A Day For Those Who Fight To End The Fighting
May 25th, 2009 § Leave a Comment
I wrote this last year for Huffington Post and it’s important now as it was last year. I hope you all find some meaning in this post.
DUMMERSTON, VT– Memorial Day weekend has come and gone. All weekend, I saw veterans honored on television, the newspapers, parades, etc. I saw more than my share of yellow ribbons, American flags, 21-gun salutes and more. But something was missing, something I wish would be covered every Memorial Day: voices of dissent, especially from those who served our country.
Don’t get me wrong. I support the troops. I support them just as much as those who support war efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan. I also support veterans in past conflicts. For many of them, Memorial Day means everything. But there are other veterans that never get heard. They are silenced, ignored and misunderstood because they have something vastly different to share. I’m talking about those veterans who served their country, survived the horrors of war and heal their wounds through advocacy efforts.
Yet Another Bogus ‘Terror’ Plot
May 25th, 2009 § Leave a Comment
James Cromitie after his arrest on charges of plotting terror acts.
Pop goes another ‘terror plot’. Robert Dreyfuss reports: (UPDATE: Dreyfuss follows up here)
By the now, it’s maddeningly familiar. A scary terrorist plot is announced. Then it’s revealed that the suspects are a hapless bunch of ne’er-do-wells or run-of-the-mill thugs without the slightest connection to any terrorists at all, never mind to Al Qaeda. Finally, the last piece of the puzzle: the entire plot is revealed to have been cooked up by a scummy government agent-provocateur.
I’ve seen this movie before.
In this case, the alleged perps — Onta Williams, James Cromitie, David Williams, and Laguerre Payen — were losers, ex-cons, drug addicts. Al Qaeda they’re not. Without the assistance of the agent who entrapped them, they would never have dreamed of committing political violence, nor would they have had the slightest idea about where to acquire plastic explosives or a Stinger missile. That didn’t stop prosecutors from acting as if they’d captured Osama bin Laden himself. Noted the Los Angeles Times:
« Read the rest of this entry »
The Militarization of America’s Youth
May 25th, 2009 § 3 Comments
Jennifer Steinhauer’s disturbing article in The New York Times titled “Scouts Train to Fight Terrorists and More” illuminates how deeply militarism has penetrated U.S. society, and particularly U.S. youth. Steinhauer specifically examines various aspects of the “Explorer’s Program,” a “coeducational affiliate” of the Boy Scouts of America, the largest youth organization in the U.S.
The Explorer’s program trains youth (some as young as 13) in law enforcement activities with a growing emphasis on combating suspected terrorists and illegal immigrants. Steinhauer’s article exposes the fanaticism of the people who run the program and the ways in which the program normalizes extreme violence in the eyes of its young members.
Cathy Noriega, also 16, said she was attracted by the guns. The group uses compressed-air guns — known as airsoft guns, which fire tiny plastic pellets — in the training exercises, and sometimes they shoot real guns on a closed range.
“I like shooting them,” Cathy said. “I like the sound they make. It gets me excited.”
Read the rest of Steinhauer’s piece here.
The Darfur Debate
May 24th, 2009 § 8 Comments
This debate between Mahmood Mamdani and John Prendergast took place on April 14, 2009 at the School of International and Public Affairs and the Institute for African Studies, Columbia University. I recently finished Mamdani’s new book Saviors and Survivors, which I will be reviewing for The Electronic Intifada shortly. The book is a tour de force brimming with political, historical, and anthropological insights. I would highly recommend it to anyone with interest in the subject.
(Also see James North’s review of the debate, and this follow up post.)
Good Cop, Bad Cop
May 24th, 2009 § Leave a Comment
Big brother is blogging you (a scene from 1984)
Considering that past winners have included the frothing-at-the-mouth zionut Mellanie Phillips, it would perhaps be more accurate to rename the Orwell Prize the Orwellian Prize. Here is Ross McKibbin on this year’s winner for the best political blog. Here is Ross McKibbin on this year’s winner for the best political blog.
The Orwell Prize committee this year introduced a new prize for political blogging. It has been won by an anonymous ‘English detective’ who calls himself ‘NightJack’. His posts are a mixture of general comment and diary accounts of apparently typical days in the lives of English policemen. They are vigorously written and sometimes perfectly reasonable. NightJack regrets that the police today are kitted out as imperial stormtroopers, he has little nostalgia for the old canteen culture, he laments the mass of paperwork that has been foisted on the police (like everyone else in the public sector) and fairly argues that if plea-bargaining is to become entrenched it ought to be formalised.
A Community of the Spirit – Rumi
May 24th, 2009 § 1 Comment
There is a community of the spirit.
Join it, and feel the delight
of walking in the noisy street
and being the noise.
Drink all your passion,
and be a disgrace.
Close both eyes
to see with the other eye.
Open your hands,
if you want to be held.
Sit down in this circle.
Quit acting like a wolf, and feel
the shepard’s love filling you.
At night, your beloved wanders.
Don’t accept consolations.
Close your mouth against food.
Taste the lover’s mouth in yours.
You moan, “She left me.” “He left me.”
Twenty more will come.
Be empty of worrying.
Think of who created thought!
Why do you stay in prison
when the door is so wide open?
Move outside the tangle of fear-thinking.
Live in silence.
Flow down and down in always
widening rings of being.
– Translated by Coleman Barks
The Torture Memos
May 24th, 2009 § Leave a Comment
Noam Chomsky examines the recently released torture memos and puts them in a historical context.
“Bush, of course, went beyond his predecessors in authorizing prima facie violations of international law, and several of his extremist innovations were struck down by the Courts. While Obama, like Bush, eloquently affirms our unwavering commitment to international law, he seems intent on substantially reinstating the extremist Bush measures.”
BDS movement gains ground in Scotland
May 24th, 2009 § 1 Comment
Prominent filmmaker Ken Loach: "The massacres and state terrorism in Gaza make this money unacceptable."
The boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel continues to gain leverage every day as more people become aware of Israel’s atrocities. Many argue that the BDS movement must penetrate every aspect of society for it to be fully effective at encouraging people to demand that Israel halt its policies of ethnic cleansing and apartheid against Palestinians. The Edinburgh International Film Festival (EIFF) has accordingly agreed to return funds provided by the Israeli Embassy to finance the visit of Israeli filmmaker Tali Shalom-Ezer. While Ginnie Atkinson from the EIFF continues to insist that the decision was not politically motivated, she prefaces her explanation for the move by stating that:
…we probably do not have too distant views on the fundamentals. « Read the rest of this entry »
Terrorism Reexamined
May 24th, 2009 § Leave a Comment
(New Press, 2008)
C. S. Soong is one of the best radio interviewers, erudite and articulate, and on his show Against the Grain you will always find some of the most stimulating discussions on politics, philosophy, literature and activism.
Terrorists, we are told, threaten our freedom and democracy. What does this kind of rhetoric ignore, and what kind of governmental violence does it justify? Matthew Carr calls attention to a tradition, beginning in the 19th century, of using violence against symbolic targets to achieve a political victory. He also discusses the Mau Mau in Kenya and the counterterrorism initiatives of the Reagan era.
Matthew Carr, The Infernal Machine: A History of Terrorism The New Press, 2008
Breaking News: Armed soldiers, police, attempt to shut down Palestine Festival of Literature
May 23rd, 2009 § 2 Comments
Israeli stormtrooper threatens the media
Israeli stormtroopers have tried to shut down the Palestine Festival of Literature according to Al Jazeera and Ma’an News Agency. Fellow PULSE contributor Robin Yassin-Kassab is one of the featured writers at this year’s event. Unfortunately there is nothing new about this type of contemptible behavior, it’s Israel’s stock-in-trade. So next time you hear an Obama or a Brown speak about ‘our shared values’, ask them if burning books and gagging writers are part of them. See also Marcy Newman who is there at the Festival and writes at the excellent Body On The Line.
Israeli police and armed border officials shut down the Palestinian National Theater in East Jerusalem on Saturday, in an effort to quash the Palestine Festival of Literature and prevent international writer and poets from addressing Palestinians.
The weeklong festival, sponsored in part by the British Council and UNESCO, was scheduled to begin at 6:30 with two panel discussions by authors from Canada, Britain, South Africa and Australia. The second annual festival will travel around Palestine and decided to begin and end events in Jerusalem in honor of Al-Quds Capital of Culture 2009.
