Embedding journalists in the military is not new. It’s simply privatizing the Army press corp. Doesn’t this early coverage of Operation Barbarossa look strikingly like the US advance on Baghdad? Support the Troops!
The islanders of Lesbos are angry that in the English speaking world, when they introduce themselves as Lesbian, it gets a laugh. Residents of Lesbos are suing to prevent a Greek gay and lesbian interest group from using the English word in their name. Some even point to evidence that the ancient poet and proto-lesbian Sappho was not homosexual. Apparently Sappho was from Lesbos, ergo, Lesbian, Lesbians.
People have historically been described by their native region, sooner than their nationality. It’s not unique to the Greek city states, though obviously in the Mediterranean it is deeply rooted. From Athens: Athenians, from Sparta: Spartans, from Troy: Tojans.
As the English speakers who are appending the confusing “ian,” perhaps the solution is in our hands. Thomas MC has suggested we all agree to call the Greek islanders Lesboes.
Not that there’s anything wrong with being confused with Lesbians. But can you say the same about the people of Crete? In several languages to be from Crete means the same, perhaps only they know why: Cretans.
As the invasion of Iraq progressed, I remember constant references to CENTCOM. Journalists would receive their briefings from CentCom, a tent in Kuwait by all appearances. I thought CentCom represented central military communications there, a safe spot behind our lines where generals could command artillery, logistics, etc.
Learning about the newly formed AFRICOM and the established EUROCOM, each beachhead assertions of US superpower control over world regions, I have to revisit US CENTRAL COMMAND for what it is, and its terribly telling dominion. Central? By the emblem I see you don’t mean the time zone. You are not talking about defense of the American Midwest. Do you really mean to refer to the Middle East, including its extended oil producing nations, as the center of your realms to command? I’d sooner concede to American ethnocentrism than to Judeo-Christian pre-occupation with Jerusalem, sooner than hold Mecca in the center cross-hairs of our bomb sights.
I’m happy to report there are currently no eager takers for Bush’s announced AFRICOM, command central for our extraction-industry ambitions on that continent.
After Bin Laden’s loudly felt complaint about the US unholy presence in Saudi Arabia, CENTCOM facilities had to be moved further from Mecca, to the crony dictator states of Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, Oman and the UAE. The US Central Command assets include many military bases and undisclosed “weapon pre-positioning sites,” six of which have been revealed to be located in Israel.
‘Targeted Assassinations’ have become an integral part of official US policy and official Israel policy. Nowhere is this illustrated more than with Israel’s constant running after Hamas leaders to try to sniper them out. By sniper though, often times this means dropping bombs or shelling neighborhoods and murdering entire families of innocent people, and not just firing away at a single person using a rifle with scope attached.
The US leadership likes this Israeli Jewish terrorist mode so much, that it is now using the same tactic in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq, and with the exact same consequences. As we have come to see, ‘collateral damage’ is often quite high. It should be clear, that what the Israeli and US governments refer to as targeted assassination’ in reality is nothing more than terrorism. It’s another semantics game like the Right also plays with the meaning of what constitutes torture. When the Right Wing US and Israeli governments do it, it supposedly does not constitute torture, or so say their apologists.
So what does this have to do with Lebanon? It is quite simple really. When state terrorism (targeted assassinations) becomes official policy, the victims almost always reply in kind. They too start targeting the leaders of the Right for ‘targeted assassinations’. Both sides, Right and Left, then usually enter into a prolonged sort of ‘dirty war’, where both sides employ terrorism against each other’s leaderships. Yesterday, Israel murdered Hamas leaders in Gaza, and today, Hezbollah murders a US-Israel allied, Christian Lebanese leader, Perre Gemayel. And as pointed out previously, this situation is actually being fomented and inflamed by the deployment of United Nations troops into Lebanon in order to save Israel from any consequences from beginning a bombing attack on Iran.
The European’s tolerance for Israel’s policy of ‘targeted assassination’ of Arab leaders it doesn’t want to deal with, PLUS the allowing of the US to turn UN ‘peacekeepers’ into agents of Bush’s foregin policy is throwing fuel onto the regionalization of the Iraq and Afghan fiascoes. The US government seems intent on turning the entire ME oil producing region into a zone of anarchy and chaos, where eventual control can ultimately only fall into Pentagon hands. It is a policy to drench in blood this entire area of the world in order to grab the energy supplies out of the ensuing chaos.
Politics elsewhere in the world can mean life or death. Indeed we’re seeing desperate political movements all over the globe where the issues are life or death. In Oaxaca City these last three days it’s death.
In America politics are semantics. It’s a horserace. And both horses are running away from the public, behind a fence, toward a goal that matters only to those with a stake invested. All of us may be affected by the outcome, but only a few will benefit.
Do you have a stake in the upcoming election? Has any candidate promised you something you want? Or is your candidate promising only that he will win for you?