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Saturday, April 12, 2003

Strange goings-on at the baseball hall of fame. The organization's president canceled a 15th-anniversary showing of Bull Durham, ostensibly to punish Tim Robbins for his political activism; apparently the actor had not even been scheduled to speak at the event. In response, Roger Kahn called off his planned speech at the Hall of Fame, accusing the president of

…far from supporting our troops, defying the noblest of the American spirit. You are choking freedom of dissent. How ironic. In theory, at least, we have been fighting this war to give Iraqis freedom of dissent.
But here you, through the great institution you head, have moved to rob Tim Robbins, Susan Sarandon and Ron Shelton of that very freedom. In support of the American right to dissent, I have no choice but to cancel my August speaking appearance at the Hall.

The Hall of Fame has received over 500 emails in response to their decision, and you can contact them with your thoughts here.

posted by Jenny at 9:15 AM |

Auuuuuugh (actually not war-related!)

Hollywood megalomania soars to new and vomitous heights: Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck have secured a deal to remake Casablanca! There's an online petition for expressing your horror here...

posted by Jenny at 9:14 AM |

If you have been a bit wary-yet-approving of Code Pink, maybe Amp can help you put that wariness into words. Plus he links to a great feminist essay.

posted by Jenny at 4:15 AM |

You know, it's simply amazing how many things I learn from Lying Media Bastards. And how much great reading material I find.

There’s almost nothing you can’t get away with doing to an American. Take away his health insurance and he’s likely to fall to his knees in gratitude. You can tell him to his face that you’re pulling funding for his kids’ schools in order to bail out some millionaire stockbroker in Connecticut who overbet the peso–and he not only won’t get mad, he’ll swell up with pride and burst out singing the "Star-Spangled Banner." You can even steal his pension and gamble it away in Vegas, and the most he’ll do is sulk a little.

In those rare cases when an American gets mad, what he usually does is wait four years to vote for an identical candidate. Push him a little farther over the edge, and he may flirt with a hopeless third-party politician or write a sarcastic letter to the New York Times. And when he becomes disconsolate, when he finally decides to take to the streets, look out–because now he’s a real threat–standing in some park or other publicly sanctioned place, and chanting goofy slogans while carrying a poster of George Bush with a crayon-drawn forked tail.

The White House expected the Iraqis to line up like redcoats with their muskets drawn in single-rank formation because that’s what we do. Whatever they tell us the permissible means of protest is, that’s what we do. If the permit for the demonstration is at an abandoned drive-in fifty miles from the nearest town, we show up there, brows furrowed and banners waving, in huge numbers. While the generals point at high-tech maps on all the major networks, we sit there babbling into the crackly dissenter line on C-SPAN at two in the morning. There would probably still be kings playing croquet on the grounds of Versailles today if the tactics of the French revolution had been like this–better heed us peasants, messieurs, or we’ll send twice the usual amount of mail to our congressmen.

...

People like me are part of the problem, too, which is why I’m even on the subject. I could make myself feel better about things by writing glibly about this or that government lie, but that’s really what it accomplishes–making me feel better.

In fact, the whole business of keeping track of media deceptions has become an unusually ridiculous exercise, and one would need a thousand pages a week to even begin to do a decent job of it.

You have to wonder after a while whether this is a good use of my or anyone else’s time, racing to keep track of the unceasing string of sensational headlines that turn out ten minutes later to be idiotic fabrications: the Basra uprising that wasn’t, the deployed Scud missile that wasn’t, the seizure of Basra that wasn’t, the uncovered secret chemical weapons factory that was damning proof of the existence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction–except that it wasn’t–the missiles that landed in Turkey and Iran that weren’t ours until they were, the civilians we didn’t bomb at two different marketplaces in Baghdad, the mass surrenders that weren’t, and so on.

...

After a while, it’s simply not dignified to freak out over each of these things individually. The dignified thing to do is to recognize once and for all the essential nature of what we’re up against, and then fight it. Don’t write petitions or make appeals, don’t sing songs, don’t wait for someone up there to change their "minds." Just fight it. And make it hurt.

Wall Street supports this war. How do you think it would react if all 30 percent of the country that opposes the war decided one day to dump all of its stock? A self-defeating gesture, to be sure, but we didn’t get to drink the British tea, either. CNN and FOX are making a killing waving a flag for the Pentagon. Why not start boycotting their advertisers one at a time until they pull their spots? Does Dell really want that "Dude, you’re getting a Dell" kid to be turned into a symbol of the war machine on college campuses?

Hell, forget about boycotting just Dell. Boycott everything. If even this minority of the population could go a month without over-consuming, it would give corporate America an aneurysm. Just one month of no new cars, no new hoop shoes, no Atlantic records, no Kellogg’s Fruit Harvest, no nothing but the bare minimum.

For years, corporate America and the media have tried to convince us that buying things is a political act, a way of expressing our individuality (Fruitopia instead of flower power, Nikes sold to the tune of "Revolution," peace signs on the walls of Starbucks). Well, let’s call their bluff. Let’s non-participate. Let’s go on consumer strike. Pull a slowdown. We don’t have a lot of choices when it comes to voting for politicians, but when it comes to buying, where our existence is actually necessary, we have a thousand choices a day. It might be the only method we have of making the decision-making class pay attention to our concerns.

Hell, let’s try something, anyway. Because what we’re doing now is just what they expected–nothing.

posted by Jenny at 3:57 AM |

Friday, April 11, 2003

Nice...according to Al-Jazeera, Britain admits there may be no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

posted by Jenny at 12:29 PM |

I think it was a Guardian writer who referred to him as Marx meets Goebbels--here's a fabricated Q&A with Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf. Either way, it's hysterical as hell. Here's an excerpt, go here to read Woundwort's full post.

Reporter #1: Do you still believe that you are winning this war, even though your city is swarming with coalition forces?

MSa-S: Absolutely. Do you not believe it? What war are you watching?

Reporter #1: I'm watching all of your buildings being blown up, and your citizens pulling down statues of Saddam and hitting them with their shoes.

MSa-S: Ignorant infidel, you understand nothing. We have instructed our people to tear those statues down because they are old and we are planning to put up new, bigger statues in their place. They are beating them with their shoes to try and make the pieces small enough to be carried away.

Reporter #2: Okay, to follow-up with that line of questioning, did Saddam know that his phone calls were being monitored by allied intelligence groups?

MSa-S: Of course he knew, he knows all. He continued speaking on them to gain proof of this. Now we are able to ask for a refund from the British company who sold us the technology since they assured us at the time that the signals could not be decoded. Another example of the British being dishonest businessmen.

Reporter #2: Right, well what do you say to the rest of world who sees these coalition forces storming Saddam's palaces at will and taking control of the city of Baghdad?

MSa-S: We have them right where we want them.

Reporter #3: Sir, has anyone told you that you bear a great resemblance to the Black Knight in the Monty Python film?

MSa-S: No, but I am honored. I am sure this Black Knight was a brave warrior.

Reporter #3: Yes, of course he was, but he had no arms or legs.

MSa-S: More evidence of his valor.

Via The RANT.

posted by Jenny at 9:56 AM |

"Astonishing coincidence", my foot. Funny to think that when I started this blog I was going to try to keep sarcasm out of my opinionated attitudes, or maybe vice versa...

posted by Jenny at 8:28 AM |

By the way, Utne and Capitol Hill Blue say that the GOP engineered all those anti-Dixie Chick protests last month...

posted by Jenny at 8:20 AM |

Experts Say US 'Discovery' of Nuclear Materials in Iraq was Breach of UN-Monitored Site

When the military stumbled across that underground facility the other day, I did actually catch my breath and wonder if those pesky WMD were actually out there, unbeknownst to the inspectors. But I just saw this on Common Dreams:

VIENNA, Austria -- American troops who suggested they uncovered evidence of an active nuclear weapons program in Iraq unwittingly may have stumbled across known stocks of low-grade uranium, officials said Thursday. They said the U.S. troops may have broken U.N. seals meant to keep control of the radioactive material.

Leaders of a U.S. Marine Corps combat engineering unit claimed earlier this week to have found an underground network of laboratories, warehouses and bombproof offices beneath the closely monitored Tuwaitha nuclear research center just south of Baghdad.

The Marines said they discovered 14 buildings at the site which emitted unusually high levels of radiation, and that a search of one building revealed ''many, many drums'' containing highly radioactive material. If documented, such a discovery could bolster Bush administration claims that Saddam Hussein was trying to develop nuclear weaponry.

Lt. Cmdr. Charles Owens, a spokesman for the U.S. Central Command, said officials there have not heard anything through military channels about a Marine inspection at Tuwaitha.

The Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency, which has inspected the Tuwaitha nuclear complex at least two dozen times and maintains a thick dossier on the site, had no immediate comment.

But an expert familiar with U.N. nuclear inspections told The Associated Press that it was implausible to believe that U.S. forces had uncovered anything new at the site. Instead, the official said, the Marines apparently broke U.N. seals designed to ensure the materials aren't diverted for weapons use or end up in the wrong hands.

''What happened apparently was that they broke IAEA seals, which is very unfortunate because those seals are integral to ensuring that nuclear material doesn't get diverted,'' the expert said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Update: I've fixed the link above, sorry about that!

posted by Jenny at 8:19 AM |

I'm recommending this article by George McGovern for several reasons...first of all, because it's great to hear politicians from times past holding to their principles, unafraid and willing to speak; second, because my parents campaigned for him and I'm proud of them; third, he's just damn cool.

posted by Jenny at 7:51 AM |

Julian Barnes has a pretty good rant up in today's Guardian. I like the way he couches things in terms of "peacenik" versus "warnik"...

posted by Jenny at 7:44 AM |

From SF Street Sheet, via Brooke Biggs:

The cost of the first 25 Tomahawk missiles launched in the first hour of the first day in the war with Iraq was more than fifty times the annual HUD budget to end homelessness in America.
[CNN - March 20, 2003]

posted by Jenny at 7:35 AM |

Thursday, April 10, 2003

War is over...if you want it

Cowboy Kahlil recently asked us to think about shutting down the blogosphere today in a moment of silence for all of those who have died or been affected by this war. I think it's a great idea, and I'm going to cease posting until tomorrow, and ending with this peace prayer.

Pray for Peace

Pray to whoever you kneel down to:
Jesus nailed to his wooden or marble or plastic cross,
his suffering face bent to kiss you,
Buddha still under the Bo tree in scorching heat,
Yahweh, Allah, raise your arms to Mary
that she may lay her palm on our brows,
to Shekinhah, Queen of Heaven and Earth,
to Inanna in her stripped descent.

Hawk or Wolf, or the Great Whale, Record Keeper
of time before, time now, time ahead, pray. Bow down
to terriers and shepherds and siamese cats.
Fields of artichokes and elegant strawberries.

Pray to the bus driver who takes you to work,
pray on the bus, pray for everyone riding that bus
and for everyone riding buses all over the world.
If you haven't been on a bus in a long time,
climb the few steps, drop some silver, and pray.

Waiting in line for the movies, for the ATM,
for your latté and croissant, offer your plea.
Make your eating and drinking a supplication.
Make your slicing of carrots a holy act,
each translucent layer of the onion, a deeper prayer.

Make the brushing of your hair
a prayer, every strand its own voice,
singing in the choir on your head.
As you wash your face, the water slipping
through your fingers, a prayer: Water,
softest thing on earth, gentleness
that wears away rock.

Making love, of course, is already a prayer.
Skin and open mouths worshipping that skin,
the fragile case we are poured into,
each caress a season of peace.

If you're hungry, pray. If you're tired.
Pray to Gandhi and Dorothy Day.
Shakespeare. Sappho. Sojourner Truth.
Pray to the angels and the ghost of your grandfather.

When you walk to your car, to the mailbox,
to the video store, let each step
be a prayer that we all keep our legs,
that we do not blow off anyone else's legs.
Or crush their skulls.
And if you are riding on a bicycle
or a skateboard, in a wheel chair, each revolution
of the wheels a prayer that as the earth revolves
we will do less harm, less harm, less harm.

And as you work, typing with a new manicure,
a tiny palm tree painted on one pearlescent nail
or delivering soda or drawing good blood
into rubber-capped vials, writing on a blackboard
with yellow chalk, twirling pizzas, pray for peace.
With each breath in, take in the faith of those
who have believed when belief seemed foolish,
who persevered. With each breath out, cherish.
Pull weeds for peace, turn over in your sleep for peace,
feed the birds for peace, each shiny seed
that spills onto the earth, another second of peace.
Wash your dishes, call your mother, drink wine.

Shovel leaves or snow or trash from your sidewalk.
Make a path. Fold a photo of a dead child
around your VISA card. Gnaw your crust
of prayer, scoop your prayer water from the gutter.
Mumble along like a crazy person, stumbling
your prayer through the streets.

posted by Jenny at 4:11 AM |

A couple of interesting ones via LMB:

Bamboozled by ads--a Tom Paine interview examining links between advertising and propaganda. Interesting insight here...

"Saving Private Lynch"--race, class, and gender in the reporting on the rescued POW.
And he's got tons more where that came from...

posted by Jenny at 2:35 AM |

Ever read news that just makes you splutter?

"I am writing to you about a once in a lifetime opportunity to join a group of warriors at the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School at Fort Bragg … THE PURPOSE OF THE GATHERING? It is believed by you, me and others that we must find a group of men who are warriors of FAITH, pastors who have the guts to lead this nation to Christ and revival." -- Reverend Bobby Welch, pastor of Daytona Beach, Flordia's, First Baptist Church, inviting fellow Southern Baptists to hang with the Green Berets on April 22 and 23.

It sounds huge fun. Welch promises participating clergy a Special Forces demonstration of "today's war fighting weapons" (with "live fire/real bullets"), a hand-to-hand combat demonstration, a visit to the "Shoot House" to learn how "Special Forces attack the enemy inside buildings (live fire/real bullets)" and time with Major General William Boykin, an evangelical Christian and commander of the special warfare center. This is not the first time Pastor Welch and Maj. Gen. Boykin have collaborated on a special forces / evangelical Christian motivational retreat. But this year, as we wage war to liberate a Muslim nation, it seems in particularly bad taste to Americans United for Separation of Church and State. "Our military has no business using its resources to aid evangelism," says the group's executive director. "It is especially outrageous to hold this kind of event at a time when America's relationship with Muslim countries is strained. This sends exactly the wrong signal at the wrong time."

Hmmm, and I thought Islam was a "warlike faith"?

posted by Jenny at 2:26 AM |

Wednesday, April 09, 2003

Another one via Ampersand...True Majority has a graph up on how Congress allocates its money...look at the great things we could do if the Pentagon's budget was cut by 15%! There's also a form letter to talk to your Congressfolk about this...

posted by Jenny at 3:20 PM |

Rock on, Michael Moore

A few days ago I posted the text of MM's Oscar speech, as well as his immediate reflections thereupon. Well, here he goes again, dispelling the myth that speaking out incurs silencing from the Powers That Be:

The next day -- and in the two weeks since -- the right-wing pundits and radio shock jocks have been calling for my head. So, has all this ruckus hurt me? Have they succeeded in "silencing" me?

Well, take a look at my Oscar "backlash":

-- On the day after I criticized Bush and the war at the Academy Awards, attendance at "Bowling for Columbine" in theaters around the country went up 110% (source: Daily Variety/BoxOfficeMojo.com). The following weekend, the box office gross was up a whopping 73% (Variety). It is now the longest-running consecutive commercial release in America, 26 weeks in a row and still thriving. The number of theaters showing the film since the Oscars has INCREASED, and it has now bested the previous box office record for a documentary by nearly 300%.
-- Yesterday (April 6), "Stupid White Men" shot back to #1 on the New York Times bestseller list. This is my book's 50th week on the list, 8 of them at number one, and this marks its fourth return to the top position, something that virtually never happens.
-- In the week after the Oscars, my website was getting 10-20 million hits A DAY (one day we even got more hits than the White House!). The mail has been overwhelmingly positive and supportive (and the hate mail has been hilarious!).
-- In the two days following the Oscars, more people pre-ordered the video for "Bowling for Columbine" on Amazon.com than the video for the Oscar winner for Best Picture, "Chicago."
-- In the past week, I have obtained funding for my next documentary, and I have been offered a slot back on television to do an updated version of "TV Nation"/ "The Awful Truth."

I tell you all of this because I want to counteract a message that is told to us all the time -- that, if you take a chance to speak out politically, you will live to regret it. It will hurt you in some way, usually financially. You could lose your job. Others may not hire you. You will lose friends. And on and on and on.

Take the Dixie Chicks. I'm sure you've all heard by now that, because their lead singer mentioned how she was ashamed that Bush was from her home state of Texas, their record sales have "plummeted" and country stations are boycotting their music. The truth is that their sales are NOT down. This week, after all the attacks, their album is still at #1 on the Billboard country charts and, according to Entertainment Weekly, on the pop charts during all the brouhaha, they ROSE from #6 to #4. In the New York Times, Frank Rich reports that he tried to find a ticket to ANY of the Dixie Chicks' upcoming concerts but he couldn't because they were all sold out. (To read Rich's column from yesterday's Times, "Bowling for Kennebunkport," go here. He does a pretty good job of laying it all out and talks about my next film and the impact it could potentially have.) Their song, "Travelin' Soldier" (a beautiful anti-war ballad) was the most requested song on the internet last week. They have not been hurt at all -- but that is not what the media would have you believe. Why is that? Because there is nothing more important now than to keep the voices of dissent -- and those who would dare to ask a question -- SILENT. And what better way than to try and take a few well-known entertainers down with a pack of lies so that the average Joe or Jane gets the message loud and clear: "Wow, if they would do that to the Dixie Chicks or Michael Moore, what would they do to little ol' me?" In other words, shut the f--- up.

posted by Jenny at 8:15 AM |

John Sutherland in Monday's G2 asserts that there is "one source of reliable information on this war--and it's coming from Russian spies".

GRU [Glavnoye Razvedyvatelnoye Upravleniye, the espionage arm of the Russian military] is the most sophisticated agency of its kind in the world. And, since Glasnost, the most transparent. GRU has thousands of agents worldwide (especially in countries such as Iraq, where Russia has traditional trade links). Intelligence has always been a top priority for Ivan. The number of agents operated by the GRU during the Soviet era was six times the number of agents operated by the KGB.

Russia, superpower that it was, still has spy satellites, state-of-the-art interception technology and (unlike the CIA) men on the ground. The beauty of GRU is that it does not (like the CIA) report directly to the leadership but to the Russian ministry of defence. In its wisdom, it makes its analyses publicly available. These are digested as daily bulletins on www.iraqwar.ru [English translation here].

The Russians have a contrarian view on the current conflict. What was it Kissinger said about the Iran-Iraq war - "Ideally we'd like both sides to lose"? That's what the Kremlin thinks about Operation Free Iraq.

From its neutral stance, GRU offers detailed, top-grade, and wholly unspun analysis. The bulletins are in Russian (bilingualism is suddenly in demand on Wall Street). You can get English translations a day later on Venik's Aviation website (www.aeronautics.ru).

Excellent as Suzanne Goldenberg's dispatches and Dan Chung's pictures are, anyone who wants to know what is really going on at the gates of Baghdad should click on to Venik (it's a pseudonym) before reading their newspaper. Check it out. GRU has been absolutely right about every pendulum swing in the fighting. It gave, for example, the true picture of the ambiguous on-off "occupation" of Basra as it happened. Traders made a killing using that GRU intelligence intelligently rather than sucking up the generals' lies and politicians' spin.

On GRU you will find the sobering information that the supply of Tomahawk missiles on US warships is at 25% "criticality" level (the arsenal they have to reserve for the North Koreans). The US can't bomb smart any more.

...

There are other sources of high-grade intelligence available to the trader wanting to be two days' head-up on the opposition. You can buy bootlegged Chinese intelligence reports in Hong Kong (apparently the Chinese have bought that downed Apache helicopter the Iraqis were dancing on) and Israeli analysis in Tel Aviv.

But why waste money when the Russians are giving away the best stuff free? Invest intelligently and get rich.

posted by Jenny at 7:56 AM |

veiled4allah has some interesting links up on Islamic nonviolence. Another good one to distribute when people refer to Islam as a warlike faith...(can you tell I'm pretty tired of "having conversations" at this point?)
posted by Jenny at 7:35 AM |

My mom is now computer proficient (sometimes a scary thought, mwaha), and since she checks out my blog when in cyberspace, I'll put this one up just for her: a Salon interview with Bill Moyers. (Sorry for the irritating ad, you just have to give it a few seconds...)
posted by Jenny at 7:33 AM |

Hi!

More on that promotional magazine that the State Department will be distributing in 22 Arab countries.
posted by Jenny at 7:30 AM |

Via the Agonist--anybody else hear that Saddam Hussein is taking refuge at the Russian embassy?! (See scrolling "breaking news".)
posted by Jenny at 7:27 AM |

Thanks to the ReachM High Cowboy, I found a great new blog...A Life Less Ordinary, by a self-proclaimed Army wife. When Blogger will let me, I am going to add her to my roster--in the meantime, check it out, especially this great post on how she is a supporter of peace while being an Army wife. I am currently emailing it to those folks who have recently told me that if I oppose the war, I don't support our troops. *sigh* It never ends.
posted by Jenny at 7:24 AM |

Word after word, Arundhati Roy is winning me over. I just saw her at the Prague Writers' Festival, and shortly thereafter finished reading The God of Small Things. This article, published last week in the Guardian, pretty much covers all the bases on the entity that is the war...too much good stuff to excerpt here. Just read it...and send it to your friends if you liked it as much as I did!
posted by Jenny at 7:15 AM |

Okay, remember that airline passenger profiling system we've been talking about? Here's more about it, contributed to Act for Change by the ACLU:

The government is developing an airline passenger profiling system called CAPPS II that will use credit information and secret databases to assess your security risk level each time you fly. These secret databases could include a great deal of personal information, pulled from both commercial and government sources. Not only would CAPPS II invade your privacy, but if there is a mistake in any of the many databases used for the system you may find yourself detained, delayed or even banned from flying.

Innocent people have already been stopped and banned from flying because their name appeared on government "no fly" lists. And most have been unable to clear their names once they were swept into the federal bureaucracy. In addition, experts have said that terrorists will inevitably learn how to circumvent the system. Identity thieves could easily sidestep this check by presenting a false driver's license or passport, undercutting the system's entire mission.

You can also click here to email you representative with your thoughts, reservations about CAPPS II.
posted by Jenny at 6:59 AM |

Dulce et decorum est

Alongside probably-suppressed photos of war casualties, The Bitter Shack has this quote from the NYT on media sanitization of the conflict:

The heroic narrative is shaped in part by what editors and producers view as a need to maintain standards and not offend their audience. But some cultural critics say that the relatively softened imagery has more to do with a political need to celebrate victory without dwelling on its price. If this is war, they ask, where is the gore?

"War is about dead people, not gorgeous-looking soldiers," said Susan Sontag, author of "Regarding the Pain of Others." She suggested, "Being a spectator of calamities taking place in another country is a quintessentially modern experience."

The images of the victims of American wars past — the villagers of My Lai, the charred head of an Iraqi soldier from the Persian Gulf war — created significant controversy when they were published. Some editors and photographers say war photography is edited with a heavier hand because of its ability not just to offend the viewer, but to implicate him or her as well.

It's interesting to juxtapose this with a recent quote from Barbara Bush on ABC:

...I know perfectly well that - don't take offense - that 90 percent of what I hear on television is supposition, when we're talking about the news.But why should we hear about body bags and deaths and how many, what day it's going to happen, and how many this or what do you suppose? Oh, I mean, it's, not relevant. So why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that?

You know, as troubling as this statement is, she's right about 90% of the news being screwed up, or perhaps better said, spun. I think Barbara Bush has just articulated the widespread apathy about news which paradoxically feeds American nationalism--we can't know what is true, but what we can know is that people are fighting and dying for us and our flag. We swallow the aesthetics of a nation at war whole, fueled by the abstract stories of older generations, heroes who fought "for our country", the complexities of the conflicts wiped away by time and History. And because of hijacked airplanes flying into skyscrapers, a field and the Pentagon, we feel qualified to speak of death and destruction, and we label as unpatriotic or unsupportive those who seek other paths of resistance, of communication, and resolution. This January editorial from the Philadelphia Daily News, much-quoted and much-despised in certain regions of the blogosphere, comes to mind:

DEAR AMERICAN soldier,

You don't know me, but I know who you are.

You are deploying from Fort Carson and Fort Hood and Fort Bliss and Fort Stewart. You hail from Middletown and Middleboro and Greenville and Redding and Thousand Oaks. You are white, black, brown and yellow - but always Americans first.

You have classmates and colleagues and cousins who died at the Pentagon and in the Twin Towers on Sept. 11. You have buddies who took bullets in Afghanistan and Kuwait and the Philippines during Operation Enduring Freedom. You have uncles and brothers and fathers and grandfathers who sacrificed their lives in past wars.[Er, have no female soldiers ever sacrificed themselves in past wars?]

Their deaths haunt you. Their heroism inspires you. Their footsteps beckon - and you cannot resist.

You have wives who are tough as nails and husbands who are enormously proud. You have toddlers who know the colors of the American flag and grade-schoolers who have memorized Army verses like these:

The hardest job, the dirtiest job
Since ever war began
Is picking 'em up and laying 'em down

The job of an infantryman
No mission too difficult
No sacrifice too great
Our duty to the nation

Is the first we're here to state
Our doughboys come from Brooklyn
Our gunners from Vermont
Our signals from Fort Monmouth
Our engineers DuPont
Against the foes of freedom
We fight for liberty
We make no peace with tyrants
On land or on the sea

As you pack your green duffel bags, press your desert camouflage fatigues, polish your boots and kiss your families goodbye, please take these words with you:

Pay no attention to Sean Penn and Sheryl Crow and Baghdad Babs. Tune out the half-naked loonies and Flower Power leftovers. Stand tall. Fight hard. And know that there are legions of Americans who are boundlessly grateful for what you have volunteered to do.

We know who you are. We will not forget.

And we will pray every day for your safe return. Hoo-ah!

Fighting used to be a personalized affair--more often than not, conflicts were fought on home territory, and people could not turn away from the ravages of war. Thanks to embedded reporters, networks would like us to think that we're still right there alongside our "men in uniform"...but as many of us have noted of late, it seems that CNN, ABC, FoxNews and all the rest are simply churning out a highly marketable form of reality TV, which strokes that most paranoic and dangerous realm of the dominant American culture--that of our nationalism. The aesthetic of a sanitary war must be maintained at all costs, to make us feel as thought we're right in there while keeping that air of detachment that allows us to make the consumer choices, from voting to buying toothpaste, that allow the war machine to keep right on churning. Just like trashy romance novels that simultaneously ensnare and repulse, the media at war must reduce everything to the smallest of numbers; people must be depicted as black or white, with or against us, good or evil. The Bush administration, a cadre of salespeople, are attuned to this as well.

It's one thing to acknowledge this, to turn off the TV in disgust, to start up a blog. To rely heavily on print journalism, comparing the various spins, hoping somehow to filter out the real news. But how on earth to talk to those who really believe in things like that Philly editorial? Where is the interface for these conversations? How can we break through this language, this aesthetic of war? Because, as I read and reread the pro-war forwards that keep arriving at my inbox, one of which features a Gulf War veteran comparing Saddam Hussein to a man beating his wife and the UN as the police who fail to act on their knowledge, bringing the boy to tears with the thought that the evil wife-beater is at his door, I realize that these people are approaching all the same information I am from viewpoints constructed over years and years of conditioning, experience, suffering, celebrating. Is simple acknowledgement even possible to attain from these people, how can we have "conversations" with neighbors whose common experience and humanity reflects my own, while they look upon me as a "pinko" simply because of my divergent politics? Forget Huntington's clash of civilizations...how on earth can I learn to communicate with many of my fellow US citizens, of whom I am so collectively proud, yet who seem unable to look at alternative views without scorn in their words? And how can I keep the despair out of my own voice when talking to them?

Well, now that I've ranted for a good long while, I'll keep y'all scrolling a bit longer. For a couple of months now this poem has been in the back of my mind, but I kept forgetting to post it here. It's work like this that can alter the aesthetic of war, if we can only allow them to puncture the surface of our streamlined, simplified global media. This was written by Wilfred Owen, a British veteran of the First World War.

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame, all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.

Gas! Gas! Quick, boys!--An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
and flound'ring like a man in fire or lime.
Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams before my helpless sight
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin,

If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs
Bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,--
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.
posted by Jenny at 6:49 AM |

Fascinating

Have just started reading this article at Utne on the connections between George W., 42, and a little known Canadian gold mining company, once again illustrating the maxim is that truth is stranger than even post-post-modern fiction. Somebody ought to turn this into a novel...almost forgot--here's the link.
posted by Jenny at 6:06 AM |

Craig Cole lets Wal-Mart have it...via Ampersand.
posted by Jenny at 5:55 AM |

Another arrrrrgh

From yesterday's Guardian:

"It's simple. They want water. I have it, as long as they agree to get baptised." Good to see the Christian principle of giving freely is alive and well near Najaf in central Iraq, where US army chaplain Josh Llano is jealously guarding his 500-gallon pool of clean water from the thirsty, sweaty soldiers of V corps combat support system, who could do with a long-overdue dip in it.

Only after soldiers have sat through a 90-minute sermon - and turned to the Lord - are they allowed anywhere near his pool, he told the Miami Herald cheerfully. "You have to be aggressive to help people find themselves in God."

Even rumours of portable showers that could dry up his supply line to a trickle have left the southern Baptist undaunted. "There is no fruit here and I have a stash of raisins, juice boxes and fruit rolls to pull out."
posted by Jenny at 5:53 AM |

Arrrgh, I arrive home after a day of travel to find pro-war forwards in my inbox! Some of my high school associates are trying to convince me why the war is a good thing, and that I am unpatriotic for "not supporting our troops". What a welcome. Thank god the blogs are here to balance me out as I figure out how to politely ask them to stop sending those emails...
posted by Jenny at 5:35 AM |