connecting*the*dots

Considering our current events, I think it’s high time to re-release Terry Gilliam’s masterpiece, Brazil (the directors cut, mind you).

Hard to believe that this beautiful, humorous and chilling narrative was originally released 20 years ago…

CounterCurrents
Why Must The Right Wing Sound So Brutally Stupid?

[…]

Of course, Condi was keeping her eyes on the big picture, as she tends to do, the picture as viewed from high above the earth where human beings become unseen bacilli in a vast fabric of coastlines and geometric patterns, not close-up where you can distinguish blood-spattered ruins and childrens’ limbs snapped like broken bird wings.

[…]

Tom Toles sums up my perspective on the future effects of this war in a single frame:

With the massacre of Haditha already drawing comparisons to the My Lai massacre — where up to 500 unarmed Vietnamese men, women and children were killed in cold blood by American forces — proponents of this war are holding fast against this incident becoming the tipping point of complete anti-war sentiment.

Local blogger, Joe Guarino:

[…] We cannot take these unfortunate events, and then somehow generalize and amplify the Big Message they convey to suggest that the overall war effort is unworthy. We cannot make general assessments of the war in Iraq (or in Vietnam, for that matter) on the basis of tragic events that do not reflect the overall pattern.

The media would be wrong to muster a drumbeat on these stories, but if they do in stereotypical fashion, the public should ignore it.

Unfortunately for Joe and his agenda, the American public will discuss the role this atrocity plays in the overall war effort.

Whether Haditha represents an accurate assessment of the US military’s tactical MO or not, it has marked a clear shift in our collective perception of modern warfare. No longer do we live in a fantasy world of surgically precise operations; we’ve all awoken to the reality that combat-stressed groups of men and women in a war zone are capable of murdering civilians on their own accord.

That 21st century, smart-bomb warfare meme is kaput; we’re now all aware that the US is knee-deep in a grudge match.

But in the end, it truly doesn’t matter if this one incident is indicative of the pattern to the entire war effort or not, because to the Iraqi people — the people on the other end of the gun barrel in any circumstance — it signifies a terrifying escalation of chaos, murder and occupation that cannot be erased with clarifying words.

Not that our words would do any good anyways.

The Overall Pattern In Iraq

From pg. 39 of the September 2004 Strategic Communication report, by the Defense Science Board — a federal advisory committee established to provide independent advice to the secretary of defense:

2.3 What is the Problem? Who Are We Dealing With?

The information campaign — or as some still would have it, “the war of ideas,� or the struggle for “hearts and minds� — is important to every war effort. In this war it is an essential objective, because the larger goals of U.S. strategy depend on separating the vast majority of non-violent Muslims from the radical-militant Islamist-Jihadists. But American efforts have not only failed in this respect: they may also have achieved the opposite of what they intended.

American direct intervention in the Muslim World has paradoxically elevated the stature of and support for radical Islamists, while diminishing support for the United States to single-digits in some Arab societies.

• Muslims do not “hate our freedom,â€? but rather, they hate our policies. The overwhelming majority voice their objections to what they see as one-sided support in favor of Israel and against Palestinian rights, and the longstanding, even increasing support for what Muslims collectively see as tyrannies, most notably Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Pakistan, and the Gulf states.
• Thus when American public diplomacy talks about bringing democracy to Islamic societies, this is seen as no more than self-serving hypocrisy. Moreover, saying that “freedom is the future of the Middle Eastâ€? is seen as patronizing, suggesting that Arabs are like the enslaved peoples of the old Communist World — but Muslims do not feel this way: they feel oppressed, but not enslaved.
• Furthermore, in the eyes of Muslims, American occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq has not led to democracy there, but only more chaos and suffering. U.S. actions appear in contrast to be motivated by ulterior motives, and deliberately controlled in order to best serve American national interests at the expense of truly Muslim self-determination.
• Therefore, the dramatic narrative since 9/11 has essentially borne out the entire radical Islamist bill of particulars. American actions and the flow of events have elevated the authority of the Jihadi insurgents and tended to ratify their legitimacy among Muslims. Fighting groups portray themselves as the true defenders of an Ummah (the entire Muslim community) invaded and under attack — to broad public support.
• What was a marginal network is now an Ummah-wide movement of fighting groups. Not only has there been a proliferation of “terroristâ€? groups: the unifying context of a shared cause creates a sense of affiliation across the many cultural and sectarian boundaries that divide Islam.
• Finally, Muslims see Americans as strangely narcissistic — namely, that the war is all about us. As the Muslims see it, everything about the war is — for Americans — really no more than an extension of American domestic politics and its great game. This perception is of course necessarily heightened by election-year atmospherics, but nonetheless sustains their impression that when Americans talk to Muslims they are really just talking to themselves.

Thus the critical problem in American public diplomacy directed toward the Muslim World is not one of “dissemination of information,� or even one of crafting and delivering the “right� message. Rather, it is a fundamental problem of credibility. Simply, there is none — the United States today is without a working channel of communication to the world of Muslims and of Islam. Inevitably therefore, whatever Americans do and say only serves the party that has both the message and the “loud and clear� channel: the enemy.

That last sentence (with my emphasis) represents the overall pattern that I see in the Iraq war.

We’re a 100,000 strong force of monolinguistic, armed men and women on a foreign soil.

Our soldiers have little to no training in the local customs of the Iraqi people, and practically no one can verbally communicate with either civilians or the enemy.

Essential building blocks of communication with Iraqi’s — humane, personal connections via idle chat during a convoy exercise, supportive conversation in local establishments, calming direction provided during a house raid — all become lost opportunities to gain a semblance of trust or credibility.

This simple inability to communicate waters the fields of insurgent seeds.

So when an atrocity such as Haditha occurs, the Iraqi people’s understanding of the act can’t be contextualized or messaged into obscurity by our military.

Worse even, the sheer brutality of such an incident doesn’t need to be framed or spun by operatives of al Qaeda or the leaders of local insurgents to build a greater resistance to American forces.

The atrocity speaks for itself, with a clarity of message delivered via a deafening tone of dead relatives, neighbors and friends, all never to be seen again.

Iraqi citizens have lived with the fear of a potential Haditha massacre for years now. Their daily lives are filled with various degrees of similar experiences with American forces as we consistently sweep through house after house in the middle of the night, searching for insurgents. A Haditha massacre does only one thing: it confirms their worst fears, leading to more fear and more aggression towards our troops.

No matter what we want to tell ourselves, perception is reality.

The DoD knows we’ll never be able to control the perception of Iraqi’s, so this cry of the right to look at the big picture of the war is a nothing more than panicked attempt to control the perception and reactions of Americans that might question this war effort.

To suggest that the American public should “ignore” the “media mustering a drumbeat on these stories” — these atrocities — in order to protect the overall pattern of the war in Iraq is a failed intellectual position. This incident might only be one data point in the overall pattern of war, but it’s a glaring one — one that exposes more elements going wrong over there than going right.

The Role Of The Media

Iraqi war planners aren’t overly concerned with critical journalism, such as the March 2006 Time magazine exclusive on Haditha, affecting the average American’s take on the state of the war.

Sure, it’s a concern, but it’s only the tip of the iceberg.

If not managed, the mainstream media can become a major threat to war efforts because it is exists via the same capitalistic infrastructure as the government it supposes to watchdog.

In other words, when media institutions begin climbing onto editorial limbs, foregoing their inherent responsibility to the interests of corporate advertising, it clearly signals a shift in times to American corporations who become placed in a position to make certain decisions they’d rather not have to make:

• They can remove themselves from media buys that are beginning to serve the reflected will of the consumer (poor PR) or
• They can keep their advertising in place as a public relations strategy, while implicitly distancing themselves from our government’s effort to wage war

See, the real concern isn’t with the common people in as much as it is with the flow of money, for once the majority of corporations are off the bandwagon of a war effort, its future becomes rather short-lived.

An Example Of The Power Of Media

Lieutenant William Calley — the American officer in charge at the My Lai massacre — faced the scrutiny of the much more centralized, mainstream media of 1970. Advertising legend George Lois provides context to the media exposure of the atrocity at the time by describing the decision and experience of placing Calley on the November, 1970 cover of Esquire magazine :

“Lieutenant, this picture will show that you’re not afraid as far as your guilt is concerned. The picture will say: ‘Here I am with these kids you’re accusing me of killing. Whether you believe I’m guilty or innocent, at least read about my background and motivations.’” Calley grinned on cue, and we completed the session.

When I sent the finished cover to (Esquire editor, Harold) Hayes he called to let me know that his office staff and Esquire’s masthead bureaucrats were plenty shook up.

“Some detest it and some love it,” he said. “You going to chicken out?” I asked. “Nope,” he said. “We’ll lose advertisers and we’ll lose subscribers. But I have no choice. I’ll never sleep again if I don’t muster the courage to run it.”

The notion that some editors might feel a sense of duty to a global community — and not just to a sovereign position or a bottom line — marks the potential for transforming the media into the greatest, political equalizer on the face of the earth.

In 1970, the attack on the “liberal” media — outlets that didn’t explicitly recognize corporate interests over human interests at every turn — was eerily similar to the conservative banter of today. From Into The Dark: The My Lai Massacre:

[…]

On April 1, 1971, just two days after the verdict, Nixon ordered Calley to be placed under house arrest while his appeal worked its way through the courts. “The whole tragic episode was used by the media and the antiwar forces to chip away at our efforts to build public support for our Vietnam objectives,� he wrote.

Across the nation, there were many demonstrations of support for Lt. Calley. The American Legion announced plans that it would try to raise $100,000 for his appeal. Draft board personnel in several cities resigned in groups. Several politicians spoke out in public criticizing the government’s prosecution of the soldiers at My Lai. “I’ve had veterans tell me that if they were in Vietnam now, they would lay down their arms and come home,� Congressman John Rarick told the New York Times.

But prosecutor Aubrey Daniel also did not remain silent. He wrote a highly publicized letter to President Nixon criticizing him for releasing Calley to house arrest: “How shocking it is if so many people across this nation have failed to see the moral issue… that it is unlawful for an American soldier to summarily execute unarmed and unresisting men, women and babies.�

[…]

In the end, we have to recognize that an atrocity such as Haditha is a symptom of the behavioral patterns of all warfare.

To brush it aside as a random act of violence would be to remove the complicit nature of war planners from the equation and lay it squarely on the shoulder of the brave souls that serve our country, no matter the call to duty.

(from Nas)

Michael Duffy, TIME
The Shame Of Kilo Company

[…]

But one morning last November, some members of Kilo Company apparently didn’t attempt to distinguish between enemies and innocents. Instead, they seem to have gone on the worst rampage by U.S. service members in the Iraq war, killing as many as 24 civilians in cold blood. The details of what happened in Haditha were first disclosed in March by TIME’s Tim McGirk and Aparisim Ghosh, and their reporting prompted the military to launch an inquiry into the civilian deaths. The darkest suspicions about the killings were confirmed last week, when members of Congress who were briefed on the two ongoing military investigations disclosed that at least some members of a Marine unit may soon be charged in connection with the deaths of the Iraqis — and that the charges may include murder, which carries the death penalty. “This was a small number of Marines who fired directly on civilians and killed them,” said Representative John Kline, a Minnesota Republican and former Marine who was briefed two weeks ago by Marine Corps officials. “This is going to be an ugly story.”

[…]

At what point do we, as a nation, realize that our occupation of Iraq is only breeding more violent insurgents and future terrorists? And if this story is true, can you blame them for wanting revenge?

On a weekend where we remember the brave men and women who have served and/or died to protect what we know and love as America, I wonder… are we still that same America? Have we ever been?

I’m sorry, but listening to Howard Coble in a conversation about terrorism and my rights makes me sick to my stomach. The man may represent my district, but he does not represent me. His apparent zeal to throw my rights to the wind is cowardly and his position on the “war” on terror is idiotic.

I would never willingly give up my right to privacy. Too many men and women have worked themselves to the bone to establish these provisions of this republic, let alone the numbers who have given their lives to defend it, for me to simply shrug away my rights as an American. To toss these rights aside, simply because we have been smacked awake to the fact that we live in the same reality as the rest of the world, is both cowardly and criminal… at best.

Where I come from, such positions would be considered as spitting on the graves of the men and women that perished on 9/11. They may have died a premature, horrific death, but they were free Americans, and that makes all the difference in the world.

Or maybe that’s just how I was raised.

These two guys hate each other, right? Then why is it that everyone else is doing all the dying?

James Westhead - BBC
Planning the US ‘Long War’ on terror

It sounds eerily like the Cold War - and that is no mistake.

The “Long War” is the name Washington is using to rebrand the new world conflict, this time against terrorism.

Now the US military is revealing details of how it is planning to fight this very different type of war.

It is also preparing the public for a global conflict which it believes will dominate the next 20 years.

The nerve centre of this war against terror is the huge MacDill airbase in Tampa, Florida.

Surrounded by white sand beaches, palm trees and two golf courses it looks more like a holiday camp than a military camp.

But inside US Central Command (Centcom) generals are planning what they call “fourth-generational warfare”.

Centcom is already responsible for operations in the Middle East, South Asia and Africa - as well as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan - and now it is planning a campaign that will eventually span the globe.

Aiming at al-Qaeda

The man behind what the US military calls its “principles of the Long War” is Brig Gen Mark Kimmitt.

Gen Kimmitt, Centcom’s deputy director of plans and strategy, told BBC News: “Even if Iraq stabilised tomorrow the Long War would continue.”

So as Centcom tries to control events in Iraq, he is also planning a strategy for “nothing less than the defeat of al-Qaeda across the world and its associated movements strung together by extremist ideology”.

To achieve victory the US military will have to change dramatically, he says.

Like the terrorists it will have to build international networks, Gen Kimmitt says, making better use of “soft power” - diplomacy, finance, trade and technology.

“I’m an artillery officer, and I can’t fire cannons at the internet,” he says, referring to what he sees as one of the key weapons of the modern age.

Instead, he argues that the US military must try to break down “old mind-sets and bureaucracies” and build new relationships with other agencies - like the FBI, the police and the state department - through what in military jargon are called “joint inter-agency task forces”.

Improved posture

The theory is that the military cannot fight alone against such a nimble and deadly foe as al-Qaeda, and must build a new kind of worldwide network as flexible and smart as its enemy.

As a result Gen Kimmitt predicts a much lower profile for traditional US forces.

He believes that will help win hearts and minds, by ending the impression that the US is occupying the Middle East.

“Our future posture is still being worked out,” he says.

“But I would like to see to the number of troops in the Middle East cut to a fraction of the current 300,000, by at least a half.”

The US military is planning a big increase in the role of special forces, the smaller, specially-trained teams able to speak local languages - including Arabic - deploy rapidly and work with the armies of other nations.

Trailer park diplomacy

Outside Centcom sits a symbol of the new approach and its complexity - a large trailer park with fluttering flags atop each trailer representing each of the 63 nations represented at Centcom, from Denmark to El Salvador.

Inside each trailer, a small team of military liaison officers shares information with their American colleagues and co-ordinates action in Iraq, Afghanistan and throughout the region.

According to an American general working with the coalition, the aim is to maintain this loose-knit arrangement to fight the global war on terror.

“We want to make it a lasting organisation,” he said.

“We don’t want it to dissolve like it did after Desert Shield and Desert Storm.”

However, America’s difficult relationship with some allies after 11 September 2001 suggests that this will be a challenge.

France and Germany, for example, opposed the war in Iraq. Rear Adm Jacques Mazars, the French representative at Centcom, says French and American forces co-operate more successfully on the ground than their politicians.

But, he said, running a coalition for a sustained period would be hard.

“On the conceptual level we can agree,” he said. “There will be a long war to be won. But on the practical level it will be harder.”

One regular cause of tension among the allies is the sharing of sensitive intelligence.

“There are some things you wouldn’t share with a neighbour and even an ally,” one senior US officer said.

There are signs that despite the difficulties, the new coalition against terror is here to stay.

The Pentagon admits its vision is not yet fully realised, but it has already started work on a new building in the MacDill complex, providing a bricks-and-mortar home for the international occupants of the trailer park.

“I can’t see there ever being a completely homogenous coalition dealing with worldwide terror,” said Col Mark Bibbey, the chief of staff of the British mission at Centcom. “The 63 nations are not signed up to the same view on everything.”

But he added: “You’ve got to start somewhere. You have to plan ahead. You have to be driving in a particular direction. If we don’t start driving now or soon, we’ll be behind the curve.”

Don’t believe this shit for a minute. We’ve been consistently at war ever since WWII. All this formal labeling does is give our administration a streamlined name for hanging their illegal wiretaps, warrentless searches and covert operations, while providing the media, publishing and entertainment industries a new topical issue to craft a narrative around.

Are the US Armed Forces currently optimized to combat a Cold War enemy? Sure. But the decentralized, agile, inconspicuous warfare that our current foes engage in has been around forever and we’ve been playing that game as well over the years. The only reason we don’t hang our hat on covert operations and the funding of rebellions that support our interests in other countries, is because that type of involvement isn’t viewed as honorable in the eyes of the civilized world.

State-sponsored or individually driven, terrorism is terrorism.

So we’re now formalizing on a name, while removing the “civil” formalities of warfare. We’ll continue to position our red coats around the world in formal lines of advancement, while sneaking in for the kill with our scrappy blue coats when the sun goes down and the townsfolk are asleep. Nothing has changed.

< --->
No connection, eh?

Neo-Nazis threaten to massacre Muslims at World Cup

ROME (AFP) - The World Cup in Germany is set to become a battleground between fascists and Muslims, an Italian member of a new European neo-Nazi movement warned.

In a statement published by Italian daily Repubblica, the member of AS Roma’s notorious ultras hooligan group claims neo-Nazis across Europe met in Braunau in Austria to plan attacks against supporters from Islamic countries during the World Cup in Germany from June 9 to July 9.

“We are united. For the first time we are talking and planning together, with the English, the Germans, the Dutch, the Spanish, everyone with the same objective. At the World Cup there will be a massacre,” said the Italian ultra.

“We will all be in Germany and there will be Turks, Algerians and Tunisians. The Turks, we can’t stand them. In our country (Italy) there are not many, but in Germany, there are many of those guys there. They are Islamic terrorists.

“We will attack them. They are all enemies that need to be eliminated, just like the police. If we make the Roman greeting (the fascist salute) they put us in prison. We will be tens of thousands. Nothing but the English are feared.”

With the tone and accent of Daniel Carver on Howard Stern back in the day:

“Wake up, white people!”

(via The Black Iris of Jordan)

Photo by birdcage

We’re now exactly three years into this debacle of a war.

More than 2,300 American men and women have lost their lives and upwards of 30,000 more are now physically and mentally handicapped. We’re consistently told that the mission is just, as democracy must be spread. We’re told that we need to fight the terrorists over there instead of fighting them over here.

The truth is that we’re knee deep in a mission to fight an “ism” that we don’t even understand.

Why should that stop us?

Photo by Rod Graves

We’re rooting our perception around the world as the global strong-armed thug. When our president casually mentions an Iraqi civilian body count to be upwards of 30,000, more or less — as if he’s guessing the amount of gumballs in a swimming pool — that should send shivers down our collective spines, yet for some reason, it doesn’t.

9/11 was a horrible moment in American history, but all we’ve done is respond by killing an even greater number of people. How does that quell a radical response to our status quo?

Photo by The Original Mozzy

Yeah, we all need to do some soul searching.

Preface (pg. xvi)

[…]
However, just as the Christian Reformation opened the door to multiple, often conflicting, and sometimes baffling interpretations of Christianity, so has the reformation of Islam created a number of wildly divergent and competing ideologies. Perhaps it is inevitable that, as religious authority passes from institutions to individuals, there will be men and women whose radical reinterpretations of religion will be fueled by their extreme social and political agendas. In this sense, jihadists like Osama bin Laden must be understood as products of, not counters to, the Islamic Reformation. Indeed, bin Laden joins a long and unsavory list of militant puritans — whether Muslim, Christian, Jewish or Hindu — who consider themselves and their individual followers to be the only true believers, and all others to be hypocrites, imposters, and apostates who must be convinced of their folly or abandoned to their horrible fates.

Like puritans of other faiths — militaristic or not — the jihadists’ principal goals is the “purifying” of their religious communities. In other words, their first target is not the West, or Jews, or Christians, or Zionists, or Crusaders, or any other outsiders (what the jihadists term “the far enemy”), but those hundreds of millions of Muslims who do not share their puritanical worldview (”the near enemy”). Their agenda can most clearly be observed in the civil war they have launched in Iraq. For whatever else may be fueling the violence in that country, there can be little doubt that the primary aim of the jihadists who have infiltrated Iraq and who represent the most ruthless segment of the insurgency is the massacre of all those Muslims (particularly the Shi’ah majority) whom they regard as rawafida or apostates.

Of course, that is not to say that the far enemy is not a target of jihadism, as New York, Madrid, and London can testify. But it is mainly as a means to galvanize other Muslims to the jihadist cause that most of these attacks against the West should be understood. The attacks of September 11, 2001, for example, were by bin Laden’s own admission specifically designed to goad the United States into an exaggerated retaliation against the Islamic world so as to mobalize Muslims to, in the words of George W. Bush, “choose sides.”

Now, four years removed from that tragic day, perhaps the most hopeful development in this internal battle to define the faith and practice of over a billion people is that Muslims themselves are becoming increasingly aware that they are as much endangered by the extremist agenda as are the so called infidels. Thus, the day before the London bombings, one hundred seventy of the world’s leading clerics and scholars, representing every major sect and school of law in Islam, gathered in Amman, Jordan, where, in an unprecendented display of intersectarian collaboration, they issues a joint fatwa, or legal ruling, denouncing all acts of terrorism committed in the name of Islam. The Amman declaration was not only a tacit (if belated) acknowledgement of the civil war raging within Islam, it was an attempt by the clerical institutions to re-exert some measure of authority over those who have hijacked Islam for their own murderous causes.

It didn’t work. The next day, and almost as if in response to the Amman fatwa, London was attacked. Two weeks later, a bomb demolished aa hotel in the resort town of Sharm El-Sheik, Egypt, killing nearly a hundred people — many of them poor, many of them Muslim. Two weeks after that, three hundred fifty bombs tore through Bangladesh, one after the other, in a violent attempt to dislodge the country’s fledgling democratic government. After each of these attacks, a new wave of fatwas was issued, again denouncing the use of violence and terrorism in the name of Islam. And after each fatwa, the jihadists struck again. And the war goes on. Reformations, as we know from Christian history, are bloody events. And though the end is near, the Islamic Reformation has some way to go before it is resolved.

Dangerous Times - One Word Away From Nuclear War (pg. 74)

The missile crisis “was the most dangerous moment in human history,� Arthur Schlesinger commented in October 2002 at a conference in Havana on the fortieth anniversary of the crisis, attended by a number of those who witnessed it from within as it unfolded. Decision-makers at the time undoubtedly understood that the fate of the world was in their hands. Nevertheless, attendees at the conference may have been shocked by some of the revelations. They were informed that in October 1962 the world was “one word away� from nuclear war. “A guy named Arkhipov saved the world,� said Thomas Blanton of the National Security Archive in Washington, which helped organize the event. He was referring to Vasili Arkhipov, a Soviet submarine officer who blocked an order to fire nuclear-armed torpedoes on October 27, at the tensest moment of the crisis, when the submarines were under attack by US destroyers. A devastating response would have been a near certainty, leading to a major war.

Participants in the decisions at the time, and at the retrospective forty years later, did not have to be reminded of President Eisenhower’s warning that a “major war would destroy the Northern Hemisphere.� The parallel between Kennedy’s handling of the crisis and President Bush’s deliberations over Iraq was a recurrent theme at the meeting,� the press reported, “with many participants accusing Bush of ignoring history, and to offer lessons for today’s crises, most notably George W. Bush’s deliberations about whether to strike Iraq.� Schlesinger was surely not the only one to bring up the fact that “Kennedy chose quarantine as an alternative to military action [while] Bush is committed to military action�; nor, presumably, was he the only one to have been taken aback to learn just how close the world came to destruction even under the less aggressive choice.

In his authoritative account of the missle crisis, Raymond Garthoff observes that “in the United States, there was almost universal approbation for President Kennedy’s handling of the crisis.� That’s a fair assessment, though whether the approval is warranted is a separate question.

The confrontation finally came down to two basic issues: (1) Would Kennedy pledge that the US would not invade Cuba? And (2) would he make a public announcement that the US would withdraw its Jupiter nuclear missiles in Turkey, on the border of Russia and aimed at its heartland? On both issues, Kennedy ultimately refused. He agreed only to a secret commitment to withdraw the missiles, which had in any case already been scheduled to be replaced by Polaris nuclear submarines. He refused to make any formal commitment not to invade Cuba, Rather, he continued “to conduct an active policy of seeking to undermine and displace the Castro regime, including covert operations against Cuba,� Garthoff observes.

In a highly provocative gesture as the crisis intensified, the missiles were turned over to Turkish command “with ceremonial fanfare� on October 22. Garthoff comments: the event was “certainly noted in Moscow, but not in Washington.� There it was presumably regarded as just another exercise of “logical illogicality.�

As history is crafted by the powerful, the most dramatic moment of the missile crisis was provided by UN Ambassador Adlai Stevenson at the Security Council on October 25, when he exposed Soviet deception by unveiling a photograph of a missile site in Cuba taken by US spy planes. The concept “Stevenson moment� has entered into historical memory, in celebration of this victory over a vicious foe aiming to destroy us.

As an intellectual exercise, let’s imagine how the “Stevenson moment� might be viewed by a hypothetical extraterrestrial observer. Call him Martian, and assume that he is free from earthly systems of doctrine and ideology. Martin would surely note that there is no “Khrushchev moment� in history: no moment at which Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev or his UN ambassador dramatically unveiled photographs of the Jupiter missiles placed in Turkey in 1961-62, or of the provocative transfer of the missiles to the Turkish military with “ceremonial fanfare� just as the most dangerous moment in human history approached. Reflecting on this distinction, Martian should recall that the Jupiter missiles were only a small element of a far greater threat to Russia, and that Russia had repeatedly been invaded and almost destroyed in the preceding half-century – twice by newly rearmed Germany, its richer Western part now within a hostile military alliance led by the world’s mightiest superpower; once in 1918 by Britain, the US, and their allies. And he might observe that there was, of course, no Russian threat to invade Turkey, nor any large-scale Russian terrorist campaign or economic warfare against Turkey, not even a lesser counterpart to the crimes that the Kennedy administration was carrying out against Cuba at the time.

Despite all this, only the “Stevenson moment� exists in historical memory. Martian would surely grasp how the distinction reflects the balance of global power. He would also presumably recall a principle that must be close to a historical universal of intellectual culture: We are “good� (whoever we happen to be), and they are “evil� if they stand in our way. Therefore, the radical asymmetry makes perfect sense, within the framework of established doctrine.

The contours of the asymmetry become even sharper when we consider the occasional effort at extenuation: the crime of the Russians in Cuba was stealth, while the US surrounded Russia with lethal offensive weapons quite openly. That is true. The world ruler not only has no need to conceal its intent, but prefers to advertise it, to “maintain credibility.� The subordination of the ideological system to power ensures that virtually and action – international terrorism (as in Cuba), overt aggression (as in South Vietnam at the same time), participation in mass slaughter to destroy the only mass-based political party (as in South Vietnam and Indonesia), and many others – will either be dispatched to oblivion or reshaped into an act of legitimate self-defense or an act of benevolence that perhaps went astray.

The importance of owning a properly crafted “history� was revealed once again in February 2003, when Colin Powell addressed the UN Security Council, informing its members that the US would go to war with or without UN authorization. The question pondered by commentators was whether Powell would be able to provide a Stevenson moment.

Some thought he had. New York Times columnist William Safire triumphantly reported Powell’s “Adlai Stevenson momentâ€?: a satellite image of trucks next to a bunker allegedly storing chemical weapons, then another with the trucks gone – clear proof that Iraq had deceived the inspectors by removing the illegal weapons before they arrived, and that the devious Iraqis had penetrated the inspection team, confirming the US thesis that the team was unreliable and hence could not be provided with intelligence data that Washington claimed to have. It was later concluded, with Powell’s silent nod of agreement, that for a range of reasons – the time lapse between the taking of the photos, the uncertain use of the site in question — the photographs proved nothing, one of a series of similar cases, which later became a torrent. Still, this was deemed a “Stevenson moment,” though Adam Clymer pointed out that there was a “stark difference” between the two: Stevenson’s moment was “one of real fear about Soviet missiles, of imminent nuclear confrontation.” Apparently, there could have been no fear, anywhere, about missiles on the Russian border.

If you’re looking for a laundry list of reasons, read this article titled, “Why do they hate us so much?”

Otherwise, simply imagine the experience of watching a missile evaporating a car directly in front of you as you prepare to turn into your cul-de-sac, somewhere in Suburbia, USA, sending shrapnel into your 8-year-old child who was waving hello to you from the curb.

Middle East Times
Palestinian militants, children killed in Gaza airstrike
Sakher Abu El Oun

[…]

An eight-year-old boy, Raed Al Batsh, and 15-year-old Ahmed Al Sweissi, who were standing in Salaheddin Street at the time, were also killed in the massive explosion.

Another 15-year-old boy died later from his wounds. Eight bystanders, most of them children, were also wounded.

An Israeli army spokeswoman confirmed that the military carried out an airstrike targeting a wanted militant from Islamic Jihad.

“A short while ago the IDF [Israeli Defense Forces] carried out an aerial attack in Gaza City against a vehicle carrying an Islamic Jihad terrorist,” she said.

Israeli security sources said that Sukar was wanted in connection with Palestinian rocket attacks on Israel and bombings against troops before Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip last September.

While its larger rival Hamas halted its campaign of anti-Israeli attacks in the past year, Jihad has carried out half a dozen suicide bombings inside Israel and snubbed January’s Palestinian election that was won by Hamas.

Before the air raid, Hamas’ chief parliamentarian, Mahmoud Al Zahar, warned Israel against any military escalation ahead of this month’s Israeli election, threatening that his faction would avenge every drop of Palestinian blood.

“Everyone knows that before every election, crimes are committed [by Israel]. Those looking for success try to make more Palestinians blood spill.

“This time, we say to them that no drop of Palestinian blood will run without riposte,” he told reporters in Gaza City.

The movement, which won by a landslide in January’s Palestinian election and does not recognize Israel, has not claimed an attack in Israel since early 2005, despite carrying out dozens of bloody attacks in previous years.

An Islamic Jihad spokesman vowed that the response to Monday’s “crimes” in Gaza City would strike “at the heart of the Zionist entity”.

[…]

Now, tell me, honesty, how would you react? What next steps would you make once the grief became tolerable. What would you expect your leaders to do for you?

These aren’t simple questions; they’re steeped in mixed issues of morality and the flawed concept of a righteous battle to end all tyranny (which often turns into a battle against a windmill). Quite honestly, if this were my child, I have no idea if I could simply breathe, let alone answer these questions, but I’ll tell you this much: I can surely understand why a parent, relative, neighbor, etc. would charge that windmill.

The insurgancy in Iraq is a perfect example.

Israel operates like this because we, the United States, allow them to operate like this. Israel will tell you otherwise, but their very existense depends on our financial support, military dominance and political capital. When Washington nods, Israel moves. The ties are deep-seeded.

Yeah, I have a grasp on the big picture of why we have a relationship with Israel, but I don’t care. This type of shit needs to stop. I mean, read the above quote once more. It suggests that this type of military strike is the norm in Israeli political campaigning.

And we bitch about the He Said/She Said negative campaigning in the States?

Until this type of aggression ceases, we’re going to continue to be viewed as a sponsor of state terrorism and innocent lives everywhere will continue to be lost in the crossfire. With great power comes great responsibility, right?

Right?

UPDATE: Nas reports that the news only gets worse:

An Israeli air strike killed Raad Al-Batash, 8, Mahmoud Al-Batash, 15, and Ahmad a-Sweisi, 14, on Monday. Sumiyya Al-Batch, the mother of Raad and Mahmoud, was also wounded. And in a separate incident, two brothers, Allam and Nidal Abu Saud, 14 and 15, were blown to pieces when an undetonated explosive left by the Israeli military in their neighborhood suddenly exploded near them.

Eight other passers-by were wounded in the air strike, most of them children, and Sukar’s aunt, who lives nearby, died of a heart attack when she was told the news of the boys’ deaths.

…a report by Israeli human rights group B’tselem called the attack a war crime [source]�

(via The Black Iris of Jordan)

Ethan covered the raid of the Kenya Television Network and the East African Standard newspaper earlier in the week, but only had access to vidcaps of the event. Well, earlier today Xeni Jardin pointed Boing Boing readers to the YouTube video of the security cameras. Here it is:

Can you imagine this happening at CBS?

WOUB: Radio & Television
Rock band promotional sticker triggers bomb alert on OU campus

ATHENS, OH (2006-03-02) A sticker on a bicycle outside a restaurant on the campus of Ohio University is behind a bomb scare this morning.

Ohio University Dean of Students Terry Hogan says an Ohio University police officer spotted a bicycle attached to the Oasis restaurant at 5:30 a.m. this morning with a sticker containing a message attached to it.

“‘This Bike Is a Pipe Bomb’ is the name of a band out of Pensacola, Fla.,” said Hogan. “The sticker was actually a promotional item for that entity.”

A bomb squad was called in from Columbus to investigate the bike, resulting in an evacuation of four buildings on campus for more than three hours.

The area was cordoned off and Gordy Hall, Ellis Hall, Scott Quad and Konneker Alumni Center were all closed until 8:40 a.m. when police allowed students students and faculty into the buildings and the immediate area.

Hogan says police were informed from the owner of the bike that the sign in question was just a sticker. The bomb squad disabled the bike to confirm that.

The bike owner’s name is not being released but Hogan says he has cooperated with the investigation.

All in all, Hogan says the university is pleased with the response from OUPD and Athens Police and fire in handling the scare. He says protocol updated after 9/11 was used for the first time in response to the potential threat.

OUPD is investigating the incident but no criminal charges have been filed.

You know, every day, I’m more and more amazed at how people in this country have absolutely no fucking clue. How could any rational human being take this bumper sticker as a threat? It’s not like the damn thing was ticking; someone had to pause, read the words, make a judgement call on the potential danger to the community and alert the authorities (if it wasn’t an “authority” find in the first place). But, hey! At least the new post-9/11 protocols are working correctly.

bin Laden completely proved that we’re a country of religion, not faith. We’re so busy looking up for direction from leaders and God, we’ve completely lost our faith in our common man.

The Carlyle Group was covered extensively in Fahrenheit 9/11. For those of you who refused to see the film, but are extremely upset about this port deal, I suggest you swallow your pride for a few hours and watch it.

As for the Olberman interview; there are some very real reasons that Bush is pushing this deal through. Our Navy needs the Dubai company controlled ports in the Middle East to continue the “War on Terror, “which progressively lines the pockets of The Carlyle Group more and more (sick, eh?). I’m sure international business doesn’t want to have ideology such as Homeland Security become a deal stopper in the future, but that’s a secondary concern to this President and his family at this point.

I mean come on, the bucks are rolling in.

Israel’s genius is mind-blowing.

As soon as the rest of the world begins to draw the ire of the Muslim world, Israel swoops in with a coup de grâce, stealing back all the affection for themselves. Yes, Israel is about to pull some serious poltergeist shit:

The Independent
Israel plans to build ‘museum of tolerance’ on Muslim graves

Skeletons are being removed from the site of an ancient Muslim cemetery in Jerusalem to make way for a $150m (£86m) “museum of tolerance” being built for the Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Centre.

Palestinians have launched a legal battle to stop the work at what was the city’s main Muslim cemetery. The work is to prepare for the construction of a museum which seeks the promotion of “unity and respect among Jews and between people of all faiths”.

Israeli archaeologists and developers have continued excavating the remains of people buried at the site - which was a cemetery for at least 1,000 years - despite a temporary ban on work granted by the Islamic Court, a division of Israel’s justice system. Police have been taking legal advice on whether the order is legally binding. The Israeli High Court is to hear a separate case brought by the Al Aqsa Association of the Islamic Movement in Israel next week.

The project, which a spokesman said had been conceived in partnership with the Jerusalem municipality and the Israeli government, was launched at a ceremony in 2004 by a cast of dignitaries ranging from Ehud Olmert, who is currently the acting Prime Minister, to the governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger.

The Israeli branch of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre declined to comment yesterday and has had no role in the project.

Durragham Saif, the lawyer who brought the Islamic Court petition on behalf of three Palestinian families, Al Dijani, Nusseibeh and Bader Elzain, all of whom have members buried at the cemetery, said: “It’s unbelievable, it’s immoral. You cannot build a museum of tolerance on the graves of other people. Imagine this kind of thing in the [United] States or England. And this is the Middle East where events are sensitive. If this goes ahead in this way it is going to cause the opposite thing to tolerance.”

Mr Saif said he had written to the Israeli State Attorney, Menachem Mazuz, seeking police enforcement of the original order. He said on a visit to the site he had entered three out of five tents where excavations were being carried out. “I was shocked to see open graves and tens of whole skeletons there,” he said.

Ikrema Sabri, the Mufti of Jerusalem, demanded a halt to the excavations and said the Muslim religious authorities had not been consulted on the dig. Saying that the cemetery was in use for 15 centuries and that friends of the Prophet Mohamed were buried there, the Mufti declared: “There should be a complete cessation of work on the cemetery because it is sacred for Muslims.”

Under Israel’s “absentee property” law the cemetery was taken over by the Custodian of Absentee Property after the 1948 war. Mr Saif said the Custodian had no right to sell the cemetery to the Jerusalem municipality in 1992. While parties to the work are resting part of their case on what they say was an 1894 ruling by the then Sharia court that the sanctity of a cemetery could be lifted, Mr Sabri said that ruling meant that only a Muslim could make such a decision.

Osnat Goaz, a spokeswoman for the Israel Antiquities Authority, which is carrying out the excavations, said it was common in Jerusalem to build on cemeteries. Adding that in such cases the bones were reburied, she said: “Israel is more crowded with ancient artefacts than any other country in the world. If we didn’t build on former cemeteries, we would never build.”

So let’s recap recent recent events, shall we?

• The United States begins a war in Iraq to fight an “ism” over “there” so it doesn’t have to be fought over here. In the process, at least 30,000 innocent Iraqi’s have been killed
• A Danish newspaper feels that it needs to spice up the religous debate, so it decides to publish 12 cartoons of the Prophet Mohhamed — knowing full-well the beliefs of Muslims and depicting The Prophet
• Now Israel is digging up “friends of the Prophet Mohamed” in order to develop a “museum of tolerance” and their defense is, “If we didn’t build on former cemeteries, we would never build”

That last excuse sounds very familiar:

Steve: Not much room for pool is there?
Teague: We own all the land. We have already made arrangements to relocating the cemetery.
Steve: Oh, you’re kidding. Oh, come on. I mean that’s sacrilege, isn’t it?
Teague: Oh, don’t worry about it. After all, it’s not ancient tribal burial ground. It’s just… people. Besides we have done it before.

Brilliant. I have no idea why radical Islam exists.

(via Jesus’ General)

Steve Gilliard on the cartoon controversy:

What I don’t find surprising is the wave of liberal anti-Muslim commentary. After all, it took a major effort by the President to prevent lynchings after 9/11, and then 8,000 Muslims were expelled for reasons having nothing to do with national security.

And let’s face it, we have a lot in common with the Danes, or so we think.

But reality is very different.

Most major US newspapers will not run these cartoons any more than they run racially or sexually offensive cartoons. They wouldn’t run a cartoon mocking church buildings being burned either. To the most vigorous defenders of free speech on the planet, in a country which allows all manner of hate speech, these cartoons will not be shown, because they are needlessly offensive.

But what is lost in all the rioting is how badly the Danes handled this.

The government admits they wanted to force a culture war. The problem for them is that Danish Muslims, feeling outnumbered and under siege, went for help. They toured the middle east, showed the cartoons to leading Islamic scholars and then, the ambassadors asked to speak to the foreign minister, and despite the advice of 22 Danish ambassadors, refused.

Now, I can’t speak to being a Muslim, but I can speak to being an outsider.

There is always the tension of never truly being accepted. You see things, cartoons, TV shows, and you wonder is there a hidden insult there, are you being depicted fairly.

Hell, people routinely tell me they had no idea I was black online.

I know what it’s like to walk into a classroom of 200 people and be the ONLY black person in the room. In that situation, you either deal with it or retreat.

For a lot of minorities in Europe, not just Muslims, but Africans and Asians as well, there is the sense of being an outsider even when you try to fit in. You teach your kids the language, they root for the local sides, they go to the schools, but at the end of the day, you get a nice slap in the face by people who wish you would disappear.

But you’ve played by the rules and there is no reward.

Now, some folks play on this to push their version of Islamic revivalism, and the right talks about how they’re coming to take over, and why they don’t just fit in.

Well, if you’ve ever been accused of not fitting in, despite your best efforts, it can make you angry or even worse, doubt yourself. You wonder if it’s you or because people dislike the way you look.

No one wants to be excluded from the society they live in, but at some point, you’re faced with a challenge to your dignity. In this case, an insult to your religion. And the Danes stubborn refusal to deal with this as it became a crisis, says much about their racial attitudes.

A lot of Europeans believe, like a lot of people, that if the Muslims go away, all their discomfort will end. But it won’t. As Pat Robertson noted in his usually subtle way, Europeans are having less children. Well someone has to pay taxes to support the growing numbers of elderly and if there aren’t enough Europeans, they will have to import workers.

And while people say “well, they should just accept that they live in Europe”.

Ok, and I say, what is the reward? A scut work job, racial contempt from cab drivers to government officials, a continuing message that you don’t belong and if you object to being insulted, you can leave?

You can’t have it both ways: you cannot say you want an inclusive society, yet when people demand basic respect, and muslim leaders went to the government and the courts, insult them for doing so.

It is hard enough to be different in the US, it must be that much harder in a monocultural society like Denmark.

My attitude here is simple: I respect Muslims and their concerns because I want them to respect mine, enough so that they reject terrorism and inform on those that do embrace it. We cannot say reject terrorism and then mock what they see as holy. It’s as if we’re doing Osama’s work for him, and I don’t want any part of that.

Exactly.

Imperial Grand Strategy - Elite Concerns (pg. 39)

Within establishment circles, there has been considerable concerns that “America’s imperial ambition” is a serious threat even to its own population. Their alarm reached new heights as the Bush administration declared itself to be a “revisionist state” that intends to rule the world permanently, becoming, some felt, “a menace to itself and to mankind” under the leadership of “radical nationalists” aiming for “unilateral world domination through absolute military superiority.” Many others within the mainstream spectrum have been appalled by the adventurism and arrogance of the radical nationalists who have regained the power they wielded through the 1980s, but now operate with fewer external constraints.

The concerns are not entirely new. During the Clinton years, the prominent political analyst Samuel Huntington observed that for much of the world the US is “becoming the rogue superpower, [considered] the single greatest external threat to their societies.” Robert Jervis, then president of the American Political Science Association, warned that “in the eyes of much of the world, in fact, the prime rogue state today is the United States.” Like others, they anticipated that coalitions might arise to counterbalance the rogue superpower, with threatening implications.

Several leading figures of the foreign policy elite have pointed out that the potential targets of America’s imperial ambition are not likely to simply await destruction. They “know that the United States can be held at bay only by deterrence,” Kenneth Waltz has written, and that “weapons of mass destruction are the only means to deter the United States.” Washington’s policies are therefore leading to the proliferation of WMD, Waltz concludes, tendencies accelerated by its commitment to dismantle international mechanisms to control the resort to violence. These warnings were reiterated as Bush prepared to attack Iraq: one consequence, according to Steven Miller, is that others “are likely to draw the conclusion that weapons of mass destruction are necessary to deter American intervention.” Another well-known specialist warned that the “general strategy of preventive war” is likely to provide others with “overwhelming incentives to wield weapons of terror and mass destruction” as a deterrent to “the unbrideled use of American power.” Many have noted the likely impetus to Iranian nuclear weapons programs. And “there is no question that the lesson that the North Koreans have learned from Iraq is that it needs a nuclear deterrent,” Selig Harrison commented.

As the year 2002 drew to a close, Washington was teaching an ugly lesson to the world: if you want to defend yourself from us, you had better mimic North Korea and pose a credible military threat, in this case, conventional: artillary aimed at Seoul and at US troops near DMZ. We will enthusiastically march on to attack Iraq, because we know that it is devistated and defenseless; but North Korea, though an even worse tyranny and vastly more dangerous, is not an appropriate target as long as it can cause plenty of harm. The lesson could hardly be more vivid.

Still another concern is the “second superpower,” public opinion. Not only was the “revisionism” of the political leadership without precident; so too was the opposition to it. Comparisons are often drawn to Vietnam. The common query “What happened to the tradition of protest and dissent?” makes clear how effectively the historical record has been cleansed and how little sense there is, in many circles, of the changes in public consciousness over the past four decades. An accurate comparison is revealing: In 1962, public protest was nonexistent, despite the announcement that year that the Kennedy administration was sending the US Air Force to bomb South Vietnam, as well as initiating plans to drive millions of people into what ammounted to concentration camps and launching chemical warfare programs to destroy food crops and ground cover. Protest did not reach any meaningful level until years later, after hundreds of thousands of US troops had been dispatched, densely populated areas had been demolished by saturation bombing, and the aggression had spread to the rest of Indochina. By the time protest became significant, the bitterly anticommunist military historian and Indochina specialist Bernard Fall had warned that “Vietnam as a cultural and historic entity… is threatened with extinction” as “the countryside literally dies under the blows of the largest military machine ever unleashed on an area of this size.”

In 2002, fourty years later, in striking contrast, there was largescale, committed, and principled popular protest before the war had been officially launched. Absent the fear and illusion about Iraq that were unique to the US, prewar opposition would probably have reached much the same levels as elsewhere. That reflects a steady increase over these years in unwillingness to tolerate aggression and atrocities, one of many such changes.

The leadership is well aware of these developments. By 1968, fear of the public was so serious that the Joint Chiefs of Staff had to consider whether “sufficient forces would be available for civil disorder control” if more troops were sent to Vietnam. The Department of Defense feared that further troop deployments ran the risk of “provoking a domestic crisis of unprecedented proportions.” The Reagan administration at first tried to follow Kennedy’s South Vietnam model in Central America but backed down in the face of an unanticipated public reaction that threatened to undermine more important components of the policy agenda, turning instead to clandestine terror — clandestine in the sense that it could be more or less concealed from the general public. When Bush I took office in 1989, public reaction was again very much on the agenda. Incoming administrations typically commission a review of the world situation from the intelligence agencies. These reviews are secret, but in 1989 a passage was leaked concerning “cases where the US confronts much weaker enemies.” The analysts advised that the US must “defeat them decisively and rapidly.” Any other outcome would be “embarrassing” and might “undercut political support,” understood to be thin.

We are no longer in the 1960s, when the population would tolerate a murderous and destructive war for years without visible protest. The activist movements of the past forty years have had a significant civilizing effect in many domains. By now, the only way to attack a much weaker enemy is to construct a propaganda offensive depicting it as an imminent threat or perhaps engaged in genocide, with confidence that the military campaign will scarcely resemble an actual war.

Take a look around. People see the world as they experience it.

I’ve had the Koran sitting on my bookshelve for the past ten years; I have no idea how The Message has alluded me until this past weekend.

While the historical accuracy of the film and its brilliant acting took center stage, there were explicit elements of both the production and storyline I found especially intriguing.

For instance, Islamic law forbids portraying either the voice or likeness of the Prophet Mohammed (that concept would put Christianity straight out of business), so when certain scenes called for interaction with The Prophet, director Moustapha Akkad made the call to turn the camera into Mohammed’s silent point of view.

The cast of followers spoke directly to Mohammed, yet they were simultaneously engaged in conversation with the audience, providing us with the positioning of The Prophet. In 1976, this may not have been viewed as a compelling technique, but in the age of first person shooter video games — where we directly engage and interact with the narrative, driving the storyline as we gaze into the eyes of AI avatars — the technique shifts meaning over the years. Very retro-cool.

In terms of the story, both the politics and marketplace of Mecca circa 600 AD were fascinating and generated numerous offshoots of thought.

The film reveals that the ruling class of Mecca kept the populous in-line, and themselves profitable, through establishing a marketplace of ~360 idolic “Gods” — wooden or clay figures, sold to individuals and families alike to provide good luck. The families blindly worshiped them as their personal saviors (talk about instant, add-water religion) and left the ruling class alone to continue their manipulation of the market and society.

When Muhammed returned from the mountains and began sharing his first poetic drops of the Koran, amongst the numerous stanzas (of eventual Islamic law), the message that forbode the worship of other gods was explicit. “There is only one God” quickly became the righteous chant of all classes of men who followed Muhammed’s revelations. Upon experiencing this shifting of inclusion (of social classes) and exclusion (of idolic gods), the local merchants/governors took this challenge of authority as a direct threat to the well-greased mechanism of Mecca’s economy, class and power structure and responded with force.

The mere concept of “There can only be one God” was more revolutionary than any number of armed men storming the city because their God could not generate a profit.

After digesting the film, my mind’s eye kept returning to the current global struggles between Islam and the West, asking the question as to whether or not we’re going through a historical recurrance on a global scale. I mean, the World Trade Center was considered to be the most prolific iconic representation of the American (and Western) financial system. Could Ramzi Yousef and Osama bin Laden possibly have targeted the WTC in ‘93 and 9/11, respectively, in an attempt to make a deep seeded philosophical connection with fellow fundamentalists, tying the traits of modern day global capitalism to Mecca circa 600 AD?

Yeah, the film was that deep. Now I’ve got to check out Reza Aslan’s recently published book entitled “No God But God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam.” Based on Jon Stewart’s interview with him last night and the reviews of Islamic bloggers, it’s bound to be enlightening on numerous fronts.

What the fuck is going on in Sydney? From the AP via Aljazeera:

[…]

On Sunday a mob of 5,000 white men, many of them drunk, attacked men they believed were of Middle Eastern descent in retaliation for the assault a week earlier of two volunteer lifeguards.

Youths of Lebanese descent were alleged to be behind that assault, but police say there was no apparent racial motive. (Full story)

Police arrested 16 rioters and said 31 people were injured, including a man stabbed in the back by an assailant officers said was a man of Arab appearance.

Prime Minister John Howard called the violence “sickening” but denied it was underpinned by a vein of racism running through Australian society.

“I do not accept that there is underlying racism in this country,” he said.

[…]

The rampage will compound shock expressed Monday at Sunday’s rioting, which police said was organized by mobile phone text messages and fanned by Neo Nazi groups.

“What we have seen yesterday is something I thought I would never see in Australia and perhaps we have not seen in Australia in any of our lifetimes. And that is a mass call to violence based on race," Community Relations Commission chairman Stepan Kerkyasharian told Sky News.

[…]

I’ve a few readers down under; Jack are you feeling the vibe down there? How organized are these hate groups?

Everything is everything… for real.

Go see it today and then do something positive.

President Bush has been pumping the "…you are either with us or against us…" rhetoric since his November 6th 2001 news conference regarding the then upcoming war against terrorism. At the time, most Americans felt he was speaking to countries that were either harboring terrorist training camps (Afghanistan) or on the fence in supporting our war planning (Turkey).

Following Bush’s recent Veterans Day speech, it’s apparent he’s speaking to American citizens as well.

To the Bush administration, any dissent—specifically, the pursuit of the potential lies which led us to war in the first place—is unpatriotic. Their perspective is that this “revisionist” talk during war time puts our troops in danger and jeopardizes the mission at hand. Terry Heaton provides a compelling argument against the foundation of this thesis.

With the politics at full rage, enter stage right Senator Chuck Hagel (R - Neb) to provide a level headed perspective:

“To question your government is not unpatriotic — to not question your government is unpatriotic,” Hagel said, arguing that 58,000 troops died in Vietnam because of silence by political leaders. “America owes its men and women in uniform a policy worthy of their sacrifices.”

Hagel should have this perspective on war and dissent.

As a Vietnam War veteran, he put his life in danger for a corrupt cause, while watching his buddies fall and a nation respond with anti-war protests. Now, as a US Senator, he has the ability to balance those experiences with the responsibilities of national security and foreign policy.

My only issue with his perfectly lucid and spot on argument is the timing.

Where was Chuck Hagel the last few years on these topics of war planning, the freedom of speech and political discourse?

This response seems to fit into the age old process of grass roots representation of the people altering the perspective of corporate interests, which in turn affects Congressmen, as their constituency have already begun to turn the corner.

While the corrupt nature of this administration is an absolute disgrace and criminal in the least and most of the GOP is already jumping ship like rats on the Titanic, I think there’s something more to Hagel’s rhetoric.

As a prospective 2008 presidential candidate, Hagel could very easily be distancing himself from a lame duck and unpopular administration. The GOP is losing their grip on Washington as each day passes and the chance that a Republican candidate will return as president in 2008 is becoming extremely slim. So if you’re the Republican Party, what choice do you have other than vulturing the replaceable icon at the top of your own pyramid organization?

If I were running that show, I’d ensure that George Bush continued to “stay the course” with his verbal indiscretions, while setting up top Republican leaders to contradict his perspective.

Smoke and mirrors, folks.

I’m not so cynical to absolutely believe that Chuck Hagel doesn’t believe what he’s saying, but the proof is in the pudding. There’s more than enough free speech and