Is Iraq in ‘Civil War’?

Our national debates often enter into surreal territories, and I got to say that I find the liberal sites to be almost as bad as the conservative ones when it comes to their examination of US militarism. Today finds the liberal sites, like Alternet and CommonDreams celebrating what a supposed advance forward it is that NBC started calling the situation in Iraq a civil war. The White House duly responded with, “Is not! Is not!”. So there, we now have lined up the two sides of the usual American idiocy, The Democrats versus the Republicans. Yawn…. But is the Iraq conflict in reality a ‘civil war’ like the liberals are now declaring it to be? I think not.

See, the liberal Democratic Party types don’t dare call the Iraq conflict what it really is, which is an imperialist war and colonial occupation Made in America. So they do the next best thing they can come up with, and that is to say that the US has troops centered in a country with a ‘civil war’ flaring up. Oh my! Despite ‘our’ good intentions, we’re in danger! Let’s cut and run!
This way of stupidly arguing this issue of war and peace with the Right, allows pro-warmongers to say, Look, the Iraqis need us to keep themselves from killing each other. Oh how humane we shall always be!

Liberals, this is no civil war at all. Can you imagine in our real American Civil War, would we have ever called it a Civil War if all the American cities, both South and North, had been occupied by a bunch of murderous imperial troops, from say Mongolia or Japan? And that these troops were causing the chaos between different sections of our own country’s population? See the simple difference between a real civil war, and an imperialist war? Apparently, the liberals have big trouble on that! Our American Civil War was a civil war, whereas the Iraqi chaos is not.

If one remembers this, the Vietnam War was once described by the American press as a civil war, too. The supposed good guys in South Vietnam were our friends, and the bad guys there were the commies. It was taught that South Vietnam was in a civil war where another country would not leave the South Vietnamese alone to solve their internal difficuties. That bad country was called North Vietnam. Just like then, the argument went that we had to occupy the country, simply because without us, the ‘civil war’ there would go much for the worse. Plus, another country, Iran… uh I mean North Vietnam, was wrongly entering into another country’s civil strife. and trying to turn it into a ‘civil war’! We had to save the South Vietnamese from foreign intervention into their civil war! Oh such tortured logic the warmongers must use.

Liberals refuse to tell the truth to people, back then and right now. They don’t go out and say that we have torn apart another society because we are an imperialist country that invaded and occupied their land. God forbid it if the liberals , who are such great flag waving patriots, would ever speak bad of the troops! Instead, the liberals have a tendency to revert to just moaning and groaning about, Why be over there in such a bad neighborhood? Look, there’s a civil war going on. Gotta go now! We’re getting hurt. Today, some liberal nuns were actually here in Colorado delivering food to our US soldiers! Poor soldier boys and girls. Get them out of harm’s way. They’re innocently in the midst of a ‘civil war’, and need some canned goods delivered to them! They’re starving! Bring them home and feed them better. Such nonsense makes me want to cry, but that’s what the liberal nuns were pushing today in Colorado.

What to say when the US spent all that time previous to the invasion, arming and training Kurds in the North of Iraq? When they take orders from DC, Iraqi Kurds are not fighting a ‘civil war’ then? But if they free lance like the Shia and the Sunni are currently doing, well that’s ‘civil war’? No? That’s nonsense. Iraq is still a conflict where ethnic tensions are being provoked by foreign powers. There is a simple name for doing that, too. It is called IMPERIALISM, not ‘civil war. The US is an imperialist country as is Britain. Imperialism often times picking on weaker countries, not countries that can better fight back. So the first cousin of American imperialism is COLONIALISM. Iraq is in the center of a colonial war, not civil war, Olbermann. I center on this liberal, because he is the point man of the Democrats within the media at this time. It is he that is pushing this use of ‘civil war’ to describe the battlefield that his government has made in the Middle East. LOL. Well he would say, at least, that Bush is not ‘his’ government. But then again, both Iraqi Shia and Sunni agree on one thing. This is not a ‘civil war’, but a warfare forced on them by colonial occupiers. My Fellow Americans, this is an imperialist war and a colonial war. It’s kind of shameful for us continually putting the guilt on the Iraqis on this matter.

The sheer nature of imperialism, is that the imperial power always uses one sector of the colony against another. It only gets called civil war, when the imperial country doesn’t klike the way things are spinning out of its control. Then they can withdraw, and say, “Oh those primitive people. They hate each other. They are always in a civil war”. I’m waiting for the day when NBC and Olbermann start calling the Middle East wars of the US for what they are. What they really are. That’s right. I’m waiting to hear the righteous Olbermann to start calling the foreign policy of the US, IMPERIALISM. But Democratic Party motivated liberals and their liberalism can’t be depended on too much.

We Are a Nation Sunk Under Corporate Legal Bullshit

It is often said that we are a nation of laws? That’s certainly true, but just what kind of laws? Are our American laws there to provide protection and justice for the overwhelming majority of us, or are they to codify the privileges of the much tinier US elite, the corporations and their super rich owners?

If you don’t know the answer to that, then try to bring a law suit against a corporation or the corporate government that rules over us. Or what’s more likely to be the situation, try to defend yourself when the elites come after you. Fact is, justice in the US is sold in dollars and cents and if you don’t have the money, you’re going to do the time. You’re going to have your life messed over, and you will have no recourse if you come into contact with the No Justice System.

The corporations won’t go to jail, you will. You will, or you will go into limbo one way or the other. Quite simply, we are not a nation that benefits from having any real justice, but a nation sunk under corporate legal bullshit where justice is routinely turned on its head. It’s your lawyers versus theirs, is it not? Can’t fight city hall, and can’t fight the corporation. Don’t be stupid to think otherwise if you go into the US courtroom.

Did you think that the police are there to serve you? Think again. You are the centerpiece of nothing, Pal. What ever made you think that the US was about justice? Some fairy tale nonsense you learned in kindergarden? Those squads of cops all over the place, those prisons in every city and county? They’re there to protect property, not you. Most of us are lucky to own the shirt on our backs, or some small shed we live in. That’s not property! The cops are a goon squad to keep your sorry ass in line, so that property can be maintained. Not some trinkets that you might have accumulated, neither. Real property. Property you’ll never know or see.

When you watch these show trials over and over again, it’s about property. Manuel Noriega? He went to jail because he messed with US government property, The Panama Canal. Somebody steal your car? So what? That’s not property. Took your wallet? Big deal. Saddam Hussein going to get the death penalty? That’s because he tried to take property belonging to the US and European oil companies. Stupid low breed Arab he was! And what about that ignorant Slav, Milosevic? Didn’t he know that Slovenia belonged to Italy, and Croatia to Germany? It’s about property. Not about justice. Justice is not for common folk in this world of corporate control and greed.

The scales of justice weighing most evenly? Bullshit! On one side sits the dollars against you, and on the other side sits the cents you have. Result, you’re going to go flying off to jail, Chump. Flying just like the jailbird they’ll make you into if you get caught up within The System, the Injustice one. Here’s about the best summary of some of the more recent corporate legal bullshit that has been piled upon us by the Right Winger whores of the corporations. Gerry Spence’s essay, Kill All Lawyers He especially hits it right on about how the docs and insurers united to screw the rest of us over with their so-called ‘tort reform’ legislation.

Are there any readers out there dumb enough to defend the US system of corporate legal bullshit? How about you, Michael? Care to defend the sea that your profession swims in? A sea of corporate legal bullshit. A sea of nonsense so obviously not justice.

Army men

Just following ordersYou might call it unfair to label those who go into the military as from the bottom of the barrel, but even at the top of the Pentagon’s barrel the mental qualifications appear pretty damn loose.
 
Our military’s options in Iraq have been summarized as this: go long, go big, or go home. Explained, these choices mean either decrease the troop levels and dig in for a protracted occupation, or increase US forces to attempt a definitive coup, or withdraw and bring the boys home. Defense Department heads are said to be favoring a combination of the three.

Sorry boys, for breakfast you get either Lucky Charms, oatmeal or donuts. Not all three.

Who else but the idiot at the back of the classroom could conceive of this synthesis: go big AND long, THEN you can go home? We’re not talking Gomer Pyle or Forrest Gump. We’re talking Larry’s brother Daryl and his other brother Daryl, awoken on the wrong side of the bed, armed, on Viagra. Keep those boys away from the heavy equipment!

Addendum: Am I saying that all Army men are idiots? Of course not. But let them come forward! All non-idiot soldiers please speak up about the war, refuse to fight it, show us what you’ve got upstairs.

Addendum 2: At the protest today, a middle aged gentleman drove by slowly with his window down, frowning and giving us a protracted thumbs down. I shouted from the side of my mouth so the others wouldn’t hear: “IDIOT!” He nearly leapt out of his expensive SUV to yell back to me “FUCK YOU!”

Does supporting the war in Iraq automatically make you an idiot? Damn straight. What a stupid question.

Campus cops taser torture Iranian student inside UCLA library

It’s just been a little over 2 months since Boulder cops murdered a young man with their tasers simply because he had grown some marijuana in a field there. He fled the cops because he didn’t want to do jail time for something so stupid. Instead of just sluffing off such a minor ‘crime’, the cops murdered him instead. Now, this past week, campus cops at UCLA put themselves in the international spotlight for torturing an Iranian student with their taser guns inside the student library. These thugs did it in front of numerous students, whom in turn got threatened with being tasered for coming to the aid of the cops’ victim. Because this act of brutality got caught on video, it has even sparked an official protest from the Iranian governement. I think it rather obvious that the student’s accent and Mid East appearance had much to do with why the cops went after him like animals on a hunt.

Ted Haggard New Life Church

This is FABULOUS! We find out tomorrow when his accuser takes a polygraph test live on a Denver radio talk show, but the preliminary report is that Ted Haggard, fundamentalist scourge of lesser sinners, will be borrowing a page that wasn’t even in Brother Swaggart’s play book.
 
It’s not that Ted Haggard is gay. Who isn’t? Or, who says it’s wrong to be gay?
 
It’s not that Ted Haggard paid for sex. For some that’s the only sex they want. Who says it’s wrong to pay someone to have sex with you?
 
It’s not that Ted Haggard did/does methamphetamine. Who hasn’t or wouldn’t if they were stupid enough?
 
It IS that Ted Haggard has been condemning gays and standing in the way of their equal partnership rights, all the while being gay. For me there is absolutely not much worse than a gay bastard!

That may sound a little strong, but it’s a curiously universal prejudice, isn’t it? Evil enhanced by being gay evil?

To celebrate, I’m going to have a second look at a documentary that came out earlier this year called Conviction, about three Dominican Sisters who were convicted and sentenced for the Plowshares action they took against a Colorado nuclear missile silo.

In particular, the documentary features a splendid interview of Ted Haggard, critical of the sisters’ actions, gloating about the prospects of them serving time in federal prison. He brags about the hand-in-glove relationship of church and military in Colorado Springs, frothing at the mouth to condemn the sisters. “This is just inappropriate, it’s bad bible interpretation, it’s bad Christianity…”

Iran will be next target and why does America’s Left continue to sleep?

Are we all asleep? The Bush Administration is planning to bomb Iran, and yet there is no effort to stop this. What in God’s name does it take to wake up an American Left? Let’s face it, most liberals have their thumbs stuck up their asses and their only plan is to just keep voting for the offal that runs under the Democratic Party banner, go to church, and pray. The Democratic Party supports Bush’s plans to attack Iran, therefore all the liberals once again have fallen into a trance behind their corporate misleadership on the question of stopping an attack on yet another country. It’s like Iran doesn’t even exist on their radar screens. Meanwhile, there are reports that the Pentagon is already moving into action once again.

Instead of moving with the times, the Colorado ‘peace movement’ contemplates its own navel this week. Are we to be out there mobilizing opposition to the planned bombing campaign against Iran? No, instead something called ‘Eyes Wide Open’ moves across the state this week. It involves a bunch of boots, and people both for the Iraq war and against it are encouraged to stare at these boots and what….? they will be encouraged to ‘reflect on the true cost of the Iraq war’! What a pile of crap! People should be encouraged to PROTEST the damn thing, but the good liberal church folk who come up with this sort of pseudo event impede the very organization of real protest events against the Pentagon, and substitute silliness instead. What next, an inaction to get us to ‘contemplate’ the evils of torture, instead of protesting the newly legalized and open use of it? Hey! Some people might not know that it hurts, I guess?

So what we have is a sleepy, milktoast American Left led by nuns, Quakers, and the Clintons and the Gores amongst us. Iran lookout! We can only ‘reflect’ here after you have been strafed, not before. Not all American Christians support Bush though. Some wait till he’s been bad, and then go ‘tsk,tsk,tsk’. They’ll be encouraging you to non-violently resist the new generation atomic weaponry their country’s military forces will be using on you. And they will be encouraging multi-faith reunions with any moderate Muslim clerics available, if not taken out already by Christian soldiers ahead of time. Let’s hold hands and pray together now. We will light the candles for you, as the troops put out your’s.

Wouldn’t it just be nice to actually have a more secular, and less Democratic Party controlled ‘peace movement’? Hey, let’s rename it an antiwar movement, too, while we’re at it. How about…whisper, whisper, whisper…. naming it ‘The Movement to Stop the US Military and to Dismantle the Damn Thing? 100%’. Take the idea to your church and/or atheist group. The idea is to protest a coming attack on another people ahead of time, and not just sit around with thumbs up the bum.

Here’s the response of the Christian pacifist to such a proposal as to confront head on the Right Wing militarist. whine…..”Oh, that’s not reaching out to others. They can change.”

To the Iranian Muslim, I apologize for the stupidity of the liberal Christians of America. They’re ready to turn their cheeks, even as you get yours slapped. Instead of an actual movement against the constant war, they just want a movement of the prayerful. They will get around to ‘defending’ you eventually. But first, you have to be crucified. Please don’t respond with a gun. They’ll be ‘reflecting’ on your behalf.

Saboteurs in the peace camp

How many ways can you sabotage an activist effort? Until the government’s playbook is published, let’s use our imagination to ferret out saboteurs.

Infiltrators: paid undercover law-enforcement agents who report back about planned actions. They might also be instigators of actions contrary or more extreme to what the genuine participants intend. Infiltration of political assemblies has been considered unlawful, until now when everything considered unlawful, for this executive branch, has become lawful.

Obstructionists: usually volunteers, they may not even know that they are serving someone else’s purpose. Difficult, mentally addled, or mentally deficient persons are courted by political party handlers or law enforcement and innocuously encouraged to join grass-roots groups. Their purpose is to hinder concensus-building at meetings and slow the strategizing. They do this by being slow-witted or contrarian. As a result, activists come to feel disorganized and ineffectual. Genuine members become discouraged. Prospective participants are driven off by the seeming futility.

Talk of saboteurs being planted is completely paranoid thinking of course. But if I was Machiavelli, on the other side, it’s certainly what I’d do.

Obstructionists are entirely the fault of an organization’s self-sabotage. Usually it’s the result of the tender quality of activists wanting to include all others, regardless of capability or handicap. It’s our primary vulnerablity to being waylaid. But it is not only altruism. In many cases it is simply bad management.

Regardless of how the unproductive or counterproductive participants reach the door, it falls on the organizers to limit their reach. Don’t assign tasks beyond a volunteer’s talents. Don’t send someone to negotiate, for example, who is likely to be flumoxed and bamboozled. We sent an envoy to ask something of the city, alerted the press to monitor the response, only to learn our representative was appeased and stalled. Nothing gained, and no story.

As another example, be very careful about giving responsibility when it is unearned. Offering faith in someone’s potential is generous, but how much of your agenda can be risked for such a big, if maybe also lazy, gesture?

The world peace and justice movement recently coordinated an international, post 9/11, multi-day event. In Denver it included an appearance by the Dalai Lama and nine other Nobel lauriates. SEASON OF FORGIVENESS was an eleven day period beginning on September 11th, to reflect on forgiveness, perhaps the real key to peace. Season of Forgiveness was a wonderful antidote I thought to the knee-jerk nationalistic “never forgetting” of 9/11.

In our circle we had a staffer declare that eleven days does not a season make. Really? What about the holiday season? Or hunting season? Nope, it was “stupid.” As a result in our town, in rejection of the national and international buzz generated for the event, in rejection of the possible co-promotion, Colorado Spring’s eleven days were called “11 Days to Empower Peace.” The turnout was despairing. Small wonder.

Fingerprint of the American Chickenhawk

Common response to antiwar protestorsOops, almost didn’t recognize The Finger from this angle because I’m used to it being pointed at me. Hundreds of people drove by as I protested against the war last year (in another city, and the Middle Finger came to symbolize the ‘Fingerprint of the American Coward’ to me.

Remember all those Right Wing bumperstickers of the past with the peace symbol being called the ‘footprint of the American chicken’? These inarticulate dopes now seem to just prefer shooting people-they-don’t-even-know their middle finger! Their veins would pop, and they would usually shout some sort of stupidity like “Get a job”, “Get out of my country”, etc. Often to protesters in their ’60s and ’70s! Comical. Most of these Rightist twits were often quite a bit younger those they were shooting the bird at. Did they care? No….

And they would never get out of their cars and try to hold an intelligent conversation, simply because they were too cowardly and scared to do so. The Middle Finger was simply all they had. Apparently listening to O’Reily, Rush, Boortz, Coulter, etc. just doesn’t prepare the typical American Coward to do much more than insult other folk with that Middle Finger of theirs. Go figure? But what can one expect of those cowards so ready to support killing innocent folk on the other side of the planet?

Yes, the middle finger is truly the modern day Fingerprint of the American Cowardly Chicken. Despite all the urban legends the Right Wing dopers like to repeat, antiwar protesters never ever heaped this sort of abuse on returning Vietnam vets. It was Right Wingers then who physically assauted peaceful protesters that is the true history of what happened Vietnam era. And today, none of us would ever be out there shooting other folk the middle finger like pro-war Rightists often will do today.

The TV noose

I’ve got an idea whose time has come… I keep wishing. I was watching TV and just grew so tired of the insolent lies. Condi was lying to Larry King, King being disingenuous, Condi was making preposterous statements, later McCain was making more things up, so were the other pundits and correspondents and anchors, all of them lying.

It made me yearn for that happy day when they will be made to atone. Which clearly isn’t about to happen now. And I despair if they’re going to weasel out of responsibility later. “I didn’t hmm. I had no idea. Who would have guessed.” Gosh.

If you think any of these cretins is so stupid, you haven’t thought about it enough. All knew better. In a better world it will be the penal system for all of them.

In the meantime there’s the TV Noose.

Here’s how it works: Make a noose or cut out a facsimile. Affix it to the top of the television, above the screen, so that it hangs down over the screen. Now you can imagine the cretin hanging before you. Visualize it. Make it happen. Will it to happen. Savor it. And practically everyone on TV who will grace your noose will actually have it coming.

Maybe it can lower your blood pressure and lessen your anxiety about whether the criminals will ever meet justice.

Hee Haw rides again

Hee Haw rides again!
Reprise: Junior Samples, Grandpa Jones, Buck Owens and Roy Clark.
 
No I’m messing with you. This is the cast of Blue Collar Comedy Tour Rides Again or something like that. Three funny guys who make an enormous living by speaking for the common man, plus the Cable Guy, their greek chorus, in this case impersonating the common lower common man. Really, when Larry The Cable Guy, Bill Engvall, Jeff Foxworthy and Ron White appear in promotional pictures, CD covers or movie posters, they are never shown in any other order than where their fans have seen them sit on their Comedy Central special. What an interesting opinion of the intellectual incapacity of your target audience.

I caught a little of this popular act on TV and I knew I’d seen it somewhere before. HEE HAW! It was funny then, and it’s funny still. But back then we didn’t have hicks for country music stars and for race car drivers and for president of the United States. Is this where you get when you idolize people who behave like they were schooled in a barn?

We make multi-millionaires out of people who talk like hayseeds. Nothin’ wrong with hayseeds, on tractors naturally. And clearly country music stars, like redneck comedy stars and like NASCAR driving stars have a lot more going for them upstairs than your average service station gofer. Most of the time we can tell that politicians and preachers who pander to the lowest common denominator, are not themselves so gullible. However, we don’t want our doctors to be hayseeds, nor our scientists, nor our news reporters, nor even customer service representatives. Why are we looking for comedic wisdom from hayseeds?

Lauding a hayseed for comedic wit seems to me to set a terrible example. We’re supposed to laugh at what stupid thinks is stupid? It’s terrifying to me that there’s even an entire auditorium full of stupids who want to hear country dumbkins opine about life. This is misogeny and gay-bashing and oversimplification of everything. Sure it’s funny to laugh at political correctness, until you consider why something is thought correct or incorrect in the first place. Life is a little bit complicated, and we don’t mind admitting that we like the most qualified person to be driving the bus. What is so funny about an idiot sounding off? Especially in a world where the court jester resembles the radio commentator and worse our presidential dauphin.

These guys tell the same jokes to each other, even work in ad libs for each other from their own original routines. This would not be so bad except that the good ol’ boys give each other kudos for their clever repartees, even though the audience would know from the CD they’ve already memorized that even the joviality is canned.

Most of us, when retelling a story in the presence of someone who we might have told already, will begin by saying “I was telling such-an-such…” so awkward are we about repeating ourselves. Performers naturally have to repeat themselves, and have to act among each other like the material is fresh. But to give each other credit for extemporizing a put-down is pretty damn lower denominator.

Lost in translation

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.

The economy stupid

Are we in a recession? Could it be a depression? A crash? Does the economy have a hope of recovery without help? The Bush administration doesn’t want to call the EMTs just yet, they prefer to tone down the rhetoric:

HELP! I’ve fallen and
I can’t improve the momentum of my recovery?

HELP! I’ve fallen and
my confidence about getting up needs a boost?

HELP! I’ve fallen and
I’m double-dipping on floor time?

HELP! I’ve fallen and
I’m despairing that my getting-up ability isn’t what it was?

HELP! I’ve fallen and
everyone wants to pretend I can get up! Or that I haven’t fallen, or that it was only a shallow fall.

A jobless recovery:
Telling a patient he’s already recovering to induce him to recover. Or pretending there’s an economic recovery to boost consumer confidence and generate an actual recovery.

I heard a spokesman say today that this recession has been the shortest in human history. In its first year the hundred year war was short.