguised as civilians, and that ambulances were perpetrating terrorist attacks.'

I drove away a girl who had had her humerus pierced by a bullet. Enrico was holding her in his arms. In the rear, the girl's father was protecting his young son, wounded in the torso and losing consciousness. The man spoke in gestures to the doctor at the back of the lines, pleading: "I don't understand, I was walking and holding my children's hands. Why didn't you shoot in the air? Or at least shoot me?"

In Baghdad, McCoy sped up the march. He stopped taking the time to search houses one-by-one. He wanted to get to Paradise Place as soon as possible. The Marines were not firing on the thickening population. The course ended with Saddam's statue being toppled. There were more journalists at the scene than Baghdadis. Its five million inhabitants stayed at home."

Interviewed by Michel Guerrin for LE MONDE, April 12, 2003.

Translated for CounterPunch by Norman Madarasz (nmphdiol@yahoo.ca).

[from Commondreams: A transcript of the speech given by actor Tim Robbins to the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., on April 15, 2003. ]

 
TIM ROBBINS: Thank you. And thanks for the invitation. I had originally been asked here to talk about the war and our current political situation, but I have instead chosen to hijack this opportunity and talk about baseball and show business. (Laughter.) Just kidding. Sort of.

I can't tell you how moved I have been at the overwhelming support I have received from newspapers throughout the country in these past few days. I hold no illusions that all of these journalists agree with me on my views against the war. While the journalists' outrage at the cancellation of our appearance in Cooperstown is not about my views, it is about my right to express these views. I am extremely grateful that there are those of you out there still with a fierce belief in constitutionally guaranteed rights. We need you, the press, now more than ever. This is a crucial moment for all of us.

For all of the ugliness and tragedy of 9-11, there was a brief period afterward where I held a great hope, in the midst of the tears and shocked faces of New Yorkers, in the midst of the lethal air we breathed as we worked at Ground Zero, in the midst of my children's terror at being so close to this crime against humanity, in the midst of all this, I held on to a glimmer of hope in the naive assumption that something good could come out of it.

I imagined our leaders seizing upon this moment of unity in America, this moment when no one wanted to talk about Democrat versus Republican, white versus black, or any of the other ridiculous divisions that dominate our public discourse. I imagined our leaders going on television telling the citizens that although we all want to be at Ground Zero, we can't, but there is work that is needed to be done all over America. Our help is needed at community centers to tutor children, to teach them to read. Our work is needed at old-age homes to visit the lonely and infirmed; in gutted neighborhoods to rebuild housing and clean up parks, and convert abandoned lots to baseball fields. I imagined leadership that would take this incredible energy, this generosity of spirit and create a new unity in America born out of the chaos and tragedy of 9/11, a new unity that would send a message to terrorists everywhere: If you attack us, we will become stronger, cleaner, better educated, and more unified. You will strengthen our commitment to justice and democracy by your inhumane attacks on us. Like a Phoenix out of the fire, we will be reborn.

And then came the speech: You are either with us or against us. And the bombing began. And the old paradigm was restored as our leader encouraged us to show our patriotism by shopping and by volunteering to join groups that would turn in their neighbor for any suspicious behavior.

In the 19 months since 9-11, we have seen our democracy compromised by fear and hatred. Basic inalienable rights, due process, the sanctity of the home have been quickly compromised in a climate of fear. A unified American public has grown bitterly divided, and a world population that had profound sympathy and support for us has grown contemptuous and distrustful, viewing us as we once viewed the Soviet Union, as a rogue state.

This past weekend, Susan and I and the three kids went to Florida for a family reunion of sorts. Amidst the alcohol and the dancing, sugar-rushing children, there was, of course, talk of the war. And the most frightening thing about the weekend was the amount of times we were thanked for speaking out against the war because that individual speaking thought it unsafe to do so in their own community, in their own life. Keep talking, they said; I haven't been able to open my mouth.

A relative tells me that a history teacher tells his 11-year-old son, my nephew, that Susan Sarandon is endangering the troops by her opposition to the war. Another teacher in a different school asks our niece if we are coming to the school play. They're not welcome here, said the molder of young minds.

Another relative tells me of a school board decision to cancel a civics event that was proposing to have a moment of silence for those who have died in the war because the students were including dead Iraqi civilians in their silent prayer.

A teacher in another nephew's school is fired for wearing a T- shirt with a peace sign on it. And a friend of the family tells of listening to the radio down South as the talk radio host calls for the murder of a prominent anti-war activist. Death threats have appeared on other prominent anti-war activists' doorsteps for their views. Relatives of ours have received threatening e-mails and phone calls. And my 13-year-old boy, who has done nothing to anybody, has recently been embarrassed and humiliated by a sadistic creep who writes -- or, rather, scratches his column with his fingernails in dirt.

Susan and I have been listed as traitors, as supporters of Saddam, and various other epithets by the Aussie gossip rags masquerading as newspapers, and by their fair and balanced electronic media cousins, 19th Century Fox. (Laughter.) Apologies to Gore Vidal. (Applause.)

Two weeks ago, the United Way canceled Susan's appearance at a conference on women's leadership. And both of us last week were told that both we and the First Amendment were not welcome at the Baseball Hall of Fame.

A famous middle-aged rock-and-roller called me last week to thank me for speaking out against the war, only to go on to tell me that he could not speak himself because he fears repercussions from Clear Channel. "They promote our concert appearances," he said. "They own most of the stations that play our music. I can't come out against this war."

And here in Washington, Helen Thomas finds herself banished to the back of the room and uncalled on after asking Ari Fleischer whether our showing prisoners of war at Guantanamo Bay on television violated the Geneva Convention.

A chill wind is blowing in this nation. A message is being sent through the White House and its allies in talk radio and Clear Channel and Cooperstown. If you oppose this administration, there can and will be ramifications.

Every day, the air waves are filled with warnings, veiled and unveiled threats, spewed invective and hatred directed at any voice of dissent. And the public, like so many relatives and friends that I saw this weekend, sit in mute opposition and fear.

I am sick of hearing about Hollywood being against this war. Hollywood's heavy hitters, the real power brokers and cover-of-the- magazine stars, have been largely silent on this issue. But Hollywood, the concept, has always been a popular target.

I remember when the Columbine High School shootings happened. President Clinton criticized Hollywood for contributing to this terrible tragedy -- this, as we were dropping bombs over Kosovo. Could the violent actions of our leaders contribute somewhat to the violent fantasies of our teenagers? Or is it all just Hollywood and rock and roll?

I remember reading at the time that one of the shooters had tried to enlist to fight the real war a week before he acted out his war in real life at Columbine. I talked about this in the press at the time. And curiously, no one accused me of being unpatriotic for criticizing Clinton. In fact, the same radio patriots that call us traitors today engaged in daily personal attacks on their president during the war in Kosovo.

Today, prominent politicians who have decried violence in movies -- the "Blame Hollywooders," if you will -- recently voted to give our current president the power to unleash real violence in our current war. They want us to stop the fictional violence but are okay with the real kind.

And these same people that tolerate the real violence of war don't want to see the result of it on the nightly news. Unlike the rest of the world, our news coverage of this war remains sanitized, without a glimpse of the blood and gore inflicted upon our soldiers or the women and children in Iraq. Violence as a concept, an abstraction -- it's very strange.

As we applaud the hard-edged realism of the opening battle scene of "Saving Private Ryan," we cringe at the thought of seeing the same on the nightly news. We are told it would be pornographic. We want no part of reality in real life. We demand that war be painstakingly realized on the screen, but that war remain imagined and conceptualized in real life.

And in the midst of all this madness, where is the political opposition? Where have all the Democrats gone? Long time passing, long time ago. (Applause.) With apologies to Robert Byrd, I have to say it is pretty embarrassing to live in a country where a five-foot- one comedian has more guts than most politicians. (Applause.) We need leaders, not pragmatists that cower before the spin zones of former entertainment journalists. We need leaders who can understand the Constitution, congressman who don't in a moment of fear abdicate their most important power, the right to declare war to the executive branch. And, please, can we please stop the congressional sing-a- longs? (Laughter.)

In this time when a citizenry applauds the liberation of a country as it lives in fear of its own freedom, when an administration official releases an attack ad questioning the patriotism of a legless Vietnam veteran running for Congress, when people all over the country fear reprisal if they use their right to free speech, it is time to get angry. It is time to get fierce. And it doesn't take much to shift the tide. My 11-year-old nephew, mentioned earlier, a shy kid who never talks in class, stood up to his history teacher who was questioning Susan's patriotism. "That's my aunt you're talking about. Stop it." And the stunned teacher backtracks and began stammering compliments in embarrassment.

Sportswriters across the country reacted with such overwhelming fury at the Hall of Fame that the president of the Hall admitted he made a mistake and Major League Baseball disavowed any connection to the actions of the Hall's president. A bully can be stopped, and so can a mob. It takes one person with the courage and a resolute voice.

The journalists in this country can battle back at those who would rewrite our Constitution in Patriot Act II, or "Patriot, The Sequel," as we would call it in Hollywood. We are counting on you to star in that movie. Journalists can insist that they not be used as publicists by this administration. (Applause.) The next White House correspondent to be called on by Ari Fleischer should defer their question to the back of the room, to the banished journalist du jour. (Applause.) And any instance of intimidation to free speech should be battled against. Any acquiescence or intimidation at this point will only lead to more intimidation. You have, whether you like it or not, an awesome responsibility and an awesome power: the fate of discourse, the health of this republic is in your hands, whether you write on the left or the right. This is your time, and the destiny you have chosen.

We lay the continuance of our democracy on your desks, and count on your pens to be mightier. Millions are watching and waiting in mute frustration and hope - hoping for someone to defend the spirit and letter of our Constitution, and to defy the intimidation that is visited upon us daily in the name of national security and warped notions of patriotism.

Our ability to disagree, and our inherent right to question our leaders and criticize their actions define who we are. To allow those rights to be taken away out of fear, to punish people for their beliefs, to limit access in the news media to differing opinions is to acknowledge our democracy's defeat. These are challenging times. There is a wave of hate that seeks to divide us -- right and left, pro-war and anti-war. In the name of my 11-year-old nephew, and all the other unreported victims of this hostile and unproductive environment of fear, let us try to find our common ground as a nation. Let us celebrate this grand and glorious experiment that has survived for 227 years. To do so we must honor and fight vigilantly for the things that unite us -- like freedom, the First Amendment and, yes, baseball. (Applause.)

While the loss of life, and potentially disastrous political ramifications,
from the current US action in Iraq are horrifying enough, the wholesale loss
of the collections of Baghdad's National Library and Archive, of the library
of Korans at the Ministry of Religious Endowment and of the cuneiform clay
tablet archive in Baghdad's National Museum (see articles below) are an
intellectual extinction at the scale of the human species that beggars the
imagination.

As poets, we should resurrect the ghost of Charles Olson and unleash him on
the White House, Pentagon and CIA with a month's supply of benzedrine, Jim
Beam and cigarettes till they beg for mercy on their bloodied knees. And
then send in Ezra Pound and HD with typewriter bombs and lethal incantations
to finish them off.

Let us take some note of this major cultural catastrophe and direct hit to
poets--it's like we just lost our mother, kids. Mnemosyne, mother of the
muses. She who rocked the cradle of our civilization.

More proof that cultural and species extinction go hand in hand, in this
predatory epoch. The murderers have just blown a gap in the cultural record
to rival the great unconformities geologists and evolutionists will forever
scratch their heads over. For this we will be remembered, if there are any
heads to scratch a few hundred years from now.

In the meantime, I lay this huge crime squarely at the feet of the
destroyers-in-my-name who, in a charitable interpretation, knew not what
they wrought--- but who, in a more cynical light, knew exactly what they
were up to. Who blew open the doors to the archives while they barricaded
the Ministry of Oil.

Why waste time killing individuals? If you want to destroy a people, you
wipe out their memory, their history, their imagination. This is genocide,
ethnocide, matricide, a "crime against humanity" on a massive scale, if
those words have any meaning left to wring.

As poets we should, collectively, lodge a FORMAL PROTEST and expression of
outrage, demanding a full investigation and that Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheney,
Powell, Rice, Wolfowitz, Perle, Rove and Co. be tried for their matricidal
crimes against humanity.

As poets, can we find words to answer this deep and mortal blow? What bits
of Sumerian wisdom can you offer in this dark moment, friends?

Something more, I hope, than "Ashes to ashes, and dust to dust . . . ?"

As poets, we should resurrect the ghost of Charles Olson and unleash him on
the White House, Pentagon and CIA with a month's supply of benzedrine, Jim
Beam and cigarettes till they beg for mercy on their bloodied knees. And
then send in Ezra Pound and HD with typewriter bombs and lethal incantations
to finish them off.

As poets, ultimately at fault for this destruction, as Robert Kocik has
intelligently and provocatively claimed, should we not be doing our own
collective penance?

Then again, as meek "postmoderns" I suppose we don't need to mourn the loss
of "origins." Should we take any consolation in Derrida's claim that poetry
is, by definition, what "survives the archive"?

SHAME ON US, Destroyers of Civilization!

In ignominy,

JS

*

Here's some of what we know:

Looters May Have Destroyed Priceless Cuneiform Archive

By Buy Gugliotta, Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, April 18, 2003; Page
A23

Looters at Iraq's National Museum of Antiquities pillaged and, perhaps,
destroyed an archive of more than 100,000 cuneiform clay tablets -- a unique
and priceless trove of ancient Mesopotamian writings that included the
"Sippar Library," the oldest library ever found intact on its original
shelves.

Experts described the archive as the world's least-studied large collection
of cuneiform -- the oldest known writing on Earth -- a record that covers
every aspect of Mesopotamian life over more than 3,000 years. The texts
resided in numbered boxes each containing as many as 400 3-inch-by-2-inch
tablets.

The Sippar Library, discovered in 1986 at a well-known neo-Babylonian site
near Baghdad, was one of the archive's crown jewels. Dating from the sixth
century B.C., it comprised only about 800 tablets, but it included hymns,
prayers, lamentations, bits of epics, glossaries, astronomical and
scientific texts, missing pieces of a flood legend that closely parallels
the biblical story of Noah, and the prologue to the Code of Hammurabi, the
ancient Babylonian lawgiver.

"This is the kind of discovery that one waits 100 years to see," said Yale's
Benjamin Foster, curator of the Yale Babylonian Collection. "And now we'll
never have another chance. It's a tragedy of the first order." Foster said
only about two dozen of the Sippar Library tablets have been fully analyzed
and published.

UCLA Assyriologist Robert Englund noted that while some of the Sippar
material was similar, at least in part, to works in earlier finds, "the vast
majority of at least 100,000 texts in the archive are unique, very poorly
documented and barely studied, if at all. I'm more fearful for these
losses."

More at

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A48178-2003Apr17.html

*

April 15, 2003

The Sacking of Baghdad: Burning the History of Iraq by ROBERT FISK

Baghdad.

So yesterday was the burning of books. First came the looters, then the
arsonists. It was the final chapter in the sacking of Baghdad. The National
Library and Archives, a priceless treasure of Ottoman historical documents,
including the old royal archives of Iraq, were turned to ashes in 3,000
degrees of heat. Then the library of Korans at the Ministry of Religious
Endowment was set ablaze.

I saw the looters. One of them cursed me when I tried to reclaim a book of
Islamic law from a boy of no more than 10. Amid the ashes of Iraqi history,
I found a file blowing in the wind outside: pages of handwritten letters
between the court of Sharif Hussein of Mecca, who started the Arab revolt
against the Turks for Lawrence of Arabia, and the Ottoman rulers of Baghdad.

And the Americans did nothing. All over the filthy yard they blew, letters
of recommendation to the courts of Arabia, demands for ammunition for
troops, reports on the theft of camels and attacks on pilgrims, all in
delicate hand-written Arabic script. I was holding in my hands the last
Baghdad vestiges of Iraq's written history. But for Iraq, this is Year Zero;
with the destruction of the antiquities in the Museum of Archaeology on
Saturday and the burning of the National Archives and then the Koranic
library, the cultural identity of Iraq is being erased. Why? Who set these
fires? For what insane purpose is this heritage being destroyed?

When I caught sight of the Koranic library burning--flames 100 feet high
were bursting from the windows--I raced to the offices of the occupying
power, the US Marines' Civil Affairs Bureau. An officer shouted to a
colleague that "this guy says some biblical [sic] library is on fire". I
gave the map location, the precise name--in Arabic and English. I said the
smoke could be seen from three miles away and it would take only five
minutes to drive there. Half an hour later, there wasn't an American at the
scene--and the flames were shooting 200 feet into the air.

There was a time when the Arabs said that their books were written in Cairo,
printed in Beirut and read in Baghdad. Now they burn libraries in Baghdad.
In the National Archives were not just the Ottoman records of the Caliphate,
but even the dark years of the country's modern history, handwritten
accounts of the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war, with personal photographs and
military diaries,and microfiche copies of Arabic newspapers going back to
the early 1900s. But the older files and archives were on the upper floors
of the library where petrol must have been used to set fire so expertly to
the building. The heat was such that the marble flooring had buckled upwards
and the concrete stairs that I climbedhad been cracked.

The papers on the floor were almost too hot to touch, bore no print or
writing, and crumbled into ash the moment I picked them up. Again, standing
in this shroud of blue smoke and embers, I asked the same question: why? So,
as an all-too-painful reflection on what this means, let me quote from the
shreds of paper that I found on the road outside, blowing in the wind,
written by long-dead men who wrote to the Sublime Porte in Istanbul or to
the Court of Sharif of Mecca with expressions of loyalty and who signed
themselves "your slave". There was a request to protect a camel convoy of
tea, rice and sugar, signed by Husni Attiya al-Hijazi (recommending Abdul
Ghani-Naim and Ahmed Kindi as honest merchants), a request for perfume and
advice from Jaber al-Ayashi of the royal court of Sharif Hussein to Baghdad
to warn of robbers in the desert. "This is just to give you our advice for
which you will be highly rewarded," Ayashi says. "If you don't take our
advice, then we have warned you." A touch of Saddam there, I thought. The
date was 1912.

Some of the documents list the cost of bullets, military horses and
artillery for Ottoman armies in Baghdad and Arabia, others record the
opening of the first telephone exchange in the Hejaz--soon to be Saudi
Arabia--while one recounts, from the village of Azrak in modern-day Jordan,
the theft of clothes from a camel train by Ali bin Kassem, who attacked his
interrogators "with a knife and tried to stab them but was restrained and
later bought off". There is a 19th-century letter of recommendation for a
merchant, Yahyia Messoudi, "a man of the highest morals, of good conduct and
who works with the [Ottoman] government." This, in other words, was the
tapestry of Arab history--all that is left of it, which fell into The
Independent's hands as the mass of documents crackled in the immense heat of
the ruins.

King Faisal of the Hejaz, the ruler of Mecca, whose staff are the authors of
many of the letters I saved, was later deposed by the Saudis. His son Faisel
became king of Iraq--Winston Churchill gave him Baghdad after the French
threw him out of Damascus--and his brother Abdullah became the first king of
Jordan, the father of King Hussein and the grandfather of the present-day
Jordanian monarch, King Abdullah II.

For almost a thousand years, Baghdad was the cultural capital of the Arab
world, the most literate population in the Middle East. Genghis Khan's
grandson burnt the city in the 13th century and, so it was said, the Tigris
river ran black with the ink of books. Yesterday, the black ashes of
thousands of ancient documents filled the skies of Iraq.

Why?

http://argument.independent.co.uk/commentators/

(A sign of our blinkered times that this item should go under the heading
"argument" rather than news.)

*

From Reuters:

U.S. Culture Advisers Resign Over Iraq Museum Looting Fri Apr 18, 2:24 By
Niala Boodhoo

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Two cultural advisers to the Bush administration have
resigned in protest over the failure of U.S. forces to prevent the wholesale
looting of priceless treasures from Baghdad's antiquities museum.

Martin Sullivan, who chaired the President's Advisory Committee on Cultural
Property for eight years, and panel member Gary Vikan said they resigned
because the U.S. military had had advance warning of the danger to Iraq's
historical treasures.

"We certainly know the value of oil but we certainly don't know the value of
historical artifacts," Vikan, director of the Walters Art Gallery in
Baltimore, told Reuters on Thursday.

At the start of the U.S.-led campaign against Iraq, military forces quickly
secured valuable oil fields.

Baghdad's museums, galleries and libraries are empty shells, destroyed in a
wave of looting that erupted as U.S.-led forces ended Saddam Hussein's rule
last week, although antiquities experts have said they were given assurances
months ago from U.S. military planners that Iraq's historic artifacts and
sites would be protected by occupying forces.

"It didn't have to happen," Sullivan told Reuters. "In a pre-emptive war
that's the kind of thing you should have planned for." Sullivan sent his
letter of resignation earlier this week.

The Iraqi National Museum held rare artifacts documenting the development of
mankind in ancient Mesopotamia, one of the world's earliest civilizations.
Among the museum collection were more than 80,000 cuneiform tablets, some of
which had yet to be translated.

Professional art thieves may have been behind some of the looting, said
leading archeologists gathered in Paris on Thursday to seek ways to rescue
Iraq's cultural heritage.

Among the priceless treasures missing are the 5,000-year-old Vase of Uruk
and the Harp of Ur. The bronze Statue of Basitki from the Akkadian kingdom
is also gone, somehow hauled out of the museum despite its huge weight.

The White House repeated on Thursday that the looting was unfortunate but
the U.S. military had worked hard to preserve the infrastructure of Iraq.

"It is unfortunate that there was looting and damage done to the museum and
we have offered rewards, as Secretary Rumsfeld has said, for individuals who
may have taken items from the museum to bring those back," White House
spokeswoman Claire Buchan said in Crawford, Texas, where President Bush is
spending a long Easter break.

FBI Director Robert Mueller added that the bureau was sending agents to Iraq
to assist with criminal investigations and had issued Interpol alerts to all
member nations regarding the potential sale of stolen artifacts.

"We recognize the importance of these treasures to the Iraqi people and as
well to the world as a whole," Mueller said. "And we are firmly committed to
doing whatever we can in order to secure the return of these treasures to
the people of Iraq."

The president appoints the 11-member advisory committee, which works through
the State Department to advise the executive office on the 1970 UNESCO
Convention on international protection of cultural objects.

*

And the following came by way of George Quasha, before news of the library
burnings had even hit:

"USA Encouraged Ransacking"

This is a translation of an article from April 11 from Dagens Nyheter,
Sweden’s largest newspaper, based in Stockholm. The article was written by
Ole Rothenborg and translated by Joe Valasek. Khaled Bayomi, has taught and
researched on Middle Eastern conflicts for ten years at the University of
Lund where he is also working on his doctorate. He has given his permission
for this interview to be widely disseminated.

Khaled Bayomi looks surprised when the American officer on TV complains that
they don’t have the resources to stop the plundering in Baghdad. "I happened
to be right there just as the American troops encouraged people to begin the
plundering."

Khaled Bayomi traveled from Europe to Baghdad to be a human shield and
arrived on the same day that the war began. About this he can tell many
stories but the most interesting is certainly his eyewitness account of the
wave of plundering.

"I had gone to see some friends who live near a dilapidated area just past
Haifa Avenue on the west bank of the Tigris. It was the 8th of April and the
fighting was so intense that I was unable to return to the other side of the
river. In the afternoon it became perfectly quiet and four American tanks
took places on the edge of the slum area. The soldiers shot two Sudanese
guards who stood at their posts outside a local administration building on
the other side of Haifa Avenue. Then they blasted apart the doors to the
building and from the tanks came eager calls in Arabic encouraging people to
come close to them. "

"The entire morning, everyone who had tried to cross the road had been shot.
But in the strange silence after all the shooting, people gradually became
curious. After 45 minutes, the first Baghdad citizens dared to come out.
Arab interpreters in the tanks told the people to go and take what they
wanted in the building."

"The word spread quickly and the building was ransacked. I was standing only
300 yards from there when the guards were murdered. Afterwards the tank
crushed the entrance to the Justice Department, which was in a neighboring
building, and the plundering continued there".

"I stood in a large crowd and watched this together with them. They did not
partake in the plundering but dared not to interfere. Many had tears of
shame in their eyes. The next morning the plundering spread to the Modern
Museum, which lies a quarter mile farther north. There were also two crowds
there, one that plundered and one with watched with disgust."

"Are you saying that it was US troops who initiated the plundering?’

"Absolutely. The lack of jubilant scenes meant that the American troops
needed pictures of Iraqis who in different ways demonstrated hatred for
Saddam’s regime."

"The people pulled down a large statue of Saddam?"

"Did they? It was an American tank that did that, right beside the hotel
where all the journalists stay. Until lunchtime on April 9, I did not see
one destroyed Saddam portrait. If people had wanted to pull down statues
they could have taken down some of the small ones without any help from
American tanks. If it had been a political upheaval, the people would have
pulled down statues first and then plundered."

"Isn’t it good that Saddam is gone?"

"He’s not gone. He has broken his army down into very small groups. That’s
why there hasn’t been a large battle. About the official state, you could
say that Saddam dissolved that already in 1992 and he’s built a parallel
tribal structure that is totally decisive in Iraq. When the US began the
war, Saddam abandoned the state completely and now depends on the tribal
structure. That was why he abandoned the large cities without a fight."

"Now the US is compelled to do everything themselves because there’s no
political body within the country which will challenge the existing
structure. The two who came in from outside the country were annihilated at
once. (The reference here is to General Nazar al-Khazraji, who returned from
Denmark and the Shiite Muslim leader, Abdul Majid al-Khoei.) They were cut
to pieces with swords and knives by a furious crowd in Najaf because they
were thought to be American puppets. According to the Danish newspaper BT,
al-Khazraji was brought from Denmark to Iraq by the CIA."

"Now we have an occupying power in place in Iraq that has not said how long
it intends to remain, has not given any plan for civilian rule and no date
for general elections. Enormous chaos is now to be expected."

http://www.dn.se/DNet/jsp/polopoly.jsp?d=1435&a=129852

After an amazing people's poetry gathering here in New York City over the past weekend, "poets for Peace" is energized to continue bringing poems against the war and poems for peace directly to the people.

We will plan our next public reading for Friday April 25th from 1-3pm on the steps of the main branch of The New York Public Library at 42nd Street and 5th Avenue near the southmost lion. Rain or shine. All poets are invited to attend and read their own or other's poems.

Also please note that Poets Against The War (www.poetsagainstthewar.org) is calling for a day of special events on the first of May. We will plan a reading for that day as well -details to follow later.

If you have any suggestions for this or future events please feel free to email me at your convenience.

peace,
Nathaniel A. Siegel
poets for Peace
poets against the war
POETRY IS NEWS

"do one thing a day to make your heart dance." yoko ono from Peace Event for
John Lennon

(Gothic News Service, 04/16) They gather daily now, in contingents of 81,
dressed in black gowns ­ each bearing 9 thin vertical gold stripes - gold
caps and veils over half of their white chalked faces, each with a thick,
black greased arc under the one exposed left eye. On the Washington Mall,
between high noon and six o¹clock, in neatly defined rows and columns ­ 9
across and 9 deep ­ the figures move in a silent, uniform procession,
walking in diagonals across the Mall from one Museum to the next, starting
from the National Gallery of Art, moving back and forth to the National Air
& Space Museum, American History, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Gallery,
Natural History, the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, American History, and the US
Holocaust Memorial Museum. The procession stops momentarily at the porch or
entrance of each Museum, makes a slight, speechless bow, before turning
around in unison to slowly proceed across the grass to the next one, moving
from one end of the Mall to the other, turning around at the Holocaust
Museum, and retracing its steps to again momentarily bow before each Museum.

For many on-lookers, most of whom join the apparent ritual out of sympathy
or curiosity, the meaning of the procession becomes more clear when they
notice a discrete image of a golden harp that is sewn into the upper sleeve
of each gown. "Sumeria, National Museum, Iraq, the solid gold harp, 3500 BC,
stolen or smashed to pieces," several whisper. "Nine strings on the harp,
nine gold stripes on the gowns, nine lines in procession. It¹s a mourning, a
grieving."

"The oldest song - a ballad - in the world," one kind scholarly man offered,
"was probably first played on the Sumerian harp. The tone of each string was
connected to the movement and mythical powers of the moon, the planets and
the stars. This stolen or destroyed harp is at the origin of all western
music." Like a bunch of ancient Greeks, the mourners stay mute, as if ­
with the exception of the procession's color and movement - yet unable to
rise above the trauma of cultural loss.

A few if the on-lookers were less kind. "Get over it," one young person
yelled from the Holocaust Museum entrance. "Fragmentation defined the
Twentieth century and its going to define this one and probably the next.
The job of the artist and poet is to pick up the rubble and either weld it
into something beautiful or frame and enjoy the resonance of pieces in the
ruin." After pausing for a moment ­ probably because many listening were
shocked ­ he added, "And don¹t you worry, if American generals and soldiers
permitted it in Iraq, if it¹s in the Government¹s interest, they can do the
same thing here. The barbarians are always at the gates."

Not everybody bought into his paranoid vision ­ which was followed by a
demonic laugh - but it provided a curious juxtaposition to today¹s
procession on the Mall. This week it¹s been reported that several similar
mute processions have formed in London, Paris, Berlin, Rome, Athens,
Istanbul, Cairo, and Damascus ­ each of them representing the destroyed or
stolen treasures of Arts and Letters from Baghdad¹s Museums and Libraries.

(c) Gothics News Service
Please feel free to distribute through out the Web

Cable's War Coverage Suggests a New 'Fox Effect' on Television

by Jim Rutenberg

The two commentators were gleeful as they skewered the news media and antiwar protesters in Hollywood.

"They are absolutely committing sedition, or treason," one commentator, Michael Savage, said of the protesters one recent night.

His colleague, Joe Scarborough, responded: "These leftist stooges for anti-American causes are always given a free pass. Isn't it time to make them stand up and be counted for their views?"

The conversation did not take place on A.M. radio, in an Internet chat room or even on the Fox News Channel. Rather, Mr. Savage, a longtime radio talk-show host, and Mr. Scarborough, a former Republican congressman, were speaking during prime time on MSNBC, the cable news network owned by Microsoft and General Electric and overseen by G.E.'s NBC News division.

For those of you who like to be amazed, you can preview the collected
political science writings of Language poet Bruce Andrews at:

www.arras.net/andrews_poli_sci.htm

An introduction by Jeff Derksen and interview with Andrews are forthcoming after the long hot summer. But for now, the titles, all downloadable for free at the above link:

poli sci 01: social rules and the state as a social actor (1975)
poli sci 02: explaining and understanding state action (1976)
poli sci 03: public constraint and american policy in vietnam (1976)
poli sci 04: representation & irresponsibility in foreign policy (1977)
poli sci 05: the piecing together of humpty dumpty: graduate education in
international political economy (1978)
poli sci 06: economic diplomacy & the new international order: rhetorical
questions (1979)
poli sci 07: the language of state action (1979)
poli sci 08: privacy and the protection of national security (1980)
poli sci 09: surplus security & the domestic paradigm (1980)
poli sci 10: criticizing economic democracy (1980)
poli sci 11: the political economy of world capitalism: theory and practice
(1982)
poli sci 12: the prison-house of the capitalist world system (1982)
poli sci 13: the domestic content of international desire (1984)

I spent a lot of time try to make this thing hot clickable, but or some reason it won't work in the blog. So you have to click the dollars below, a new window will open up, and you can click through to the various web sites embedded therein.

... from The Onion, of course.

An open letter from Ellison Horne:

To All:

I'm urgently calling for an investigation of the broadcast by CNN and CNN Headline News's reporting of Michael Moore's acceptance speech last month at the Academy Awards.

CNN and CNN Headline News aired a significantly different audio response to Mr. Moore's speech than was orginally broadcasted on ABC.

It seems that someone has manipulated the audio to give the impression there was constant loud "booing" throughout Moore's speech, when in reality, there was only marginal booing often overridden with cheers and applause.

This needs to be fully investigated.

As you may well know it is not easy to demonstrate how the corporate media influences mass opinion, but here we have a clear and shocking example of unethical behavior through manipulation of a historic event.

Let's help the public to better understand corporate media bias by making CNN and CNN Headline News face the REAL story.

Sincerely,
Ellison Horne

Horne and his friend Lisa Rein have built a web page housing digital clips of both ABC's live audio and CNN's rebroadcast, along with a waveform analysis of both clips. Decide for yourself.

Why should we listen to Hans Blix
and all those other foreign pricks:
the faggot French who swallow snails
and kiss the cheeks of other males:
the Germans with their Nazi past
and leather pants and cars that last
longer than ours: the ungrateful Chinks
we let make all our clothes; those finks
should back us in whatever task--
we shouldn't even have to ask:
and as for creepy munchkin Putin...
a slimy asshole-- no disputing!?
We saved those Russians from the reds--
they owe support. Those wimpish heads
of tiny states without the power
to have a radio in the shower
should fall in line behind George Bush
and join with him and Blair to push
the sword of truth through Saddam's guts
(no need for any ifs or buts)
we'll even do it without the backing
of UN cowards and their quacking--
remember how we thrashed the Nips
and fried them like potato chips?
God's on our side, he's white and Yankee
he'd drop the bombs, he'd drive a tank: we
know he's stronger than their Allah
as is our righteousness and valor!
We'll clip Mohammed's ears and pecker
And then move on to napalm Mecca.

Tom Raworth is a British poet. His most recent book of poems is Tottering State. He submitted Listen Up to the PoetsfortheWar.org website, hoping to sneak it past the censors. To date, they have not published the poem. However, late word comes that the site's proprietor, Charles Weatherford, has offered him a position as an "organizer" in their movement. (Counterpunch)

If W ain't the Ace of Spades... then who is???

Remember--it's not conspiracy, it's collusion. And it's not a theory...

Cast your vote today!

http://www.greatusaflags.com/product_info.php?products_id=94&aff_id=15&aff_sub_id=1

From Boing Boing:

"The March 2, 1998 issue of Time ran a piece by George Bush and Brent Scowcroft titled, "Why We Didn't Remove Saddam."

Here's an excerpt from the article:

We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq. The coalition would instantly have collapsed, the Arabs deserting it in anger and other allies pulling out as well. Under those circumstances, furthermore, we had been self-consciously trying to set a pattern for handling aggression in the post-cold war world. Going in and occupying Iraq, thus unilaterally exceeding the U.N.'s mandate, would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression we hoped to establish. Had we gone the invasion route, the U.S. could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land. It would have been a dramatically different -- and perhaps barren -- outcome.

As America invades, judges and acts without regard to world opinion it exposes more clearly the dire need to hold the President accountable to world opinion for re-election. Change America from with-in and from with-out. End geopolitical barriers to justice.

The final two candidates that America produces will be voted on by every country that has a legitimatized voting system. Each foreign vote will count 1/8th the American citizen's vote.

      Cars passing their messages along country crossroads
            to populaces cement-networked on flatness,
                                          giant white mist on earth
            and a Wichita Eagle-Beacon headlines
            "Kennedy Urges Cong Get Chair in Negotiations"
The War is gone,
      Language emerging on the motel news stand,
                                          the right magic
            Formula, the language known
      in the back of the mind before, now in black print
                                                daily consciousness
Eagle News Services Saigon-
      Headline Surrounded Vietcong Charge Into Fire Fight
            the suffering not yet ended
                                          for others
            The last spasms of the dragon of pain
                        shoot thru the muscles
                  a crackling around the eyeballs
                  of a sensitive yellow boy by a muddy wall
Continued from page one             area
      after the Marines killed 256 Vietcong captured 31
      ten day operation Harvest Moon last December
                                                Language language
      U.S. Military Spokesmen
                              Language language
                                                Cong death toll
            has soared to 100 in First Air Cavalry
            Division's Sector of
                              Language language
                  Operation White Wing near Bong Son

Some of the
      Language language
                  Communist
                        Language language soldiers
charged so desperately
      they were struck with six or seven bullets before they fell
                  Language Language M 60 Machine Guns
                              Language language in La Drang Valley
                  the terrain is      rougher infested with leeches and scorpions
                              The war was over several hours ago!
Oh at last again the radio opens
      blue Invitations!
            Angelic Dylan singing across the nation
                  "When all your children start to resent you
                  Won't you come see me, O~een Jane?"
      His youthful voice making glad
                              the brown endless meadows
      His tenderness penetrating aether,
            soft prayer on the airwaves,
                        Language language, and sweet music too
                        even unto thee,
                              hairy flatness!
                        even unto thee
                                          despairing Burns!

Future speeding on swift wheels
                  straight to the heart of Wichita!
Now radio voices cry population hunger world
                                    of unhappy people
                  waiting for Man to be born
                                    O man in America!
      you certainly smell good
                                    the radio says
      passing mysterious families of winking towers
      grouped round a quonset-hut on a hillock-
            feed storage or military fear factory here?
Sensitive City, Ooh! Hamburger & Skelley's Gas
                              lights feed man and machine,
      Kansas Electric Substation aluminum robot
            signals thru thin antennae towers
            above the empty football field
                                                      at Sunday dusk
to a solitary derrick that pumps oil from the unconscious
                              working night & day
& factory gas-flares edge a huge golf course
      where tired businessmen can come and play-
Cloverleaf, Merging      Traffic East Wichita turnoff
                              McConnell Airforce Base
                                                nourishing the city-
      Lights rising in the suburbs
      Supermarket Texaco brilliance starred
                        over streetlamp vertebrae on Kellogg,
                  green jeweled traffic lights
                        confronting the windshield,
Centertown ganglion entered!
                  Crowds of autos moving with their lightshine,
                  signbulbs winking in the driver's eyeball-
            The human nest collected, neon lit,
                                          and sunburst signed
                  for business as usual, except on the Lord's Day-
            Redeemer Lutheran's three crosses lit on the lawn
                                          reminder of our sins
            and Titsworth offers insurance on Hydraulic
            by De Voors Guard's Mortuary for outmoded bodies
                                          of the human vehicle
                  which no Titsworth of insurance will customize for resale-
So home, traveler, past the newspaper language factory
      under Union Station railroad bridge on Douglas
      to the center of the Vortex, calmly returned
                  to Hotel Eaton-
Carry Nation began the war on Vietnam here
                              with an angry smashing ax
                                    attacking Wine-
      Here fifty years ago, by her violence
began a vortex of hatred that defoliated the Mekong Delta-
      Proud Wichita! vain Wichita
                  cast the first stone!-
                                          That murdered my mother
                  who died of the communist anticommunist psychosis
                        in the madhouse one decade long ago
      complaining about      wires of masscommunication in her head
                        and phantom political voices in the air
                                    besmirching her girlish character.
      Many another has suffered death and madness
            in the Vortex from Hydraulic
                  to the end of 17th-enough!
The war is over now-
      Except for the souls
                        held prisoner in Niggertown
still pining for love of your tender white bodies O children of Wichita!

February 14, 1966

By Ruth Conniff

Dennis Kucinich is clearly holding down the left end of the bench of Democratic Presidential contenders for 2004. The co-chair of the Progressive Caucus in Congress, an advocate of nonviolence who has proposed that the U.S. government create a Department of Peace, a vegan because he believes in "the sacredness of all species," and a pro-labor environmentalist who marched in the streets of Seattle and Washington, D.C., Kucinich is, without a doubt, the progressive candidate. The argument for his candidacy, unlikely though it may be, is that it represents a point of view the Democrats should be forced to deal with.

The former "boy mayor" of Cleveland, now fifty-six, is the most vocal opponent of war with Iraq in the House of Representatives. A year ago, he began making impassioned speeches on the subject, and lately he's showing up on the talk show circuit as a lonely voice for peace. Meet the Press, Crossfire, Hardball, and The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, among others, have had him on to debate the Bush Administration's Iraq policy – though the Washington establishment is not taking his Presidential bid seriously. (The New York Times ranks him somewhere below Al Sharpton as a "viable candidate," and his February announcement in Iowa that he was running was greeted with a resounding shrug by most of the mainstream media.)

Kucinich thinks the pundits are in for a surprise. "They try to make it appear that the positions I'm taking are way out, but they're not," he told me on the phone recently. "As the war effort continues, I think you'll see that more and more people will join in and want to be involved with the campaign."

Steve Cobble agrees. A longtime progressive political strategist who worked for Jesse Jackson, Cobble compares Kucinich to Jackson in 1988. He thinks he could do much better than expected, thanks to the support of people the politicos in Washington don't notice.

"The people who are dismissing Kucinich out of hand are the same people who are shocked by this big anti-war movement that has had such growth in so short a time," says Cobble, who is an adviser to the candidate. Like the late Senator Paul Wellstone, Kucinich is long on big ideas and short on glitz. He is neither tall nor telegenic, neither wealthy nor well connected. And, of course, there's his minimal national name recognition.

But no one voted Ralph Nader "Mr. Charisma" five years ago, Cobble points out, and Nader became a pop star on college campuses during the 2000 campaign. "Young people responded to Nader in 2000," says Cobble. "It was the ideas and the sense of integrity, not blowing in the wind. Dennis is going to give the same vibes."

That's where the comparison to Nader ends, however. "I have no interest in a third party candidacy. None," says Kucinich. "I want to do it the other way – bring third party candidates into the [Democratic] Party and get support in the primaries." Taking much of Nader's message into the Democratic Party may be a worthy goal. But how far will it get Kucinich?

If a lot of progressives have a hangover from the last Presidential election and are feeling down, Kucinich and his campaign staff are energized by the massive anti-war and anti-globalization demonstrations around the world and by the feeling that a newly active grass-roots movement is rising up and making itself heard.

Kucinich, who opposes NAFTA, is the only candidate proudly giving voice to the fair trade movement. And his opposition to weapons in space and civil liberties violations under the Patriot Act are welcome among a Democratic base eager for a strong opposition to Bush.

"Whereas everyone else says, 'Gee, I'd have used a different airplane, or maybe we should use this missile instead of that one,' he'll be a clarion call for peace," says progressive Wisconsin Democrat and labor lawyer Ed Garvey. Now a supporter of Kucinich, Garvey was moved by the experience of hearing him speak out early against the Iraq war. "The passion and intellectual depth of his speech was really impressive."

Certainly, Kucinich, who quotes long passages of poetry and has a deeply thoughtful, almost starry-eyed quality, is not your usual politician. So is Kucinich the peace movement candidate, as Eugene McCarthy was in 1968?

"This movement precedes a war. The 1968 movement happened years after war began," Kucinich says. His campaign takes on not only war but also a complex array of domestic and international concerns.

Kucinich denounces the Bush Administration's whole political philosophy of "projecting aggression into the world." The issues of his campaign are empire versus democracy, globalization versus equality, war versus peace, a private health insurance system that leaves seventy-five million people intermittently uncovered versus national health care, the Patriot Act versus the Bill of Rights. Get him going, and he'll blow your ears back with a litany of calamitous news.

"People are fearful," Kucinich says. "My candidacy steps forward and says, 'Hey, stop! Hold it!' We're losing what's dear to our country. We have a foreign policy that's setting the stage for new wars. We're talking about first use of nuclear weapons. We still have chemical and biological weapons, which disqualifies us from the chemical and biological weapons treaty. The polar ice caps are still melting. Islands in the Pacific are seeing the water rising. Meteorological changes suggest that global climate change is here to stay. The Kyoto climate change treaty is urgent. The U.S. has to recognize the interconnectedness, interdependence, of the world. We're not doing it. I'm looking at the entire structure of our society and saying, how can government be relevant?"

Whoa! That's Kucinich. Passion and intellectual depth? Yes. Glib pol? Not exactly.

Kucinich has one big problem with a grass-roots, progressive base: His position on abortion. Until last year, he maintained a nearly perfect voting record according to National Right to Life, and scored an absolute zero in the vote tally kept by the National Abortion Rights Action League. Since then, he says, his position has evolved, and he has broken ranks with his former colleagues on anti-abortion legislation.

"I withheld my support on a number of bills in the last year," he says, adding that the aggressive Republican effort to overturn Roe v. Wade persuaded him to help protect women's fundamental constitutional right to abortion.

"I don't believe in abortion, but I do believe in choice," he says.

How does that work?

"I don't believe Roe v. Wade should be overturned," he says. "I've become increasingly uncomfortable with the way the choices are framed in the House of Representatives." He says the Republican assault on Roe v. Wade has become an assault on the Constitution. He now sees the issue as "a question of equality – whether a woman was going to be equal in society and have constitutional protections. Women will not be equal to men if that constitutionally protected right is denied. Criminalizing abortion is unconstitutional."

Kucinich says he wants to overcome the us-and-them nature of the abortion debate by supporting a kind of nurturing environment for women and children, including full employment, a living wage, universal health care, and affordable and high quality child care. He wants abortion to be legal but rare.

"It's not wrong to support life, and it's not wrong to support a woman's right to choose," he says. "We have to permit both points of view to have expression. But there is a point at which the Constitution cannot be undermined. I've never advocated a constitutional amendment to repeal Roe v. Wade."

Kucinich thinks he can radically change politics in America. He cites his successes as the nation's youngest mayor, standing up to the privatization of Cleveland's public utilities, as well as coming to the aid of its steel industry and its hospitals when they were about to be shut down. "We changed the outcome," he says. "Government presents opportunities for profound creativity."

Cobble cites Barry Goldwater and George McGovern – dark horse candidates who didn't win the Presidency but transformed politics. "It's worth taking this burgeoning peace movement into the party, whether or not a candidate who voted for the war resolution wins," says Cobble. "We have a group of people in the White House that overtly put empire, first strike, and the occupation of other countries on the table," he adds. "We need a widespread discussion of this, and not many people are volunteering for the job."

Even former Vermont Governor Howard Dean, who is running another anti-war candidacy, is not taking on the big picture the way Kucinich is.

"We need someone like Dennis, who has the guts to carry this case," Cobble says.

Says Kucinich: "If I'm able to win some early primaries I'll be able to move these domestic concerns right to the top of the campaign concerns for the party. . . . FDR said in '33 we have nothing to fear but fear itself. We can create a new world. It's possible."

Ruth Conniff is Political Editor of The Progressive.

AlterNet: The Peace Candidate

So yesterday was the burning of books. First came the looters, then the arsonists. It was the final chapter in the sacking of Baghdad. The National Library and Archives - a priceless treasure of Ottoman historical documents, including the old royal archives of Iraq - were turned to ashes in 3,000 degrees of heat. Then the library of Korans at the Ministry of Religious Endowment was set ablaze.

I saw the looters. One of them cursed me when I tried to reclaim a book of Islamic law from a boy of no more than 10. Amid the ashes of Iraqi history, I found a file blowing in the wind outside: pages of handwritten letters between the court of Sharif Hussein of Mecca, who started the Arab revolt against the Turks for Lawrence of Arabia, and the Ottoman rulers of Baghdad.

And the Americans did nothing. All over the filthy yard they blew, letters of recommendation to the courts of Arabia, demands for ammunition for troops, reports on the theft of camels and attacks on pilgrims, all in delicate hand-written Arabic script. I was holding in my hands the last Baghdad vestiges of Iraq's written history. But for Iraq, this is Year Zero; with the destruction of the antiquities in the Museum of Archaeology on Saturday and the burning of the National Archives and then the Koranic library, the cultural identity of Iraq is being erased. Why? Who set these fires? For what insane purpose is this heritage being destroyed?

When I caught sight of the Koranic library burning - flames 100 feet high were bursting from the windows - I raced to the offices of the occupying power, the US Marines' Civil Affairs Bureau. An officer shouted to a colleague that "this guy says some biblical [sic] library is on fire". I gave the map location, the precise name - in Arabic and English. I said the smoke could be seen from three miles away and it would take only five minutes to drive there. Half an hour later, there wasn't an American at the scene - and the flames were shooting 200 feet into the air.

There was a time when the Arabs said that their books were written in Cairo, printed in Beirut and read in Baghdad. Now they burn libraries in Baghdad. In the National Archives were not just the Ottoman records of the Caliphate, but even the dark years of the country's modern history, handwritten accounts of the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war, with personal photographs and military diaries,and microfiche copies of Arabic newspapers going back to the early 1900s.

But the older files and archives were on the upper floors of the library where petrol must have been used to set fire so expertly to the building. The heat was such that the marble flooring had buckled upwards and the concrete stairs that I climbed had been cracked.

The papers on the floor were almost too hot to touch, bore no print or writing, and crumbled into ash the moment I picked them up. Again, standing in this shroud of blue smoke and embers, I asked the same question: why?

So, as an all-too-painful reflection on what this means, let me quote from the shreds of paper that I found on the road outside, blowing in the wind, written by long-dead men who wrote to the Sublime Porte in Istanbul or to the Court of Sharif of Mecca with expressions of loyalty and who signed themselves "your slave". There was a request to protect a camel convoy of tea, rice and sugar, signed by Husni Attiya al-Hijazi (recommending Abdul Ghani-Naim and Ahmed Kindi as honest merchants), a request for perfume and advice from Jaber al-Ayashi of the royal court of Sharif Hussein to Baghdad to warn of robbers in the desert. "This is just to give you our advice for which you will be highly rewarded," Ayashi says. "If you don't take our advice, then we have warned you." A touch of Saddam there, I thought. The date was 1912.

Some of the documents list the cost of bullets, military horses and artillery for Ottoman armies in Baghdad and Arabia, others record the opening of the first telephone exchange in the Hejaz - soon to be Saudi Arabia - while one recounts, from the village of Azrak in modern-day Jordan, the theft of clothes from a camel train by Ali bin Kassem, who attacked his interrogators "with a knife and tried to stab them but was restrained and later bought off". There is a 19th-century letter of recommendation for a merchant, Yahyia Messoudi, "a man of the highest morals, of good conduct and who works with the [Ottoman] government." This, in other words, was the tapestry of Arab history - all that is left of it, which fell into The Independent's hands as the mass of documents crackled in the immense heat of the ruins.

King Faisal of the Hejaz, the ruler of Mecca, whose staff are the authors of many of the letters I saved, was later deposed by the Saudis. His son Faisel became king of Iraq - Winston Churchill gave him Baghdad after the French threw him out of Damascus - and his brother Abdullah became the first king of Jordan, the father of King Hussein and the grandfather of the present-day Jordanian monarch, King Abdullah II.

For almost a thousand years, Baghdad was the cultural capital of the Arab world, the most literate population in the Middle East. Genghis Khan's grandson burnt the city in the 13th century and, so it was said, the Tigris river ran black with the ink of books. Yesterday, the black ashes of thousands of ancient documents filled the skies of Iraq. Why?

by Noam Chomsky and Michael Albert
April 13, 2003

(1) Why did the U.S. invade Iraq, in your view?

These are naturally speculations, and policy makers may have varying motives. But we can have a high degree of confidence about the answers given by Bush-Powell and the rest; these cannot possibly be taken seriously. They have gone out of their way to make sure we understand that, by a steady dose of self-contradiction ever since last September when the war drums began to beat. One day the "single question" is whether Iraq will disarm; in today's version (April 12): "We have high confidence that they have weapons of mass destruction -- that is what this war was about and is about." That was the pretext throughout the whole UN-disarmament farce, though it was never easy to take seriously; UNMOVIC was doing a good job in virtually disarming Iraq, and could have continued, if that were the goal. But there is no need to discuss it, because after stating solemnly that this is the "single question," they went on the next day to announce that it wasn't the goal at all: even if there isn't a pocket knife anywhere in Iraq, the US will invade anyway, because it is committed to "regime change." The next day we hear that there's nothing to that either; thus at the Azores summit, where Bush-Blair issued their ultimatum to the UN, they made it clear that they would invade even if Saddam and his gang left the country. So "regime change" is not enough. The next day we hear that the goal is "democracy" in the world. Pretexts range over the lot, depending on audience and circumstances, which means that no sane person can take the charade seriously.

The one constant is that the US must end up in control of Iraq.

Saddam Hussein was authorized to suppress, brutally, a 1991 uprising that might have overthrown him because "the best of all worlds" for Washington would be "an iron-fisted Iraqi junta without Saddam Hussein" (by then an embarrassment), which would rule the country with an "iron fist" as Saddam had done with US support and approval (NYT chief diplomatic correspondent Thomas Friedman). The uprising would have left the country in the hands of Iraqis who might not have subordinated themselves sufficiently to Washington. The murderous sanctions regime of the following years devastated the society, strengthened the tyrant, and compelled the population to rely for survival on his (highly efficient) system for distributing basic goods. The sanctions thus undercut the possibility of the kind of popular revolt that had overthrown an impressive series of other monsters who had been strongly supported by the current incumbents in Washington up to the very end of their bloody rule: Marcos, Duvalier, Ceausescu, Mobutu, Suharto, and a long list of others, some of them easily as tyrannical and barbaric as Saddam. Had it not been for the sanctions, Saddam probably would have gone the same way, as has been pointed out for years by the Westerners who know Iraq best, Denis Halliday and Hans van Sponeck (though one has to go to Canada, England, or elsewhere to find their writings). But overthrow of the regime from within would not be acceptable either, because it would leave Iraqis in charge. The Azores summit merely reiterated that stand.

The question of who rules Iraq remains the prime issue of contention. The US-backed opposition demands that the UN play a vital role in post-war Iraq and rejects US control of reconstruction or government (Leith Kubba, one of the most respected secular voices in the West, connected with the National Endowment of Democracy). One of the leading Shi'ite opposition figures, Sayed Muhamed Baqer al-Hakim, who heads the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), just informed the press that "we understand this war to be about imposing US hegemony over Iraq," and perceive the US as "an occupying rather than a liberating force." He stressed that the UN must supervise elections, and called on "foreign troops to withdraw from Iraq" and leave Iraqis in charge.

US policy-makers have a radically different conception. They must impose a client regime in Iraq, following the practice elsewhere in the region, and most significantly, in the regions that have been under US domination for a century, Central America and the Caribbean. That too is well-understood. Brent Scowcroft, National Security Adviser to Bush I, just repeated the obvious: "What's going to happen the first time we hold an election in Iraq and it turns out the radicals win? What do you do? We're surely not going to let them take over."

The same holds throughout the region. Recent studies reveal that from Morocco to Lebanon to the Gulf, about 95% of the population want a greater role in government for Islamic religious figures, and the same percentage believe that the sole US interest in the region is to control its oil and strengthen Israel. Antagonism to Washington has reached unprecedented heights, and the idea that Washington would institute a radical change in policy and tolerate truly democratic elections, respecting the outcome, seems rather fanciful, to say the least.

Turning to the question, one reason for the invasion, surely, is to gain control over the world's second largest oil reserves, which will place the US in an even more powerful position of global domination, maintaining "a stranglehold on the global economy," as Michael Klare describes the long-term objective, which he regards as the primary motive for war. However, this cannot explain the timing. Why now?

The drumbeat for war began in September 2002, and the government-media propaganda campaign achieved a spectacular success. Very quickly, the majority of the population came to believe that Iraq posed an imminent threat to US security, even that Iraq was involved in 9-11 (up from 3% after 9-11) and was planning new attacks. Not surprisingly, these beliefs correlated closely with support for the planned war. The beliefs are unique to the US. Even in Kuwait and Iran, which were invaded by Saddam Hussein, he was not feared, though he was despised. They know perfectly well that Iraq was the weakest state in the region, and for years they had joined others in trying to reintegrate Iraq into the regional system, over strong US objections. But a highly effective propaganda assault drove the American population far off the spectrum of world opinion, a remarkable achievement.

The September propaganda assault coincided with two important events. One was the opening of the mid-term election campaign. Karl Rove, the administration's campaign manager, had already pointed out that Republicans have to "go to the country" on the issue of national security, because voters "trust the Republican Party to do a better job of...protecting America." One didn't have to be a political genius to realize that if social and economic issues dominated the election, the Bush administration did not have a chance. Accordingly, it was necessary to concoct a huge threat to our survival, which the powerful leader will manage to overcome, miraculously. For the elections, the strategy barely worked. Polls reveal that voters maintained their preferences, but suppressed concerns over jobs, pensions, benefits, etc., in favor of security. Something similar will be needed for the presidential campaign. All of this is second nature for the current incumbents. They are mostly recycled from the more reactionary sectors of the Reagan-Bush administrations, and know that they were able to run the country for 12 years, carrying out domestic programs that the public largely opposed, by pushing the panic button regularly: Libyan attempting to "expel us from the world" (Reagan), an air base in Grenada from which the Russians would bomb us, Nicaragua only "two-days driving time from Harlingen Texas," waving their copies of Mein Kampf as they planned to take over the hemisphere, black criminals about to rape your sister (Willie Horton, the 1988 presidential campaign), Hispanic narcotraffickers about to destroy us, and on and on.

To maintain political power is an extremely important matter if the narrow sectors of power represented by the Bush administration hope to carry out their reactionary domestic program over strong popular opposition, if possible even to institutionalize them, so it will be hard to reconstruct what is being dismantled.

Something else happened in September 2002: the administration released its National Security Strategy, sending many shudders around the world, including the US foreign policy elite. The Strategy has many precedents, but does break new ground: for the first time in the post-war world, a powerful state announced, loud and clear, that it intends to rule the world by force, forever, crushing any potential challenge it might perceive. This is often called in the press a doctrine of "pre-emptive war." That is crucially wrong; it goes vastly beyond pre-emption. Sometimes it is called more accurately a doctrine of "preventive war." That too understates the doctrine. No military threat, however remote, need be "prevented"; challenges can be concocted at will, and may not involve any threat other than "defiance"; those who pay attention to history know that "successful defiance" has often been taken to be justification for resort to force in the past.

When a doctrine is announced, some action must be taken to demonstrate that it is seriously intended, so that it can become a new "norm in international relations," as commentators will soberly explain. What is needed is a war with an "exemplary quality," Harvard Middle East historian Roger Owen pointed out, discussing the reasons for the attack on Iraq. The exemplary action teaches a lesson that others must heed, or else.

Why Iraq? The experimental subject must have several important qualities. It must be defenseless, and it must be important; there's no point illustrating the doctrine by invading Burundi. Iraq qualified perfectly in both respects. The importance is obvious, and so is the required weakness. Iraq was not much of a military force to begin with, and had been largely disarmed through the 1990s while much of the society was driven to the edge of survival. Its military expenditures and economy were about one-third those of Kuwait, with 10% of its population, far below others in the region, and of course the regional superpower, Israel, by now virtually an offshore military base of the US. The invading force not only had utterly overwhelming military power, but also extensive information to guide its actions from satellite observation and overflights for many years, and more recently U-2 flights on the pretext of disarmament, surely sending data directly back to Washington.

Iraq was therefore a perfect choice for an "exemplary action" to establish the new doctrine of global rule by force as a "norm of international relations." A high official involved in drafting the National Security Strategy informed the press that its publication "was the signal that Iraq would be the first test, but not the last." "Iraq became the petri dish in which this experiment in pre-emptive policy grew," the New York Times reported -- misstating the policy in the usual way, but otherwise accurate.

All of these factors gave good reasons for war. And they also help explain why the planned war was so overwhelmingly opposed by the public worldwide (including the US, particularly when we extract the factor of fear, unique to the US). And also strongly opposed by a substantial part of economic and foreign policy elites, a very unusual development. They rightly fear that the adventurist posture may prove very costly to their own interests, even to survival. It is well-understood that these policies are driving others to develop a deterrent, which could be weapons of mass destruction, or credible threats of serious terror, or even conventional weapons, as in the case of North Korea, with artillery massed to destroy Seoul. With any remnants of some functioning system of world order torn to shreds, the Bush administration is instructing the world that nothing matters but force -- and they hold the mailed fist, though others are not likely to tolerate that for long. Including, one hopes, the American people, who are in by far the best position to counter and reverse these extremely ominous trends.

(2) There is some cheering in the streets of Iraqi cities. Does this
retrospectively undercut the logic of antiwar opposition?

I'm surprised that it was so limited and so long delayed. Every sensible person should welcome the overthrow of the tyrant, and the ending of the devastating sanctions, most certainly Iraqis. But the antiwar opposition, at least the part of it I know anything about, was always in favor of these ends. That's why it opposed the sanctions that were destroying the country and undermining the possibility of an internal revolt that would send Saddam the way of the other brutal killers supported by the present incumbents in Washington. The antiwar movement insisted that Iraqis, not the US government, must run the country. And it still does -- or should; it can have a substantial impact in this regard. Opponents of the war were also rightly appalled by the utter lack of concern for the possible humanitarian consequences of the attack, and by the ominous strategy for which it was the "test case." The basic issues remain: (1) Who will run Iraq, Iraqis or a clique in Crawford Texas? (2) Will the American people permit the narrow reactionary sectors that barely hold on to political power to implement their domestic and international agendas?

(3) There have been no wmd found. Does this retrospectively undercut
Bush's rationales for war?

Only if one takes the rationale seriously. The leadership still pretends to, as Fleischer's current remarks illustrate. If they can find something, which is not unlikely, that will be trumpeted as justification for the war. If they can't, the whole issue will be "disappeared" in the usual fashion.

 (4) If wmd are now found, and verified, would that retrospecitvely
undercut antiwar opposition?

That's a logical impossibility. Policies and opinions about them are determined by what is known or plausibly believed, not by what is discovered afterwards. That should be elementary.

(5) Will there be democracy in Iraq, as a result of this invasion?

Depends on what one means by "democracy." I presume the Bush PR team will want to put into place some kind of formal democracy, as long as it has no substance. But it's hard to imagine that they would allow a real voice to the Shi'ite majority, which is likely to join the rest of the region in trying to establish closer relations with Iran, the last thing the Bushites want. Or that they would allow a real voice to the next largest component of the population, the Kurds, who are likely to seek some kind of autonomy within a federal structure that would be anathema to Turkey, a major base for US power in the region. One should not be misled by the recent hysterical reaction to the crime of the Turkish government in adopting the position of 95% of its population, another indication of the passionate hatred of democracy in elite circles here, and another reason why no sensible person can take the rhetoric seriously. Same throughout the region. Functioning democracy would have outcomes that are inconsistent with the goal of US hegemony, just as in our own "backyard" over a century.

(6) What message has been received by governments around the world, with what likely broad implications?

The message is that the Bush administration intends its National Security Strategy to be taken seriously, as the "test case" illustrates. It intends to dominate the world by force, the one dimension in which it rules supreme, and to do so permanently. A more specific message, illustrated dramatically by the Iraq-North Korea case, is that if you want to fend off a US attack, you had better have a credible deterrent. It's widely assumed in elite circles that the likely consequence is proliferation of WMD and terror, in various forms, based on fear and loathing for the US administration, which was regarded as the greatest threat to world peace even before the invasion. That's no small matter these days. Questions of peace shade quickly into questions of survival for the species, given the case of means of violence.

(7) What was the role of the American media establishment in paving the way for this war, and then rationalizing it, narrowing the terms of
discussion, etc.?

The media uncritically relayed government propaganda about the threat to US security posed by Iraq, its involvement in 9-11 and other terror, etc. Some amplified the message on their own. Others simply relayed it. The effects in the polls were striking, as often before. Discussion was, as usual, restricted to "pragmatic grounds": will the US government get away with its plans at a cost acceptable at home. Once the war began it became a shameful exercise of cheering for the home team, appalling much of the world.

(8) What is next on the agenda, broadly, for Bush and Co., if they are
able to pursue their preferred agendas?

They have publicly announced that the next targets could be Syria and Iran -- which would require a strong military base in Iraq, presumably; another reason why any meaningful democracy is unlikely. It has been reliably reported for some time that the US and its allies (Turkey, Israel, and some others) have been taking steps towards dismemberment of Iran. But there are other possible targets too. The Andean region qualifies. It has very substantial resources, including oil. It is in turmoil, with dangerous independent popular movements that are not under control. It is by now surrounded by US military bases with US forces already on the ground. And one can think of others.

(9) What obstacles now stand in the way of Bush and Co.'s doing as they prefer, and what obstacles might arise?

The prime obstacle is domestic. But that's up to us.

(10) What has been your impression of antiwar opposition and what ought to be its agenda now?

Antiwar opposition here has been completely without precedent in scale and commitment, something we've discussed before, and that is certainly obvious to anyone who has had any experience in these matters here for the past 40 years. Its agenda right now, I think, should be to work to ensure that Iraq is run by Iraqis, that the US provide massive reparations for what it has done to Iraq for 20 years (by supporting Saddam Hussein, by wars, by brutal sanctions which probably caused a great deal more damage and deaths than the wars); and if that is too much honesty to expect, then at least massive aid, to be used by Iraqis, as they decide, which will be something other than US taxpayer subsidies to Halliburton and Bechtel. Also high on the agenda should be putting a brake on the extremely dangerous policies announced in the Security Strategy, and carried out in the "petri dish." And related to that, there should be serious efforts to block the bonanza of arms sales that is happily anticipated as a consequence of the war, which will also contribute to making the world a more awful and dangerous place. But that's only the beginning. The antiwar movement is indissolubly linked to the global justice movements, which have much more far-reaching goals, properly.

(11) What do you think is the relationship between the invasion of Iraq
and corporate glboalization, and what should be the relation between the anticorproate globalization movement, and the peace movement?
 
The invasion of Iraq was strongly opposed by the main centers of corporate globalization. At the World Economic Forum in Davos in January, opposition was so strong that Powell was practically shouted down when he tried to present a case for the war -- announcing, pretty clearly, that the US would "lead" even if no one followed, except for the pathetic Blair. The global justice and peace movements are so closely linked in their objectives that there is nothing much to say. We should, however, recall that the planners do draw these links, as we should too, in our own different way. They predict that their version of "globalization" will proceed on course, leading to "chronic financial volatility" (meaning still slower growth, harming mostly the poor) "and a widening economic divide" (meaning less globalization in the technical sense of convergence). They predict further that "deepening economic stagnation, political instability, and cultural alienation will foster ethnic, ideological and religious extremism, along with violence," much of it directed against the US -- that is, more terror. Military planners make the same assumptions. That is a good part of the rationale for rapidly increasing military spending, including the plans for militarization of space that the entire world is trying to block, without much hope as long as the matter is kept from the sight of Americans, who have the prime responsibility to stop it. I presume that is why some of the major events of last October were not even reported, among them the US vote at the UN, alone (with Israel), against a resolution calling for reaffirmation of a 1925 Geneva convention banning biological weapons and another resolution strengthening the 1967 Outer Space Treaty to ban use of space for military purposes, including offensive weapons that may well do us all in.

The agenda, as always, begins with trying to find out what is happening in the world, and then doing something about it, as we can, better than anyone else. Few share our privilege, power, and freedom -- hence responsibility. That should be another truism.

ZNet/ Vision Strategy/ Noam Chomsky Interviewed

http://www.dn.se/DNet/jsp/polopoly.jsp?d=1435&a=129852

"USA Encouraged Ransacking"

This is a translation of an article from April 11 from Dagens
Nyheter, Sweden’s largest newspaper, based in Stockholm. The
article was written by Ole Rothenborg and translated by Joe
Valasek. Khaled Bayomi, has taught and researched on Middle
Eastern conflicts for ten years at the University of Lund where
he is also working on his doctorate. He has given his permission
for this interview to be widely disseminated.

Khaled Bayomi looks surprised when the American officer on TV
complains that they don’t have the resources to stop the
plundering in Baghdad. "I happened to be right there just as the
American troops encouraged people to begin the plundering."

Khaled Bayomi traveled from Europe to Baghdad to be a human
shield and arrived on the same day that the war began. About
this he can tell many stories but the most interesting is
certainly his eyewitness account of the wave of plundering.

"I had gone to see some friends who live near a dilapidated area
just past Haifa Avenue on the west bank of the Tigris. It was
the 8th of April and the fighting was so intense that I was
unable to return to the other side of the river. In the
afternoon it became perfectly quiet and four American tanks took
places on the edge of the slum area. The soldiers shot two
Sudanese guards who stood at their posts outside a local
administration building on the other side of Haifa Avenue. Then
they blasted apart the doors to the building and from the tanks
came eager calls in Arabic encouraging people to come close to
them. "

"The entire morning, everyone who had tried to cross the road
had been shot. But in the strange silence after all the
shooting, people gradually became curious. After 45 minutes, the
first Baghdad citizens dared to come out. Arab interpreters in
the tanks told the people to go and take what they wanted in the
building."

"The word spread quickly and the building was ransacked. I was
standing only 300 yards from there when the guards were
murdered. Afterwards the tank crushed the entrance to the
Justice Department, which was in a neighboring building, and the
plundering continued there".

"I stood in a large crowd and watched this together with them.
They did not partake in the plundering but dared not to
interfere. Many had tears of shame in their eyes. The next
morning the plundering spread to the Modern Museum, which lies a
quarter mile farther north. There were also two crowds there,
one that plundered and one with watched with disgust."

"Are you saying that it was US troops who initiated the
plundering?’

"Absolutely. The lack of jubilant scenes meant that the American
troops needed pictures of Iraqis who in different ways
demonstrated hatred for Saddam’s regime."

"The people pulled down a large statue of Saddam?"

"Did they? It was an American tank that did that, right beside
the hotel where all the journalists stay. Until lunchtime on
April 9, I did not see one destroyed Saddam portrait. If people
had wanted to pull down statues they could have taken down some
of the small ones without any help from American tanks. If it
had been a political upheaval, the people would have pulled down
statues first and then plundered."

"Isn’t it good that Saddam is gone?"

"He’s not gone. He has broken his army down into very small
groups. That’s why there hasn’t been a large battle. About the
official state, you could say that Saddam dissolved that already
in 1992 and he’s built a parallel tribal structure that is
totally decisive in Iraq. When the US began the war, Saddam
abandoned the state completely and now depends on the tribal
structure. That was why he abandoned the large cities without a
fight."

"Now the US is compelled to do everything themselves because
there’s no political body within the country which will
challenge the existing structure. The two who came in from
outside the country were annihilated at once. (The reference
here is to General Nazar al-Khazraji, who returned from Denmark
and the Shiite Muslim leader, Abdul Majid al-Khoei.) They were
cut to pieces with swords and knives by a furious crowd in Najaf
because they were thought to be American puppets. According to
the Danish newspaper BT, al-Khazraji was brought from Denmark to
Iraq by the CIA."

"Now we have an occupying power in place in Iraq that has not
said how long it intends to remain, has not given any plan for
civilian rule and no date for general elections. Enormous chaos
is now to be expected."

NEW MEXICO, USA - On March 17, the day of US President George Bush's
televised announcement of the imminent US military attack on Iraq, Green
Left Weekly writer Bill Nevins was suspended from his teaching job at Rio
Rancho New Mexico public high school. The student Poetry Slam Team/Write
Club, which Nevins organises and sponsors, was also barred from performing
their outspoken words in public.

The suspensions took place after an anti-war poem written by a Rio Rancho
New Mexico poetry team member read out a poem over the in-school closed
circuit TV system. Following the reading, the student's parent (also a
teacher at the school) was ordered by an assistant principal to go home and
search the student's room for a print copy of the poem. The parent declined
to do so. All members of the poetry team were individually interrogated by
the school administration. The charge against Nevins is that he permitted
students to perform at public poetry readings without approved "field trip"
forms being on file.

Nevins is fighting the suspension with the strong support of the New Mexico
teachers' union. The Slam Team/Write Club has achieved local fame for the
courageous way that multicultural youth from the school and the community
had put their words of anger and protest into fine-crafted poetry. They have
delivered these bursts of truth on local television, in print and at
frequent poetry open mikes throughout central New Mexico.

The team was planning to appear at the Taos State Wide Youth Poetry Slam on
March 21 but was told by the Rio Rancho High School administration on March
17 that they may be barred from going there by the school. Several students
vowed to go to Taos anyway and to speak out there against repression in the
USA, denial of free speech at their school and the suspension of Nevins.

Readers are asked to send protest letters to New Mexico governor Bill
Richardson from his web site at

http://www.governor.state.nm.us

::

Below is the poem that was read out:

::

REVOLUTION X
_____________

Bush said no child would be left behind

And yet kids from inner-city schools

Work on Central Avenue

Jingling cans that read

Please sir, may I have some more?

They hand out diplomas like toilet paper

And lower school standards

Because

Underpaid, unrespected teachers

Are afraid of losing their jobs

Funded by the standardised tests

That shows our competency

When I'm in detox.

This is the Land of the Free ...

Where the statute of limitations for rape is only five damn years!

And immigrants can't run for President.

Where Muslims are hunted because

Some suicidal men decided they didn't like

Our arrogant bid for modern imperialism.

This is the Land of the Free ...

You drive by a car whose

Bumper screams

God bless America!

Well, you can scratch out the B

And make it Godless

Because God left this country a long time ago.

The founding fathers made this nation

On a dream and now

Freedom of Speech

Lets Nazis burn crosses, but

Calls police to

Gay pride parades.

We somehow

Can afford war with Iraq

But we can't afford to pay the teachers

Who educate the young who hold the guns

Against the "Axis of Evil"

Land of the Free ...

This is the land

If you're politically assertive

They call you a traitor and

Damn you to ostracism.

Say good-bye to Johnny Walker Lindh

And his family.

Bye Bye.

American Pie.

So maybe

My ideas about this nation

Don't resolve around perfection

But at least I know

Education is more important

Than money.

Land of the Free . . .

If this was utopia

We'd have to see each other naked

Before we got married

But instead, we see each other naked all the time

Because the government has my social security number

And the name of my dog!

And then we make babies,

But don't worry, they won't be left behind

And they grow up saying

God bless America!

But they don't know who Bush is

Because they never learned the Presidents.

And they will ride the ship Amistad

To our dreamland shores

Bearing the same shackles as us.

I'm here to say that

Generation X

Is pissed and we are taking over,

Ripping down the American illusion of perfection

We are the future generation

I have my qualifications

I know it looks like Angel Soft paper,

But don't worry

It's a diploma

Do I look qualified?

You can take our toilet paper,

But you can't take our Revolution.

::
::

From Green Left Weekly, March 26, 2003.

Visit the Green Left Weekly home page at:

http://www.greenleft.org.au

Canadian writer, filmmaker and journalist Gwynne Dyer (whose weekly column on international affairs appears in 175 newspapers worldwide and who is CBC-TV's principal commentator on the war) has written a new book, Ignorant Armies, an account of the strategy behind the September 11 attacks and the reasons for an American strike on Iraq.

From the back cover:

"Around the world thoughtful people are asking one vital question: How could an unspeakable terrorist act carried out by a small group of Islamist zealots, most of them Saudi Arabian, result in war being declared on Iraq, a country with a brutal but firmly secular government that had no known connection with 9/11? Is it a grotesque mistake, a sinister plot, or just the strategic equivalent of a highway pileup?

Far too many politicians and journalists who should know better have swallowed the story that Saddam Hussein is a threat to the West, that his weapons of mass destruction are about to fall into the hands of suicidal terrorist fanatics, and that we must invade Iraq before the Beast of Baghdad eats us, hair and all. And too few observers have pointed out that the weapons are not very dangerous, that Saddam has been successfully contained for over a decade without a war, and that the emperor has no clothes."

The Introduction follows; specifics on the title are here.

If historical ingratitude were a crime, the chattering classes of the West would be facing life sentences at hard labour. The luckiest generation in history, the people who got their future back because World War Three was cancelled, think that the world has changed forever just because a few terrorists have chosen them as targets.

About three thousand human beings were killed in the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington on September 11, 2001. That makes “9/11” the worst single terrorist incident in history, and it all played out on live television, so the immediate shock and outrage was entirely understandable. But the actual loss of life on that day was on the same order as the monthly death toll from traffic accidents in the United States – and there was almost no follow-up to those terrorist attacks, whereas the other loss occurs every month.

Numbers do matter. At least half the American population would have died in a World War Three fought with nuclear weapons. Therefore World War Three was an awesome possibility, one that could actually have ended American history. Only one American in a hundred thousand died on September 11, and not one in a million has been killed in terrorist attacks since then, so the new terrorism, viewed in this context, is virtually a non-event.

It is the media coverage that gives terrorism such huge apparent importance, of course – modern terrorism is almost entirely a media phenomenon – but it is nevertheless astonishing how big it has made this event seem, and how long it has kept it inflated. Even in 2003, the terrorist attacks on the United States in 2001 still shape American and Western foreign policy – or at least they are still being used, without much dissent, as justification for policies that may in fact have other motives and goals. September 11 did not change the world, but it is being used in an attempt to change the world.

This is not 1939, when great moral and ideological issues were involved, or even 1914, when at least great armies were involved. For all its modern technological trappings, this feels more like one of the colonial wars of the late nineteenth century – say, the Spanish-American War of 1898, Washington’s first excursion into imperialism. The pretext for the American attack on the Spanish empire on that occasion was an explosion that sank the battleship Maine in Havana harbour, killing over a thousand Americans. There was actually no evidence to connect the Spanish government with the disaster (sound familiar?), but the war was popular with the American public because it was over quickly, cost little, and allowed the United States to control Cuba for quite a few years, the Philippines for half a century, and Puerto Rico and American Samoa for good.

But the Spanish-American War was really a side-show. The main event at the turn of the last century was the Anglo-Boer War of 1899–1902, when Britain, the world’s greatest power, cooked up an unjustified war of aggression against the little Afrikaner republics of southern Africa, not because they were nasty – though they were, at least towards foreigners and blacks – but because they had one valuable resource that the imperial power craved: gold. Then, as now, everybody else disapproved of war, but chose not to lie down in front of the steamroller. Then – and maybe now – the war turned out to be a lot longer and harder than the planners calculated. And though Britain won it in the end, the war marked the beginning of a steep half-century decline that ended its superpower status. Could that happen to America too?

Almost certainly not: the United States today is far more dominant, relative to the other great powers, than Britain was in 1899. But there could be a modest silver lining if things get bad in Iraq, in the sense that if the Bush administration has a thoroughly miserable experience in the Middle East over the next year or so, the American right wing might be cured of its current fantasy that the United States can actually run the world. We should not wish for the lesson to be taught in this way, however, for the price would be too high, and sooner or later the unilateralist tide in the United States is bound to recede with or without disasters in the Middle East.
 How bad could it get? The worst-case scenario is a bloody ground war in Iraq, perhaps followed by a lengthy and debilitating American occupation; the overthrow of existing, pro-Western regimes in Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, or Pakistan by Islamist revolutionaries; the expulsion of the Palestinians from their remaining footholds west of the Jordan River (which would foreclose any hope of a general Arab-Israeli peace for the indefinite future); a large rise in oil prices and a prolonged global recession; and more and bigger terrorist attacks by Islamist groups on Western targets than has been the norm up to now. That is a lengthy tale of woe, but not all of it is likely to happen. Even if it did, it wouldn’t be the end of the world, or even of the Middle East. There have been bigger upheavals in the past half-century, and most of us are still here.

Nevertheless, the terrorist attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001 set in motion an avalanche of events, clearly connected in some senses though hugely different in character and motive. The largest of those events, it now appears, will be a war of considerable size in the Middle East, and it is worth the effort to try to understand the goals and strategies of the major players, American, Islamist, Israeli and Iraqi. What did the planners of al-Qaeda actually hope to achieve with their attacks on the United States, and how serious a threat to the status quo are they? How has American strategy responded and mutated in the months since then – and in particular, why did the subject change from al-Qaeda to Iraq? Has there really been a revolution in military affairs that now enables technologically advanced military powers to fight and win wars virtually without casualties, and could it be the foundation of a lasting Pax Americana? Is Saddam Hussein dangerous to anybody other than his immediate neighbours? Indeed, is he even dangerous to them any more?

I should mention that I do not oppose war in the right cause on principle. I supported using military force under United Nations authority to drive Saddam Hussein’s army out of occupied Kuwait in the Gulf War of 1990–91 because invading your neighbours is wrong. More recently I supported military action in Bosnia and later in Kosovo, because attempted genocide is also wrong. My unease about the motives and probable consequences of the Second Gulf War (as it will probably be called) are specific to this occasion.

To write a book about a war before it starts – without even being certain that it will start – is to give rather too many hostages to fortune. But it still seems worthwhile to try make sense of the recent past and present, especially as the near future may not make much sense at all.

TUES APRIL 15TH, 7 PM., ST. MARK'S CHURCH.-
KURT VONNEGUT - LIZA JESSIE PETERSON - GRANNY D

[click to enlarge]

THE STOP BOMBING GOSPEL CHOIR
Conducted by James Solomon Benn

and introducing Miranda Lee Reality Torn in
"The Baptism of Reality"
(daughter of Tony Torn and Lee Ann Brown)

Sainthood for "Village Anna" of the Coalition to Save the East Village
Tickets $10 -- at REVBILLY.COM

After the service we will go to the Post Office on 34th Street where we
will preach and sing to the late filers. Our tax resistance activities
are endorsed by the War Resisters League. Ed Hedemen and Ruth Benn,
authors of "War Tax Resistance" will be available for counseling

Press/ activist contact: The Church of Stop Shopping office, 212 226 8777

This event hosted by Father Julio Torres of St. Mark's Church, New York City

Lee Ann Brown
PO Box 13, Cooper Station
NYC 10003
646.734.4157
LA@tenderbuttons.net

WASHINGTON -- Congressional Republicans, working with the Bush administration, are maneuvering to make permanent the sweeping anti-terrorism powers granted to federal law enforcement agents after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, officials said Tuesday.

The move is likely to touch off strong objections from many Democrats and even some Republicans in Congress who believe that the Patriot Act, as the legislation that grew out of the attacks is known, has already given the government too much power to spy on Americans.

The landmark legislation expanded the government's power to use eavesdropping, surveillance, access to financial and computer records and other tools to track terrorist suspects. When it passed in October 2001, moderates and civil libertarians in Congress agreed to support it only by making many critical provisions temporary. Those provisions will expire, or "sunset," at the end of 2005 unless Congress reauthorizes them.

But Republicans in the Senate in recent days have discussed a proposal, authored by Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, that would repeal the so-called sunset provisions and make the expanded powers permanent, officials said. Republicans may seek to move on the proposal this week by trying to attach it to another anti-terrorism bill that would make it easier for the government to use secret surveillance warrants against "lone wolf" terrorism suspects.

Many Democrats have grown increasingly frustrated by what they see as a lack of information from the Justice Department on how its agents are using their newfound powers. The Senate Democratic leader, Tom Daschle of South Dakota, said Tuesday that without extensive review, he "would be very strongly opposed to any repeal" of the 2005 time limit. He predicted that Republicans did not have the votes to repeal the limits.

A senior Justice Department official on Tuesday said the Patriot Act has allowed the FBI to move faster and more flexibly to disrupt terrorists before they strike. "We don't want that to expire on us," the official said.

With the act's provisions not set to expire for more than 2 1/2 years, officials expected that the debate over its future would be many months away.

But political jockeying over separate, bipartisan legislation sponsored by Sens. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., and Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., appears to have given Hatch the chance to move on the issue much earlier than expected.

The Kyl-Schumer measure would eliminate the need for federal agents seeking secret surveillance warrants to show that a suspect is affiliated with a foreign power or agent, such as a terrorist group. Advocates say the measure would make it easier for agents to go after "lone wolf" terrorists who are not connected to a foreign group.

The proposal was approved unanimously by the Senate Judiciary Committee. But Republicans were upset because several Democrats said that when the measure reaches the Senate floor for a full vote, perhaps this week or later in the month, they plan to offer amendments that would impose tougher restrictions on the use of secret warrants.

"There is a pattern to the Bush administration's way of doing business that does not bode well for the future — a pattern of conquest followed by malign neglect."

Paul Krugman writes that "One has to admit that the Bush people are very good at conquest, military and political. They focus all their attention on an issue; they pull out all the stops; they don't worry about breaking the rules [ ... ] But after the triumph, when it comes time to take care of what they've won, their attention wanders, and things go to pot."

Consider Afghanistan, "the land the Bush administration forgot." According to Krugman, "most of the country is back under the control of fundamentalist warlords; unpaid soldiers and policemen are deserting in droves. (Remember that the Bush administration forgot to include any Afghan aid in its latest budget.)" Afghani President Hamid Karzai's brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, told an Associated Press reporter: "It is like I am seeing the same movie twice and no one is trying to fix the problem. What was promised to Afghans with the collapse of the Taliban was a new life of hope and change. But what was delivered? Nothing. Everyone is back in business."

[ full text follows ]

------------------------------------------------------------------------

April 11, 2003

Conquest and Neglect
By PAUL KRUGMAN

redit where credit is due: the hawks were right to say that a whiff of precision-guided grapeshot would lead to the collapse of Saddam Hussein's regime. But even skeptics about this war expected a military victory. ("Of course we'll win on the battlefield, probably with ease" was the opening line of my start-of-the-war column.) Instead, we worried — and continue to worry — about what would follow. As another skeptic, Michael Kinsley of Slate, wrote yesterday: "I do hope to be proven wrong. But it hasn't happened yet."

Why worry? I won't pretend to have any insights into what is going on in the minds of the Iraqi people. But there is a pattern to the Bush administration's way of doing business that does not bode well for the future — a pattern of conquest followed by malign neglect.

One has to admit that the Bush people are very good at conquest, military and political. They focus all their attention on an issue; they pull out all the stops; they don't worry about breaking the rules. This technique brought them victory in the Florida recount battle, the passage of the 2001 tax cut, the fall of Kabul, victory in the midterm elections, and the fall of Baghdad.

But after the triumph, when it comes time to take care of what they've won, their attention wanders, and things go to pot.

The most obvious example is Afghanistan, the land the Bush administration forgot. Most of the country is back under the control of fundamentalist warlords; unpaid soldiers and policemen are deserting in droves. (Remember that the Bush administration forgot to include any Afghan aid in its latest budget.)

President Hamid Karzai's brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, told an Associated Press reporter: "It is like I am seeing the same movie twice and no one is trying to fix the problem. What was promised to Afghans with the collapse of the Taliban was a new life of hope and change. But what was delivered? Nothing. Everyone is back in business."

The same pattern can be seen on the economic front. President Bush won a great triumph in 2001 when he pushed through a huge tax cut — claiming that his plan was just the medicine to cure the economy's ills. What has happened since?

The answer is that things have gradually fallen apart. There was one quarter of good growth, early in 2002 — and there were cries of triumph over the policy's success. After that, however, things went steadily wrong. Growth was too slow to create jobs: at the end of 2002, after a year of "recovery," fewer people were working than at the end of 2001.

And in the last two months the situation has deteriorated rapidly. In February and March the U.S. economy lost 465,000 jobs, bringing the total job loss since the recession officially began in March 2001 to more than two million.

At this point the employment decline has been bigger, and has gone on longer, than the slump that took place during the first Bush administration. And there's no sign of an upturn: new claims for unemployment insurance are still running well above the level that would signal an improving labor market.

Some hope that the economy will turn around of its own accord — that consumers and businesses, relieved that the war has gone well, will begin spending freely. But hope is not a plan. What is the plan?

The answer seems to be that there is no plan for the economy. Instead, the White House is fixated on achieving another political triumph — the elimination of taxes on dividends — that has little or no relevance to our current economic troubles.

I could demonstrate this irrelevance by going through an economic analysis, but here's a telling political clue: USA Today reports that faced with concerns in Congress about budget deficits, the administration has indicated that it is willing to consider a phase-in of its dividend plan.

That is, it's willing to forgo immediate tax cuts — the one piece of its proposal that might actually help the economy now — in order to be able to pass its long-run proposal intact, and hence claim total victory.

The scary thing is that this slash-and-burn approach to governing may continue to work for Mr. Bush's people because the initial triumphs get all the headlines. Unfortunately, the rest of the world has to live in the wreckage they leave behind.  

Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company | Privacy Policy

The US Department of Defense has equipped soldiers with sets of playing cards depicting members of the Iraqi regime. Ostensibly, the cards are used "to identify regime leadership". During the Vietnam War, playing cards called "death cards" (usually the Ace of Spades) had a different purpose. These official and effective tools of psychological warfare were left by GIs on the corpses of slain enemies "as a reminder".

[source: Nofear]

Friends-

Our team in Baghdad just called. It is difficult for us to convey the obvious relief that we experienced upon hearing from them. The phone disconnected three times giving us less than 10 minutes to communicate with them. They told us U.S. soldiers and tanks are on streets and street corners, they seem to be everywhere. Further, they expressed with great emphasis that an excessive amount of bombs have rained down on Baghdad for the last week.

Today as we watch on television the countless hours of reporting on the tangible and symbolic destruction of a Saddam Hussein statue, the number of injured civilians, families losing loved ones, lootings, fires, and fighting increases. Meanwhile our team in Amman attended a press briefing where they heard statements from United Nations humanitarian coordinators. These statements have gone unmentioned in the mainstream media.

Carel de Rooy director of UNICEF in Iraq stated, "Before this conflict took place UNICEF had networks and systems in Iraq that helped achieve our life-saving vaccination campaigns, nutrition campaigns, and work in education. What is horribly worrying about the looting, chaos, and break down of order, is that those systems we counted on may completely collapse," he added that at the beginning of this week, the UNICEF Iraq appeal has received just 1/5th of its funding. "This is obviously and simply not enough. We have an emergency on our hands. Our actions in the next few weeks will determine the physical and mental well-being of a generation of Iraqi children."

A representative from the World Health Organization, speaking to the increasing humanitarian crisis added, "Reports from Baghdad tell of serious civilian casualties and growing pressure on hospitals and health workers. Electricity supplies are erratic, the standby generators are being overworked to the point of collapse; many hospitals are running short of clean, safe water, staff are working extremely long hours in unimaginable circumstances and some vital surgical and medical supplies are running short...in a hospital with a basic infrastructure not functioning, and where doctors and nurses have to perform difficult emergency surgical operations and provide intensive care without access to some of the most basic services and supplies."

Months prior to the "shock and awe" onslaught, UN officials, as well as delegates with the Iraq Peace Team, had warned and protested against the use of such violence due to the realities Iraqis are faced with today, the realities as outlined in the statements above. Adding greater concern to an already desperate situation, UNHCI commented on the inability for UN agencies to enter Iraq at the current time, because of the lack of safety on the roads and access to warehouses and offices.

As our team in Baghdad continues to bear witness, we ask all of you to continue to do the work that has just begun. The urgency for water and relief that is felt by many civilians throughout Iraq is one that must be heard and echoed throughout the world until their needs are met. In the most recent diary from our team in Iraq, Cynthia Banas wrote, "Death, destruction, maiming, and lifetime trauma are the consequences of war. We have witnessed children frightened beyond their years, and have seen their mangled bodies in the hospital. War for them will never end."

-Bitta Mostofi
for Voices in the Wilderness

http://www.nonviolence.org/vitw

http://www.iraqpeaceteam.org

April 6th: Iraqi National Congress founder, Ahmed Chalabi is flown into the southern Iraqi city of Nasiriyah by the Pentagon. Chalabi, along with 700 fighters of his "Free Iraqi Forces" are airlifted aboard four massive C17 military transport planes. Chalabi and the INC are Washington favorites to head the new Iraqi government. A photograph is taken of Chalabi and members of his Free Iraqi Forces militia as they arrive in Nasiriyah.

April 9th: One of the "most memorable images of the war" is created when U.S. troops pull down the statue of Saddam Hussein in Fardus Square. Oddly enough... a photograph is taken of a man who bears an uncanny resemblance to one of Chalabi's militia members... he is near Fardus Square to greet the Marines. How many members of the pro-American Free Iraqi Forces were in and around Fardus Square as the statue of Saddam came tumbling down?

The up close action video of the statue being destroyed is broadcast around the world as proof of a massive uprising. Still photos grabbed off of Reuters show a long-shot view of Fardus Square... it's empty save for the U.S. Marines, the International Press, and a small handful of Iraqis. There are no more than 200 people in the square at best. The Marines have the square sealed off and guarded by tanks. A U.S. mechanized vehicle is used to pull the statue of Saddam from it's base. The entire event is being hailed as an equivalent of the Berlin Wall falling... but even a quick glance of the long-shot photo shows something more akin to a carefully constructed media event tailored for the television cameras.

Staged "Liberation" media event? : SF Indymedia

Chris Stroffolino on the challenges that different generations face in staying / being "political"

ronsilliman.blogspot.com

April Fool’s Day

As we thumb through the world news pages
We feel like we're back in the middle ages
Some Christian soldiers with God on their side
Now have the whole world terrified

Our young men and women in uniform
Was it for this that they were born?
They are beautiful strong and brave
They should be at work or in school not trying to save

The reputations of a few old men
Whose arrogance goes back to when
The federal government took Indian lands away
And put the people on reservations to live out their days

The Indians are a great warrior race
And many still serve in the military today
But once again they have been betrayed
As the U.S. Armed Forces penetrate

The sovereign nation of Iraq
In an unprecedented, unprovoked attack
“The outcome is certain,” the President said
I wonder what put that in his head

No outcome is certain, this we know
Except that the ranks of Al Quaeda will grow
With the pain and suffering of ancient Baghdad
Loss is the lifeblood of jihad

While generals scratch their heads and think
In Basra there’s no fresh water to drink
“We didn’t plan in our war-game drills
for irregular enemies,” General Wallace spills

We thought we’d be welcomed with open arms
As liberators removing the people from harm’s
Way when in fact since 12 years ago
They’ve mourned their war dead and suffered under embargo

Meanwhile where are the WMD’s we went to war about?
We know they exist without a doubt
Why? Because Saddam made ‘em
With stuff he got from Rummy and Reagan

Bush Younger thought he could get carte blanche
From the UN Security Council to launch
An all out attack but this miscalculation
Has led to America’s isolation

Having squandered the whole world’s sympathy
After 9-11 we are now seen on TV
From Kamchatka to Madagascar
As a dangerously out-of-control aggressor

So much for diplomacy, Mr. Powell
Should throw in the proverbial towel
While he still has a shred of credibility
Meanwhile if we love life and liberty

There is something each of us must do
Sooner or later you’ll say so too
War may be short, occupation, long
And bitter and bloody and totally wrong

As we see all this happening before our eyes
It is not too early to organize
To bring our young men and women back
U.S.A. out of Iraq!

--Kit Robinson

*****

Thing

We love our cat
for her self
regard is assiduous
and bland,

for she sits in the small
patch of sun on our rug
and licks her claws
from all angles

and it is far
superior
to "balanced reporting"

though, of course,
it is also
the very same thing.

--Rae Armantrout

Introduction by Lebanese novelist Elias Khoury

Poems by Badr Shakir As-Sayyab, Abdul Wahab al-Bayati, Nazik al-Malaika, Buland al-Haidari, Saadi Youssef, Lamia Abbas Amara, Sargon Boulus, Fadil al-Azzawi, Sadiq al Sayigh, Yusef al Sayigh, Hisham Shafiq, Sinan Antoon, and Mahmoud Darwish.

The poems will be read by Waiel Abdelwahed, Ammiel Alcalay, Haytham Bahoora, Lucas Canino, Rebecca Johnson, Elias Khoury, Khaled Mattawa, Mara Naaman, Tsolin Nalbantian, Manel Saddique, Sherene Seikaly, Shareah Taleghani and Nader Uthman.

Saturday, April 12th, from 3:45 to 5:00 p.m.
Poet's House
72 Spring Street(between B'way & Lafayette)in Manhattan
212-431-7920

For a full schedule of other events with writers from Pakistan, Bosnia, Morocco, Lebanon and many other places (including Etel Adnan, Abdellatif Laabi, Kishwar Naheed, Semezdin Mehmedinovic, Khaled Mattawa, Venus Khoury-Ghata, and many others), check the webiste:

www.poetshouse.org
www.peoplespoetry.org

Readings will be (mostly) in English translation.

Hello !

Poets for Peace invites all poets to read poems against the war this Friday April 11 from 1-3pm on the steps of the main branch of The New York Public Library located at 42nd Street and 5th Avenue (in front of the southmost lion). Look for the poets for Peace banner. Rain or shine.

I am reminded of the importance of this reading upon learning that a friend from Spain living here in New York knew the Spanish journalist who was killed yesterday in Iraq.

The talking heads on t.v. this morning as they gloried in a photo op of a statue about to be tumbled, voiced over that the reporters and journalists who were in the same hotel that was attacked by the tank, had now somehow gotten over the incident or words to that effect. As with much of what we hear these days: I can hardly believe this to be true. That any life: be it one of our peers, friends or enemies, or a stranger is treated so callously, truly sickens me. I hope you can make the time to read with us this Friday even if it's just for a short time.

peace

Nathaniel

poets for Peace
poets against the war
POETRY IS NEWS

Excerpt rom Michael Moore's website:

"The next day -- and in the two weeks since -- the right-wing pundits and radio shock jocks have been calling for my head. So, has all this ruckus hurt me? Have they succeeded in "silencing" me?

Well, take a look at my Oscar "backlash":

-- On the day after I criticized Bush and the war at the Academy Awards, attendance at "Bowling for Columbine" in theaters around the country went up 110% (source: Daily Variety/BoxOfficeMojo.com). The following weekend, the box office gross was up a whopping 73% (Variety). It is now the longest-running consecutive commercial release in America, 26 weeks in a row and still thriving. The number of theaters showing the film since the Oscars has INCREASED, and it has now bested the previous box office record for a documentary by nearly 300%.

-- Yesterday (April 6), "Stupid White Men" shot back to #1 on the New York Times bestseller list. This is my book's 50th week on the list, 8 of them at number one, and this marks its fourth return to the top position, something that virtually never happens."

[This is kind of like detournement meets Robert Smithson / land art.]

By Neela Banerjee
March 27, 2003

The subtleties surrounding the sensitive role oil plays in the Iraqi war may have eluded the United States Army. Deep in some newspaper coverage yesterday was a report that the 101st Airborne Division had named one central Iraq outpost Forward Operating Base Shell and another Forward Operating Base Exxon.

The Pentagon shrugged off concerns that now might not be the time to mention the names of foreign oil companies on Iraqi soil. "The forward bases are normally refueling points they're basically gas stations in the desert," a Pentagon spokeswoman said. "Whether or not we're going to lecture everyone that, due to political sensitivities, you should be careful what you call your gas stations, I don't know if that's something that should be done or would be done."

Neither Royal Dutch/Shell nor Exxon knew about the Iraqi bases. Cerris Tavinor, a spokeswoman for Shell, heard of the base only when a reporter called.

"We don't have anything in Iraq," Ms. Tavinor said. "Clearly they pick their names for whatever they want to use."

Tom Cirigliano, a spokesman for Exxon Mobil, said he first heard of the bases when he read a press review on Wednesday morning, but the mention did not bother the company, the world's largest publicly traded corporation.

"My first reaction when I saw it was this was not a political statement in any way by the men and women of 101st," Mr. Cirigliano said. "I think the 101st was being pretty creative and naming things after what reminds them of home. And I think that's pretty neat."

But others involved in the oil industry say the Pentagon's indifference to the names of the bases was poorly considered. "You have this atmosphere of suspicion and apprehension now, and that's just among your allies," Jan Stuart, head of research for global energy futures at ABN Amro, the Dutch investment bank, said. "And in this atmosphere, you call your own supply effort this. It's mind-boggling the degree of insensitivity. There is little doubt the Americans will win the war, but you have to wonder how people who are so insensitive are going to win the peace."

Erwin Piscator, coiner of the term "epic theater," was a big influence on Brecht, but also a big advocate of turning the theater into a multi-media realm that reflected historical realities. In Germany, we would stage productions whose text was altered based on what had happened that very day in the news. There's very little about him on the web, and I've only found one book about him back when I was trying to do some research, but I didn't try very hard. Anyway, here's a pretty good web page that runs down some of his basic ideas -- the better web pages are in German.

ACTING: development of epic theatre

"[T]he actors have a totally new attitude to the subject of the play they are acting in. The actor can no longer remain indifferent to his role, as he has done up till now, nor can he ‘lose himself' in it, that is, give up all conscious will." (43)

Series of multi-media productions:

"Film projections, the colour organ, the interchange on stage between light and ‘film light,' complete motorization of the stage--through these, and how many other, innovations modern creative science can supplant the ancient peep-show. And what would happen if it were to introduce a wholly new architecture, making the stage a play-machine, a wonder-world, an arena for battling ideas, perhaps even setting the audience on a turntable, dynamically bursting the static illusion of the present stage? I do not say that new techniques will be the saviour of the theatre. I merely say that they can express new dramatic contents by liberating the creative forces of playwrights, directors and actors."(472)

Designed to present complex social and economic forces shaping contemporary society.

"It has probably become clear from what has already been stated that technical innovations were never an end in themselves for me. Any means I have used or am currently in the process of using were designed to elevate the events on the stage onto a historical plane and not just to enlarge the technical range of the stage machinery." (244)

Technology necessary for two reasons:
[1] needed to represent contemporary reality (masses)
[2] needed to achieve function of connecting to audience and forcing them to take sides.

--- Erwin Piscator ---

Here's another bit of the poem -- almost done. When I have the whole thing formatted I'll create another entry with the entire thing. I start this with an excerpt since initially it doesn't seem to do much with the site, but clearly the long passages of looking at the sky, revelling in erotic bodily pleasure, etc., play the non-abstracted self against the seemeingly otherworldly machinations of the Congress. The rhetoric still seems too self-consciously Whitmanesque to me

"I lift my voice aloud,
      make Mantra of American language now,
                  I here declare the end of the War!
                        Ancient days' Illusion!-
            and pronounce words beginning my own millennium.
Let the States tremble,
      let the Nation weep,
            let Congress legislate its own delight
                  let the President execute his own desire-
this Act done by my own voice,
                              nameless Mystery- "

...

I'm an old man now, and a lonesome man in Kansas
      but not afraid
            to speak my lonesomeness in a car,
            because not only my lonesomeness
                  it's Ours, all over America,
                                    O tender fellows-
                  & spoken lonesomeness is Prophecy
                  in the moon 100 years ago or in
                        the middle of Kansas now.
It's not the vast plains mute our mouths
                        that fill at midnite with ecstatic language
                  when our trembling bodies hold each other
                        breast to breast on a mattress-
      Not the empty sky that hides
                              the feeling from our faces
      nor our skirts and trousers that conceal
            the bodylove emanating in a glow of beloved skin,
                  white smooth abdomen down to the hair
                                    between our Legs,
      It's not a God that bore us that forbid
            our Being, like a sunny rose
                        all red with naked joy
            between our eyes & bellies, yes
All we do is for this frightened thing
            we call Love, want and lack-
      fear that we aren't the one whose body could be
            beloved of all the brides of Kansas City,
            kissed all over by every boy of Wichita-
      O but how many in their solitude weep aloud like me-
            On the bridge over Republican River
                  almost in tears to know
                        how to speak the right language-
            on the frosty broad road
                  uphill between highway embankments
            I search for the language
                              that is also yours-
            almost all our language has been taxed by war.
Radio antennae high tension
      wires ranging from Junction City across the plains-
      highway cloverleaf sunk in a vast meadow
                  lanes curving past Abilene
                        to Denver filled with old
                                    heroes of love-
                  to Wichita where McClure's mind
                        burst into animal beauty
                        drunk, getting laid in a car
                              in a neon misted street
                                    15 years ago-
      to Independence where the old man's still alive
      who loosed the bomb that's slaved all human consciousness
                  and made the body universe a place of fear-
Now, speeding along the empty plain,
            no giant demon machine
                  visible on the horizon
      but tiny human trees and wooden houses at the sky's edge
            I claim my birthright!
                  reborn forever as long as Man
                        in Kansas or other universe-Joy
            reborn after the vast sadness of War Gods!
A lone man talking to myself, no house in the brown vastness to hear,
            imaging the throng of Selves
                  that make this nation one body of Prophecy
                        languaged by Declaration as Pursuit of
                              Happiness!
I call all Powers of imagination
      to my side in this auto to make Prophecy,
                                                all Lords
            of human kingdoms to come
Shambu Bharti Baba naked covered with ash
            Khaki Baba fat-bellied mad with the dogs
Dehorahava Baba who moans Oh how wounded, How wounded
      Sitaram Onkar Das Thakur who commands
                                    give up your desire
Satyananda who raises two thumbs in tranquillity
      Kali Pada Guha Roy whose yoga drops before the void
            Shivananda who touches the breast and says OM

Srimata Krishnaji of Brindaban who says take for your guru
      William Blake the invisible father of English visions
      Sri Ramakrishna master of ecstasy eyes
            half closed who only cries for his mother
Chaitanya arms upraised singing & dancing his own praise
      merciful Chango judging our bodies
            Durga-Ma covered with blood
                  destroyer of battlefield illusions
            million-faced Tathagata gone past suffering
      Preserver Harekrishna returning in the age of pain
Sacred Heart my Christ acceptable
            Allah the Compassionate One
                              Jaweh Righteous One
                        all Knowledge-Princes of Earth-man, all
      ancient Seraphim of heavenly Desire, Devas, yogis
                        & holymen I chant to-
                              Come to my lone presence
                                    into this Vortex named Kansas,
I lift my voice aloud,
      make Mantra of American language now,
                  I here declare the end of the War!
                        Ancient days' Illusion!-
            and pronounce words beginning my own millennium.
Let the States tremble,
      let the Nation weep,
            let Congress legislate its own delight
                  let the President execute his own desire-
this Act done by my own voice,
                              nameless Mystery-
published to my own senses,
                  blissfully received by my own form
      approved with pleasure by my sensations
            manifestation of my very thought
            accomplished in my own imagination
                  all realms within my consciousness fulfilled
      60 miles from Wichita
                              near El Dorado,
                                    The Golden One,
in chill earthly mist
      houseless brown farmland plains rolling heavenward
                                                      in every direction
one midwinter afternoon Sunday called the day of the Lord-
      Pure Spring Water gathered in one tower
                  where Florence is
                        set on a hill,
                  stop for tea & gas

[As Charles W., who forwarded this link, writes to me: "i'm sure something similar is going on in this here war...though, as usual, we probably won't know all the details until all the victims are dead and buried. i mean, somebody sure has been working overtime to get 42% of americans to believe that saddam hussein was directly responsible for 9-11 (when, once upon a time, it was only 3% who were that delusional.)"]

Excerpt:

"US Congressman Jimmy Hayes of Louisiana - a conservative Democrat who supported the Gulf War - later estimated that the government of Kuwait funded as many as 20 PR, law and lobby firms in its campaign to mobilize US opinion and force against Hussein. Participating firms included the Rendon Group, which received a retainer of $100,000 per month for media work, and Neill & Co., which received $50,000 per month for lobbying Congress. Sam Zakhem, a former US ambassador to the oil-rich gulf state of Bahrain, funneled $7.7 million in advertising and lobbying dollars through two front groups, the "Coalition for Americans at Risk" and the "Freedom Task Force." The Coalition, which began in the 1980s as a front for the contras in Nicaragua, prepared and placed TV and newspaper ads, and kept a stable of fifty speakers available for pro-war rallies and publicity events.

Hill & Knowlton, then the world's largest PR firm, served as mastermind for the Kuwaiti campaign. Its activities alone would have constituted the largest foreign-funded campaign ever aimed at manipulating American public opinion. By law, the Foreign Agents Registration Act should have exposed this propaganda campaign to the American people, but the Justice Department chose not to enforce it. Nine days after Saddam's army marched into Kuwait, the Emir's government agreed to fund a contract under which Hill & Knowlton would represent "Citizens for a Free Kuwait," a classic PR front group designed to hide the real role of the Kuwaiti government and its collusion with the Bush administration. Over the next six months, the Kuwaiti government channeled $11.9 million dollars to Citizens for a Free Kuwait, whose only other funding totalled $17,861 from 78 individuals. Virtually all of CFK's budget - $10.8 million - went to Hill & Knowlton in the form of fees."

By JULIANNE BASINGER

A Florida legislator has sponsored a bill that would ban state financial aid to college students who are citizens of six nations on the U.S. State Department's list of countries that sponsor terrorism.

State Rep. Dick Kravitz, a Republican from Jacksonville, said on Sunday that in considering how Florida spends its money in a tight economy, he was disturbed by the idea of state funds being used to help educate students who are nonresident aliens from those countries.

"These people do have to go back, and whatever they learn here is going to be used for their country," Mr. Kravitz said. "I felt as though those dollars, which we needed, would be better spent on taxpayers in Florida and their children."

The bill (HB 31), which was placed last Thursday on the Florida Legislature's agenda for consideration, would bar state aid from going to college students from six countries: Iran, Iraq, Syria, Sudan, Libya, and North Korea. Cuba, which is also on the State Department's list, was removed from the bill through an amendment.

Florida has a large Cuban population. The state's colleges and universities used $308,717 to provide financial aid to students from countries on the federal list in 2001 and 2002. If passed, the measure sponsored by Mr. Kravitz would go into effect in July.

"We're going to find out if we're going to give them the money to potentially use against us, or if we're going to give it to our kids," he said. But Muslim students in Florida say that the bill unfairly discriminates against them.

"What he's saying is if you're born in Libya or Syria, you're more likely to be a terrorist than anyone else," Hadia Mubarak, president of the Muslim Students Association at Florida State University, told the Associated Press. Mr. Mubarak did not return a telephone message on Sunday seeking further comment.

http://chronicle.com/daily/2003/04/2003040703n.htm

Linguistic Reformulation:
Forthcoming Challenges in a Democratic Occupied Iraq

(Gothic News Service, 5/08) The White House today announced the formal creation of "Lang-Ops," a joint division of State and War Departments with a direct mandate to take charge of the reconstruction of the Arabic language in Occupied Democratic Iraq.

"No, this is not an ethnocentric exercise, nor one of political manipulation," Brad Stevens, the new Lang-Ops Director responded at a news conference to an Arab reporter’s question. "This is all about re-invigorating Gulf Spoken Arabic with old and sound Mediterranean values of trade, commerce and opportunity. Like Iraq’s damaged oil fields and cities, Lang-Ops' most exciting task is to restructure Arabic to take full advantage of new technologies and business models that have fueled the success of western economies. On a most simple level, Lang-Ops will introduce the Arabic version of English words and phrases that will operate as catalytic agents in the goal of integrating Iraqi national aspirations with global economic interests."

When asked if this meant bringing business and other teachers from the United States to work in Iraq’s economic institutes and universities, the Director replied, "Of course. Fortunately our country is currently abundantly filled with former business executives who are entirely advanced in introducing and using the language and tools of potentially prosperous economies. Power Point, Excel – for examples - and other computer programs are already being revamped for bilingual Arabic and English classes - both on-site in Iraq and world wide on-line. Conceptually our Lang-Ops staff members have already been very busy creating correspondent Arabic language terms to stimulate an aggressive sense and use of concepts for "brand identity", "traction", "critical mass", and other terms for multiple micro-market global domination. You have to realize Iraq is a country that’s been more or less out of it for over thirty years."

"What about the language of democracy – values of free speech, consent of the governed, public assembling, voting, honoring foreign agreements, religious freedom, those kinds of things."

"First and foremost is to introduce the English-Arab terms for purposes of Iraq economic stimulus. This process is not much different than reconstructing an oil well and instituting a new management to control its world financial and delivery operations. Without the stimulus of a rebuilt Arabic in a way that represents economic opportunity for the liberated, old-fashioned democratic values are not worth a dime. In other words an Occupied Iraq first requires linguistic reformulation in a manner forceful enough to assure integration with our world’s economic interests. Success there will permit the evolution of democratic Arabic language values. I think you will also find our linguistic success will lead to the mitigation of resistance from certain religious and other counter-democratic forces."

The Lang-Ops Director went on to say that both State and War Departments are actively recruiting its first what will be called "Business Language Mentors (BLMs)" in both Silicon Valley and its counter-part in Massachusetts. "The executive talent pool in the High-Tech sector is particularly deep right now," the Director said without explanation. "We will have no trouble filling our Iraq Mentor Sites. Lang-Ops looks forward to an aggressive Arabic language reconstruction program."

Director Stevens refused to respond to a question as nothing but "offensive" when another Arab reporter asked whether or not Lang-Ops was part of an over-all State and War Department strategy to "re-cradle Arab civilization, including the origins of the Muslim faith."

The following is a response to Bruce “Peace Bridge Chronicler” Jackson’s article, “That pissant Ralph Nader is coming to Buffalo” in Jackson’s own Buffalo Report. On the basis of the likely scenario that the war in Iraq will ultimately go well for the Bush regime, I address questions looming for the left in this country, from a “green” perspective—engaging the politics of globalization and local economies. In particular, I critique the characterization of the current administration as a “fascist” regime that only a Democratic White House in 2004 can save us from.

JS

Amidst all the fear and trembling about the new fascism in the US—of which Bruce Jackson’s recent, invidious ad hominem on Ralph Nader is a particularly low instance: “Had, in Florida, Ralph Nader behaved decently or honorably or with a modicum of concern for the fate of this nation, we would not be slaughtering Iraqis right now and American men and women would not be dying in Iraq right now” (Buffalo Report)—I can’t help but note the short-sighted (not to say US-centric and terror-driven) nature of much of the rhetoric.

At issue—and I take it to be an issue that will define the US left in the approach to November, 2004—is whether we would be facing a significantly different scenario had Gore taken the White House. At issue is Nader’s claim that there was “no difference” between Al Gore and GW Bush. At issue is whether GW Bush and September 11 really have marked a radical departure from the order of things under the Clinton administration.

One might try examining the situation from the perspective of the “developing” or “undeveloped” world (while Jackson writes from an era where these are still referred to as "Third World," I'm suggesting he update his discourse). From such a perspective—which I don’t pretend to comprehend sufficiently, only enough to know it differs substantially from that of our own “logged on” cyber-eyries—I’d postulate that the differences are hard to discern.

The indirect genocide which involves uprooting people from their lands and local economies to turn them into driftless refugees or urban ghetto squatters and which was ratified by NAFTA, GATT and a host of other free trade agreements under Clinton (remember Clinton was pushing for the same “fast track” authority our spineless Democrats finally granted Bush?) has, of course, been accelerated by the War on Terror, but it’s a difference of degree rather than kind.

I’m talking about the horrific pace of irreversible deforestation in South America or Indonesia— equivalent to systematically amputating the planet’s lungs; I’m talking about the desertification of the Sahara and the American Midwest; I’m talking about the war on and within bodies everywhere unleashed by a merciless and unaccountable chemical industry (just look at the cancer rate in Tonawanda, or breast cancer rates in general); I’m talking about “usura” lying down between the farmer and her seed, between the bridegroom and his bride* with corporate meddling in and patenting of genetic materials (“terminator” and “roundup-ready” seeds); I’m talking about AIDS decimating one quarter of Africa’s population while pharmaceutical companies sit on the vaccines; I’m talking about mountains of increasingly toxic garbage dumped on the same masses, huddled in the city and borderland slums, evicted from their lands (in order to set McDonald’s beef to pasture, for example) by the very industries producing this waste; I’m talking about the ozone chemical smog that is slowly killing urban dwellers around the world and the acid rain that is destroying boreal forests and poisoning fresh waters; I’m talking about the fossil fuel industry warming our planet until massively populated Bangladesh and other low-lying, impoverished lands are flooded out of memory; I’m talking about the privatization of what waters, arable soil and clean air is left to drink, farm and breathe; I’m talking about the enclosure of the remaining commons, the marketing of basic needs that have till now been considered a fundamental human right.

This is not to deny the further domestic woes visited on the US economy by Bush & Co., nor that Al Gore might have been softer on the environment. However, a closer analysis of Gore’s environmental politics would note that his oft-championed “sustainability” amounts in many respects to a preservation of the status quo and Foucauldian policing of boundaries between developed, developing and undeveloped nations. Dissensions within the Seattle WTO summit over the terms of “sustainability”—masked by the protests publicity—as with more recent disagreements at Doha or at the “Earth Summit” in Johannesburg, underscore tensions brought on by the co-option of environmental rhetoric by corporate interests.

Such cooption is to be expected when corporations are engaged (via “corporate education”) to produce change in environmental policy—and indeed there is much debate within the environmental movement about the extent to which these engagement should be pursued. But any policy which ignores the power and necessity of local economies and ground-up, grassroots initiatives is doomed from the start. Even a cursory read of Earth in the Balance reveals to what extent Gore was mired in top-down Cold War-era, “balance of powers” global-strategic thinking (where global warming replaces atomic weapons as the “mutually assured deterrent”). His inability to engage and adapt the issues supposedly closest to his heart in the course of his political campaign shows up the rigidity of his thinking here.

Certainly Nader in many respects lacks the qualities of a world leader. But what drew voters to this “primo egocentric evildoer” (to quote Jackson) in 2000 was the extent to which he was able and willing to articulate a complex vision, engaging environmental, labor and corporate concerns, where powers at the “bottom” count for as much as powers at the “top.” This vision, by the way, has been articulated over the years by the “anti-globalization” movement and not by Nader himself; note that Nader came to and endorsed the Green Party, not the other way around. I agree that he might have been more explicit about the “smart voting” Green voters were to practice—voting Green in the "safe" states, or “trading” votes with friends in the swing states . . . and there’s no doubt that, together with Gore’s hugely blundering campaign (devoid of any of the above vision) and with extreme right-wing corruption and meddling in the electoral and judicial processes, the Greens helped to deliver us Bush & Co.

But from the global perspective I’ve advocated, it’s easy to see why most foreign observers just laughed at the electoral breakdown of 2000, noting that it only confirmed what they’d seen (and felt the brunt of) for years: a sham Benetton democracy, whose big multicultural land-of-opportunity Wal-Mart success story has been nourished by support for dictatorships and ruthless economic and environmental exploitation around the globe.

To insinuate that Nader “misled” voters or is somehow single-handedly responsible for the current bloodbath in the Middle East is both condescending toward Green voters and viciously invidious toward Nader and the Green Party itself—not to speak of the relative blindness it betrays, with respect to a political landscape that is engendering, around the world and out of the media spotlight, slow but substantial change, in consciousness, ethics and politics. (That this is a change operating at the local, rather than state or federal levels may be what has kept it under the radar of the power-obsessed.) Most Green voters are far more savvy in politics than Jackson’s slur accomodates, and voted “smart” anyway, regardless of whether or not Nader told them to.

If anything, it’s the Democrats who’ve been misled (viz above) in a state of things where “voting” as the extent of political participation can only be considered a charade at best—ever since big money took hold of the process more than a century ago. (I don’t underestimate the important line Democrats hold on the domestic front, with regard to the precarious character of the Judicial Courts. At least they’ve been doing a modicum of their duty here.)

To be fair, one might write off Bruce Jackson’s myopia as an effect of living in the ideological backwaters of Western New York, where the Green Party put on an extremely lackluster showing in 2000 (an embarrassment and a debacle, which the Citizens’ Environmental Coalition’s laughable green hardhat theatre, in spite of this organization’s good work, doesn’t help a bit), and where endless debates about a “Signature” Peace Bridge overshadow much graver environmental concerns (of which the Peace Bridge is a part, but by no means a big part). Governor Pataki’s neglect of New York State’s depleted environmental cleanup “Superfund,” or Mayor Masiello’s shameful mismanagement of the toxic Hickory Woods development in South Buffalo, set far graver economic and health precedents for the region than whether we get a twin span or an Italian designer rainbow bridge. I’m not denying a certain connection between these issues, but I suggest local progressives train their eyes Westward, toward states like New Mexico, Colorado, Oregon or Washington where the politics are also hardly progressive, yet in spite of, or in response to, a heavy-handed Federal presence citizen initiatives have elected Green city council members and state representatives and brought a complex, globally-oriented yet locally-engaged vision to politics.

None of this is to deny the frighteningly fascist look of things on the “homeland” front. But from a wider perspective (which includes not just thinking across the equator but across Main Street as well, about the victims of economic violence within the US borders and our own city limits), one might say to those anti-war protestors who have been investigated, apprehended and detained without charges, and are nursing the bruises of police brutality—“welcome to the developing world.”

The extent to which eyes get opened once it’s one’s own ass on the line (or that of “one’s folk”) shadows these street conflicts with a certain irony not lost on foreign observers. These protests in the US, and this resistance, are necessary and good, and unlike Jackson I certainly don’t want to bring needless dissension or backbiting to an opposition that desperately needs to stay united. But it’s crucial—for this movement to continue and build, through a war that is likely to be a success for the current administration (and not the debacle the opposition vocally dreads and secretly prays for)—that reasons for resistance be articulated on the basis of contemporary complexities, through a vision that is able to make intelligent and practical connections between local and global, indigenous and cosmopolitan, human and nonhuman economies. “Empire,” a term much volleyed about lately, is one I have as many reservations about as “fascism”—as poet and thinker Robert Kocik has advocated, “biocide” is a more accurate label for the current, global corporate-military regime.

To forecast the success of Bush & Co. abroad and naysay a fascist scenario at home, is not defeatist and deluded; rather it is to recognize geopolitical continuities, retain historical memory, and prepare for the long struggle ahead. Such historical memory also tells us that fascism in the US, if it is indeed taking hold, would prognosticate an imminent demise to this tottering giant, and in fact be the best possible thing for the rest of the world: would that we could wish this nation and its sins (viz paragraph five) so swiftly away!

Jackson’s link on Buffalo Report to a recent, excellent Arundhati Roy article is indicative. Jackson writes: “But Iraq, says the Indian novelist in this important essay published the April 2 Guardian, isn't where the really important war is being fought just now. That other war is global, and George Bush brought it on.” This is a patently false representation of Roy’s more sophisticated claims. A glance at her concluding paragraphs suffices:

Arundhati Roy
Wednesday April 2, 2003
The Guardian

“Regardless of what the propaganda machine tells us, these tin-pot dictators are not the greatest threat to the world. The real and pressing danger, the greatest threat of all is the locomotive force that drives the political and economic engine of the US government, currently piloted by George Bush. Bush-bashing is fun, because he makes such an easy, sumptuous target. It's true that he is a dangerous, almost suicidal pilot, but the machine he handles is far more dangerous than the man himself.

Despite the pall of gloom that hangs over us today, I'd like to file a cautious plea for hope: in times of war, one wants one's weakest enemy at the helm of his forces. And President George W Bush is certainly that. Any other even averagely intelligent US president would have probably done the very same things, but would have managed to smoke-up the glass and confuse the opposition. Perhaps even carry the UN with him. Bush's tactless imprudence and his brazen belief that he can run the world with his riot squad, has done the opposite. He has achieved what writers, activists and scholars have striven to achieve for decades. He has exposed the ducts. He has placed on full public view the working parts, the nuts and bolts of the apocalyptic apparatus of the American empire.”

Again and again, I’m told, by this crowd of Democratic Party faithful, that it’s “too soon” for the kind of change I’m advocating. However, even the most conservative assessment of the global environmental predicament (barring that of “skeptical environmentalist” Bjorn Lomborg, our nutso statistician from Denmark) gives humanity ten to twenty years at the outside to reverse the biocidal tide, and predicts catastrophic consequences, if such reversal is not made, within fifty. (Fortunately for our own children and unfortunately for those of the developing and undeveloped world, the brunt of such catastrophe will be borne by the economic “South”). The dire moment may even now be upon us: according to most climate science, our window for reversing catastrophic change just expired. We waited through eight long years of a Democratic administration that threw nothing but fig leaves at the environmental crisis (a few “National Monuments” by Presidential Decree, lip service to the Kyoto “protocol” on global warming—go and read the accord to see what a flawed, token agreement it is, basically a vehicle for liberalizing environmental regulation). Like Roy, I’m tempted to prefer the Bush & Co. frontal assault on the environment, as it has awoken many of us from a certain complacency.

Documentarist Michael Moore, who spends most of his time speaking to and drawing inspiration from the kind of grassroots activism I’ve alluded to, having turned his back on clearly bankrupt “beltway” politics, fuels his courageous and untiring media activism with the same cynical-optimist outlook: “George Bush, your time is up!” Can we honestly expect much from the glorious old “jackass” Democratic party? Didn’t they seal their fate when, with little to no ado, many representatives and most senators delivered up Congressional oversight of civil liberties and war-powers to an all-mighty unelected Executive Branch hell (or heaven)-bent on prosecuting its limitless “War on Terror”? That’s when I was seriously tempted to stop wasting time writing letters to “my” representatives.

No one should pay the price of our awakened consciousness in blood, but the least we can do is not squander that consciousness on the kind of egotistically short-sighted, “electoral politics” rhetoric we’ll be hearing more of in the run-up to November, 2004. To “vote safe now” is to cave into the very “culture of fear” Moore so devastatingly nailed in Bowling for Columbine. When such moderates tell me it’s “too soon,” I like to ask them, bringing all of the evidence to bear: how long do we have to wait before too soon is too late?

Why wait ? Let’s continue now the exposure of corporate crime that began with the Enron scandal, and keep the pressure on; withdraw our dollars from the franchises and invest in local business and grassroots initiatives like CSA (Cooperative Society of America) farms; sign on to cyber-empowered educational cooperatives like Joel Kuzsai’s “Modern Schools” revival— www.factoryschool.org; look into www.bioneers.org for “practical and visionary” solutions ordinary citizens are cooking up to solve the world’s problems now; implement creative rituals to facilitate real dialogue and help build the positive community networks (of production as well as resistance) that are spawning change around the globe. Let’s not wait for elected officials to work miracles for us. (Sure, we can work hard to get the Democrats back into the White House in 2004, but this work should be just the tip of our political iceberg.) Such activism is a potent counter-force to the politics of fear and hate now dominant: “In the U.S. and U.K., the war against Iraq has become a convenient diversion from issues of globalization and the rise in unemployment and economic insecurity. A politics of hate is becoming the indirect support for the failed and failing project of globalization” (Vandana Shiva, ZNet Commentary, “Globalisation And Its Fall Out,” April 05, 2003).

Let me note, in closing, that calling Nader a “pissant” is either undue flattery of this human demagogue or an insult to the hymenopteric order—that diverse society of globally engaged ants which probably do more good for this planet (certainly, representing about 10% of the planet’s biomass, they outnumber humans by an order hard to imagine) than all of human activity combined. Nader at least should be grateful of the compliment.

JS

*“With Usura . . .
is thy bread dry as paper,
with no mountain wheat, no strong flour
. . .
wool comes not to market
sheep bringeth no gain with usura
. . .
It has brought palsy to bed, lyeth
Between the young bride and her bridegroom”

Ezra Pound, Canto XLV

“Without doubt it is we, the poets and thinkers, who are to blame for this bloodbath and who have to atone for it.” (Dadaist artist Hugo Ball)

I call it the OTHER FRONT UNDERFOOT.

I’d like to forgo my opinion of this possible war…to take a position relative to impossible war.

(By not having stopped war from arriving at this brink, poets have already failed. Have long failed. What recourse within ourselves and our materials does this compel?

(Now that the potential problem with stopping the war is stopping stopping war.)

At this point, to protest war is reaction and compulsory. I’d call it peace conscription. A citizen’s as distinct from a poet’s action.

To instinctively stay within an efficacy particular to the materials of poetry. The language we’d be fighting for peace for.

We don’t live in a world where the use of force is unviable. It’s chronic. It’s called the war to end war over and over. It may one day be terminal--the war that ends all. But it can’t be made acute—like a fever that breaks and takes away the sickness from then on. It’s a terminal condition kept chronic. We can’t just, as a species, get it over with.

Recovering but not cured. Getting hungry again. Back in the saddle. War is likely. It’s back in vogue. Entertainable. (If not this war then some other war.)

Is it a law of nature or just a rule of thumb?

Threat of the use of force in order to empower negotiation, is already war. Poetic failure--specifically because the language of threat is ‘language’. Once the language of threat is unleashed, no poetic operation can retroactively unengender it.

Once reactionary, it may even be tempting to react further—to subvert aversion—come out in favor of war, in the sense of sobering oneself with reality in an unbiased, disinterested sense—or exuberantly admitting war as vital, life renewing, as creation’s ritual creativity. (Not pro-war in the narrow, passionate sense of having belligerently taken one’s own side—which has nothing to do with artwork.)

As Long As The Body About To Be Blown Up Is Not YOU Or YOURS? Too late for artwork to take effect. Artwork not a viable last minute strategy.

What would poets place in the world to bring us to the point where we could even find out if it’s possible to live without force? Apparently not poetry.

What poem?

Looking as little like a poem as unlike a weapon.

As little like a poem as the language of war it would apply in order to be preemptive.

Preempt was a poet’s word (and is now a Wolfowitz word)—a word poetry could have given to the populace so that it would be unavailable for military use. Preempt is another word for portend or prophesize—to materialize, which is to poeticize.

Fighting against has never yet worked. What I fight against is (explicitly) not that which I fight for. Nor is fighting for what I fight for. It gets called ‘lose/lose’. Mutual exclusions.

To fight against is to fight for that which to fight against denies.

To fight for, in the fighting against, is to forfeit that which is fought for.

So, just let roll over me that which would deny the positive goods living without war would be a matter of?

The positive goods, if provided, would disallow war as well as its verge. THAT POEM. (How many and of what sort would it take--while conscientiously, arduously, all-out-resourcefully undertaking it—while at peace (as the Orient goes to the doctor in times of health—the crisis, calling up our total reserves, is all’s well)--to write, that poem, our rewiring?)

(The Surgeons General admits a great deal is known about sickness while very little is known about health. How many pages went into Paradise Lost, and how few could be provided for Paradise Regained? What about us necessarily dims at the brink of peace?)

Fighting against, at most, waylays the occasion (the occasion poetry has in fact forfeited) to implant the moral and vital equivalent de-necessitating that which is fought against. NOT THAT POEM.

(These words are made of my father’s death. He does not have to die on a battlefield to die in glory or fill me with courage. It would simply be misplaced, misleading, malicious and maddening to believe so in even the slightest sense.)

Should poets usurp the means for war—i.e. reason, righteousness, rage, results; knowing that each mental mode is at base a writing genre. To fight against fighting, are we repelled by warlike languages while these very languages have in fact been taken from us in order to wage war—languages which now seem nonnative to poetry and naturalized to power and aggression? All uses of the language belong to poetry because the proper object of poetry is all of the language—all of the languages within the language--because language is a property of poetry.

If not, we can no more than plant geraniums in helmets evermore. Way too post pre emptive. Swords to plowshares re-belligerent.

With our backs to the wall, what’s called Comic Warfare is viable. Comic Warfare is the appropriation of the terms of war toward contrary ends—to stand people back up. Covert, unidentifiable poetry. Conversion not coercion of materials. Overt, disarming poetry.

If poetry has never once kept us from the brink of war, why are we now concerned with conserving its identity (of conserving our identities) in the face of war? Is not the face of war occasion to be less concerned than ever over the conserving of the recognizable poem? If we keep looking strictly at what poetry has done, war remains inevitable. What it has not done, allows war to happen. If there were ever a world only poetry could put in place, war would be no more.

Get out of, not type of genre, but genre itself. Take hold of agency, office, infrastructure and construction in ways that are not redundant to or reiterative of power.

Comic Warfare doesn’t underdo or undo the controls—it outdoes them, comically. If, for example, determinism is killing us, the comic poem could extradetermine—one last loop around or lace straight through the ‘point’ and it is outdone. So overfacilitate the fraud of the ineluctability of force—that upon its next step it fall flat on its face.

(As in my opening quote by Hugo Ball) even the dastardly, reproachful language of incrimination and vindication can be applied with considerable and unexpected poetic efficacy. While blame is the blunt instrument of belligerence, Ball, by blaming himself and his kin, declares personal and total empathy with the catastrophe. He calls on blame to make a ludicrous claim real.)

I’m more than ok with that.

How? To overprovide:

how about adding an adversely active attribute to an antagonistic category? Extemporize predetermination. Alleviate axiomatics. Unbias theophanics. Experientialize expertise.

Haywire teleology. Contradictory is complimentary . Demilitarize security. Concretize Wesenschau.

Up the ample: aestheticize ascetics. sediment the transcendent. Suprasensitize empiricism. Be a munificent, bemuddled mechanist.

Maybe betray your own: actualize inexplicable. Eroticize R&D.

How about disinterested self-help? Rambunctious reductionism?

Or, delve into the extra delectation of overdoing the doubly debunked (a term discredited inside and outside its field): demonstrably vitalist. Add a negative or double debunk to a double debunk: support dead-beat behaviorism.

Although the above operations are stop-gap and not quite occlusive--- belying beatified materiality (globe: as below, so above)--they are nonetheless solid steps toward fighting neither for nor against. Anything but perversity for perversity’s sake--steps pertaining to the impending perpetual peace.

(The obvious danger in appropriating the terms of the oppressor—driving deeper behind enemy lines to directly undo an unwanted world may distance artists from ‘native’ aesthetics of a wanted world (yes, like watching the domestic budget dwindle). One example that comes to mind—the NYC-based artist collective rTmark adopts corporate and free market methodology in order to sabotage advanced global capitalism. RTmark hijacks corporate and political identities in order to snare the unaware. To cite but one instance—rTmark parodies the WTO website by using similar graphic elements as the official WTO site. The confused guest stumbles upon a directory of direct action initiatives that challenge the neo-liberal juggernaut. In another instance, rTmark channeled funds from a military veteran’s group to the Barbie Liberation Organization which used the investment to switch the voice boxes of Barbie and G.I. Joe dolls. )

How might poets, with their open identities, remain pertinent between breakaway utopia and turning into their own antithesis?

Is a poet nothing in particular? Because a poet is nothing special (last nonspecialist), something denatured, denurtured, one card not contained in the deck can be played.

Poets aren’t people. Poets may be citizens--but not necessarily people. I can’t do as a citizen what I can only do as a poet. Politicians are people—though failed people. Speaking for the people with the voice of the people is at best, approximate. Switzerland is full of people. A consensus cult. If I’m speaking, as a poet, with the voice of the people—just how cut off from my material am I--from the shift only I as non-democracy can effect. Like the first fool eukaryote that let in an organelle that we might one day breathe. As opposite elitist as democratic (the requisite agent).

The problem with the MUST of throwing one’s prosdized body before the war machine…losing limbs with which to perpetually jam up the Great Big Biocide of which war is a speck and spectacle. (I’d call it ‘getting Saddam Lewinskied’.

By means of all the possible actions of the poet of unconserved identity—or even a poem on a piece of paper or a poem read out loud (the point at which the least a poem can be becomes its most) through Comic Warfare, this time brought to a fair fight in the fantastic asymmetry of artwork vs. warworld. (Our publicity will never be as powerful as theirs). The asymmetric strike is quintessentially (quintessence, another recoverable ordure) poetic—poetic scale and odds. A line on a piece of paper up against biocide. Auspicious enough—the gross imbalance beckons ungraspable tactics. Impregnable bubble all around, with a little package delivered directly to the door by one’s own pet. Just a box cutter or the bottom of a shoe will do. As only an act from an asymmetrician can pose a serious threat to the peerlessly, imperially empowered.

And provided poets hit their stride in their fight without side, make it terminal may apply not to people but war.

Three five zero zero is numerals
Headline language poetry, nine decades after Democratic Vistas
      and the Prophecy of the Good Gray Poet
            Our nation "of the fabled damned"
                                    or else . . .
      Language, language
Ezra Pound the Chinese Written Character for truth
            defined as man standing by his word
                  Word picture:      forked creature
                                              Man
            standing by a box, birds flying out
               representing mouth speech
      Ham Steak please waitress, in the warm café.
            Different from a bad guess.
                              The war is language,
                                    language abused
                                          for Advertisement,
                                    language used
                              like magic for power on the planet:
Black Magic language,
      formulas for reality-
            Communism is a 9 letter word
                  used by inferior magicians with
the wrong alchemical formula for transforming earth into gold
            -funky warlocks operating on guesswork,
                  handmedown mandrake terminology
                                    that never worked in 1956
      for gray-domed Dulles,
                              brooding over at State,
            that never worked for Ike who knelt to take
                        the magic wafer in his mouth
                                          from Dulles' hand
                                    inside the church in Washington:
Communion of bum magicians
                  congress of failures from Kansas & Missouri
      working with the wrong equations
      Sorcerer's Apprentices who lost control
            of the simplest broomstick in the world:
                                    Language
O longhaired magician come home take care of your dumb helper
      before the radiation deluge floods your livingroom,
                              your magic errandboy's
                                    just made a bad guess again
                        that's lasted a whole decade.

N B C B S U P A P I N S L I F E
      Time Mutual presents
            World's Largest Camp Comedy:
                        Magic In Vietnam-
      reality turned inside out
            changing its sex in the Mass Media
            for 30 days, TV den and bedroom farce
Flashing pictures Senate Foreign Relations Committee room
      Generals faces flashing on and off screen
                                          mouthing language
      State Secretary speaking nothing but language
      McNamara declining to speak public language
            The President talking language,
                  Senators reinterpreting language
            General Taylor Limited Objectives
                              Owls from Pennsylvania
                        Clark's Face Open Ended
                              Dove's Apocalypse
                              Morse's hairy ears
      Stennis orating in Mississippi
                        half billion chinamen crowding into the
                                                      polling booth,
            Clean shaven Gen. Gavin's image
                                                imagining Enclaves
                        Tactical Bombing the magic formula for
                        a silver haired Symington:
      Ancient Chinese apothegm:
                              Old in vain.
            Hawks swooping thru the newspapers
                  talons visible
            wings outspread in the giant updraft of hot air
                              loosing their dry screech in the skies
                                                over the Capitol
Napalm and black clouds emerging in newsprint
      Flesh soft as a Kansas girl's
                        ripped open by metal explosion-
      three five zero zero        on the other side of the planet
            caught in barbed wire, fire ball
            bullet shock, bayonet electricity
      bomb blast terrific in skull & belly, shrapneled throbbing meat
While this American nation argues war:
            conflicting language, language
                              proliferating in airwaves
      filling the farmhouse ear, filling
            the City Manager's head in his oaken office
            the professor's head in his bed at midnight
            the pupil's head at the movies
                  blond haired, his heart throbbing with desire
                  for the girlish image bodied on the screen:
                                    or smoking cigarettes
                                    and watching Captain Kangaroo
                                    that fabled damned of nations
                                    prophecy come true-
Though the highway's straight,
      dipping downward through low hills,
      rising narrow on the far horizon
            black cows browse in caked fields
                  ponds in the hollows lie frozen
                                    quietness.
Is this the land that started war on China?
      This be the soil that thought Cold War for decades?
      Are these nervous naked trees & farmhouses
                                    the vortex
                              of oriental anxiety molecules
      that've imagined        American Foreign Policy
            and magick'd up paranoia in Peking
                        and curtains of living blood
                              surrounding far Saigon?
Are these the towns where the language emerged
      from the mouths here
                  that makes a Hell of riots in Dominica
      sustains the aging tyranny of Chiang in silent Taipeh city
      Paid for the lost French war in Algeria
            overthrew the Guatemalan polis in '54
      maintaining United Fruit's banana greed
                                          another thirteen years
            for the secret prestige of the Dulles family lawfirm?

Here's Marysville-
      a black railroad engine in the children's park,
                                          at rest-
and the Track Crossing
      with Cotton Belt flatcars
                  carrying autos west from Dallas
      Delaware & Hudson gondolas filled with power stuff-
      a line of boxcars far east as the eye can see
                  carrying battle goods to cross the Rockies
            into the hands of rich longshoremen loading
                                    ships on the Pacific-
            Oakland Army Terminal lights
                        blue illumined all night now-
Crash of couplings and the great American train
                  moves on carrying its cushioned load of metal doom
      Union Pacific linked together with your Hoosier Line
                        followed by passive Wabash
                                          rolling behind
                        all Erie carrying cargo in the rear,
                  Central Georgia's rust colored truck proclaiming
                                          The Right Way, concluding
      the awesome poem writ by the train
                  across northern Kansas,
            land which gave right of way
            to the massing of metal meant for explosion
                                          in Indochina-
Passing thru Waterville,
      Electronic machinery in the bus humming prophecy-
            paper signs blowing in cold wind,
                        mid-Sunday afternoon's silence in town
            under frost-gray sky
                              that covers the horizon-
That the rest of earth is unseen,
                                    an outer universe invisible,
                              Unknown except thru
                                                language
                                                      airprint
                                                            magic images
or prophecy of the secret
                              heart the same
                              in Waterville as Saigon one human form:
                        When a woman's heart bursts in Waterville
                                    a woman screams equal in Hanoi-
On to Wichita to prophesy! O frightful Bard!
      into the heart of the Vortex