Tag Archives: Casualties

PPJPC condemns US bombing of Somalia

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Instead of admitting that the US invasions and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan are immoral violations of international law, the US government has extended their war into more and more regions of the world. The Pikes Peak Justice and Peace Commission opposes the most recent US bombing strikes in Somalia. These bombings are acts of war that have not been discussed or voted upon by anyone in the US congress. Further, they follow US government approval and encouragement of Ethiopia’s invasion of Somalia, in itself a violation of international law.

The American people are asked to believe that only ‘terrorists’ are being killed and injured when the US conducts bombing raids in countries such as Somalia and Pakistan. In fact, the US is killing many innocent civilians and those casualties are being considered acceptable collateral damage by the Pentagon and the Bush Adminstration. We do not agree.

There is no way to pinpoint targets without unacceptable civilian bloodshed, especially when American forces do not even speak the local language, as is most often the case. We must not sit by and passively accept the resulting carnage without raising our voices in protest and condemnation. Essentially, the American people are being asked by their government to condone a policy of political assassinations that convicts others without trial or jury, and also maims and kills scores of innocent bystanders.

We at Pikes Peak Justice and Peace Commission reject these illegal acts of war and call on all our elected representatives to help stop this continual warmaking. We encourage everybody to do what they can to actively oppose the US military intervention in the Horn of Africa. Stop the bloodshed, do not feed into it. Do not encourage regional and ethnic conflict.

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What Bush and Osama together have taught the world

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September 11 was important in world history, because Osama bin Laden taught the world that resistance to US domination was most effectively fought on US soil, and not the soil of the world’s oppressed nations.

Seems simple enough, but most victims of US foreign policy up to then had fought back directly against their own US propped-up puppet governments. Osama bin Laden globalized the resistance to US imperial policies by taking the fight to US soil. His message? Not to let D.C. fight the war solely on your home territories.

The 9/11 attacks might have not alone taught the world much of anything, if there had not been the Bush Adminstration team in office. That was the genius of Osama. He knew how elite American arrogance would most likely respond, being of elite lineage himself. He knew that the US ruling class would tend to try to destroy this new resistance against their world domination by using pure and total violence, much as the ruling class in Osama’s native Saudi Arabia does when threatened. But pure violence is dangerous since it tends to overheat like a nuclear meltdown occurring within the core of a reactor.

At present glance, it appears that nothing much has changed. The response of the Bush Administration to 9/11 was to up the level of violence against the peoples of the Third World states of Afghanistan, then Iraq, and next Lebanon No new attacks have occurred on American soil meanwhile. And as usual, there have been yet new hundreds of thousands of victims of the US military and its ME Frankenstein, the state of Israel’s IDF. The European governments have done their part, as junior cheerleaders of the US mandated blood bath outside their own continent.

But what will be the ultimate cost that the American people will eventually pay for sitting by and silently allowing its corporate-run government to go bezerk after 9/11? I talk not of the trillions of dollars in national debt that is being run off, but rather of the fact that the Bush Adminstration has practically guaranteed that Osama’s message did take root in the populations of the world.

Osama said let’s start a dirty war of attrition against the US rulers on their home soil. Osama had the ability to give the lesson that this was the Achille’s heel of US imperialism, but he didn’t have the organization to do much more than just explode one big bonfire or two for the passive and impoverished crowd he was trying to wake up to see. Bush has now given this previously dormant crowd the knowledge of the technique to create one, two, a thousand mini or maximum 9/11s in the years ahead.

It does not involve airports nor planes, And the world is more awake now. It is probably only a matter of weeks, or months at best, before the war stirs once again on the US mainland soil, but this time with newer techniques learned on Afghan and Iraqi soil. The ultimate price to be paid by Americans for their acceptance of this carnage, is that the carnage will most likely hit our soil once again, just like it hit New York previously.

So let’s look some at the new techniques to wage war on American soil. Let’s look at the Improvised Explosive Device (IED), which is close cousin to the cluster bomb. The IED has accounted for about 1/3 of the US casualties in Iraq. The components of an IED are cheap and its materials easily found. And let us not think that only Muslims can use these devices within the US. Anybody can.

Ex- US soldiers can come back and construct them. Hispanics tired of the US messing with their countries can put them together. Gang members trafficking in illegal substances and human flesh can do the same. That’s what a dirty war is all about. The weak use weaker weapons against the more powerful, but weapons they do begin to use. Iraq plus 9/11 = the ability and desire by yet more people, to use cheap weapons against the US government on US soil. Bush has given that little shove that was needed to make Osama’s lesson to the world more effective.

These IEDs are what has been giving the Iraqi resistance its sharpening edge. But where might this dirty war of attrition begin to play out in yet another battlefield? See William S. Lind’s commentary, The Boomerang Effect that shows how one scenario most likely might occur.

Osama taught us that what goes around comes around. Americans have just yet to learn that lesson, though the Bush Klan is determined that we certainly will. Dubya, Dick, and Donald helped the world find the most hard to stop weapon that could be used against the American people. The IED. The lesson was learned in Iraq, but the whole world has been watching.

Comparing the death tolls

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In the aftermath of bombings and indiscriminate attacks in Iraq which reached record numbers on Thanksgiving, I read that the combined Iraqi civilian casualties raised the Baghdad death toll to 202. For the day. For Baghdad. The count starts anew each day.
 
Meanwhile the US soldier death toll is 50 and climbing, for the month. For all of Iraq. Why the differing units of measure? Why not consider weekly totals for both Americans and Iraqis, to facillitate comparison?

I know something’s wrong on the grocery shelf when the price of some items is given per ounce, while a similar commodity is described per pound. Somebody doesn’t want the price comparison weighed, and I haven’t yet taken a calculator with me to discover who.

Why this discrepancy of value for human lives? I’m thankful at least we are new counting the Iraqi lives lost, although the numbers are themselves distorted. US forces are conducting more air attacks where it’s more difficult to measure the casualties. Won’t somebody come out and say it, we care quite a bit less about Iraqi lives compared to American lives? Even though the Iraqis were likely innocents, often children and children.

How can news outlets simply set the standards of measure as if the most important factor was to have the result fall within manageable ranges, figures we can wrap our head around? Or more accurately, figures they can wrap around our head.

What’s going to happen when the daily toll of civilian deaths reaches higher? Will they break the day into parts, a morning Iraqi death toll for example? To compare not too insanely with the US deaths per month? What a ruse.

Come tell Cheney not to torture!

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Meet at Lake Avenue and Second StreetCome protest Vice President Dick Cheney’s campaign stop at the Broadmoor. This is your chance to tell him you don’t think the US decision to use torture is a “no-brainer.” (Read about one of the first US female casualties in Iraq. A recent FOIA has revealed her death was a suicide, covered-up. Her motive? She did not want to participate in US methods of torture.)

CSAction Activist Alert from Mark Lewis:
On Friday, November 3 at the Broadmoor Hotel, “The Dick” cheney will come to do a fund raiser for lamborn, who is close to loosing the 5th congressional district seat to Fawcett. The supporters will start arriving at 4 pm (according to the local GOP office) and must be inside for the security sweep at 6pm just before cheney arrives up Lake Avenue.

We need to be there in force to “welcome” cheney (that’s Mr. Dick to you) with orange hunting vests, signs about halliburton, war profiteers, Abu Ghraib, POWs, Gitmo, Iraq, “Who would Jesus torture?”, maybe a “water board” display?

Maybe the same location as the 2004 NATO protest at 2nd and Lake, where the motorcade will have to slow for the “round about” and where there is parking in the church lot?

The sat trucks will go live at 5 for TV coverage, so we need to be in place at least by then. Spread the word.

Afghanistan, where cowardly US military is deliberately murdering children

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Every week now, it seems that the US puppet president of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai, is ‘investigating’ another tragic ‘accidental bombing of civilians. He demands that these ‘accidents’ stop. But these are not accidents, and Karzai knows this well, as every other Afghan must now know it well, too. An accident occurs once or twice, but an intentional strategy of targeting civilians becomes constant, as have become the US bombings of Afghan civilians in the more remote regions of that country.
 
The strategy is ‘to destroy the sea that the guerrilla fighter must swim in’, as it was once explained in the Vietnam War era, years ago. In short, the quickest, easiest way to combat the enemy, is simply to target his wife and family, including the kids. So the cowardly US-led NATO army of occupation in Afghanistan, is systematically doing that instead of engaging the enemy on the ground, where politically dangerous casualties might occur. Bomb the Afghan women and children in their homes from up high, if there is even the remotest military resistance to US forces in their general neighborhood.

This is the same strategy that the US government formerly used in SE Asia, some 35 to 45 years previously. It is the same strategy that the NAZIs used when they pushed into East Europe against the Russians during the Second World War. In their pathway, they razed to the ground villages, towns, and even entire cities. It is even the same strategy that Mafia gangsters use against their opponents. It is the same strategy that the US fed Colombian death squads use, too. They go into villages with chain saws, and cut people up before their own family members. Basically, this is government sponsored terrorism against civilians, and the US is committing internationally recognized war crimes by targeting civilians instead of the armed combatants they face. The strategy, is to target the families of combatants, and not those who might actually be able to inflict return casualties upon the invading and occupying, barbarian armed forces.

see Hamid Karzai orders investigation

We expect this cowardice from the cowardly US military commanders and chiefs, like Dubya and Dick Cheney, Donald and Alberto, who all get great glee out of torturing US-held POWs. And we expect it from the US grunts, too. They mainly just want to get out alive, and don’t much care who gets hurt, as long as it is not themselves. Innocent children bombed as they play, or as they sleep? Well who cares? Not the uniformed soldier cowards, nor their leaders. They are much like the Israeli troops, another cowardly group of soldiers, that distributed hundreds of thousands of cluster bombes in the last 3 days of their Lebanon vacation. Early Christmas for the children? Well the uniformed forces of occupying armies don’t care. They are simply cowards who want to get back home whole, and they will follow cowardly orders, from cowardly leaders.

But what of the press? The press barely even reports Afghanistan these days to US readers. And when they do, they cowardly hide away the nature of what they are reporting on. To the US press, the Afghanistan fighting is a NATO conflict, and they will report whole articles without even once using the letters, ‘US’ or ‘USA’! Let’s keep our jobs, and let’s keep the whole Afghanistan issue away from the American public, who are too cowardly to actually think about what they are doing to that poor country.

And what about the US peaceniks’? They are cowardly, too. 99% of them vote for the Democratic Party, and talking about Afghanistan is too embarrasing to the top party hacks. So, shhhhhh….. Keep quiet. The recent AFSC tour of their ‘Eyes Wide Open’ exhibit was basically a ‘Mouths Tightly Closed’ exhibit of their AFSC political cowardice when it comes to Afghanistan. They should remember and be ashamed of this, when the Quaker leaders are inside the voter booths pushing the levers for the Democratic Party candidates. They could have put boots out for the US soldiers killed in Afghanistan. But they didn’t. They could have placed out shoes of Afghani civilians killed by US and allied troops, but they didn’t.

But the other liberal peaceniks from the other liberal churches are equally as cowardly. When was the last time one saw a sign saying, Get Out of Afghanistan Now? All the talk is of Iraq instead. The liberal megawebsite, commondreams, carries bumperstickers calling for Get out of Iraq, No war with Iran, and even No War with Syria. But Get Out of Afghanistan? Not a chance! More political cowardness. It would push the Democratic Party hacks too hard. Yet our country is now deliberately bombing civilian children in that country, and doing it routinely, too.

It is political cowardice to bomb huts full of empoverished women and children noncombatants, rather than fight on the ground below against the men. But that’s what an imperialist army is full of. They are full of cowards who want to kill people like they are playing some video game back in the suburbs at home. But it, too, is cowardly for the US Peace Movement not to demand that our government get its troops out of Afghanistan with the same force we demand it get out of Iraq. We are betraying the children of that country, who are being slaughtered down like cattle. Yes, we have a cowardly antiwar movement in the US that wants only to concentrate on ‘Iraq’, and getting their cowardly Democratic Party leaders elected to office once again. Let’s hope that liberals can grow some backbone, and start opposing this war, too. Otherwise, the peace crowd is just as bad as ‘our troops’, who mainly want to kill from afar and from up high, with no possilbe repercussions to their cowardly, uniformed selves. Those that don’t mind killing innocent children, just so that they can claim a high ‘enemy’ body count.

Five thousand Iraqis

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The EWO memorial displays 3000 civilian shoesJohns Hopkins has calculated that 655,000 Iraqis have died as a result of the US invasion of their country. Six Hundred Fifty Five Thousand.
 
Quite a difference from the 30,000 by Bush’s estimate, “give or take a thousand.” Or the 45,000 by the official media counts. Or Lancet’s original 100,000 and later 250,000. Both those numbers were contested too, even as they were now probably conservative.

Most people who know that civilian casualties have been understated are still refuting the 655,000. ” I’m not sure the count is that high, but it’s high I’m sure.” Critical thinking without the why. Johns Hopkins methods, like the Lancet’s are peer reviewed for all to see. Our government and its supporters are the only ones to refute the number. When have they yet proven to speak any truth at all?

I’ll tell you I believe the new figure. I read about how it was calculated, based on surveys and statistical studies, with the same means as are used elsewhere in other populations and other catastrophes. I cannot believe, cannot fathom, cannot mourn 650,000 Iraqi lives destroyed by American aggression. What I can conceptualize is the 5,000 more. Tell me you caught a fish one foot and one half inch long, and I’m inclined to believe you measured it.

For those who want to compare the 655,000 to how many Iraqis would have died under Sadam’s continued reign, the number is already taken into account. Let me quote the latest study:

As many as 654,965 more Iraqis may have died since hostilities began in Iraq in March 2003 than would have been expected under pre-war conditions

Eyes Wide Open for friends only

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Attire for a memorial to the cost of war?An Air Force soldier participated in our candlelight vigil tonight. A vigil held at the Colorado Springs Eyes Wide Open Exhibit, for the lives lost in the Iraq War. He spoke about losing a close friend, and about his friends who are deployed in Iraq for whom he fears. He read a poem he’d written about looking at the names of the casualties everyday and hoping, praying it would be no one he knows.
 
Did he miss the point of the 2,700 boots?

If I try to be charitable, I’d say the soldier added a human aspect to the ceremony, not just his grief, and his fear, but the self-centeredness of a soldier’s world view. It certainly made me irritated. The rest of us were here, apparently, to give him company in his fear.

I was not.

He introduced himself, Sam, an Air Force enlistee, and a student at the Colorado College. He’s gone to basic training but has yet to be deployed to the war. I’d seen him recite at a poetry gathering the year before. He goes around campus in his fatigues, often fresh from training. My guess is he’s among many college recruits who serve the military by living among students to project an air of normalcy about the military.

Tonight Sam wore a leather jacket with a skull insignia on the back, with the slogan “where do special forces go when they die? They go to hell to regroup.” (or so)

Enlistee Sam fish-out-of-water spoke tonight of dreading when he’d be sent to war, I was listening but didn’t hear that his disposition toward warfare had changed by developments since the last time I saw him. At the poetry reading he spoke of planning to bringing back his war experiences through the eyes of a poet. Most of the other student poets looked aside as he read. Too polite to roll their eyes. The eyes at the vigil were wiser than mine.

There are some attendees who are turned off by the religiosity of gatherings such as the vigil, I could not bear the banality of this foolish enlistee, worrying for himself and his friends, thinking not at all to question the work he was doing or the profound repercussions upon the lives of so many countless thousand innocents.

Two soldiers remembered

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A sister writes to her brother a week before he was due homeWe traipsed up to Denver to see the RMPJC Eyes Wide Open display in advance. I’d like to describe two pairs of boots in particular.
 
One represented a young soldier from Oregon. Someone had added a snapshot, his smile drew my eye. There was also a letter from his sister, who’d been planning to greet him home only a week later.
 
Another pair of boots represented a Coloradan soldier whose parents had requested his name not be mentioned in the memorial. How sad. People come with flowers and gifts, pictures and flags to adorn the boots. Siblings come, and high school friends, and fellow soldiers.

For every soldier, particularly one who’d been stationed nearby, there are dozens of comrades who come to look for their buddy, to see that he was not overlooked, regardless the antiwar sentiment.

When parents have their child’s name removed, it doesn’t mean the boots. The boots are part of the statistic, the casualties. The number of American soldiers killed belongs to us. Bought and paid for by the US taxpayer. I like to think too, an entry into the accounts payable, for these bastards in charge.

And who are they, those ultra-patriot parents, to take their child’s name from the ranks of his friends? Who are they to presume that he doesn’t want to be visited, remembered fondly, missed, mourned, thanked.

I felt tears of loss for Sargeant Eyerly of Oregon with the million dollar smile, in his uniform, only 23 years old. And I feel sad for the unnamed Colorado boy whose parents don’t think his memory deserves a little more than the short life he got.

No one to remember these bootsTheir son was used by the military, his parents didn’t interfere then. Now he’s being used by the anti-military. But he’s still gone. He probably would not wish that his short life have passed into obscurity without so much refection.

As an organizer for the event, I of course do know the name, and the name of the parents. What immoral prigs to put politics above their son’s memory.

All the news fit to be shown to Americans

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Simultaneous editions of NewsweekThis September has been the most fatal month for Canadians in Afghanistan. The number of Canadian soldiers killed peacekeeping for NATO has been accelerating of late and now stands at 37. It would stand to reason that Afghanistan would make the news.
 
Amy Goodman’s Independent Media in a Time of War examined the difference between the Iraq war coverage on CNN versus CNN international. Not the difference between Fox-News and the BBC, just the difference between in-house news departments of the same company.
 
What explains the decision to have a different cover story in this week’s domestic issue of Newsweek? Losing Afghanistan everywhere else, Annie Liebowitz: My Life In Pictures here.
 
The War in Afghanistan has become the forgotten war, due in large part because it is also kept an invisible war.
 
It serves to remember that regardless of the occasional expose, our press is neither unvigilant nor asleep. More precisely, their vigilance attends to guarding we don’t lose our sleep.
 
I have to remind myself, after reading any story critical of the war, that our press is not critical. The Wall Street Journal are terrible Neocon war mongers. The Washington Post, cynical war mongers. The Los Angeles Times, bandwagon war mongers. The New York Times, gatekeeper war mongers. Fox, MSNBC, of course cheerleader war mongers. CBS, ABC, war monger wannabees. Disney, war monger profiteers.
 
Recently fans are rallying around Keith Olbermann and his recent tirades against this administration. I agree we should support his speaking out, but Olbermann’s got a long way to go before he atones for his full throttle support in the lead-in to war.

Over 250,000 Iraqis are dead as a result of our invasion. Afghanistan too continues to suffer terrible civilian casualties. Our press supported both ventures and continues to support them.

Support your local war memorial

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I’m working on an address to our city council. I only have three minutes:

MemorialMr. Mayor, distinguished members of the City Council: as a member of the Pikes Peak Justice and Peace Commission, I’ve come once again on their behalf to ask the City Council for your support of the traveling Iraq War Memorial, known as Eyes Wide Open, which is coming to Colorado Springs on October 12 and 13.
 
Two weeks ago, at the previous opportunity to address the council, the Justice and Peace Commission asked for the use of Memorial Park as a fitting site for a memorial. We also asked the City of Colorado Springs to adopt a resolution similar to that of the City of Baltimore, proclaiming the two day visit as “Days of Reflection on the Human Cost of War.” To this day we’ve received no formal response from the council. I’m here today to repeat our requests.

Actually we did hear one reply from Councilman Bernie Herpin, a resounding no, because he considers any such memorial to be a blatant anti-war statement. I’d like to ask Mr. Herpin: do you have such little faith in the patriotism of the general public, in the wisdom of your constituents, that were they to reflect -on the many lives the war in Iraq has cost us- that you think they would automatically be against the war?

Do you consider it patriotic, and showing support for our troops, Mr. Herpin, to hide the Iraq War casualties from the sight and memory of their friends, neighbors and community? If the war in Iraq, or as you call it, the War on Terror, is indeed worth fighting, why do you want to conceal its cost from the people of Colorado Springs, the people who more than nearly any other community in the country, must bear the cost of this war? The cost being measured, in their lives, the lives of their loved ones, the lives of their friends and coworkers. This is to say nothing of the many more who are injured and maimed.

Are you afraid to let the people of Colorado Springs gaze upon the boots of 2,700 soldiers -only the official count of the US casualties in Iraq- boots that stretch across vast green fields, nearly to the horizon? One hundred and seventy pairs of those boots will correspond to the Fort Carson soldiers who’ve died in Iraq.

The latest count of soldiers wounded in Iraq according to the V.A. hospital system is over 40,000. If the ratio of US soldiers wounded to US soldiers killed in Iraq holds for Colorado Springs, by a terrible coincidence, the 2,700 pairs of boots that Colorado Springs residents will see on October 12 and 13 will also correspond to the number of Colorado Springs residents -Iraq War veterans- who now move about in wheelchairs and on prosthetic limbs.

Is this your way to show support for the troops? To keep their sacrifices unseen from their countrymen and their city? Why are you so quick to send them off, to fight a war on foreign soil, and so quick to hide the cost they’ve paid or will pay? The media networks aren’t even allowed to show their coffins on television! Why are you conspiring to keep a soldier’s most ultimate sacrifice a secret? -because you think the American people would not support your war?

If you are so gung-ho to have someone fight this war on terror, why don’t you do it yourself? You go over there and do it! And reflect, please, whether you want your effort to go seen or unseen. Otherwise please know that you can count on us, that if you pay the ultimate price to defend our freedom, that we intend to make sure the people of this country and this city see it and show their thanks. Good luck and bon voyage.

Please accord the people of Colorado Springs the respect of honoring their sacrifice. I’d like to see the proclamation we ask for in writing as soon as possible, or I’d like to see each of you fill out the Defense Department paperwork to enlist to go to Iraq yourself. Thank you.

Antipersonnel by design

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Green Parrots memoir of a war surgeonIt is reported that Israel used one million cluster bombs in Lebanon. Half in the final hours of their pull-out.
 
One of the very sorry consequences of cluster bombs is that many unexploded bomblets are left to litter the streets and countryside. The bomblets are commonly bright yellow in color and attract the eye of small children. The bomblets explode when the children pick them up.
 
You’d think that maiming children could not be purposeful. Heaven forbid accusing Israel of such an intention. Surely child casualties are only a collateral product of war!
 
Until you consider a weapon nicknamed the Green Parrot. These antipersonnel mines are scattered by helicopter and are painted bright green. Unlike conventional mines which are concealed and detonate when stepped upon, Green Parrots are meant to be noticed and picked up by children.

Also called toy mines or flying mines, the small winged cylinders look like toy birds and explode when held.

Where have we heard that before?

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pictureWhen Israel initiated its new incursion into Lebanon, it was deja vu at first sight and just hasn’t let up. But it’s not so much to do with Israel’s previous invasion of Lebanon, actually.
 
When Israeli troops prepared their offensive into Lebanon, in self-defense, they had embedded reporters with them. The media didn’t appear to be interested in covering Hizb’Allah or the Lebanese army.

When Beirut awaited Israeli air strikes, a solitary camera fed American networks a view of the Beirut skyline in anticipation of far off explosions and fires.
 
(Do you wonder -with webcams and surveillance cameras literally available at the Dollar Store- why wouldn’t they want to put cameras close in to the action?)
 
When casualty reports came in about military skirmishes, every Israeli soldier’s death was reported. Hizb’Allah casualties were unknown. Sound familiar?

Now Israel is complaining about having to overcome a problem of foreign fighters among the Hizb’Allah ranks. Iranian they were, too, apparently.

Remember how many foreign fighters we found in Iraq?

pictureRupert Murdock’s British SKY NEWS made the mistake of interviewing George Galloway about the notion of foreign fighters in Lebanon.

Unsustainable argument making

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I attended Colorado College’s symposium about the expected effects of climate change upon the Rocky Mountain region. There was less discussion about adapting to the certain change than there was about hoping still to prevent it.

By focusing on trying to undo global warming, the discussion had to quantify the changes and of course explain their causes. This opened up the door to arguing the causal links, leading to the idea that perhaps we need do nothing at all.

I don’t know but I think I expected to see live scientists deny global warming. What scentist is going to deny global warming? Should be a good show! What I learned was how they deny it. It’s boring but instructive.

Our panel consisted of a student researcher who presented a study of current and forecasted climate change, a representative of the ski industry to present their plans and efforts, and two professors to explain the science. The professors were a father son team from UNC and USC respectively. While they might smilingly present themselves as advocates of environmental issues, I’d call them spoilers.

Elder Roger Pielke went into the technical gobbledegook concluding… nothing. Probably the scientific community needs those guys, but don’t put him on a public panel. His part: spirited, unquestionably qualified, perhaps even well meaning, obfuscation.

His son Robert Pielke explained the need for more unbiased research. Too many scientists have spoken out in alarm about global warming, thus they are biased and their research cannot be trusted. We’ll need more unalarmed scientists to weigh in before we can conclude anything. Follow that logic? This was Pielke’s lesson: always question the motive of a researcher.

Great lesson, in reverse! Someone seeking to deny the warming, underwritten usually by big oil, coal, and general industrial interests, that person’s research might be wise to scrutinize. What pray tell might be the ulterior motives of the 70% of scientists who are currently expressing their alarm about global warming?

Junior Pielke’s approach is the same argument we hear from the unIntelligent Design proponents. Question the motives. Scientists are biased against a deity apparently and therefore evolution findings cannot be trusted. It’s good advice to question the motives. What are the creationists’ motives? To further our understanding of the physical world or to bolster increasingly fallable-looking poppycrock?

Don’t we hear that argument everywhere? Never mind Bush’s motives for slaughtering now up to 250, 000 Iraqi civilians, question the protestor’s motives, no doubt they do not support the troops!

The 250, 000 casualty figure comes from the British medical journal The Lancet, previously unquestioned when they presented their estimates of civilian casualties in the Balkans and Africa. Question their motives. The Lancet figure, estimated to be lower than the probable casualty count, came from American, English and Iraqi doctors. No doubt their ulterior motive is to save lives.

Truth in camouflage

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M1-A1 tank in new urban camouflage
What’s the point to the U.S. camouflage scheme on armored vehicles in Iraq? If opposing forces do not have an air force, nor any mechanized cavalry, nor any artillery, nor any optical sighting devices to speak of, what exactly is the benefit of military camouflage?
 
No really, how does camouflage conceal you from IEDs or suicide bombers? And in an urban, peopled environment, against what backdrop can you even hope to blend in? Truth in advertizing might suggest that a best camo scheme should reflect the real battlefield, filled with the real casualties.

Gunship diplomacy

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C-130s laying suppression fire before landing.
The C-130 gunships are coming! C-130s are flying platforms for hi-tech observation and weaponry. U. S. Military leaders have announced that they are deploying C-130s to Iraq in greater numbers, one of them called “Spooky.” You wonder -why now? What’s happened in Iraq that we now want to rain death upon the Iraqi population without needing to differentiate between men and women, adults and children, between friendly and unfriendly Iraqis?

Have you seen the video footage smuggled to the press which documented a now infamous C-130 raid upon an aledged Taliban compound in Afghanistan? From a safe height, gunners on the plane destroyed cars and buldings and picked off every single person running for cover. Infrared imagery illuminated every person’s body against the dark ground.

There were some valiant dashes for cover in the Afghan example, even a run that resembled a miraculous field-length touchdown where the runner was able to zig-zag between each shot from the C-130 cannons. You couldn’t help but want to cheer the little figure on. In the end the C-130 got everbody and redirected its fire to obliterate the entrance to a nearby cave.

One advantage to using the C-130 gunships in Iraq now will be that we will know how many Iraqis we are killing. The C-130s will have video records of the Iraqi casualties. We’ll have tiny white images of every body we destroy. We’ll know the children in the videos because although the little white figures emit a similar heat footprint, the children will have been taking smaller final steps.

Gunship diplomacy denotes the practice of bringing colonies to heel by the mere show of force, usually a technologically advanced ship sent to patrol the coast of a subjugated people who have known otherwise only houses made of natural materials.

Trickle-down news

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Weapons dealersAnother reason to wait 18 hours to call the cops? For alcohol to leave your system? And Cheney didn’t have a hunting license. Better to be called a bumbling hunter than a drunk poacher, or the person who authorized Scooter Libby to out a CIA agent.

Why doesn’t someone just march into the hospital in Corpus Christi and find out if Cheney’s hunting victim is already plain dead?

First we hear his victim was hit by “bird-shot” and the vice-president says he’s spoken to Weatherspoon on the phone and everything’s fine. Then we hear the victim had a “mild-heart-attack.” Next we might hear that a gas leak in the hospital wing has caused a minor explosion and poor Mister Bill has been blown to bits.

Eighteen hours before any reporters were given the story, maybe blown-up bits were already what was left of Cheney’s hunting companion. Soviet era hunting trips used to come back mysteriously minus a member or two of the Politburo.

2.
This reminds me of how the media is reporting the stories of casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan. First there is a delay, then the story is unfolded to minimize the emotional impact upon the American public.

A multiple-US-casualty day in Iraq this time last year serves as an unfortunate example. A truck carrying 19 American servicewomen to work at checkpoints was hit by a suicide-bomber. First there were two casualties, four missing, seven injured. Over the course of two weeks those missing were revealed to have died. They didn’t die later, they died immediately with the original two. Net result? The military didn’t have to report that six women died that day.

Alito’s new world order executive branch

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New Orleans Police kill man armed with three inch knife
Overwelming firepower. In this case against a three-inch knife.
 
Moments after this video was taken, while the young amateur camera operator was racing down the stairs to film the standoff from street level, the New Orleans police officers shot and killed this man.

We’ve seen this more and more often. There are reports every day of suspects being killed by tasers. Policemen shoot boys armed with BB guns. Police shoot unarmed detainees.

It happens in war. We drop 500 pound bombs on innocent families. We stop vehicles with hundreds of rounds of ammunition. In war this is illegal. It is called use of overwelming force and it is illegal. Kill-boxes, free-fire-zones, shoot-anything-that-moves, bulldozing houses, indescriminate killing, disproportunate civilian casualties, illegal.

With Alito’s appointment to the Supreme Court, the deck is getting stacked against any judicial recourse. False arrest? Police brutality? Tell it to the judge.

Permissible degrees of torture

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Department of Information Retrieval.
In the film Brazil, the smallest typo, a brush with an unlicensed repairman, or a humanitarian impulse, can see you in the hotseat.

There are no permissible degrees of torture.

I’d like to try to make that point sometime. I’ll ask for a volunteer. I’ll explain to the volunteer and to those watching what I intend to do. “Put you arm behind your back where I can grab it and twist it slowly. Like this,” I’ll illustrate. “I’ll twist gently but steadily until it might begin to hurt.” It will be up to the people watching to decide at which point I’ve gone too far.

Then I’ll have to hope that there aren’t too many sadists in the crowd. Plan B might be to grab for something like a baseball bat, out of view of the volunteer, and appear prepared to hit him with an unsuspected blow. Much will depend on the onlookers rising to interfere.

In that manner we will all be able to explore what it means to accept a certain degree of torture, up to a point. And that point should lie somewhere between the anticipation of torture and the application of pain. If my subject wets himself or herself at just the thought, perhaps my audience will urge that even the anticipation is going too far.

I hope we can recognize that we want to tolerate not a single degree of torture.

Many experts have been coming out to say that torture is not effective. In this era of modern chemistry, we have all sorts of drugs and serums for overcoming a person’s mental resistance. Putting aside whether those methods are themselves ethical, if interrogators want to learn something from a detainee, there is no need to resort to torture.

Torture is not about interrogation. Torture is about terror. It is terrorism exercised upon a defenseless captive, and it is terrorism practiced against a population who are subjugated by the fear that they too may face torture.

We have declared war on terrorism. Terrorism such as our governement defines it does not exist. There are no idealogues whose chief pursuit in life is the spread of terrorism. This is a myth. Terrorism is not an ideology.

Terrorism is a practice, and we are its greatest perpetrators. In the main it’s called state-sponsored-terrorism. Extra-judicial assassinations, the sanction of indescriminate killing, the tolerance of disproportunate civilian casualties, the imposition of inhumane social structures, all constitute the terror we are imposing upon an occupied people.

Torture is another method by which we terrorise our subjects.

Are we united against terrorism? Why then are we not also aggreed that we are united against torture?

Who’s afraid of the Christian Peacemaker Team?

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Motley crew
Lock up your daughters, it’s the Christian Peacemaker Team delegation!
 
By now the story is out about our visit to Senator Allard’s office today, particularly the effort we encountered to thwart our visit.

I’ll recap. After holding our daily noon vigil for the four CPT hostages being held in Iraq, a delegation of vigil keepers went downtown to visit the offices of three local congress members as part of the national SHINE THE LIGHT campaign. We walked with three yard signs and another sign of similar size held aloft. One among us wore a black hood over his head, to remind onlookers of the Abu Ghraib captives.

After a pleasant walk down Tejon Street, we first visited Congressman Hefley’s office where we received a warm reception. They’d seen the TV news report the night before. They also confirmed having received our emailed press releases.

When we tried to find Senator Allard’s office, our reception was quite a different matter. We nearly didn’t make it to his office.

Senator Allard’s office is located in the Plaza of the Rockies, a mid-sized office building with a large atrium. The building is home to many financial service companies such as Morgan Stanley, RBC Dain Rauscher, Booz Allan and Hamilton, Stewart Title, and Vectra Bank among others.

Finding ourself on the second floor of the atrium, unable to get to the floor above, our group fanned out to find a stairwell or alternative elevator. We were no longer parading with our poster boards, carrying them instead under our arms. But our identity as war malcontents was probably apparent enough and we could tell that a couple of the occupants of those glass offices appeared to grab their phones on seeing us walk by.

After my own fruitless search for Suite 300, I returned to find our group being confronted by two men in suits. We were being asked to leave the building. This was private property they explained and we were not permitted to protest on their property.

We answered that we were not protesting, but were merely trying to reach Senator Allard’s office. Could they tell us which way to Suite 300? They would not, “he’s not there.” They insisted instead that we leave. Private property and all that.

We countered that Senator Allard’s office was a public space, and certainly the conveyance to his office must be considered public. They did not agree. When we asked with whom we were speaking, the first identified himself as “Larry,” the chief security officer, the other was the property manager.

Finally we offered to relinquish the offending signs and take them outside the building. I ran the signs down to Pat and Esther who were waiting outside the front door.

I got back in time to hear the property manager arguing “if you knew your bible, you’d know why we have to be in the Middle East!” I learned afterward that I had missed him accusing the leader of our delegation, CPT member Bill Durland, of being “Taliban.”

Eventually the two building representatives agreed to conduct us to the Senator’s office, but only on the condition that Peter remove his hood. Though again we made our case that the Abu Ghraib hood represented an important message we were trying to communicate, in the end Peter agreed to take it off. He would be able to put it back on in the Senator’s office.

In the Senator’s office we were greeted by his assistant who offered to talk with us. But she insisted that the security official remain in the room, and she insisted that Peter remove his hood.

There followed a polite exchange whereupon members of our group spoke from their hearts about the illegality of the war in Iraq, the immorality of torture and other crimes related to the taking of captives without just cause, etc. Senator Allard’s assistant pulled out an old chestnut that Allard is still using at fund raising speeches. Apparently 9-11 caused more casualties that our fighting in Iraq, and that if we hadn’t fought the war in Iraq, the war would have come to us here.

Throughout this discussion, police officers were arriving. The first two arrived at the heels of another Allard staffer. They walked in the door without saying a thing, walked through the reception area where we were having our exchange, and went to stand in the office just inside the reception area.

The odd thing was that no one was addressing these officers, they were merely shown the inside office where they could hear our discussion and interrupt presumably if they were needed. A third officer arrived shortly, and then a fourth. We could see them waiting unsupervisez in the other room. One of the police officers wore the typical tight black gloves and left them on.

When asked who had called for the police officers, Allard’s assistant repeatedly declared that she did not. Although she also did not question any of the officers as to what was the purpose of their visit, and why there came another and another. Instead she proffered that the police were merely a routine measure of building security.

In the end, our visit felt more fruitless than constructive. I don’t know what we would have expected to communicate to one of the few senators who voted against the anti-torture bill. Allard’s assistant defended her boss by telling us that his opposition to the anti-torture bill was because he wanted a stranger one. We interjected that simultaneously Allard had expressed his approval of President Bush’s signing exemption.

In the end we saw the soft underbelly of the beast. and should have taken greater advantage of it. The Neocons may be formidable adversaries, but their supporters, the underbelly, are about as soft as they come.

Senator Allard’s office help kept insisting that they welcomed our visit, yet they seemed quite in step with the actions taken on the part of building security, actions which were not welcoming in the least.

Had our confidence not been boosted by the knowledge that our lead negotiator was an ACLU lawyer, we might not have been persistent enough to reach Allard’s office.

The routine scrambling of police officers certainly surprised us. Afterward I longed to have questioned one of the police officers in the next room. What was the nature of the disturbance described to them? What trouble were they fearing might errupt from a christian(!) peacemaker(!) team visiting their senator’s office?

Lost in translation

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Stoning the Devil between noon and sunset
Today 345 pilgrims in Saudi Arabia were stampeded to death. Hundreds more were injured. It happened in the frantic scramble of millions of pilgrims trying to edge close enough to three ancient pillars to cast 29 pebbles at them. Or something like that. Before the sun set.

I wish I wasn’t feeling so disheartened by this news. It’s not about the loss of life exactly. Antiwar activists are trying their best to give meaning to the Iraqi deaths we’ve caused in this war while Muslims in Mecca are dying because they’ve trampled each other.

When you take this religious war at face value you can see why many Americans dismiss Islam as a religion for simple people. On one hand you become convinced to take up the responsibility of the white man’s burden, and on the other hand you want to subdue any militancy such a people might entertain toward threatening you.

On a day like today it’s hard not to want to hedge your bets with the Neocon zionists.

A stampede like this has the propensity to happen every year at the ritual of the Ramajat. Sometimes the casualties have been many times more. Each year the government tries to improve the lay of the land to accommodate the increasing millions of pebble-throwing pilgrims. Imagine if everyone descending to the subway was determined to use just the leftmost turnstyle, and they weren’t about to slow down to do it.

Except that these death at Mecca were of their own choosing, and except that to die on the Hajj is an honorable death, this predictable tragedy appears synonymous with the useless muslim deaths by our hand.

I cannot help but feel there’s racism in my sentiments. These pilgrims weren’t killed because they were stupid or simple or primitive. This is tradition meets technology, maximum capacity meets three million persons, this is crowd dynamics.

I do not begrudge the Muslims their holy pursuits, especially as a response to the tragedies we’ve visited upon them. But couldn’t the pilgrims or the Saudi government for that matter take a special war-time care not to appear careless about their own lives?

It’s a hard enough sell over here. Here American newspeople are still asking questions like “civilian casualties -are the lives of our soldiers being jeopardized by too great of a concern for the safety of Iraqi civilians?”

It would be no great leap for a young American soldier to rationalize his callous barbarity. He can believe he’s machine-gunning the “stupid Hadjis” to their eternal paradise.

King’s missing dong, episode 1

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Time Magazine characterizes King Kong’s enthousiasmOkay, I admit that’s my own headline. There was indeed no trace of a King dong, but neither was there lust, nor anything more than a communication barrier overcome by physical clowning. A young white lass with Vaudeville chops was able to cajole the mighty Kong where scores of unfortunate black maidens had failed.
 
But really the special effects in the latest King Kong were amazing.

With special effects the filmmakers were able to create a giant gorilla who went ape at the sound of tom-toms summoning him to dine on a mouse-sized snack.

Special effects recreated superstitious black peoples who subsisted on the craggy coast of Skull Island, separating themselves from the island’s vegetation to live behind great fortifications and beneath countless pointy sticks on which were impaled human sacrificees.

Special effects produced dinosaurs also very keen to fight over what would be a tiny human morsel, willing to discard bigger kill for the smaller bird in the bush, even gnash away at a rocky surface trying to snatch said bony morsel.

To another extreme, special effects created bats which prey on animals larger than insects, and they stalk their target, hanging upside down each time a bit closer.

Convenient for the slow shutter rate of film projectors, these bats fly with the awkwardness of pterodactyls, the beating of their wings visible to human eyes. Lucky for our heroes who escape by holding on to the wing of a bat, while he flies with the other. A feat clearly accomplished only through special effects.

Special effects depict a world plainly ignorant of what some know as the food chain. The filmmakers can adhere to the laws of gravity, sort of, and whichever laws of physics can be illustrated, but they can’t grasp the food chain or that animals kill to eat, they do not maraud mercilessly.

By depicting nature as malevolent, we are expressing the highest disrespect for what really have become our wards. Like depicting Jesus with a machine gun for example. It might be funny, but it would be pretty undeserved.

But there’s more. Special effects produced stampedes both human and Jurassic, from which few casualties are seen. Men are able to keep pace beneath Brontosaurus legs to make the Spaniards who run with the bulls every year in Pamplona look like wusses.

And in the end you have Kong flinging blond lasses left and right, you have an entire opera house audience stampede to the exits with nary a body left behind.

In fact, given Peter Jackson’s fondness for gross-out scenes like the close-up of the carnivorous worm devouring a man head first, it seems strange that they cranked back the special effects for Kong’s final splat unto street level from the Empire State building. Kong’s body at rest on the street is shown not one bit like a sack empty of its potatoes, the usual sudden end to a 100 story fall.

David Letterman fans might have hoped to see Kong burst like a watermelon fallen from a great height, but special effects intervened.

And so the special effects try to approximate mechanical consequences, but ignore the organic, what used to be the common knowledge of life.

While this might suit the lower educated of today’s movie audience, Peter Jackson certainly does not limit himself to that denominator. In an early scene he risks boring that crowd with three interminable inside jokes: the actress they had wanted to cast for this adventure, “Fay,” was already doing an “RKO” picture for that damned “Cooper.” Rocky Horror Picture Show fans would get those references, but so what? Why not throw some bones to zoology majors and enlighten everyone.

The special effects in King Kong trade not merely in the currency of the implausible or improbable or impossible, they perpetuate the currency of ignorance with which people do great evil to nature and the environment and other cultures, particularly indigenous ones.

This film plays with lots of movie land conventions, but to an audience that is less privy to the inside references and more prone to base human reactions to the demonized stereotypes.

An Iraqi remembrance

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Holiday season event, date to be announced.

When we dismantled the 1900 CROSS IRAQ WAR MEMORIAL on October 13, we recited the names of all the US soldiers killed in the war in Iraq. Recalling the recitation of the American names, CAMP CASEY will next attempt to memorialize the people of Iraq who lost their lives.

This remembrance performance will require a chorus of at least twelve people, half male, half female, half of each of them children. A larger group can certainly be accomodated, as long as the make-up remains three parts men, three parts women, three parts boys, three parts girls.

As a lead vocalist reads the first names from the official list of US casualties, the chorus will punctuate each American name with a rythmic chant of Islamic first names to represent the Iraqi dead. Each member of the chorus will be assigned a set of four Islamic names, appropriate to their gender.

Between each American name, the chorus of twelve people will simultaneously chant four names in quick succession:
“Abdallah, Saleh, Sabah, Jabbar.”
“Qasem, Ahmad, Ali, Nusseir.”
“Yahya, Yaseen, Khaled, Ammar.”
“Ziyad, Taha, Nayef, Munther.”
“Hameed, Salah, Leith, Wahhab.”
“Mushtaq, Riyad, Basem, Mahdi.”
“Aziz, Nafe, Omar, Shiya.”
“Hussein, Dia, Jalal, Abbas.”
One man and one boy would voice a base rhythm of “Mohammad, Mohammad, Mohammad, Mohammad.”

The effect will be to have 48 Iraqi names called out for every American name, two thousand times.

Iraq War protest concept 2 LONG DISTANCE CONNECTION

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A red telephone will float at the surface of an open steel barrel filled with red liquid. The sides of the barrel will be covered with pictures of Iraqi civilian casualties. The handset will be coated with red syrup.

When the handset is handled and held close to the ear, a looped recording will feature the voice of a friend or relative over a long distance telephone line:

“I don’t know anyone who’s gone to Iraq. I don’t know anyone who knows anyone who’s gone to Iraq. I don’t know what’s happening there at all. It doesn’t really touch my life. I feel kind of strange about it I guess. It just doesn’t have anything to do with me.”

Returning the handset to the phone, one’s hand will appear bloodied.

My idea for an Iraq War Memorial

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A box. Sunken in the earth. Like the foundation of an unfinished house.

Borrowing from Maya Lin’s Vietnam Wall obviously, this memorial foundation would be at the base of a hill. Preferably in te shadow of a hill. Looking up at the north slope with the sun beyond the hill.

On one wall, the thousand US casualties of the war.

On the next wall, blank space reserved for the next thousand who will die before we can extricate ourselves from Iraq. Without abandoning the Iraqi population.

Now it occurs to me that I’ve left out the casualties of the first Gulf War. The many who served in that conflict and have since died of causes related to their service. We’ll have to find a suitable memorial for them.

In the corner between the two walls already described will sit a small replica of Rodin’s THINKER. He’ll be seated on a stool and he’ll wear a dunce cap emblazoned with the logos of the corporate profiteers and media war mongers.

On the other two walls which rise against the hill -which rise higher and together in the fashion of the twin towers of the WTC perhaps- here will be engraved with the names of each Iraqi citizen casualty. Fifteen thousand names, many thousand whose names we neglected to record, and about which few relatives or friends remain to give testament. Those could each be listed as “Sovereign Citizen of Iraq.”

Support the troops

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Supporting the troops? What is that?! I don’t SUPPORT OUR TROOPS! What a laugh! As the slogan goes: better to support the troops by bringing the troops home! I don’t support what the troops are doing. I don’t support that they’ve been put in harm’s way. I don’t support that they are putting thousands of others in harm’s way.

They are firing on children, firing on women, firing on civilians, using napalm, cluster bombs and depleted uranium projectiles. They’re making snap judgments that are often fatal for innocent civilians, journalists and even their own comrades.

I heard the other day a TV anchor asking if we are being too concerned about civilian casualties at the expense of our soldiers’ safety? I’m sorry but is the life of an American soldier more valuable than that of an Iraqi? I think it’s the opposite unfortunately. The Iraqi is an innocent bystander to this affair, whereas the soldier has been hired to do a dangerous job. Inherently dangerous.