Life Imitating Art

Real life events on the U.S.-Mexican border last month are disturbingly similar to the storyline of a film from a few years ago, The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada. The only unfortunate thing is that there is no Pete Perkins to act as an agent of redemption for Ramiro Gamez Acosta's killer, Border Patrol Agent Nicholas Corbett.



Corbett and the Border Patrol claim he was acting in "self defense". It looks like Acosta was cocking his arm to throw something. Like a rock, maybe? All that Corbett needed to do was point the rifle and say "Alto!", whether Acosta was aiming at him or the BP truck, which is what it looks like to me.

All that things like this are going to do are polarize each side even further without contributing anything to a possible solution...

Trying to imagine...

what it would be like if the roles of two nations (and the people impacted) were reversed:

Baghdad Burning:

So we've been busy. Busy trying to decide what part of our lives to leave behind. Which memories are dispensable? We, like many Iraqis, are not the classic refugees- the ones with only the clothes on their backs and no choice. We are choosing to leave because the other option is simply a continuation of what has been one long nightmare- stay and wait and try to survive.

On the one hand, I know that leaving the country and starting a new life somewhere else- as yet unknown- is such a huge thing that it should dwarf every trivial concern. The funny thing is that it’s the trivial that seems to occupy our lives. We discuss whether to take photo albums or leave them behind. Can I bring along a stuffed animal I've had since the age of four? Is there room for E.'s guitar? What clothes do we take? Summer clothes? The winter clothes too? What about my books? What about the CDs, the baby pictures?

The problem is that we don't even know if we'll ever see this stuff again. We don't know if whatever we leave, including the house, will be available when and if we come back. There are moments when the injustice of having to leave your country, simply because an imbecile got it into his head to invade it, is overwhelming. It is unfair that in order to survive and live normally, we have to leave our home and what remains of family and friends… And to what?

Let me paraphrase one small section of this latest entry to reflect the alternate possibility:

Since last summer, we had been discussing it more and more. It was only a matter of time before what began as a suggestion- a last case scenario- soon took on solidity and developed into a plan. For the last couple of months, it has only been a matter of logistics. Plane or car? Canada or Mexico? Will we all leave together as a family? Or will it be only my brother and I at first?

The reality of these circumstances that would drive one to abandon all that has ever been known to them is so foreign to me that I have nothing but admiration for all those who have had to stay and survive the Hell that they have had to endure for the past four years.

Best of luck to Riverbend and her family in their travels. Hopefully they will be able to return to their home soon.

Two fairly significant events this week...

The first of which is the airing tonight of Bill Moyers documentary "Buying the War", marking his return to investigative journalism after an absence of three years. Amy had him on Democracy Now! this morning to talk about it.

Digby also notes the curious lack of a review in the NY Times and what that may mean:

LA Times:

Phil Donohue, fired as host of an MSNBC show in early 2003 says he was told he could have a war advocate on his program as a solo guest, but dissenters had to be balanced out from the right.

"Our producers were instructed to feature two conservatives for every liberal," he says.

There is no on representing the conservative argument here, not the deeper ideological reasons for believing in the Iraq invasion. But that's partly Moyers' position: In the run-up to war, point-counterpoint emerged as a devastating sham.

I guess it's not so surprising that the NY Times didn't bother to review this. It's cowardly, however.

I'm glad that Moyers has amassed the footage and put it all in one place so that people can see it again in its glory. It's a big story and I'll be interested to see how many of the most dizzying moments during that long national acid trip Moyers was able to capture.

The second is the release of the paperback edition of Greg Palast's new book, Armed Madhouse, which features some new material that the Cranium doesn't want you to read.

Greg's most recent post also sheds some interesting light on the role of Gonzo as the most recent sacrificial lamb to be left twisting in the wind:

1. It’s all about the 2008 election.
2. It’s not about Gonzales.

We’ve been here before. Gonzales is getting Libby’d. Takes the bullet for Karl Rove and the White House. If you wondered why the Republican jackals like the sinister Senator Specter piled on Gonzales — it’s because they were told to.

Rove and Bush are doing the Nixon Twist on Gonzales.

Look, I have no sympathy for Alberto the Doomed. He’s guilty of a crime I employed in racketeering cases: “Willful failure to know.” It’s a kind of fraud; Alberto was going way out of his way to not know what he had to know, that Rove and the President were toying with prosecutors.

Gonzales is their glove-puppet. Why fire him? The nation watches these hearings and wants to kill something.

But why shoot the puppet? It’s time to fire the puppeteer. Eh, Mr. Rove?

The more folks see the Cranium for what he is, the tighter the sights will train in on him...

Appropriate use of racial terms

like this one which has been stirring up so many Hornets as of late?

NONE.

No one should ever use any terms that are even questioned in terms of their volatileness. If you have to ask if you should use them, then you know not to.

Never let a good gag go to waste...

Shame on all of us for thinking that it was his original idea...



Thank goodness he couldn't resist and thus has further mired himself in the pit of controversial hawkdom that may be his undoing as a candidate...

Here's the scary thing...

...these people are dead serious.

WBBM 780:

The Topeka, Kan.-based Westboro Baptist Church (WBC), which is not affiliated with any national Baptist organization, announced plans to protest at victims’ funerals only hours after 32 people were killed in the worst mass shooting in U.S. history. They also may protest at other events on the Virginia Tech campus.

The organization, founded and led by Fred Phelps, believes the United States has condemned itself to destruction by accepting homosexuality and other “sins of the flesh.” Phelps’ daughter, Shirley Phelps-Roper, said the Virginia Tech teachers and students who died on Monday brought their fate upon themselves by not being true Christians.

“The evidence is they were not Christian. God does not do that to his servants,” Phelps-Roper said. “You don’t need to look any further for evidence those people are in hell.”

They may not be affiliated with any national Baptist organization, but one has to assume that they work from a scripture that has the same template as all the other Christian rooted faiths. You know, the one that preaches loving one's fellow (wo)man and practicing tolerance and forgiveness of all one's fellows?

UPDATE 21 APR 07 21:46

And how do we think they'll react to this?

Lost in the Shuffle...

Hidden amongst the indignant howling over gun control, weapons sales that never should have taken place, stress management in the workplace, the alleged lack of psychiatric help for disturbed individuals at our institutions of higher learning, and the completely ineffective rationalization and defense of the political machinations of the Executive branch on the Judicial branch of our government are two episodes that likely will have greater impact farther into the future than any of these things: the obvious and inflammatory taunting of the Iranian Nation and people by John McCain (pretty much topping any of the cowboy invective uttered by the Shrub) and the start of construction of a wall designed to separate Sunni Iraqis from their Shite neighbors in order to minimize violence between the two.

The fact the John McCain (the lost fourth Wilson brother) had this witty alternate version of one of the Beach Boys greatest songs so readily handy to unveil for a group of his veteran friends shows that the prospect of taking such action against Iran is in the forefront of his mind and there is a very ready and willing mindset to follow through at the slightest provocation (this actually may be in the process of occurring as I write this). In the self quoting spirit of Arthur, I'd like to harken back to this post of mine from early March:

Iran is not an immediate threat to the United States or its allies in the region. IF Iran is pursuing nuclear enrichment technology for the purpose of developing a weapons program in addition to an energy program, it is not an offensive act. It is an act of defense motivated by the fact that Iran is now surrounded by declared and undeclared nuclear powers: Russia to the North, Pakistan, India and China to the East, Israel to the West, and the United States to the South in the Persian Gulf with an disproportionately sized naval armada.

If there were a situation where the United States was surrounded in such a manner (Canada and Mexico possessing proven nuclear weapons and another major power such as China or Russia having placed a similarly sized force in the Gulf of Mexico) I'm sure that the United States would be rattling its nuclear sabers, and if the U.S. didn't have nuclear weapons, it certainly would be pursuing that technology as vehemently as Iran and most likely more so, all the while defending its inherent right to that technology and the right to possess it for use as a DETTERENT. This is the reason the U.S. gives for possessing nuclear weapons (despite the fact that it is the only nation to have actually used them on another country) and yet it tries to deny other countries with a legitimate case for possessing nuclear weapons as a DETTERENT the opportunity to do so.

Justin had some similar thoughts in this post following the serenade of the VFW in Murrells Inlet:

I know the Iranians appreciate the humor, just as we would find it uproariously funny if Iranian President Ahmaninejad or some other relatively well known Iranian politician who wanted to become the Iranian leader sang about bombing America in front a laughing crowd. We Americans eat that kind of shit up! What would be even funnier is if Iran invaded Canada and Mexico, sent Iranian battleships off the coast of the U.S. to conduct war exercises using high tech bomber planes, conducted clandestine raids and sponsored terror attacks on U.S. soil, and so on.

And Brian offers these thoughts about how it's going over in Tehran and the rest of the sovereign nation that is Iran:

I don't know what the reaction to the McCain video has been in Iran. But since they're the weaker nation, if their reaction is anything other than passive acceptance of our dear senator's foolishness, then our reaction to their reaction will determine whether this becomes a big deal or not.

The World wonders...

As far as the newest no bid boondoggle of a project in Iraq, I will yield to Tristero in this entry at Digby's Blog:

the American military is building a wall to physically separate a despised minority from their neighbors in order to protect them. And vice versa.

But let's not infer the worst here. After all, history teaches us that sealing off ghettos does reduce violence. That's simply an indisputable fact. For example, attacks against Sunni Jews declined markedly and rapidly under the Nazis. Had they not built walls around the ghettos, which enabled an entire Jewish population of a given city to be quickly rounded up and sent off to the camps, attacks on Jews would have gone on for much, much longer.

Seriously, is this the best way to show the Iraqis how to govern themselves, police themselves, and live amongst themselves? By building barriers to keep them separated from each other? What an example we're setting for the rest of the world...

Harsh, and yet...

rather telling.

This latest essay by Scott Ritter helps to clarify what the history behind the infighting between the Shia and the Sunni in Iraq is really all about.

It is a convoluted mess. You think that Biblical history of the evolution of Christianity and the bloody repression it faced in the early years following Christ's death is complicated? How about the Spanish Inquisition and the repercussions that it wrought? The Protestant movement and its subsequent migration of thousands of Europeans to the Americas, resulting in the extermination of hundreds of indigenous tribal peoples? The Crusades? The Rennaisance?

All of them significant and traceable to the modern day political, social and economic swamp we find ourselves mired in.

However, they all are comparable to the turmoil and strife that was ongoing between the peoples of the Middle East when we were still ignorant of their existence and ways, or worse yet, cognizant of their existence but dismissive of their social structure, which was as sophisticated as a Western model while also adapting its own distinct characteristics.

While long and quickly mind numbing to the average American reader (bear down when you feel your eyes start to cross, it's worth it) Ritter's essay provides a brief rundown of the vital splits that occurred within the Islamic religion resulting in the three major competing sects of the modern day: Shia, Sunni, and Wahabbi, following the death of Muhammad and the ensuing struggle for power at the top levels of the leadership of the Islam faith.

What this all boils down to is that we as Americans have no idea what the root causes of the violence between Sunni and Shia Iraqis are--and even if we did have the respect and take the time to do so we would throw up our hands and let them work it out between themselves. It's been being hashed out between various incarnations of the sects for over 1500 years, so why should they all of the sudden listen to a foreign power who is only really interested in stripping the land of its natural resources tell them how to solve their differences and govern themselves?

To put it into perspective, imagine if a huge foreign power came over to the U. S. and overthrew the current regime (an interesting concept in and of itself) and then tried to institute a form of government that had never been put into practice before; all the while looting the natural resources of the country, dismantling the national, state snd local institutions; leaving almost no public services intact and putting millions of people out of work. The resulting unemployment would manifest itself in the polarization of these suddenly unemployed individuals by various religious groups which have traditionally been at odds with each other. The result would be similar to what we are seeing in Iraq today, only on a much larger and messier scale (the polarized divides would, I'm sorry to say, develop more along an ethnic (I'm loathe to use the term racial--we're all members of the same race--the human race) lines, with minorities at odds with Caucasians and the occupying force).

The occupying force would no doubt be undereducated as to the nuances of the cultural and social history and fault lines of the American experience, from the marginalization of the native American peoples to the enslavement of Negros and other minorities to the war that was fought to restore the Union and secure the freedom of all people in the U. S. to the repression of all those minorities and the various forms that that repression takes up to the present day to the class marginalization that is rampant in the U. S. and so on and so on. Due to this ignorance, the occupying force would have nary a clue as to how to address the violence short of introducing more armed forces into the equation, resulting only in the further inflamation of the violence. Over time, however, the leaders of the various factions would recognize the fallacy in striking at each other as opposed to the occupying forces and begin calling on their followers to act against the occupying force as opposed to each other.

In short, whatever nation or force took on such a task would quickly discover that they had struck an active hornet's nest which they mistook for a beehive full of honey that they thought had been either abandoned or was full of hibernating bees that wouldn't mind all of the honey being "harvested". Further whacking of the nest and other methods of quelling the hornets would continue to prove fruitless. How they responded to this revalation is another matter entirely.

Ve haff vays uff makink zoo talk...

I came home and mowed the lawn instead of zipping over to this gathering, so I thought that a post would serve as some form of penitence (that's the best I can do to tie into the recently passed holiday...) even though I'm dog tired after the effort (damn winter not letting my grass grow so I need to cut it and stay in shape!).

Democracy Now last Thursday:

New revelations have linked the FBI to the interrogation and detention of anti-war protesters in Washington, D.C. According to unearthed police records, a secret FBI intelligence unit helped detain and question a group of protesters in a downtown parking garage in April 2002. Some of the protesters were interrogated on videotape about their political and religious beliefs.

Ah, shades of the good old days:

The actions and orders of the GESTAPO were not subject to judicial review. Under the law of 30 November 1933 the only redress available was by appeal to the next higher authority within the GESTAPO itself.

The reason assigned for the arrest and commitment of persons to concentration camps usually was that, according to the GESTAPO, the person endangered by his attitude the existence and security of the people and the State.

The most casual remark of a German citizen might bring him before the GESTAPO, where his fate and freedom were decided without recourse to law.

Casual remarks, like, "The war in Iraq is illegal."? Or maybe, "The highest members of the administration are guilty of crimes against humanity and should be impeached." ? I thought what Paul Craig Roberts said in his interview on The Monitor here was a bit of a stretch, but after hearing about this latest escapade along with this from 2004 I'm not so sure any more. What makes me see red more than anything else in the case of the DC episode is the long term effect that it has had on one of the protesters, Nat Meysenberg:

I don’t think I’ve been to a protest in D.C. since. Secondly, I have become vastly more distrustful of police orders. I cooperated with police requests and acted in good faith, that I would be let go if I merely cooperated with them. And throughout, they violated my rights, from my very right to show up and speak out against the war to my rights to be free from incarceration and harassment.

These people are supposed to be there to defend the laws and defend my rights, and instead we find them covering things up in federal court for year after year.

However, while he chooses to avoid DC:

But also, more generally it’s galvanized me in a way to speak out about what happened to me and the type of illegal tactics used by police departments all over the country to silence dissenting voices and protesters.

Yet another example of the resilience of the human spirit to express itself that these thick skulled dunderheads in authority can never get through their heads. More info about the fight to preserve Civil Rights and freedom of expression can be found here.

A night at the cinema

Dennis Hartley has written about the cinematic chronicling of the difficulties of re entering society that veterans face on a daily basis here:

As the Iraq “war” grinds on and we sadly gird our loins to deal with a whole new generation of physically and/or psychologically scarred vets, it’s time to take a look at some of the films that have tackled the difficult subject of “coming home”.

Hands down, one of the most powerful movies ever made about the physical ravages of war is Dalton Trumbo’s 197l anti-war classic “Johnny Got His Gun”, adapted from the director’s own novel. Timothy Bottoms is a horribly wounded WW I vet who lies in a hospital bed for the duration of the film, re-living his war trauma and reviewing his life. His injuries are so grave that, in addition to the loss of all his limbs, he has lost the ability to speak (what is left of his torso and head is wrapped in gauze, mummy style.) Hence, we only “see” Bottoms in black and white flashbacks, with the actor providing voice-over to parlay the racing thoughts going through his mind as he lies helplessly in his hospital bed. (In all seriousness, I would not recommend this film for claustrophobics.)

Recent releases that Hartley doesn't mention include Harsh Times and Jarhead. Some may argue that these two (along with Three Kings)glorify the Iraq experience more than they act as an anti war statement, but it's in the eye of the beholder as far as I'm concerned.

Death of a Brain

I have to believe that the blood clots in his legs are seriously impairing the reasoning abilities of Dick Cheney when he says things like this on the same day the Pentagon issues a report that says this in direct contradiction with him.

It's the only reasonable explanation, but stranger things are possible, I guess...

Got a pulse? You're ready to fight Terror!

Remember the scene in Enemy At The Gates when the new soldiers who had survived a three day train ride in cattle cars and the strafing of the shuttle boats on the Volga were being pressed into service to immediately attack a fortified German position in the meat grinder that was Stalingrad? Every other man was handed a rifle and told "When one man falls, pick up his rifle and move forward."

No briefing, no onsite training, hmmmm, sounds familiar...

UPDATE 4:55 PM CST 5 APR 07:

Time's cover story this week has more:

Even Colin Powell—a retired Army general, onetime Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and Bush's first Secretary of State—acknowledges that after spending nearly six years fighting a small war in Afghanistan and four years waging a medium-size war in Iraq, the service whose uniform he wore for 35 years is on the ropes. "The active Army," Powell said in December, "is about broken."

Army equipment is wearing out even faster than Army troops. Gear and weapons are usually left in the war zone to be used by newly arriving troops. That grinds the equipment into scrap up to 10 times as fast as in peacetime. The lack of guns and armor back home has a boomerang effect: many of the troops training in the U.S. are not familiar with what they'll have to depend on once they arrive in Iraq.

Words, just words

Why can't we just lighten up as a nation and society?

Everyone curses, but it's one of the big taboos on the public airwaves or in a public forum. People get all huffy and offended--"oh my god, he said the f-word on the air! I can't fucking believe he did that!"(ooops...) Or, "oh, that was just uncalled for, especially with all these children around." Give me a break. What with the influence and propensity of so-called profanity in today's world, you'd think that every child's first words would be something like "Put me down, dammit!", or, "Shit, that floor really hurt! why'd you let go of my hands when I was walking for the first time?"

It would really help people air their feelings about issues and people, like Snoop Dog did here. Storytelling would also be more authentic, which is something we need more of in this day and age. people curse all the time, so when someone is relating an anecdote about a conversation they had why do they need to censor it. Like this story Sami Rosouli was relating on Democracy Now about pasing through a US checkpoint in iraq:

So the driver suggested to take a side road, which was dirt and unpaved. So a few minutes later, when we were on that road, we were raided by three Humvees, and about twelve servicemen jumped from their vehicles, pointing their rifles at us, asking us to get out. An Arabic translator was there, also translating whatever the soldiers were saying. And I felt like, I’m not in a good position. So I reached out to my American driver license, and I claimed I’m an American. And then the sweet young man looked at me, and he goes -- I don't know if I can say this -- “No sh**!” so and with a big smile. So I tell him, “You betcha.” So he said, “Well, you must be a Minnesotan.” So he called upon his commander to come and check me out and give me sort of clearance. And when they talked to me, he asked me, “What the f-- you're doing here?” I told him, “Well, I’m visiting family, but what you are doing here?” They said, “We are looking for enemies, terrorists. They just killed two of us in Al Taji.” So I replied, “Am I the enemy?” He said, “No, you look good. You can go.”

It's all part of the backwards logic that runs rampant throughout our entertainment consuming self righteous "I'm better than you because you do this and i would never be caught dead doing it--well, i'd never be caught doing it, lets leave it at that" society:

It's legal to swear, but you'll get fined if you do it over the public airwaves.

It's legal to have sex, but you'll be seriously fined if you broadcast sex on public airwaves (but you can walk into a local smut store and buy a DVD of just about anything you want to watch--except anything involving shit--who came up with that boundary? "Anything goes, but if you start flinging crap, we'll confiscate all the tapes and shut down the studio...", and if you don't want to leave the house and are tired of ranty blogs like this one, there's always a web browser and search engine--not that I would know anything about any of that...)

It's illegal to commit arson, kidnap someone, commit armed robbery, commit murder, steal a car, and any number of other things but those types of acts are all over the freakin TV every night,

And if that's not enough, during the day you can flip on the tube and watch any number of talk shows bring on the perpetrators of any of the aforementioned acts and glorify them. Maybe not intentionally, but to some people watching, the fact that they're ON TV is enough to make them think that going out and doing something like that just to get on TV might actually be worth it.
Of course, this delves into the seriously sick and self cannibalistic tendency that we have as a nation of voyeuristic sickos, which is not really what I started out wanting to write about this time.

We love to rant and rave and about our oral fortitude while we cause more ill will and harm toward people throughout the world in the past 100 years than the world did as a whole for 500 years prior to that.

We froth at the mouth about family values while the number of broken families and single parent households is astronomical in this country.

The contradictory nature of us is astounding:

We tout our ability to bring Democracy to any corner of the globe, but here at home the way things are run doesn't look like the Democracy envisioned by the Revolutionaries (hmmm, revolutionary? as in... Revolutionary Guard? NAHHHHH...) who fought a long and brutal war to earn independence from Great Britain.

We stump for free and open electoral processes throughout the world and stoop to any depth to assure the desired outcome of elections here at home.

I could go on, but you get the picture. I'm not sure where this conflicted nature of ours as a nation and society came from, but I am pretty sure that if left unchecked it will only mean our demise in a less than pleasant way.

"I don't know which species is worse, Burke. You don't see them fucking one another over for a profit margin, do you?"

-Lt. Ellen Ripley, Aliens

Internet Keymaster, Happy Amphibians & Lost Cinematic Gems

This is kinda nuts. Where do the masterminds think their control extends to? just because Al supposedly attributed the invention of the Internet to himself (or an American agency) that makes them think that they can demand the key to it all? I'm sure that the answer to this demand form the community as a whole, especially the EU and major Asian countries is going to be a resounding "NOT!" as well it should be. The internet is a remarkable forum which levels the playing field of information and idea exchange in a way that has never been seen before. The internet is almost Marxian in the manner in which it equalizes all of the content contained in and carried over it--maybe that's what drives all the power mongers batty...

Winter is officially over here in Southeast Texas. the first rainstorms followed by stifling humidity followed by more rain and harmonic Toad croaking was experienced today and is continuing through tonight...

Calling all movie buffs: what unearthed/withheld treasures await our viewing pleasures at the whim of bunt out desensitized movie executives whose only concern is the protection of the studio (read corporate) interests? This calls to mind a quote from Derek Dick, aka Fish, lead singer for the Scottish band Marillion, on the answer to a query about piles of demo tapes he saw in a record company exec's office during a meeting that came from the indifferent exec:

"Oh those, they're just demos that we've gotten from some bands."

The haphazard way that the exec referred to them and the way that they were stacked in an offhand way infuriated Fish, knowing how much effort had to have gone into making the Demos (this was back in the '80's, when computer studios were an inconceivable notion...) and that the demos were the bands ultimate shot at landing some, any kind of touring/recording deal, and that the record companies thrived on the desperation of such bands to make the ludicrous amounts of money that they were able to squeeze out of hardworking talented bands before the age of digital online music sucked all the wind out of their sails before they knew what had happened to them... That pretty much sums up my thoughts about all these unreleased titles...

I just realized that I'm crossing the century mark with this blog (counting the myspace blogs). Hooray for perseverance, I guess. The overactive brain takes a bow...