Fort Hood Texas, and other places

1. fromWikipedia:

The Camp Liberty killings occurred on 11 May 2009, at military counseling clinic at Camp Liberty, Iraq. Sgt. John M. Russell, 44, of the 54th Engineering Battalion based in Bamberg, Germany, was taken into custody and charged with five counts of murder and one count of aggravated assault against soldiers—including those from the 55th Medical Company, according to Major General David Perkins (a spokesman for the U.S. army forces of the area).

Russell was being escorted from the clinic when he stole a weapon from a fellow soldier and drove to the clinic, where earlier he had been in a fight. He then opened fire there, killing five people.

President Barack Obama, in a White House statement, said he would speak to Defense Secretary Robert Gates about the matter, and that he was profoundly saddened by the news and determined to understand why it may have happened in order to do everything feasibly possible to make sure it never happened again.

It was the worst killing in the Iraq War against U.S. forces perpetrated by a fellow American servicemember.

A report was issued in October, 2009. Stars and Stripes summarized by writing in part "Despite years of emphasis on mental health issues, commanders in Iraq lack the necessary tools, training and guidance to deal with at-risk soldiers, according to an Army investigation into mental health services."

2. When I first heard about the shootings at Fort Hood, I actually thought about the guy who drove through the plate glass window of a Luby's in Killeen, back in October of 1991. He supposedly yelled, "this is what Bell County did to me" just before he started shooting. Killeen is just up the road from Ft Hood, and every time I drive to San Antonio to visit my family, I see the exit sign off I-35 that says Killeen/ Ft Hood.

The next thing I thought was 'damn. It's going to get bad again.' Because it will get bad, for us. I hate to say us, as opposed to you and me=us. A lot of Americans hear about things like this and reactively think in terms of "us versus them." (Fortunately, not all.) Well, we are them, and most of the time we don't think these things, but events like this make Arab-Americans a bit wary, especially those who look like we are from the middle east. I would venture to suggest that many Arab-Americans hearing about the shooting are feeling a strange ambivalence about Hasan's actions--protective concern about how readily the media and large numbers of our fellow citizens will eagerly demonize him, mixed with anger at him, thinking, "what did you hope to accomplish? Do you think you were making some kind of statement? Do you think you're the only who periodically grits his teeth and puts up with shit because he has to? Why didn't you just refuse to go? If you did that you'd be in the Ft. Hood stockade right now, instead of on life support."


3. This was Bernard Chazelle's response, which somewhat puzzled me. Maybe he was trying to be dryly ironic as another commenter suggested, but maybe I have difficulty with that kind of humor in this instance. I left this comment(slightly revised and expanded here):

What I see is different. The media is working to stir up resentment towards Middle-easterners in our midst, but also to seal off the cognitive dissonance that this horrible act represents-- the psychic toll that the wars take on the foot soldiers who serve the empire.In other words,

(1)stress he was sane, even though we don't know this.(that SOB Hindraker at Powerline is already calling Hasan a terrorist.)

Which dovetails into

(2)don't call too much attention to all the other military personnel who carry psychic wounds from their participation in our wars. Yes, we could care about them more, but what if it reminds us how fucked up and just plain wrong these wars are? And it seems to be working. Look at the mostly disgusting comments that follow this crazy WaPo article:

"Fort Hood attack is 3rd this year by antiwar radicals targeting military on U.S. soil"

And ultimately, the corporate media's job is to make sure that we avoid a sense of our common humanity-- it's important that we don't see Hasan's actions and the many suicides by vets returning from Iraq and Afghanistan as having anything in common, even though he listened to so many testimonies of soldiers referred to him precisely because they were deemed to be psychologically vulnerable. So we're supposed to see Hasan as sane and bad, and real American soldiers are sane and good, and when they crack it's because of their goodness, or maybe some other reason. But this dynamic can't apply to him, since he didn't crack but was cowardly and bad, and motivated by a deadly religion.

Damn you CNN, Fox News, CBS, ABC, Washington Post, MSNBC, etcetera. Damn all of you who deliberately misrepresent the psychiatric crisis our wars present. You knew how to make a fuss about inadequately armored Humvees, right? The Camp Liberty killings, horrible as they also were, were an opportunity to talk about the serious deficits in the Army's mental health resources for soldiers, but apparently this didn't interest you, what with John Russell being as Caucasian as he was. (Note how for Russell's standard newswire photo, above, they chose one with his ribbons and posed in front of a flag, unlike the standard one for Hasan.) Now, thanks to Nidal Hasan being as Arabic as he is, you have a figure you can talk about who's had a similar crackup but allows you to avoid the psychiatric dimension because he is a ready-made swarthy villain, and uncomplicated, infantilized popular approval of the military state is more important than attending to our broken ex-soldiers (like the ones he counseled), now that they've served their purpose.

A Star chamber

The DMCA, perhaps notably enacted when the last democrat was president, was bad enough. I don't remember the specifics of the progression of copyright law, but I seem to recall that in the 1790s copyright was for just 14 years. Under the DMCA it can be as much as 95 years for corporate-held copyrights, and the lifetime of the artist plus 70 for individuals and their estates, which is undoubtedly why so many dead people like Marilyn Monroe and Elvis are raking it in.

Now there's this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Counterfeiting_Trade_Agreement

via Avedon Carol:

In other news, you can kiss Flickr good-bye thanks to Mr. Internet-savvy Obama and his secret copyright treaty, which requires ISPs to go out of their way to police user-contributed material for copyright violations, to cut off internet access too anyone accused of such a violation (and anyone who shares the same net access), and make this insanity international. I just knew they were going to take this thing away from us....

Arthur Silber: "The Internet as You Know It Will Cease to Exist", who links to

Cory Doctorow:

The internet chapter of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, a secret copyright treaty whose text Obama's administration refused to disclose due to "national security" concerns, has leaked. It's bad. It says:

* That ISPs have to proactively police copyright on user-contributed material. This means that it will be impossible to run a service like Flickr or YouTube or Blogger, since hiring enough lawyers to ensure that the mountain of material uploaded every second isn't infringing will exceed any hope of profitability.

* That ISPs have to cut off the Internet access of accused copyright infringers or face liability. This means that your entire family could be denied to the internet -- and hence to civic participation, health information, education, communications, and their means of earning a living -- if one member is accused of copyright infringement, without access to a trial or counsel.

If you piss off a corporation-- or anybody substantially more powerful than you-- they can acuse you of copyright infringement and law enforcement takes your stuff away, maybe including your means to defend yourself. Sounds a little like the War On Drugs®, doesn't it?

She's a witch!

Incidentally, it's Guy Fawkes' night in the UK.

Is Karzai Krazy?

I don’t think so. An important part of any con is the details. The big con that is going down today is that the U.S. and its wavering bought and paid for “allies” are nation building in Afghanistan and laughably poor Iraq. Job number one of installing a puppet government – otherwise known as nation building – is you must create the appearance that your bought and paid for puppet government (Included in your nation building kit are one third world nation, one crooked thug to prop up as a leader, trillions of devalued dollars, your very own toy soldiers to do with as you will, and numerous moving and life-like targets to shoot)is legitimate. This is extremely important for the puppeteers because then all your bought and paid for friends in Europe and elsewhere can all pretend that the puppet government is legitimate so everyone can be ever so happy to pretend that they aren’t raping and pillaging. And everyone knows that the raping and pillaging is the best part! Surely Krazy Karzai knew this and since he was the only game left in town after he outmaneuvered his rival Abdullah Abdullah, John Kerry, Hillary Clinton and the rest of the lovelies he is of course now pronounced man and legitimacy and Obama can now forever hold his peace.

Of course Obama has lowered the doom of “or else” upon Krazy Karzai who has six months to clean up Dodge or get out of town. We’ll see. If I were Krazy Karzai I’d get those pearl handled six-shooters out and practice shooting some cans. We saw what happens to legitimate leaders once they fall out of favor with the Empire as in the case of Saddam. Still, it looks like Obama is stuck with his erstwhile pal Krazy Karzai for a little while and six months from now, well, a lot of things can happen in six months including unfortunate accidents.

In a way this is just justice. During the last election the big sell to the corporate kingpins coming from the Demokrat's korner was that they would be the steady hand behind the wheel of the imperial barge (barges are drawn by donkeys by the way). The Republican leadership was described as incompetent and the Democrats would be ever so much cleverer than W. Bush for they and they alone knew that the right and righteous war was in Afghanistan not silly old Iraq for Pete’s sake. And now here is the Democratic leadership with egg all over their faces, cheeks rosy and burning like a blushing bride with Krazy Karzai on their powdered schnozz in the form of a big ugly and hairy wart. If people weren’t dying I could laugh. Youz guys is Kompetent!

This is where the layers of hypocrisy and lies can tangle you up. The issue is not about who is competent and who isn’t. The issue isn’t about if we are winning or losing. The issue isn’t about a choice between Afghanistan and Iraq. The issue is and always has been the morality of attacking and occupying other nations under false pretenses in order to enrich a few of the most wealthy.

Three Drones are Better than One

Via Jonathan Schwarz

Link

The U.S. government runs two drone programs. The military’s version, which is publicly acknowledged, operates in the recognized war zones of Afghanistan and Iraq, and targets enemies of U.S. troops stationed there. As such, it is an extension of conventional warfare. The C.I.A.’s program is aimed at terror suspects around the world, including in countries where U.S. troops are not based. It was initiated by the Bush Administration and, according to Juan Zarate, a counterterrorism adviser in the Bush White House, Obama has left in place virtually all the key personnel. The program is classified as covert, and the intelligence agency declines to provide any information to the public about where it operates, how it selects targets, who is in charge, or how many people have been killed.

It seems obvious that one of the reasons for the popularity of using drones for assassination in Pakistan is that it doesn’t involve the deaths of U.S. soldiers. This must in part be driven by domestic politics for high body counts of U.S. soldiers make war unpopular and the Afghan War is already unpopular. So behold the cold calculated thinking behind the decision to escalate the use of drones by Obama who in nine and one half months authorized more drone attacks than W. Bush did in his last three years in office. On one side there is the desire of all leaders to retain and gain power (with war as the means) and on the other side there is the well known fact that large numbers of civilians including small children are slaughtered as a result of using drones. Guess which side won. It wasn’t the small children.

Let’s reduce this to the essentials. When it came to deciding between political self-interest and the lives of innocent civilians staying in power wins hands down. I doubt if much time was spent on deciding between the two. Certainly much less time than Obama’s little dog and pony show displaying his desire to appear wise and thoughtful right before he sends the next 45,000 or so troops to Afghanistan. Even if the Afghanistan War isn’t escalated the war would only shift to a different front with the same horrific results. Most of any fallout amongst our political class is due to disagreements on tactics and strategies. The wars themselves are never questioned, or rarely are, and will continue even as they are now on many fronts.

Recently I viewed a short video that appeared to be a rather lame propaganda piece. It shows some U.S. soldiers walking along in Afghanistan and as part of the winning hearts and minds plan a young soldier approaches a family in front of their hovel and introduces himself. “Hey, hi, like my name is Fred and I just wanted to say hey, hi, how ya doing?” Nothing could bring home the idea more than this video that teenagers with guns dressed up in battle gear are not going to bring social change to Afghanistan. Such insanity couldn’t be more forlorn or ridiculous. The scene with the soldier was ludicrous and bizarre to the point where you wondered where reality begins and ends.

Meanwhile behind this façade of “gosh golly gee whiz we’re just helping old Afghanistan women across streets” there is a steady drone of death in the background as the war of drones continues and escalates under Obama’s authorizations.

People often talk of changing other people. What in the world does that mean? Change what? Should people be bred to have three arms and four eyes? We complain that things need to change because someone is lording it over someone else yet in the end we who wish to change things in order to end one group from lording it over others is in itself an act of lording it over those who we wish to stop form lording it over others. I could go on but this is already asinine and maybe you see what I mean. I’m not asking people to suspend common sense because I don’t have to. We do it all the time. Liberals often are willing to overlook much just like their conservative brothers and sisters. This is part of the human condition not just the property of Republicans or Democrats. We too easily accept that our present reality is the only possible reality yet it is only one possibility out of countless others. What we accept as normal is more a product of our culture than any reflection upon reality.

People were horrified or alternately amused by the neocon who said we now make our own reality yet he was uncomfortably close to the truth. We do create our own reality. We do it all the time. The extreme right clings to Grandpa Reagan as if the old murderer embodied their vision of America. Liberals cling to the hope that Obama will mitigate some of the worst damage and who knows. Frankly I think it’s a pipe dream for by all the signs Obama has no interest in undoing any of the worst of W. Bush rather he seems to be expanding it. Further adding to the mix is that liberals aren’t all that disturbed when one of their favorite sons is bombing the hell out of someone as in the case of Bill Clinton and former Yugoslavia. If a Democratic president does it it’s because someone was really being bad and deserved it. Either that or it is just not discussed in politer circles. This is the folly of identity politics because identity politics isn’t about facts it’s about how people view themselves and its one way the ruling class keeps us enthralled and powerless through division.

Halloween 2009

some headlines, 31 October 2009:

• Cheney told FBI he had no idea who leaked Plame ID
• Geithner: Recovery could be 'a little choppy'
• Clinton calls Israeli concessions 'unprecedented'

That Unipolar Moment

Noam Chomsky recently wrote the following.

Link

Every powerful state relies on specialists whose task is to show that what the strong do is noble and just and, if the weak suffer, it is their fault.

In the West, these specialists are called "intellectuals" and, with marginal exceptions, they fulfill their task with skill and self-righteousness, however outlandish the claims, in this practice that traces back to the origins of recorded history.

You will recall how many of our leading politicians demanded that the people of Iraq stand up for themselves despite years of crippling sanctions sandwiched between two savage assaults the last firmly establishing a permanent U.S. military presence in Iraq after destroying the infrastructure, causing the death of over one million Iraqi, and millions more sent into exile. None of that mattered in the least for it was obviously the fault of the Iraqi people for not taking responsibility after all we had done for them. Or when Israel attacked Gaza at the beginning of the year it was the Palestinian’s fault for objecting to the loss of their land and rights as human beings under a brutal Israeli occupation. The truth was of course quite different than the official story. The attack on Gaza was just part – though one of the more brutal – of the ongoing practice of ejecting Palestinians from their land yet what we heard was Israel had a right to protect itself.

Not only does this idea of the strong being moral and just apply to how our government views our treatment of Iraq and Afghanistan it also applies to how the American public perceives itself and is perceived by our own government. Recall how just recently the military was disturbed by a lack of enthusiasm for the Afghan War by the American public and it was implied that if the military lost (whatever that means) it would be the fault of the American public. Then there is the housing bubble for who was blamed for that? Why those shiftless and no good losers who bought houses they could not afford. It certainly couldn’t have been the fault of predatory lending schemes cooked up by the banksters after Bill Clinton helped deregulate banking practices or the fault of Alan Greenspan who helped create the bubble.

Most Americans think in terms of winners and losers. Indeed the very idea that the strong are noble and the weak are mere human detritus strewn along the wayside left in the dust as the winners win is germane to the very essence of U.S. philosophy if it can be dignified as such. There is little doubt that many Americans feel superior to the peoples we subjugate by virtue of our wealth, sciences, and technology even if there is any empathy for the people we slaughter and murder on a daily basis. So we see people like Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama constantly call for other nations to live up to our standards with “or else” always tacitly in the background and very few bat an eye or wonder at the arrogance of it all because this state of mind is so ingrained into our world view.

It is interesting as more and more of the wealth is acquired by the top one percent (notice how I describe the winners as top, culture is hard to escape) that there are now so many losers that you would think that people might begin to question the value of this preposterous and dangerous philosophy. Don’t hold your breath. Some things take time. Lots and lots of time.

Quite frankly I don’t believe that any change of the status quo in foreign policy will be achieved from within the United States for more than one reason and not the least being the state of our world view as described above. However there is still cause for hope that things can change despite our militarized culture, economy, and philosophy because America’s unipolar moment as an economic power is likely coming to an end. How quickly this will occur I don’t know but as Chomsky points out other economic powers are rising which could pressure the U.S. to curb perhaps some of its more aggressive actions or as Chomsky puts it…

Though the world is unipolar militarily, since the 1970s it has become economically "tripolar," with comparable centers in North America, Europe and northeast Asia. The global economy is becoming more diverse, particularly with the growth of Asian economies.

A world becoming truly multipolar, politically as well as economically, despite the resistance of the sole superpower, marks a progressive change in history.

So this is a progressive change that is occurring despite U.S. foreign policy not because of it. And when someone says that it is your fault that wars are failing or that it is your fault that the government has been pandering to corporate America I would view such statements with much skepticism. Americans are victims, victims of their own government who clearly only represent corporate interests. This is the reason for the ongoing wars, people are getting rich off them like so many bloated ticks. I’m not saying the public is blameless but most of the ills result from the machinations of our own government and the corporations whose only real export is war.

I believe it is often the case that the public really gets a lot of things right as in not supporting the Afghan War or wanting a real single payer health plan not whatever garbage congress will churn out. People know when they are being screwed even if they cannot always define the particulars. National leaders endlessly infer that they know better than the public yet time and again the public has shown a much more realistic view of the world than our political leaders have. You know I almost believe that if America really had a democracy it might actually work rather well.

You should read Chomsky’s essay in its entirety but I would like to include one more important point Chomsky makes which is that Obama has merely continued with W. Bush’s policies albeit in a kinder and gentler delivery.

As Barack Obama came into office, former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice predicted he would follow the policies of Bush's second term, and that is pretty much what happened, apart from a different rhetorical style that seems to have charmed much of the world.

Even some of Obama’s staunchest defenders will fall silent under the above criticism because it is true. Obama is essentially carrying on with Bush policy which to my way of thinking makes Obama worse than Bush in that he can pursue the same policies with a good deal less criticism. Once W. Bush left office all the opposition to his policies fell silent for the most part.

So that’s where we are today pursuing the same policies with the same disregard for what it does to our victims and ourselves yet there is still cause for hope as other nations around the world move slowly towards more progressive societies in spite of the destabilizing influence of U.S. military adventurism.

dry hump days

First, before I lose focus, let me mention the wonderful Arthur Silber, who is again raising funds, and sounds like he's in a tight spot. He's not the only one of course, but if you value his work and are in a position to help him, or even if you just want to help him and can, please consider doing so.


2.I would like to flatter myself(ourselves?) and pretend that Joe Bageant is name-checking Dead Horse here, but it's unlikely:

"Raising Up Dead Horses":

...Somewhere in the smoking wreckage lie the solutions. The solutions we aren't allowed to discuss: adoption of a Wall Street securities speculation tax; repeal of the Taft-Hartley anti-union laws; ending corporate personhood; cutting the bloated vampire bleeding the economy, the military budget; full single payer health care insurance, not some "public option" that is neither fish nor fowl; taxation instead of credits for carbon pollution; reversal of inflammatory U.S. policy in the Middle East (as in, get the hell out, begin kicking the oil addiction and quit backing the spoiled murderous brat that is Israel.

Meanwhile we may all feel free to row ourselves to hell in the same hand basket. Except of course the elites, the top five percent or so among us. But 95 percent is close enough to be called democratic, so what the hell. The trivialized media, having internalized the system's values, will continue to act as rowing captain calling out the strokes. News gathering in America is its own special hell, and reduces its practitioners to banality and elite sycophancy...

the rest is here.

3. I'm sure Michael Lind is a nice enough person, but somehow his essays at Salon often grate on me, even when he observes something that strikes me as true. In "That sound you hear is the social fabric about to snap " he observes that the real unemployment is probably closer to 20 per cent, and I suspect he's right. But his essay makes him seem tone-deaf, as if he's simply talking about a puzzle that needs to be solved, and needs to be discussed in such a way as to demonstrate the cleverness of the writer, but completely disassociated from the human misery involved, and blithely ignoring the corruption that will prevent any of his dainty solutions from materializing.


4. Avedon Carol, "Waiting for Grandma to die"

It's worth remembering that a lot of the people who voted for Republicans because they are twitchy on social issues - still basically racist, still homophobic, still disgusted by hippies and wimmin's libbers - also still love their Social Security and Medicare and think they pay taxes so government can do things for them. They think businesses should not be able to break the law and poison, trick, or rob their customers. They think people who work hard and play by the rules should be able to retire in reasonable comfort and not be treated like dirt because they didn't happen to get immorally rich. They just don't realize that those are the real liberal policies that conservatives hate the most and are trying the hardest to get rid of.

But there's a younger generation out there that, as BDBlue points out, grew up in the Reagan era and doesn't even appreciate what Social Security has accomplished. Young, healthy kids who are now seeing Democrats who were put in power by liberals openly transferring taxpayers' wealth to criminal banksters, and who are about to force them to buy overpriced crappy insurance from the same criminals who've been denying them health care all along.

And the only people who are suggesting in public that these Democrats might be doing them wrong are...right-wingers whose stock-in-trade is bashing the left. And there's no one on TV telling them that it's not "blacks" and "liberals" and "gays" and "illegal aliens" who are responsible for this.

the passage above is of course only an excerpt. Please go read all of it.

Even though I wouldn't say I know her well, I've known Avedon and her writing a lot longer than Arthur Silber or Joe Bageant or any of my co-writers here at DH. In 2005 she discouraged me from going to Iraq as I announced that I planned to in 2007, and I didn't, although it was not because of her advice but the poverty I've experienced for most of the past 4 years. My point, however, is that Avedon has had a strong influence on my thinking about politics and our increasingly messed-up world, going back to when I first discovered the world of political blogs in 2002, and I'd even say she's helped me grow as a writer.

By that same token, her influence on my thought may help you to have a better perspective on my arguments, such as they are. For example, although I agree with Rob about the need to end the US imperial project, I really don't see how it's possible without shoring up the welfare state, and healthcare, and the economy. To me they're tied together, as our whole society seems to be predicated more and more on brutishness, on "looking out for number one," and to me this isn't simply random or culturally driven, but also driven by the structure of government, including the rotten fruits of Reaganism and the deliberate, decades-long project of tearing apart of the New Deal.

(And ironically Bill Clinton did a lot of this, even if he was also more sensible than his successor about paying the bills.)

How are you going to get ordinary people to care about Afghans getting blown up when 800 people show up to apply for just one crummy job as a meter reader? And the lucky schmoes who actually have half-way decent jobs, how do you get them to care about dismantling the empire when they're worried their health coverage may become similarly dismantled, and the press and President Smoke-and-Mirrors tell them the most they may hope for from the current healthcare 'reform' push is a government plan to sell people health insurance, when every other civilized country just provides healthcare-- i.e., allows you to pursue happiness without the fear or need for such insurance? I don't think you can.


Thursday, 22 October, some additional thoughts: I realize as I look at the above words that this argument is significantly incomplete. I don't want to suggest that arresting the US's economic slide and bolstering the social safety-net will suddenly make us a nation of Howard Zinns and Eleanor Roosevelts, but I do think it's a necessary condition for putting us on the right path. There's a lot more that needs to be addressed, from the infantilizing mission of corporate mass media to the amply demonstrated fact that US elites know they can largely ignore the more progressive impulses that popular majorities occasionally have, with no consequences. I was hoping some interesting commenters might leave some interesting comments and further the discussion, but maybe my rude title put them off, or something else... Anyway, I will return to this topic in a few days.