Barack Obama has come out swinging following his party's rout in Massachusetts, vowing to "fight Wall Street" with a "populist" proposal whose main thrust seems to be the reinstatement of some of the common-sense regulations imposed almost 80 years ago to separate banks and investment firms. (I say "seems to be," because one can only guess what, if anything, Obama really intends to do about the matter. For despite the usual elevated rhetoric, he is, as usual, "leaving crucial details to be hashed out by Congress," as the NY Times reports. And we know how populist those paladins can be when they get down to hashing out crucial details.)

Of course, those old regulations were repealed by the bipartisan free-market extremists of the Clinton Era -- many of whom are now once more in charge of national economic policy, such as Obama's main economic adviser, Larry Summers. And the fact that Obama is just now vaguely proposing such a move, a year after taking office -- and after engineering the transfer to trillions of dollars in cash, credit guarantees, bailouts and other forms of baksheesh to Wall Street -- cannot but evoke three little words that nonetheless speak volumes: horse, barn, door.

And even in the  highly hypothetical likelihood that Obama was actually serious about "reining in the banks" -- that is, serious enough to actually have his staff draw up the crucial details themselves before handing the "fight" over to the banks' own bagmen in Congress -- it would be a moot point anyway, given the Supreme Court's promulgation of its Corporate Enabling Act this week. Although their ruling to remove the few existing -- and pathetic  -- restraints on Big Money's domination of the electoral process is indeed bad news, one must also admire the Court's frankness in allowing this domination to step forth and stand out boldly, nakedly, no longer having to hide itself in dirty dodges and furtive tricks. (For more on the ramifications of the ruling, see this piece from Christopher Ketcham at Counterpunch.)

But even as the highways and byways and blogways of the Potomac power grid are all engrossed in the usual partisan navel-gazing, the hard, dirty work of empire goes on.* This week there was yet another killing of civilians in Afghanistan by the ever-surging NATO-led forces, including two boys, aged 11 and 15. As Reuters reports:

Over 100 people took to the streets of a small bazaar in Qarabagh district in Ghazni province, southwest of Kabul, to demonstrate, locals told Reuters by telephone.

Villagers who brought the bodies of four people to the hospital in the provincial capital of Ghazni city said three of the victims belonged to one family. Two were boys 11 and 15, villagers said.

Naturally, the American-led occupation forces said that no civilians were killed in what they called a raid  "designed to capture a 'high-level Taliban commander known to direct attacks'. Unfortunately for the spinmeisters, an actual journalist, Nir Rosen, has been on the case. He provided this report to Professor As'ad AbuKhalil:

Nir Rosen sent me this from Kabul (I cite with his permission): "I met today with the parliament member from qara bagh district. He's not anti-occupation and even wants more operations but he confirmed that all the dead were innocent and were not fighters and two were quite young".

"All the dead were innocent." And two of them were children.

This is the reality when we should keep in mind as we wade through the endlessly chewed cud of petty partisan in-fighting among the court factions of our militarist empire. Every day, every night, someone's blood is being offered up on the imperial altars. That's what empire is. That's what empire does.

***

See Rome 

While you were dreaming
While you wrapped your mind in silks
Bronze   Steel   Stone
Did their work 

While you breathed the fumes
Of the oracle's fissure
Deranged the senses
Settled in soft beds 

Rome
Sent agents into the streets
Hard men   pinched men
Bronze   Steel   Stone

To eliminate   execute
Discredit and destroy 

See Rome 

While you stood in the forum
Declaimed high words
Filled temples with fragrant smoke
Scrawled millions of learned disquisitions
 
Rome marched
Somewhere, in your name
Fired the village
In your name
Put steel to the belly 

While you were wrapped in silks
While you grubbed
While you drank degraded waters
Drank dark, brilliant wine
While you sang, while you dreamed 

Rome was
Rome hammered the real 

Your silks
Your songs
Are dreams 

See Rome 

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Comments (9)

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Bill Jones said:

	Well Chris I think it must be the ultimate testimony to the sheer quality of your writing that I keep coming back to a site whose content makes me weep.
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January 22, 2010
Votes: +6

Geoffrey Young said:

	... I'm no literary critic, but I found that poem to be excellent. Thank you for writing it.
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January 23, 2010
Votes: +3

nina said:

	... ...one must also admire the Court's frankness in allowing this domination to step forth and stand out boldly, nakedly, no longer having to hide itself in dirty dodges and furtive tricks... Excellent point. We can go on another day rather than sink into complete despair. Its interesting to explore how much farther this is going to go, we wonder if there is a limit? Ah, but Rome.
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January 23, 2010 | url
Votes: +1

Art James, bebop-o, GoodCelery! said:

	nod, sigh, I thought this... Only a person harrowing clods In a slow walk With a old horse that stumbles and nods Half asleep as they stalk. Only a thin smoke without flame From the heaps of couch-grass; Yet this will go onward the same Though Dynasties pass. Yonder a maid and her wight Come whispering by: War's annals will cloud into night Ere their story die. - (1915) Thomas Hardy
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January 23, 2010
Votes: +1

scott douglas said:

... Must say that my initial reaction to the Obama fusillade of fireworks - that classic misdirection hiding the card in the hand unpresented - was just as Chris states: Let's see the follow up, Com-padre. Now, this poem, while not another issue entirely, is another matter completely: I found this to be deeply disquieting. It is a profound, steady and somber hand holding up a frightening mirror to a self-indulgent crowd. You will shy away. You will run through the verses and relegate the experience to the dungeon of your minds, but...no: the sting holds. It works. It has called me back again and again to contemplate the accusation implicit in it's very rhythms. We are all, together, collected in this karmic pool. There is no removal. There is no safe hill or secret dale. There is no personal vector or solitary destiny. No. We are all one Humanity; and, if it happens to one -- it affects us all. What a great poem. Thank you, Chris.

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January 23, 2010
Votes: +2

john kelley said:

... If you can turn your eyes away for the moment from the bombing, the pillaging, the ethnic cleansing, the nuclear and dioxin contamination, the DEVASTATION of distant lands...in your name...in short, from the impenitent sins of the out-of-control empire... ...look out your window, you potential "enemy combatants"...and see the "unusual punitiveness of American society". The floodgates are open. And we are downstream. The body scanners are humming. Our laptops are self-incriminating. The Tasers are charged. Predator B unmanned aerial vehicles are already surveilling the northern border. For the coasts, a maritime version is in the works. How savage will it get?

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January 23, 2010
Votes: +3

Grandma Jefferson said:

Freedom on the March, Chapter MMMMMMMMMM A bit of errata in Rome's latest endeavors whilst sowing Democracy and Liberty across the globe, via the ever-helpful lackeys of MSNBC and the NYT: "Beginning the day after the attack on a C.I.A. base in Khost, Afghanistan, the agency has carried out 11 strikes that have killed about 90 people suspected of being militants, according to Pakistani news reports, which make almost no mention of civilian casualties. The assault has included strikes on a mud fortress in North Waziristan on Jan. 6 that killed 17 people and a volley of missiles on a compound in South Waziristan last Sunday that killed at least 20. “For the C.I.A., there is certainly an element of wanting to show that they can hit back,” said Bill Roggio, editor of The Long War Journal..." http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35027603/ns/world_news-the_new_york_times/ Revenge lauched for the typical CIA clusterfuck that "recruited" a Taliban agent for the purpose of infiltrating and murdering his comrades, but who instead, as it turned out, successfully infiltrated and murdered his recruiters. There's always the unexpected, especially in the murky sewers inhabited by the "intelligence community". So now, in classic street-gang fashion, the aggrieved CIA is given a free hand to escalate the drone bombing in Pakistan. After all, how dare anybody interfere with the necessary process of infiltration and murder? They certainly have the right to rain death from the skies on 90 SUSPECTS, who were doubtless guilty of something, and maybe even the supreme crime of disliking the USA. And nobody even questions the CIA's morphing into yet another attack arm of the Imperial military, nor their right to kill "people suspected of being militants", which is the only pretext required for genocide these days. Even the spies have drone bombers around here, it's only fitting and proper. How savage will it get in the sacred Homeland? Never doubt that what they are doing to human beings elsewhere they will have not the slightest compunction against doing here. Chris, I don't have the words to describe your poetry, other than to add my own feeble praise of its perfect beauty and truth. Put me on the subscriber list for that signed first edition, when you get around to it.

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January 24, 2010
Votes: +3

Phylter said:

	No doubt If you kill every (insert nationality of your choice here), you MIGHT get the people you're after, and as for the innocent dead, well, you have to break some eggs to make an omelet, after all... There are no words to describe the absolute evil being done here, in our names. Where are the human beings? Where? Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.
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January 24, 2010
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john kelley said:

This is the reality “A Spanish politician said on Saturday that he was ’stupefied’ by the FBI’s decision to use his photograph to compose its latest image of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and is considering taking legal action,” the CIA’s favorite newspaper, The Washington Post, reports today. “In the last few days I have seen the security services involved in some very strange things, some major failures, but I would never have believed they could have affected me so directly,” said Gaspar Llamazares, a former leader of Spain’s communist party Izquierda Unida.

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January 24, 2010
Votes: +1