So much world to save...so little time!
Occassionally I run into folks who thrumb on about the death of the anti-war movement. Some of these folks declare, simplistically, this is because it is called The Anti-war Movement, rather than The Peace Movement. They believe that avoiding the "negative" word "war" would allow hoards of middle-the-roader, aka fence-sitting or "centrist", Americans to do more to end war IF it were framed in "positive" language.
While I agree that framing and language is important - I'm a writer and author, after all and love words -- I also find this belief system to lack basic understanding about human nature. Folks who worry about how to "reach the masses" - frankly, I am one of them - also need to understand that the masses are, fundamentally, out of reach. And not only because of the niceties of language but because "the masses" don't recognize that the world, the planet, is an integrated environment...and that they are already involved. The masses aren't convinced yet that, when the s**t hits the fan, they will be cleaning it up, that their kids will be recruited to fight and die in war...no matter what it is called.
It matters to say, Sec State Hilary Clinton if what is going on in Honduras right now (prez thrown out by right wing coup) is called a "coup" or not because the US has military forces, training, weaponry, and $$$s invested down there. If she named it what it is, a "coup", the US (in the best case scenario, that is a scenario in which integrity ruled) would be politically obligated to pull out its various interests.
In the same vein, it matters if a killing spree is called "genocide" or not.
Bill Clinton utilized smoke screen diplomacy during the non-genocide in Rwanda, did nothing about the actual genocide (despite the US had few resources invested there...we'd have been obligated to try to prevent the killing and no politicians wanted to invest US troops down there) Close to a million people died in a matter of months.
The Armenians are still struggling to set their history straight - that is, receive recognition for that genocide...and it sometimes seems they might succeed but not so far. Not because it wasn't genocide - the term, after all derived from this massacre - but because it is not politically expedient - yet - to call it what it was.
"Coup" "genocide" and so on are political charged terms attached to diplomacy and international law and so on. It is a lot easier, for politicians, to simply avoid the reality and paint these event as something else.
While "anti-war" or "peace" are not political terms of the same ilk...they're used in the same way: as smoke screens. The level of abstraction in which the smoke screen terms "coup" or "genocide" are used is higher than the level of abstraction in which the smoke screen term "anti-war" is used...but both have the same effect: to confuse the issue, to muddy the water, to avoid looking at the absurdity, and to prevent anyone else from looking at, naming, and acting upon, the absurdity.
Next time I hear someone raise this languaging smoke screen I will remind her or him that real live people in war zones -- civilians, troops, "militias", know what war is: death, killing, blood, crying for your mother as you blood drains into the dust, rape, looting, and mayhem, homelessness, starvation, and more.
Be against that, that is be "anti-war" and understand that peace is not simply an absence of war.
On a related topic, listen to Terry Gross' show today, "A Mass Grave in Afghanistan Raises Questions." It is well worth hearing....
Thursday, July 23, 2009
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
"The obscenity of war is lost on most Americans..."
"The obscenity of war is lost on most Americans, and that drains the death of Robert McNamara of any real significance."
This is the last line of Bob Herbert's column in today's New York Times. Bob has been consistently so right on about war for the last 8 years that I'm sharing the link here.
Do read it: After the War Was Over
And for a more detailed and indepth look at McNamara, do read Alexander Cockburn's piece on Counterpunch: McNamara: From the Tokyo Firestorm to the World Bank
Despite the horror McNamara oversaw during his heyday, the usual admiring soliloquies will flood the media and we'll be subjected to how honorable, intelligent, and self-reflective McNamara really was.
I expect the media to pat itself on the back as it introduces a smidgen of questioning what passes for McNamara's "introspection". His rhetoric is hard to ignore as the movie going public had to confront, in the broad daylight of "Fog of War", whether he was a war criminal. That passes for introspection and will not, of course, require a serious answer... or a serious look at what we continue to do with war, in war, and about war.
Will Michael Jackson's body at Staples overshadow the news of McNamara's demise?
Will McNamara's body be flown around the country like Reagan's was?
Stay tuned!
So far, 2009 has been a helluva year for celebrities, one big name death overshadowing - so to speak - another.... It is almost as if 2009 is The Year to Die. Who is next?
This is the last line of Bob Herbert's column in today's New York Times. Bob has been consistently so right on about war for the last 8 years that I'm sharing the link here.
Do read it: After the War Was Over
And for a more detailed and indepth look at McNamara, do read Alexander Cockburn's piece on Counterpunch: McNamara: From the Tokyo Firestorm to the World Bank
Despite the horror McNamara oversaw during his heyday, the usual admiring soliloquies will flood the media and we'll be subjected to how honorable, intelligent, and self-reflective McNamara really was.
I expect the media to pat itself on the back as it introduces a smidgen of questioning what passes for McNamara's "introspection". His rhetoric is hard to ignore as the movie going public had to confront, in the broad daylight of "Fog of War", whether he was a war criminal. That passes for introspection and will not, of course, require a serious answer... or a serious look at what we continue to do with war, in war, and about war.
Will Michael Jackson's body at Staples overshadow the news of McNamara's demise?
Will McNamara's body be flown around the country like Reagan's was?
Stay tuned!
So far, 2009 has been a helluva year for celebrities, one big name death overshadowing - so to speak - another.... It is almost as if 2009 is The Year to Die. Who is next?
Sunday, July 5, 2009
Activists, actions, and reactions....
The Spirit of Humanity's crew of activists are being slowly released from Ramle prison after being arrested by the Israeli Navy in the Mediterranean. (Hear a clip from 3 imprisoned activists.)
First there was the Gaza 22, then the Gaza 21, today it is the Gaza 14. It is difficult to find news about how and which activists are being released. Three of the 6 British Free Gaza detainees will be put on a flight to London after having been moved to cells at Ben Gurion airport detention center. (I suppose all airports have detention centers these days.... Maybe they're stocked with goods commandeered by security agents from passengers' luggage at the checkpoints. Or does that stuff end up in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch...or at the local St. Vincent de Paul's...or for sale on e-Bay or Craigslist?)
Meanwhile, back at Colorado's Aspen Institute's Ideas Festival, Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad said, "Jews, to the extent they choose to stay and live in the state of Palestine, will enjoy those rights and certainly will not enjoy any less rights than Israeli Arabs enjoy now in the state of Israel. "
Fayyad was responding to a question from former CIA director James Woolsey. I can imagine former CIA director James Woolsey choking on his caviar as these words sunk in!
I say to Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, "Congratulations on turning on its head, and very creatively too, the usual go-nowhere "dialog" aimed at "peace in the region" that always has the seeming largess coming from the Israelis."
Fayyad's idea is, I hope, an example of the high quality of thought at the Ideas Festival. It is good to have creative ideas...and it is difficult to implement the best of them.
Those of us who are not Palestinian and who know how naturally generous the Palestinian heart and culture actually is -- despite what the Israelis promote -- recognize that Fayyad may not have been trying to be satirical; he may have been, in fact, speaking from his heart. His statement suggests that all this nastiness between Israelis and Palestinians will, in fact, be worked out soon ... it has just been a little misunderstanding between brothers... and soon, soon, bygones will be bygones and we can get on with our lives.
Then I read Peter Beaumont's article, "A life in ruins" that includes these paragraphs:
Six months after Israel's war against Gaza, Shifa, a 20-year-old student, sleeps with her family behind the fallen house. A trodden path leads through the rubble to a row of cramped, ramshackle shelters open to the elements and roofed with hessian sacks. They are identical to the cattle pens that stand beside them.
On closer examination I can see that the frames have been constructed out of cast-off sections of wood and metal lashed together. What walls that exist are fashioned out of old pallets and branches woven into crude wicker. Or more sacking, staked into the soil to make rudimentary windbreaks.
Shifa's family are Bedouin. Until recently they farmed this land close to the barrier, in an area once used for missile launches against the Jewish communities on the far side. This was one of Gaza's limited areas of agricultural production in a densely crowded urban area, home to 1.4 million people. Because of the missiles, this neighbourhood of farms and little factories was treated to a scorched earth policy.
Inside Shifa's own tiny, dirt-floored "compound" a fire pit has been scooped out of the earth and filled with twigs. On it sits the blackened pan in which Shifa and her mother make stews of molokhiya - spinach-like greens - with chicken, garlic and onions. "This is my kitchen," says Shifa shyly, in English. A piece of broken board is propped on two drums to function as table. Here a jam jar sits, holding a pestle and a solitary sharp knife.
I first came to this house in January, in the immediate aftermath of Israel's war against Gaza, visiting the Salman family almost every day. The family were sleeping in the ruins to shelter from the rain, surrounded by the stinking bodies of their sheep, killed during the assault. Then, Shifa complained that the frightened younger children were kept awake at night by the sound of packs of dogs scavenging among the carrion outside. (Read the entire article.)
How does Shifa and her family let bygones be bygones? Would you be able to do that under these circumstances?
First there was the Gaza 22, then the Gaza 21, today it is the Gaza 14. It is difficult to find news about how and which activists are being released. Three of the 6 British Free Gaza detainees will be put on a flight to London after having been moved to cells at Ben Gurion airport detention center. (I suppose all airports have detention centers these days.... Maybe they're stocked with goods commandeered by security agents from passengers' luggage at the checkpoints. Or does that stuff end up in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch...or at the local St. Vincent de Paul's...or for sale on e-Bay or Craigslist?)
Meanwhile, back at Colorado's Aspen Institute's Ideas Festival, Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad said, "Jews, to the extent they choose to stay and live in the state of Palestine, will enjoy those rights and certainly will not enjoy any less rights than Israeli Arabs enjoy now in the state of Israel. "
Fayyad was responding to a question from former CIA director James Woolsey. I can imagine former CIA director James Woolsey choking on his caviar as these words sunk in!
I say to Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, "Congratulations on turning on its head, and very creatively too, the usual go-nowhere "dialog" aimed at "peace in the region" that always has the seeming largess coming from the Israelis."
Fayyad's idea is, I hope, an example of the high quality of thought at the Ideas Festival. It is good to have creative ideas...and it is difficult to implement the best of them.
Those of us who are not Palestinian and who know how naturally generous the Palestinian heart and culture actually is -- despite what the Israelis promote -- recognize that Fayyad may not have been trying to be satirical; he may have been, in fact, speaking from his heart. His statement suggests that all this nastiness between Israelis and Palestinians will, in fact, be worked out soon ... it has just been a little misunderstanding between brothers... and soon, soon, bygones will be bygones and we can get on with our lives.
Then I read Peter Beaumont's article, "A life in ruins" that includes these paragraphs:
Six months after Israel's war against Gaza, Shifa, a 20-year-old student, sleeps with her family behind the fallen house. A trodden path leads through the rubble to a row of cramped, ramshackle shelters open to the elements and roofed with hessian sacks. They are identical to the cattle pens that stand beside them.
On closer examination I can see that the frames have been constructed out of cast-off sections of wood and metal lashed together. What walls that exist are fashioned out of old pallets and branches woven into crude wicker. Or more sacking, staked into the soil to make rudimentary windbreaks.
Shifa's family are Bedouin. Until recently they farmed this land close to the barrier, in an area once used for missile launches against the Jewish communities on the far side. This was one of Gaza's limited areas of agricultural production in a densely crowded urban area, home to 1.4 million people. Because of the missiles, this neighbourhood of farms and little factories was treated to a scorched earth policy.
Inside Shifa's own tiny, dirt-floored "compound" a fire pit has been scooped out of the earth and filled with twigs. On it sits the blackened pan in which Shifa and her mother make stews of molokhiya - spinach-like greens - with chicken, garlic and onions. "This is my kitchen," says Shifa shyly, in English. A piece of broken board is propped on two drums to function as table. Here a jam jar sits, holding a pestle and a solitary sharp knife.
I first came to this house in January, in the immediate aftermath of Israel's war against Gaza, visiting the Salman family almost every day. The family were sleeping in the ruins to shelter from the rain, surrounded by the stinking bodies of their sheep, killed during the assault. Then, Shifa complained that the frightened younger children were kept awake at night by the sound of packs of dogs scavenging among the carrion outside. (Read the entire article.)
How does Shifa and her family let bygones be bygones? Would you be able to do that under these circumstances?
Thursday, July 2, 2009
When will we ever learn?
I remember way back in 1979 instinctively listening for the sounds of Somoza bombarding the Nicaraguan people.
At that time I'd lived in the US for about two years and I didn't know much about US foreign policy in general or in Central America in particular. I knew enough, though, to recognize that The People - Nicaraguans - were getting it in the neck. And with American financed weaponry, and American trained troops.
Somoza's family had plundered Nicaragua for decades and still the Somozas wanted more; they wanted it all. They believed they were entitled to take it all, too.
The last of the Somoza dynasty, "Our Man" in Central America "resigned" on July 17th 1979 and fled to Miami. (He went into exile in Paraguay where he was assassinated in 1980...but, I digress.)
Of course I could not hear the bombs falling, the chop-chopping of helicopters overhead, the overwhelming blasts, or people screaming in Managua and everywhere else there was resistance that had to be wiped out. I was, after all, in California. But I felt it. Something in my collective unconscious surfaced over a series of days and, despite being safe in my home, I "felt", I was psychically plugged into, the ongoing human catastrophe deriving from greed, monomania, and shortsighted policies enacted to promote capitalism and pacify the people. I'd stop whatever I was doing, stare out the window of my house, listen... and I'd hear the chaos of bombardment.
Today, as 4,000 American troops - mostly Marines - bombard Helmand Province I have a similar experience. I can hear the noise of the helicopters, the screams, the chaos as families flee the onslaught.
Which mother is going to hear tomorrow that her son is wounded...or dead? Which mother is digging at her smashed brick and mud mortar house to free her child under the rubble? How is it that so few journalists are surfacing the realities behind this slaughter: the ongoing human catastrophe deriving from greed, monomania, and shortsighted policies to pacify the people, promote capitalism and lay the oil pipelines?
Meanwhile, today, the Iraqi people are "free" of American troops in their cities...and, for the first time in four decades, since Iraqi oil was nationalized, the oil corporations are bargaining for Iraqi oil.
Somoza is dead; long live Somoza.
Eerily, this picture looks a lot like the pix from the Vietnam war... you know the ones I mean... American troops crossing a rice paddy in that familiar formation?
Pete Seeger had it right when he sang, "when will they ever learn?" When will we ever learn?
Photo: David Guttenfelder/Associated Press
At that time I'd lived in the US for about two years and I didn't know much about US foreign policy in general or in Central America in particular. I knew enough, though, to recognize that The People - Nicaraguans - were getting it in the neck. And with American financed weaponry, and American trained troops.
Somoza's family had plundered Nicaragua for decades and still the Somozas wanted more; they wanted it all. They believed they were entitled to take it all, too.
The last of the Somoza dynasty, "Our Man" in Central America "resigned" on July 17th 1979 and fled to Miami. (He went into exile in Paraguay where he was assassinated in 1980...but, I digress.)
Of course I could not hear the bombs falling, the chop-chopping of helicopters overhead, the overwhelming blasts, or people screaming in Managua and everywhere else there was resistance that had to be wiped out. I was, after all, in California. But I felt it. Something in my collective unconscious surfaced over a series of days and, despite being safe in my home, I "felt", I was psychically plugged into, the ongoing human catastrophe deriving from greed, monomania, and shortsighted policies enacted to promote capitalism and pacify the people. I'd stop whatever I was doing, stare out the window of my house, listen... and I'd hear the chaos of bombardment.
Today, as 4,000 American troops - mostly Marines - bombard Helmand Province I have a similar experience. I can hear the noise of the helicopters, the screams, the chaos as families flee the onslaught.
Which mother is going to hear tomorrow that her son is wounded...or dead? Which mother is digging at her smashed brick and mud mortar house to free her child under the rubble? How is it that so few journalists are surfacing the realities behind this slaughter: the ongoing human catastrophe deriving from greed, monomania, and shortsighted policies to pacify the people, promote capitalism and lay the oil pipelines?
Meanwhile, today, the Iraqi people are "free" of American troops in their cities...and, for the first time in four decades, since Iraqi oil was nationalized, the oil corporations are bargaining for Iraqi oil.
Somoza is dead; long live Somoza.
Eerily, this picture looks a lot like the pix from the Vietnam war... you know the ones I mean... American troops crossing a rice paddy in that familiar formation?
Pete Seeger had it right when he sang, "when will they ever learn?" When will we ever learn?
Photo: David Guttenfelder/Associated Press
Sunday, June 21, 2009
Thursday, June 18, 2009
The VA’s highest standard of excellence and commitment. Not!
The Department of Veterans Affairs has known for months that non-sterile equipment used in its facilities may have exposed 10,000 veterans to HIV, Hepatitis, and other infections. These VA “mistakes” and “human error” involve endoscopic equipment used for colonoscopies and other procedures at hospitals in Miami, Murfreesboro, Tenn., and Augusta, Ga. – and date back to 2003.
After eight years in the US Army, three combat tours, and an honorable discharge could my son have been exposed to more fatal incompetence?
It was fatal incompetence that electrocuted a member of his elite military unit in the shower after KBR contractors wired that facility in Baghdad. It was fatal incompetence that saw National Guardsmen die of kidney failure while serving in Iraq. It was fatal incompetence – or worse – that saw football star Pat Tillman shot to death by someone in his Ranger unit. Indeed, it was fatal incompetence that began The War on Terror that has left a swathe of death and destruction around the world. And now this. Our sons and daughters, husbands and wives, uncles and aunts who came home from war in one piece may be condemned to debilitating diseases courtesy of the very facilities meant to heal them.
Nashville lawyer Michael Sheppard represents dozens of affected veterans and said it was “hard to describe the upheaval and injury this has caused innocent veterans. Some no longer trust or have confidence in the VA medical facilities and feel betrayed, misled, and ill-informed.” Others, he suggests, may avoid colonoscopies for fear of HIV or other infections.
As we know, HIV can take up to six months to show up in tests. So far, no one is admitting how long -- or how come -- the VA has been using improperly sanitized endoscopic equipment. Or whether the non-sterile equipment was isolated to three Southeast hospitals or is part of a wider problem. This fatal incompetence surfaced back in February so there are still veterans out there who are only now learning they are infected. Who have they unwittingly infected in the meantime?
I’m almost afraid to ask my son if the medical tests he did recently in Tennessee were carried out in Murfreesboro.
According to U.S. Rep. Phil Roe of Tennessee, the ranking Republican on the House Committee on Veterans Affairs oversight and investigation subcommittee, “Somebody is going to have to take responsibility.”
No kidding. But who? And what is the likely outcome?
Taking responsibility for the incompetence at Walter Reed Army Medical Center saw Army Maj. Gen. George Weightman fired in 2007…only to be replaced by Lt. Gen. Kevin Kiley who soldiers, their families, and veterans’ advocates complained already knew about WRAMC’s problems but did nothing to alleviate them.
Back then Defense Secretary Robert Gates vowed, “The care and welfare of our wounded men and women in uniform demand the highest standard of excellence and commitment that we can muster as a government. When …not met… I will insist on swift and direct corrective action and…accountability up the chain of command.”
Spokesman for the American Society for Gastrointestinal Endoscopy, Dr. David A. Greenwald, said that although the VA patients tested positive, they could have had the viruses for years -- and before the VA treated them -- without showing symptoms. “Probably all of the infections that are being reported are infections people already had.”
In other words, blame the victims.
Lip service will be given to swift and direct corrective action up the old chain of command that, as we’ve seen repeatedly, goes nowhere after the first public slap on the wrist of the designated fall guy. Meanwhile, infected veterans, their families, friends, and casual acquaintances unwittingly exposed will join the ranks of about 0.6 percent of the world's population infected with HIV.
How could it be that honorable people like my son and the sons and daughters of other “military moms” enlisted to fight for their country end up as WHO and UNAIDS statistics? According to these organizations, AIDS has killed more than 25 million people since December 1, 1981. In 2005 alone, AIDS claimed around 2.4–3.3 million lives, half a million of whom were children.
My son is eagerly planning his own family. What will become of him, and all of us who love and respect him, if he encountered “human error” and improperly sanitized endoscopic equipment – and at the VA of all places?
After eight years in the US Army, three combat tours, and an honorable discharge could my son have been exposed to more fatal incompetence?
It was fatal incompetence that electrocuted a member of his elite military unit in the shower after KBR contractors wired that facility in Baghdad. It was fatal incompetence that saw National Guardsmen die of kidney failure while serving in Iraq. It was fatal incompetence – or worse – that saw football star Pat Tillman shot to death by someone in his Ranger unit. Indeed, it was fatal incompetence that began The War on Terror that has left a swathe of death and destruction around the world. And now this. Our sons and daughters, husbands and wives, uncles and aunts who came home from war in one piece may be condemned to debilitating diseases courtesy of the very facilities meant to heal them.
Nashville lawyer Michael Sheppard represents dozens of affected veterans and said it was “hard to describe the upheaval and injury this has caused innocent veterans. Some no longer trust or have confidence in the VA medical facilities and feel betrayed, misled, and ill-informed.” Others, he suggests, may avoid colonoscopies for fear of HIV or other infections.
As we know, HIV can take up to six months to show up in tests. So far, no one is admitting how long -- or how come -- the VA has been using improperly sanitized endoscopic equipment. Or whether the non-sterile equipment was isolated to three Southeast hospitals or is part of a wider problem. This fatal incompetence surfaced back in February so there are still veterans out there who are only now learning they are infected. Who have they unwittingly infected in the meantime?
I’m almost afraid to ask my son if the medical tests he did recently in Tennessee were carried out in Murfreesboro.
According to U.S. Rep. Phil Roe of Tennessee, the ranking Republican on the House Committee on Veterans Affairs oversight and investigation subcommittee, “Somebody is going to have to take responsibility.”
No kidding. But who? And what is the likely outcome?
Taking responsibility for the incompetence at Walter Reed Army Medical Center saw Army Maj. Gen. George Weightman fired in 2007…only to be replaced by Lt. Gen. Kevin Kiley who soldiers, their families, and veterans’ advocates complained already knew about WRAMC’s problems but did nothing to alleviate them.
Back then Defense Secretary Robert Gates vowed, “The care and welfare of our wounded men and women in uniform demand the highest standard of excellence and commitment that we can muster as a government. When …not met… I will insist on swift and direct corrective action and…accountability up the chain of command.”
Spokesman for the American Society for Gastrointestinal Endoscopy, Dr. David A. Greenwald, said that although the VA patients tested positive, they could have had the viruses for years -- and before the VA treated them -- without showing symptoms. “Probably all of the infections that are being reported are infections people already had.”
In other words, blame the victims.
Lip service will be given to swift and direct corrective action up the old chain of command that, as we’ve seen repeatedly, goes nowhere after the first public slap on the wrist of the designated fall guy. Meanwhile, infected veterans, their families, friends, and casual acquaintances unwittingly exposed will join the ranks of about 0.6 percent of the world's population infected with HIV.
How could it be that honorable people like my son and the sons and daughters of other “military moms” enlisted to fight for their country end up as WHO and UNAIDS statistics? According to these organizations, AIDS has killed more than 25 million people since December 1, 1981. In 2005 alone, AIDS claimed around 2.4–3.3 million lives, half a million of whom were children.
My son is eagerly planning his own family. What will become of him, and all of us who love and respect him, if he encountered “human error” and improperly sanitized endoscopic equipment – and at the VA of all places?
Fans...
Thanks to all who read this blog!
Especially my Extra Big Fan Club in....Plymouth, UK! Good to see such devotion! Flitwick too!
Hmmm, love the Internet!
Especially my Extra Big Fan Club in....Plymouth, UK! Good to see such devotion! Flitwick too!
Hmmm, love the Internet!
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