History Friday

I'm thinking that I might institute a new feature on this blog; "History Friday." After all, amid all the insanity, despair, and dogmatic self-imolation of modern politics, warfare, and diplomacy it might be fun to remind ourselves that we were ever this screwed up.

Each Friday until I get bored with it I'll post a link to an interesting example of political bollocks from our past. Today's "History Friday" offering takes us back to 1973, the year of my birth, and the height of the Yom Kippur/Ramadan War between Israel and their Arab neighbours. The Soviets and the United States stood on the brink of plunging into this regional conflict...

Nixon 'too drunk' for Cold War crisis chat

Good Pondering on "Tom Paine"

Always been a fan of tompaine.com; any website named after the most famous radical from my home county in England was bound to catch my attention and it rarely disappoints.

Anyway, Tom Paine writer Richard Blow has an interesting ponder about smart writing and attack journalism is this piece, titled: Sizing Up Sontag .

Enjoy.
wisdomweasel@hotmail.com

Wedding Tip #1: Don't throw rice, throw chaff.

American pilots have a real thing against weddings: 2 years ago they blow up a village in Afghanistan for celebrating nuptials and now they are at it again, shooting up a bridal party in Iraq. (As always, here's the outstanding BBC.)

Of course, there is no mea culpa from the Pentagon, just the usual ass-covering and fudging of details that has become second nature in this litigation-obsessed country. Just playing the board game "Sorry" is considered an admission of guilt and can get you sued over here, so don't hold your breath waiting for an American corporation or branch of government to apologise.

Mind you, I'm getting ahead of myself here and not withstanding the US military's long and bloodstained history of accidentally destroying the wrong thing (Iranian airliners, Afghan weddings, Chinese embassies, Canadian infantrymen training outside Kabul, British RAF Tornado aircraft*, countless numbers of their allies in many wars, Sudanese pharmaceutical factories, Japansese trawlers, and so on)the alleged wedding might well have been a legit target. To quote American Brigadier Mark Kimmitt:
""Bad people have parties too." Yes, Brigadier Kimmitt, yes they do; usually the best ones at that.

I think it is incumbent on me to offer advice to the good people planning parties and weddings in the greater Mesopotamian region. You've taken care of the invitations, you've invited your neighbors so that the loud uluation Fatima always ends up doing after midnight isn't going to be a problem, and you have used your connections in Jordan to score a couple of cases of Old Uncle Hashemite's Halal Non-Alcoholic Whisky Style Beverage. The very next thing you should do is demand that guests, however gleeful, should refrain from firing their weapons in the air.

Yes, I know the firing of guns at weddings and parties is a long standing Bedouin tradition and it has even been adopted in many parts of the United States. However, you might want to factor in modern attitudes. In the west, it has become common to stop throwing paper confetti as it is messy and environmentally unfriendly; many people substitute bird seed. In the middle east and central Asia, it seems that joyfully discharging a full clip from an AK-47 into the air invites missile attack from a US helicopter. Therefore, if something must be fired in the air, why not substitute Nerf balls?

It is an awful thing, to have to alter the way you live in order that the people who are allegedly in your country for your right to be free don't kill you. I know it is an affront to your ancient and proud culture. However, bear this in mind; many American aviators are from the Air National Guard. The Air National Guard in Texas considered George W. Bush to be adequately qualified to fly lethal warplanes. Do you want to gamble your life on the chance that your neighborhood patrolling American attack aircraft pilot is more sensitive to your traditions than George W.? Do you want to chance it and see if he stayed awake during the briefing on Arab culture? Do you want to be on the recieving end of a refusal to apologise?
wisdomweasel@hotmail.com

*One of the few targets the much-hyped Patriot missile has ever been able to hit, making the USA safe from a repeat of the War of 1812.

Useful Resources from the United States Congress, of All Places

Thanks to an email newsletter I get from the Federation of American Scientists' government secrecy project, I occasionally get tipped off to some heavy but interesting reading. A case in point:

Detention of American Citizens as Enemy Combatants: A Report by the Congressional Research Service.

I highly recommend subscribing to the FAS Secrecy newsletter. For more info:

Secrecy News is written by Steven Aftergood and published by the
Federation of American Scientists.

To SUBSCRIBE to Secrecy News, send email to
secrecy_news-request@lists.fas.org
with "subscribe" in the body of the message.

Secrecy News is archived at:
www.fas.org/sgp/news/secrecy/index.html

Pretty Vacant? The Strange Phenomena Of Conservative Punk.

Residents of North London have recently been on the phone to paranormal investigators, complaining of an impassioned yet atonal moaning coming from a nearby cemetery. I can exclusively reveal that the ghostly rumblings are a result of Joe Strummer spinning in his grave.

A recent story on the BBC news website points to the cause of his discomfort. Apparently there now exists in the United States such a creature as the “conservative punk”. The culture wars have reached such a point that now social trends are consuming their own young, with horrific results. I have to admit that this put me off my stride for a minute or two; after all it’s supposed to be the boomer hippies who become turncoat Republicans. Strange paradigm shifts happen all the time in politics; Marxists become supply-siders, liberal hawks become neo-cons, and George W. Bush turns losing an election into a ticket to the White House. For me personally however, this one is a doozy.

At this point, some of you might point out that The Stranglers supported Margaret Thatcher. To you, I say this; The Stranglers were crap. Some others might say that a life long Republican lurked among the Ramones. Proof I suggest that self-loathing, male prostitution, and rampant glue sniffing does have it’s down side.

Although it might seem like the antithesis of punk to suggest that someone is “doing it wrong”, the words “conservative” and “punk” no more belong in the same sentence as “Rumsfeld” and “keeps his job” do. I know that one of the unwritten laws of punk is to shock, but this is taking things out of the realm of the theater of the absurd and putting them in to plain ridiculous. It’s a bit hard to proclaim that “I am the antichrist” when you support the policies of the Christian fundamentalist Right.

Conservatism as currently formulated is all about obedience, acceptance of norms, and the forcible imposition of one’s will, be it on the Iraqis overseas or a woman’s body at home. Punk on the other hand is about rebellion, challenging blind authority, and the expression of individualism. It would be exclusionary to say that conservatives have no right to like punk music, if only because their own musicians are such a sorry lot (fancy cutting a rug to a bit of Gary Numan, Phil Collins, or a huge swath of commercial country music, anyone?) but to attempt to misappropriate a slice of popular culture so intrinsically at odds with their politics is breathtaking.

I’m not one to indulge in petty personal invective so I’ll refrain from pointing out that most teen and twenty something right-wingers are pompous, friendless, and sexually maladjusted twats. These people are the Glen Matlocks of popular culture. However, just picture what might have happened if this conservative punk movement had been in at the start of the phenomena. I’m having a great time picturing them pogoing in chinos, gobbing down the front of each other’s button down shirts, and shouting, “turn it down!” at the stage. A selection of classic punk recordings might have been radically different too:

“Contra” by the Clash
“God Save the Queen (With no Sarcasm Intended)”
“Teenage Kicks (As a Form of Abstinence)”
“I Wanna Be Sedated (Hook Me Up Limbaugh)”
“Factory in Cambodia”

Oh God, please stop me; the nightmare of conservative punks has turned me temporarily into Weird Al Yankovic.

Supporting Bush might well mean no future but I’ve always taken Johnny Rotten’s nihilistic ranting to be a primal scream against entrenched power, not a celebration of it. Since the outset, punk has rejected some of the more woolly aspects of political liberalism but to assume that should lead to an embrace of polar opposite right wing values is to follow a logical blind alley. The punk ethos is more akin to the words of 17th Century English radical Oliver Cromwell, who proclaimed that “I do not know what I would have, but I know what I would not.”

Is this a sign of the apocalypse? I’m not sure yet, but don’t be surprised if Karl Rove morphs a picture of Sid and Nancy onto the deck of that infamous aircraft carrier for use in future campaign commercials.
wisdomweasel@hotmail.com

De Oppresso Libre?

This blog thing is supposed to be fun and light-hearted. My intention was to establish a place where I could vent my spleen and release the steam valve in my head. I was going to amuse myself by skewering politicians of all shades on both sides of the Atlantic. Someday soon I’ll be able to set aside the grave and horrific news that clogs the airwaves and newspapers and pick on the less consequential things in life, like Mel Gibson. But over in Iraq real life has become as po-faced and sadomasochistic as The Passion of the Christ and the gags are few and far between. So bear with me a while, as this time I’ve run out of reasons to procrastinate and I’m plunging back into the torture story.

As I guessed in my first post on the subject, the exposure of the horror and betrayal in Abu Ghraib Prison was just the scab on top of the whole festering sore. Despite the best efforts to pass off the Iraq torture allegations as the twisted work of a “few bad apples” (remember how wholesale corporate fraud was dismissed as “a few bad apples?”) it appears that the institutional rot might have taken the form of orders, direct or implied, that sanctioned the mistreatment of prisoners. The vast majority of service personnel currently in Iraq did not perpetrate the abuses. It must be noted however that the vast majority did not have contact with the debased, cowed, and dehumanized prisoners that ended up as the playthings of MPs and mercenaries.

While our appointed jailers in Abu Ghraib amused themselves with shooting the Baghdad version of Girls Gone Wild, forced sodomy, rape, beatings, and murder it appears that their twisted pursuits were common at other detention centers too. This points to at best a willful ignorance by command of the “softening” techniques employed by service personnel in furtherance of orders and policies designed to create pliable interrogation subjects.

At this point it is important to note that there are two intertwined yet distinct types of abuse taking place in Iraq. Firstly, there is the brute, unthinking and obscene exaggerations of hazing undertaken by the guards. More sinister is the more considered torture: the nudity, the hooding, the binding in painful positions, the death threats, and so on. This is a prelude to interrogation and is carefully designed to make a prisoner willing to talk. The Communist Vietnamese did this to American pilots. The Nazis did it to many of their captives too.

Apologists (and there is no other word for their ilk) for these abuses like to point out that this is a war and that war is a dirty business. They say that the Iraqi insurgents and Al Qadea show no mercy, and therefore are not deserving of the protections of a civil society or international treaty.

There are real problems with this smug High School debate champ argument:

1) 70-80% of Iraqi detainees have been wrongfully arrested (in the estimation of US military intelligence.)
2) You can’t have it both ways. Bush declared the war over more than a year ago. Which one is it? An occupation, or a war?
3) We cannot win a fight against barbarism and hate by encouraging barbarism and hate.
4) Isn’t it precisely because we believe our values and protections are worth defending that we are fighting these wars?

Do you realize that despite immense provocation, the allied forces that liberated the concentration camps in 1945 did not beat, abuse, torture, or slaughter the guards they captured? Furthermore, those men were mostly conscripts, not the supposed professional soldiery we have now. Their leaders, from field officers to four stars, understood that righteous anger is all the more powerful when restrained. Why did they get it, and our modern military doesn’t?

The president says that these abuses do not reflect America. Well, to a point. In fact this torture reflects an America, one that co-exists with the kindness, friendliness, and compassion. This is the America that allows the suspension of hard-won international protections in Guantanamo and similar abuses to Abu Graib in Afghanistan. The one that allowed the School of the Americas train generations of South and Central American oppressors. The America that looks the other way as its corporations hire thugs to break unions, beat and assassinate activists, and exploit child labor in the developing world. The America that refuses to apologise for anything that adversely affects fellow humans. The in your face America that rubs the noses of the less fortunate in the dirt. The America that through both unthinking and cynical action allows terrorists to establish the popular support that astounds and offends us so often.

The tragedy is that none of this had to happen. If only the administration had rallied to the values that truly inform the constitution rather than take a “the ends justify the means” approach we would be having an easier time pulling the thorns from our hide. Simply, this torture would have been less likely to happen (compare to the concentration camp example above) if our troops had been fully appraised of the philosophies behind their rights and the government had rallied us to core principles rather than the mall.

In 1941, not long before the USA was forced into the Second World War, President Roosevelt outlined four freedoms that made democracy a system worth fighting for: freedom from fear, freedom of speech, freedom from want, and freedom of worship. Right there, in twelve words, is the bill of rights and the constitution beautifully summarized. How many of these essential freedoms have our ill-considered policies since 9/11 delivered?

Man, oh man.

Good thing they don’t allow gays in the US military, otherwise before you know it they’d be raping the male inmates of Abu Ghraib prison. Oh, wait a minute…

Actually, for a rather brilliant opinion on this whole disgraceful affair, check out the Army Times

The Fiery Furnaces

My pal Nik is tour managing this lot: The Fiery Furnaces. Check and see if they are coming to a town near you.
Think The White Stripes meets Howling Wolf meets TRex...

Much Needed Relief In An Awful Time

One of my inspirations to start this blog was my old pal Dave "Don't Call me Shirley" Stelfox. Dave is an outstanding journalist, expert on all forms of dance music, and a gourmet gourmand. His facinating noodlings on dance hall, east London, and how to cook salmon can be found at World of Stelfox.

He also has a healthy lust for Ce'Cile and a much darker thing for the Phil Collins/Philip Bailey duet "Easy Lover."

Check him out: he is a genuine human being, this Dave.

Disney contact information.

What A Mickey Mouse Affair.

As most of you probably know, Disney is blocking the release of documentarian Michael Moore's new film "Fahrenheit 911", which Moore claims highlights the links between the Bush Dynasty and the Houses of Saud and Bin Laden.

Moore is undoubtedly as biased as me when it comes to politics, but that shouldn't preclude his film being offered to the general public. If overt bias was a means by which films and other media were blocked from release, there would be no Fox News, no talk radio, and no film by Governor Arnold featuring "teah-rah-rists", as he pronounces the word.

Disney claims they are trying to stay neutral and above the political fray, which is odd for such a politically active company (see this Miami Herald story). Even if this excuse can be taken at face value, its still pathetic. (More on Disney politics from Tompaine.com)

Therefore I decided to write to George Mitchell, former senator from Maine (where I live) who now serves as chair of Disney. As I find out more about this (such as the optimum place for you to send your own letter) I'll post it to the blog. In the meantime, here's the letter:

March 7, 2004

Dear Senator Mitchell,

If we in Maine were to suddenly become temperamentally inclined to idolize anyone, you would be our first choice. For us, you represent all that is great about this state: independence, fairness, and our right to speak our minds, however unpalatable our opinions might be to the powerful. I would hate to think that we are going to have to assign those attributes to you in the past tense, but if you don’t come out in defense of Michael Moore’s right to express his opinions by releasing the film “Fahrenheit 911” you will leave us with no choice.

Nobody of sound judgment is going to equate Mr. Moore’s film with official Disney corporate policy or opinion. After all, we gave you the benefit of the doubt when Disney put Rush Limbaugh on their ESPN network. Most decent Americans won’t ascribe partisan bias to a movie studio based on what one filmmaker has produced. We all know that Mr. Moore has an ideological position that rejects the policies of President Bush (a position, it must be noted, that was shared by over half the electorate in the 2000 election) but don’t we deserve the chance to see for ourselves what he has to say and make our own minds up as to the validity of his position? I am deeply saddened that you, of all people, are chair of a company that seems so afraid of the first amendment.

The President so opposed by Mr. Moore has involved us in two wars in three years supposedly in defense of our freedoms, including the right of free expression. American service people have died in these wars, fighting regimes and ideologies that sought to censor and ban ideas and debate. Surely Disney does not want to act like the Taliban, silencing artists because they offer up uncomfortable, non-conformist work?

If film studios had taken this attitude throughout the history of the movies, MASH, All The President’s Men, and many other politically challenging films would never have seen the light of day. Is it because Mr. Moore’s film is non-fiction, because he has already won an Oscar for asking difficult questions, and because his books shoot to the top of the best seller lists as soon as they released that Disney wants to lock the prints of “Fahrenheit 911” in the vault? Are you worried that his film might actually engage people rather than just passively wash over them?

Disney has presented me with a simple decision by this action. I’m going to miss Jeopardy, NYPD Blue, Nightline and ESPN. I’m going to miss watching all those great films your various studios produce. I won’t be coming to Disneyworld anytime soon. It’ll take some research, but I have no choice but to avoid your publishing imprints and TV network advertisers. In short, you have lost a customer until Disney reverses its craven refusal to release Mr. Moore’s film. Furthermore, I will be actively encouraging my friends and neighbors to spend their money with less cowardly companies.

Senator Mitchell, I doubt that this will actually reach your desk. The day is long gone apparently when heads of corporations actually cared to listen to their customers, and sad as it is, maybe even you have succumbed to this complacency. However, to whoever is reading this and either replying to or ignoring this in your name, please consider this. In his Oscar acceptance speech Mr. Moore decried the fact that “We live in fictional times.” When he wins at Cannes this year, or when he wins his next Academy award, I hope he doesn’t have to add “with fictional constitutional protections” to his sorrowful litany.

Disturbing Times

Last week two sets of serious allegations about the treatment of prisoners in Iraq emerged, one for each side of the Atlantic. Last Wednesday, CBS News broke the story in the United States that American military personnel had engaged in systematic mental and physical torture of Iraqi prisoners. Then on Friday night the English newspaper the Daily Mirror ran a story of British soldiers clubbing handcuffed Iraqis with their rifles, then urinating on them (there is a debate raging in Britain over the veracity of those photos. The BBC has good coverage of the issue: Army photos: Claims and rebuttals)

Both stories were accompanied by incontrovertible photographic evidence of these assaults carried out by coalition troops (apparently taken for the album back home by the grinning perpetrators) and denunciations from the respective political and military hierarchies in Washington and London. We are told that those who indulged in these behaviors were “rogue elements” and “a disgrace to the uniform” and that they will be vigorously dealt with by the court martial process.

I certainly agree that those responsible are reprehensible human beings and I applaud the rigor of the condemnations from our leaders. Exactly how “rogue” these actions were will no doubt be uncovered by the course of the investigation, although one of the accused American NCOs has been claiming that the mistreatment of prisoners resulted from direct orders given by shadowy civilian military contractors (less hermetically known as mercenaries.) How widespread the knowledge of these abuses reached up the official chain of command will hopefully emerge during the courts martial.

However the question must be asked, loudly and often, as to how these professional soldiers came to think that these assaults were acceptable. It is common practice to demonize an enemy before battle, as it makes the killing that will take place easier to bear psychologically. Once an enemy is captured or has surrendered however, both honor and the Geneva conventions dictate humane treatment. Given that one of the ostensible reasons for the coalition’s presence in Iraq is to fly the banner of democratic values, it should pain all of us that this vileness was allowed to emerge from the ranks of what both sides of the pond are told are the “best, most professional armies in the world.” The trouble is that while only a few “rogue” elements have seen fit to act on their disgusting, inhuman impulses there is a permissive culture towards brutalism in both armies.

I support the troops. I come from a military family, and I know first hand the sacrifices made by service personnel in return for lousy pay, keyed-up boredom, and moments of high danger. But I also bear in mind the maxim expressed by the Duke of Wellington on the eve of the Battle of Waterloo: “I do not know what our men do to the French, but they scare the hell out of me.” Fighting units and their support arms (military police, etc) have to be brutal, savage combatants. Yet, believing as I do that every human being can conceive of at least two separate lines of thought simultaneously, they also have to be professional enough to put the brakes on. The best army units apply force within a disciplined continuum.

The American and British troops serving in Iraq are under a microscope; their individual actions and inactions can have an impact on the post-war landscape of the entire region. One photograph of an Iraqi humiliated and beaten could be the trigger for the next Mohammed Atta. Nobody is perfect, but every soldier knows that the treatment of prisoners and civilians is not subject to improvisation as clear laws and rules do exist.

The problem might be that the coalition troops do not see the Iraqis as a liberated population but rather as a defeated enemy. When an army allows its troops to refer to all Arabs (enemy soldier, guerilla/terrorist, civilian, and ally alike) as “camel jockeys” and “towel heads” the dehumanization that leads to humiliation, casual hooliganism, and torture has begun. The inability to control the basest behaviors of soldiers smacks of poor leadership and an institutional failure.

I have little patience with those who are ready to draw historically dubious comparisons between Iraq and Vietnam after a scant 13 months. However, there is one aspect of that dismal Southeast Asian conflict that does seem relevant to these abuses in Iraq, and its one that has been back in the news as an aspect of the presidential campaign.

Back in 1971, John Kerry testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee about abuses, torture, and crimes committed by US servicemen in Vietnam. As decorated combat veterans of that conflict, Kerry and his colleagues in Vietnam Veterans Against The War were able to give eye- witness accounts of the abuses, and backed them up in repeated press interviews, including one infamous encounter on Meet the Press.

I say infamous because on April 18, 2004 on the same show, Tim Russett decided to take Kerry to task for his testimony 23 years previously. Suggesting that “a lot” of Kerry’s allegations had been discredited, Russett tried to hold the Democratic contender’s feet to the fire and cast doubt on his suitability for the Oval Office. To his discredit, Kerry vacillated and waffled rather than stand by the courageous actions of his youth.

The unpleasant and unavoidable truth, highlighted by Kerry all those years ago, is that torture and human rights abuses were both prolific and horrific in Vietnam. This has been backed up by hours and hours of testimony, memoir, and confession. Most recently, The Toledo Blade of Ohio won a Pulitzer Prize this year for its illumination of a campaign of unrelenting human rights abuses by a specific army unit over a seven-month period.

The fact that similar allegations are now emerging in Iraq suggest that people like Russett are both in the wrong and doing the world a grave disservice. By attacking the whistle blowers for their courageous stand against inhuman behavior rather than turning the spotlight on the complacency, permissiveness, and institutional brutality that leads to this torture they risk perpetuating this pattern of abuse that has damaging effects far beyond those on the immediate perpetrators and victims.

It is a damning indictment of America’s failure to learn from the disaster of Vietnam that these abuses have been taking place in Iraq. Maybe we should think twice before trying to forcibly export our brand of democracy, given that we seem fundamentally incapable of mature examination of our own weaknesses.

George W. Bush famously claimed “they hate us for our freedoms.” No Mr. President, they hate us for our arrogance, our casual xenophobia, our ignorance, and our callow refusal to examine the institutional failures that lead to the torture of prisoners.

Write to me: wisdomweasel@hotmail.com