Erratum

Paul and Annette Discuss Ida Lupino and Nothing Ever Was, Anyway

I, on my side, require of every writer, first or last, a simple and sincere account of his own life, and not merely what he has heard of other men's lives. -Henry David Thoreau, from Walden

An authorship that began with Either/Or and advanced step by step seeks here its consummating place of rest at the foot of the altar, where the author, personally most aware of his own imperfection and guilt, certainly does not call himself a witness to the truth but only a singular kind of poet and thinker who, "without authority," has had nothing new to bring but "has wanted to read through once again, if possible in a more inward way, the original text of individual human existence-relationships, the old, familiar text handed down from the fathers" -Søren Aabye Kierkegaard, from the preface to Two Discourses at the Communion on Fridays

Toward dawn, he dreamt he had hidden himself in one of the naves of the Clementine Library. [...] A librarian wearing dark glasses asked him: What are you looking for? Hladik answered: God. The Librarian told him: God is in one of the letters on one of the pages of one of the 400,000 volumes of the Clementine. My fathers and the fathers of my fathers have sought after that letter." -Jorge Luis Borges, from The Secret Miracle

When we concentrate on a material object, whatever its situation, the very act of attention may lead to our involuntarily sinking into the history of that object  Novices must learn to skim over matter if they want matter to stay at the exact level of the moment.   Transparent things, through which the past shines! -Vladimir Nabokov, from Transparent Things

This is the story.  This is the story that I have been writing.  It is the story I began long ago, and that I have been writing since.  The things I say I want, I had and lost, and have again, and have had again, and again, and have always had.  The story is my life.  This is not the story of my life, however.  My life is the story.  And, although I am not a character in this story, I am every character.  How could I not be?  I do not exist except in their eyes.  They do not exist except in my eyes.  The story is the world.  The story is the word.  The world does not exist without my witness.  I do not exist without the witness of the world.  The words in the story are stars in an endless universe.  The universe is but a word.  And lost?  And have always had?…lost, then, does not always mean gone?  The story is not here.  The story is everywhere, and nowhere.  Is it circular or linear?  I only ask because I do not know.  I am as frustrated as you with this story.  It seems to begin in the middle of something that has no middle.  And yet, within a word or two later, I (we) are in some other place, some other time, a time that is briefly the present, a time that recedes into a verifiable but ever shifting past.  The past itself is not shifting, but as we listen again to a piece of music, or read again a poem, we have changed, if imperceptibly, forever and ineluctably.  You, the reader, are no longer where you were or who you were when you began the story.  The evidence is everywhere, ubiquitous, incontrovertible, and ultimately irrelevant.  We all know that we are hurtling through space and time, and that we are composed of gyrating particles, which themselves are composed of smaller gyrating particles, and that solidity and tangibility are illusions.  And, this does not take into account entropy.  The story, then, is an illusion.  This is not an ontological assumption, but simply an observation that is also irrelevant.  It is not relevant to the act of writing, nor is it relevant to the act of reading.  It is for philosophers to undertake questions of being and not being.  Certainly Aristotle may make an appearance in the story, or Descartes may stroll through eating an ice cream cone.  Look, there is Kierkegaard clipping his toenails.  A moment later, one of these gentlemen may become either victim or murderer.  The delineation of his actions and his motives concomitant with their ultimate consequences, i.e. plot, theme, characterization, dénouement, will play differently in the infinite theaters of the mind upon which they are projected.  Who is speaking?  It is I and Thou.  Do you hear my thoughts, His thoughts, Her thoughts, or is this narrative (Is this a narrative?) homodiegetic?   Such terms: heterodiegetic, figural narrative, overt omniscience, will all lead in the wrong direction, toward narratology and semiotics.    Someone is speaking of these things within the story; perhaps Roland Barthes and Tzvetan Todorov are in a café in Prague discussing Kafka.  Barthes says,

"The death of the author is the birth of the reader." Am I dead?  Are you born?  The text will go on without either of us, or never was, or always was, and always is.  This is the story.  This is the story that I have been writing.  It is the story I began long ago, and that I have been writing since.  It seems to begin in the middle of something that has no middle.  Do you hear my thoughts?  The story is my life.   The evidence is everywhere.  Who is speaking?  The things I say I want, I had and lost, and have again, and have had again, and again, and have always had.    You, the reader, are no longer where you were.  This does not take into account entropy.  The story is an illusion.  It is I and Thou.  The words in the story are stars in an endless universe.  This is the story.  This is the story that I have been writing.

Death and Transfiguration of a Blog

In The World as Idea, Schopenhauer writes:

No truth therefore is more certain, more independent of all others, and less in need of proof than this, that all that exists for knowledge, and therefore this whole world, is only object in relation to subject, perception of a perceiver, in a word, idea.  This is obviously true of the past and the future, as well as of the present, of what is farthest off, as of what is near; for it is true of time and space themselves, in which alone these distinctions arise.  All that in any way belongs or can belong to the world is inevitably thus conditioned through the subject, and exists only for the subject.  The world is idea.

Certainly it is a continuation of the Cartesian notion, and certainly it allows for the writer as perceiver a reason to write or connote an idea.  Thus, perhaps, is the simplest justification for the existence of this blog: cogito ergo sum.  Yet to avoid the fulsome effluvium (a phrase stolen from Vonnegut) of cliché, would I not have to name it something like, Crack Whores and Cheese, and write without the use of pronouns or conjunctions?  As it has been, cliché may be the best I can say about it.  The worst of it is summed up by Yeats in his poem, Remorse for Intemperate Speech:

                                              

            I ranted to the knave and fool,

But outgrew that school,

Would transform the part,

Fit audience found, but cannot rule

My fanatic heart.

I sought my betters: though in each

Fine manners, liberal speech,

Turn hatred into sport,

Nothing said or done can reach

My fanatic heart,

The final stanza is less applicable (for me, not for Yeats), and, thusly, is omitted.  I have spilled the ink of my thoughts into an impenetrable Rorschach blot, ergo blog, where text becomes noise; the text separates into meaningless cuneiform, which dissipates further into the white noise that surrounds us.  Trying to define insanity is itself a form of insanity.  I had intended a few words that would tend toward the opposite of didacticism, toward Barthes’ description:

… poetry is a regressive semiological system that aims at reaching the meaning of things themselves.

However, as I stumbled outside of my sphere of influence, a circumbendibus in which I was pursued and preceded by mediocrity like my own shadow,  the daedal theses and antitheses became nothing more than intemperate speech; text gone wild.   These narrative excursions became very similar to my own quotidian exercise of going out the door with, let’s say, the above paragraph of Schopenhauer to contemplate on my daily walk, which I probably would refer to as my diurnal hegira, whereupon scarcely into my peripatetic journey of epistemological inquiry I would find the world as idea more accurately the world as distraction.  Shadows, sounds, smells, comforts, discomforts, the cracks in the sidewalk, and pragmatism suddenly all demanding my moronic attention; lists of quotidian details summoning themselves, all vying for pyretic position, and all just sticks fallen over like toppled Giacomettis.  By my return home I am aware of little more than my own breathing and paucity of verdure.  There is no narrative, only textual evidence of an attention deficiency disorder.  I have wandered into ordinary madness with new shoes. 

The point of all this is simple.  The National Institute for Technology and Liberal Education (NITLE) has a census of blog sites, 273,986 weblogs of which it has indexed, with approximately 2 billion weblogs in queue, not yet verified, and it estimates 180,830 active blogs.  To me this reads like mass hysteria.  Perhaps, however, we are so technologically Neanderthal that in the incipient future blogging will approximate striking two stones together.  Being that, however precariously, I am in the now, and not the ineluctable future, I must decline from screaming into the void.  If any catharsis is to occur, it will not be on the world wide web.  Governments, geopolitics, global economics, wars, crime, plagues, natural disasters, and the mountains of minutiae regurgitated by the ostensible main stream media in a self-actuated Marshall McLuhan nightmare (“And as our senses have gone outside us, Big Brother goes inside. So, unless aware of this dynamic, we shall at once move into a phase of panic terrors, exactly befitting a small world of tribal drums, total interdependence, and superimposed co-existence. [...] Terror is the normal state of any oral society, for in it everything affects everything all the time…”) and deconstructed infinitely by any of those 200,000 bloggers perpetually, time having become another irrelevancy, has caused me to reconsider that which I have been doing, thus, that which I have become. 

I had already reached the conclusion that the polemic of U.S. politics had become Kafkaesque in its absurdity and corruption, and Orwellian in its hegemonic and Judaic-Christian totalitarianism, be it ever so incipient.  Out of something like capitulation, I posted my last piece on July 20^th, halted by the shrill noise of my own intemperate speech, the screech of tires locked and careening toward my narcissistic diatribe.  Not quite an epiphany, the moment was more darkness than light.  I agreed with Mencken’s notion that, “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”   To end the vigilant and interminable perusal of every news source, of every article/op-ed/blog/book/periodical that may reveal the DNA code of our collective destruction, was suddenly and determinately the only choice.  What could I read in The Nation, that I had not already come to understand by reading Kafka’s, The Trial?  Indeed, one reading of Charles Maturin’s, Melmoth the Wanderer, would suffice to illustrate the intrinsic nature of our species, and all other literary works of fiction ultimately shine the light of truth  into the corners of human affairs, revealing the detritus of lives lived.  Without creating a paean to Art, I would humbly suggest to the reader a more sapient exposure to the works of individuals who have labored outside of the static, whose unique vision bears collective witness.  For my part, I returned to my fiction in progress and to articles on esoterica and Thoreauvian quiet desperation.  A respite from the inexorable flow of information and email into my laptop was requisite and welcome.

Then something like an actual epiphany occurred; I finally checked my email.  An old friend had located me after centuries, by stumbling across my blog.  The infernal regions of the house in Mark Z. Danielewski’s, House of Leaves approximated the internal fall into my own Gordian knot of fears, memories, illusions, and psychoses that reside within my inverse universe.  Realizing that someone from my youth was reading these harangues on the lunatic fringe, felt like looking up from the homeless sidewalk in any city where someday a real rain ‘ill come and wash all this scum off the streets, after a break in an otherwise ceaseless monologue to myself, to imagine that I recognize the face looking down at me in horror and disgust.  It was as though I was caught masturbating on a live feed to every television in the world.  Oh yeah, if you post your trivium (see McLuhan) on the internet, it may actually get read.  Of course, the specific memories of the friend’s indelible effect on me came back in a torrent of joy, horror, embarrassment, laughter, and ineffability.  I remember his mother, a sweetheart actually, had told him that I was a bad influence upon him; a perspicacious observation from a loving parent.  Nevertheless, his family took me along on their summer vacation, whereupon he turned the color of a horse chestnut and I burned every layer of epidermis, derma, sebaceous glands, and blood and lymph vessels, down to and including the bone.  He was a youth with ferocious talent who wrote beautiful compositions on the piano, played the double bass with unparalleled virtuosity (and could be playing today in the manner of Gary Peacock or Dave Holland, George Mraz or Christian McBride, Charlie Haden or Boris Koslov, who plays with the Mingus Big Band), and once wrote a poem entitled, A Sinner Who Died in a Fire, that I would present here if I could.  He was a prodigy, a talented basketball player, an enigma, and someone who would laugh hysterically at my most inane utterances.  In Denmark, as a bassist, he recorded an LP with the Erling Kroner Quintet upon which his composition, I’ve Grown Accustomed to the Race, shines in perpetuity.  What ever happened to the quintet’s original drummer?

This humble diary in its present form is at a point of repose.  I do, however, rage against the dying of the light; the light of our democracy, our liberties, our possibilities.  Perhaps there is no point of repose, the way in Steve Swallow’s composition, Sweeping Up; the simple chords in a modal progression of 7 bars never cease to be.  The original Erratum will stay up briefly, its embalmed body of work grotesquely on display for the perversely curious, after which the text will be cremated and spread upon the waters of moirés. 

To (re-)read this and all future posts go here.

The Art of War

17. According as circumstances are favorable, one should modify one's plans. 18. All warfare is based on deception. 19. Hence, when able to attack, we must seem unable; when using our forces, we must seem inactive; when we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away; when far away, we must make him believe we are near. 20. Hold out baits to entice the enemy. Feign disorder, and crush him. -The Art of War, Sun Tzu. According to the Wikepedia definition, Misdirection is a form of deception, where one feints in a particular course, and then exploits the misled pursuer's mistake to escape, or remain undetected. It would not require political acumen or perspicuity to recognize that the Bush administration, with its shadow government of neocon advisors and planners use the art of misdirection as their deux ex machina to resolve issues that raise inquiry and to initiate actions that can not be easily undone. The day-to-day politics of this administration relies heavily on the shell game to misdirect a complacent (if not complicit) mainstream media into looking at the wrong story at the wrong time or the wrong aspect of the story or at a different story entirely, while the truth stealthily slips into oblivion. With the sudden nomination of John (or as Billmon calls him Bob) Roberts for the SCOTUS, the entire vacuous coterie of television prompter readers have been misdirected to the SCOTUS premature evacuation and away from the State Department Memo dated July 7, 2003, that informed top administration officials that the wife of ex-diplomat and Bush critic Joseph Wilson was a CIA agent, and that was passed around at the WH and on Air Force One resulting eventually (as in 7 days later) in the public revelation that Joe Wilson’s wife was (is) Valerie Plame, a CIA agent assigned to WMD. I would direct readers to peruse Justin Raimondo’s article on Antiwar.com, and in particular to overly peruse these paragraphs: The main thrust of this investigation – as well as parallel investigations into similar breaches of U.S. national security in recent days – is aimed at the "disinformation campaign" described in that footnote to the Senate intelligence report. Who ran that campaign, and on whose behalf – what government officials were in on it, and what help, if any, did they receive from foreign intelligence agencies? These are all questions, I believe, to which Fitzgerald is seeking answers. The Plame investigation is the result of the FBI's counterintelligence efforts, which have apparently uncovered the roots of the "disinformation campaign" referred to in the Senate report. The esteemed senators on the intelligence committee were too cowardly to dig too deeply into it, but "Bulldog" Fitzgerald is kicking up a lot of dirt. What the outing of CIA agent Plame has to do with all this is simple: whoever was out to get Wilson as a Mama's boy with a partisan agenda was also pushing the Niger uranium story. They knew its falsity, and what's more, they knew its provenance – and yet they ushered it, unexamined, through the intelligence-vetting process. The outing of Plame, which was part of the cover-up, wasn't the only blow aimed at U.S. intelligence capabilities by this group: whoever outed Plame also injected corrupted intelligence into the information stream that eventually washed up on the president's desk. Somebody burned the White House, and badly: that's why the Fitzgerald investigation has been allowed to proceed, and why it involves a lot more than violation of an obscure statute that has only been successfully prosecuted once. Luckily, for our sake, Fitzgerald is unlikely to be misdirected by the mainstream media’s ADD. However, the diabolical Bush Cabal is advancing other agendas simultaneously. The Patriot Act II, with all of the sundown clause provisions of Act I in place, is being pushed through both hoses of Congress with alacrity and without adequate scrutiny. Let’s do a bit of refresher reading now to get an immediate handle and minimal course of action, i.e. writing to your elected Congressional representatives. First I will refer you to my own views on the subject here. And then I would refer you to the following articles: • EFF Analysis of "Patriot II," • Patriot Act II Resurrected? • Patriot Act: To find right balance, keep debate wide open • Safe and Free There are obviously hundreds of articles on the subject; Google your own. But, by all means pay attention and let your voice be heard. The Patriot Act is as serious as it gets. At least read this article, which gives as much of an overview as you will need. While Blair is using Bush’s 9/11 rhetoric to explain the 7/7 London bombings to his country (they hate our freedom and way of life palaver), Wolcott points out some glaring omissions by US in the U.S. and bUSh in the U.K.; ouch! Iraq: • 9 Dismissed From Tribunal Trying Saddam • Hussein Tribunal Shaken by Chalabi's Bid to Replace Staff • Plan Called for Covert Aid in Iraq Vote • GET OUT THE VOTE • Tally puts civilian toll at 25,000 • Draft of Iraq charter looks to Islam Guantanamo: • Ruling Lets U.S. Restart Trials at Guantánamo (John G. Roberts was one of the three judges on the panel that handed Bush this significant victory) Bush’s nomination of John Roberts to the U.S. Supreme Court is, of course, a salient issue that deserves the intense scrutiny that it certainly will receive. However, public discourse needs to rise to the occasion, and we need to stay focused on many issues that simultaneously affect the immediate health and character of the republic. Ten minutes of reading, let alone listening especially to those who are endorsing his candidacy, will give you a fairly accurate idea of the potential damage this man can do as a lifelong Justice of the Supreme Court. Fitzgerald…the State Department Memo and its ramifications…Patriot Act debate…IRAQ…

Anarchy in the U.K.

But after a while I felt that someone was entreating me for this lost story – some lonely soul, perhaps, standing far away at the window of his dusky room, or perhaps the very darkness itself that surrounded me and him and all things. So it happened that I told my story to the dark. – Rainer Maria Rilke, from Stories of God

On July 7th, beginning at approximately 08:50 AM GMT, bombs began exploding in London. Officially, as reported by the BBC, there were 4 explosions that ripped across central London causing the death of 52 persons and injuring more than 700 others. Last Thursday morning, I was among millions of other Americans who were having their morning coffee watching the news of the London bombings unfold on their televisions or computer screens; more death, more murder, more numbness and inertia. CNN hyperventilated TERRORISTS BOMB LONDON SUBWAYS, inserted al Qaeda into every sentence, and ratcheted up the domestic fear mongering rhetoric to Level RED. I don’t know what kind of a narcissist one would have to be to let the ineluctable inevitability of one day ceasing to be ruin his or her day. As Schopenhauer said, "We can regard our life as a uselessly disturbing episode in the blissful repose of nothingness."

However, that is rather a circumscribed description and does nothing to alleviate our diurnal manifestations of moral outrage, sorrow, joy, anger, and disgust, among other directed and misdirected emotions. I chose to sit out this range of possible mood swings and wait a few days to comment. It occurred to me that a few facts may shake out over the ensuing days of forensics and analysis of first-hand accounts. The senseless death of individuals who were merely going about their quotidian lives, the kind of death that is (and has been for years) inflicted upon thousands of Iraqis daily, the kind that arrived like a thunderbolt from the heavens at a wedding party in Afghanistan, with women, children, and men celebrating one of life’s hopeful ceremonies, snuffed out courtesy of the American military in erratum, still squeezes out of the withered core some amount of anger and shame, and leaves behind an indescribable sorrow that lives in darkness. Now begins the intellectual response.

The massive scale of death in Iraq being perpetrated by the insurgency and all manner of indigenous fringe groups, including the new and improved Iraqi police and army, not to mention our own military, counterinsurgency, paramilitary, and agents of mayhem, all seem to have a cause and effect kind of logic to the insanity. When a suicide bomber blows him/herself up in Israel, we know that this is a war of attrition being waged by Palestinians against a nation possessing massive military power, which will retaliate exponentially for any attack. We know that this conflict is perpetual or will end badly. And, as much as we try to understand how someone would choose to blow him/herself up for a belief that can not be proved, it is not impossible to make logical connections. There is a cause and effect. The bombings in London, however, require something of a suspension of disbelief. As we try to draw the lines of possible cause and effect, nothing seems to make sense. We must ask, as in any crime, what is the motive. Who, in whatever twisted logic, stands to gain? On the Sunday after the attacks I came across one possible answer in this Observer story:

Millions of personal email and mobile phone records could be stored and shared with police and intelligence officials across Europe to help thwart terrorist attacks. The Home Secretary, Charles Clarke, will propose new measures at an emergency meeting of European Union interior ministers which will discuss the implications of Thursday's London bombings. He raised the stakes dramatically by claiming they could 'quite possibly' have helped prevent such attacks, by identifying in advance suspicious patterns of behaviour by potential terrorists.

If one has been paying attention over the last 6 months or more, the British government, in the guise of Charles Clarke MP, Minister of State at the Home Office, who has overall responsibility for the work of the Home Office, civil emergencies, security, terrorism, expenditure and Civil Renewal, has been waging a very unpopular campaign of anti-terrorism legislation, national identity cards, and general abridgement of civil liberties. As a post-9.11 American, this has to ring familiar. I heard one Brit refer to the whole legislative campaign as Patriot Act Lite. However, from this writer’s perspective, the measures the British are trying to implement are beyond even the contentious Patriot Act II. So call it a coincidence, but one answer to the question of who stands to gain from these bombings is the politicians intent on subjugation of the general population. It’s nine-one-one déjà vu all over again.

Do I discount any possibility that radical Islamic elements are behind the bombings? Almost, but no. It is indeed, however, difficult to find the cause and effect logic of such an action. For those who would say there is no logic in any act of radical Islamic terrorism, I would contend that those individuals suffer from a deficit of knowledge relative to the foreign policy of the United States, specifically, as well as the British and French peripherally. I condone no violence against individuals by anyone for any reason, particularly innocent citizens merely going about their business, who, unfortunately are so often the targets of these assassins. However, attempting to understand the motivations of those who would commit crimes that are so heinous, to understand what level of grievance they feel they have suffered to equate this level of reprisal, and to try to be circumspect and empirical when measuring historical evidence seems the responsibility of all of us, as individuals, in this brave new world. Indeed, the efforts may be only “disturbing episode[s] in the blissful repose of nothingness”, but our struggle to understand our own existence may be the only reason not to opt for the least painful exit strategy available. Although, I have to admit there exists a delicate balance between asking the difficult philosophical questions and madness. Parents may find their reason to be in the eyes of their children. That does not preclude being a responsible citizen, however; demanding truth and responsibility from elected civil servants, from the Executive Branch of the Federal government on down to the crossing guard in your neighborhood. After all, one day you may find yourself in the back of a courthouse listening to one of your sons extrapolating perfunctorily like Dennis Rader, the congregational leader of the Christ Lutheran Church and serial murderer, on how his demons set in motion the dynamic that fueled his proud life. After that, I doubt that anything could ever be as difficult as finding beauty in a sunrise.

Today we have the British press reporting that the bombers (note: not terrorists) are (were purportedly) all English by birth and regular British citizens. One of the alleged bombers, Shahzad Tanweer, a 22-year-old British Asian of Pakistani ancestry, who,

ten days ago was playing cricket in the local park with his friends. It was something he loved to do. He was a sporty young man who loved martial arts, drove his dad's Mercedes and had many friends in the Beeston area of Leeds.

Evidently his accomplices were also all regular guys. Pardon me if my incredulity is as thick as a slab of fresh Parmesan. Throw in some cynicism and critical thinking and I just can’t get past the stupidity of all of the allegations, or, if true, the stupidity of the plot. A quick glance at the facts: •four young comrades in Islamic radicalism decide to commit a coordinated bombing for political purposes;

•they all carry their identity papers on them, wear identical rucksacks filled with their explosive and timing devices;

•they all get surreptitiously photographed (by the ubiquitous, Big-Brother style government cameras) upon entering the train station;

•they all blow themselves up, allegedly again since no DNA has proven otherwise, but manage to have their identification papers left in tact. (This is an interesting point from a national I.D. perspective. Make certain to carry yours to your intended bomb site.);

•not even the authorities know whether to call this a suicide bomb strike, in absence of corpus delicti, or simply a new breed of home grown terrorism.

•military grade weaponry, i.e. explosives were used;

•French sources are saying that these individuals had already been arrested months ago ( a charge vehemently denied by Charles Clarke).

Allow me to hypothesize on the advantage of creating the illusion of the latter. Today, here in the big, anticipatory terrorist target, the U.S., the Director of Homeland Security (can you imagine there even exists such a position), Michael Chertoff, who looks as though he could easily star in any psychological horror movie, laid out a reorganization plan for the department that includes a new assistant secretary for cyber-security and telecommunications. During an interview with Wolf Blitzer today, he kept referring to the terrorist bombings in England, and warned that this is why we need better surveillance capabilities. If the supposition is that there are new terrorist cells that are domestic, the surveillance would then have to be on citizens. Wolf mentioned that studies pointed to infiltration as the best way to battle these multifaceted terrorist cells. Chertoff basically said, yeah that too, but surveillance and technical abilities is where we need to focus. Almost simultaneously, in Britain Prime Minister Blair and Home Secretary Clarke are warning of more suicide bombings (really?) by, in Blair’s description, an "enemy whose roots lie in a poisonous and perverted interpretation of Islam". Mr. Clarke is intent on aggressively pursuing improved surveillance techniques and parameters in Britain as well. Just what the totalitarian doctor ordered.

The latest news is that British authorities are pursuing the “mastermind” behind the bombings, who is suspected, in fact, of being the bomb maker. As the New York Times reports here,

This fifth man is suspected of being the ringleader and possibly the bomb-maker, the official said, in the attacks last Thursday in the London Underground and on a double-decker city bus that killed at least 52 people. Investigators described him as a highly trained person.

I don’t know where this is going, but I feel like I should be reading it in a yellow covered paperback.

Meanwhile in Iraq, a suicide car bomber on Wednesday steered his sport utility vehicle toward a group of children who had crowded around a patrol of American troops and detonated his payload, killing as many as 27 people, nearly all of them children, government and hospital officials said. One American soldier was also killed. There are no words for this kind of horror. The NYT report reads:

The attack, in a poor, predominantly Shiite neighborhood of eastern Baghdad, left a wrenching scene of bloodshed, anger and despair. Children's colored slippers, pieces of flesh and shrapnel were strewn around the wide crater left in the street by the bomb. Women wailed and slapped themselves on the chest and face in a ritual of grief as bodies were placed in crude coffins and carried away.

The globe is stained with the blood of innocents. It has been this way throughout history. The men who wage war are political and diabolical, entreating those who will kill and die for their lies of convenience. There is no war on terror. Terror, unmitigated violence, and torture, inflicted upon other humans have been the staple of conquering hordes toward the indigenous inhabitants of conquered lands. Over time, the indigenous tribes use the same techniques of terror in an insurgency against the occupiers. Terror is as old as the darkness that resides in all of us. It is used as a heartless tool by the neo-cons to establish world hegemony. It is used by the disenfranchised to fight back against overwhelming force. It is an abomination against mankind in all cases. Who are we fighting? Is a world religion really at the heart of all our fear and loathing, and, more importantly, our capitulation to the politicians who have agendas of which we know nothing about? There are those who crave power and control, forces aligned and unholy alliances who would subjugate the world citizenry for their dystopian dream. We can’t really look to Schopenhauer or Hegel for guidance in this struggle against our own governments. Perhaps Chuck D. is more apropos: Fight the Power.

Look at the arrogance of our own political structure:

The intentional disclosure of a covert operative's identity is a violation of federal law. Under the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982, it is a crime for anyone with access to classified information to reveal intentionally the identity of an undercover intelligence officer. The punishment: a fine up to $50,000 and/or up to ten years in jail.

We can not get to the truth in a case where the blatant facts are attacked and regurgitated by the right-wing political machinery to obfuscate the obvious. Forgive me my cynicism, but I do not have faith in this electorate to see through the propaganda. And, if we lose this one battle, and the Chernoff and Clarke puppets to their masters get their way, even telling your story in the dark will be a crime.

Iran, So Far Away

Almost everything is outside of my sphere of influence. It is only in a chimerical consortium of other writers, readers, and citizens that I imagine a thought perhaps surviving beyond my own attempt to shape it into words. This is the fundamental conundrum of writing: why write. Without becoming overly existential, the answer is as Beckett’s Vladimir, in Waiting for Godot, declares, “I can’t go on. I’ll go on.” In a world that seems absurd and meaningless, it is up to the individual to create meaning. Of course, Camus took it further in his essay, The Myth of Sisyphus, who insists that it is our struggle, and Sisyphus’ struggle, that gives us meaning, that “One must imagine Sisyphus happy.” His argument is,

If the descent is thus sometimes performed in sorrow, it can also take place in joy. This word is not too much. Again I fancy Sisyphus returning toward his rock, and the sorrow was in the beginning. When the images of earth cling too tightly to memory, when the call of happiness becomes too insistent, it happens that melancholy arises in man's heart: this is the rock's victory, this is the rock itself. The boundless grief is too heavy to bear. These are our nights of Gethsemane. But crushing truths perish from being acknowledged. Thus, Oedipus at the outset obeys fate without knowing it. But from the moment he knows, his tragedy begins. Yet at the same moment, blind and desperate, he realizes that the only bond linking him to the world is the cool hand of a girl. Then a tremendous remark rings out: "Despite so many ordeals, my advanced age and the nobility of my soul make me conclude that all is well." Sophocles' Oedipus, like Dostoevsky's Kirilov, thus gives the recipe for the absurd victory. Ancient wisdom confirms modern heroism.

I am not as optimistic about the struggle. The absurdity we are up against at this historical moment seems intrinsically evil, a shadow upon reality. And, reality itself seems to be under manipulation, which indicates a success for those vying for control. Salvador Dali once noted,

I believe that the moment is near when by a procedure of active paranoiac thought, it will be possible to systematize confusion and contribute to the total discrediting of the world of reality.

Indeed, trying to understand the fighting in Iraq, distinct from the arguments of why the U.S. is there in the first place, is to descend into madness, paranoid speculation, conspiracy theories, and the realization that the worst of these scenarios is actually possible. The BBC announces,

An aide to Iraqi Shia spiritual leader Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani has been shot dead by unidentified gunmen in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad.

And the possibilities begin to unfold: Sunnis instigating a civil war/the CIA instigating a civil war/al Qaeda instigating a civil war/all of the above working in collusion. Adjunct Professor of English at West Chester University, Stacy Tartar Esch draws a correlation between Beckett’s work and our current modern existence:

…we're waiting all the time, too. Think about it: aren't we waiting for the war in Iraq to end, waiting to catch Osama bin Laden, waiting to win the war on terror? We're waiting for President Bush to smoke out the evil-doers. If you're a banker or a stockbroker you might be waiting for an end to bankruptcy court or class action suits or social security or taxes. Or an end to racism….an end to poverty, drug abuse, domestic violence… Many of us are waiting for environmental disaster, the next world war, the next flu epidemic, the next school shooting, the next terror attack… we're waiting for security, good times, that great vacation, that better job, that better wardrobe, that better car, that smaller computer, smaller cell phone; we're waiting for the perfect soul mate, the perfect body, the perfect moment… we're waiting for our hopes to be heard, our prayers to be answered, our wishes to be granted… we're waiting, and meanwhile, we're….here.

Are we waiting to discover if Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was one of the leaders of radical students who seized the Tehran embassy in 1979 and held 52 American hostages for more than year? This absurdity is the template upon which I shall attempt to build a road of understanding and shall attempt also to illuminate the ineluctable reality. Or to put it more directly, allow me to cut through the massive bullshit on this issue. In the issue(s) 1/24 and 1/31/05 The New Yorker, published a piece by Seymour Hersh entitled, The Coming Wars in which he wrote:

This is a war against terrorism, and Iraq is just one campaign. The Bush Administration is looking at this as a huge war zone,” [a] former high-level intelligence official told me. “Next, we’re going to have the Iranian campaign. We’ve declared war and the bad guys, wherever they are, are the enemy. This is the last hurrah—we’ve got four years, and want to come out of this saying we won the war on terrorism.

The extremely detailed article goes into the intricate maneuverings of Rumsfeld, who is authorized by President Bush to conduct this campaign, and the “war on terror” in general, “off the books”,

…free from legal restrictions imposed on the C.I.A. Under current law, all C.I.A. covert activities overseas must be authorized by a Presidential finding and reported to the Senate and House intelligence committees. (The laws were enacted after a series of scandals in the nineteen-seventies involving C.I.A. domestic spying and attempted assassinations of foreign leaders.) “The Pentagon doesn’t feel obligated to report any of this to Congress,” the former high-level intelligence official said. “They don’t even call it ‘covert ops’—it’s too close to the C.I.A. phrase. In their view, it’s ‘black reconnaissance.’ They’re not even going to tell the CINCs”—the regional American military commanders-in-chief.

Hersh continues to delineate how the Bush administration has consolidated power through secrecy and behind-the-scenes machinations to achieve the goal of being beyond the reach of the intelligence community and the congress. Mr. Hersh reveals that,

The Administration has been conducting secret reconnaissance missions inside Iran at least since last summer. Much of the focus is on the accumulation of intelligence and targeting information on Iranian nuclear, chemical, and missile sites, both declared and suspected. The goal is to identify and isolate three dozen, and perhaps more, such targets that could be destroyed by precision strikes and short-term commando raids. “The civilians in the Pentagon want to go into Iran and destroy as much of the military infrastructure as possible,” the government consultant with close ties to the Pentagon told me.

As a reader, one must decide to believe or remain skeptical about such reporting. (As a disclaimer, this reader has found the work of Seymour Hersh to be dead on and nothing short of amazing in its veracity.) Nevertheless, it is obvious that the Cheney Administration has designs upon Iran. I recommend the following articles as a place to begin, if you need to placate a nagging skepticism:

• Onward to Iran, by Richard Heinberg

• The U.S. War with Iran Has Already Begun, by Scott Ritter

• Archived Articles on the Threat of US Intervention in Iran (from the global Policy Forum)

Then there is the historical relationship over the years from 1953 on between the U.S. and Iran to consider. In 1953 the CIA engineered a coup to take out the Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh and reinstall the Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. In reality this was the first U.S.-British engineered regime change, and can be researched further here. The CIA enlisted Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf in the coup campaign. General Schwarzkopf, the father of the Persian Gulf War commander, had befriended the shah a decade earlier while leading the United States military mission to Iran. This inauspicious meddling in Iranian affairs by the U.S. and Britain can further succinctly be referenced here and here.

The cozy relationship between the Shah of Iran and the U.S. would come to an end in with the Islamic Revolution that began in 1978. The U.S. would turn its back on the shah and lend tepid support to the Islamists, but too little, too late. On November 4, 1979, Iranian activists seized the U.S. embassy in Tehran and took those inside as hostages. Any scrutiny of this period will reveal that this hostage crisis ended the re-election hopes of President Jimmy Carter. This is where the behind-the-scenes maneuvering of Reagan’s campaign director (and future CIA Director) William J. Casey and Reagan’s running mate, George Herbert Walker Bush (and former CIA Director, 1976-1977) thicken the plot, as they say. The allegations, vehemently denied by G.H.W. Bush, are that Bush, Casey, et al, met with Iranian agents in Madrid and Paris and brokered a deal to have the hostages held through October, until Reagan could defeat Carter in early November, and then be released. The hostages were in fact released on the very day of Reagan's inauguration, twenty minutes after his inaugural address.

Finally, for the purpose of this synopsis, came the ignominious Iran-Contra Affair. The Reagan Administration engaged in selling arms to Iran (the proceeds of which were diverted to the Nicaraguan Contras who were fighting the leftist Sandanistas) at a time when Iran was engaged in a bloody war with Iraq. Along with supplying money to the Contras, the purpose of these arms sales was to placate and appease the Iranians. However, later, when it looked as though the Iranians may actually win the conflict with Iraq, the U.S. began supplying Saddam Hussein with weaponry, as accounted here. The Iran/Iraq conflict served U.S. interests in truly Machiavellian ways. Not only was Bush, Sr. involved in all of this, but Reagan sent (present U.S. Secretary of Defense) Donald Rumsfeld to negotiate the deal with Hussein in 1983. All of this (almost) unfathomable espionage, counter-espionage, playing Islamic countries against each other for U.S. “interests” has been de rigueur for at least 52 years. The Middle East, for the obvious reasons of its being the major source of our oil and its strategic location to Israel (and now Afghanistan) is of such crucial importance to the U.S. and our foreign policy, as evidenced by our current conflict in Iraq, that the focus of our intelligence organizations on all of these countries, i.e. Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Libya, Egypt, and Iran is ubiquitous and intense. It is, therefore, with absolute incredulity that I watch the U.S. National Security Advisor, Stephen Hadley stand before the press corps and state that he does not know whether or not Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was one of the leaders of radical students who seized the Tehran embassy in 1979 and held 52 American hostages for more than year.

To exacerbate the political advantages of such a stance, President Bush has weighed in with his comments saying he has "no information, but obviously his involvement raises many questions." Are these guys kidding? Any cursory look at the photographs that are being compared reveal a discrepancy in the eyes, the beard, the nose, the hair, the chin, the mouth, the whole damn head. Moreover, are we to believe that a candidate (now elected) for the Iranian presidency does not have a massive dossier with the U.S. intelligence community? I would be amazed if they did not know Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s favorite vegetable, song, color, and sex position. So what is the purpose of feigning ignorance in this matter, and who are the Americans who would believe such a farcical posture? This brings the matter back to the themes of absurdity and nihilism in Waiting for Godot. Is writing this action or inaction? Is there any modicum of influence the individual can exercise over the insane, immoral, incongruous, and existentially dangerous policies of the United States in the world?

American support for the current war in Iraq, if you believe the polls, is waning rapidly. That we are there in the first place is beyond belief to many of us. Historically wars have been waged for reasons that, when placed under scrutiny, reveal delusions of grandeur, personal hatreds, imperialistic designs, tribal or regional conflicts, and any number of irrational motives. However, leaders have always used defense of country and honor as the primary motivational propaganda to rally the actual armies. The ultimate outcome has always been, is, and will always be death. The Bush Administration stands before us daily speaking to us as if we are absolutely stupid. Unfortunately, they are often correct in this assumption. CNN offers us politicians talking about “staying the course” (in Iraq), with varying ideas of what that means. What it means is a lot more deaths of American military. What it means is innumerable Iraqi deaths and the breeding of hatred that will last for decades or until total annihilation is achieved. And the designs upon Iran are obvious. There is an impending, and if we as individuals continue to “wait”, inevitable war with Iran looming. Are the decisions already made? Is the dynamic immutable and unstoppable? Does writing about this make any difference, or is our destiny out of our “sphere of influence”?

Camus begins his essay, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, with the sentence,

There is only one really serious philosophical question, and that is suicide. Deciding whether or not life is worth living is to answer the fundamental question in philosophy. All other questions follow from that.

He compares the absurdity of the existence of humanity to the labors of the mythical character Sisyphus, who was condemned through all eternity to push a boulder to the top of a hill and watch helplessly as it rolled down again. Camus takes the nonexistence of God for granted and finds meaning in the struggle itself. The individual in this absurd existence, Camus postulates, ultimately rejects suicide and declares that the only courageous and morally valid response to the Absurd is to continue living. “Suicide is not an option.” Further, Camus states that it is the responsibility of the individual to revolt, which is defined as a spirit of opposition against any perceived unfairness, oppression, or indignity in the human condition. I write to say, “I can’t go on. I’ll go on.” And, I write, while knowing that I may have a negligible “sphere of influence”, as an act of rebellion.

Courting Disaster: Bork to the Future

The propaganda series, Iraq:Road to Progress on CNN, along with Jaws V, Girls Gone Wild in Aruba, and Where in the World is Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, will have to be put on hold, while Mr. Magoo Senior Political Analyst Bill Schneider, Too Much Candy Crowley, Down Low Joe Johns, You are I John King, et al on that network, and all of their counterparts in the 24 hour and MSM news organizations focus on the resignation of Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. While Herr Frist was on the Senate floor delivering some pointless palaver, one of his sycophants came running in with the Wikepedia version of Justice O’Connor’s bio replete with appropriate encomiums. These tributes, of course, will be brief, as the focus shifts to the selection process, and the Republicans call for a strict Constitutionalist, which means someone who subverts the Constitution, and shuns “activist” judges, meaning those who are for protecting Constitutional rights. We’ve heard from Bush. We’ve heard from Senator Kennedy. Let the games begin.

I am including this list of resources from David NYC at Daily Kos:

Whatever happens with the Supreme Court nomination battle that is about to ensue, it's going to happen fast. Here are some things you can do right now:

• If you have a cell phone, sign up for People at the American Way's Mass Immediate Response site. This way, you'll be able to receive text message action items instantly as events break. (If you signed up during the nuclear option fight, you'll need to re-sign up.)

• Also sign up with the Save the Court, another PFAW website devoted specifically to this issue. • Recruit friends and family members to the cause.

• Write to the President, telling him he should choose a consensus candidate to replace O'Connor.

• Contact your Senators to tell them the same thing.

I’ll post on this later, when I finish my piece on Iran. My own feelings tend toward realizing as Bush consolidates power, a power that is hell-bent on taking away the rights previously guaranteed under the Constitution, for the purpose of controlling the domestic populace as he pursues his designs of global hegemony, this issue requires immediate action on the part of all Americans who value their Constitutionally guaranteed freedoms.

There is no change but radical change.

Take back America through revolution...NOW!

Duck and Cover

In his book, Bush at War, Bob Woodward, in a one-on-one interview, asked the President about how history would see this [the war], Bush responded with a shrug and, "History, we won't know. We'll all be dead."

Plutonium. It’s kind of a fun word to say. I, perhaps, would name a dog Plutonium, or even a son, if my last name were Zappa. With a half-life of 24,200 years, Plutonium certainly has staying power. It is a key fissile component in the making of modern nuclear weapons, and can be used to make radiological weapons or poison. So it was comforting to see this headline in the NY Times:

U.S. Has Plans to Again Make Own Plutonium

The Bush administration is planning the government's first production of plutonium 238 since the cold war, stirring debate over the risks and benefits of the deadly material. The substance, valued as a power source, is so radioactive that a speck can cause cancer. Up Close, a Plutonium Pellet and a Minor Slip of the Tongs (June 27, 2005) Federal officials say the program would produce a total of 330 pounds over 30 years at the Idaho National Laboratory, a sprawling site outside Idaho Falls some 100 miles to the west and upwind of Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming. Officials say the program could cost $1.5 billion and generate more than 50,000 drums of hazardous and radioactive waste. Project managers say that most if not all of the new plutonium is intended for secret missions and they declined to divulge any details. But in the past, it has powered espionage devices. "The real reason we're starting production is for national security," Timothy A. Frazier, head of radioisotope power systems at the Energy Department, said in a recent interview. "It's going to be a tough world in the next one or two decades, and this may be needed," said a senior federal scientist who helps the military plan space missions and spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the possibility that he would contradict federal policies. "Technologically, it makes sense." In 1964, a rocket failure led to the destruction of a navigation satellite powered by plutonium 238, spreading radioactivity around the globe and starting a debate over the event's health effects. In 1965, high in the Himalayas, an intelligence team caught in a blizzard lost a plutonium-powered device meant to spy on China. And in 1968, an errant weather satellite crashed into the Pacific, but federal teams managed to recover its plutonium battery intact from the Santa Barbara Channel, off California.

I’ve wanted to discuss the question of whether the U.S. is preparing military action against Iran. One indication to the affirmative on this comes to mind as I listen to CNN in the background where British Prime Minister Tony Blair is ranting against the new Iranian president-elect, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, followed by a live news conference of Bush and German Chancellor Schroeder, where Bush categorizes the elections in Iran as corrupt. Well, it would be just too easy for me to glibly reply glibly to that remark, so I shall resist. “Do you remember 2000 dipshit?” Sorry. Anyway, Iran is clearly on the table, as this ominous report indicates. And I do plan on writing at length on the subject. However, between the Supreme Court’s enigmatic and frustrating rulings and the issue of PLUTONIUM, my focus a just a bit disjunctive.

By the way, if Mr. Ahmadinejad is such a religious conservative, why does he dress like a used car salesman (with apologies to all used car salesmen)? And, not to non sequitur myself into a corner, but is the Supreme Court just fucking with our heads? The Ten Commandments, IN-OUT/right-wrong…but at the same time, The United States Supreme Court declined today to hear the cases of two reporters facing jail time for refusing to testify about conversations with their confidential sources.

The case now returns to the federal district court in Washington, where its chief judge, Thomas F. Hogan, is expected to hear arguments this week about when and where the reporters, Judith Miller of The New York Times and Matthew Cooper of Time magazine, will begin to serve their time. The special prosecutor in the case, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, is likely to ask that the reporters be jailed immediately. Lawyers for the reporters may ask Judge Hogan for permission to file additional briefs. "I am extremely disappointed," Ms. Miller said in a statement. "Journalists simply cannot do their jobs without being able to commit to sources that they won't be identified. Such protection is critical to the free flow of information in a democracy." Arthur Sulzberger Jr., the publisher of the New York Times, added: "It is shocking that for doing some routine newsgathering on an important public issue, keeping her word to her sources, and without our even publishing a story about the C.I.A. agent, Judy finds herself facing a prison sentence. "That 49 states and many countries around the globe provide broad protection for journalists who have promised confidentiality to their sources, makes today's decision even more disappointing. And it is doubly painful that the court rejected our case in the face of the plea of 34 state attorneys general, prosecutors who normally seek journalists' evidence, that anonymous sources are critical to provide information to the public."

But seriously, PLUTONIUM? How apocalyptically evil are this Administration’s designs on global hegemony? I guess the question by its implications answers itself. However, why don’t we all read Robert W. Merry’s, Sands of Empire, and discuss this in five minutes. Okay. The Physicians for Social Responsibility thought about this issue and offered this policy brief on 10/22/02, and excerpt of which reads,

The adoption of the dangerous venture of preemption as a pervasive security strategy is an unprecedented move by the United States, distancing the Bush administration’s national security policy from all before it. President Bush cites the need for such a strategy due to the nature of the threats facing the United States in a strategic environment wrought with terrorism. This new strategy, however, is at least partly motivated by the administration’s aim to maintain U.S. military dominance in the future, and both elements of this strategy carry more inherent dangers than do the threats cited by the Bush administration.

Another by-the-way; when William Kristol refers to this global hegemony wet-dream, he calls it Benevolent Global Hegemony. Meanwhile, back in the world of greed and money and global political chess moves, Krugman has this article in today’s NY Times, saying,

There's nothing shocking per se about the fact that Chinese buyers are now seeking control over some American companies. After all, there's no natural law that says Americans will always be in charge. Power usually ends up in the hands of those who hold the purse strings. America, which imports far more than it exports, has been living for years on borrowed funds, and lately China has been buying many of our I.O.U.'s. Until now, the Chinese have mainly invested in U.S. government bonds. But bonds yield neither a high rate of return nor control over how the money is spent. The only reason for China to acquire lots of U.S. bonds is for protection against currency speculators - and at this point China's reserves of dollars are so large that a speculative attack on the dollar looks far more likely than a speculative attack on the yuan. So it was predictable that, sooner or later, the Chinese would stop buying so many dollar bonds. Either they would stop buying American I.O.U.'s altogether, causing a plunge in the dollar, or they would stop being satisfied with the role of passive financiers, and demand the power that comes with ownership. And we should be relieved that at least for now the Chinese aren't dumping their dollars; they're using them to buy American companies.

Just a thought: perhaps China is one of the reasons the Bush Administration plans to again make its own PLUTONIUM.

(I split infinitives; they split atoms.)

Well, I think it’s time to go have some Fun with Dick and Jane, (this seems like a good one) check my Weekly Reader for subliminal messages, drink a bottle of tequila, see if I can get my hands on some percocets, and find a desk that I can crawl under.

buh bye.

"Only the Dead Have Seen the End of War" -Plato

Lance Cpl. Holly Charette, a 21-year-old from Cranston, R.I., finds one of her own letters as she sorts through Headquarters Battalion Marines' mail, March 17. Charette recently deployed here from her home base at Camp Lejeune, N.C. to serve in Operation Iraqi Freedom. (U.S. Marine Corps. photo by Sgt. Stephen D'Alessio)

Rhode Island, as everyone knows, is a small state. With 1,048,319 people living on a land area of 1,045 square miles, we only need one newspaper, the Providence Journal, to cover our local needs, generally speaking of course. Today’s front page featured this story:

A 2001 graduate of Cranston High School East was among the six U.S. military personnel killed in Fallujah on Thursday. Lance Cpl. Holly A. Charette, 21, a mail carrier for her division, was killed by a suicide bomber who drove a car into the convoy in which she was traveling, the Department of Defense said last night. Charette's family could not be reached. Charette delivered mail for the 2nd Marine Division, II Marine Expeditionary Force, based at Camp Lejeune, N.C. She had one year left in her enlistment, and planned to apply for a job with the U.S. Postal Service afterward, she said in a May 3 Marine Corps news release. "I never really thought too hard about being a mail person, but it's really an important job, and people depend on me," she said in the release. Holly A. Charette was among 4 women killed and 11 wounded in a suicide car-bomb attack that military officials say may have specifically targeted female service members. Charette's death brings the total of Rhode Island combat deaths since Sept. 11, 2001, to 13. Of those, Charette is the first female Rhode Islander killed in the war. (Sharon T. Swartworth, a Judge Advocate General's Corps Officer originally from Warwick but living in Virginia was killed in Iraq in 2003.) In high school, Charette played on the field hockey team and was a cheerleader for the ice hockey team. Her yearbook shows her in her cheerleading uniform and in street clothes, arms around girlfriends, beaming in each photo. The quote she chose reads, "Don't say 'goodbye' because it's the end. Say 'nice knowing you,' because it was." (BY ELIZABETH GUDRAISJournal Staff Writer)

I sit at this keyboard daily writing about politics and ranting against this war, usually engaged in polemical outrage at the Bush Administration’s moral and ethical turpitude. The daily rhetoric of our politicians usually supplies ample fodder for a diurnal, finger-waving diatribe. I have no delusions regarding the efficacy of this minor blog to change anything other than my own choice of words. Nevertheless, I continue.

War is defined by death. It is a construct of politicians, promulgated by lies and subterfuge. As the famous Prussian militarist and author of Vom Kriege (On War), Carl von Clausewitz wrote,

"It is of course well known that the only source of war is politics -- the intercourse of governments and peoples. . . . We maintain . . . that war is simply a continuation of political intercourse, with the addition of other means."

Death and disfiguration of the body and spirit, however, are the only lasting effects of this “continuation of political intercourse”, as politics become corrupted and change like fashion and empires rise and fall; death is final and eternal. Bush’s invasion of and consequent war in Iraq, forged out of a policy of hegemony and propagated with prevarication, did not meet the definition of jus ad bellum and is thusly an illegal act. In the language of the Nuremberg prosecutors, aggressive leaders who launch unjust wars commit "crimes against peace." Bush’s neo-con advisors have set a policy, justified by the still uninvestigated crimes of 9/11, that is intent on perpetuating a state of global war exemplified by Clausewitz’s statement,

"If war is part of policy, policy will determine its character. As policy becomes more ambitious and vigorous, so will war, and this may reach the point where war attains its absolute form. . . . Policy is the guiding intelligence and war only the instrument, not vice versa."

At the beginning of this war, the ultra-hyped “shock and awe” part, the population was again, as in the Gulf War, whipped into a frenzy of blood lust, even though the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said portentously at the time,

"We need to condition people that this is war. People get the idea this is going to be antiseptic. Well, it's not going to be. People are going to die."

Not everyone saw the war as a jus ad bellum. War protesters staged events and rallies while intellectuals and writers spoke against the purported justifications for invading Iraq. The author of War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, Chris Hedges said at the time,

I think the {Iraq} war is illegitimate not because civilians will die. Civilians die in every conflict. It's illegitimate because the administration has not, to my mind, provided any evidence of any credible threat. And we can't go to war just because we think somebody might do something eventually. There has to be hard intelligence. There has to be a real threat if we're going to ask our young men and women to die. Because once you unleash the "dogs of war" and I know this from every war I've ever covered, war has a force of its own. It's not surgical. We talk about taking out Saddam Hussein. Once you use the blunt instrument of war, it has all sorts of consequences when you use violence on that scale that you can't anticipate. I'm not opposed to the use of force. But force is always has to be a last resort because those who wield force become tainted or contaminated by it. And one of the things that most frightens me about the moment our nation is in now, is that we've lost touch with the notion of what war is.

Along these lines, the poet W.S. Merwin wrote:

It would not have been possible for me ever to trust someone who acquired office by the shameful means Mr. Bush and his abettors resorted to in the last presidential election. His nonentity was rapidly becoming more apparent than ever when the catastrophe of Sept. 11, 2001, provided him and his handlers with a role for him, that of "wartime leader", which they, and he in turn, were quick to exploit. This role was used at once to silence all criticism of the man and his words as unpatriotic, and to provide the auspices for a sustained assault upon civil liberties, environmental protections, and general welfare. The perpetuation of this role of "wartime leader" is the primary reason-- more important even than the greed for oil fields and the wish to blot out his father's failure-- for the present determination to visit war upon Iraq, kill and maim countless people, and antagonize much of the world of which Mr. Bush had not heard until recently. The real iniquities of Saddam Hussein should be recognized, in this context, as the pretexts they are. His earlier atrocities went unmentioned as long as he was an ally of former Republican administrations, which were happy, in their time, to supply him with weapons. I think that someone who was maneuvered into office against the will of the electorate, as Mr. Bush was, should be allowed to make no governmental decisions (including judicial appointments) that might outlast his questionable term, and if the reasons for war were many times greater than they have been said to be I would oppose any thing of the kind under such "leadership". To arrange a war in order to be re-elected outdoes even the means employed in the last presidential election. Mr. Bush and his plans are a greater danger to the United States than Saddam Hussein.

And yet, the Bush administration pounded the drums of war incessantly, before the country and before the world at the United Nations. Nevertheless, the case was made, as the Downing Street Memos show, with flawed and manipulated intelligence that was “being fixed around the policy”. There would be no stopping this initiative, and we were left with the result that, as Hedges put it,

Our whole civil society is being torn apart. Once again, as is true in every war, the media parrots back the clichés and jingoes of the state. Imbibes and promotes the myth. In wartime, the press is always part of the problem. And that we are about to engage in that ecstatic, exciting, narcotic that is war. And that if we don't get a grasp on the poison that war is, then that poison can ultimately kill us just as surely as the disease.

Politically, Iraq is so disjunctive that it is like a glass-ball world full of sworn enemies that has been shaken, and every individual has to look at those around him/her as that soul’s potential murderer. To read the daily news reports of death and destruction is to immerse oneself in incomprehensible pathos. There is no sense, no hope, no logic; only war profiteering, whatever delusions of grandeur the Bush cabal suffer from, and the immutable loss of life. Whatever hatred fuels the insurgency in Iraq, it is matched by the hubris, greed, and imperial ambitions of our own corrupt leaders. They are cowards who send children off to die for their delusional designs. Bush and Rumsfeld, et al, have even failed to protect the troops who risk their lives daily in this dystopian hell. They have blundered into a war of which they have lost control, of which is already lost.

Here is the Secretary of Defense in Iraq:

David Hume Kennerly/Getty Images During a visit to Iraq last year, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld rode in a Rhino Runner, a steel-reinforced vehicle that its maker says is designed to withstand 7.62 x 39-millimeter and 5.56-millimeter ammunition, overhead airbursts and explosive devices up to 1,000 pounds.

In War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning,

Chris Hedges argues that war is both a deadly addiction—a drug that offers an unmatchable intoxication, the thrill of being released from the moral strictures of everyday life—and a unifying force that provides a sense of meaning, purpose, and self-sacrifice that can wash away life’s trivial concerns. But the meaningfulness of combat, Hedges suggests, depends upon the myth of war. In reality, no matter what grand cause it is supposed to support, war is simply the basest form of aggression: “organized murder.” Once war begins, the moral universe collapses and every manner of atrocity can be justified in the eyes of those who wage it, because the cause is just, the enemy is inhuman, and only war can restore balance to the world. Hedges reveals the hollowness of such thinking and makes an impassioned plea for humility, love, and compassion as the human race’s only hope for survival. Only when a nation can accept its share of blame and see its enemy with compassion rather than hatred can war be averted and true peace prevail.

Later today, Donald Rumsfeld will appear on the Sunday talk show, Meet the Press. We can only hope that the obsequious Russert will ask him if he’s spoken to the parents of Holly Charette, and told them how grateful he is that she gave her life for…

War is defined by death. It is a descent into madness, into the “heart of darkness”. And as Neruda pleads in his last stanza of I'm Explaining a Few Things,

Come and see the blood in the streets.

Come and see The blood in the streets.

Come and see the blood In the streets!

Rove Rage

A late morning live news conference with President Bush and Iraqi Prime Minister al-Jaafari just took place, attempting to present a united and optimistic front before the American public. Iraqi Prime Minister al-Jaafari read a statement that was almost word-for-word what Cheney recited yesterday during an interview with Wolf Blitzer, i.e. they said we would not defeat Saadam – we did. They said there would never be a sovereign Iraq – there is. They said we would never capture Saadam – we did. They said there would never be free elections – there were, etc. If they don’t want their puppet al-Jaafari to sound like a puppet, shouldn’t they at least give him a fresh text to read, one that does not mimic Cheney word for word?

The press corps was tepid as usual in their questions. The Downing Street Memos, while still exhibiting a half-life on the internet, are dissipating quickly in the mainstream media. Therefore, there were no questions regarding the legality/illegality of the Iraq invasion and occupation. No one asked President Bush about the divisive statements of his presidential advisor, Karl Rove, and why, in a supposed time of war, a spokesman for the Whitehouse would be instigating domestic political warfare. Of course, we already know the answer to the latter: this was another “pearl harbor scenario” of surprise political attack causing outrage and confusion, but also diffusing the issues under scrutiny. And notice the difference between their “controversial” attacks and those from Democrats. All of their team lines up behind the messenger. The Democrats caved in on Senator Durbin, when, in fact, they should have supported his charges and taken the implicit message in those words to the next level of outrage against the torture techniques that have been employed at Gitmo and elsewhere, and against the policy of extraordinary rendition.

Rove’s comments were the first shots fired in a new Administration initiative to re-sell and recast the Iraq war and occupation to the American public. Prior to the invasion of Iraq, the Republicans accused anti-war activists and anyone who even questioned the reasons behind the war planning of being unpatriotic at best and traitors at worst. This kind of lugubrious slander is diversionary in its tactic, a version of divide and conquer, and succeeds by being buoyed with a united front of propagandists who keep jabbing the wound causing a reactionary Left and the observing American public to lose sight of the issues that are adversely affecting the Administration. Witness the latest alignment of support for Rove’s statements:

A White House official said Friday the administration finds it ``somewhat puzzling'' that Democrats are demanding presidential adviser Karl Rove's apology or resignation for implying that liberals are soft on terrorism. ``I think Karl was very specific, very accurate, in who he was pointing out,'' communications director Dan Bartlett said. ``It's touched a chord with these Democrats. I'm not sure why.'' Congressional Republicans earlier joined the White House in standing solidly behind Rove, saying he shouldn't apologize and that he was outlining a philosophical divide between a president who sought to win the war on terrorism by taking the fight to the enemy and Democrats who questioned that approach.

The Durbin fiasco illustrates the impotence of a Left that lacks political and intellectual conviction, voice, and go-for-the-jugular determination. Now, we have Bush and al-Jaafari getting a national audience, a chance to espouse conviction and a positive description of events in Iraq, albeit a fallacious description, and state their case emphatically:

President Bush assured Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari on Friday ''there are not going to be any timetables'' for withdrawal of American forces and vowed victory over insurgents attempting to prevent establishment of a democratic government under a new constitution. ''This is not the time to fall back,'' al-Jaafari concurred at a joint news conference at the White House.

Except for a few self-serving moderate Democrats, like Joe Biden, no one in the Democratic party, and certainly not the party as a group, is talking about Iraq with a clear voice of opposition to the Administrations current policies, never mind discussing the consequences of yielding to the illegal manipulations of Bush and the neo-cons who went to war based on lies. Where are the senators who should be pushing for hearings on the Downing Street Memos, and who should be relentlessly pursuing the manifold illegal actions of this Administration prior to going to the U.N.? News conferences like the one today, remarks like Rove’s, and Cheney’s rare appearance in a MSM interview, albeit with a supplicant like Blitzer, will succeed in deflecting the DSM’s and all of the relevant documentation of the illegal selling of this war unless the Democrats bring this to the forefront immediately.

Reclaiming 9/11

“Short of a Pearl Harbor-like disaster this demonstrates the obsolescence of current systems and concepts of operations, the process of transformation will remain a slow one.” – From a report outlining the military challenges and hurdles of the new U.S. Administration (referring to a DOD need to restructure to fight “a different kind of war”) by The Project for the New American Century

“Further, the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor.” September, 2000, from A Report of The Project for the New American Century, entitled, REBUILDING AMERICA’S DEFENSES Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century

The extant miasma of the American condition, inflicted upon us and perpetrated globally by the Bush Administration is predicated upon one thing: the co-opting of the 9/11 attacks. The profound, immeasurable, and incomprehensible pain of these attacks obliterated our sense of reality, and the ensuing emotional, political, intellectual, and nationalistic reactions were conflicted by proximity to the trauma. The American President, George W. Bush, had just come back from a month long vacation, the longest since Nixon was President, his poll approval numbers were in negative territory, his proposals to privatize social security and his foreign policy of anathema toward international treaties, called “exceptionalism” (the concept that the U.S.A. is the world’s only superpower and is thusly exempt of any necessity to comply with any treaties between the rest of the world’s countries) were both receiving vociferous criticism. The embarrassing incident of the U.S. aircraft that collided with a Chinese fighter and was forced down into the People’s Republic of China in April was slowly fading. Then, instantly, like a Phoenix, Bush stood upon the smoldering rubble of the World Trade Center, now called Ground Zero, and declared prophetically, "Just three days removed from these events, Americans do not have the distance of history, but our responsibility to history is clear, to answer these attacks, and rid the world of evil."

In our national state of Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome, the hyperbole and implicit machinations of the words “rid the world of evil” did not resonate within our perspicacity. Bush’s usurpation of our national tragedy is used without compunction. His latest weekly radio address used 9/11 as the reason we are in Iraq. This is, of course, as inaccurate as it is unseemly. The Downing Street Minutes and other related documents merely confirm what was, or certainly should have been, obvious from the beginning of the Bush Administration’s public shift of focus away from Afghanistan, while funds (and troops) were being secretly and illegally diverted, to Iraq. This article, at the time, asserted,

In 2002, troops from the 5th Special Forces Group who specialize in the Middle East were pulled out of the hunt for Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan to prepare for their next assignment: Iraq. Their replacements were troops with expertise in Spanish cultures. The CIA, meanwhile, was stretched badly in its capacity to collect, translate and analyze information coming from Afghanistan. When the White House raised a new priority, it took specialists away from the Afghanistan effort to ensure Iraq was covered.

If the DSM’s have true merit, it is that they are the catalyst that will provide the dynamic for re-scrutinizing all of the obvious fait accompli machinations of the Bush Administration during the period immediately following September 11th, 2001. In fact, invading Iraq and toppling Saddam Hussein were high on the agenda as the Bush Team was being assembled immediately following the 2000 elections, and even before Florida had been decided. The think tank, the Project for the New American Century, now an adjunct to the Department of Defense, had been advocating such a military intervention since at least 1997 (see this letter to Clinton). And, of course, George W. had his own personal reasons for enthusiastically endorsing such an action, i.e. Hussein had tried to assassinate George the Father in Kuwait after the Gulf War. It would seem evident that 9/11 in fact provided the removal of Hussein as a priority, given that he is captured and Osama Bin Laden has not been. This is an important fact relevant to U.S. security, since Al Qaeda had had almost 4 years to undergo a metamorphosis into, what has been called, a hydra-headed organization of thousands of cells and operatives. Osama Bin Laden, in fact, is merely a symbol of what Al Qaeda used to be, and is our real or imagined personification of 9/11. The pain of that day is still so graphic and unequivocal that words such as “Nine/Eleven”, “Osama”, “Al Qaeda”, “World Trade Center”, and “War on Terror” are psychological inducements toward fear, anger, and confusion, and these words are used precisely for this reason by Bush and his cabal. Progressives, Liberals, the Democrats, and the American people need to realize that these attacks happened while these people, i.e. the Bush Administration, were at the helm. This should be a point of shame and culpability for them, not a rallying cry and excuse for every abomination that they inflict upon our foreign policies, our civil liberties, our national security, and our international reputation. We need to reclaim the tragedies of 9/11 as a point of origin for a discussion that points a finger at the Bush Administration, not as the carte blanche that they were hoping for to run rampant over the status quo of humanity.

Where are we now? We are entrenched in a country that is still called Iraq, even though it is splintered into religious sects and tribal factions, green zones, Halliburton-built contractor and troop cities, fractured infrastructures, and living conditions that are execrable. Please read the most recent post from Baghdad Burning for a unique perspective of the diurnal quotidian attempts at normalcy, and the surrounding hypocrisy and lunacy.

Detentions and assassinations, along with intermittent electricity, have also been contributing to sleepless nights. We’re hearing about raids in many areas in the Karkh half of Baghdad in particular. On the television the talk about ‘terrorists’ being arrested, but there are dozens of people being rounded up for no particular reason. Almost every Iraqi family can give the name of a friend or relative who is in one of the many American prisons for no particular reason. They aren’t allowed to see lawyers or have visitors and stories of torture have become commonplace. Both Sunni and Shia clerics who are in opposition to the occupation are particularly prone to attacks by “Liwa il Theeb” or the special Iraqi forces Wolf Brigade. They are often tortured during interrogation and some of them are found dead.

The price of building materials has gone up unbelievably, in spite of the fact that major reconstruction has not yet begun. I assumed it was because so much of the concrete and other building materials was going to reinforce the restricted areas. A friend who recently got involved working with an Iraqi subcontractor who takes projects inside of the Green Zone explained that it was more than that. The Green Zone, he told us, is a city in itself. He came back awed, and more than a little bit upset. He talked of designs and plans being made for everything from the future US Embassy and the housing complex that will surround it, to restaurants, shops, fitness centers, gasoline stations, constant electricity and water- a virtual country inside of a country with its own rules, regulations and government. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Republic of the Green Zone, also known as the Green Republic. “The Americans won’t be out in less than ten years.” Is how the argument often begins with the friend who has entered the Green Republic. “How can you say that?” Is usually my answer- and I begin to throw around numbers- 2007, 2008 maximum… Could they possibly want to be here longer? Can they afford to be here longer? At this, T. shakes his head- if you could see the bases they are planning to build- if you could see what already has been built- you’d know that they are going to be here for quite a while.

The Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown & Root is more entrenched in Iraq than the military, and even more incompetent in their bookkeeping. They have cost the American taxpayer billions in cost overruns, losses and waste, and a “black hole” corruption. The manifold aspects to the folly of our involvement in Iraq are so numerous and substantial that any one could provide a reason for immediate withdrawal. The absolute illegality and conspiracy of our involvement in the first place, as documented by the Downing Street Memos and countless pre-war military activities, such as thousands of target bombing raids by U. S. and British planes, allocated funding for “emergency construction capabilities” at “worldwide locations,” authorized by the Defense Department portentously (see this article @ theRawStory). Our concerted efforts must now be focused toward a clear demand for and articulation of the reasons that the U.S. must

a.) cease and retract all military operations from Iraq

b.) provide and solicit humanitarian aid for Iraq to help rebuild their infrastructure

c.) outline a strategy for of strong national defense supported by an internationally responsible foreign policy

d.) outline a strategy for a strong domestic security based on a fair, strong, and responsible economic policy, and

e.) a relentless campaign against every single oppressive, regressive, divisive, and obstructionist policy that this outgoing Bush Administration has inflicted upon the United States of America and the International community, that it will continue to inflict with the help of the Republican controlled Congress and the “dominionist” Religious Right.

We can not rely on the centrist, moderate Democrats who occasionally speak up tepidly. Recently Senator Dick Durbin stood before the Senate and spoke the truth about the abominations and abysmal treatment of detainees at Guantanomo. Writers on the Left were quick to applaud and support Senator Durbin for his accurate and courageous remarks, despite the smear campaign waged by the fully-revved Republican spin/lie machine. Unfortunately, the mainstream media only reported the spin and not the full statement of Durbin or the context or the source, i.e. the FBI. I, in fa