Selves and Others

Amid the rubble, ruin and broken lives in Fallujah seven months after the last US offensive on the city, the tangible devastation is easy to see. The less tangible damage is now manifesting itself: inflamed tempers, deepened sectarian rifts and an Iraqi resistance spurred into levels of attacks rarely seen prior to the siege.

A study into present African passivity.

Imperialism loves Africa. It fights itself, unlike the Arabs who prefer fighting invaders. It speaks a million tongues, unlike the unhelpfully monolingual Arabs, presenting rich opportunities to resourceful foreigners. All of Africa’s incorruptible heroes are dead - Cabral, Fanon, Sankara, Hani, - those of the Arabs - Hamas, Hizbullah, the Iraqi Muquama, still live - and don’t we know it! Africa has a short memory, the Arabs a long one, we know because we wrote Africa’s history, the Arabs, rebellious as ever, wrote their own. (...)

I just spent two days in the southern Iraqi city of Karballa. Getting there was a bit of trick, we had to drive through the dangerous "Sunni Triangle" and dozens of checkpoints. It was particularly bad the day we left because the US was beginning "Operation Lightening", where they planned to completely surround Baghdad and "sweep" the city in an attempt to appear offensive and test the new Iraqi security services. The major highway was completely blocked by a huge convoy of trucks carrying tanks, equipment and supplies. We tried for over and hour with hundreds of other cars to get through on the side roads, but it eventually became clear that it was impassible and we had to go around another way. (...)

"There’s a conspiracy to create the appearance that no one is governing."

President Carlos Mesa

On May 30-31, the Bolivian capital witnessed the largest, most radical protest marches since October 2003; in a climate of institutional crisis and government paralysis, two concepts of democracy confronted one another. For President Mesa (and I’m paraphrasing here), mass mobilization in the form of civic strikes, protest marches, and road blockades is synonymous with chaos, economic disorder, political instability, subversion, criminal conspiracy, and coup plotting. For Bolivian social movements, democracy is the expansion of political participation and national sovereignty obtained via mass mobilization. (...)

When asked about the increased violence in Iraq Bush said, "What you’re seeing is a group of frustrated and desperate people who kill innocent life". So, if the increase in violence and the numbers of deaths is a good thing, showing just how desperate they are, then Bush will see the LAT’s report that "U.S. officials and Iraqi analysts say the insurgents’ resources are increasing on several fronts: money to buy cars and explosives, expertise in wiring car and human bombs, and intelligence leaks that help the insurgents target U.S. and Iraqi forces." as even further proof of just how successful this war is.
—Matt Mertz, Selves and Others Reader

Increasingly, the bombers are Iraqis instead of foreign infiltrators. Civilians and police, not GIs, are the prime targets.

BAGHDAD - Suicide bombings have surged to become the Iraqi insurgency’s weapon of choice, with a staggering 90 attacks accounting for most of last month’s 750 deaths at the militants’ hands.

Suicide attacks outpaced car bombings almost 2-to-1 in May, according to figures compiled by the U.S. military, The Times and other media outlets. In April, there were 69 suicide attacks, more than in the entire year preceding the June 28, 2004, hand-over of sovereignty. (...)

“An imperial affliction

Sent us of the Air” - Emily Dickinson

Alfred de Vigny developed stomach cancer in his early sixties, which he endured with exemplary stoicism: Quand on voit ce qu’on est sur terre et ce qu’on laisse/Seul le silence est grand; tout le reste est faiblesse. “When you see what we are and what life amounts to/Only silence is great; everything else is weakness.” Reminds me of Giacometti... who I just wrote about at here.

And it reminds me of Beckett... who I’m always writing about at Ox to Grind... and elsewhere.

Silence to Silence, an eighty-minute documentary on Beckett, with French subtitles (”D’un silence l’autre”), produced by Radio Telefis Eirann is something to see... if you’re interested in this subject. To wit, want subjecting yourself to... this idolatrous idea, subject.

Since the Bush administration invaded Iraq, they have insisted that in doing so, they are spreading democracy. The administration has grandly pledged to “end tyranny in our world.” But a report just released by the World Policy Institute casts doubt on these assertions. And it calls into question the favorite declaration by the Bush administration: namely, that America is safer today than it was before the invasion of Iraq. (...)

After the Bush administration yesterday (June 1) lined up numerous officials, including Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and General Richard Myers, to attack Amnesty International for its report that criticizes the administration’s human rights record, the respected human rights organization fired back.

In a statement released yesterday, Amnesty International USA Director William Schulz said that this wasn’t their first report about the administration’s mistreatment of prisoners. "Donald Rumsfeld and the Bush administration ignored or dismissed Amnesty International’s reports on the abuse of detainees for years," says Schulz. (...)

EUROPE’S POLITICIANS and business executives were reeling May 29 after French voters resoundingly rejected the proposed European constitution in a referendum vote.

The draft constitution—whose writing was overseen by a former French president, Valéry Giscard D’Estaing—would centralize power in the Brussels-based bureaucracy of the European Union (EU), giving it greater power over the EU’s 25 member countries. While “vote yes” propaganda hailed the constitution as a path to economic growth, it in fact is designed to lock in free-market, pro-business policies known as neoliberalism, while continuing to shred the European welfare state.

The defeat of the constitution is a blow to French President Jacques Chirac and the conservative government led by Chirac’s ally, Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin. Chirac’s popularity was already sinking due to budget cuts and the rollback of pro-worker reforms such as the 35-hour workweek. (...)

[June 3, 2005 | Page 5]

THERE SEEMS to be a disconnect in politics in the U.S. today.

Check any opinion poll this month and you will find that President Bush’s popularity rests somewhere in the mid-40 percent range. On specific subjects, like privatizing Social Security, Bush’s ratings reach Nixonian levels of unpopularity, with about one in three Americans expressing support. And a growing majority believes the war in Iraq wasn’t worth it.

Bush’s and Congress’s crashing support should be a signal that Americans are looking for an alternative to the right-wing politics that dominated the country. Yet, you’d be hard-pressed to find among the liberal organizations and the Democratic Party a sense of anything other than a feeling of siege and resignation. Why? (...)

[June 3, 2005 | Page 8]

SINCE GEORGE W. Bush launched his “war on terror,” more than 25,000 U.S. troops have been medically evacuated from the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan—about half of them injured by bombs or bullets.

Many of the most seriously wounded will eventually find themselves at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Walter Reed is considered the nation’s premier military medical facility. But some patients tell a different story—of a vastly overcrowded facility, where they don’t receive adequate treatment.

Many of the wounded are returning home from Bush’s war for oil and empire to discover that their personal battles are far from over. NICOLE COLSON reports on the crisis at Walter Reed. (...)

[June 3, 2005 | Pages 6 and 7]

As the government emphasizes patriotism as part of the national school curriculum and discussion continues apace over revising Article 9, some Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) lawmakers are calling for changes to the Constitution that may put equal rights and individual freedom at risk.

The ongoing discussion on revising the Constitution has grown to include calls for amendments to Article 24 — the clause protecting gender equality in postwar Japan — in a bid to lock conservative family values into the legal and social framework at the expense of individual freedom. (...)

The Indictment of Larry Franklin, Iran desk officer in Douglas Feith’s Office of Special Plans, and the ongoing espionage investigation of his contacts at AIPAC and the Israeli Embassy in Washington, may have rolled up the principal operational officers who were planning a US war against Iran. (...)

September 8, 2005, marks the sixtieth anniversary of the arrival of US soldiers on the Korean peninsula to accept the surrender of Japanese forces. There will likely be little fanfare accompanying this event. At the end of World War II, Koreans viewed the Soviets and the Americans equally as liberators, and neither occupation force was expected to stay long on Korean soil. The special relationship between South Korea and the United States was forged by later events: the formation of the Republic of Korea (ROK) under American auspices in August 1948, the Korean War of 1950-53, and the Mutual Defense Treaty of 1954. The US-ROK alliance was, as the North Koreans and Chinese like to say of their own relationship, a "friendship cemented in blood," marked by memories of shared sacrifice. (...)

A Poem.

Sunshine and,

The glory of,

A Monday morning.

Breakfast,

Coffee,

And a couple pieces of toast.

Don’t forget what you said,

Yes, sweetheart.... I know,

But you promised,

Okay.... I’ll get it done today. (...)

A Poem.

Aw yes,

To be an honest human being,

Honest with one’s self,

Honest with God,

Honest with others.

Enough of,

Being an organizational man,

A team player,

A status-quo oriented,

Whatever you say boss,

Yes I’ll kiss your ass,

Anytime you want,

Kind of guy.