The Try-Works

According to Serymour Hersh’s latest piece in the New Yorker, we are now officially funding Al Qaeda. (Again.) God, I love this country. No matter how vile the enemy’s painted, you’ve only gotta hold on for a year or two, and all the sudden they’re “freedom fighters” again. Because, hell, what’s a few thousand dead citizens when stacked up against the interests of Halliburton?

In the past few months, as the situation in Iraq has deteriorated, the Bush Administration, in both its public diplomacy and its covert operations, has significantly shifted its Middle East strategy. The “redirection,” as some inside the White House have called the new strategy, has brought the United States closer to an open confrontation with Iran and, in parts of the region, propelled it into a widening sectarian conflict between Shiite and Sunni Muslims.

To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Administration has coöperated with Saudi Arabia’s government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran. The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda.

. . .

Nasr compared the current situation to the period in which Al Qaeda first emerged. In the nineteen-eighties and the early nineties, the Saudi government offered to subsidize the covert American C.I.A. proxy war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. Hundreds of young Saudis were sent into the border areas of Pakistan, where they set up religious schools, training bases, and recruiting facilities. Then, as now, many of the operatives who were paid with Saudi money were Salafis. Among them, of course, were Osama bin Laden and his associates, who founded Al Qaeda, in 1988.

. . .

The United States has also given clandestine support to the Siniora government, according to the former senior intelligence official and the U.S. government consultant. “We are in a program to enhance the Sunni capability to resist Shiite influence, and we’re spreading the money around as much as we can,” the former senior intelligence official said. The problem was that such money “always gets in more pockets than you think it will,” he said. “In this process, we’re financing a lot of bad guys with some serious potential unintended consequences. We don’t have the ability to determine and get pay vouchers signed by the people we like and avoid the people we don’t like. It’s a very high-risk venture.”

American, European, and Arab officials I spoke to told me that the Siniora government and its allies had allowed some aid to end up in the hands of emerging Sunni radical groups in northern Lebanon, the Bekaa Valley, and around Palestinian refugee camps in the south. These groups, though small, are seen as a buffer to Hezbollah; at the same time, their ideological ties are with Al Qaeda.

. . .

In an interview in Beirut, a senior official in the Siniora government acknowledged that there were Sunni jihadists operating inside Lebanon. “We have a liberal attitude that allows Al Qaeda types to have a presence here,” he said. He related this to concerns that Iran or Syria might decide to turn Lebanon into a “theatre of conflict.”

Keep reading.

Any comment, Mr. Sullivan? Love to hear what you think of your tax-dollars funding Al Qaeda. And, hey, does this now make Ward Churchill’s On the Justice of Roosting Chickens a patriotic piece? After all, he was just expressing support for our foreign policy allies. Can we expect an apology from Bush administration mouthpieces like Dan Caplis, Bill O’Reilly and Vincent Carroll? Shouldn’t they be all singing Kumbaya together, now that they’re on the same side as Bin Laden? When do you think I’ll be able to buy a yellow ribbon for our Al Qaeda boys?

Oh, and whattya think the public outcry will be like? Since Ward Churchill was all but scourged for pointing out that Al Qaeda had reasons to hate the US, how long until the riots start now that the Bush administration has decided to funnel them the material support to carry on operations? How’s giving them money for disrespecting the 9/11 victims? And do you think we should prosecute and hang any US officials who’ve taken part in this? I mean, it looks like the very definition of treason to me.

Update: Video of Hersh on CNN.

A fair question from attorney Stephen S. Pearcy.  (Thanks to Adam Jones.)

Publicly available information about the Iraq invasion has become plentiful over the last several years. Reasonable people contemplating service in the U.S. military should know that people throughout the world regard participation in the occupation as tantamount to aiding and abetting in mass murder, fraud, human rights violations, and international war crimes. By now, all of the troops should recognize this, and ignorance is no excuse.

The frequency of U.S.-sponsored war crimes in Iraq is such that it has become the norm rather than the exception. U.S. troops have intentionally and recklessly caused the deaths of so many Iraqi civilians, and continue to do so, that we can now properly regard acts in furtherance of the occupation effort generally to be acts substantially likely to facilitate crimes such as those which have already occurred.

From a legal standpoint, obeying Bush’s orders is just like when Nazi soldiers obeyed Hitler’s orders. And we know from the Nuremberg trials that the “just-following-orders” excuse is invalid. Watada’s case suggests that we should question all troops’ willingness to follow their illegal orders.

Suggesting troop-responsibility for the illegal war is unpopular, but it would also have been unpopular during WWII for a German citizen to suggest that Nazi troops be held accountable for obeying their illegal orders. At the end of the day, it’s really no different.

Keep reading.

The U.S. military said on Friday it was investigating whether civilians, including two children, were killed during a fierce gunbattle in Ramadi on Wednesday that ended with U.S. air strikes destroying several buildings.

U.S. Marine spokesman Lieutenant Shawn Mercer had said on Thursday there were no reports of civilian casualties but that U.S. forces had killed 12 insurgents in the six-hour battle in the volatile western city.

Iraqi officials in Ramadi said 26 people were killed, including some women and children, and a Reuters photographer saw the bodies of an infant and a young boy who had been pulled from the rubble of one of the demolished buildings.

Keep reading.

On Ayn Rand.

All four of Rand’s novels contain the same essential plot and characters. For John Galt in Atlas Shrugged, there is Howard Roark in The Fountainhead. For the heroine Dagny Taggart in one, there is Dominique Francon in the other. Both women are beautiful, haughty, superior and outraged at the misguided selflessness of collective society. Both are also, according to Rand, “myself in a bad mood”. Each falls in love with the hero - new Eves to the novels’ new Adams.

Sex is a major factor. Superior beings attract other superior beings and have superior, often violent, but always desperately satisfying sex. These scenes demand lots of music, great costumes and precision lighting, which is how director King Vidor framed them in his movie of The Fountainhead (which was arguably better than the novel, in making Rand’s points much more succinctly.) Rand called her books “novels of ideas”, by which she meant that her characters, straw figures all, pelt one another with philosophic bromides, either expressing wrong-headed collectivist notions on the one hand - “Man can be permitted to exist only to serve others” - or noble individualistic notions on the other: “I live by the judgment of my own mind and for my own sake.”

Rand’s readers will invariably admit that they first responded to her writing during adolescence. That makes sense. A simplified world of brilliant and unappreciated beings fighting for the recognition they deserve is understandably appealing to teenagers.

These are romance novels with a patina of pseudo-philosophy which is well-suited to those desperate for adulthood. Indeed, Rand is probably best read by those still young enough to miss the implication of her beliefs: neither charity nor compassion nor common cause have any value when compared with the transcendence of the individual mind.

Keep reading.

In the comments from my latest David Yeagley post.

Rudy Youngblood supporter, Michelle Shining Elk — whom I very much like — is squaring off with one of Yeagley’s biggest fans, John Martin of San Diego, who goes by the handle Tallsoldier — and who, to his credit, manages to type even with his fingers slipping all over the slobber on his keyboard.

Stop by and say hi.

Update: It’s worth noting that this John Martin is a different asshole bigot than the asshole bigot named John Martin whom I’m usually insulting. Just so you know.

But this article by CU student James Collector is by far the best writing to come out of my much overblown unmasking. Take a lesson, Michael Roberts.

Update: With one minor caveat: I would note to Mr. Collector that the Try-Works is back up, and has been for some time.

Update II: As Mr. Arthur points out, Pirateballerina has reversed himself and taken to frothing at the mouth, along with John Martin and Joe Sullivan. (Always happy to play Beavis to Jim Paine’s Butthead, Mr. Martin has even started throwing “buttboy” and “’tard” around.)

Have you learned nothing from me, Mr. Martin? If you’re gonna start in with profanity, at least have the respect for your readership to be inventive. Anyway, I’m just waiting for Snapple to weigh in. (Though knowing Snapple, it’ll probably be all about my involvement in the McKinley shooting.)

Are we having fun yet, gentleman? As much as you’ve tried to make of my identity, you’ve managed to drum up all of three articles in the local media, two of which have set you gnawing at your own fingers in frustration. And the only revelation the third made was that Vincent Carroll’s too chickenshit to let his readers see what I actually had to say about him.

Update III: Joe Sullivan has a blog. Even better, when not working himself into a lather over me and Ward Churchill, he seems to spend most of his time writing about — get ready for it — American Idol.

I couldn’t make it up if I tried. Stop by for a laugh. I have it on good authority his next bit’s gonna be about how Katie Holmes is soooooo leaving Tom Cruise.

So, most have you who ain’t in some way brain damaged have figured out that I’m a leftist. Well, I’m also a country music fan, which raises some eyebrows during dinner parties. It shouldn’t. As the Philadelphia Enquirer recently pointed out, leftists have a long history in country music, including the big guy, Johnny Cash. (Thanks to Brickburner.)

For, while country music today is often equated with pickup trucks, rebel flags, and men with mullets, it also has a brave and, dare I say, liberal streak in its closet.

Take Johnny Cash, for instance. Not only did many of his most famous lyrics center on “the poor and the beaten down,” including a poignant attack on this country’s treatment of American Indians, but also Cash was a vocal critic of the Vietnam War, as in his famous song “Man in Black”: “I wear the black in mourning for the lives that could have been/ Each week we lose a hundred fine young men.”

And then there is Willie Nelson, who on Valentine’s Day 2006 released a love song about gay cowboys, titled, “Cowboys Are Frequently, Secretly (Fond of Each Other).” Perhaps more seriously, he has been an avid supporter of presidential hopeful Dennis Kucinich, who, while arguing for universal health care and a swift withdrawal from Iraq, is probably the furthest left of any Democratic candidate.

Keep reading.

I get the feeling, however, that the author ain’t real familiar with the genre. As leftists go, Cash and Nelson are small-fry compared to two of my personal favorites: Steve Earle and Kris Kristofferson. When recording the Highwayman albums, Kristofferson’s recording booth had a Noam Chomsky poster on the wall to which he sang every song — driving Waylon Jennings nuts. And Earle’s been quoted as putting his political bent somewhere to the left of Mao.

Anyway, for your listening pleasure, two of my favorites:

Steve Earle - Copperhead Road. An anti-government, anti-Vietnam, pro-drug dealing epic. What more could you ask for? (Buy the album here.)

Kris Kristofferson - Don’t Let The Bastards Get You Down. Containing my favorite line from any protest song written anywhere by anyone. Hint: it’s also the title of this post. (Buy the album here.)

Update: Story on the above tyke:

On August the 10th, 2005, an innocent eight-month pregnant Iraqi woman fell victim to the ever so familiar barbaric indiscriminate shooting by the American forces in Mosul. She was shot several times in the stomach. The American soldiers who had shot this innocent woman did not appear to feel any remorse to what they had done. Instead of rushing to help her as she fell into a pool of her blood on the ground in front of her doorstep, they simply walked away.

It was down to the family of the shot woman to pick up the pieces and rush her to the nearest hospital, the Mosul Republican Hospital, for emergency treatment where a team of doctors immediately performed a caesarean in their attempt to save mother and baby. However, it soon became obvious to the medical team that the baby had died in his mother’s womb after a bullet had entered his chest and departed from his back.

As for the poor mother, she miraculously survived this crime. The doctors are of the opinion that the baby had acted as a ’shield’ which protected the mother from certain death. The mother has been moved to the Maternity hospital for post-operation care.

Keep reading.

Update II: My favorite Robert Service poem:

The Men That Don’t Fit In

There’s a race of men that don’t fit in,
A race that can’t stay still;
So they break the hearts of kith and kin,
And they roam the world at will.
They range the field and they rove the flood,
And they climb the mountain’s crest;
Theirs is the curse of the gypsy blood,
And they don’t know how to rest.

If they just went straight they might go far;
They are strong and brave and true;
But they’re always tired of the things that are,
And they want the strange and new.
They say: “Could I find my proper groove,
What a deep mark I would make!”
So they chop and change, and each fresh move
Is only a fresh mistake.

And each forgets, as he strips and runs
With a brilliant, fitful pace,
It’s the steady, quiet, plodding ones
Who win in the lifelong race.
And each forgets that his youth has fled,
Forgets that his prime is past,
Till he stands one day, with a hope that’s dead,
In the glare of the truth at last.

He has failed, he has failed; he has missed his chance;
He has just done things by half.
Life’s been a jolly good joke on him,
And now is the time to laugh.
Ha, ha! He is one of the Legion Lost;
He was never meant to win;
He’s a rolling stone, and it’s bred in the bone;
He’s a man who won’t fit in.

Update III: Since we’re on poetry, it’s Auden’s centennial. To be honest, I could give a shit about Auden, but I like this factotum from the Guardian (the “shady wet nun” part, that is):

Few writers mutilated their own work more often - for many years he deleted one of his most justly remembered lines, “We must love one another or die”, from the poem in which it occurs. Yet Wystan Hugh Auden (as he gleefully pointed out, his name was an anagram of “hug a shady wet nun”), who was born in York a century ago today, an anniversary scandalously under-recognised by a culture that thrives on less worthy commemorations, now stands as England’s greatest poet of the 20th century.

Keep reading.

Come to think, I also like that he knew the “We must love one another or die” line was horseshit. I’ve hated that poem since it started making the rounds after 9/11. There seemed something monumentally grotesque about its usage, something best summed up by the above picture.

Update IV: Charley Arthur reminded me of Country Joe MacDonald, and yeah, it’s obvious, but it sure is fun. Be the first one on your block to have your kid come back in a box. (Album here.)

Update V: Since we’re on obvious picks and were just telling Highwaymen stories, how could I forget their rendition of this Woody Guthrie ant-anti-immigration classic? This one’s for you, Peter Boyles. (Album here.)

Update VI: And since we’re talking Woody Guthrie, my personal favorite. You savvier readers (Charley Arthur, if nothing else) can probably guess what it is. (Album here.)

Update VII: And somebody smack me. I forgot the Flying Burrito Brothers? (Album here.)

Update VII: Now and then one of you emails or comments bitching about my posting pictures of dead Iraqi civilians. The reason I post ‘em is real easy: the media won’t. That we’re okay with killing kids but too squeamish to look at the bodies doesn’t even count as chickenhawk behavior, it’s just chickenshit. Anyway, a good video on the media’s cowardice can be found here. Thanks Leah.

Update VIII: Anybody notice that even John Martin’s followers are starting to figure him out for a bigot? Come to the dark side, dougie. And don’t sweat it, Mr. Martin, you’ll always have Snapple.

And you know how I hate David Yeagley. So when Nora was kind enough to forward me this beaut, how could I resist posting it?

Yeagley’s Lament

I don’t mind to be boring
So here’s my outpouring
I go on yabber yack
Like a maniacal hack
Without any compunction
About Black and White junction
Of darkies and blondes
What despicable bonds
That sets off my gland
And I type with one hand
I DO like to barge
Spread my hatred’s dischárge
So you listen to me
Disgust? Not for thee
If you don’t want to listen
That causes some frisson
Then I whine and complain
And start a campaign
Of lying and slander
Intellectual pander
When I’m caught foot in mouth
I try wriggling out
I lie and distort
And cry for support
From slobbering dirt
Hey! They think I’m a flirt
I advocate hanging
For cross-racial banging
Specifically Black
Blah yabber and yack
I am hating myself
Cause I’m left on the shelf
And because I’m not White
I am feeling contrite
That I am bereft
Is the fault of the left
Gestalt psycho babble
Negroes are just rabble
If I were only White
I’d be high like a kite
I loath to be Red
But how else get ahead?
Minority card
Even for a retard
Lack of knowledge illusions
And goofy conclusions
I guess and ass-ume
Blah blah and boom boom
Ann Coulter screech crow
Trannie cackle oh WOW
At least she’s no broad
For crying out loud
Bubba Adolf delight
If I only were White
I like blood and death
Just like Lady Macbeth
A bloodthirsty crone
Yack yabber and drone
Rudy Yo’blood orgasm
Awmegawd what a spasm
I have tried read a book
But what trouble that took
So I stopped on page nine
Rather yabber and whine
Yes I can’t even spell
Will you all go to hell
Hey is nobody there?
Seems I’m talking to air…

By the way, anyone who doesn’t get the Rudy Youngblood reference should check out Michelle Shining Elk. Rudy Youngblood’s the actor in Mel Gibson’s Apocalypto, and Yeagley’s been going after him for being too much Negro and not enough Indian — one of his favorite pursuits.

I noticed the body variants as well. What I thought was particularly revealing was the style in which Rudy ran. His whole manner was very black, like a black athlete. Wasn’t Indian at all. That was a major thing, to me. But, I can’t very well offer that as empiracle evidence. It’s just something I noticed–right away. Did you see the hands?

Keep reading.

And:

Rudy looked so completely un-Indian, though, it was a distraction. None of his physiognomic features, from head to toe, resemble Indians, of any tribe.

Keep reading.

Bet you half expect the moron to start digging up the bodies of Youngblood’s progenitors and filling their skulls with dried millet seed, don’t you?

Update: Pointing out that Yeagley’s full of shit about Youngblood shouldn’t be taken as any kind of endorsement of Apocalypto.  That should go without saying.

Update II: Mel Gibson: doing for Indians what he’s done for Jews.

Update III: I’m an idiot.  I told you to check out Michelle Shining Elk, and then didn’t link to her.  Problem fixed.

Update IV: A picture of Rudy Youngblood.  Join with Yeagley in identifying the Negroid features yourself.

Update V: It’s worth noting that Yeagley has himself been oft-compared to a certain prominent African American, by the way.

All hail the Average Savage!

Update VI: And, hell, that was so much fun let’s do it again.  Even if I have posted these before.

All hail the Average Savage!

(Thanks to the Angryindian.)

When President Bush says he’s prepared to stay in Iraq “until the job is done,” those poor Iraqis have no idea just how long he means. But the Lakotas do. The United States government has been “stabilizing” the Great Sioux Nation and promoting democracy for 139 years.

Analogy is a dangerous form of argument, never precise. But sometimes analogy can give us insights into our history, and in this case, it’s worth considering: Maybe Iraq isn’t just the next Vietnam. Maybe Iraq is the next Pine Ridge.

A good starting point is the recognition that the voice of our “better angels” is forever stumbling over the more powerful impulse of greed. Oil in Iraq. Gold in the Black Hills. As a good friend likes to remind me: “We didn’t invade Iraq because they grow broccoli.”

The face of American democracy first comes to nations like the Lakotas and Iraq in the form of invasion. Kill the radicals and train homegrown police to secure the countryside. Build forts along the wagon routes. (Fourteen American military bases have been built in Iraq.) Draw sharp rhetorical edges. Warriors who refuse to move to the reservations are “hostiles.” Iraqis who resist the invasion are “terrorists.”

Then we sign treaties and send in a superintendent. Welcome to Iraq, Mr. Bremer. We dump wagonloads of money into economic development — scrawny cattle, plows, cheap blankets. Private contractors siphon off most of the money. Welcome to Iraq, Halliburton.

Then we form constitutional governments, pick our favorite chiefs, and sponsor elections. Dip your finger in purple ink, and make your mark here. Divide up your land, modernize, grow wheat. It’s all for your own good.

We’ve been building constitutional government in Iraq for three years. At Pine Ridge we’ve been at work since 1934. And here’s what we’ve got. The impeachment of Cecelia Fire Thunder was a sham. Last fall’s election was a disaster. Almost no one voted, and those who did can’t agree who the legitimate president is.

Unemployment is over 50 percent. The tribe is smothered by epidemics of obesity, diabetes, alcoholism and domestic abuse. The budget for Indian Health Services is cut year after year.

The Iraqis are gonna love American democracy.

Finally, we abandon the nation to poverty. There hasn’t been a full-time BIA Superintendent on Pine Ridge for over a year. We cover our escape with a self-righteous chorus of blame. You can hear it from the mouths of conservative ranchers and liberal politicians, “Those Indians … those Iraqis … they just aren’t ready for self-government. This mess is their fault.”

Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was fond of saying; “At some point, you’ve got to take your hand off the bicycle seat.” Those Iraqis are such children. If they only had training wheels. Hillary Clinton promises the voters of New Hampshire, our soldiers “won’t baby-sit a sectarian civil war.” This is the bi-partisan language of the Great White Father.

Don’t get me wrong. A century of American intervention on Pine Ridge has created a disaster, but it does not mean the Lakotas are without leadership, community, cultural and spiritual vitality. The most creative expressions of popular sovereignty come from people who have returned to traditional political values — consensus, council, and the authority of elders. In New England we used to call it “town hall” democracy. But you have to go off the paved roads to find democracy on Pine Ridge. And, how can I say this politely: We ain’t exactly welcome.

Keep reading.

I’ve been saying this for over a year now, of course. Iraq is an Indian war, as surely as Viet Nam was. And you don’t have to take it from me. The point’s been made by no less than the likes of neo-con mouthpiece, Robert Kagan, in his unconscionably stupid, Imperial Grunts.

Kaplan, who began his career as a self-described “travel writer” in the 1980s, has evolved into a political thinker whose outlook is explicitly imperialist – a term that he has used and reused in recent years with unabashed approval – and, in the words of one conservative reviewer and retired Army colonel, Andrew Bacevich, “reactionary.”

In his view (and one that would be shockingly familiar to Roosevelt in his “Rough Riding” days in Cuba more than 100 years ago), the “war on terror” and associated conflicts is simply a repeat of the U.S. Army’s Indian Wars, but on a nearly planetary scale.

Instead of the Great Plains and western reaches of the 19th century U.S., however, today’s “Injun Country,” as Kaplan calls it, consists of the entire Islamic world, from the southern Philippines to Mauritania, as well as other ungoverned or misgoverned areas in desperate need of order and civilization.

And who best to civilize these places and their inhabitants than the U.S. military, specifically the “imperial grunts” with whom Kaplan embedded himself – no doubt with the enthusiastic support of the Pentagon and probably Rumsfeld himself – for weeks at a time in various parts of the world on three continents, and who, not incidentally, bear a striking resemblance to Bush’s own self-image?

In contrast to the “elites” and “global cosmopolitans” who dominate the media, the State Department, Washington think tanks and academia, and the Democratic Party, these soldiers are “people who hunted, drove pickups, employed profanities as a matter of dialect, and yet had a literal, demonstrable belief in the Almighty,” according to Kaplan.

He offers remarkable praise for the war-fighting traditions of “the gleaming officers corps of the Confederacy” – that is, the military arm of the slave-owning southern states, including Bush’s Texas, during the Civil War – and for the present-day “martial evangelicalism of the South.”

In a “Hobbesian world” where U.S. military commands and deployments span every continent, U.S. imperialism is not a choice, but rather a necessity, just as it was for the British in the late 19th century, according to Kaplan, who argues that Washington’s “righteous responsibility [is] to advance the boundaries of free society and good government into zones of sheer chaos.”

In one telling piece of analysis, he describes the presumed thoughts of a Filipino in Zamboanga, presumably a descendant of Moro who resisted, at the cost of tens of thousands of their lives, U.S. imperialism 100 years ago: “His smiling, naïve eyes cried out for what we in the West call colonialism.”

Keep reading.

Update:  The New York Times has a typically nonsense review of Kaplan’s Imperial Grunts.  My favorite tidbit:

Like many writers and houseguests, Kaplan needs an argument to get his best juices flowing. But here he’s on a trip to utopia, and what emerges are surprising opinions. He meets a Filipino and observes: “His smiling, naïve eyes cried out for what we in the West call colonialism.”

Keep reading.

Crying out for colonialism, you say?  I’m thinking that might have more to do with the wish-fulfillment fantasies of Kaplan and the NY Times.

“It is true that as America became a powerful nation, without any qualms we took the land from the native tribes and killed them and exiled them, leaving remnants to struggle for generations in cultural and economic disaster. We could wish that Israel, too, might emerge victorious from a purge of Arab populations, but America handed out smallpox blankets before the camera.” Novelist Annie Roiphe, in Alan Dershowitz, ed., WHAT ISRAEL MEANS TO ME (2006) pp. 301-2.

A funny thing happened on my way to assessing Grant Crowell’s horseshit “critique” of our favorite CU prof’s take on the 9th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. That is, unlike Walking Eagle, I actually read something about it so maybe I’d have a clue what I was talking about. More specifically, I read Chapter 6 of Jordan J. Paust’s INTERNATIONAL LAW AS LAW OF THE UNITED STATES (2003)—a rather standard text, assigned at fine law schools everywhere—which is titled “Human Rights and the Ninth Amendment.”

And guess what, kids?

Prof. Paust, who, unlike Mr. Eagle’s preferred “expert”—the premier plagiarist of Harvard Law, Alan Dershowitz—actually IS an acknowledged expert on the topic seems to agree quite wholeheartedly with Prof. Churchill’s interpretation. Or is it a case of Churchill knowing enough about the law to agree with Paust?

No matter, really, ’cause you lose either way Mr. Eagle. Which ain’t really such a novel experience for a loser like yourself, is it?

Time to ‘fess up, boy. Having flopped as a “cartoonist,” you’ve become a cartoon.

BTW, Mr. Eagle, we’re all waiting with baited breath to see your response to my invitation to show up at Churchill’s April event in Chicago and publicly ID yourself so that we can wander off for a nice private little chat. Sorta thought it might help you get the difference between him and me real straight in what you refer to—jokingly, no doubt—as your “mind.”

C’mon, pretty please?

So I finally read the first volume of Derrick Jensen’s Endgame. I’ve been looking forward to it for awhile, in part because it’s been recommended to me by a diverse spectrum of folks. Some whose judgment I couldn’t respect more, some whom I wouldn’t trust to properly operate a dinner fork without assistance.

I’ve got a couple of quibbles, of course. The main one being with one of the extended metaphors the book employs to make its case. Endgame really isn’t so much a cohesive argument as a constellation of anecdotes, quotes and metaphors that support a series of premises about environmental/indigenous issues. That’s not a complaint, mind, but, when the anecdotes fall flat — which is bound to happen in a book of its size — it’s tempting to discount the whole thing.

Anyway, the one that got my goat (see how it works?) is Jensen’s usage of the tropes of sexual/domestic abuse and recovery. I’ve been close to enough imploding survivors (and perpetrators, for that matter) to be uncomfortable with universalizing that stuff. It’s sort of like AA. I know it helps some people, and I’m glad it does, but that doesn’t make the truisms propped up therein universally true. And, since I’m uncomfortable extending that stuff universally within its intended context, I’m real uncomfortable moving it outside that context. More importantly, though, at least in the context of this book, is that most of the jargon of abuse recovery has been so over-applied that it’s become a series of dead metaphors. Those bones have long since been picked clean (again . . .) by the endless chatter of daytime talk-shows and docudramas.

Quibbling aside, the book’s hell on wheels. Some my favorite riffs:

You can’t get much clearer than Sitting Bull, who said, when forced to speak at a celebration of the completion of a railroad through what had been his people’s land: “I hate you. I hate all the white people. You are thieves and liars. You have taken away our land and made us outcasts.” It’s important to note, by the way, that the white translator did not speak these words, but instead the “friendly, courageous” speech he had prepared.

And:

I just got home from talking to a new friend, another longtime activist. She told me of a campaign she participated in a few years ago to try to stop the government and transnational timber corporations from spraying Agent Orange, a potent defoliant and teratogen, in the forests of Oregon. Whenever activists learned a hillside was going to be sprayed, they assembled there, hoping their presence would stop the poisoning. But each time, like clockwork, helicopters appeared, and each time, like clockwork, helicopters dumped loads of Agent Orange onto the hillside and onto protesting activists. The campaign did not succeed.

“But,” she said to me, “I’ll tell you what did. A bunch of Vietnam vets lived in those hills, and they sent messages to the Bureau of Land Management and to Weyerhaeuser, Boise Cascade, and the other timber companies saying, ‘We know the names of your helicopter pilots, and we know their addresses.’”

I waited for her to finish.

“You know what happened next?” she asked.

“I think I do,” I responded.

“Exactly,” she said. “The spraying stopped.”

And this one for John Martin and Jim Paine, since Ayn Rand seems the viciously stupid little core of their worldview:

March 6, 1974, Ayn Rand addresses West Point cadets, something she considered the greatest honor of her life. When someone has the impertinence to express an “unpopular view” and asks her about the United States’ basis on the dispossession and genocide of Indians, she responds, “They didn’t have any rights to the land, and there was no reason for anyone to grant them rights which they had not conceived and were not using . . . . What was it that they were fighting for, when they opposed white men on this continent? For their wish to continue a primitive existence, their ‘right’ to keep part of the earth untouched, unused and not even as property, but just keep everybody out so that you will live practically like an animal [and how else would she expect an animal — which is truly what we are — to live?], or a few caves above it. Any white person who brings the element of civilization has the right to take over this continent.”

And another one for the boys (since this is quite literally John Martin’s stance on colonialism):

Resources for the civilized have always been more important than the lives of those in the colonies. A German colonial officer in South West Africa was more honest than many: “A right of the natives, which could only be realized at the expense of the development of the white race, does not exist. The idea is absurd that Bantus, Sudan-negroes, and Hottentots in Africa have the right to live and die as they please, even when by this uncounted people among the civilized peoples of Europe were forced to remain tied to a miserable proletarian existence instead of being able, by the full use of the productive capacities of our colonial possessions to rise to a richer level of existence themselves and also to help construct the whole body of human and national welfare.”

And, since I’m on a roll, this for Snapple, from William S. Burroughs:

The people in power will not disappear voluntarily; giving flowers to the cops just isn’t going to work. This thinking is fostered by the establishment; they like nothing better than love and nonviolence. The only way I like to see cops given flowers is in a flower pot from a high window.

And this from you know who:

What I want is for civilization to stop killing my people’s children. If that can be accomplished peacefully, I will be glad. If signing a petition will get those in power to stop killing Indian children, I will put my name at the top of the list. If marching in a protest will do it, I’ll walk as far as you want. If holding a candle will do it, I’ll hold two. If singing protest songs will do it, I’ll sing whatever songs you want me to sing. If living simply will do it, I will live extremely simply. If voting will do it, I’ll vote. But all of those things are allowed by those in power, and none of those things will ever stop those in power from killing Indian children. They never have, and they never will. Given that my people’s children are being killed, you have no grounds to complain at whatever means I use to protect the lives of my people’s children. And I will do whatever it takes.

Anyway, the anecdotes aren’t as loosely strung together as the above suggests. They all work to support a series of premises (you can find them here) that Jensen lays out front, and takes to their natural conclusions without waffling. That’s something, and if you think it ain’t, recall the hundreds (of thousands) of books and flicks cranked out for so-called progressive causes which conclude by encouraging the kind of feel-good, mealy-mouthed, asinine inaction which have ensured said causes never advance.

And, of course, no matter what minor issues I have with Jensen’s metaphors, I have no quibbles at all with his premises.

Update: Speaking of exercises in futility, Stan Goff wrote his congressman to demand he defund the war in Iraq. And was shocked — shocked!!! (yeah, that’s the first and only time I commit that little bloggy cliché) — when he received a bullshit form letter in response. I’ve said this before, I’ll say it again: trying to pressure your Democratic elected representative into stopping the war in Iraq is a waste of time. It’s idiotic and it’s ahistorical. The only problem bigger than the Democrats is the faith-based notion — and it can only be faith-based, there’s no evidence to support it — that the interests they represent are separable from the interests represented by the Republicans.

This is what Jensen refers to a false hope. In his words (and, yeah, as evidence that I’m pretty much entirely full of shit, it relies on exactly the kind of abuse analogy that I was bagging on above):

One reason my mother stayed with my father was that there were no battered women’s shelters in the fifties and sixties, but another was because of the false hope that he would change. False hopes, as I’ve written elsewhere, bind us to unlivable situations, and blind us to real possibilities. Does anyone really believe that Weyerhaeuser is going to stop deforesting because we ask nicely? Does anyone really believe that Monsanto will stop Monsantoing because we ask nicely? If only we get a Democrat in the White House, this line of thought runs, things will be okay. If only we pass this or that piece of legislation, things will be okay. If only we defeat this or that piece of legislation, things will be okay. Bullshit. Things will not be okay. Things are already not okay, and they’re getting worse.

Update II: Audio of Ward Churchill and Derrick Jensen in discussion here.

Update III: Barack Obama: your candidate for change.

From Mr. Fish.

Alright, so I’ve been refusing to believe we’re going launch an attack on Iran, if for no other reason than because they actually have something like a military — no matter how small — and they’re close enough to our troops in Iraq that they could feasibly kick back. After all, fighting enemies that have the capability to fight back doesn’t seem like our forte.

But then last week the New York Times ran a front-page regurgitation of Pentagon claims about the government of Iran supplying the Iraqi insurgency with weapons, with nary a shred of evidence to back it up. And when the Gray Lady hikes up her skirt for a lunatic administration salivating for a bloodbath, I start to get nervous. Because I remember the last time. Not to mention the time before that. And, though I wasn’t born yet, I’ve read about the time before that. Then, to top it off, I was just turned on to this Vanity Fair article. So, needless to say, now I’m just waiting for the strikes to begin.

So here’s my question. All of you remember the mainstream media’s non-coverage of the Iraq war build-up and launch, right? The MSM served as cheerleaders for the war, nothing more. The way I see it, every worthless MSM journalist in this country owns a few of those 655,000 Iraqi corpses they helped put a bullet in (visual aid above). There’s nothing as disgusting as watching pundits on CNN or MSNBC waxing righteous about the war, given their absolute servility when they could have actually stopped it.

So, bearing that in mind, and noting that we’re kind of getting our asses kicked over there, I have to ask one question.

Ready?

Here goes . . .

When we start bombing Iran, what color “Support our Troops” lapel pins do you think the news anchors will be sporting?

Update: Rick MacArthur, publisher of Harpers’ magazine, speaking about the New York Times and Michael Gordon, the NYT reporter responsible (with Judith Miller, of course) for the Iraq war — and now aiding and abetting Bush in the run-up to our impending air-strike on Iran.

I always read the New York Times the way Sovietologists used to read Izvestia, the government newspaper, and I half-kiddingly always ask the question: is the New York Times playing the role of Izvestia or the role of Pravda, which was the party newspaper? The New York Times owes its success, its long-term success, economic and otherwise, to being close to the government, to being sort of the semiofficial government newspaper and giving the administration line to the public fairly unfiltered. And Michael Gordon is just a tool. He’s just a conduit for this policy that the paper has been pursuing for decades.

Keep reading.

Update II: If you think the NY Times is bad, check out our cowtown rags here in Denver. As far as I can tell, neither the Rocky nor the Camera can even be bothered with the topic at all, outside of reprinting AP blurbs. And the Posts’ contribution was a reprinted WaPo article that degenerated into the idiot “the Iraqis are doing it to themselves” line.

Update III: “Step up and finish the job, you lazy, good-for-nothing Iraqi bums!”

Update IV: Nice to see I wasn’t the only one cracking up when Bush castigated the government of Iran for being “belligerent, loud, noisy, threatening.”

Update V: Matt Hutaff of The Simon, on the Pentagon’s claim that Iran’s been responsible for 170 American deaths in Iraq.

It’s a rare thing, witnessing propaganda so over-the-top it beggars the imagination. Most lies have a kernel of truth that give them an air of credibility, but every once in a while something comes along that shakes the cynicism from our jaded eyes. You laugh - and almost feel sad for the drunken hacks who put the story together in the first place. After all, can’t they spend five minutes fact-checking their nonsense on Wikipedia?

When I read this week the Pentagon implicated Iran in over 170 American deaths in Iraq, I felt a giddy rush of excitement I hadn’t felt since the dog-gassing video of 2002. Finally, pure propaganda! No failed attempts at diplomacy, just half-assed demonization in the form of a captured bomb cache delivered straight from the munitions sweatshops of Tehran.

The image of said mortar rounds provided to the press is an hilarious failure in the art of manufacturing evidence. A low-resolution photo with artifacts and an abundance of glare, it almost dares someone in the United States to jump-start his brain and shout “fake!” Commentary describes the round as one of many confiscated by Iraqi police in mid-January, but the shell itself has even more information to share, like a manufacture date - March, 2006, in case you were wondering. That date means Saddam couldn’t have made it, so who else could? Heck, it’s like a big, sexy, missile-shaped Budweiser, proudly showing its born-on date on its seductive wrapper.

Isn’t it convenient for both the American media and the public that Iran decided to time stamp its illegal weapons shipments in English? Now, when Pentagon officials say Iran armed Shia militias with counterinsurgency weapons capable of crippling Abrahms M1 tanks, we don’t have to read some chicken scratch Farsi or watch Al Jazeera for a rebuttal. It’s all spelled out, right there, on the weapon itself!

Keep reading.

Update VI: Sign a petition begging the administration not to attack Iran. See what good it does you.

Update VII: This really is fun, Mr. Martin. Thanks again.

Update VIII: Charley Arthur’s going with chickenshit yellow. What could be more appropriate? After all, it’ll be a series of massive airstrikes against a country with no air defense to speak of. And, if past experience tells us anything, the heaviest hit sites will be soft targets — i.e., infrastructure and civilians. Not to mention, of course, the nuclear sites, which will have the added effect of exterminating Iranians for generations to come. So, yeah, chickenshit yellow seems right on the mark.

Update IX: “I support the wars in Eurasia and Eastasia.” (Thanks, dex.)

Update X: “There she lusted after her lover, whose genitals were like those of donkeys and whose emission was like that of horses.  Ezekiel 23:20″ 

First Prize Singles, World Press Photo 2007 — Nina Berman.  (Thanks to Today in Iraq.)

As I posted last week, Glenn Morris had a piece in the Rocky about Columbus Day. And, as I didn’t post — because who gives a shit? — John Martin posted a singularly stupid retort.

Well, in a blessing to the blogging gods, Mr. Morris was kind enough to stop by Martin’s place and respond. Which, even better, inspired Mr. Martin to drop his pants and wag his ass around a little. My favorite bit being as follows:

The reason poor little landlocked Colorado, so far from the scenes of Columbus’ exploits, celebrates Columbus Day is the same reason most of the hemisphere does: his “discovery” of the New World symbolizes the spread of western civilization and its values, and the dramatic and continuing improvement in the general lot of humanity that resulted.

At first blush I thought I’d riff on Martin’s casual racism. When that kind of horseshit gets dropped on the table, I always like to begin by referring the idiot-at-large to Kipling, seeing as he’s done that line of reasoning like no one else.

The White Man’s Burden - Rudyard Kipling

Take up the White Man’s burden–
Send forth the best ye breed–
Go, bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives’ need;
To wait, in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild–
Your new-caught sullen peoples,
Half devil and half child.

Take up the White Man’s burden–
In patience to abide,
To veil the threat of terror
And check the show of pride;
By open speech and simple,
An hundred times made plain,
To seek another’s profit
And work another’s gain.

Take up the White Man’s burden–
The savage wars of peace–
Fill full the mouth of Famine,
And bid the sickness cease;
And when your goal is nearest
(The end for others sought)
Watch sloth and heathen folly
Bring all your hope to nought.

Take up the White Man’s burden–
No iron rule of kings,
But toil of serf and sweeper–
The tale of common things.
The ports ye shall not enter,
The roads ye shall not tread,
Go, make them with your living
And mark them with your dead.

Take up the White Man’s burden,
And reap his old reward–
The blame of those ye better
The hate of those ye guard–
The cry of hosts ye humour
(Ah, slowly!) toward the light:–
“Why brought ye us from bondage,
Our loved Egyptian night?”

But, hell, that seems a little too complicated, doesn’t it? So, instead, since Mr. Martin seems just a little soft on his history, I thought I’d ask him exactly what “the dramatic and continuing improvement in the general lot of humanity” was that the Taino incurred by being, er, discovered? I mean, there’s a few hundred places to begin with Mr. Martin’s argument, but let’s start with that one.

Or, even better, is the point supposed to be that now and then a few million hapless souls must be sacrificed for the greater benefit of mankind?

Because, y’know, I can think of a few other figures who’d share that viewpoint.

Oh, and though I pretty much end every post about Mr. Martin with this same tip, I’ll repeat it: whyn’t you and your pinhead ilk, like, crack a dictionary once a decade?

Check #4. Fucking morons.

Update: Over at the Drunkablog’s place, a commenter by the name of vendor has pointed the real problem with John Martin’s so-called refutation.

Namely, that it’s nothing of the sort.

If you want to refute someone’s points, then you should address those points instead of posting cornball ripostes after entire paragraphs.

Simply breaking up someone’s post does not mean you have dismantled and refuted the arguments. Do you understand that, retard?

I’ll even walk you through some easy steps. Pick out 3 of the strongest points in Glenn Morris’s response. Next, refute those points using a coherent argument. That way, people can read what you wrote as a refutation.

As it is, your reply is a mess and is rather pointless. Go ahead and give it a shot and I’ll check back at the end of the day.

I’ll update when Martin responds.

(That was a joke. As those of you who’ve ever tried to get John Martin to actually back up to one of his idiot assertions know all too well, he ain’t responding — that would require he research a subject beyond Wikipedia.)

Update II: Anybody wonder how Jim Paine got to be such an expert on circle-jerks?

Update III: Anybody wonder why John Martin’s pretending ignorance of the subject?

Update IV: This updating shit is kind of fun. Think I’ll steal it.

Update V: Martin still hasn’t responded to vendor’s challenge, or my fair questions. Instead, he’s taken to whining that we’re just nasty.

Update VI: Alright, this vendor cat is a fucking genius, taking one of Martin’s posts and Drunkablogging it.

Martin’s original:

Noj,

I think JWP quoted somebody one time who pointed out that despite all the problems American Indians face, Co-AIM does fuck all except spout revolutionary rhetoric and victimology. They’re a hindrance to the people they purport to represent.

What’s the evidence that Morris is a fake Indian? All I can find is national AIM crap, and I believe them exactly as much as I believe Colorado AIM.

Glenn,

Really, does it ever bother you that dumb, nasty, threatening people like Vendor and Whitmer are on your side?

Vendor’s, um, refutation:

I’ll now channel JGM and reply in his typical fashion.

And in true JGM style, I’ll entitle this

“A devastating reply only on the drunkablog”
by jgm

>I think JWP quoted somebody one time who pointed out that despite all the problems American Indians face, Co-AIM does fuck all except spout revolutionary rhetoric and victimology. <

Victimology? Wasn’t that the name of a Paula Abdul song? Oh, that was Vibeology. Karl Marxism indeed.

>They’re a hindrance to the people they purport to represent.<

In the same way a leash is a hindrance to a favored pet.

>What’s the evidence that Morris is a fake Indian? All I can find is national AIM crap, and I believe them exactly as much as I believe Colorado AIM.<

Speaking of crap, I wonder how the nuggets did tonight.

>Glenn,<

No, that is not my name.

>Really, does it ever bother you that dumb, nasty, threatening people like Vendor and Whitmer are on your side?<

I once took a photo of this homeless guy digging through the trash. I don’t know if he was from Spain but I did detect a certain noble civility in his actions.

Update VII: Sound familiar, Sullivan?

The United States to the Filipinos - John Banister Tabb, 1900

We come to give you liberty
To do whate’er we choose,
Or clean extermination
If you venture to refuse.

Iraqis gather in front of a hospital in Fallujah, 65 kilometers (40 miles) west of Baghdad, Iraq, Thursday, Feb. 8, 2007, to inspect a body of a young man that was killed in a U.S. army air raid on the nearby village of Zaidan. A U.S. airstrike Thursday killed 13 insurgents in a volatile area west of Baghdad, the military said, while local officials claim 45 civilians, including women and children, perished in the attack.

Keep reading.

What he said.

One Bryan Lee, stone-cold nailing Westword in their letters this week.

Alternative newsweeklies should be an alternative to something. Westword isn’t. Our media in this country have become one long, loud sustained barrage of sensational, lowbrow drek. It’s like a perpetual-motion shit machine that just cranks non-stop, 24/7, without ever letting up for five minutes, and Westword has become just another incoherent, screeching voice in the cacophony. For the love of all that is even remotely tasteful, brain up already.

Keep reading.

I ain’t sure I entirely agree with Michael Chabon’s take on The Road (you can read mine here), but he makes a hell of an argument.

Horror fiction proceeds, in general, by extending metaphors, by figuring human fears of mortality, corruption, and the loss of self. The haunted house (or planet), the case of demonic possession, the nightmare journey to or through a charnel house, the transubstantiation of human flesh into something awful and foul, the exposed wolfishness of men, the ineradicable ancestral curse of homicidal depravity —all of them tropes to be encountered, in one form or another, in McCarthy’s work—trade on these deep-seated fears, these fundamental sources of panic, and seek to flay them, to lay them open, to drag them into the light.

What emerges most powerfully as one reads The Road is not a prognosticatory or satirical warning about the future, or a timeless parable of a father’s devotion to his son, or yet another McCarthyesque examination of the violent underpinnings of all social intercourse and the indifference of the cosmic jaw to the bloody morsel of humanity. The Road is not a record of fatherly fidelity; it is a testament to the abyss of a parent’s greatest fears. The fear of leaving your child alone, of dying before your child has reached adulthood and learned to work the mechanisms and face the dangers of the world, or found a new partner to face them with. The fear of one day being obliged for your child’s own good, for his peace and comfort, to do violence to him or even end his life. And, above all, the fear of knowing— as every parent fears—that you have left your children a world more damaged, more poisoned, more base and violent and cheerless and toxic, more doomed, than the one you inherited. It is in the audacity and single-mindedness with which The Road extends the metaphor of a father’s guilt and heartbreak over abandoning his son to shift for himself in a ruined, friendless world that The Road finds its great power to move and horrify the reader.

Keep reading.

Vincent Carroll’s pissed off at the Cherry Creek school district. Seems they’ve been reading his mail.

Caplis and Silverman’s too.