When the webmistress sleeps

Bent on violence, outwitted by peaceniks

For weeks they kept saying we were dangerous agitators, all because we wanted to expel the stench of death from our city. And to tell the truth about the APEC killers dining in the Sydney Opera House, the ones who claim that dropping bombs is a recipe for peace. We came not in hatred, but as witnesses to history. Tabloid morons said the marchers didn’t know what they were protesting about, and yet the ignorance was entirely theirs.  Neither rain nor threats kept us away.

The march was peaceful, but the atmosphere was edgy. The NSW police had promised violence, and thus were disconcerted by jocularity and placards of Gandhi. We made it to Hyde Park and then came orders from a secret source. Leaping from a convoy of white buses, Ninja shock troops surrounded the park and blocked the exits. The mood darkened. Helicopters whirred. Snipers squatted on rooftops. Rumours swept the crowd. The footpath became packed with puzzled protesters pouring from the park, unable to cross the road, any road. “This is a trap”, I thought, as the water cannon rolled up Elizabeth Street. We had exercised our freedom to assemble, but we were now denied our freedom to disassemble.
 
It felt scary. Grandmothers jabbed fingers at the faces in the thick blue line. Larrikins led cheer squads mocking the cops. I said to several officers, “this is false imprisonment”. Perhaps we should rush the line, I muttered, and a wiser voice replied, “That’s just what they want”. Of course. It’s what they had spent the last three weeks trying to incite. Why? To discredit the legitimacy of those who know what’s really going on, and who are loud and clear in their contempt for the killers in the Opera House.

This is a black moment in Sydney’s history, when the aphrodisiac of power curdles the brains of policemen and lets politicians think they are potentates. When our adventure in Iraq has descended to such a level of criminality, that all the perpetrators have left between self hate and facing a war crimes prosecution, is to keep lying until they are blue in the face. But Hyde Park was filled with people who know the truth, and that’s why the powers that be are so paranoid. Finally the police line broke, and we wended our way home.

SAD SEVENTH BIRTHDAY

In August 2001, I launched www.richardneville.com with the aim of bringing futures thinking to a wider audience, having just returned from a conference in Minneapolis, where I mingled with wacky inventors and cloned bulls. “Smart dreamers float through the gilded ballrooms, muttering about space-food, third dimensional pixels and micro credit”, I ranted, “visions were painted of enhanced humans with the eyesight of an eagle, the sonar prowess of a bat, the speed of a gazelle”. A few weeks later planes struck the World Trade Centre and the “free world” set its sights on revenge.
On 1 October 2001, I asked,  ‘Who would have thought that in a globalising world at the dawn of a new millennium, we would see such a resurgence of jingoism? Who would have thought that in the aftermath of the recent mass murders in Washington and New York, surely to be understood as a hideous crime against humanity; who would have thought we would hear from on high, such utterances as … evil barbarians, dead or alive, smoke ‘em out, you’re with us or against us, infinite justice and … that the sole cause of the cruel attack is because the US shines as the world’s beacon of freedom and opportunity?




They call it a war against terrorism, but it’s more like a war against history. It’s a war against education and illumination, a war against seeing the world as a whole, a war against seeing the world as a system.
How odd to be galloping through a new millennium, while saddled with the values of the Old Testament.
Why so quick to pursue the agenda of war?
Within 24 hours of the attacks, a CNN anchor is wearing a superbly tailored khaki jacket, complete with epaulettes. Tabloid fascists dismiss cautionary voices as “appeasers”. Their solution? Give Force a Chance.



Justice must come to the perpetrators, so long as it really is justice, and not just the worlds biggest lynch mob”.

But it was not to be. Our ongoing intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan is basically a process of mass murder, dressed up as “reconstruction”. Imperial forces were slaughtering “ragheads” at the dawn of the 20th century, and are still slaughtering them now, from the safe distance of cockpits and remote US bases, like Pine Gap. But history is expunged  from public consciousness. According to Condoleezza Rice a few days ago on Australia’s ABC TV, America was “sitting innocently on a day in September, a beautiful Tuesday morning…” when barbarians struck. That’s it. End of story. An act of motiveless malignity. This is what passes as analysis in today’s White House. No reference to Blowback, term first used in March 1954 in a CIA report on the unlawful 1953 operation to overthrow the President of Ian and control the oil. The CIA's fears that there could be blowback from its malicious interference in the affairs of Iran were justified, but that’s another story, but not one understood by Condoleezza Rice. As Chalmers Johnson puts it, “The suicidal assassins of September 11, 2001, did not "attack America," as our political leaders and the news media like to maintain; they attacked American foreign policy”.

Perhaps the war against terrorism is working in the way its proponents intended. While it has multiplied the number of terrorists, it has also enhanced the power of the state. Politicians are authoritarian by nature and bullies at heart, so to them, helicopters, pomp, and heightened security are turn-ons. Armaments inflate their self importance. But who are these wretched outsiders who mock them? Scribblers, satirists, shady types. Quick as a flash, laws are enacted to curb tongues and civil liberties. “All for our own good”, say the lickspittles. But today I saw this sign at Sydney airport: “To make a joke during security procedures is a criminal offence”.  The war against humour has begun.

(Apart from the "grannie" and the image of US forces treating hospital patients in Falluja, the above photos  were provided by Jack Carnegie

DEAD LUCKY:LAUNCHING LINCOLN HALL

Lincoln Hall in the Blue Mountains, 2006, shortly before setting off for Mount Everest. He is modeling headgear  acquired in Kathmandu in 1965(!) during my own tragic attempt to reach Everest base camp.

Two weeks ago, when Lincoln Hall invited me to launch DEAD LUCKY, his account of ‘life after death on Mount Everest’, I was thrilled. It seemed my abseiling skills had finally been recognised. “Lachlan Murdoch was supposed to do the honours”, said Lincoln, “but suddenly had to leave the country”. And so I stand before you as his understudy.

Considering what happened last year on the slopes of Mt Everest – what with the resurrection and all that – many of us here can thank our lucky stars that Lincoln Hall was never cut out to be a Messiah. Otherwise, many of you here would have ended up as his disciples. This new book would have been a new gospel. Thousands of followers in brand name parkas and crampons would be worshipping icons of a bespectacled mountaineer with holy finger stubs and a blue eyed female consort, Barbara.

But luckily, the only kind of Christianity Dead Lucky brings to mind is the version according to Monty Python – The Life of Brian. One of its famous lines could have been uttered by Barbara: “He’s not the Messiah, he’s just a very naughty boy!”

MURDEROUS INTENTIONS
This is reminiscent of the scene on that on that fateful night last year when some of us were gathered at Lincoln’s house with Barbara and her sons,  Dylan and Dorje, and the inlaws and the friends and the dogs … when the news broke that there was a glimmer of hope that Lincoln may have actually survived his ordeal on the summit. There was a screech from the kitchen: “If Lincoln IS still alive, I’ll kill him when he gets home.”

Little did any of us know at he time, that on his way down from the mountain, some people DID try to kill him – well, haven’t we all? -  but I’ll leave the spicy details for you to discover in the book. (Happy now, Lincoln? Surely this is the kind of blatant sales pitch you wanted from Lachlan).

Lincoln Hall had one hell of an experience, and he also put his family and friends through some unforgettable days. Reports of his death made headlines the world over and strong men wept openly, even the Aussie mogul, Dick Smith, who hadn’t cried in public since Arnotts Biscuits fell into foreign hands.

To try to make sense of this strange tale, we need to consider the qualities which make Lincoln special:  Olympic-level lateral thinking, over the limit intelligence, immense courage and tenacity, clarity of thought, self discipline … plus modesty and a sense of honour that is today regarded by many as quaint. (My wife, Julie Clarke, wrote those words, which also serve as a rebuke to her husband).
The day I first met Lincoln, he looked the spitting image of the young man who had come to prominence in a series of children’s books: Where’s Wally? This was at a time when Julie and I had organised a toddler playgroup in our mountain home. Lincoln strode into our life with a manic male child, Dylan. After the arrival of their second son Dorje, Lincoln and Barbara had decided it was time for their oldest son Dylan to become socialised and to meet girls.

SOMETHING FISHY BEHIND THE WARDROBE
We soon witnessed some of Dylan’s extraordinary behaviour patterns, which made more sense as we got to know Lincoln. On entering the house, Dylan would dart around in all directions generating havoc, while the more sedated toddlers focussed on creating elaborate  artworks out of toilet rolls. Then someone would ask, “Where’s Dylan?”

More than once he disappeared up the highest of pine trees, setting in motion a visit from the police search & rescue squad, who we got to know well during those child rearing years. On another day, Dylan decided to re-settle my daughter’s pet Axelotls by lifting them out of their aquarium and dropping them behind a large wardrobe, which they did not seem to enjoy. 

This behaviour somehow smacked of his father’s famously odd sense of humour, which is fortunately constrained by his Buddhist precepts to avoid doing harm to any living being. Not that his other son’s exploits should be forgotten, which started as soon as he could walk. Dorje’s speciality during his visits to our place, was to wedge himself into various crevices, the tighter the better, providing yet more hours of fun for the police rescue teams.

One day, while waiting for the emergency convoy to arrive, I amused myself by pouring two bottles of virgin olive oil down the cement hole in which Dorje was jammed, to no avail. By the time Barbara turned up, the rescue squad had started to lower a giant mechanical claw in the direction of Dorje, but she barely blinked. It was just another day at playgroup.

STAVING OFF THE PAPARAZZI

Lincoln was able to find  the one woman in the world who would put up with him, frostbite and all, possibly because her own strength of character is equal to his. Many years later, when the worst had happened, and many of us were gathered at the small house on that cold mountain night with Barbara and the boys and the dogs, we saw her courage and her character shining through. It was there we encountered another strong woman in Lincoln’s life, his sister Julia, steely and bristling with military capabilities as the phone rang non-stop and paparazzi tried climbing fences to get photos of the grieving family.

Luckily, I was able to push my way into the fray, so they could get photos of me.

The irritating thing about Lincoln, when I first met him, was that he could not be dismissed as one of those strong hairy outdoor silent types, owing to his superb prose and Delphic one-liners. White Limbo is one of the classiest mountaineering  books ever written. He has a solid scientific education and a spiritual awareness. Lincoln is also reluctant – to use his own phrase - to “throw adjectives at mountain tops”.

No-one really knows how close to death Lincoln came. We only know that medically his survival is considered impossible. Instead of sharing this wonderful night of celebration, we could very well have been attending a memorial dinner.

Lincoln has written about how his love for his family gave him the strength to make it back down the mountain. But while it would be understandable and excusable to become sentimental in such circumstances, the always-practical Lincoln avoids that pitfall, as in this moving sentence about his wife: “I could smell Givenchy perfume on her neck. I had bought it for her about a year ago, choosing the largest bottle in the range because it came with a free shoulder bag.” 

How rare an experience we have been through with Lincoln and which he now shares in these pages. To have produced a work of quality so soon after such an ordeal is in itself another miracle.

“To me the only way you achieve a summit”, remarked John Mallory,  “is to come back alive. The job is half done if you don't get down again.”And so Lincoln you did achieve a summit. Welcome back. May you and your family continue to enjoy your bizarre adventures long into the future, and at the same – and this would be Lachlan’s wish - make a mint!

Richard Neville, Kings Cross, Sydney, May 10/07.
Most of this speech was written by Julie Clarke.
DEAD LUCKY is published by Random House Australia.

FACELESS POL POTS OF THE SKIES?

As the webmistress hasn’t slept for ages, this space has languished. Today it’s being used to host comments that may arise from a photo-polemic on aerial bombardment, published here on the fourth anniversary of the war in Iraq.

A couple of related links: • A Sevenfold increase in the yearly rate of fatal jihadist attacks: http://www.motherjones.com/news/featurex/2007/03/iraq_effect_1.html • Only 18% of Iraqia said they had confidence in US and coalition troops, and 51% said they thought attacks on coalition forces were justified: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6464277.stm

Post Script:

BLAIR, BUSH, HOWARD(?) COULD FACE PROBE AT THE HAGUE

From the Melbourne Age, March 19/07

TONY Blair could face the prospect of an International Criminal Court investigation for alleged coalition war crimes in Iraq.

The court's chief prosecutor said at the weekend that he would be willing to launch an inquiry and could envisage a scenario in which the British Prime Minister and US President George Bush could one day face charges at The Hague.

Luis Moreno-Ocampo urged Arab countries, particularly Iraq, to sign up to the court to enable allegations against the West to be pursued. Iraq's ambassador to the United Nations said that his country was actively considering signing up.

The US has refused to accept the court's jurisdiction and is unlikely to hand over any of its citizens to face trial. However, Britain has signed up and the Government has indicated its willingness to tackle accusations of war crimes against a number of British soldiers.

Mr Moreno-Ocampo said it was frustrating that the court was viewed in the Arab world as biased in favour of the West.

Asked whether he could envisage a situation in which Mr Blair and Mr Bush found themselves in the dock answering charges of war crimes in Iraq, he replied: "Of course, that could be a possibility … whatever country joins the court can know that whoever commits a crime in their country could be prosecuted by me."

Human rights lawyers remain sceptical about whether charges will ever be brought.

Some Muslim countries have criticised what they claim is the court's reluctance to deal with offences committed by Western governments. Sudan has called for the court to investigate coalition actions in Iraq

CARTOONS THAT SHOOK THE WORLD

The moving finger draws, and having drawn moves on,
nor all your piety nor wit, shall lure it back to cancel half a line.

You have to feel sorry for the Danes, the least funny people on earth. Melancholia is their forte, angst their heritage. Over the years these former Vikings have tried to lighten their psychic load with an output of fairytales, sickly pastries and slick pornography, but to no avail. On the world’s stages, Hamlet and Ophelia keep playing out their tragic destiny in a castle near Copenhagen, reinforcing the national stereotype: gloomy, introverted, grief ridden.

To be or not to be, is not the question. It’s to speak or not to speak. To publish or prohibit. To think aloud or wrap your conscience in a flag or faith. The printing of the controversial cartoons in the Jyllands-Posten (Jutland Post), was not – thankfully - motivated by a desire to introduce the world to Danish humor.  The aim was less of audacious. It was seeking a response to the spread of self censorship in the wake of religious intolerance. A Danish academic had been brutally bashed for reading extracts from the Qur’an to non Muslim students. A Dutch filmmaker, Theo van Gogh, had been murdered for his critique Islam’s attitude to women. The Jutland Post asked the board of the Danish Editorial Cartoonist Union – probably a cabal of grim depressives on the brink of suicide – to invite its members to “draw Mohammed as they see him”. Twelve artists responded. The result was published last September, today Danish embassies are in flames, people are dying, the cartoonists are on the run.

Who started the fire? Free speech is under assault from fundamentalists of all persuasions. A high profile Christian minister much loved by the White House has again called for the assassination of Hugo Chavez, the democratically elected President of Venezuela, on the grounds that his views are a threat to Americans. “Chavez calls Bush a war criminal”, gasps Pat Robertson on Fox News. The interviewers agree: “the world would be better off without him”. http://mediamatters.org/items/200602030003.  Such views are vile, but I will campaign for the right to hear them expressed. If their calls for assassination had been directed at George Bush, Tony Blair or John Howard, these bigots would be hauled behind bars as roughly as Cindy Sheehan was hauled from her seat at the State of the Union address, due of the words on her t-shirt: 2245 Dead. How many more? 

Despite its claim to be fighting for freedom, the US military is no believer in freedom of speech. In Iraq, Al Jazeera offices are bombed, numerous independent journalists are shot or “detained”. A cartoon in the pro war Washington Post commenting on the horrific injuries facing the “battle hardened” troops elicited a letter of outrage from six Joint Chiefs of Staff. The real outrage, of course, is that such men are still bombing the dwellings of Iraqis, Afghanis, even Pakistanis. The Rolling Stones lyrics are censored at Superbowl. Australian artist, Azlan McLennan, burnt holes in his country’s flag and hung it from a Melbourne art gallery billboard, captioned “Proudly unAustralian”. The police swooped. All this madness in the same few days.

Standing up for free speech is not always easy. How quickly the mighty Google succumbed to commercial imperatives by censoring its search engine to appease Beijing. Last November, historian David Irving was arrested in Austria for two speeches he made in 1989, during which he allegedly claimed there had been no gas chambers at Auschwitz. It is a crime in Austria to minimise the atrocities of the Third Reich and the historian faces up to 10 years imprisonment if found guilty, notes the BBC. Despite the good intentions of the lawmakers, this is a ridiculous affront to the right of citizens to believe what they like. Once Irving is locked up, who’s next?

Okay, so why are the rampaging Muslims so angry? The caricatures of Mohammed are mild – this is the most outrageous. One cartoon is even funny, a first for the Danish Editorial Cartoonist Union, with its depiction of the Prophet standing on a cloud, greeting ascended suicide bombers with the warning, "Stop, stop, we’re fresh out of virgins!” It reminds me of an Easter Monday cartoon I once printed in a student paper, which caused a storm. It depicted an anthropologist emerging from the burial cave of Jesus with skeletal remains, shouting “call off the holiday, I’ve found his bones”. How tame it seems now, how wild it seemed then.

Having been prosecuted on two continents for publishing satirical cartoons, I am well aware of the power of the pen to inflame. The embassy-burning Muslims are wrong to riot on several counts.

1) All religion is superstition, so by definition its core claims are open to doubt and a bit of a laugh.

2) If God/Allah really exists, then he/she personifies the best of humankind and can thus take a joke. A heaven without humor is hell.

3) Besides, there’s a rich lore of jocularity and anti authoritarian wisdom in the epigrams of Muslim mystics, the Sufis. (“You will not attain Truth until a thousand honest people have testified you’re a heretic” – the Junaid of Baghad). Young Muslims are making waves on the comedy circuit - http://enjoyment.independent.co.uk/theatre/features/article305269.ece

4) If a mere caricature, and Danish at that, can send the faithful into a spasm, then the cartoon is only the catalyst, not the cordite. Could the psychic explosion be a way of distracting doubt; perhaps your faith is not as solid as it should be, or you sense it may not be the sole measure of human worth. You try to crush these qualms by running amok.

5) To be shocked by the views of others can be beneficial to mental health.

6) Medieval Muslim artists, renaissance Christians, modern scholars and commercial hacks have often created paintings, illuminated manuscripts, book covers and contemporary drawings depicting Mohammed in full face. Numerous examples are presented here. http://www.zombietime.com/mohammed_image_archive/

Perhaps the cartoon riots are more an expression of rage against the West, than a defence of the dignity of Mohammed. And who can blame this rage? Over 100,000 Iraqis have been killed and at least thrice that number maimed. Citizens are worse off now than under the tyranny of Saddam – less oil, less electricity, less clean water, less security – and they’re still under the thumbs of Marines, mercenaries and misfits. Just as fish cannot see the water in which they swim, the Bush administration is oblivious to the river of blood soaking its armpits. In the TV footage of rioting Muslims in Syria, one placard stood out: The West has entered a Dark Age. That much is true. Both sides are blinded by belief, so let’s use free speech to open each other’s eyes, or our tongues will turn to lead.

Ends. This piece first appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald, Feb 8/2006.

http//:www.richardneville.com

Iranian woman artist Oranous (who is a Muslim and lives in Tehran) created this iconic painting of a young Mohammed and is selling it online. This  painting is apparently not forbidden because it depicts a young Mohammed before he was visited by the Angel Gabriel and started receiving his visions. http://oranous.org

DIRTY WORK IN DAMADOLA

Oh God said to Abraham, "Kill me a son"
Abe says, "Man, you must be puttin' me on.

Imagine yourself drawn to a place of worship this January to celebrate an event that your community regards as holy. The cathedral is packed, all the bright children arrayed in festive dress, three days of feasting will follow. The occasion which melds you is the commemoration of a biblical story that long predates the birth of Christ, and his supposed resurrection. It is the Festival of Sacrifice (Eid ul-Adha). You are there to honour the willingness of Abraham to carry out what he regarded as a directive from God, as conveyed in a dream, that he must kill his beloved son.

As Abraham prepares to slit his son’s throat, despite the Devil urging him to resist, his devotion is rewarded by God, who lets the prophet sacrifice a sheep instead. Every year, millions of believers worldwide celebrate Abraham’s commitment by feasting on meat and distributing it among the poor. This year, let us imagine your place of worship – be it Westminster Cathedral or a boring brick chapel in Canberra - is struck by hellfire. Almost a score of the congregation are burnt to a crisp, many of them women and children. No warning is given, no negotiation is proffered. An untold number of celebrants are maimed, orphaned and scarred for life.

Later, after the wounded are tended, the bodies buried, you ask, who are  these evil doers? From whence came the fire? Was it Al-Qaeda? No! Imagine your rage on discovering the slaughter was instigated by an ally of your own Government, the champion of the “War on Terror”, the USA.  The children sacrificed at the behest of the CIA, on the grounds that a bad guy was in the building – to hell with the innocent!

ON NOT TREATING PEOPLE LIGHTLY

On Friday the 13th of January, such was the plight of the tribes people in Damadola,  a village in Pakistan, when the CIA flattened several dwellings with Hellfire missiles. The apparent target was Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden's second-in-command, who was not present at the time. Some Pakistani officials said the village been struck by as many as 10 missiles fired from the remote-controlled drones and that the death toll was 25. Locals denied any knowledge of al-Zawahiri. Instead of an apology, Condoleezza Rice reminded the Pakistanis that al-Qaeda and its supporters "are not people who can be dealt with lightly", meaning the lives of children – even those of its allies – are expendable. 
The bombing of Damadola is a war crime. In a just world, the people who the ordered the attack would be hauled before an international court. In Bushworld, such criminals are honoured.

Two weeks prior to this atrocity, eight people died in another U.S. drone attack on a cleric's house in Pakistan. Repeated air strikes in Afghanistan and Iraq since 9/11 have killed countless noncombatants, worshippers at mosques and wedding guests. On Jan 3, several members of the same family, including women and children, were killed in a US air strike that destroyed their home in northern Iraq.

Isn’t it time for the UN to  publicly name the CIA as the world’s most lethal terrorist network? The people who work for the agency, despite their firm handshakes and boyish charm, are handmaidens of terror and torture. They should be investigated by a legally constituted war crimes tribunal.

It may turn out that two or three of the victims at Damadola were connected with Al Qaeda, despite the repeated insistence by Pakistani Prime Minister, Shaukat Aziz,  that such claims are “bizarre”. The village is now off limits, some identities remain unconfirmed. Newsday reports that the CIA’s missiles killed a gold merchant, Bakhtepur Khan, his wife and four of his five children, plus other relatives. Sisters Madia, 9, and Sadiqa, 10, were among those who died. Such deaths were expected, according to a former CIA specialist quoted by Newsday, but the chance to knock off some bad guys was too good to miss. While many regard this act as criminal, those who pushed the buttons will bathe themselves in glory.
Surely diehard conservatives realize the futility of bombing allies. Up to 10,000 men, women and children rallied in Karachi to denounce the atrocity at Damadola, chanting “Death to America”. For every “associate” of al Qaeda who is eliminated by such means, a thousand new terrorists are born.

THE AMBASSADORS OF DEATH

One of the CIA’s golden boys is Henry "Hank" Crumpton, hailed by the Washington Post as a “revered master of CIA covert operations… on at least four continents … who recently came in from the cold … to take the job as State Department Coordinator for Counterterrorism, with the very public rank of ambassador”. It is likely Ambassador Crumpton ordered the murders at Damadola.

As though to divert scrutiny of this crime, he has been berating the mass media with dire warnings that the West will soon be hit with a major attack from a terrorists.  It could be anthrax, he says, or maybe WMD’s, even nuclear, bio-tech…. Did he mention bird flu? Not sure, but he reckons Osama bin Laden is still alive… and ticking. Up goes the fear meter.At this moment a tape from Osama turns up on Al Jazeerra.

The story has another chilling aspect. It is widely accepted that the Pakistanis have granted the CIA permission to mount such attacks, but they suppress this fact. (Some Westerners seem unaware that Pakistan is a military dictatorship). Last November in Waziristan, a suspected hide-out Osama bin Laden, two similar attacks took place. Pakistan's government claimed the explosions were caused by “clumsy al-Qaeda militants building bombs”.

However, a local journalist, Hayatullah Khan, obtained fragments from a US made missile and photos that proved an attack from the air. On Dec 5, he was abducted by armed gunmen and remains missing.

Khan’s eight-year-old daughter, Naila Hayat, and her brothers, Hamran, 5, and Fareshta, 6, have since headed a protest by family members and journalist colleagues, demanding his return. A placard read, “Give us our father back.” The day before he disappeared, Khan told his brother, “If anything happens to me, the government must be held responsible.”

But which Government?

“Freedom is a precious thing”, a friend said, who had escaped from East Germany as a child. “You people are losing it bit by bit, and you don’t even notice.” She had fled across barbed wire. The only country in the world to have dropped a nuclear bomb on a civilian population still claims collateral damage as its right. The US military likes big explosions at midnight, blood on the walls, the scattered bodies of decapitated children. And there’s plenty more bombs in the pipeline.


Note: This is a revised version of the piece I posted 21/Jan/06 on www.opednews.com

40 LESSONS FROM THE NEW MILLENIUM

Secret webs, scared bullies,
a global mind shift.

There is no God higher than Truth, said Socrates, but that was long ago. Today’s Truth lurks behind a thousand veils, while the new Gods pillage the future. Here’s some of what we think we now know:

1. Of whatever persuasion, religious fundamentalism is a global curse.

2. As is market fundamentalism.

3. The CIA is probably the mother of all terrorist organizations.

4. The world’s “most powerful democracy” is not a democracy. It is an oligarchy. The US is run by a surprisingly small number of power brokers who revolve through the doors of the White House, Big Oil, Defence, Security, Trade, Embassies, the World Bank and numerous blue chip boardrooms.

5. This elite, plus the CEO’s of major global corporations, are the true manipulators of the modern world. Yet few have faced elections.

6. Those who screw up, attract unwanted attention, or are caught with hands in the till, are often promoted out of the way.

7. A handful of boardroom tycoons own and control the mainstream media.

8. Anyone who aspires to high office in a Western democracy must cultivate the media and accept that boardroom power is today’s major driver of global affairs.

9. The high players embedded in these institutions – corporations, banks, media, government, IMF, WTO, etc – the “corporatocracy” – are united by a core credo: THERE IS NO GOD HIGHER THAN PROFIT.

10. This is the mindset that fuels endless growth, even as fossil fuels choke the planet.

11. Such a mindset imperils the future.

12. It is this mindset that says its okay to Wallmart the world, because the consumer gets more choice, even although the choice is largely illusory. What’s the point of offering 30 brands of toasters at the cost of “one-quarter of all plant and animal species” being doomed to extinction, because of global warming? (Nature magazine).

13. The greed-is-good philosophy is justified on the grounds that it spreads the wealth around. True, it spreads the wealth around the boardrooms. The income gap between the rich and the poor keeps widening. The richest 1% of Americans own more assets than the other 99% combined. Is this fair? Both within countries and between countries, such wealth gap keeps expanding, but few Western politicians will talk about it for fear that Rupert Murdoch’s media will call them Communists.

14. The top 5% of the world’s pop has an income 200 times greater than the bottom 5%. (In 1980, the ratio was only 6 to 1). Worldwide, downward mobility is more common than upward mobility.

15. A future of dramatic wealth redistribution is inevitable.

16. And is gathering momentum in Latin America.

17. Popular culture promotes global warming. It fans the flames of consumer desire and hastens obsolescence. Mainstream media, the movies, marketing, advertising, branding, celebrity endorsements, etc, put hyper consumption at the core of human existence. The Shopping Religion dwarfs traditional faiths.

18. By 2050, the world population, barring pandemics and/or climate shocks, is expected to reach 9.1 billion. At today’s consumption levels, this will increase the demand for oil tenfold. Yet the supply of oil is nearing its peak, or past its peak.

19. Which is why the wars to secure future supplies of oil (and water) have already begun.

20. Hollywood cultivates a taste for violence. Just as the Westerns of the 1950’s endorsed the slaughter of Native Americans, today’s blockbusters legitimise sadism. In this season’s highly acclaimed hymn to collateral damage and spouse bashing, Mr & Mrs Smith, it is taken for granted that the CIA has a right to liquidate anyone on the planet. Further, that the assassin’s role is noble, as well as lucrative, sexy and cool. All of life’s problems, including a grim marriage, can be solved with guns, explosions and a vicious beating. Followed by orgasm.                                     

21. In 2005, global military expenditure was expected to reach $1 trillion.

22. In the last 5 years, doublespeak has thrived. More than ever, the statements of political leaders are the reverse of the truth. When Condoleezza Rice tells the world that America is the land of laws, she is the mouthpiece of outlaws. While George Bush was saying he does not condone torture, he had already authorised torture and was denying its use, even as footage from Guantanamo Bay showed unconscious prisoners on stretchers returning from interrogation.

23. Hunger strikers at Guantanamo Bay are being force fed with plastic tubes inserted into their stomach through the nose, a painful procedure, even at the hands of medical specialists. Some tubes used by guards are said to be “larger than normal”. The widespread incarceration of children by the US is not denied.  The International Red Cross reported registering 107 detainees under eighteen, some as young as eight years old. In May 2005, it was found that there were "800-900 Pakistani boys age 13-15 in custody." Accounts of mistreatment are numerous. A Pentagon spokesman told Seymour Hersh that "age is not a determining factor in detention."

24. Prior to the turn of the century, only a few intellectuals publicly argued that America was no longer a noble nation, as advertised. By now, it has become obvious to anyone with a passing acquaintance with foreign affairs, that George Bush’s America is the world’s deadliest Rogue State.

25. The plague of lying and law-breaking began to spread from the White House to its allies on the eve of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, itself regarded as illegal by the world’s most eminent lawyers.

26. Among the few invading nations who lined up to brown-nose Uncle Sam without being bribed, no tongue licked longer or more vigorously than that of John Howard, the Australian Prime Minister. He disallowed a debate in Parliament. He dismissed the huge turnout of peaceful protesters as “a mob”. He was still pretending he hadn’t made up his mind about the war, long after authorising the Special Forces to blow-up Iraqi infrastructure.

27. Young Australians have been jailed for burning their country’s flag. The men who ordered the torching of Iraq have still not been arrested.   

28. Howard’s enthusiasm for war was not driven by revenge. He seemed to act from fear. Perhaps the fear of 242 million Indonesian Muslims on Australia’s doorstep. His long held terror of The Other may have bonded him to Bush and his seemingly invincible legions. Or was Howard’s fear even deeper, a fear of a values shift, a fear that the status quo was under threat, a fear that a new consciousness might arise and seek from him more than he could give, more than bread and circuses?  Meanwhile, there is no crime that America could ever commit in its terror wars, that will shake the loyalty of John Howard, who George Bush rightly calls his deputy sheriff.

29. Truer now than ever: Even if you are not interested in politics, politics is interested in you.

30. When the Australian military became aware of the porno-tortures at Abu Ghraib, it tried to hush them up. One of its officers, then attached to the Pentagon, wrote to the International Red Cross, trying to refute the rumours of abuse. When one of its own citizens detained by the US, Mamdouh Habib, was found to be the victim of torture, Australian officials were ordered to state “Habib was well treated”.

31. The deaths of well over a 100,000 Iraqis and the mutilation of many more, is still being justified by George Bush as the price of “spreading freedom”. What is this freedom? It is not freedom of the press. The US military has shot and jailed non-embedded journalists, it has closed down independent newspapers, it has bombed media offices, it has paid bribes to publish false stories.  Is it political freedom? Iraq is in the process of moving from a secular tyranny to a fundamentalist theocracy. No-one knows for sure what will happen, but it is unlikely to replicate the golden age of Athenian democracy.

32. The US has used more illegal weapons on Iraqis, including chemical weapons, than were ever used by Saddam Hussein, (either on his own people, or on anyone else).

33. At least 35 nations have weapons of mass destruction in their military stockpiles, the U.S. more than all others combined.

34. The ferocity of the November 04 assault on the citizens of Fallujah exceeded by far the 1937 Fascist bombardment of Guernica, but as yet no Picasso has emerged to immortalise the atrocity. While mainstream journos were a-bed with the perpetrators, it was left to freelancers and the bloggers to blow the gaff. The terror-war mindset has turned us into what we’re supposedly fighting against.

35. The heads of Halliburton, Boeing, Bechtel and other defense giants are seated on the boards of corporate media. The Carlyle Group, a private equity firm with a stake in the arms industry, graces the board of the New York Times. The Washington Post hosts Lockheed Martin, whose latest warhead “successfully demonstrates lethality against urban structures”. Bombing the cities of Iraq does more for the corporate bottom line than publishing true accounts of the impact of the bombs.

36. Which is why to Western eyes, the nightly air strikes on Iraqi dwellings are invisible.

37. Among major defense contractors with shares that trade on Wall Street, the average pay for CEOs has tripled. And these are the wimps. DHB Industries makes bulletproof vests. Prior to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, its chief executive, David H. Brooks, took home an annual salary of $525,000. Three years later, Brooks collected $70 million, a pay increase 3,349 per cent. (He held a birthday party in Manhattan for 150 of his daughter’s friends reported to have cost $10 million).

38. Both NBC and the Washington Post have board members who sit on the board of  Coca Cola. The NY Times shares a board member with Pepsi, another board member with drug giant, Eli Lilly, another board member with Ford … and so on. So while the media has been dragged kicking and screaming to accept the likelihood of climate change, don’t expect a feverish promotion of a carbon neutral lifestyle any time soon. (On present trends, global greenhouse gas emissions will almost triple by 2050).

39. As Einstein pointed out, you can’t solve serious problems with the same mind set that created them. You can’t deal with climate change without experiencing a change of consciousness. We’re already half way through the first decade of a new millennium, and our leaders are still stuck with a medieval mindset. And we’re stuck with them. Meanwhile, many thousands of citizens have moved on from the Newtonian view of the world, with its focus on certainty, dualism, us-against-them, good-against-evil. A post-modern age requires a fluid sense of strategy, deep empathy, the acceptance of multiple stories. It seeks from leaders a way of coping with paradox, a flair for handling complex projects in surreal environments, an understanding that holistic thinking matters more than spin, trickery and photo ops.  While such a mind shift is gathering speed at the grass roots, the mentally decrepit  “survival of the fittest” war-horses at the top are trying to quell the new awakening with the age-old strategy of invoking FEAR.  It is a strategy that comes easy, as their own demons rise up to haunt them, and they desperately seek to unload their terror. But the global mind shift required for a sustainable future is underway, and grass-roots groups are cleaning up waterways, reforming third world aid, shining a light on injustice. Their rallying cry becomes ever more relevant: “Another World is Possible. Let us build it.”

40. Among these activists was Nkosi Johnson the heroic South African AIDS sufferer who was asked, not long before he died, aged 12, what motivated him at such a young age and with such a debilitating illness to campaign so tirelessly for his fellow sufferers.  His answer speaks for everyone: “Do what you can with what you have, in the time you have, and the place you are”. And do it now.

ENDS

RELATED LINKS:

www.richardneville.com/Satire/Satire030605.html

http://rebelpeasant.blogspot.com/2005/12/us-holding-children-in-prison-camps-as.html

http://www.democraticunderground.com/articles/05/12/17_right.html

BETWEEN A HARD PLACE AND STEVIE NIX

Roasting flesh and Fleetwood Mac - how we're bringing the fight to the
cowardly dogs and Taliban lady-boys!

(Martin Sharp, Oz, 1967)

We have entered the fourth year of killing Afghans, but we are the ones who are dying. Saddam Hussein is finally in the dock, but we too are guilty. Last night on Australia's feisty current affair show, Dateline (SBS, Oct 19/05), footage was screened of American soldiers near Kandahar burning the bodies of two of its “enemies”. Flames crackle, limbs jerk, a GI remarks on the gushing of blood from an enemy mouth. In a despondent daze I watch the scene from a suburban couch, toying with pasta. If this sparks a hue and cry, I realise, it won't make a speck of difference. Atrocities are a motif of today's terror wars, but no-one of note is ever held to account. When a mighty nation invades countries bereft of air force, navy, or high tech weaponry, it must get boring for the troops. How to let off steam? Bomb a few wedding parties, spray civilians at will, kick down the doors of hovels at midnight, ramp up the torture….

In the early weeks of the 2001 Afghan invasion, Operation Enduring Freedom, SBS showed footage of a CIA guy directing an air strike on a mud built compound holding numerous “Taliban” prisoners, but it didn't provoke a peep. Neither did a 2002 doco on the apparent role of American soldiers in the suffocation, shooting, torture & secret burial of  “up to 3000” prisoners held in steel containers. (Google Massacre at Mazar-i-Sharif by Jamie Doran). Anyway, so here we are today still strutting our stuff on foreign soil, while the locals continue to endure operation freedom. After the Taliban barbecue scene, psy-ops swings into action. Loudspeakers are aimed at the distant hills, where the “bad guys” lurk. In a local dialect, the message is blasted to an elusive prey: “You call yourself Taliban but you are a disgrace to the Muslim religion, and you bring shame upon your family….You allowed your fighters to be laid down facing west and burnt. You are too scared to retrieve their bodies. This just proves you are the lady-boys we always believed you to be

Mesmerised on the couch, I am trying to imagine the Taliban huddled in caves, quaking in their frilly underwear. "You attack and run away like women”, continues the voice of freedom, “Come and fight like men instead of the cowardly dogs you are..."

And so it continues, this unconscious revelation of frustration at the enemy's agility. What have our two country's become? Australian forces are also in the area, but far too wary to be caught on camera. While the diggers may not yet have shred the last vestiges of shame, it doesn't mean that they are not involved in shameful acts.

HEART MELTING HOSPITALITY

As far back as May 2002, Australian Defence Minister, Robert Hill, gloated on TV that our troops had “killed 300 Al Qaida”. However, the London Times Online, May 10/02, revealed how a “small number of armed men, probably Afghans, stumbled across a six-man team of Australian SAS, who were searching a cave complex for weapons. Surprised, the locals raised their weapons and were shot in the chest” … by the Australians. A subsequent search of a nearby village produced an ancient Lee Enfield which was taken as a trophy. The caves contained livestock. The men who our soldiers shot in the chest were shepherds, according to the report. (In 1966, when I overlanded through Afghanistan, the farmers still carried flintlocks and their hospitality was heart-melting). For more on Aussie troops in action see here.   

Remember, it was an Australian Major attatched to the Pentagon who helped try to hide the crimes at Abu Ghraib. Aussies have witnessed torture sessions at the “BIF”, that nasty jail near Baghdad airport. How futile to hope that the “Anzac spirit” or Government denial will shield us from the consequences of our complicity in the serial atrocities for which this era will be remembered and despised.

Psy-ops in Kandahar is not limited to abusive broadcasts and flesh fuelled bonfires. The opening scene of the Dateline doco is the most shocking of all, because of its depiction of everyday cultural sadism. Blasting from the military vehicles patrolling the towns and the countryside, is a barrage of ear shattering rock. Raggedy children look up amazed, even scared, as Humvees bristling with machine guns throb through the streets, forcing camels & buses off road, while Fleetwood Mac bursts across the Hindu Kush. What's going on here, apart from incredible bad manners?

A DRAMA TAKING PLACE IN TOTAL SILENCE

According to the Dateline narrator, it is all part of a psy-ops scheme to keep the Taliban on edge, but it is also a projection of the New American Century. Those who are bullied into rocking around the clock are Afghani citizens, whose own cultural traditions are exterminated, as they are groomed to join the shopping religion of their occupiers. Probably not a single citizen of Kandahar had a hand in flattening the World Trade Centre, but how many are still paying the price? 

A price so many of us are paying. In the most bellicose nations of the ever diminishing Coalition of the Willing, freedom, honour and truth have diminished. Mental illness, obesity and depression is soaring. Democracy has lapsed into shadow puppetry and lying by skillful means is taught on the news. On Constitution Day in Iraq, US helicopters and warplanes bombed two villages near Ramadi, the military claiming to have killed 70 “insurgents”. But an Iraqi doctor reported 20 people killed -- including six children -- and 25 wounded. All the dead were civilians, he said. Such dumb acts of cruelty have been common from the first day of the invasion.

Last week a UN Human rights investigator, Jean Ziegler, accused the US-led coalition of driving citizens out of settlements that were about to be attacked by cutting off supplies of water and food. 

Mr Ziegler, a Swiss-born sociologist, said "a drama is taking place in total silence in Iraq, where the coalition's occupying forces are using hunger and deprivation of water as a weapon of war against the civilian population”. He told a press conference in Geneva, "This is a flagrant violation of international law”. But don't worry, a US military spokesman in Baghdad has denied the allegations. We are the good guys, remember. Big Mac, i-Mac, Fleetwood Mac - the world is within our grasp. Syrians and Iranians should stock up on ear plugs. Ends.

image from:www.lucyedkins.com/guan/kandahar_interrogation.htm

VISIT MAIN SITE: www.richardneville.com   

BOYS OWN ANTICS IN BAGHDAD

Since the London bombings, the elected leaders of nations that invaded Iraq are sinking deeper into the swamp, grinning wildly as they go, taking our freedoms with them. Long used to lying to their own citizens, George Bush, Tony Blair and John Howard, are also lying to themselves. How can it be claimed that the upsurge in terrorism is unrelated to our presence in Iraq? The argument rests on the assumption that the 9/11 strike on America stemmed solely from a blind hatred of western lifestyle, that it was unprovoked and that it lacked a geo-political context. It’s as if the CIA’s covert actions in Afghanistan, which led to the empowerment of the Taliban, had never happened. Or that no-one had noticed the 35,000 US troops propping up the House of Saud. Or…. but why go on? Politicians are loath to acknowledge ‘blowback’, as Chalmers Johnson points out, because it implicates them in the deaths of their own citizens. Perhaps Tony Blair’s addiction to cosmetics derives from an unconscious need to save face.

When a victim of the London bombers, Louise Barry, was visited in hospital by John Howard, she braved the TV crews and her alarming neck brace to suggest her assailants had been motivated by our invasion of Iraq. Taken aback, the PM looked shifty and disagreed. Yet the British newspaper, The Independent, now reveals new research into how the bloodbath in Iraq is “inspiring a worldwide insurgency”. The paper’s correspondent, Patrick Cockburn, a seasoned visitor to Iraq, quotes an Israeli study of 154 foreign fighters which found that almost all had been radicalised by Iraq alone. Another study of 300 Saudi fighters found that “very few had any previous contact with al-Qa'ida or any other terrorist organisation previous to 2003”. These insurgents are supported by a “homegrown network of sympathisers and supporters who provide safe houses, money, explosives, detonators, vehicles and intelligence”. In short, the worst way to hit back after 9/11 was to invade a Muslim country without links to Al Q’aeda or any plan to bomb the West.

It now turns out we started the war to export democracy, which is wonderful news for all the political prisoners in Burma, China and our comrade in arms, Uzbekistan. Hang in there.

Meanwhile, our own democracy continues to shrink, a process that started the moment the Iraq war plot was hatched. Tricking the public into backing an illegal invasion had little to do with democratic elections or representative assemblies, and much to do with faking the evidence and feeding the media. “Decisions were taken among small groups of people in private”, notes historian Eric J. Hobsbawm, “not very different from the way they would have been taken in nondemocratic countries”. Yesterday we lost the right to joke at airports. Today the Murdoch media calls for a ban the pamphlets of Mullahs (as if its own editorials were any less inflammatory) and our students are questioned by secret police about their taste in text books. While the escalation of terror may require a reduction of freedoms, what will tomorrow bring? Web censorship, suspicious commuters to be shot on sight, martial law?

The war mongering nations have ceased to feel like democracies. Not one of them possesses an opposition party worthy of the name. Not one of them has accepted responsibility for the gruesome chain of murders triggered by our invasion - over 500 suicide attacks in Iraq over the last year. Not one “visionary leader” (Murdoch on Howard) has admitted that life for Iraqis is hell Those who concocted the intelligence that led to war have been congratulated, those who give the nod to torture have been promoted, those who bombed the hospitals, mosques, water plants and suburbs of Fallujah, are jangling with medals. Hollywood will convert their skyborne terrorism into Boys Own heroics. Our furtive use of depleted uranium raises the rates of leukemia, deformities and babies born without eyes. But politicians are more likely to bomb an Iraqi children’s ward than to visit one. John Howard took a “secret trip to Baghdad” to talk about cricket to soldiers as the cameras whirred, continuing an 80 year colonial tradition.

Back in the 20’s the British navy was converting to oil and Iraq was gushing with the stuff, but the natives were restless. Punitive bombings were prescribed. A typical raid took place in February 1923 on a village in southern Iraq, where Bedouins were celebrating 12 weddings. An eyewitness, Saleh 'Umar al Jabrim, reported bodies scattered everywhere, including those of women, children and four camels. In 1924, a distinguished Air Commodore, Lionel Charlton, resigned his post as a staff officer in Iraq after he paid a hospital visit to the armless and legless casualites of a British bombing of a Baghdad market. How quaint. These days Generals don’t even count the dead, much less visit the victims.

While all three Coalition of the Killing leaders were re-elected, despite the Iraqi cock-ups, it’s John Howard who goes from strength to strength, a beaming Machiavelli in a Vodaphone tracksuit, posing as a Churchill. This week, the LA Times reports on the growing number of unarmed,innocent civilians, “including people who are considered vital to building democracy”, who are being killed by U.S. troops.

Our country is under a spell, sleep walking towards disaster, while its decent, distracted citizens ponder interest rates, the footy and whether to put a plasma opposite the Jacuzzi. Our poets are lost for words, our comedians fiddle the stock market, our movie stars flock to the Imperial Court, our auction-star painters extrude sullen abstracts, while singing hymns at Howard’s table.

There’s a widespread switch off about crimes in Iraq. Mention Fallujah to the bright Westerners who “dedicate their waking hours to media-induced sensations, to their pursuit and their creation” and they’ll probably think it’s a Turkish pastry. Nothing seems to matter anymore, except what’s on a screen. If a tsunami had struck Asia in the age of radio, no-one would have noticed. And yet what’s on screen about Iraq is filtered through three thick flags, a legacy of the lost war in Vietnam. Our exporting of freedom requires limits on free speech, which is why the Marines tend to jail independent camera crews, or shoot them. ends.

See the main site:

www.richardneville.com

Iraq images not shown on TV:
www.richardneville.com.au/satire/satire030605.html

Shooting Civilians update:

www.informationclearinghouse.info/article9564.ht

The mysterious quote about "media induced sensation comes from Thomas de Zengotita, who's worth Googling.

Thanks to Sydney artist Peter Kingston for this image of the fateful meeting:

The PRINCESS OF BAGHDAD

An edited transcript of Condoleezza Rice’s speech at the American Embassy in Baghdad, formerly the Republican Palace, headquarters of the Saddam Hussein.

May 15, 2005: CHARGE D’AFFAIRS, JIM JEFFREY: Let me introduce someone you know, the Secretary of State, Dr. Rice. (Applause and cheers)

SECRETARY RICE: Thank you, thank you. First, just let me say what a thrill to be in Baghdad. I can’t even tell you how excited I’ve been about coming, how delighted I am to be here. I just took the helicopter ride in -- this is a spectacular city, it really is. At least, what’s left of it! (Cheers, whistles, applause)

I want to start by thanking Jim Jeffrey for his leadership of our 1000 strong team in this former Palace. I know that he is a dedicated servant, I see him on our video conferences, and he has given wonderful leadership. Jim has restored the swimming pool in record time. (Cheers) I want to thank him for that. And to thank Saddam Hussein for putting it here in the first place. There’s more water in that pool than the whole of Iraq! (Laughter) And more smart bureaucrats in this Embassy than in my Washington office! It was you guys who isolated the $184 million from US Govt funds earmarked for Iraq’s drinking water projects and used it instead to top up this Embassy’s repair budget, as well as the swimming pool. Isn’t that neat? I can’t thank you enough for your service.

You people are truly on freedom’s front lines. And I thank you for that. Unfortunately, Iraqis are still facing massive outbreaks of cholera, diarrhoea, nausea and kidney stones from drinking contaminated water, but freedom isn’t meant to be easy. Not for them, and not for us. I know that there are people here who are on active duty, I know there are reservists here, I know that you’re away from family and friends and that you’re in harm’s way. But remember, you’re not in as much in harm’s way as the citizens of Iraqis. Over 400 have died violently in the short time since we got them to form a Government. That’s on top of, oh let’s say between the 50,000 and a 100,000 that have been blown away since we arrived to liberate the oil fields. In the US today, just walking through the financial district of Houston, you often hear how proud people are, for the job that you’re doing here, thank you very, very much.

SECRETARY RICE: And I want to thank our private contractors. Talk about keeping the cowboy spirit alive! The foreign media often describes you people as “behaving like an invading army”, and I think that proves you’re really representing the United States so very well. Privatising the industries of Iraq and putting them in US hands will help freedom prosper. And help our freedom to prosper. Like using Iraq’s own oil revenues for projects that were supposed to be covered by American tax dollars – that is, once we secure the pipelines. You contractors were among the first to display leadership skills at Abu Ghraib, which even your critics acknowledge. By working as a team to humiliate, torture and abuse Iraqi prisoners, you were able to increase demand for your corporation’s interrogation services. That’s smart strategy, one that helps locals understand our pre-emptive business culture, and I thank you for that.

Now, this is a tough environment sometimes, maybe all of the time, but I want you to stay focused on what it is that we are doing here. Softening up Iraqis for democracy by any means necessary. You see, this war came to us, not the other way around.

I know what you might be thinking. Oh, the war didn’t come from Iraq, but that’s only because Saddam didn’t have the means or the motive. So what am I saying? The United States of America, when it was attacked on September 11, realized that we lived in a world in which we cannot let threats gather, and that we lived in a world in which we had to have a different kind of Middle East if we were ever to have a permanent peace. It just could not continue to be a Middle East in which dictators like Saddam Hussein paraded around, lived in great palaces, and yet tortured, and oppressed, and just made mincemeat of this wonderful infrastructure here in Iraq. Instead, it would have to be the United States that has a Middle East in which our military parades around, lives in great palaces, and yet tortures and oppresses and makes mincemeat of this wonderful infrastructure here in Iraq. Then rebuild it for a profit.

We just couldn’t let Saddam Hussein stay on, a man who has been a danger to this region for his entire reign, never more so than when we used to sell him chemical weapons.

We realized we had to have a chance to work with people in the Middle East who wanted a different kind of life, because the absence of freedom in the Middle East, the freedom deficit, especially for the people of Palestine we have ignored for so long, but I can’t really say that outside these walls, is that it has produced the ideologies of hatred that led people to fly airplanes into a building on a fine September day.

People don’t want to be suicide bombers, people don’t want to be suicide hijackers. They would much rather bomb villages from gunships high in the sky and use remote controlled drones to murder those they suspect. But first, people need to the freedom to get rich, so they can buy their weapons from us. For many many years, the United States, along with the rest of the free world, believed somehow that people in this region didn’t care about freedom. We cared about stability, and what we got was neither freedom nor stability. We got a malignancy that was growing, that came to haunt us on that fine September day.

And now it’s another fine day in Iraq, as I stand here radiant in this white tropical Valentino pants-suit talking of freedom, while our close ally in Uzbekistan, Islam Karimov, is killing hundreds of his own citizens, mainly Muslims. Shooting them dead in the town square for daring to dream of freedom.

There is no point on the Earth where people do not want to be able to say what they think, where people do not want to be able to worship as they please, where people do not want to be free of the knock of the secret police at night. But such people can’t always have what they want, not if they are unlucky enough to ruled by a dictator who we support. And support strongly. Okay, the brutality of Islam Karimov is similar to that of Saddam Hussein, but that’s not the point. Karimov runs an efficient secret police; he beats, he jails and he tortures his critics – one of them famously boiled alive in oil – but he has his good points. First, he gave us a military base from which to launch our attack on the Afghanis, who to this day remain ungrateful. Another good point about Karimov, is that he is helping us out with a problem involving the 150 or so prisoners held by the CIA, the ones singled out for torture. Egypt can’t be expected to handle them all, so Uzbekistan has put at our disposal its extensive apparatus of inquisition. They will even provide the boiling oil! (Laughter) Uzbekistan has plenty of it – 116,000 barrels a day, to be exact. All this in the name of freedom. All this in the name of cheap gas and Helping America – which is what our allies are for.
These are our universal values, and America has always been at its best when it is securing, and providing for, and bringing these values to the rest of the world. Because you know something, when freedom is on the march, America is more secure, and when freedom is in retreat, America is more vulnerable. Trouble is, freedom is on retreat within America, so I don‘t know where that leaves us.

Anyway, our children, and our children’s children, will look back, and they will say, we are so grateful that there were Americans willing to sacrifice, and to kill, so that the Middle East could be whole, and free, and democratic, and at peace. And that never again would we have to fight terrorists on our soil, in America.

So thank you for what you do every day, thank you from the bottom of our hearts. I bring you greetings from your commander-in-chief. And I thank the men and women in uniform, I thank the diplomats here and all the others, who are making the dream of freedom possible for Iraqis. And you know, they deserve it. Even if the dream is currently a nightmare.

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE transcript, Office of the Spokesman.

ORIGINAL VERSION: http://usinfo.state.gov/usinfo/Archive/2005/May/16-275013.html

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Abu Ghraib Art by Columbian painter, Fernando Botero; masked soldier by Greg Spalenka http://www.spalenka.com/transfer/pages/political.html

ANOTHER WORLD IS POSSIBLE

There’s a quickening in the air, don’t you think? Oil shocks, the Warming, the Dimming, tectonic shifts, Torture Mania, War Without End, etc, which adds fuel to the religious revival. The death of a Pope is great spectacle, and the grief of his followers is moving. But when you stand back from it all, Catholicism is little more than a branded superstition. (As are other faiths). Rome has a global reach, gilded ceremonies, an infallible figurehead; giving it a dream run as reality TV. Nothing can compete, not even the British Crown.

The Holy Roman TV Empire has a moral component, both for good and for ill, even if it demands from adherents breathtaking leaps of imagination. However, in the end it’s a brand, like Coca Cola, with similar colour hues, and must fight to maintain market share. So the deeper question is this, regardless of the next Pope’s identity: how does the corporatisation of the planet affect everyday life?

For anyone who travels the roads of the world, the quickening psychic pulse is a major threat. When driving to and from the Blue Mountains, west of Sydney, it is not unusual to be jammed between a pair of semi trailers who race the clock, and each other. The last time it happened to me, both of the horn blaring behemoths were branded Woolworths, their signage singing of dewy melons and crisp lettuce, as the rear truck clawed at my side, horns blaring, edging me into the misty kerb. Another suicide mission in the service of cost cutting, I thought, after the tranquillisers kicked in. Most drivers can recount similar near death experiences.

It’s an old story, speeding truckies on speed, but getting worse. Between 80 and 90 per cent of long distance drivers are using drugs to keep awake and meet impossible deadlines, according to Officials of the Transport Workers Union, who depict a dark culture of truckstops “littered with syringes”, the drivers harassed by impossible deadlines, their contracts cancelled at the tick of a clock. Woolworths and Coles impose half hour windows for delivery, even if the drivers are late leaving the clients warehouse, even for an interstate haul. Trucks are “sweatshops on wheels”, says the Union, driven by sleep deprived slaves. Lateness can incur a $6.66 fine per minute, turning their rigs into killer vans.

Is this the future, in our brave new world of market fundamentalism, a choice between being the driver or being the roadkill?

Meanwhile, major corporations are promoted as today’s champions of “social responsibility”, conjuring a sleeves-rolled-up army of sensitive new age metrosexual Mother Theresas intent on righting the world’s wrongs, fixing the weather and feeding the hungry with crisp lettuce. Welcome to TwinWorld™. A world adorned with bright logos, false promises and nonstop entertainment. Lift the lid and view the debt, hear the lies, smell the blood. It was ever thus, you are thinking. We are all canon fodder for the toffs. Yes, but the pace is quickening, the stakes are higher, the lies more blatant. “We are on the side of life”, says the President of TwinWorld™, playing to the Terri Schialvo headline writers, even as his armies perform mass euthanasia in Iraq, sometimes by storming its hospitals.

The clock watchers in the dispatch room at Woolworths are just doing their job. Today’s corporate culture ordains that return on investment will always outweigh the welfare of truckies. Getting goods to market ten minutes earlier – whether its lettuce or oil – will boost the bottom line, so never mind the buckets of blood on the Great Western Highways, whether in Baghdad or the Blue Mountains. But something is amiss. Oil is suddenly $50 plus a barrel; the lettuce lands are parched. TwinWorld has got a twin complaint, both global warming and global dimming are speeding up, like the Woolworths trucks. Try to stop one and the other will accelerate.

Let’s not worry about that, says the board of TwinWorld. We’re getting a new Pope, a Christian revival, another season of Desperate Housewives and a beefed up nuclear arms race, even into the heavens. Glory Hallelujah. Jesus will help us whether the weather. Hurry off to TwinWorld, a shopping heaven, where even too much is never enough. Where truth is a lesson in forgetting. Few care we lied about Iraq’s arsenals. Few care that we’ve turned Afghanistan into one big jail (http://www.guardian.co.uk/afghanistan/story/0,1284,1440836,00.html). Few care that the guys who ordered the torture are promoted. Few care that we napalm civil rights at home, that there’s a hint of something smelly about the events of 9/11. What the Hell. The Twin Towers came tumbling down, but TwinWorld never stops spinning.

Not so fast, Mr President, people do care. Our numbers are understated, our voices muted, our “idealism” ridiculed. Mainstream media is your messenger, but it is not the only tongue in town. Truth is carried on the breath of child. The distracted majority are not always blind. A new poll shows that one third of the citizens of your close ally, Australia, regard US foreign policy as a global threat. Two thirds think the alliance is too intimate. But you don’t need a pollster to see which way the wind blows, just listen to the new music (it aint on the radio), talk to strangers, read the blogs, hear the jokes, check the local farmers markets, scan the foreign media…Today TwinWorld is dominant, but Another World is Possible. A world of many hues, diverse views; a community fiercely opposed to the militarisation of the planet, the jailing of refugees, the theft of nature, enslavement to the clock and the impoverishment of billions in order to fatten the few. In this world, trucks will be green-fuelled. The drivers will nap at a motel, and not at the wheel. It won’t be perfect, it won’t be a top-down ideology, it won’t turn shits into saints. Maybe it will be a bit fairer, maybe the weather will stabilise, maybe the goal of a pre-emptive “full spectrum dominance”, will no longer be considered sane.

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