I didn’t hear much about the Johns Hopkins study of civilian deaths in Iraq before hearing people jeering at its conclusions as gross exaggerations and — in the tiny mind of our president — an incitement to further violence in the nation he has destroyed (sadly, with our help). Like most politicians, Bush likes some statistics and detests others, and nowadays the sound of a mere $250 billion federal budget deficit is so much sweeter than that of 655,000 dead Iraqi non-combatants. A grim tally indeed. One of the study’s authors, Les Roberts (recent candidate for the democratic nomination for congress in my hometown district), seems to me not at all the hysterical exaggerator type. A physician and epidemiologist, he has been working on public health issues for many years, including time in war zones like Bosnia. This study is a follow-up on the one his team released a couple of years ago that put the number of “excess deaths” (i.e. those resulting from the U.S. invasion) at that time conservatively at 100,000. (The administration hated that number too, as I recall. )

Of course, this is a statistic that was born to be an orphan, and I have little doubt that while it is excoriated by the Republicans, the Democrats will treat it like a leper, just as my hometown newspaper had done so far (no story as of yet). Bush’s reaction is understandable. Hey, what the hell — practically the only “good” news coming out of Iraq for Bush is the Saddam Hussein trial, so when someone claims that Dubya has killed more Iraqis than Saddam, this is not at all a good thing. And as the Democratic leadership knows, he’s not the only one on the hook. There’s enough blood here to stain us all, and that always makes politicians uncomfortable. Don’t want to be giving people the impression that they are, well, responsible for anything their democratically elected leaders do, now do we? That’s no way to get votes. Just give the people happy talk about how we’re the greatest country in the world, and how we’ve never done anything wrong to anybody… and by the way, there’s that evil menace out there. Oh yeah… and you can have war and tax cuts at the same time.

Whatever the pols would have you believe, if this new Iraq casualties study is anything close to true, this is truly one of the major bloodlettings of our time — Rwanda league, for sure. But even if it were closer to the lower figures I hear the administration bandying about — a mere 50,000 or 100,000 — isn’t that bad enough? Isn’t the real crime that those deaths are so unimportant, regardless of their magnitude? For chrissake, does anybody still think that this war was unavoidable? If we’re close to unanimity on that, isn’t it time we consider the degree to which we are responsible for the suffering in Iraq? Is it somehow less disturbing to imagine a 2:1 ratio of Saddam’s killings to our own than something closer to 1:1, when we’re talking about hundreds of thousands of bodies in either case? Shouldn’t totals like this bother us at least as much as some lame-ass Congressman pulling a boner on teen pages?

Democracy = responsibility. That’s why we need to speak up, act up, and vote to end this stupid war.

luv u,

jp

Quite a spectacle this season, and I don’t mean the changing leaves. Our Republican friends trying to cling to power, fucking things up with such consistency that even so moribund an opposition as the Democrats can give them cause for worry. Still, there’s no day so sunny that the Dems can’t coax a little rain out of it. Hard to see what kind of dramatic difference they would make in power after having provided a dozen votes in the Senate to eliminate habeas corpus protections and give the president extra-constitutional powers and unprecedented legal immunity. Sometimes it seems like they feel they’ll only get to run the store by giving it away first. Weird people. But that’s what corporate money does, I guess — it just promotes a mind-numbing sameness; a narrowing of the political spectrum so that there will be virtually no risk of the ownership class’s interests being threatened. Our republic is definitely in trouble if only because the vast majority of people can find no effective political means of addressing our most pressing problems. Encouraged towards cynicism by both parties, they are increasingly likely to drop out of the political game altogether.

So… why do I have a horse in this race — namely the 24th Congressional district in upstate New York? Well, not because I think it’s going to make all the difference. I’m supporting the Democrat — Michael Arcuri — because I want to give the party currently in power a pain in the ass. Also, the Republican in the race is one of my hometown GOP politicians who’s been considered next in line for this seat for at least a decade. He’s a disgusting little vermin who will support the most reactionary policies of Bush, Hastert, Boehner (pronounced “boner”), and company, and he richly deserves to lose. Of course, the national Republican party has been sending boatloads of money his way, running ads that accuse Arcuri (a district attorney) of being soft on crime, a “tax and spend liberal,” plus funded by shady businessmen and comrade Barbara Streisand. Our backwater district has been graced by visits from Dick Cheney (who raised $200,000 for his boy Ray Meier) and Laura Bush (who raised $150,000 from local fat cats eager to shake her hand), so it’s pretty clear that the Bush White House wants… needs to hold onto this seat, which the GOP has held longer than anyone can remember.

That is why I’m putting some effort into this campaign — not because I’m all that fond of the Democratic candidate, but because Cheney and Hastert and Dubya want the seat so bad. Let’s face it, whoever is elected in November will work to bring federal contracts, projects, and cash home to the 24th district — that’s a given. They all bloody do it. The only meaningful point of comparison is which set of national policy priorities either one is going to support. If Arcuri wins and the Dems take over the House, John Conyers, Barbara Lee, and Dennis Kucinich will be banging the gavel at committee meetings. If the other guys win, it will be Boehner and Foley (well… not, Foley… though something tells me he’ll still be busy with Boehner… pronounced “boner”). That is enough reason for me to help put Arcuri over the top, then return to normal agitating the day after.

Electoral politics is just one small part of the game. And even if the “gains” are negative ones (e.g. slowing down the most pernicious aspects of the Bush agenda), it’s worth putting a few hours into. Nuff said.

luv u,

jp

Here’s a big surprise: the latest National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) surmises that the war in Iraq has led to an increased threat of terrorism, both in terms of the volume of potential attacks and the global spread of extremist groups. Who woulda’ thunk it? Once again, those initial arguments against invading Iraq are finding vindication years into the conflict, and — once again — its appears to make no difference. I feel like standing in the middle of Pennsylvania Avenue and shouting, Hey, fuckers! Those antiwar freaks were right about everything. Think there’s a chance they may be right about pulling the troops out, too? But let’s face it, these are very cynical times. People seem to have neither the energy nor the inclination to join a political fight they sense is pointless — that of convincing a bi-partisan Washington pro-war consensus that it’s time to abandon the Iraq project, shut down the permanent bases, pack up the gear, and pull out…. maybe even pay reparations for the mess we’ve made of the place. Most people think the war is stupid, not worth the cost, etc., but there’s no fire in the belly, because they’re not being compelled to a.) fight the war, or b.) pay for it. “Not my problem” seems to be the operative phrase.

Of course, this latest NIE demonstrates that, yes, it is our problem, including those of us who have had nothing to do with the military and who have enjoyed Bush’s tax cuts over the past five years of war. Like our ludicrous policies in Afghanistan during the 1980s, we are banking on a new generation of jihadist attacks. The (borrowed) money we spend in Iraq is an investment in future violence… meaning we can look forward to another wave of 9/11 type attacks just as the bills come due from this seemingly endless war. Why isn’t this treated as the scandal it truly is? Well, the press won’t stick their neck out on any story that doesn’t reflect some major center of power. If the leadership of neither party is willing to talk about an issue, the corporate media will avoid it as well. And because this is at least formally a democracy, neither party will move on something like bringing the troops home until we the people make it a political necessity for them to do so.

Maybe I’m wrong. (Has happened.) Maybe people will vote on the war this November and send the Republican congress packing out of sheer frustration. I know I intend to work towards that end, knowing that it is a minimalist approach to making a difference. (I live in a key congressional district that’s up for grabs this fall — more on that later.) Interestingly enough, the sentiments of the Iraqi people — those upon whom we have bestowed the toxic blessings of Bush-league democracy — seem to count for very little. Recent polling shows a solid majority of them want us out, while more than sixty percent support attacks on U.S. troops. (Not sure what those two statistics reflect, but they could mean that some Iraqis want us to stay so that they can shoot at us.) Seems to me that, at the very least, we should take these people at their word. But, of course, Bush is sticking to his line, now apparently relying on a fraudulent ABC television docudrama (or melomentary) to substantiate his suggestion that 9/11 was, basically, Clinton’s fault.

So much for vox populi.

luv u,

jp

This week, the Senate debated whether or not to sanction President Bush’s policy of torturing detainees. Let’s not trifle with words — torture is what we’re talking about here, not some antiseptic “alternative methods of interrogation” cooked up in the laptops of Dubya’s spin-meisters. We’re talking about grabbing people in the middle of the night and dragging them off to some “dark site” (perhaps the basement of a suburban home, who knows?) with no legal recourse. We’re talking about lashing people to boards and holding them under water. We’re talking about beating them senseless and fucking with their minds until they don’t know their own mother’s name. And we’re also talking about shipping them off to third countries where they’ll get even worse — the full spectrum of coercive technologies, modern and medieval. Some of the Republican leadership in the Senate framed this as a battle for American “values,” though they appear to have caved as of this writing. They had also raised a more practical question of leaving our military people at risk of ill-treatment and our leaders and commanders at risk of prosecution for violations of international law.

Personally, I think Bush had the advantage on this one. I think he appeals on a very visceral level to the impulses of revenge and retribution that are fairly common currency in the American body politic. Plenty of Americans — and I have known more than a few — are of the opinion that people in custody are most likely guilty, that foreigners are doubly guilty, and that the guilty deserve whatever they get. In fact, the worse their treatment the better, and if Bush can convince them that ill-treatment somehow makes them more safe, that’s better still. These base instincts are the same ones that inspire snickers at stories of prison rape, a staple of late-night television comedy monologues. Prisoner abuse constitutes the ultimate dehumanization, placing someone in a position of utter powerlessness, then systematically depriving them of dignity, basic physical security, and in some cases, life itself. Ugly as it is, prisoner abuse reflects a strand of our culture that’s as American as apple pie. Think about Abner Louima, the Haitian fellow who was beaten and sodomized with a nightstick by Rudy Giuliani’s NYPD. America’s mayor, wielding America’s nightstick. It’s in the blood, my friends.

On the other side of that same coin are the atrocities we’ve seen committed by some of our troops overseas. Once again, dehumanizing the “other” to the point where life is cheap, disposable, expendable. Back to Giuliani’s New York, remember Amadou Diallo, the unarmed black guy shot 19 times by the NYPD for attempting to pull out his wallet and identify himself; or Patrick Dorismond, another person of color shot by undercover cops when they tried to harass him into buying drugs off of them (he was resisting entrapment, apparently). This is part of the culture we bring with us to Baghdad, playing it out in the streets just as we do at home. Like the brutality of Saddam’s era, this has become part of their social burden. And now, with the Senate compromise legislation, our government will have expanded ability to circumvent common article three of the Geneva Conventions, ignore our own War Crimes Act, and gut what’s left of habeas corpus (which shysters like McCain didn’t even affect to defend). They are also protecting themselves from prosecution at some presumably more civilized point in the future. Saddam must be green with envy.

The tradition continues.

luv u,

jp

On the fifth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks (which seems to have lasted months rather than a single day) my trusty hometown newspaper published a jumbo-tron sized headline on the front page: NEVER FORGET.

They were, of course, referring to the terror attacks in New York, Washington D.C., and on the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania. That one moment in time — one morning in September that must remain seared into our collective memory for all time. A moment of supreme infamy, as horrific as they come. There are other moments, however, that our government would much prefer we forget. In fact, they are relying on us not to remember those particular moments.

Like the decade we spent sluicing money into what was the biggest CIA project in history up to that time — the war against the USSR in Afghanistan, when we created a virtual Ford Foundation for jihadists of the type our politicians now excoriate at every opportunity. Thanks to our largess, aspiring militants anywhere in the Muslim world could go to their local Pakistani embassy and pick up free tickets to Afghanistan on the CIA’s tab. I recall hearing about U.S. State Department officials pulling their hair out because the Reagan-era U.S. embassy in Saudi Arabia kept issuing visas to highly unsavory types on the insistence of our intelligence community. It was at that moment that the seeds of Bin Laden’s (then himself a CIA asset) organization were planted.

Of course, at the same moment (the 1980s) the U.S. was actively helping a certain Saddam Hussein prosecute the war he started against neighboring Iran. We supplied strategic intelligence, supplies, helicopters, and other aid as Saddam repeatedly used chemical weapons against the Iranians, starting as early as 1982 (fully six years before the Halabja massacre). When he gassed to death 5,000 residents of that Kurdish community, our State Department put the word out that Iran was somehow responsible. When Saddam started attacking ships in the Persian Gulf, we ran escorts to protect the safety of shipping allied with Iraq — not Iran’s ships. When Saddam’s air force shot up the U.S.S. Stark and killed 30+ sailors, our leaders cursed Iran. No one in the Reagan administration, from the “Gipper” on down, gave a damn for Saddam’s victims throughout that entire war. Meanwhile, these avowed enemies of terrorism were secretly selling arms to Iran (which they considered the center of terrorism), funneling the proceeds to the Contra terror army in Central America, so they could shoot up more undefended civilian targets, like farms and clinics and anywhere their U.S. sponsors told them the Nicaraguan army wouldn’t be.

That was before 9/11. Then, of course, there was all that stuff since the day of infamy — stuff like, oh I don’t know, lying us into a major war that has now cost nearly as many American lives as the 9/11 attacks. They run away from it now, but the Bush administration and its allies in congress (of both parties) played the terror card over and over in the run-up to the Iraq invasion, making claims and insinuations about Al Qaeda links and WMDs that were wholly unsubstantiated. No investigation is needed to work that one out — it’s a matter of public record, and a performance so transparent that any five-year-old could see through it. Now, because of their actions, Iraq is in worse shape than ever, and it’s well on the way to becoming a “failed state” on the magnitude of Afghanistan in the 1990s. Their boneheaded efforts at building a hillbilly empire (their own Mayberry on the Tiber) is probably beyond any hope of even a moderately benign outcome, and we will pay for their stupidity for many decades to come.

Yeah, well… you can forget all that.

luv u,

jp

It was a real Rove moment. George W. Bush at the rostrum in front of a room full of 9-11 victim families, announcing his new policy on the disposition of detainees held in the never-ending “war on terror.” (God forbid our official enemies should declare a similar “war on air power” or “war on artillery”). Dubya pulled most of his trademark non-sequitur facial expressions ( the “by crackee” squint-smirk, the long “get it? get it?” glare) and was generally in form for this photo-op as he promised to bring the 9-11 plotters to justice for the nearly 3,000 lives lost on that awful day. And yet, as well received as his words were among that group, I wonder if anyone there pondered how Bush has brought about, by his own count, at least ten times as many deaths in Iraq — and really more like 50 times as many by the most realistic reckoning — as a result of the war of choice he initiated in the name of their fallen loved ones. I know that a good many 9-11 families are none too happy about being used in such a manner… and they can expect the memory of their loss to be invoked regularly in the weeks leading up to the mid-term elections.

So what is this thing called guilt? What meaning does it have if it is only applied to those who lack the power and resources to avoid apprehension and prosecution? Recent experience suggests it has very little meaning at all except as a marketing tool — recall the Saddam trial and all of his unindicted Reagan-era co-conspirators. Actually, I had occasion to hear one of the great legal minds behind the administration’s war on terror this week. NPR’s “Day to Day” was interviewing John Yoo, author of Bush’s legal justification for torture and detention without due process. Yoo drew a distinction between “war time” and normal circumstances, arguing that it is not practical to apply the niceties of constitutional rights to combatants captured on the field of battle. Of course, what he didn’t discuss was how many of these “combatants” were pulled from their homes in, say, Lahore or Karachi, and thrown into a black hole where they were beaten, humiliated, and held without legal recourse for up to three years before being released on the admission that they were innocent all along. In Yoo’s legal world, it’s okay to hold someone like that until the end of the “conflict” (i.e. forever) — just arrest everyone you can get your hands on (or pay a bounty for) and sort them out later.

Fact is, this denial of rights is criminal in the extreme, and the Bush team knows it. That’s why they are so dead set against any international legal architecture of justice — not because they fear U.S. soldiers will be dragged off to the Hague (as they claim) but because they see themselves in the dock one day, facing charges of unlawful abduction, torture, mass murder, and the supreme crime of waging aggressive war against a nation for no legitimate reason, at the cost of many tens of thousands of lives. So as you pause for your solemn moment of silence this Monday, think not only of those who perished in the 9-11 attacks, but also of those who have died since as a result of our political culture’s thirst for blood and our own indifference to the suffering of others. Let us duly mourn our failure to stop this before so many were forced to pay with their lives (including nearly as many Americans as died on that fateful day five years ago).

And so long as your head is bowed, think of that Pet Goat Bush was reading about as the WTC burned and ask yourself why the hell this man is still being allowed to run our nation into the ground.

luv u,

jp

The smoke has barely cleared from Israel’s bombing of Lebanon and the chattering/scribbling classes are already climbing over one another to claim the “master narrative” (in po-mo language), telling us what lessons may be drawn (and quartered) from the recent bloodletting. I don’t know about you, but I’ve heard plenty of the official Israeli line — about attempting to create a “new reality” in southern Lebanon; about the international community’s responsibility to implement all provisions of the ceasefire (i.e. take up the fight that Israel could not win); about how the U.N. had ignored Israel’s warnings about the build-up of arms in Lebanon over the past six years. (Israel’s deputy U.N. ambassador Daniel Carmon even questioned on DemocracyNow! whether “all the civilians in southern Lebanon were purely innocent civilian(s).” All of this constituting a rationale for not lifting their naval blockade of Lebanese ports, not allowing even western organizations to clean up the massive oil spill the IDF created, and not entirely removing its forces from Lebanon. I think the amazing thing is that Israel can arrogate to itself the right to block shipping and aid to Lebanon without any serious international consequences. Who died and left Olmert god, anyway?

We are supposed to see the malevolent hand of Tehran and Damascus in Hezbollah’s success, but this is a very weak gambit. Sure they get money and arms from Iran… just as Israel gets much more of both from the United States. But I think Israeli peace activist Uri Avnery is right when he points out that the biggest reason for Israel’s poor performance in the second Lebanon war is the corrosive effect on the IDF of Israel’s 39-year occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, Gaza, and the Golan Heights. They no longer have the skills to fight a reasonably well-organized and adequately armed adversary because they’ve been using their tanks, missiles, and helicopter gunships mainly against civilians and lightly-armed militants, as well as stone-throwing boys. What tactical sophistication is needed in a place like Gaza, where your bulldozers, tanks, and pilotless drones can lay waste to any housing unit you care to target? There has been almost a sense of outrage at Hezbollah’s capacity to resist the Israeli invasion. They’re not fighting fair! (Translation: they’re fighting back.)

The fact is, the only meaningful military capacity Hezbollah possesses is a defensive one, as well as a largely random retaliatory one. So their real offense in this conflict has been not to crumble like so many Arab armies before them. This is getting up Dubya’s nose in a serious way, because he cannot attack Iran now without having missiles rain aimlessly down on northern Israel. It’s not just the fact that these people can repel an attack — it’s that they now have some semblance of a deterrent; a primitive variant on Mutual Assured Destruction, like the North Koreans, whose massed artillery casts a shadow over Seoul (not to mention Washington’s desire to “take them out”… and I don’t mean to dinner.) So “Project Democracy” is in trouble. Of course, Dubya’s concept of “democracy” is fully congenial to Israel’s taking 30 democratically elected Palestinian parliamentarians prisoner and the PAN evidently stealing a presidential election in Mexico.

Just try to remember: when Viktor Yushchenko rallies the masses against a fraudulent election in Ukraine, it’s a good thing. When AMLO does the same thing south of the border… not so good.

luv u,

jp

Even as the U. S. media gears up for what promises to be the “trial of the century” of the year (that Jon Benet Ramsey murder case they’re obsessing about now), our trusty hometown newspaper found space on the front page (way below the fold) for one story coming out of Iraq — that of another “trial of the century”. Namely, Saddam Hussein’s second, at which he will answer charges of genocide against the Kurds during the Anfal campaign of 1987-8. Conspicuously absent from the stand, of course are Saddam’s and “Chemical” Ali’s co-conspirators in the Reagan administration, as well as much of the congressional leadership at the time. Sure, Reagan’s dead, but many of his top people are still with us (particularly his special envoy to Baghdad, Donny “by gosh” Rumsfeld), some of whom have made their way back into the White House in the intervening years. At the very least, the full history of U. S. cooperation with Saddam up to, including, and well beyond the gassing and bombing of Kurdistan should be brought forward at this trial. But any such suggestion is merely laughable in the context of the U.S. occupation of Iraq.

This trial isn’t about justice, it’s about public relations. This is the closest thing to good news our government can muster out of the disaster they have created in Iraq. It is very likely that upwards of 200,000 people have died in that country since our invasion of March 2003. Add that to the 300,000 to 500,000 who died because of the 12-year sanction regime (imposed by the U.S. and Britain) and we’re putting Saddam’s grisly numbers to shame. Though it isn’t reasonable to set our death toll against his, since we are also morally and materially culpable in the mass killings for which he is being held responsible. No one talks about it now, but Saddam received billions and billions in aid and war materiel from the United States during his 8-year war against Iran. His regime received logistical support and satellite intelligence, much as was provided to the Nicaraguan “Contra” terror army at about the same time. He received components for WMD’s from U.S. and European suppliers with a nod from their respective governments. He enjoyed considerable diplomatic support as well, particularly in the wake of the Halabja attack, which we tried to hang on Iran, if memory serves. Indeed, our support for the bad boy went on until days after he invaded Kuwait in 1990, fully two years after Halabja.

You’ve heard me say all this before (those who’ve been reading this blog for a while), so forgive me for repeating myself. It is just that the entire history of our relationship with Iraq (and, indeed, with every nation in the greater Middle East area) goes unmentioned, unreferenced, and unremembered in the mainstream press. Those of us who do recall what happened end up sounding like Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner, but I suppose that is the only way to keep history alive — by utilizing this modern equivalent of an oral tradition. To listen to our leaders and our network newscasters, we are living in a world of clearly defined “good” and “evil”. But the definitions they offer do not hold an ounce of water, once you scratch beneath the surface a little bit (Olmert and Nasrallah come to mind). If Hussein belongs in the docket, then we should be standing right beside him, for the people who died twenty years ago… and for the people who are dying today.

The king is mad. Pass it on.

luv u,

jp

The cease fire in Lebanon appears to be holding at this moment, thank God. Just a Goddamned shame it couldn’t have been called a month ago before well over a thousand people were killed in Lebanon (Robert Fisk reports the number at around 1,300 as some of the collapsed buildings hit by the IDF are excavated) and more than 140 in Israel. Did I say “couldn’t”? It’s really more a case of “wouldn’t”. Bush, Cheney, and pals were anxious to see the birth of their “new Middle East,” after all, so many more hundreds of men, women, and children had to die needlessly, many more had to be grievously wounded, lose their homes and livelihoods, etc., before the administration and the Israeli government chose to accept virtually the same terms as they could have had shortly after the conflict began. It looks as though Olmert and Peretz had had enough, realizing that victory does not come easy in southern Lebanon even with vastly superior military technology and a strategy that involves massive civilian casualties and collective punishment. Well, it was gripping while it lasted, eh, fellows?

So what does this new Middle East look like? Well, let’s see. From the wreckage of Lebanon, Hezbollah has emerged as a world-class fighting organization, able to hold off one of the most sophisticated military machines in the world — a feat which has earned them the admiration of virtually the entire Arab world, including sectarian communities in their own country who were their sworn enemies not so long ago. The craven Bush administration, apparently high on the latest round of strategic Kool-Aid being ladled out by the likes of Iran-Contra felon Elliott Abrams, was expecting Christian, Sunni, and Druze Lebanese to turn on the Shi’a community as a result of Israel’s savage attacks on their country. Perhaps they were stoked up by memories of last year’s “Cedar Revolution” and the ejection of Syrian troops from Lebanon. If so, they severely miscalculated… yet again. Hezbollah may receive arms and support from Iran and Syria, but it is an indigenous force with its loyalties fixed firmly in the soil of southern Lebanon. You don’t fight that fiercely for something that isn’t yours. So this entire exercise simply entrenched Hezbollah more deeply in Lebanon’s political and cultural life, enhanced their reputation as a resistance movement, and demonstrated that the concept of mutual assured destruction now applies to local, non-nuclear conflicts between Israel and its immediate neighbors.

This brings us back the the “vision” thing, as pappy Bush used to say. What is Lebanon’s role in America’s grand strategy? Pretty simple. Disarm the one force capable of deterring a neighboring power that has attacked invaded their country half a dozen times in the last 25 years. Let Western capital roll over their economy. And keep their mouths shut. That was the plan for Iraq, as well — in fact, that’s the goal for every nation in what’s referred to as the “developing world”. The model is to have formal democratic institutions in the sense that there will be elections every few years. But all the key decisions regarding the ownership and distribution of national resources, public services, and trade and investment policy, will be made by bankers and investors in the “developed” world. This is what Bush calls “freedom” — for the impoverished majorities in these countries, it means abandoning hope of a better life and resigning oneself to penury in a global consensus built to benefit multinational corporations. It’s the “freedom” you find in Guatemala and Nicaragua.

My guess is, that’s part of what makes people fight so damned hard. They can see where this is headed.

luv u,

jp

Yes, friends, we do still have a color coded terror alert system (not heard from since just after the 2004 Democratic National Convention) and it’s cranked up to red after this week’s thwarted terror plot in Britain. Another hijacking plan involving long-distance flights, this time apparently focusing on ten aircraft, though I believe the 9/11 strategy originally called for more than 4 or 5 planes. Bush’s comments following the announcement seemed particularly rambling and incoherent, covering the usual talking points about those who “hate our freedoms,” then stumbling off even further into numbskull territory. His painfully qualified-sounding observation that we are “safer than we were on 9/11” sounded a bit like when he was lowballing the number of Iraqi dead to “around thirty thousand”, give or take. This man should never work without a script. In any case, the national security establishment was full of self-praise at having averted a major catastrophe of the type we can expect to see attempted with greater frequency in the months and years ahead, thanks to their ham-fisted policies over the last five years. So, well done… I think.

Still, this near miss (or as George Carlin might term it, “near hit“) fills me with dread. Maybe it’s just paranoia born of anticipating the inevitable fallout from the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Lebanon, but I can’t help but wonder – why such an obvious scenario? Why attempt an attack using the very system that is most closely watched by the authorities? Might this be an elaborate diversion, a rouse to distract us from some far more novel operation now in progress? I hope not, but I know this has occurred to others besides myself. It would be reckless to assume that this would never have occurred to groups like al Qaeda, as well. The malign brilliance of the 9/11 plot was that it completely blind-sided our national security establishment and used the failings of our profit-obsessed commercial aviation system and the atrophied regulatory bodies that oversee it as weapons against us, to terrifying effect. Someone – I doubt bin Laden – was bright enough to look closely at our society, discern where the structural weaknesses are, and proceed accordingly. If they’re smart enough to pull that off, it seems to me they’re probably too smart to rely solely on a plot that uses those same resources, which while still vulnerable are much more highly scrutinized by intelligence and law enforcement than they were prior to September 2001.

So while our homeland security secretary and various anti-terrorism officials pat themselves on the back for a job well done, there may be some more subtle conspiracy under way on the part of the “evil doers”. Lord knows we’re open to attack across a broad spectrum of the national infrastructure, from ground transportation to chemical plants to power generation facilities and so on. Our homeland security funding is a shambles, with money being sent in all kinds of strange directions per the usual congressional pork-barrel allocation process. Just a few miles from where I live, there’s a training facility where people in hazmat suits practice for the terror attacks of yesteryear, effectively closing the door on that empty barn. Sure, it generates a few jobs and it makes it look like our politicians are doing something to make us safer, but when you’ve got a top-level leadership that doesn’t think New York City has any important landmarks worth protecting; one that has demonstrated its inability and unwillingness to respond to predictable disasters like Katrina; a national political culture that has done more to breed terrorism in the last five years than Osama might have dreamed possible in 2000, there’s no question but that we have a major problem here.

By the way, we now have a cease fire agreement for Lebanon that allows the IDF to keep dropping bombs “defensively.” More payback on the way, I expect… so keep your heads down, my friends.