An outstanding documentary on Al Jazeera about desparate Ukrainian miners working abandoned mines to salvage coal which was previously thought uneconomical to extract. These people risk their lives to eek out a meagre living.
The slapped-on happy-ending makes it easier to watch, but I can’t help but wonder what Democracy and the end of the Soviet Union really got them. Their daughters now populate brothels in Germany and elsewhere–willingly and otherwise. Sex tourism and mail-order brides have become the lot of them.
This very disturbing report shows just some of the casualties of the tragedy in Iraq. The blame lies directly with the American neo-cons/Likudniks who started this war; the Saudis who spawned the madness of the Salafis/Wahabis; the Baathists and whoever else triggered, or fanned the flames of, civil violence.
In the Jordanian capital Amman, a hospital receives the wounded from the war in Iraq. These women and children are injured by bombs on marketplaces, light or heavy artillery and military bombardments. They cannot be treated in Iraq as the medical services there are overwhelmed. FRANCE 24’s reporters went to meet them.
The “Jesus Was an Arab” essays are now for sale, at $0.99, on amazon.com. Also included is the critique of Bernard Lewis’s book, What Went Wrong?, and an excerpt from a literary novel I have published under a different pseudonym.
I expect that, at some point, other essays will be compiled into a second book. But, with all the other writing that I do, and my day-job, its time-line is entirely unclear!
Let me see if I get this: We are supposed to fear an assumed attack by weapons from yet-to-be-completed nuclear programs from countries whose nuclear belligerence is entirely unproven?
Throughout the Cold War, we lived in constant fear/awareness of mushroom clouds rising over our cities. The scene in the film Terminator 2, with a nuclear explosion over Los Angeles, merely rendered what was long the stuff of nightmares for anyone with a modicum of political awareness.
And they have already polluted us with hundreds of atmospheric, let alone other, nuclear tests. How many Chernobyl’s is that? The Western powers had (and still have) enough missiles to annihilate life on this planet. And most of Earth’s population had not even an indirect say in this.
And yet we are to fear Iran! (And Iraq, before that, propagated by the same people.)
Never under-estimate the power of propaganda. Sheer repetition always works. For years, MSM opened its reports about Iran’s supposed program with the question, “Does Iran have a nuclear weapons program?” They had nothing else, but repetition insinuated much. It worked for Iraq (“Does Iraq have WMDs?”), so it should work for Iran as well, they think.
Meanwhile, the Star Wars program got pushed, and no mention was made of US’s withdrawal from the ABM Treaty. Again, anyone who lived through those years, knows the significance of such treaties, and how hard they were to establish.
Chris Matthews goes over the discredited reasons, too. (He remains the only one who mentions the human cost to Iraq, though his “100,000″ casualties count is far less than the million–give or take a hundred 9/11s–estimated by others.)
Quoting Matthews, from the above, addressing CFR’s Dan Senor (who is rephrasing the old neo-con lines):
I think very few other presidents would have taken us to war. I don’t even think Reagan would have taken us to war. It took a unique combination of a president who knew very little of foreign policy and lacked the philosophical base to fight with you guys and Dick Cheney, who wanted war in the worst way.
So what was the reason? Why was Iraq invaded? American progressives and the European left like to say that it was for oil. But Saddam was already selling dirt-cheap oil to us! When we tried to stop him, he spent more than a decade trying to sneakily sell oil to whoever was buying. He was put in power by us, and he had even asked our permission before invading Kuwait. So his oil was ours for all intents and purposes anyway!
Is the suggestion that Big Oil wanted him gone? That’s nonsense! Business seeks stability; the whole modus operandi of the American empire is to bully foreign countries into creating environments friendly to American business. Saddam was already on our side!
As for the question of Cheney’s motive, it has continued to remain unanswered–in fact, largely unaddressed! Even if we’d attempted to impeach the pulseless Darth Vader for an answer, he may have pulled a Pinochet on us!
Oil may win as an interim alibi. But the ones who steer and shape the intellectually challenged segments of the population will inevitably point out the obvious hole in the story. The pertinent question is: What will average people think the reason was, ten years from now? What will returning soldiers think to be the root cause of their disfigurements?
Hard-nosed analysis is neither an inclination nor comfortable territory for most people. Policy nuances will escape them. If an attempt to give them health insurance causes paranoid fears, what reasons will they find for this war? Even if we discount the lunatic fringe of the Birthers and the Deathers, one still has to keep in mind how easily misled a large chunk of the US populace was with respect to Iraq–and so how easily misleadable.
I remember reading an article, in the Manchester Guardian, soon after 9/11, by an academic who said that, in its early years, Islam was not considered a religion distinct from Christianity. The similarities were such that it was viewed as merely a sect of Christianity.
Not surprisingly, I never heard that argument ever again. Though it immediately rang true–as it likely would to a dispassionate individual with elementary curiosity–it did not serve the emerging narrative.
The storm over the Islamic community centre near Ground Zero, and the threatened Quran-burning in Florida, are the natural conclusions of a narrative which pitted Islam as the enemy. And this strategy was wholly necessary: to have done otherwise would have been to face the real reasons why such an attack had taken place. There would not have been an irrational, invisible, omnipresent enemy, but the cold reality of an entire planet with accusing fingers pointed at us.
This is not to say that such a strategy was orchestrated at the governmental level. Interested parties did, and do, exist, but there are limits to even their power. The infection spread because there was a willing host. Even as cretinous an explanation as “They hate us because we love freedom” is a bit too abstract for the masses: it lacks a hook-nosed, or slanty-eyed, Other to viscerally hate! It’s about as politically correct as an antagonist description could get. Even the Who-could-possibly-object-to-that! simplicity of “War on Terror” failed to be much more than a brand for our wars. (Perhaps naming it Belligerence Against Bellicosity would have been more in-sync with the mood of the populace.)
There is a large segment of the public which needs a Bad Guy, and there are powerful operators ready to provide one for them. As no lesson in political economy will fill that void for them, then we have arrived at only a natural conclusion for the chosen narrative.
Update: This Rachel Maddow commentary touches on related territory. (Even if it didn’t, it’s typically brilliant! )
Whatever happened to Kyoto? I don’t think I even hear of it anymore!
I remember, when it was first being negotiated, reading bits and pieces, here and there, about it. I was not even following the news with particular attention; people worthier than me were fighting that cause. But the impression I had gotten was that more and more was being trimmed off of it as time went by. The final agreement was a mere ghost of what environmentalists had originally hoped for.
In the years following the agreement, I watched as the struggles to bring it into effect took place. The sense of urgency, and the passion with which this was being conveyed to everyone, made me question my recollection, or interpretation, of the Protocol’s compromises. Activists and scientists fought for even the empty shell that was left!
Then, a year or two ago, I saw a documentary which mentioned, almost incidentally, how devastating the impact of the final agreement was on a group of environmentalists: they were absolutely demoralized!
And yet even this castrated treaty did not get implemented!
What do we see now that the North-West Passage is becoming free of ice? They’re scrambling to dig it up for oil! It makes you wonder whether, as a species, we deserve to survive!
There is a vast difference between how religious the United States was a few decades ago, and how it has become so now. I used to call it the Christian Republic of America due to an increasing level of religious fundamentalism which one would normally associate with Iran. However, the citizenry of the latter are fond of saying that the Islamic Revolution turned Iran into a nation of atheists! Meanwhile, the Red States have bled all over the map of the United States.
I think that, increasingly, a case can be made for a land swap. All the Middle Easterners who want freedom should move to the US, and the Christians and other Zionists can move to the Middle East. It will work perfectly: the god people will get their End of Days and their oil—-and they’ll get to walk in the desert for forty centuries if they want—-and the logical heathens will get to abort and curse and drink and smoke with only rational limits.
It’s the perfect solution to Israeli occupation as well.
Admittedly, there may be a conflict between the Jewish, Islamic, and the newly-arrived Christian fundamentalists. But I suspect that they will have far more in common than with the heathens that they used to be stuck with.
Yet another food recall! It seems to be the norm nowadays. Even seemingly unprocessed vegetables—-eg bagged salad—-or organic vegetables cannot be trusted!
Now, of course, the public is demanding more regulations. But it was them who voted for deregulation back in the 80s and 90s. They gutted the relevant departments just so they could get a few dollars back in tax refunds! All the talk against “big government”, and for private enterprise, has led to its logical conclusion.
I remember seeing an interview with David Waltner-Toews, author of “The Chickens Fight Back: Pandemic Panics and Deadly Diseases that Jump from Animals to People.” His argument was that industrial agriculture, with its battery cages, has created the perfect breeding ground for new diseases: pathogens evolve rapidly, and lethally, and they never run out of hosts.
But the public continues to fail to see the link between its past choices, and the consequences it faces today.And the politicians have no choice but to avoid pointing that out to them.
We know that the next food recall will be soon. And I wonder when the next global pandemic threat is going to arise!
A Beat, a Bong, and a Bang
Billy Does a Right-Wing Pundit
Billy Does a Vampire in a Tree
Jesus Was an Arab
Mescaline Catechism
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