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Friday, April 04, 2003

Okay, and one more--Al-Jazeera got kicked out of Iraq...not by the Americans, but by the Iraqi government!

posted by Jenny at 2:17 AM |

The poetry of D.H. Rumsfeld

And one to keep you reading while I'm gone...

posted by Jenny at 2:15 AM |

I'm off to Èesky Krumlov for the weekend--it's a Bohemian hill town near the source of the Vlatava, near the mountains between Germany and the Czech Republic. Will be blogging sporadically until Monday or Tuesday. See you soon...

posted by Jenny at 2:09 AM |

Wednesday, April 02, 2003

Okay, after I post this last one, I´m REALLY leaving!

The smart donor´s guide to aid for Iraq

posted by Jenny at 8:16 AM |

Well, time to dart outside and find something to gnaw upon. Rainclouds have turned the Prague sky a curious yellow, but the city is still as beautiful as ever. It pays to visit in the "off-season", when the number of tourists isn´t overwhelmingly crushing. It´s also fun to tap into the American "expat" culture here, although I am glad I will be returning next week to a place where I know the country´s language. I will miss Poland and the Czech Republic a lot, though. On my train trip down from Krakow, I finished an excellent book by Ursula Hegi called "Stones from the River." Don´t know how to describe it in one fell swoop, but you guys should read it--one of the most haunting and enticing books I´ve picked up in a long time, and it speaks to our current situation as well as troubled histories from decades past. Anyways, I hope you enjoy the posts today--I´m off to roam the streets and look for the Prague Golem. Here are some great photos and more of the Bohemian captial.

posted by Jenny at 8:13 AM |

Brooke Biggs has a good post up on the Dixie Chicks and country music´s frightening conservative slant. I just can´t seem to let this one go--I´m buying their CD, too.

posted by Jenny at 8:01 AM |

Alternet reminds us not to forget Patriot II, hovering somewhere on Ashcroft´s horizon. Full text of the draft here in PDF format.

posted by Jenny at 7:55 AM |

Democracy Now has the scoop on independent journalists detained and physically and verbally harrassed for 48 hours by a group of American soldiers. This excerpt, also posted by Ampersand, is particularly scary:

Amy Goodman: Was one of the Portuguese reporters beaten up?

Dan Scemama: Yes. After we were arrested at six o’ clock in the morning by these guys, and at about 11:30 I think it was, some five and a half hours after we were arrested, he kind of lost his patience, the Portuguese guy, and they put us in our jeep, they closed us inside the jeep and they said we are not allowed to get out of the jeep and we are supposed to stay there.

And uh, so the Portuguese guy got out of the jeep, approached the army—the camp and said “Please, please, I am begging you, I have a wife and children. Let me just make a call, a telephone call to tell them that we are safe, that we are with you, the Americans and not with the Iraqis. They might think at home that we are killed by Iraqis. Please just let us tell them that.” And they said to him, “Go immediately to your car.” And he said, “Please I am begging you.” Five soldiers went out of the camp, jumped on him and started to beat him and to kick him.

We ran to his direction. They all put bullets inside the cannons of their guns, and they said if we move forward they shoot at us. We were standing like stupid guys. We saw our friend lying on the ground crying, hurting. They tied his hand behind his back. They took him into the camp. And after half-an-hour, they let him go, and came back to us all crying. And then came this Lieutenant Scholl. And he told us, “Don’t mess with my soldiers. Don’t mess with them because they are trained like dogs to kill. And they will kill you if you try again.”

Earlier in the interview, Scemama noted that some of the American troops he and his associates encountered had been sympathetic, encouraging, even helpful. How to describe what is happening to US military, civilians, etc.? Something is on the tip of my tongue, but I need more time to formulate it. I´ve been reading a novel on the rise of the National Socialists in Germany as I have visited sites pertaining to World War II and the Holocaust on this trip. The comparison between that very different and yet eerily similar war machine, the totalitarian systems of the Soviet "East", and the current dominant political culture of the United States--the symmetry and deviance between these need to be further mapped.

posted by Jenny at 7:51 AM |

Precision-guided weapons?

US aircraft hit a Red Crescent maternity hospital in Baghdad, the city's trade fair, and other civilian buildings today, killing several people and wounding at least 25, hospital sources and a Reuters witness said.

The attacks occurred at 9.30am (0630 BST) and caught motorists by surprise as they ventured out during a lull in the bombing. At least five cars were crushed and their drivers burned to death inside, Reuters correspondent Samia Nakhoul said.

Patients and at least three doctors and nurses working at the hospital were among those wounded.

The missiles obliterated wings of Baghdad's trade fair building, which lies next to a government security office that was apparently missed in the bombings.

posted by Jenny at 7:40 AM |

Remarks by Representative Dennis Kucinich on the House floor, yesterday:

Stop the war now. As Baghdad will be encircled, this is the time to get the UN back in to inspect Baghdad and the rest of Iraq for biological and chemical weapons. Our troops should not have to be the ones who will find out, in combat, whether Iraq has such weapons. Why put our troops at greater risk? We could get the United Nations inspectors back in.

...

Stop the war now. This war has been advanced on lie upon lie. Iraq was not responsible for 9/11. Iraq was not responsible for any role al-Qaeda may have had in 9/11. Iraq was not responsible for the anthrax attacks on this country. Iraq did not tried to acquire nuclear weapons technology from Niger. This war is built on falsehood.

Stop the war now. We are not defending America in Iraq. Iraq did not attack this nation. Iraq has no ability to attack this nation. Each innocent civilian casualty represents a threat to America for years to come and will end up making our nation less safe. The seventy-five billion dollar supplemental needs to be challenged because each dime we spend on this war makes America less safe. Only international cooperation will help us meet the challenge of terrorism. After 9/11 all Americans remember we had the support and the sympathy of the world. Every nation was ready to be of assistance to the United States in meeting the challenge of terrorism. And yet, with this war, we have squandered the sympathy of the world. We have brought upon this nation the anger of the world. We need the cooperation of the world, to find the terrorists before they come to our shores.

Stop this war now. Seventy-five billion dollars more for war. Three-quarters of a trillion dollars for tax cuts, but no money for veterans’ benefits. Money for war. No money for health care in America, but money for war. No money for social security, but money for war. We have money to blow up bridges over the Tigris and the Euphrates, but no money to build bridges in our own cities. We have money to ruin the health of the Iraqi children, but no money to repair the health of our own children and our educational programs.

Stop this war now. It is wrong. It is illegal. It is unjust and it will come to no good for this country.

Stop this war now. Show our wisdom and our humanity, to be able to stop it, to bring back the United Nations into the process. Rescue this moment. Rescue this nation from a war that is wrong, that is unjust, that is immoral.

posted by Jenny at 7:32 AM |

Politics is the art of making people indifferent to what should concern them. --Paul Valery

Cited in this article on the firing of Peter Arnett and the tentacles of the White House propaganda machine in the US media.

posted by Jenny at 7:29 AM |

One of the best peace poems ever, via ReachM High Cowboy, soon to head off into the blogosphere sunset...for now.

posted by Jenny at 7:24 AM |

Tom Tomorrow always finds the most interesting things...

posted by Jenny at 7:14 AM |

Foreigners need not attend

Just saw this post at Eszter´s (a new blog I´ve discovered)...it sums up the discrimination against foreign academics wanting to enter the United States for conferences, and the risks encountered by academic foreign residents of the US who want to travel abroad to present their work. Based largely upon this article. This makes the hair on the back of my neck rise when I think of the leagues of wonderful people who teach and work in US academia not born on American soil--in my wildest dreams, I can´t understand how the "war on terrorism" can justify this.

posted by Jenny at 7:12 AM |

Apologies in advance for today´s blogging...this Czech keyboard is incredibly confusing, so my wording may be strange and the punctuation is slightly off--but on the bright side, content is still there! Hang around, folks...

posted by Jenny at 7:01 AM |

As the estimable Oz could have told us a few weeks ago, the former Yugoslavia is coming increasingly under fire for its leaders´ participation in the Iraqi arms buildup--funny, Rumsfeld and all those other US government folks who shook Saddam´s hand back in the day don´t seem to be in any trouble at all...

posted by Jenny at 6:57 AM |

Monday, March 31, 2003

I'm going to go thwart my sore throat with some strong tea. Sadly, I will be leaving beautiful Krakow tomorrow--but the good news is I'll be in Prague where there are exquisite buildings, interesting people, and a center of English-speaking doctors for sick and weary travelers such as yours truly. Will write more when I'm settled in.

posted by Jenny at 3:01 AM |

Rock on, Geov Parrish:

For me, in many ways, the U.S. street demonstrations of the last week have been nearly as depressing as the invasion itself. They have been primal screams, by definition unsustainable, when what is desperately needed is sustainable responses. They have been expressions of what protesters have felt they need to say, rather that what protesters felt other Americans needed to see or hear. They have been reactions to what has been done, rather than demands for what should be done now. They have used the shopworn tactics, iconography, and slogans of 40 years of left street protest, which by definition are going to seem knee-jerk and irrelevant when what is being undertaken is in many ways so new and so dangerous we don't have words to do that danger justice.

And, by this conduct, they have turned their backs on the far broader segment of Americans who have in recent months also been alarmed by this government's direction, but who have over a matter of decades expressed quite clearly that they find the activist left's tactics, iconography, and slogans to be profoundly unappealing.

...

This is what powerlessness does. Primal screams (or canine begging) happen when there is nothing else left, when citizens feel not only that they have not been heard, but that by definition they will never be heard. It's barely removed from simply giving up and tuning out -- which is what more people in America than in any other Western democracy choose to do, and what many current activists, in this war as in past ones, will also choose to do.

The thing is, I don't want to be heard. I want the policies to change, the killing to stop, the living to start. If going mute would do that, I'd happily go mute. Policy change isn't simply a function of decibel level or of number of heads counted at a march; it's also a function of having clear policy alternatives, and putting into power people willing to enact those alternatives. Chanting "no justice, no peace! (Until we go home in an hour)" is easy; building long-term change is much harder. And "The People" know it.

Until two weeks ago, there was a clear alternative to war: the inspection process, which at minimum bought time, at best was a path out of an artificially induced, but nonetheless real, crisis. When that was lost, so too were many members of the new anti-war movement, because there was no "next step," no contingency plans in the peace movement's demands beyond lame and hypocritical calls to "support the troops." Possibilities abound, from a movement to have the U.N., rather than United States, take part or all of the post-invasion administration of Iraq, to a concerted push to unseat Bush in 2004. Yet at the moment more protesters are trying to impeach Bush (which is not, repeat not, repeat NOT going to happen) than to elect a Democratic president in less than 20 months.

...

The United States, at the moment, is careening away wildly from all but one country -- Israel -- in terms of how its public views the world. Israel is for many reasons a special case; born of the Holocaust, surrounded by countries that for decades were intent on its destruction, it's easy to see (though not to condone) how the Israeli public could embrace its current fortress mentality, and its attendant abuses.

America has no such claim; 9/11 was not the Holocaust, and this country, far from being threatened, has lived an existence of remarkable isolation and ease. Before the Cold War, it hadn't faced any meaningful external threat in over a century; even after a planet's worth of abuses inflicted in the name of that Cold War, it took another half-century before anyone caused harm on U.S. soil, and even then, it was a single act (so far) by an illegal private organization, not the army of a nation-state. To many around George Bush (and probably Bush himself), America's charmed history is a sign of America's unique partnership with Providence.

That sort of talk, and the power abuses now accompanying it, scare and enrage even traditional U.S. allies, who see it as evidence not of the moral authority of democracy and freedom, but the "might makes right" attitude of a bully. Among allies and around the world, people wonder why so few Americans seem willing to challenge this mindset from within, using a different type of moral claim.

For those of us who do want to challenge it, there's much we can't control. Barriers to such changes in U.S. public perception are formidable. The military complex in this country has enormous money behind it, enough to employ millions of people earning (except for the soldiers) a comfortable living building pieces of a repugnantly deployed whole. Mass media is currently dominated by a range of political opinion that makes Genghis Khan a centrist, and that acknowledges dissent usually only in the course of ridiculing it. Both major political parties are corrupted by corporate money almost beyond redemption.

But what we can control is what we say (and hear), how we act, who we appeal to and work with, and to what ends. Much of the political rhetoric in this country -- with or without a war in progress -- is so over the top and intolerant as to be anathema to a secular democracy, and many Americans know that, too. What is lacking is a coherent, appealing alternative. Times of crisis and maximum dissent are precisely when those alternatives should be on display -- not when they should be abandoned for the protest equivalent of comfort food.

posted by Jenny at 2:59 AM |

US leaders continue to challenge the European moratorium on genetically-modified foods, citing Third World reliance upon GM exports and the need for European support of developing economies involved in GM exchange. Hmm, so Europe is to blame that we've shoved these possibly hazardous products on the post-colonial export economies of Africa and beyond? Interesting.

posted by Jenny at 2:45 AM |

Anyone who tells me that Fox News doesn't have a pro-war slant should explain this article first.

posted by Jenny at 2:40 AM |

I'd heard about the Iraq Body Count website, but never seen it for myself until today. Check it out--and here's an article about the site from Wired.

posted by Jenny at 2:32 AM |

Friendly fire?

The latest episode of misfire between American and British forces--this time, says the Guardian, the attacked British soldiers can't control their anger...

posted by Jenny at 2:27 AM |

Sunday, March 30, 2003

Okay, I'm off to get some grub. More to come!

posted by Jenny at 7:18 AM |

Listen to the dolphin, folks

This shouldn't shock me, since I usually act jaded as a defense mechanism against outrage--but it's just pretty damn depressing that the US government conscripts dolphins and probably other animals to do their dirty work. I guess I'll have to figure out a way to boycott them just like Proctor & Gamble...nonetheless, kudos to Takoma, who is hopefully hanging out someplace warm and welcoming:

The US Marines have suffered an embarrassment with reports last night that one of their most prized investigators may have defected.
Takoma, the Atlantic bottle-nosed dolphin, had been in Iraq for 48 hours when he went missing on his first operation to snoop out mines.

His handler, Petty Officer Taylor Whitaker, had proudly showed off Takoma’s skills and told how the 22-year-old dolphin was among the most pampered creatures in the American military.

Takoma and his fellow mine hunters have a special diet, regular medical checks and their own sleeping quarters, which is more than can be said for the vast majority of the military whose domestic arrangements are basic, to say the least.

The wayward Takoma set out on the first mission with his comrade, Makai, watched by the cameras as the pair of dolphins somersaulted over the inflatable dinghy carrying their handlers.

Takoma’s role was to sweep the way clear for the arrival of the Royal Fleet Auxiliary, Sir Galahad. US officials had said that dolphins, first used in Vietnam, were a far better bet than all the technology on board the flotilla of ships.

Update: This article expounds upon the military's use of dolphins and also sea lions.

posted by Jenny at 7:16 AM |

Anybody ever heard of right-wing environmentalism?

posted by Jenny at 7:09 AM |

And now for something completely different--the official website of the Jewish Museum in Berlin, which is one of the best museums I've ever seen--integrating exhibitions with architecture, this complex imprints a hint of the psychological trauma incurred by the Holocaust, but also and just as importantly, an appreciation of the enduring contributions of Jewish peoples to European science, philosophy and society. I especially recommend the pages on the design of the site itself, which is fascinating and affecting.

posted by Jenny at 7:04 AM |

This is interesting--Michael Moore's latest project.

Update: MM on mass, advocacy, and the booing at the Academy Awards. Don't miss it!

posted by Jenny at 6:57 AM |

On yesterday's Alternet:

At least 50 people were killed in a crowded market in Baghdad from a missile attack -- the latest in a series of tragedies that are making Iraqis increasingly skeptical about the "war of liberation." It is unlikely that any of the U.S. networks will carry the images, but you can see BBC photographs of the devastating attack.

posted by Jenny at 6:56 AM |

Forget the international criminal court, we've got a hanging judge on this side of the Atlantic

This just in, via LMB:

"U.S. officials vowed Friday to vigorously prosecute members of the Iraqi military who they charge are committing a wide range of war crimes... the United States intends to conduct the prosecutions for crimes against U.S. combatants, rather than turn the defendants over to an international court or tribunal."

More.

posted by Jenny at 6:50 AM |

Ha! Okay, I'm late in the game, I know, but is anyone else excited that Perle is (under the cover of political martyrdom, seemingly) offering to retire from the Defense Policy Board?

posted by Jenny at 6:44 AM |

"We will turn Bush into a dog"

This article by Christopher Dickey (via Ash) speaks to the article by Burham al-Chalabi I posted last week. Yet another sources which helps distinguish the distinct differences between "Iraqi patriotism" and blind submission to Saddam Hussein.

posted by Jenny at 6:40 AM |

One Rule for Them

Here's that article I mentioned the other day. Written by George Monbiot, it appeared in last week's Guardian. The text details some of the finer points of US hypocrisy in regards to the Geneva Convention--perhaps the most powerful section is this one, which refers to the story of the massacre of prisoners of war by the Afghan Northern Alliance with the complicity of US military personnel stationed in the region:

[Rumsfeld's] prison camp in Guantanamo Bay, in Cuba, where 641 men (nine of whom are British citizens) are held, breaches no fewer than 15 articles of the third convention. The US government broke the first of these (article 13) as soon as the prisoners arrived, by displaying them, just as the Iraqis have done, on television. In this case, however, they were not encouraged to address the cameras. They were kneeling on the ground, hands tied behind their backs, wearing blacked-out goggles and earphones. In breach of article 18, they had been stripped of their own clothes and deprived of their possessions. They were then interned in a penitentiary (against article 22), where they were denied proper mess facilities (26), canteens (28), religious premises (34), opportunities for physical exercise (38), access to the text of the convention (41), freedom to write to their families (70 and 71) and parcels of food and books (72).

They were not "released and repatriated without delay after the cessation of active hostilities" (118), because, the US authorities say, their interrogation might, one day, reveal interesting information about al-Qaida. Article 17 rules that captives are obliged to give only their name, rank, number and date of birth. No "coercion may be inflicted on prisoners of war to secure from them information of any kind whatever". In the hope of breaking them, however, the authorities have confined them to solitary cells and subjected them to what is now known as "torture lite": sleep deprivation and constant exposure to bright light. Unsurprisingly, several of the prisoners have sought to kill themselves, by smashing their heads against the walls or trying to slash their wrists with plastic cutlery.

...

You would hesitate to describe these prisoners as lucky, unless you knew what had happened to some of the other men captured by the Americans and their allies in Afghanistan. On November 21 2001, around 8,000 Taliban soldiers and Pashtun civilians surrendered at Konduz to the Northern Alliance commander, General Abdul Rashid Dostum. Many of them have never been seen again.

As Jamie Doran's film Afghan Massacre: Convoy of Death records, some hundreds, possibly thousands, of them were loaded into container lorries at Qala-i-Zeini, near the town of Mazar-i-Sharif, on November 26 and 27. The doors were sealed and the lorries were left to stand in the sun for several days. At length, they departed for Sheberghan prison, 80 miles away. The prisoners, many of whom were dying of thirst and asphyxiation, started banging on the sides of the trucks. Dostum's men stopped the convoy and machine-gunned the containers. When they arrived at Sheberghan, most of the captives were dead.

The US special forces running the prison watched the bodies being unloaded. They instructed Dostum's men to "get rid of them before satellite pictures can be taken". Doran interviewed a Northern Alliance soldier guarding the prison. "I was a witness when an American soldier broke one prisoner's neck. The Americans did whatever they wanted. We had no power to stop them." Another soldier alleged: "They took the prisoners outside and beat them up, and then returned them to the prison. But sometimes they were never returned, and they disappeared."

Many of the survivors were loaded back in the containers with the corpses, then driven to a place in the desert called Dasht-i-Leili. In the presence of up to 40 US special forces, the living and the dead were dumped into ditches. Anyone who moved was shot. The German newspaper Die Zeit investigated the claims and concluded that: "No one doubted that the Americans had taken part. Even at higher levels there are no doubts on this issue." The US group Physicians for Human Rights visited the places identified by Doran's witnesses and found they "all... contained human remains consistent with their designation as possible grave sites".

It should not be necessary to point out that hospitality of this kind also contravenes the third Geneva convention, which prohibits "violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture", as well as extra-judicial execution. Donald Rumsfeld's department, assisted by a pliant media, has done all it can to suppress Jamie Doran's film, while General Dostum has begun to assassinate his witnesses.

It is not hard, therefore, to see why the US government fought first to prevent the establishment of the international criminal court, and then to ensure that its own citizens are not subject to its jurisdiction. The five soldiers dragged in front of the cameras yesterday should thank their lucky stars that they are prisoners not of the American forces fighting for civilisation, but of the "barbaric and inhuman" Iraqis.

The blogs have probably been all over this one already, but as I am still new to the blogosphere, I can't be sure. There's more on Jamie Doran, director of the documentary on the massacre, here and here.

posted by Jenny at 6:34 AM |

Howdy from Krakow. Despite fever and persistent sniffling, I am enjoying the beauty of Poland. The people are incredibly friendly there, despite the fact that I barely know a word of Polish. They are all rushing to learn English to cope with the influx of tourists from the West since the fall of the Iron Curtain, and it makes me sad, wondering how long it will take for "globalization" to fully extend its tentacles into the culture here. The process is well underway, if the number of McDonalds and foreigners are any indicator, but for some reason the hordes of tourists don't bother me here like they do in Prague, Cologne, and elsewhere. There is a palpable difference one registers when crossing the border into non-EU countries--the standards of personal equity applied in the EU are obviously lacking here, and it's clear that the powers that be will have to do a lot of work to get these countries up to speed by the date of their projected EU accession. Auschwitz is very close to here; we went yesterday and it was a jarring experience--like the Vietnam Wall, you can't know how you'll react to it until you are standing there, looking at the rows and rows of barracks, the confiscated goods of prisoners long dead, the ponds in which cremated remains were poured by the Nazis. It's going to take me awhile to deal with the things that I saw.

Since I'm dealing with the last stages of a cold, I'll be sticking around here for awhile, healing myself with stone soup and views of the incredible architecture. I'll do my best to get back to you folks tomorrow or Tuesday. Stay out of trouble!

posted by Jenny at 6:24 AM |