I’m at a Loss for Words

In a week in which it comes to light that President George W. Bush revealed that God told him to invade Iraq–with all that implies–and former Repulican presidential candidate–and pretender to the vice-presidential slot along with John McCain–Mike Huckabee made a supposedly jocular comment in the middle of a speech to the American Rifle Association to the effect that his Democratic opponent, Barak Obama, was taking cover as someone had him in their sights, I am at a loss for words.

“Sinister?” “Grotesque?” “Macabre?” “Surreal?” “Bizarre?” “Perverse?” “Ominous?” “Sordid?” “Infamous?”

None of these words seems grand enough to express the magnitude of the villainy at large in the United States of America these days, villainy which continuously stretches our credulity beyond the breaking point.

I cannot make a comment which is commensurate with the circumstances. If I were a Buddhist monk I would immolate myself. But I’m not a monk unfortunately. I’m not even a Buddhist.

If I were a poet I would write:

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

But I’m not a poet. Besides nobody listened to Yeats, either.

So I give up. I’m at a loss for words.

Winter Soldiers Left Out in the Media Cold

Last March 13-16 some 250 American veterans of the Iraq and Afghan occupations gathered at the National Labor College in Silver Spring, MD for the “Winter Soldier - Iraq and Afghanistan” conference, a replica of a similar event which took place in Detroit in 1971, during the Vietnam War. This recent weekend was devoted to the Iraq and Afghanistan veterans’ first-hand testimonies regarding the events which they both witnessed and participated in during their tours of duty in those two countries, events which included abuses and atrocities from the destruction of homes to the cold-blooded murder of innocent civilians.

What seems remarkable to me in all of this is not that there were U.S. abuses, even atrocities, in Iraq. We suspected that all along. What boggles the mind is that this mass confession by more than 200 American veterans, which took place in Silver Spring, MD, not 25 miles up Georgia Ave. NW from Washington DC, received virtually no coverage in the American mainstream press. It’s as if the “normal” media, the papers that most people read, the TV news programs that most people watch, had universally boycotted this uncomfortable news event. Because a group of American soldiers, “our boys,” sitting in front of cameras and microphones recounting first-hand experiences of cold-blooded murder of Iraqi civilians, however uncomfortable, is certainly news. But CNN was not there, nor ABC, nor NBC. In order for American citizens to learn about these events they had to read reports from the alternate Internet news websites such as alternet.org, truthout.com, Democracy Now, The Real News, or Indy Media, or through the coverage of foreign news organizations who sent teams to Maryland to cover the event.

Ex Super Power? Can This Be True?

Asia Times Online published an article on May 10, 2008 entitled “An oil-addicted ex-superpower.” The American author, Michael T. Klare, Five Colleges professor of Peace and World Security Studies, makes a chillingly convincing case for the fact that the United States’ massive borrowing to pay for its oil habit has already cost them their superpower status.

The fact is, says Klare, America’s wealth and power has long rested on the abundance of cheap petroleum. The United States was, for a long time, the world’s leading producer of oil, supplying its own needs while generating a healthy surplus for export.

From the end of World War II through the height of the Cold War, the US claim to superpower status rested on a vast sea of oil.

But those times are long past, according to Klare.

The Art of Democracy

U.S. Artists Mount Countrywide Art Protest

A couple of fine-art printmakers and veteran art activists have recently started a very interesting politiical ball rolling in the United States. Stephen Fredericks, of the New York Society of Etchers, and Art Hazelwood, longtime member of the California Society of Printmakers, have founded a movement–which they call a “national coalition”–of artists who will be mounting and participating in a series of political art exhibitions this fall.

Fredericks and Hazelwood declare in the introduction to the Art of Democracy website: “We chose this time when the nation is particularly politically aware to bring into focus overlooked and under-represented voices and views on the state of politics, and the state of democracy today.” Let’s let them tell their own story.

Gringo Baghdad: Luxury Hotels and Golf

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree :
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.

So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round :
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree ;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

Pentagon Plan Re-Defines Surrealism
According to an article in this morning’s Guardian, the Pentagon has plans to emulate Samuel Taylor Coleridge and convert the Baghdad Green Zone into a stately pleasure dome with the new billion-dollar American Embassy surrounded by “fashion boutiques, swanky cafés, and shiny glass office towers.” There are even luxury hotels and a golf course in their plans.

“With countries, just like people, it’s easy to let the best of yourself slip away.” Bruce Springsteen

Who is Pepe Escobar, Anyway?

Journalist Pepe Escobar is one of those remarkable Brazilians like the film director Fernando Meirelles or the photographer Sebastiao Salgado, rich in both human and professional qualities. In fact, all three of them are related to Sao Paulo. The first two were born in that city and Salgado studied economics at the university there.

Escobar was one of the first journalists to reach Kabul after the Taliban’s retreat, and more recently he has explored and reported from Iraq, Iran, Central Asia, US and China. He currently writes a column called The Roving Eye for Asia Times Online and is a correspondent and news analyst for The Real News Network. Escobar is the author of two books, Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007) and Red Zone Blues: A Snapshot of Baghdad During the Surge (Nimble Books, 2007).

On August 30, 2001, less than two weeks before September 11, he wrote a prophetic column for Asia Times Online entitled: “Get Osama! Now! Or Else…“

Here’s a link to the best of Escobar’s columns in Asia Times Online. There’s lots of excellent reporting here dating back to July, 2004.

“Well, some countries seem to be able to bomb others whenever they feel like it.”

This video is The Real News Network’s Pepe Escobar commenting on the Israeli bombing of Syria on September 6 of last year, an event which went uninvestigated by the mainstream Western media.

The Presidential Candidates As Polymorphous Panderers

Who and What the U.S. Presidential Candidates Must Pander to in Order to Get Elected:

• To extreme right-wing Christians, who don’t require reasons. They have the agenda of their angry God. They’ve formed a group called Christians United for Israel (CUFI). One of their spokesmen, Pastor John Hagee recently declared:“The United States must join Israel in a pre-emptive military strike against Iran to fulfill God’s plan for both Israel and the West… a biblically prophesied end-time confrontation with Iran, which will lead to the Rapture, Tribulation […] and [the] Second Coming of Christ.”

  That is to say, they want to bring on the Apocalypse, which would expedite their own ascent into heaven and send their enemies straight to hell.

How to Produce a Disoriented Citizen

In case you were wondering, here’s how to produce a thoroughly disoriented citizen:

• Tell him he’s superior to people from other countries.
• Put a gun in his hand.
• Flag-wave him to death.
• Repeat more, louder lies.
• Distract him with hard-core consumption.
• Make money his measure of all things.
• Make false promises.
• Bribe him.
• Frighten him.
• Isolate him.
• Banalize him.
• Send his children to war.
• Re-engineer the electoral process to as to install low men in high places.
• Tell him torture is necessary.
• Feed him false philosophy, empty values.
• Offer him venal role models.
• Convince him that speculation is “business.”
• Convince him that if he’s not rich there’s something wrong with him.
• Fill him up with that old-time religion.
• Imprison him.
• Steal his constitutional rights.

That should do it.