Arthur Silber needs your help. It's as simple as that. One of the most insightful, original, informed and meaningful voices in our political discourse today, Silber must scrape by from month to month on the jagged edge of circumstance, battling ill health with notable courage, surviving on nothing but what his blog can bring in. This is a shameful reflection of how our society regards wisdom and truth: as something to be cut off, unsupported, crushed if possible, and if not -- as in the case of Silber's indomitable spirit -- then marginalized, battered, made to suffer.
In recent weeks, Silber has roared back from a particularly vicious bout that laid him low to write a remarkable string of essays, full of the learning, passion, perception -- and wicked wit -- that is a trademark of his work. Some particularly choice example can be found here: Let the Victims Speak; Why America May Go to Hell; and Cultivate Your Sense of Wonder.
In the latter piece, Silber combines older and new material to speak eloquently about the vision that drives his work:
If I had to select just a single word to express my deepest feeling about the world, and about humankind, it would be that one: wonder. I consider it a measure of how unevolved we are that so many people appear to be capable of that feeling only when they contemplate an imaginary, supernatural plane. It is hardly surprising that our world holds so much unnecessary suffering, when so many people are willing and eager to condemn it to second-rate status in favor of one they've made up out of whole cloth...
I think it highly probable that our circumstances will continue to get significantly worse, although this deterioration may come quickly or comparatively slowly. You may live the rest of your life without seeing the worst of what will happen, or even anything close to the worst -- or you may not. There is no way to know, and the variables are close to infinite. But I say again: it does not have to be this way. Extraordinary events have transpired in history before, and they might again. We need a miracle, but not one delivered to us from a supernatural realm: we require a miracle that we create.
It can happen. Hold on to your sense of wonder; if you do not have a sufficiently strong one, then develop it. For me, it is the most precious resource in the world....
Live in the sense of wonder, and in the world of joy. Take it, feel it and pass it on. That's sometimes all you can do -- for someone, somewhere, one day. It's everything.
I now add that, when you engage in this process, you yourself live ecstatically -- today.
Can we afford to let such a voice fall silent? If you have anything at all to spare, get on over to Silber's site and give what support you can.
Tell me that this doesn't sound like something out of a history of Nazi tactics in World War II:
The rules [of engagement]t explicitly allowed the killing of unarmed Iraqis under certain circumstances...Specifically, the snipers were allowed to shoot unarmed people running away from explosions or firefights....Of course, it's not unusual for innocent people to run from explosions.
Didier, who has since been promoted to captain, said that "if that individual makes contact with you and then breaks contact of their own accord and disarms themselves while they are breaking contact, they are still an engageable target because they are not wounded, nor did they surrender." He explained, "They are only breaking contact so that they can engage coalition forces at a later time." In court, Sgt. Anthony Murphy, one of the snipers who was responsible for a questionable kill, testified that he interpreted this order about breaking contact so they can engage at a later time as: "Engage fleeing local nationals without weapons."
In other words, if an innocent, unarmed Iraqi runs away to seek safety from a suicide bombing, a missile attack or a gunfight -- which any human being would instinctively do -- then he is fair game to be killed by an American sniper.
The excerpt above comes from a story in Salon.com, "Killing by the Numbers," about an "elite" U.S. sniper squad that murdered a captured, unarmed civilian in cold blood. A more detailed excerpt follows below, but I'd like to deal briefly with one ancillary aspect first.
The story expands to talk more generally about the sniper program in Iraq, and is careful -- overly careful -- to emphasize that the snipers responsible for so many "questionable kills" are operating in very stressful conditions: sleep-deprived, sweltering in deadly heat, surrounded by potential "hostiles," at constant risk of attack. All true, of course, but it prompts this simple question: What the hell are they doing there in the first place? Why are they squatting and sweltering in "hides" in a foreign land, looking to kill people who never attacked the United States?
Yes, it is entirely understandable that a soldier subjected to nerve-wracking, physically tormenting conditions might fail to act with reason, patience, judgment and prudence. But is this supposed to be some kind of excuse for crimes committed within the context of a larger crime: a war of aggression, the military invasion and occupation of a foreign country without any provocation? Surely many of the Nazi atrocities were committed by men under unbearable mental and physical strain as well. So what? Were they absolved of their crimes? And more importantly -- were their leaders absolved for instigating the larger crime that engendered these atrocities?
For as the story also shows, the "questionable kills" by American snipers derive largely from the murderous "rules of engagement" they are given by their superiors -- and by the anxiety of their officers to produce big "kill numbers" to appease the bloodlust -- and PR needs -- of the thugs in the White House and their "counterinsurgency genius," David Petraeus.
But let's return to the story of how a sniper squad murdered Genei Nesir Khudair al-Janabi, an Iraqi vegetable farmer, almost one year ago, after he stumbled upon their "hide" on the banks of the Euphrates.
I. George W. Bush and David Petraeus are preparing to make a new Fallujah in Sadr City, home to two million Shiites in Baghdad. Thousands of people are already fleeing the area before the full-scale slaughter and destruction begin. As in Fallujah, the multitudes who cannot escape will be trapped in a "free fire zone", subjected to ruthless bombardment and ground assault. Thousands -- perhaps tens of thousands -- of innocent civilians stand in the shadow of imminent death.
The assault is part of the run-up to the coming attack on Iran -- an attempt to secure the rear of that new front by destroying Iraq's Shiite nationalist forces. It is also part of an on-going effort to eliminate the strongest rival to the Shiite extremists that Bush has installed in office in Iraq, before the conquered land's fall elections.
The preliminary assault on Sadr City has already begun, of course. As the BBC notes, in the last seven weeks around 1,000 people -- most of them civilians -- have already been killed by the Bush-Petraeus "surge" into the area. Petraeus is frantically building high-walled ghettos in Sadr City, slicing neighborhoods in half, sundering families, destroying communities and livelihoods. Meanwhile, the Iraqi government is circulating leaflets in Sadr City districts, warning the people to leave -- or else.
This, you understand, is liberation. This is freedom. This is the glorious "surge" to victory. As Tacitus noted:
A rich enemy excites their cupidity; a poor one, their lust for power. East and West alike have failed to satisfy them.... To robbery, butchery, and rapine, they give the lying name of "government"; they create a desolation and call it peace.
That translation of the quote was taken from a remarkable article by David Bromwich in the New York Review of Books, a shattering analysis of the nation's hideous and horrifying moral decay in the Terror War. The title says it all: Euphemism and American Violence. You should read the whole thing, but the conclusion is most apt to our immediate subject here:
"History begins today" was a saying in the Bush White House on September 12, 2001—repeated with menace by Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage to the director of Pakistani intelligence Mahmoud Ahmad—a statement that on its face exhibits a totalitarian presumption. Yet nothing so much as language supplies our memory of things that came before today; and, to an astounding degree, the Bush and Cheney administration has succeeded in persuading the most powerful and (at one time) the best-informed country in the world that history began on September 12, 2001. The effect has been to tranquilize our self-doubts and externalize all the evils we dare to think of. In this sense, the changes of usage and the corruptions of sense that have followed the global war on terrorism are inseparable from the destructive acts of that war.
In the name of tranquilized American people, a new evil is about to externalized upon the bodies of the women and children, the old and sick, the innocent and vulnerable in Sadr City. As the BBC reports:
The authorities in Baghdad say they are preparing for an exodus of thousands of people from eastern parts of the city. Fighting between government and US troops on one side, and Shia militia on the other, has intensified recently. Two football stadiums are on stand-by to receive residents from two neighbourhoods in the Sadr City area...
In the last seven weeks around 1,000 people have died, and more than 2,500 others have been injured, most of them civilians. The fighting so far in Sadr City has been fierce - street to street, and house to house.
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki is showing a determination to disarm the country's Shia militia groups - particularly the Mehdi Army - that he has never displayed before. However, Iraqi army operations, backed by US ground and air support, have so far failed to overwhelm the Shia militiamen, who are still responding with roadside bombs, sniper fire, mortars and rockets.
The government has distributed leaflets in two key districts of Sadr City, warning people to leave.The speculation is that government forces are preparing for a big push into eastern Baghdad to end the current fighting once and for all. Shortages of water and medical supplies have already made life inside Sadr City extremely difficult.
And this is just the beginning.
II. The story of Fallujah's destruction at Bush's order in mid-November 2004 -- a burnt offering to celebrate his renewal of power -- gives us an intimation of what is about to happen in Sadr City. This is what I wrote, in the Moscow Times, about that assault while it was still going on:
Ring of Fire: The Fallujah Inferno "The inferno…is what is already here, the inferno where we live every day, that we form by being together. There are two ways to escape suffering it. The first is easy for many: accept the inferno and become such a part of it that you can no longer see it. The second is risky and demands constant vigilance and apprehension: seek and learn to recognize who and what, in the midst of the inferno, are not inferno, then make them endure, give them space." -- Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities.
There is of course no space, nowhere to move or breathe in the sealed chamber of the American Infoglomerate – the vast entanglement of corporate media and government propaganda that smothers the body politic with hysterical outpourings of diversion, drivel and deadening white noise. Here, events occur in a total vacuum: they have no history, no context, no consequences. Stripped of the heft and scope of reality, they can easily be molded and distorted to fit the prevailing political and business agendas. Amnesia, ignorance, confusion and fear are left to rule the day: excellent fuel for the stokers of the inferno, who use the heat to work their alchemical magic – transforming human blood into gold.
"There are more and more dead bodies on the streets and the stench is unbearable. Smoke is everywhere. It's hard to know how much people outside Fallujah are aware of what is going on here. There are dead women and children lying on the streets. People are getting weaker from hunger. Many are dying are from their injuries because there is no medical help left in the city whatsoever. Some families have started burying their dead in their gardens."
This was a voice from the depths of the inferno: Fadhil Badrani, reporter for the BBC and Reuters, trapped in the iron encirclement along with tens of thousands of civilians. It was a rare breath of truth. The reality of a major city being ground into rubble was meant to be obscured by the Infoglomerate's wall of noise: murder trials, state visits, Cabinet shuffles, celebrity weddings – and, above all, the reports of "embedded" journalists shaping the "narrative" into its proper form: a magnificent feat of arms carried out with surgical precision against an enemy openly identified by American commanders as "Satan," the Associated Press reports.
One of the first moves in this magnificent feat was the destruction and capture of medical centers. Twenty doctors – and their patients, including women and children – were killed in an airstrike on one major clinic, the UN Information Service reports, while the city's main hospital was seized in the early hours of the ground assault. Why? Because these places of healing could be used as "propaganda centers," the Pentagon's "information warfare" specialists told the NY Times. Unlike the first attack on Fallujah last spring, there was to be no unseemly footage of gutted children bleeding to death on hospital beds. This time – except for NBC's brief, heavily-edited, quickly-buried clip of the usual lone "bad apple" shooting a wounded Iraqi prisoner – the visuals were rigorously scrubbed.
So while Americans saw stories of rugged "Marlboro Men" winning the day against Satan, they were spared shots of engineers cutting off water and electricity to the city – a flagrant war crime under the Geneva Conventions, as CounterPunch notes, but standard practice throughout the occupation. Nor did pictures of attack helicopters gunning down civilians trying to escape across the Euphrates River – including a family of five – make the TV news, despite the eyewitness account of an AP journalist. Nor were tender American sensibilities subjected to the sight of phosphorous shells bathing enemy fighters – and nearby civilians – with unquenchable chemical fire, literally melting their skin, as the Washington Post reports. Nor did they see the fetus being blown out of the body of Artica Salim when her home was bombed during the "softening-up attacks" that raged relentlessly – and unnoticed – in the closing days of George W. Bush's presidential campaign, the Scotland Sunday Herald reports.
What they saw instead were two loudly devout Christians, Bush and Tony Blair, clasping hands and proclaiming that Artica Salim had been torn to shreds in order to fight terrorism – specifically, the terrorism of Jordanian thug Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. The city's alleged refusal to turn over Zarqawi was the ostensible reason for the attack; yet halfway through the assault, with dead civilian bodies already stinking in the streets, Coalition commanders finally admitted the truth: Zarqawi wasn't in Fallujah – and hadn't been there for weeks, perhaps months.
But then, Zarqawi leads a peculiarly charmed life. Three times before the war, U.S. forces were set to kill him and destroy his organization. It wasn't that difficult; after all, he was operating in Kurdish-held Iraqi territory, where the U.S. military had free rein. Yet each time, Bush called off the strike, the Wall Street Journal reports. He needed Zarqawi for his pre-war propaganda, so he could point to an "al Qaeda ally in Iraq" – even though Zarqawi was on Bush's Iraqi turf, not Saddam's. And Bush still needs Zarqawi, or someone like him – a killer whose lurid malefactions obscure the even larger crime that set all these atrocities in motion: an unprovoked aggressive war based on lies, whose only goal is the imposition of a regime that will enrich Bush's cronies while advancing American dominance of the world's resources.
Bush and Zarqawi are mirror-image enemies: foreign terrorists breaking into Iraq to spread indiscriminate death and ruin in pursuit of their brutal visions. Everywhere they go, everything they touch, everyone they draw to their cause becomes inferno.
Arthur Silber has the second part of his powerful "Choosing Sides" series up now: Killing Truth and Hope -- The Fatal Illusion of Opposition. There is little I can add to the insight and eloquence of the piece -- just go read the whole thing, and follow up on the links provided there as well.
But I would like to highlight two particular aspects of the post. First is Silber's succinct description of the "corporate-authoritarian political system" that confronts us at every turn with its soul-crushing, death-dealing power:
This system encompasses every area of our national life....The military-industrial complex -- or what is now often more accurately described as the military-industrial-congressional complex -- is the most significant component of these interrelationships, but there are many other parts. They encompass all major industries, and almost every minor one, as well as many of our educational and cultural institutions....
This system as it exists today consists of innumerable interrelated, constantly moving parts. Countless agencies, commissions and bureaucrats act in concert and on their own to expand their power, and that of government generally. The system has a life of its own; it is its own reason for being. It sustains itself, and it seeks more and more territory for its dominance. The exercise of power and the acquisition of still more power are not directed at the improvement of the lives of "ordinary" Americans, whoever they may be; ordinary Americans are of no interest or concern to the ruling elites, except insofar as their labor and often their lives are necessary for the maintenance of the lives of immense comfort and privilege enjoyed by the powerful. Power is not the means to some other end, although that claim is a crucial element of the extraordinarily successful propaganda so willingly swallowed by the public. Power -- its exercise and maintenance, and the acquisition of still more power -- is the end.
Again, see the original for the several illuminating links provided.
Silber also deals extensively with two important articles by Pam Martens recently published at Counterpunch. (Here and here.) As Silber notes, Martens is a personal admirer of Barack Obama, and believes him to be a more or less sincere tool of forces beyond his control. Yet this does not prevent her from doing what legions of "progressives" -- especially in the blogosphere -- seem congenitally unable to do: look at the reality of the Obama campaign in the face. And Marten's reality-based analysis of the campaign's real nature is absolutely devastating. She shows the true backers of Obama's candidacy:
A Wall Street cartel of financial firms, their registered lobbyists, and go-to law firms that have a death grip on our federal government....Seven of the Obama campaign’s top 14 donors consisted of officers and employees of the same Wall Street firms charged time and again with looting the public and newly implicated in originating and/or bundling fraudulently made mortgages. These latest frauds have left thousands of children in some of our largest minority communities coming home from school to see eviction notices and foreclosure signs nailed to their front doors. Those scars will last a lifetime.
She also exposes the rank hypocrisy of Obama's claim to be free from the influence of the Big Money lobbyists who wield such overwhelming, sinister sway in Washington. This claim is, to put it bluntly, an egregious lie. As Martens demonstrates, Obama's Wall Street backers are also some of the worst, most corrupt lobbyists -- such as Greenberg Traurig, former home of that master criminal of the Bush Regime, Jack Abramoff.
Senator Obama's premise and credibility of not taking money from federal lobbyists hangs on a carefully crafted distinction: he is taking money, lots of it, from owners and employees of firms registered as federal lobbyists but not the actual individual lobbyists. But is that dealing honestly with the American people?
The 2008 Obama presidential run may be the most slickly orchestrated marketing machine in memory. That's not a good thing. Marketing is not even distantly related to democracy or civic empowerment. Marketing is about creating emotional, even irrational bonds between your product and your target audience.
Martens goes on to report that "the Obama campaign has spent over $52 million on media, strategy consultants, image building, marketing research and telemarketing." As Silber says, you should read Martens' articles in their entirety to get the full impact of her facts and analysis.
In his piece, Silber kindly quotes from a post I wrote, in which I noted that the very small differences between the two major parties could have significant effects, because "even minute mitigations in the operation of vast power structures can translate into real benefits for many ordinary people, simply due to the scale on which such structures operate." But Silber goes on to note, quite rightly:
If you choose to support one party over the other because of those "minute mitigations" that "can translate into real benefits for many ordinary people," that's fine -- but intellectual honesty ought to compel you to recognize the great danger you're courting.
He has much more to say on this theme -- again, go read the whole thing -- but it is a point worth stressing again. As I noted in this earlier post ("Disabuse Your Illusion"):
Whether these mitigations of injustice and suffering in certain instances outweigh the cost of participating in – and thereby to some extent legitimizing and perpetuating – a system that inevitably produces injustice and suffering on a massive scale is a question that each person must decide for themselves, in their own individual conscience.
And this question is certainly pertinent in the case of Barack Obama. For by the choices he has made in picking advisers to help him shape his policies, he has given every indication that while his presidency might represent a better management and presentation of the current system, it will in no way overturn or even seriously challenge it on any essential point. In other words – and bearing in mind the type of not-insubstantial mitigations noted above – he will keep doing what Bush has been doing, only more competently, less radically, with a greater care for the long-term viability of the power structure. And what is that structure that Obama seeks to refine and extend? It is an imperial system based on militarism and the exaltation of elitist profit and privilege above all other concerns.
It's your choice. But as Silber says -- "at least be honest about the nature of your choice." Have the courage to do what Martens and Silber are doing, and look reality in the face.
Do you want to know what the entire American political establishment -- Democrat and Republican, conservative and "progressive" -- really stands for? Do you want to know what they all support, whole-heartedly, without the slightest objection or demur? Do you want to see their true vision for the world, behind all the pious rhetoric and poisonous lies? Then look no further; here it is, in the raw:
A leading human rights group on Tuesday accused Ethiopian troops in Somalia of killing civilians and committing atrocities, including slitting people's throats, gouging out eyes and gang-raping women. (AP)
"The people of Somalia are being killed, raped, tortured; looting is widespread and entire neighbourhoods are being destroyed," said Michelle Kagari, Africa Programme Deputy Director at Amnesty International, speaking from Nairobi.
Witnesses described to Amnesty International an increasing incidence of Ethiopian troops killing by what is locally termed "slaughtering" or "killing like goats" -- referring to killing by slitting the throat. The victims of these killings are often left lying in pools of blood in the streets until armed fighters, including snipers, move out of the area and relatives can collect their bodies.
In one case, a 15-year-old girl found her father with his throat cut upon returning home from school, after Ethiopian security forces swept through her neighbourhood.
Other cases in the report include:
Haboon, a 56-year-old woman from Mogadishu, who said her neighbour's 17-year-old daughter was raped by Ethiopian troops. When her 13 and 14-year-old sons tried to defend their sister, the soldiers beat them and took their eyes out with a bayonet. The mother fled. It is not known what happened to the boys. This girl is in a coma as a result of the injuries she sustained during the attack.
Guled, aged 32, who said that he saw his neighbours "slaughtered". He said he saw many men whose throats were slit and whose bodies were left in the street. Some had their testicles cut off. He also saw women being raped. In one incident, his newly-wed neighbour whose husband was not home was raped by over twenty Ethiopian soldiers. (Garowe Online)
Ceebla'a, aged 63, from Wardhiigley, said she fled Mogadishu on 15 November 2007 with her young children after some shooting in the area. One day she saw three men leaving their shops being picked up by Ethiopian soldiers for investigation. The next morning she saw the bodies of the three men on the street. One was strangled with electrical wire. The second had his throat cut. The third had been chained ankle to wrist, and his testicles had been smashed. (Amnesty report)
These Ethiopian troops were armed, trained and funded by the Bush Administration, then sent into Somalia as a proxy army for yet another Terror War "regime change" operation in late 2006. American military forces have been directly involved in the operation, on the side of the invaders, throughout the conflict, from the very beginning to this day -- as evidenced by the U.S. missile attack last week that killed at least two dozen civilians in the course of an "extrajudicial" assassination of a Somali insurgent leader.
There has been no objection to any of this from any major figure in American politics. Barack Obama doesn't object to it. Hillary Clinton doesn't object to it. Nancy Pelosi doesn't object to it. It goes without saying that John McCain and the Republicans don't object to these latest war crimes by their blood-drenched leader. The entire Washington power structure has lined up to support this hideous project: military aggression, murder, destruction and rampant atrocity. Somalia -- already one of the world's most fragile and ravaged nations -- is being battered into utter destruction before our eyes....and in our names.
"The human rights and humanitarian situation in Somalia is growing worse by the day. This report represents the voices of ordinary Somalis, and their plea to the international community to take action to end the attacks against them, including those committed by internationally-supported [Transitional Federal Government] and Ethiopian forces."
Security in many parts of Mogadishu is non-existent, and the entire population of Mogadishu bears the scars of having witnessed or experienced egregious violations of human rights and international humanitarian law.
"There is no safety for civilians, wherever they run. Those fleeing violence in Mogadishu are attacked on the road and those lucky enough to reach a camp or settlement face further violence and dire conditions."
The American-backed invasion, and the depradations of the American-backed TFG, which was helped into power by Somali warlords in the pay of the CIA, have, inevitably, radicalized opposition forces, some of whom respond with similar brutality. As in Iraq and Afghanistan, violent "regime change" aggression only exacerbates the extremism it purports to combat. And, as in the other Terror War operations, the chaos wrought by the war in Somalia breaks down all vestiges of society and human communion, leaving people prey to freebooting criminal gangs and the ravages of desperation.
In the face of all this deliberately fomented horror -- and its embrace by the entire American political establishment -- it is difficult to regard the U.S. presidential race as anything other than a sickening obscenity, played out on a stage drenched in viscera. "Oh my god, did you hear what Harold Ickes said about Barack?!" "Mercy me, did you hear what those latte-swilling Obamaniks said about Hillary's gas tax plan?!" This is juvenile navel-gazing taken to sinister extremes. I honestly cannot fathom such people, who pretend to care about politics and policy -- yet ignore the unspeakable ruin and suffering that are the reality of our politics, the accepted, bipartisan results of our policies.
Until we have a politics that considers the fate of Haboon and her children to be just as important, just as meaningful, just as real as our own, there will be no end to this cycle of atrocity and terror, no end to ruin and revenge, no real change, no matter who is elected.
(More details from the Amnesty report can be found after the jump.)
Serving the System: Disillusion, Deception and the Obama Campaign fd, with all respect, a lesser evil is still evil.
I don't know why you think Obama would advance any other than DLC-approved SCOTUS appointments. He did nothing to stand in the way of the approval of Scalia or Roberts. He could have filibustered ...
Serving the System: Disillusion, Deception and the Obama Campaign Point well taken. Obama is clearly an establishement candidate. But after what we've been through the last 8 years, eye-opening as they have been, I'm glad he's an establishment candidate, because it means he has a chance to win. I'll take him over M...
Fallujah Revisited: Bush, Petraeus Prepare 'Cleansing' of Sadr City Mother's Day update:
"While reports so far today point to a ceasefire in Sadr City, Saturday night brought no relief to the residents as US forces continued a heavy bombardment of this community of over 2 million people. The independent Voices of Ir...
Shot of Wonder: Supporting Arthur Silber That the species still produces a beautiful spirit, noble heart and luminous mind such as he, demonstrates some hope for us. To help him is a joy and honor.
Shoot, Kill, Lie, Repeat: America's New Moral Universe The superficialities which may drive these self absorbed monsters are a matter of no concern. The likelihood that they may change their view of the world and it's peoples to one which is not predicated upon fear, terror and avarice seems highly unl...
The Enduring Legacy of Gerald R. Ford no thanks, Jessica. Obama is a fraud. But please go ahead and vote for him yourself -- and buy a Prius, and put an Obama 08 sticker on it. That's enough to save the world!
Shoot, Kill, Lie, Repeat: America's New Moral Universe Chris, have we considered Bush's allowing of [i]einsatzgruppen[/i] tactics may be revenge related, but not in a 9/11 revenge sense. No, I mean something far more personal.
In the early 40's Dubya's grand-father was charged with trading with the ene...
Shoot, Kill, Lie, Repeat: America's New Moral Universe DR. RON PAUL has been LOUDLY declaring this for many years, and has been campaigning with this absolute clear guarantee: "I WILL IMMEDIATELY BRING ALL US TROOPS HOME FROM EVERY FOREIGN NATION AND END THESE UNCONSTITUTIONAL LAWLESS FASCIST GLOBAL FOR...
Shoot, Kill, Lie, Repeat: America's New Moral Universe I read Arthur Silber's 05/09 post after I made my comment here and I must admit to being ashamed. I agree with everything he said, and I can't believe I spewed despair when Arthur, of all people, had posted a HOPE note the day before. Lord. I AM lost...
New Britney Spears Sex Tape Bares All!
Monday, 21 April 2008
(UPDATED BELOW)
I know no one cares about Somalia; every time I write about it on the website, the traffic drops like a stone. (Let's see if that headline draws a few eyeballs, though. If it works, we might just rename the whole damn blog.) But I don't care if no one cares. There is a continuous slaughter and ravaging of innocent human beings going on in Somalia, a vast atrocity that is sponsored, funded, greenlighted and directly aided by the United States government, and I'm going to keep on writing about it.
This third Terror War campaign of "regime change" by the American military machine has already spawned what the UN calls the world's worst humanitarian crisis, and every day leaves more civilian bodies rotting in the streets, and more fleeing families stranded in the middle of nowhere, with nothing. At every step of the way, the Bush Administration has assisted its proxy force of Ethiopian invaders and CIA-paid warlords, by rocketing villages, killing goatherds, capturing refugees and "renditioning" them to Ethiopian torture chambers, and even sending in openly avowed "death squads" to "kill anyone left alive" after bombing strikes. At every step of the way, the Bush Administration has conducted and assisted operations that Americans once would have considered the stuff of old-movie Nazis, twirling their waxed Prussian moustaches as they send a young mother off to a concentration camp, or order artillery barrages on residential areas, or dispatch death squads to pump bullets into the heads of human beings left twitching, burned and bloodied after a sneak attack by Stukas.
Oh, I know none of this is nearly as important as working up a mighty "blogswarm" against ABC because some witless TV talking heads aimed some witless questions at politicians on the make who have been spouting witless bumpersticker platitudes all over the country for months on end. I know I should be out on the street in protest, sticking it to The Man with some really ironic placards or something. Because after all, the only thing that matters in this election -- where the American proxy war in Somalia has not been mentioned at all, and where all the candidates earnestly pledge to conduct the global War of Terror with even more ruthless efficiency than the "incompetent" Bush -- is what a few Beltway insiders say to each other on the Tee-Vee.
But surely, in the big and glorious tent of the blogosphere, there is room for a minor story or two about a little American-backed mass murder in one of those funny little countries across the ocean, right? Like this AP story featured -- that is to say, buried -- in the New York Times on Monday: "81 Die in Clashes Between Islamists and Troops in Somalia."
You will note the NYT's clever headline, which completely distorts the plain facts reported in the second paragraph of the AP story:
The deaths were caused when Ethiopians fired heavy artillery and tank shells in residential areas of Mogadishu, said the rights leader, Sudan Ali Ahmed, chairman of Elman Human Rights. “We condemn this latest fighting,” he said. Besides the 81 people who were killed, 119 were wounded, he said. His group said that all of those killed were civilians.
This doesn't exactly sound like a fierce firefight between "Islamists" and the unidentified "troops" in the headline. Instead, it sounds as if the occupying forces of a military invader turned their guns on civilians and slaughtered a few dozen of them. But this eternal blazon must not be to ears of flesh and blood.
Yet let's be fair to the old Gray Lady. It's not just the headline; the AP story itself is riddled with verbal sleight-of-hand to keep the reader from learning the reality behind the "objective" report. For example, directly after quoting Ahmed, the human rights leader, by name, AP goes on to provide some mitigating spin from anonymous "witnesses" who "said that because the insurgents wear civilian clothing, it was impossible to say how many of the dead were noncombatants."
Who were these witnesses? Are they more credible than Ahmed, whose group has condemned the atrocities on all sides, earning the enmity of every armed group in the country? Was Ahmed lying?
What if there were "Islamist fighters" among the dozens of dead? Does that mitigate the crime of firing heavy artillery and tank shells into residential areas? Was it OK for the Nazis to, say, bombard a French neighborhood to ruins, as long as there were a few Resistance fighters wearing civilian clothes in the area?
There were a few more witnesses willing to be named in the story. Let's see what they had to say:
A witness, Aden Shire, said the Ethiopians had seemed to be searching for the bodies of fellow soldiers killed Saturday. Another witness, Omar Abdulahi, said that among the dead he counted were two old men in their homes who had been shot by Ethiopian soldiers.
A woman, Nasteho Moalim, said her 7-year-old daughter and three neighbors had been killed, and her husband wounded, by tank shells that hit their homes.
But wait; everything's OK, it wasn't an American-backed war crime after all, because someone in the neighborhood fired back at the Ethiopian/warlord forces that were firing heavy artillery and tank shells into the civilian area:
On the government’s side, at least one Somali soldier and two Ethiopians were killed, said another witness, Asha Shegow Abikar.
Those bodies were certainly not taken to the hospitals and clinics in the disputed area where the human rights group totaled up the dead from Sunday's battle, so they did not figure into Ahmed's death count.
But in the end, what does it matter? Anyone killed in one of our righteous "regime changes" had it coming one way or another, right? The story goes on to retail the same kind of amorphous demonization we have seen of every single person in the Terror War (and its conjoint operations) who does not openly and avidly collaborate with an occupying force. In its very brief background graf on the conflict -- which naturally omits any mention at all of American involvement -- AP tells us that:
Ethiopian troops supporting the transitional government’s soldiers ousted Islamist fighters from power in Mogadishu, the capital, in December 2006.
What the forces of the Ethiopian dictatorship actually ousted with the help of American money, training, weapons -- and direct military support -- was a federation of Islamic groups that had coalesced into the first relatively stable government that Somalia had known since 1991. Some of the groups in this Islamic Courts coalition had militias -- like every other clan and political faction and criminal organization in the anarchic land. But not everyone involved in the new government, and not everyone who supported it, or tolerated it for the security and stability it had brought, were "Islamist fighters." Yet AP's description -- repeated over and over in most of American media stories on this Terror War front -- paints them all with this sinister brush.
And thus any Somali who now opposes the Ethiopian occupation is automatically an "Islamist fighter" or an "insurgent" or, inevitably, a "terrorist." Just as every Palestinian in Gaza is part of Hamas, and every Iraqi not actively working for the Bush-backed government is a "Mahdi Army fighter" or an "insurgent" or, inevitably, "al Qaeda" -- and thus fair game for a drone missile attack launched by some goober eating Hot Pockets at his computer terminal in Nevada. The killing of anyone slapped with these labels is considered "justified" by the Bush Regime, and by the American press. Even the murder of innocent people who happen to be in vague proximity to someone assigned one of these ever-expanding labels is considered a "regrettable" but necessary bit of "collateral damage."
And so the slaughter goes on in Somalia. If you are an American, it has your name on it. If you are a Democrat, neither of your presidential candidates gives a damn about it. (It goes without saying that Bush-hugger John McCain doesn't give a damn.) But hey, that's all right; the main thing is that George Stephanopoulos probably feels a bit sheepish right now. I'm sure that will make Nasteho Moalim feel a whole lot better as she buries her seven-year-old daughter.
The bodies of 10 people have been found in a mosque in the Somali capital, after two days of clashes between Ethiopian troops and insurgents. Local residents blame the killings on the Ethiopians, who are backing the government against Islamist fighters.
Six of the dead are religious leaders from the Tabliq Sufi sect, which is not involved in the conflict...
Aden Haji Yusuf, 60, was one of the local elders helped to bury the dead on Monday. "We are now out, for the first time in two days, to discover the dead bodies of some neighbours and bury them," he said.
Tabliq official Shiekh Abdi-kheyr Isse said the Ethiopians had "slaughtered" the clerics. "The Ethiopians surrounded al-Hidaya Mosque on Sunday and killed [the] mullahs mercilessly, including Sheikh Sa'id, the chief of the group in southern Somalia," he said.
Elsewhere, the story notes that the "regime change" in Somalia has had the same effect as the similar operations in Iraq and Afghanistan: it has destroyed moderate forces, radicalized multitudes, and fueled the rise of religious extremism:
Islamic militants of the al-Shabab movement are still holding the south-western town of Wajid, 90 kilometres (52 miles) north of Baidoa, the current seat of the interim parliament. They took the town on Sunday, shutting down video cinema and kiosks selling narcotic leaves known as "khat" and also forced some boys in the city to shave their heads because they had their hair cut into western styles, witnesses said.
"Heavily armed young men, who masked their faces with turbans, have been in control of the town and they have also been patrolling in the streets," local resident Madey Isaq Nur told the BBC by telephone.
This actually follows a much older strategy followed by the US and the UK in the region. The Western powers have long favored alliances with pliant (or paid-off) warlords and tyrants -- the Saudis, the Shah, Mubarak, Saddam, etc. -- helping them destroy any centrist forces that might pose a genuine alternative to rule by U.S. clients. Very often this also takes the form of deliberately stoking religious extremism, giving violent sectarian groups money, arms, and support to bring down more nationalist, secular targets: such as the democratic Iranian government toppled in favor of the Shah. Or Israel's role in the rise of Hamas as a counterforce to the secular, nationalist PLO. Or Putin's obliteration of Chechen society, leaving nothing but Kremlin-backed warlords and fanatical extremists to fight it out.
Likewise in Iraq, the Bush Administration has empowered a client government dominated by violent Shiite factions long aligned and nurtured by Iran's mullahs. And of course the supreme example of this strategy is the key American role in creating an international organization of militant Islamic extremists to topple the secular, Soviet-backed government in Afghanistan.
And even where active support is not given to extremists (as in Egypt today), the chaos and suffering wrought by aggressive "regime changes" and the political repression imposed by American-backed tyrants drive people toward extremist factions, which are often the only alternative organization left standing when civic society has been destroyed.
But again, that's all OK; the more chaos and extremism there is out there, the bigger the profits of the war machine -- and of the politicians who serve it so faithfully.
For a recent example, see Hillary Clinton's bloodthirsty promise to "obliterate" Iran if it dares to attack Israel -- something that is not even remotely a possibility. What will be the effect of Clinton's bellicosity? Why, to strengthen the extremists and hardliners in Iran, of course! To store up more suffering, death and chaos for generations to come.
But why on earth would she do that? Well, which candidate has received the most money from the war machine in this campaign? Here's a hint: It's not Bush-hugger McCain or Business-as-usual Barry. (Although both men are also trousering plenty of blood money, of course.)
Well Chris, hats off to you again on another solid report about the war that the texas fuhrer & co obviously don't want us knowing about. I just want to personally say that I do care about somalia and honestly dunno why anyone who reads this site wouldn't care, since its all part n parcel of the much wider war being waged on the region. Think folks with enough knowledge to read your articles in the first place are not interested in hearing only half the story but again in true form you say you don't care if no one cares your going to keep writing about it and you should this site isn't about ratings its about telling the truth, last time I checked (folks that want "news" made with ratings in mind can check out the fox noise network :)
But back to the the literally burning issue, Somalia is being plundered. Dark forces from Washington have conspired and planned, then sent billions in Military Hardware, Bribes and expertise and rained them down on this country to undermine and destroy a local political movement from restoring order. Why?
Dr Omar De Kock in his article (Who's sawing off the Horn of Africa") on Global Research wrote: "As part of Operation Enduring Freedom US Naval vessels have engaged in several military strikes in Somalia" Doesn't that sound a bit suspicious? He concludes that Somalia/Ethiopia is to some extent "a southern front" in the larger middle east war theatre.
If that is true is Iran going to be "the eastern front" of enduring freedom?
In one of your previous articles "Kill anyone still alive" you mention Barnett as saying that Somalia was "Iraq done right" Hmmmm what was done so well in this campaign as opposed to Iraq????
Maybe it was the privatisation of the early stages on the war involving "illegal mercenaries" back in June of 2006 as I just read tonight here
I'm forever grateful you refuse to shut up about this cynical, state sponsored genocide, for the sake of our possible posterity. They will need to know that not all of us were monsters from hell, and there will be very little hard evidence of that fact to be found. But perhaps it will be gleaned that there were a few impassioned voices for humanity still out there, refusing to bow down before the monolithic evil that covers the globe.
The bombings by the Bush administration in Somalia have had the destabilizing effect that was intended. This was another attempt to cause utter confusion and chaos so that LARGE OIL COMPANIES could get offshore OIL rights for nothing.
Indeed, when there is war in 4 separate theaters, the attention of the public is on whatever “conflict” involves LARGE OIL COMPANIES. The western elitist press, who has better things to do than actually report the truth about what is happening, has decided to put a false priority on the news items that can sell the most advertising.( $ ) The BBC Africa has been reporting on the Somalia situation, more than most of the other “news” organizations.
Bush Foreign Policy:
1). Bomb third world countries that have OIL. 2). Put out faulty intelligence and CIA claims that Al-Qaeda is involved. 3). Pay off right wing organizations (Like the UN) to bolster your efforts. 4). Try to destabilize the governments by whatever means are available, so that LARGE OIL COMPANY INTERESTS ARE FAVORED over human rights and decency issues.
Learning is the key to healing.
References Used in this Blog:
As always, all these specific pages start with ( http://www. ) Please type them into your browser window for accurate results.
Continue reporting on Somalia, Chris,it's one of the major reasons to me to visit your site.Because anywhere else there is not much indepth reporting on this subject.Great article again
When Bush 41 committed U.S. troops to Somalia, he was on his last global junket as president of the United States. At the time, I thought the commitment was just another way the GOP planned to make life difficult for the incoming Democratic administration of Bill Clinton -- one more hot potato to drop in the opposition's hand.
I was surprised, therefore, at what I thought was Clinton's stupidity in not pulling U.S. forces OUT of Somalia as soon as he had the power to do so. My sense of the situation was reinforced after the famous Mogadishu shootout (of "Blackhawk Down" fame), when rightwingers in the beer joints all snickered cynically about "Bill Clinton's war." And of course it did no good to point out that Poppy Bush was the guy who sent our boys in there.
So I never figured out why Clinton left our troops in Somalia. And that means I never actually knew why Bush 41 sent them there in the first place. And I still don't know. So if somebody could background me on that, I might be more curious about what happens there.
Furthermore I've arrived at the conclusion that it does no good for me, as an American citizen, to rail about what happens in Somalia or Iraq or Palestine or any such place. That's because our United States government (from the POTUS right down to the lowliest congresscritter) no longer gives one shit what anybody thinks of what it's doing about anything at all.
All of the conflicts in which we are now involved are but symptoms. Stopping them (if we had the power) does nothing to fix what's wrong here at home. And what's wrong here at home boils down to piracy on a grand scale. Pirates, organized criminals, have seized control of the United States government and now use our military might to rape and plunder the rest of the nations on this planet.
That is the problem as I see it. There is no non-violent solution to the problem. We will overthrow this government or else the rest of the world will come here and do the job. Revolution at home would be incredibly difficult and dangerous, but if we allow the latter scenario to develop, things for us will be more difficult still.
It's still your privilege to vote this year if you want to. But if you do, you're part of the problem.
Chris, I was heartened to read you say that you will continue to address events in Somalia even if no one else seems to care. What we are doing in that country is beyond shameless and if you don't cover it the US govt. wins by default.
Thanks Chris for your great reporting on Somalia. Your readers should also check out http://www.blackagendareport.com/ index.php?option=com_ content&task=view&id=449&Itemid=36 Black Agenda Reportfor more news on Somalia
1). Bomb third world countries that have OIL. 2). Put out faulty intelligence and CIA claims that Al-Qaeda is involved. 3). Pay off right wing organizations (Like the UN) to bolster your efforts. 4). Try to destabilize the governments by whatever means are available, so that LARGE OIL COMPANY INTERESTS ARE FAVORED over human rights and decency issues.
The only thing I'd add to this good summary is that "right-wing" (point 3) may not be as accurate as corporatist or imperialist. I say this because if you believe all political perspectives can be shown by the left-right linear scale, there are right-wing people who aren't in favor of empire or corporatism. They're the old-school conservatives, literal conservatives. Not many of them left these days, but they do exist. But still, BLAQFATHER makes an excellent summary.
So I never figured out why Clinton left our troops in Somalia. And that means I never actually knew why Bush 41 sent them there in the first place. And I still don't know. So if somebody could background me on that, I might be more curious about what happens there.
Chris - Keep up the good works culling through the news coverage on the Somalian GWOT front. Your efforts are appreciated.
Also, we need to keep reminding ourselves that the media's disinterest in Somalia (like Dafur, like the Congo) is part of the historic racial prism. This is going on over in Africa. Life is cheap there. These people all have dark skins. If there were a bunch of publicity about the ongoing slaughter being funded covertly under the table by Uncle Sam, or orchestrated overtly from overhead with US air strikes, the notoriety might get rabble rousers like that Jeremiah Wright fellow all worked up, and that could get awkward or even out of hand.
So it's better to just turn away, sort of like we did in Rwanda, Guatemala, East Timor, and places like that.
Jimmythem -
Good point on George I presenting Bill Clinton with the Mogadishu hot potato as a welcoming present.
Even though George H W Bush obviously had some sort of strategic purpose in sending troops into Somalia in the first place (he certainly did not envision losing to a draft dodging Dem in 1992), much of the US military build up there was carried out when Bush had become a lame duck. The table was set, with scarcely a bloodstain on the cloth or napkins.
If Bill Clinton embraced a US military build up in Somalia, he could perhaps prove he was not a wimp, and help exorcise the ghosts of Vietnam like Reagan-Bush had done. If he withdrew, his cowardice would be proved. Then when he events eventually forced Clinton's hand (Blackhawk down, bodies dragged through the streets on the evening news), Clinton could be attacked from the right for lacking resolve.
The military/industrial/intelligence complex had it all covered however things came unraveled. And it worked.
George the Lesser has been diligently sprinkling special forces throughout much of Africa and central Asia for several years now, in a similar hot potato pattern. If McCain wins, the Pentagon is all set. If Obama wins, it's his no-win partisan problem to deal with, with the same range of undesirable, politically manipulable options.
Thanks Chris for this one. Let me just join in with other commenters here and cherish the bitter comfort of having your magnificent voice around to help us understand the twisted cruelty of our times. Corporate media spin is ubiquitous and only forcibly startling people out of it will open the road to more decency. No one does that better than you do. Thanks again.
If Bill Clinton embraced a US military build up in Somalia, he could perhaps prove he was not a wimp, and help exorcise the ghosts of Vietnam like Reagan-Bush had done. If he withdrew, his cowardice would be proved. Then when he events eventually forced Clinton's hand (Blackhawk down, bodies dragged through the streets on the evening news), Clinton could be attacked from the right for lacking resolve.
That might be a plausible scenario in an alternate universe, like Bizarro World.
George W. Bush and David Petraeus are preparing to make 
Subscribe to this comment's feed
