The Try-Works

And I should be fucking pistol-whipped for not having these up earlier.  My apologies, gentle(wo)men.  Don’t y’all never stop.

Happy 4th of July, Enjoy the Barbecue!!!

Why We Say . . .Fuck the Troops

With this kind of spirit in town, do you really think anyone’s gonna miss T.A.R.D. come August?

Found this at Max Forte’s Open Anthropology, where I have the feeling I’ll be spending an afternoon or two in the near future.

Agreeing with writers such as Ward Churchill, I have been arguing that the notion that the U.S. does not “intentionally” kill civilians in its bombings of civilian areas, and thus is “not terrorism” is not a convincing argument. U.S. military planners know that the bombings will kill civilians, they pre-label the fatalities as “collateral damage” and prepare press briefings in advance condemning the enemy for using “human shields” — that the enemy wants to defend its neighbourhoods is dismissed — and this amounts to a logic of calculated killing, of knowing murder, and thus terrorism. One might quibble about whether the primary or secondary target is civilian.

Keep reading.

If you’re like me, dear reader, you’ve been pondering exactly why CodePink, United for Peace and Justice, Tent State and the rest of T.A.R.D. have taken it upon themselves to do everything they can fucking dream up to decimate local organizing around the DNC here in Denver.

As some of you have pointed out, it’s simply what these corporatized activist organizations do.  Right?  They blow into town, systematically plunder the work that’s been built at the grassroots level, crush local perspectives, drown out voices from communities of color, and ensure whatever so-called oppositional points of view left are pristine, lily-white, and entirely fucking useless.  It’s business as usual for these assholes.

But I’m curious as to why.  What do these little shits have to gain?  Or, a better question, given their nature: what purpose do they serve?

Well, I’ve got an answer.  And I’m gonna precede that answer with the following from Baudrillard’s discussion of Watergate in Simulacra and Simulation:

The denunciation of scandal always pays homage to the law. And Watergate above all succeeded in imposing the idea that Watergate was a scandal — in this sense it was an extraordinary operation of intoxication: the reinjection of a large dose of political morality on a global scale. It could be said along with Bourdieu that: “The specific character of every relation of force is to dissimulate itself as such, and to acquire all its force only because it is so dissimulated”; understood as follows: capital, which is immoral and unscrupulous, can only function behind a moral superstructure, and whoever regenerates this public morality (by indignation, denunciation, etc.) spontaneously furthers the; order of capital, as did the Washington Post journalists.

But this is still only the formula of ideology, and when Bourdieu enunciates it, he takes “relation of force” to mean the truth of capitalist domination, and he denounces this relation of force as itself a scandal: he therefore occupies the same deterministic and moralistic position as the Washington Post journalists. He does the same job of purging and reviving moral order, an order of truth wherein the genuine symbolic violence of the social order is engendered, well beyond all relations of force, which are only elements of its indifferent and shifting configuration in the moral and political consciousnesses of people.

All that capital asks of us is to receive it as rational or to combat it in the name of rationality, to receive it as moral or to combat it in the name of morality. For they are identical, meaning they can be read another way: before, the task was to dissimulate scandal; today, the task is to conceal the fact that there is none.

Watergate is not a scandal: this is- what must be said at all cost, for this is what everyone is concerned to conceal, this dissimulation masking a strengthening of morality, a moral panic as we approach the primal (mise-en-)scene of capital: its instantaneous cruelty; its incomprehensible ferocity; its fundamental immorality — these are what are scandalous, unaccountable for in that system of moral and economic equivalence which remains the axiom of leftist thought, from Enlightenment theory to communism. Capital doesn’t give a damn about the idea of the contract which is imputed to it: it is a monstrous unprincipled undertaking, nothing more. Rather, it is “enlightened” thought which seeks to control capital by imposing rules on it. And all that recrimination which replaced revolutionary thought today comes down to reproaching capital for not following the rules of the game. “Power is unjust; its justice is a class justice; capital exploits us; etc.” — as if capital were linked by a contract to the society it rules. It is the left which holds out the mirror of equivalence, hoping that capital will fall for this phantasmagoria of the social contract and fulfill its obligation towards the whole of society (at the same time, no need for revolution: it is enough that capital accept the rational formula of exchange).

In an admittedly reductive nutshell, then, that’s where I see T.A.R.D.  The members therein don’t actually oppose the war any more than the Watergate scandal opposes Capital.  Instead, they provide moral cover for the population at large.

We cluster-bombed civilians?
Don’t blame me, I adhere to solely non-violent principles.

US contractors raped prepubescent boys to garner information?
Don’t blame me, I lit a candle.

More than a million civilians have been exterminated since 2003?
Don’t blame me, I wore pink.

In fact, if you think about it, the members of T.A.R.D. are necessary for the furtherance of the war.  If they didn’t exist, the state would have to invent them.  Without them to provide that moral cover, to help bridge the cognitive dissonance inevitably caused by a culture that prattles on about human rights while committing a fucking holocaust, someone might actually do something to, well, stop the war.

In other words, CodePink, United for Peace and Justice, and the rest of T.A.R.D. are as necessary to ensuring Iraq remains an abattoir as .223 rounds.  They function as an ideological Free Speech Zone, mandating the limits of what is allowable in protest, and restricting dissent.  They serve to provide a safe, State-sanctioned zone for the exercise of limited rights, and to express a purely symbolic opposition to the war.

The only problem being, of course, that the war isn’t symbolic.  And neither are those one million and more dead Iraqis.

They’re just fucking dead.

And, in part, they have T.A.R.D. to thank for it.

Update:  On cue, your T.A.R.D. representative, in the Rocky Mountain News.

The city of Denver has conditionally approved permits for 1,000 local Democrats to host an Aug. 26 Democratic National Convention “watching party” on a big-screen TV at City Park and - just a Frisbee throw away - an encampment for 20,000 to 50,000 war protesters vowing to “Confront the Democrats” for failing to use their control of Congress to cut Iraq war funding.

“How fun will a Denver Democratic convention watching party be with 50,000 protesters all around protesting us?” asked Julie Kronenberger, a Denver County Democratic Party member working to obtain city permits for their night event at City Park Pavilion and adjacent band shell.

But leaders on both sides of the political divide believe they can find common ground at the park.

“I think it’s great. I think the dialogue between the people at Tent State University and the (local) Democrats will probably be more democratic than anything that’s going on inside the convention,” said Adam Jung, chief organizer for Tent State, which describes itself as “a positive, youth-led initiative to fund education instead of war.”

“We’re not there to chastise rank-and-file Democratic Party members. Many of them probably agree with our position on the war,” said Jung.

He said the young protesters’ beef is with national Democratic Party leaders, including presumptive presidential nominee Barack Obama.

Jung fears Obama is making a “run to the right” and wavering on vows to withdraw troops from Iraq 16 months after taking office.

Yet, he added, “I can’t foresee us doing anything that would make (local Dems’) night unpleasant. In fact, I think they would be welcome to check out what we’re doing. I think they might have a lot of fun.”

Keep reading.

Fucking pig.

And I mean that quite literally.  As Glenn Spagnuolo alludes in an interview with Peter Boyles this morning, Adam Jung(k) of Tent State (and a founding member of T.A.R.D.) is working with the city to draw people away from downtown Denver’s Civic Center Park, which is home base for the protests and protesters.

From Mr. Fish.

I apologize for my absence of late. Been busy with ancillary projects. Posting shall pick up, and in the meantime, the finest video ever posted to the web, and I mean ever, from the titans at RAIMD.

Well done, gentlefolk. This is the kind of shit that gets me up in the morning.

Read to the end.

And, just for the record, fuck you Clay Evans.  As commenters to your column note, your rag runs all the same skewed AP horseshit about the war as your competitors.  You can claim to be anti-war because you write a yearly editorial, but how’s about including some actual fucking news about the war?

You are the media, asshole.  Instead of whining about the lack of Winter Soldier coverage in the media, whyn’t you, like, cover it?

Democracy Now ran great coverage last week of Winter Soldier testimony, wherein US troops confessed their part in the ongoing holocaust in Iraq, which you can find here, here and here.

I strongly suggest those of you whining about my posting pictures showing the human cost of the war in Iraq give it a listen.

I’d prefer you enlisted and shipped out to get your ass fucking blown off, but, hell, since we all know you as the cowardly little shits you are, I’ll settle for your listening to a little audio.

You can also get video of Winter Soldier testimony straight from the source, here.

(Thanks to Rolanda.)

(Thanks to Rolanda.)

Thanks to Try-Works commenters and emailers, a video round-up of our brave soldiers, protecting our freedom in Iraq and elsewhere.

One crippled puppy at a time.

• American soldiers shooting puppies.
• And shooting puppies.
• And shooting puppies.
• And shooting puppies.
• And blowing up sheep.
• And fervently hoping to sodomize Iraqi men and slaughter Iraq women and children.
• And trashing Iraqi houses for shits and grins.
• And throwing Iraqi kids off bridges.
• And getting Iraqi kids to chant “I love pork!”
• And bragging about Iraqi girls they’ve raped.
• And generally winning hearts and minds.

This is for the gentle souls at RAIMD.

Two missiles hit a makeshift house in a remote area of southern Somalia on Monday and local officials and witnesses said they believed it was a U.S. air strike against Islamist insurgents.

If confirmed, it would be at least the fourth U.S. air strike on Somalia in 14 months.

Residents of Dobley, a Somali town 220 km (140 miles) from the southern port city of Kismayu on the Kenyan border, believe the missiles were targeting senior Islamist leaders meeting nearby.

“Two U.S missiles hit a house in Dobley early this morning,” one local politician, who asked not to be named, told Reuters by telephone, adding that shrapnel from the missiles had been found. “The missiles have U.S. markings.”

The U.S. 5th Fleet in Bahrain and the Pentagon in Washington had no immediate information on the attack.

The politician said Sheikh Hassan Turki, a local militant cleric, and other leaders from a militant Islamist group from Mogadishu were meeting in the vicinity. The Islamists have been waging a bloody insurgency against Somali government forces.

“The town is very tense. People have started fleeing because they fear there might be more attacks,” he said.

Keep reading.

American soldiers really, really don’t like dogs.

From RAIMD, the reason You Tube was invented.

Ladies and germs, American soldiers throwing puppies off cliffs. Watch it quick, as You Tube’s pulling these videos as fast as they can find them.

At least 10 Palestinians were killed in Gaza by Israeli fire Sunday, according to local hospital officials, bringing the total of Palestinians killed since Wednesday, when the latest surge in hostilities began, to more than 100. Israel says that most of those killed were armed militants, but Palestinian officials say that more than half were civilians, including several children.

A spokesman for the military wing of Hamas, the Qassam Brigades, said Sunday that 35 members of his group had been killed. About nine militants from smaller militant groups like Islamic Jihad and the Popular Resistance Committees were also reported among the dead.

In the West Bank, Israeli forces shot and killed a Palestinian boy, Mahmoud al- Masalmeh, 14, near Hebron and dispersed stone-throwing demonstrators in several other cities and areas bordering on Jerusalem as protests broke out against the spiraling death toll in Gaza.

Keep reading.

The U.S. military faced complaints Tuesday from its Sunni allies over claims that still more civilians had been killed by American forces — amplifying tensions as the Pentagon tries to calm anger over an air strike last week that claimed innocent lives.

The disputes have further strained ties with anti-al-Qaida fighters considered crucial in turning the tide against extremist violence.

The latest deaths occurred early Tuesday when U.S. soldiers, saying they acted on intelligence, stormed a squat, mud-brick house in the village of Adwar, 15 kilometers (10 miles) south of Saddam Hussein’s hometown of Tikrit. The predominantly Sunni area is home to many former members of Saddam’s regime, and has been the frequent site of U.S. raids.

The U.S. military said a gunbattle broke out after the troops came under small-arms fire by two suspected terrorist cell members as they entered the building. It acknowledged a woman was killed and a child wounded but said it was not clear who shot them, adding an investigation was under way.

Iraqi police, relatives and neighbors said a couple and their 19-year-old son were shot to death in their beds late Monday. Doors in the small house were pockmarked with bullet-holes and pillows and other bedding on the floor were soaked with blood, according to

The U.S. military reported only three dead, but Iraqi police said two young girls were wounded and one died Tuesday at a hospital.

It was the second time in as many days that the U.S. military conceded involvement in the death of Iraqi civilians.

On Monday, the military said it had accidentally killed nine Iraqi civilians, including a child, in an airstrike late Saturday targeting al-Qaida in Iraq south of Baghdad.

The rest.

Local edition.

A Fort Carson soldier told Army investigators he and another soldier routinely shot at Iraqi civilians while on patrol in Baghdad, according to court records filed in a Colorado Springs homicide case.

The Army’s Criminal Investigation Command is investigating the alleged war crimes.

Pfc. Bruce Bastien Jr., who faces a first-degree murder charge in the December death of Spc. Kevin Shields, told a CIC agent “about potential crimes which occurred in Iraq during these soldiers’ deployment there,” the records reveal.

The rest.

Oops.

A group of gunmen killed in U.S. airstrikes in Iraq last week were pro-U.S. fighters, an American military officer said on Sunday, despite the military’s public statements that they were insurgents.

The officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said U.S. military officials had talked to Sunni Arab tribal sheikhs in Taji, just north of Baghdad, to express their regret for the loss of life in the attack, which took place last Tuesday.

“There was some confusion and we were not able to turn off the attack quickly enough,” he said of the airstrikes that continued for several hours despite frantic phone calls from local tribal leaders to the U.S. base in Taji.

“We have talked to them and explained our sorrow over the incident and the loss of lives of volunteers trying to bring order to their neighbourhoods,” the officer said.

The incident threatens to derail a carefully constructed relationship between U.S. forces and anti-al Qaeda Sunni tribes in Taji and has put the spotlight on operating procedures for tribal police units the U.S. military is forming around Iraq.

“If they (the U.S. military) do not give us a proper reason for what happened, we will withdraw from the Awakening Council and let al Qaeda return,” said Sheikh Shathir Abid Salim, leader of the anti-al Qaeda group. His brother was among those killed.

The military said in a statement last week that it killed 25 suspected insurgents in operations targeting al Qaeda militants near the capital. Tribal leaders told Reuters U.S. warplanes had mistakenly bombed their men, killing 45.

The rest.

A triple feature.

At least 17 Iraqi civilians, including women and children, have been killed in a US air raid, Iraqi officials and witnesses say.

US military officials have yet to respond to the claim, but issued a statement that it had killed 25 Shia fighters in clashes near the city of Baquba, in the same area as the alleged attack on the civilians.

US helicopters attacked the Shia village of al-Jaysani, close to the town of Khalis, at about 2am local time (2300 GMT), witnesses said on Friday.

“Seventeen people were killed, 27 were wounded and eight are missing including women and children,” an Iraqi defence ministry official, said.

The rest.

And.

Ninewa, Oct 7, (VOI) – U.S. soldiers killed two first aid workers on duty in eastern Mosul, the Ninewa police operations chief said on Sunday.

“The two first aid workers were on duty at the neighborhood of al-Khadraa, eastern Mosul, when the U.S. soldiers opened fire on them during a late hour on Saturday,” Brig. Abdul-Kareem al-Juburi told the independent news agency Voices of Iraq (VOI).

Juburi did not provide further details and no comments were issued by the U.S. side on the incident.

The rest.

And.

“[Our reliance on private security contractors] has created a dependency syndrome on the private marketplace that not merely creates critical vulnerabilities, but shows all the signs of the last downward spirals of an addiction,” Singer writes. “If we judge by what has happened in Iraq, when it comes to private military contractors and counterinsurgency, the U.S. has locked itself into a vicious cycle. It can’t win with them, but can’t go to war without them.”

Shortly before the release of the report, the private security firm Blackwater made headlines for yet another scandal involving violence against Iraqi civilians. On September 16, a Blackwater convoy under contract to the State Department opened fire in a crowed marketplace in the Mansour district of Baghdad, killing as many as 20 civilians, according to Singer’s report.

The killings sparked nationwide outrage. Prime Minister Maliki called the incident a “crime” and the Iraqi Interior Ministry threatened to revoke Blackwater’s license to operate in Iraq. In an ironic twist, it turned out that Blackwater had no license to revoke. After high-level American intervention, Blackwater was back in business on September 21.

This wasn’t the first international incident sparked by Blackwater contractors. On Christmas Eve 2006, a drunken Blackwater employee shot and killed the guard of the Iraqi Vice President. The company fired him, and whisked him out of the country within 36 hours. Ten months later, he still has not been charged with any crime.

According Blackwater incident reports obtained by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, employees fired on Iraqi civilians at least 195 times since 2005, an average of 1.4 shooting incidents per week. Blackwater fired the first shots in over 80 percent of the reported incidents.

. . .

Private security contractors outnumber now outnumber uniformed military personnel in Iraq. According to Singer, there are 160,000 armed civilian contractors in the country today. Some are under contract to U.S. federal agencies, including the State Department. Others are hired by private interests because the American occupying force cannot maintain adequate security.

The rest.

According to a new study, this time by British polling organization ORB, there have been 1.2 million violent deaths in a Iraq as a result of the US invasion and occupation.

That’s a number that equals Cambodia’s killing fields and the Rwandan genocide, and it’s all ours. We’re no less culpable than those in Cambodia or Rwanda who washed their hands of the exterminations going on around them. Worse, as Alan Greenspan recently acknowledged, we’re enjoying an economy fueled by this holocaust. We benefit by these mass graves.

So here’s a question for you: what do you think an appropriate response would be from the people being exterminated? If it were your family? Your friends? Your people? How long would you wait? What would you sacrifice? What would you do?

Any ideas?

Yeah. I thought so.

And here’s a last question: how much sympathy would you have for the perpetrator population who stood by and watched their government liquidate your people?

I’d guess just about as much as they deserve.