abandoning iraq is the same as occupying iraq

“We've got five years, my brain hurts a lot…” – David Bowie

“The message to the Baghdad morgue was simple - they could do what they liked with the plastic handcuffs, but the metal ones were expensive and needed to be returned. Such is the murderous state of affairs in Iraq at the moment that the demand, made by a militia gunman who is also believed to be a member of the Special Police Commandos, hardly caused a stir.

There was a similar lack of shock when a dozen bodies were brought in with identification cards showing that each had the name Omar. The catch here was that Omar is a Sunni name, and this fact was enough to seal their fate at Shia checkpoints.

Baghdad is full of checkpoints. Leaving the Hamra Hotel, where the dwindling band of British journalists outside the Green Zone stay, means negotiating the Badr Brigade, their Shia competitors the Mehdi Army of Moq-tada al-Sadr, and the Kurdish peshmerga. The Iraqi police and the government paramilitaries, in the meantime, have their own barriers. And there are others: the Shia Defenders of Khadamiya, set up by Moq-tada's cousin Hussein al-Sadr, and the government-backed Tiger and Scorpion brigades. They all have similar looks: balaclavas or wrap-around sunglasses and headbands, black leather gloves with fingers cut off, and a very lethal arsenal of weapons. When not manning checkpoints, they hurtle through the streets in 4x4s, scattering the traffic by firing in the air. Out of sight, they stand accused of arbitrary arrests and extrajudicial killings.” – Independent, Operation enduring chaos - Kim Sengupta

LI often reads op ed pieces that begin, the United States must not abandon Iraq.

This impassioned moral plea from the smug, who are not about to leap out of their chairs to volunteer to go over and help save Iraqis, ignores the fact that the United States has already abandoned Iraq. The occupation and the abandonment have been as one thing, a dialectical entity, a living breathing monstrosity condoned by the Americans, paid for by the Americans, ruthlessly put through by the Americans, and for which America’s loss of prestige is way too little a punishment, one of the signs that this country has soured in its very pores and ouns. The abandonment started with the looting. It went through de-structuring the government. It went through the inability to even control the weapons, the random imprisonment of innocents, and the inability to imprison criminals, the razing Fallujah, the berms around Sunni cities mostly because they are Sunni, the outsourcing of American troops as instruments of ethnic cleaning, the dirty and appalling laws allowing mercenaries carte blanche in Iraq, and the now institutionalized Green Zone mentality, an almost perfect imitation of that of the Ba’athist oligarchs. Somehow, the message of the Lancet study hasn’t sunk in. The right is still attacking it, comically enough, as a dartboard approach – this is the same right that continually cites polls using sampling methods that are much narrower in scope. LI is rather suspicious, actually, of polls, and we read with interest all of the controversy surrounding the Lancet study. None of the complaints against it really confronted did more than cast into doubt some marginal process issues.
If one accepts the Lancet study, or even halves its equilibrium point to 300,000 extra fatalities, the great fact is not so much that Americans have killed a great number of Iraqis – it is that a far greater number have been killed by other Iraqis since the Americans liquidated security in the country in 2003 and signally failed, themselves, to fill that gap. And that vast number of deaths has worked like acid on the innumerable threads that keep any society together.

The question, then, isn’t about abandoning Iraq, but whether the malign and awful invaders are going to continue to sit on that country like a nightmare the people cannot get rid of.

“Iraq's savage sectarian war is now regarded as a greater obstacle to any semblance of peace returning than the insurgency, and was the main reason for the Americans recently pouring 12,000 troops into the capital - an operation that, they now acknowledge, has failed.

"Yet, ironically, the death squads are the result of US policy. At the beginning of last year, with no end to the Sunni insurgency in sight, the Pentagon was reported to have decided to train Shia and Kurdish fighters to carry out "irregular missions". The policy, exposed in the US media, was called the "Salvador Option" after the Ameri-can-backed counter-insurgency in Latin America more than 20 years ago, which led to 70,000 deaths and countless instances of human rights abuse.

"Some of the most persistent allegations of abuse have been made against the Wolf Brigade, many of whom were formerly in Saddam's Baathist forces. Their main US adviser until April last year was James Steele, who, in his own biography, states that he commanded the US military group in El Salvador during the height of the guerrilla war and was involved in counter-insurgency training. The complaints against Iraqi special forces continue. At the end of last year, while in Iraq, I interviewed Ahmed Sadoun who was arrested in Mosul and held for seven months before being released without charge.

"During that time, he said, he was tortured. He showed marks on his body, which were the results of the beatings and burnings. Mr Sadoun, 38, did not know which paramilitary group, accompanied by American soldiers, had seized him, but the Wolf Brigade was widely involved in suppressing disturbances in Mosul at the time.”

We know how the death squad template was imported. Next question: Where do the militias get their arms?

This is from a NYT story a day ago:

"The American military has not properly tracked hundreds of thousands of weapons intended for Iraqi security forces and has failed to provide spare parts, maintenance personnel or even repair manuals for most of the weapons given to the Iraqis, a federal report released Sunday has concluded.

The report was undertaken at the request of Senator John W. Warner, the Virginia Republican who is the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee …
…
The answers came Sunday from the inspector general’s office, which found major discrepancies in American military records on where thousands of 9-millimeter pistols and hundreds of assault rifles and other weapons have ended up. The American military did not even take the elementary step of recording the serial numbers of nearly half a million weapons provided to Iraqis, the inspector general found, making it impossible to track or identify any that might be in the wrong hands.”

Notice, LI still hasn’t listed the combinations in Iraq, as we promised to do yesterday and which we were cocky enough to do in 2003. That is because the situation has retreated to a sheer Brownian motion of violence. Still, that doesn’t mean that there are not more probable outcomes. Realistically, the U.S. is probably going to remain stuck in Iraq, multiplying the violence, for the foreseeable future – both Democrats and Republicans being as one in the D.C. consensus that we must not ‘lose’ in Iraq, which has nothing to do with Iraq, where we have already lost, and everything to do with D.C. Having flourished on the money spouted out by the Pentagon during the past five years like a tick fattening on blood, we have to imagine what D.C. will do by thinking like a tick. If a tick could get up on its hind legs and make speeches to dogs, cattle, and other warm blooded creatures, advising them for their own good, it would sound much like the editors of the Washington Post.

So, we should start our combinations by trying to think like a tick - like the odious bugs who rule us. But thinking like a tick makes my brain hurt a lot, so I will put this off until another post.

In my last post, I reprinted one from 2003 about Iraq in which I played the combinations from the American p.o.v. – that is, I listed some basic possible states (all of them combining different possibilities) that the American war in Iraq could move to. I wrote that the American policy of that time was to bet everything on one of those scenarios, and that the bet was made regardless of the fact that the combination of possibilities seem to rank it pretty low among possible outcomes. And that even then, the Americans were not resourcing or acting in such a way as to make it more possible, or patch over the internal incompossibilities –if anything, American behavior contradicted the America’s preferred goals.

The number one goal, in 2003, was this: “1. American troops withdraw. We leave behind a stable, American friendly democracy, that pays America back its 200 billion dollars [spent on the war], with interest, in a timely matter.”

By the terms of this goal, America lost the war in Iraq in Spring of 2004. In fact, winning and losing are, in a sense, stupid terms for what happened. America became irrelevant in Iraq in 2004. There was not going to be a stable state. There was not going to be an American friendly state. There was not going to be a democracy (in the broad sense – with an independent judiciary, a strong legislature, a unified chain of command over the army, etc., etc.). The Wolfowitzian promise that America would be repaid the money expended on this war was not only not going to happen, but was universally forgotten.

Now, incredibly, for the last two years the Bush administration and the majority of the governing class has pretended that America still has a chance 1. It doesn't. The impossibility is two fold: there is no will to do what would be necessary to achieve 1 in the U.S. And there is no possible way to go from the situation in Iraq back now back to a situation in which 1 is possible. It is like a cracked egg - you can't uncrack it.

In order to obviate the obvious improbability of America achieving 1, the discussion about America’s role in Iraq has been reduced to a question of staying – a wholly abstract question that tells us nothing about what the Americans are staying there to do, how they are going to do, what means they are going to use to do it, etc. Of course, whereever a vacuum of real thought occurs, ethical sentimentalism rushes in. The ethical sentimentalism of the moment is that America owes Iraq. Well, that's the fucking truth. But it is not going to 'repay' Iraq by staying and interfering in the only paths possible to peace in Iraq.

Now, I’d like to put forth another series of combinations, but it is much harder to do at the moment. My preferred combination is not from the American p.o.v. I’d like to see the Americans leave Iraq, and the Iraqis themselves hold unconditional talks between factions not to create an absolute peace, but to create the conditions for peace talks. I’d like to see the factions agree on lowering the level of violence in their areas, as well as agreeing not to attack other areas. As in Lebanon, the first step to peace is not an absolute solution to the question of power, but, first, a recognition of who has power. Only then will Iraq be able to move towards folding the militias into a reconstituted army and actually creating a new Iraqi state. I have a strong suspicion that the new Iraqi state will include Northern Iraq in name only.

It would be a D.o.G. [delusion of grandeur] to think that the Americans would cooperate on what Iraq really needs right now, however. The U.S. is still unwilling to accept reality – that is, the lesser degree of their power and influence in the Middle East. Just as Thomas Friedman and Paul Wolfowitz wanted, the Americans blindly smashed an order in the Middle East, but it turns out that this order was the optimal order for American influence. To try to prolong American hegemony in the Middle East in a new, Bushian order will sap the political will of the Americans and, in the long run, be a tremendous waste of their resources. It won’t work. However, that it won’t work still is not evident to the American governing class.

Anyway, I’m going to try to list some combinations with various American policy changes in Iraq, just to see what they would look like. In the next post, I think.

from the past

LI likes to go through the early years, sometimes, to see what we got right and what we got wrong. This post, from 2003, right after Bush's first request for an 80 billion dollar supplemental for the war, got one thing very wrong: under the influence of the Gulf war, we really figured that the U.S. would try to squeeze back the money for the Gulf War II. Otherwise, the combinations look pretty good.

“Monday, September 08, 2003


All right. Let's do a review. The war was supposed to bring some benefits. There would be costs, there would be benefits. Now we have a better picture of both, and we have a sense of how -- from the American perspective -- they are defined. One of the great benefits of the war was the bringing down of Saddam H. The cost, in human lives and in dollars, hasn't yet been toted up -- on the Iraqi side it may never be -- but as of today we have some feel for it.

So, the Bush administration has defined the ultimate benefit in Iraq in terms of several abstractions and one pre-war claim. The pre-war claim is that Iraqi oil will pay for the war and the American contribution to Iraq. In other words, we are spending about 150-200 billion dollars on Iraq, but we will receive that money back. The abstractions can be boiled down to: a democratic, American friendly country. Like Iran under the Shah, only with elections.

Given these baselines, we can come up with combinations of possible outcomes, assign them probabilities, and ask which one will give us both 1) the greatest benefit and 2) the best odds.

I can think of five basic combinations.

1. American troops withdraw. We leave behind a stable, American friendly democracy, that pays America back its 200 billion dollars, with interest, in a timely matter.

2. American troops withdraw. The government that is left behind is less friendly to America than Kuwait, but more friendly than Iran. It is, however, stable, and has certain democratic aspects. The 200 billion dollars is not paid back.

3. American troops leave. The American friendly democracy that is left behind tries to repay the American debt, causing a nation wide rebellion. It is overthrown by a government that is hostile to America.

4. American troops leave. Iraq is riven with conflict. The 200 billion dollars is gone. The conflict lasts for a long time, is destabilizing, and no side in it is openly pro-American.

5. American troops don't leave, but have to stay indefinitely, due to conflict. Another 100 billion dollars is spent on Iraq, but the nation is riven with conflict. Casualties mount. No stability, no democracy, and increasing harm to American forces.

One can argue that there are innumerable subsets. There are. But I imagine each one simply enriches the detail of one or another item on this list.

The problem with the Bush solution is simple. It bets everything on 1. Myself, I think one has about the same chance as Dennis Kucinich has of being the next US president.

The second option is much more possible. But humans drive their own history -- it will definitely be made impossible the more Bush bets on 1. The other three options are progressively worse for American interests. And for Iraq.

So, rationally, for our 150-200 billion dollars -- money we are not going to see again -- I'd say the reasonable thing to do is to take 2 as a scenario and try to improve it. That means ... well, it means handing power over to the Iraqi cabinet, and letting Bremer tell rotary clubs in Indiana all about his splendid plan for an Iraqi constitution. It means getting real about the money -- this money isn't coming back. It means letting the Iraqis decide what kind of economy they want -- from the contractors they hire to repair oil wells to the market system they are comfortable with. Of course, the "Iraqis" don't operate in isolation. But we should certainly not get into a situation in which there is a puppet Iraqi elite that simply obeys Americans, and thus abruptly abridges its shelf life. The commentary I've read about Iraq is truly odd -- it is as if nobody even thinks about what happens when the Americans withdraw. The Americans are not going to enforce a permanent solution to the Iraq problem -- period. The arguments are all about the chaos that will ensue if we withdraw right now, and how we have to do this, and how we have to do that... But by the force of things (ah, Lucretian phrase!) the Iraqis are the ones who will be there when the Americans are long gone. The american exit strategy better be shaped with that reality in mind.”

halloween

Here’s a Halloween story for you all. From Histoire curieuse et pittoresque des sorcier, devins, magiciens, astrologues, voyants, revenants, etc., by Mathias de Giraldo

Un pâtre du village de Blow, près de la ville de Kadam, en Bohème, apparut quelque temps. Il appelait certaines personnes, qui ne manquaient pas de venir dans la huitaine. Les paysans de Blow déterrerent ce pâtre et le réinhumererent avec un pieu qu’ils lui passerent à travers le corps. Cet homme, en cet état, se moquait de ceux qui lui faisaient subir ce traitement, et leur disait qu’il avaient bonne grace de lui donner ainsi un bâton pour se defender contre les chiens. La même nuit il se releva, et effraya par sa presence plusieurs personnes, et en suffoqua plus qu’il n’avait fait jusqu’alors. On le livra ensuite au bourreau, qui le mit sur une charrette pour le transporter hors du village et l’y brûler. Ce cadaver hurlait comme un furieux, et remuait les pieds et les mains comme un vivant, et losqu’on le perca de nouveau avec des pieux, il jeta de tres-grands cris, et rendit du sang vermeil et en grande quantité. Enfin on le brula, et cette exécution mit fin aux apparitions et aux infestations de ce spectre.

“A village shepherd from Blow, near to the village of Kadam, in Bohemia, appeared for a while [after his death]. He called upon certain persons, who did not fail to come to him within eight days. The peasants of Blow dug up the shepherd and re-buried him with a steak through his body. That man, in that estate, mocked them, thanking them for giving him a stick with which to defend himself against dogs. The same nite he rose and frightened several people, and suffocated more than he’d done before. They finally gave him to the executioner, who put him on a cart to transport him out of the village and burn him. The cadaver screamed like a maniac, and moved his hands and feet like a live person, and when they pierced him with stakes again, he emitted loud cries, and spewed out scarlet blood, in great quantities. At last they burned him, and that execution put an end to the apparitions and infestations of this specter.”

PS
And a little Halloween Borgesian touch for LI’s far clung correspondent in NYC, Mr. T. This is from Lew Spence’s encyclopedia of the occult. I’d like to find one of these folks.

Almoganenses is the name given by the Spaniards to certain people who, by the flight and song of birds, meetings with wild animals, and various other means, foretold coming events, whether good or evil. "They carefully preserve among themselves," says Laurent Valla, "books which treat of this science, where they find rules of all sorts of prognostications and predictions. The soothsayers are divided into two classes, one, the masters or principals, the other the disciples and aspirants."
Another kind of knowledge is also attributed to them, that of being able to indicate not only the way taken by horses and other beasts of burden which are lost, but even the road followed by one or more persons. They can specify the kind and shape of the ground, whether the earth is hard or soft, covered with sand or grass, whether it. is a broad road, paved or sanded, or narrow, twisting paths, and tell also how many passengers are on the road. They can thus follow the track of anyone, and cause thieves to be pursued and apprehended. Those writers who mention the Almoganenses, however, do not specify either the period when they flourished, or the country or province they occupied, but it seems possible from their name and other considerations that they were Moorish.

marabout hideousness

"And the Iraqi says, "What do you mean this is a show?'"

On April 18, 1999, in the NYT Magazine section, there was a brief article by Teller about Robert-Houdin’s trip to Algeria:

“On Oct. 28, 60 burnoose-clad chieftains and their retinues arrived at Algiers's Bab Azoun Theater to see Houdin. The magician began with a few pleasant surprises: he produced cannonballs and bouquets from a hat; he threw coins into the air, which then appeared in a crystal box suspended above the audience; he filled an empty silver punch bowl with steaming coffee -- a great hit with the Arab java lovers.

Having tantalized the audience with humor, Houdin began the psychological assault. He brought out a strongbox with a ring for a handle, and placed it on the floor. He asked for a muscular volunteer to come up onstage and lift the chest. A volunteer, a particularly burly man, did so easily.

Then Houdin waved his wand at the volunteer and said, ''Voila! You are weaker than a woman; now, try to lift the box.'' With a disdainful swagger, the volunteer seized the handle again, but though he sweated and strained, though his compatriots cheered him on, he could not move the chest. After a few minutes he suddenly screamed, fell to his knees, tore his hands from the ring and fled, crying for Allah to save him.

Houdin followed this trick by catching a marked bullet in an apple, and by making a member of the audience vanish. By the end of the show, the chieftains were exclaiming, ''Shaitan!'' (the Arabic equivalent of ''Satan'') as they ran for the exits in terror.
But Houdin was a magician, not a politician, so he had a conscience. After the show he sent translators to explain to the spectators that his tricks were just like the tricks of the marabouts -- theater and science, not the supernatural. (A powerful electromagnet under the stage kept the box on the ground; an electrical shock sent the strongman running.) In this case, a magician revealing his tricks paid off. Three days after the performance, 30 of the most powerful chieftains presented Houdin with an illuminated manuscript praising his art and pledging their steadfast allegiance to France.”

Since that article appeared in the golden age of Good King Bill, our politicians have invaded Mohammedan countries as the best damn team of stage magicians ever assembled – for instance, doing the disappearing army trick in Iraq. However, to LI, Teller’s story – which of course derives from Robert-Houdin’s excellent memoirs (sadly, to those who’ve emailed asking about said memoirs, Dover Press apparently has discontinued printing them – although this is a great opportunity for some Publishing company to hire LI to translate them for a whole new audience!) – puts into question the fissure between magic and politics, magic and the marketplace, magic and rational choice, etc. For it is the story of a type: it is the story of white magic that is favored by historians and the writers of Ripley’s believe it or not as well. It is the superstitious native vs. the rational white man. It is the script of a thousand Tarzan movies, and returns (turned about, satanically, the seachange undergone by the repressed) as voodoo attacks, or the Cat Woman, or I walked with a Zombie, or the Night of the Living Dead. It has a lively, marginal existence, and a happy ending – they always bring the illuminated manuscript in the end, and they always pledge their steadfast allegiance to France – or even better, Uncle Sam!
…
I’ve noticed that the disgruntlement with the ingratitude of the marabout has seeped far into the belligeranti culture. It was always going to happen. In the first few weeks of the occupation, when the looting broke out, there was the beginning of the narrative of Iraqi ‘immaturity’ – plus the shame of so many of the small dicked males in said soon to be paradise of free enterprise that it took the White Gods to drive Saddam into his spiderhole. However, we were going to be on the case in a jiffy, teaching the Iraqi policeman to respect democracy as much as American policemen do, and things like that. Oh, the things we wanted to teach the Iraqis! Our hearts were so open. We even wanted to play sex games with them at Abu Ghraib, or at least according to Representative Shays from Connecticut. How American is that? Not only fun now, but later on, you can have repressed memories therapy and learn what has been fucking up your whole life. So it is a twofer.

I am not, of course, saying that we were stupid – the savage knows one thing, and that is fear. But, like the kindest, gentlest Dr. Moreau’s, we were going to train that group of mutants into the best damn step and fetchit nation you ever saw.

But now, three years later – why you just have to go to National Review’s current source of Oriental wisdom, Foundation for the Defense of Democracies to see how damned depressed our belligeranti are becoming. It isn't the war so much - the belligeranti have the stomach for war. They are tough like that. But it is the realization that our gentleness has been misinterpreted as general pussiness by the hideous 'Umma', the insurgents, the cowards and fiends. Andrew McCarthy, a fellow at the institute and an absolute expert in Islam - in his bio, he modestly claims to have seen Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom ten times - has been on the case:

“Much of this worldwide community of believers, you may have noticed, has a hard time with some basic tenets of Western civilization — freedom of speech, of religion, separation of church and state, equality between men and women, between Muslims and non-Muslims, and so on. Not exactly what you'd call a running start toward anything we'd recognize as a democracy.

The Umma, moreover, has a hard time with … well, the Umma. Today marks the end of Ramadan, said to be the sacred month in the Islamic calendar. Yet this year, as in many years past, it will be marked in blood. Ironically, just a few days ago Muslim activists were rising up in anger (is there ever a time when they're not rising up in anger?) over the realization that the 2012 Olympics in London will collide with Ramadan, putting observant pole-vaulters at a competitive disadvantage. Fasting obligations, however, seem to detract little from the energy required for slaughter. Shiites and Sunnis in Baghdad have somehow managed to bomb, bludgeon, and behead each other with furious abandon throughout this “holy month.””

Marabout fuckers. The Umma is a wonderful word – sorta like Smersh – and you can tell right away that it is a regular beehive of evil. And he who says evil says the devil – something that the white magicians can’t abide.

McCarthy’s column is about a recent statement by a State Department official that the U.S. has been arrogant and ignorant in Iraq. So not the truth!

“In any event, the Associated Press reported on Sunday that Fernandez now believes he has the problem figured out: We need to talk more. You see, though we have freed 26 million Muslims from Saddam's sadistic tyranny and given them a chance — whether or not they want it — to taste freedom, the United States is ignorant and imperious because we haven't had enough dialogue with the malcontents. But finally, according to Fernandez, “We are open to dialogue.” Why? Because “we all know that, at the end of the day, the solution to the hell and the killings in Iraq is linked to an effective Iraqi national reconciliation[.] … The Iraqi government is convinced of this.”

So there you have it. State's assessment from the senior diplomat responsible for conveying our position: The U.S. is arrogant and stupid, and what we need to pursue is the chatter course preferred by the Iraqi government. And, yes, that would be the same government whose thoroughly ineffective, Hezbollah-supporting, Iran apologist of a leader, Nouri al-Maliki, can't or won't crack down on Shiite militias — particularly the one led by his political ally, Muqtada al-Sadr, who may now outpace al Qaeda and disgruntled Baathists among Iraq's countless destabilizers.”

Truly, the Offending Freedom, er, or Defending Democracies is the think pack to join in this, a trough time in the forty year war to rid the world of terrorism. The sample from McCarthy, by the way, represents the moderate wing of this group of Front Liners.

Lois Poitras

Lois Poitras decided to do something foolhardy, and went to Iraq with a camera, and hung out with an anti-occupation politician during the 2005 election. Contrast this with the home of Kraus and Shafer and Hitchens, Slate, which elected to get its Iraqi election news from correspondant Tamara Chalabi – that’s right, Ahmed’s daughter. How sick is that. And so contrarian! Giggles must have swept the Slate D.C. office – so naughty. Why, it is as funny as making a mousse out of congealed Iraqi blood!

Well, Poitras didn’t do anything so chic and D.C., but spent time –
plebe that she is – in the Adhamiyah section of Baghdad filming … “*Dr. Riyadh* … a Sunni political candidate and medical doctor who sees the effects of war daily. Dr. Riyadh opposes U.S. occupation and calls for civil resistance, while hoping for a democracy based on Islamic principles.” One of the … wait for it … bad guys, must be. Ungrateful for the killing fields which, as Chris Hitchens has pointed out, are just the price people like him are willing to pay to stop Islamofascism.

Anyway, her Q and A here is fascinating, and the film sounds pretty
cool – those of you who get PBS might see if you can tune into some
rerun of My Country, My country.

However, as much as LI finds Poitras and the response to her film
heartening – there is still a part of this country that won’t accept
bullshit lying down – there was a q.and a. to remind us that under the present decider-clown, we are slouching towards giving up our right to freedom of speech at an alarming rate:

“*Fort Thomas, Ky.:* Have you found out yet why you have a score of 400 with Homeland Security? it is an outrage! The film was wondeful I am hoping to get it shown at my daughters HS - Thank you and please send our thanks to the Dr. and his family for sharing their lives with us!

This is an important work.

*Laura Poitras:* The reason I'm on the list is classified. What I was told my a source it that there is an accusation against me. I'm in the process of filing a Freedom of Information Act request which will probably take months or years to process. It is sad and also funny - no one gave me any trouble in Baghdad, but now that I'm home I'm suddenly dangerous. Makes me a little worried about the people who make this
kinds of decisions.”

Mother of mercy - an accusation filed against her. This is where I stick my poll through the screen - notice the chopped off locks? Yesterday, I decided I needed to look like Dreyer's Joan of Arc, got out the scissors, and snip snip snip - anyway, kiddies, here's the plan. Please address Andres Serrano and ask him to make President Bush the honoree of his next art work. An' at this point I withdraw my head, the camera filling with a huge eyelid coming down - wink! on a huge eye, a la a Warner Bros. cartoon, circa 1945 - and we return you to your regularly scheduled post...

The PBS site for the film is here, complete with podcast of conversation with George Packer. Hmm.

And a quote:

Maria Hinojosa: There is a moment in your film, when people are getting ready for the election and they're being spoken to by an American military official who says, "Your elections are going to be the biggest show on earth, they're going to be seen all over. Your show." And the Iraqi says, "What do you mean this is a show?" and he was confused. Tell me about that scene.

Laura Poitras: It was actually a shoot that I fought really hard to get on. Some of the access I got in Iraq came serendipitously, some of it went through repeated, repeated emails. For that particular shoot, I knew that there was going to be training of police before elections, and then I got an email and officially, they said, "No, the training is not going to happen, it's not going to happen." But somebody else sent me an email from the military and said, "Listen, it's happening, you didn't hear it from me." I approached the military and I got in.

It was two days of training where the U.S. State Department and Justice Department had put together a manual for training Iraqi lieutenants. So these were Iraqi police officers who were high up, and the U.S. brought them from all over the country to do this training. I filmed for the whole two days and during this one particular scene, it's a contractor for the Justice and State Departments who was conducting this training and talking about this is going to be such a great show. But then you listen to the conversation that develops, and you realize that the people he's talking to — the Iraqi police — are going to be on the front lines, so these are the people who are going to die in the show.

Maria Hinojosa: That's what he's saying to them, "This isn't a show for us."

Forgive a bit of blind and stupid optimism, but I think the Poitras approach is going to blow up, eventually, the Dracula’s castle the plutocrats are making of this country. We creep up upon them. Loonies such as myself, practicing homemade black magic. Filmmakers getting riffs from war supporters that lead in unexpected directions. My suggestion for a political motto at the moment in these here states is: Brothers and sisters, let's not slaughter other people.

Radical, eh?

Bush, our vanity robot, speaks

Out of curiosity, LI counted the number of times President Bush said “I believe” in today’s press conference. It comes out to 21. As we have said until saying it makes us fucking sick and tired of saying it, Iraq is a vanity war, caused, in part, by the power seized by the executive branch during the cold war that has allowed any president to use U.S. troops as mercenaries to fulfill whatever odious desire he happens to shelter. President Bush is different than most in that he is more emotionally crippled than is even usually the case for a politician – and let’s face it, the skill set for a politician can be pretty much read in the face of a politician -- all the taloned love of self combined with the usual middle manager's enormous and servile fears.

Thus, this war has been reduced, in the unimaginable claustrophobia of the oval office, to what Bush believes. The convergence of an anti-democratic structure and the pathologies of privilege meet and resonate in Bush’s credo, for what he believes in is… Bush. His defense of the entire Iraq war revolves around the phrase, “I believe” … in me. (cue the “Fame, I’m going to live forever!" music). The reiteration of that kind of thing is heady and tempting for the D.C. crowd – finally, the king openly relies on his own Godgiven kingliness, instead of any mere excuse provided by precedent or rationality. This is why Bush, among these syncophants, is known as ‘bold,’ he’s a ‘cowboy’, he’s ‘tough’. The old and reliable eunuch impulses kick in. Isn’t this the whole crowning point of meritocracy, the whole glorious apotheosis? The separation of the wealthy and privileged, finally, from the filth and sloppiness of the American plebe, the vast audience of suckers, who can hardly be relied upon to find their proper places in the American greatness project. Those places are to volunteer to be a soldier, god damn it. Get your fucking ass in uniform, and don’t ask beastly and silly questions about the children of the D.C. privileged. Those questions show such childishness, especially in the divine light radiated out by Bush’s “I believe.”

Well, besides giving Fred Barnes several orgasms with this press conference, we wonder if the drunken wobble of the American greatness project as it reliably produces 300 to 500 Iraqi dead per day isn’t going down just as a matter of course. In a sense, having a vanity robot telling us what he believes, as though this were some transforming data we hadn’t considered before, as if big dick Moses was coming down from the mountain to lay it out before us as we heedlessly danced around a golden calf we are paying Visa, Mastercharge and American Express for, at a new discount rate of 21 percent compounded monthly, and suddenly – ah, the light dawns upon us. Our president BELIEVES – well, we wonder if the suckers and zombies are going to take this bait once more.

Comment on devient sorcier

That wonderful phrase comes from Robert-Houdin, the conjurer LI mentioned in the last post.

Robert-Houdin is known to most Americans simply because Eric Weiss stole part of his name and added an ‘i’: Houdini. And even those who know that rarely know that Houdini wrote a book in which he supposedly “unmasked” his idol as a pilferer of other people’s tricks. Robert-Houdin has become one of those quiet sites of American-French rivalry – as the French know, Robert-Houdin’s house was lit by incandescent lightbulbs with a filament he invented decades before the Wizard of Menlo Park got around to experimenting on how much of an electrical charge the human hair follicle could take.

His memoirs were once popular, and still are popular among magicians. They are also popularly debunked. As is, for example, the story of how Houdin got into the magic biz in the first place.

Here it is. Houdin was a young man, away from home, an apprentice watchmaker, and son of a watchmaker. One day he got a bad case of food poisoning. He’d nearly collapsed by the side of the road, trying to reach home, when a traveling magic show passed by. The magician was a once famous conjurer named Torrini now in the dumps, accompanied, of course, by a faithful servant, Antonio. Torrini and his servant took the delirious Houdin in, and nursed him back to health. Torrini was so affection because, it transpired, Houdin looked like Torrini’s son. A son about which there was some obvious dark cloud of mystery, since every time Torrini mentioned him, he’d burst into tears. While Houdin learned the mysteries of the craft, he did not learn the mysteries of Torrini until one night he gradually wormed it out of the old man.

Seems like Torrini hadn’t always been just a sawdust floor wizard – at one time, he was a conjuror to princes and popes. He was born into the nobility, you see. But as the years went on, his card tricks began to bore his audiences, and so he searched around for something more… shall we say, more s-sensational.

At this time, Torrini was married and had a boy. His son assisted him, especially in an act Torrini had entitled, Son of William Tell. Torrini claimed to have invented it – like all stage showman, he had a weakness for bogus originality. It was quite simple, really. The boy bit into an apple, and held it there in front of his mouth, and his father shot at him. The bullet, especially marked, lodged in the apple.

Here’s how the bullet catch trick is done. “The bullet was molded of hollow wax, mixed with soot to give it a dark, metallic look. The wax bullet was crushed in the barrel of the pistol and the magician was careful to stand a great distance away.”

It is an old trick. According to James Randi, it was first described by Reverend Thomas Beard in Threats of God’s Judgment in 1631. Anyway, here is how Torrini lost his mind: he kept these wax bullets in a box. All very simple. And yet somehow a leaden bullet was insensibly mixed into this box, and one night the leaden bullet was selected, the boy stood with his apple, and his father took aim and slew him.

And you wondered where William Burroughs got the idea…

After six months in jail and his wife’s desertion, Torrini then wandered the byways of Europe, playing to gawping plebes, out of his head. And then, just as Saul was cured of his Godrogenic stresses by David, Torrini met Robert-Houdin.

Jim Steinmeyer, in his biography of Chung Sing Loo, writes that Torrini never existed. Or nobody has ever found a record of him. But it is an excellent story.

Incidentally, Houdini was famously advised never to do the bullet catch himself, and never did. It is a simple trick, but usually it involves a momentary loss of control of the instrument. Rather than the magician shooting, the magician usually selects someone from the audience to shoot at him.

When Hobbes wrote about nature blood in tooth and claw, he was referring, allegorically, to the audience at magic acts. The first magician who brought the bullet catch trick to America turned around, and in that moment the spectator who held the gun filled it with tacks – and must have had the tacks on hand, too. Anyway, of course, the magician was pelleted. Chung Sing Loo died of the bullet catch act. You can get a partial list here.
…
Now – interlude for some heavy bellringing as LI goes into a History channel overview re magick – magic in the sixteenth century, whether performed by the savage or the sage woman, was the same kind of stuff, derived from the devil. But by the eighteenth century, there was a fold. At that point the belief in magic, for the governing class of European, fell by the wayside. And so the native magician became ignorant, and the peasant became a tool of some more powerful personage playing on his credulity. Magic as a means of taking and keeping power produced a variation on the reading of the chief, the shaman, the ‘medecine man’, the figure flinger.

Bringing us on the wings of white magic angels to the nineteenth century, and Robert-Houdin, born in 1805 to a watchmaker. It is emblematic that nineteenth century magie blanche should arise from the same cadre that produced steam engines and cotton gins. At the beginning of his memoirs, Houdin breaks out into a nice bit of poetry that tells us a good deal about the 19th century:

“How often, in my infantile dreams, did a benevolent fairy open before me the door of a mysterious El Dorado, where tools of every description were piled up. The delight which these dreams produced on me were the same as any other child feels when his fancy summons up before him a fantastic country where the houses are made of chocolate, the stones of sugar-candy, and the men of gingerbread. It is difficult to understand this fever for tools; the mechanic, the artist, adores them, and would ruin himself to obtain them. Tools, in fact, are to him what a ms. is to the archaeologist, a coin to the antiquary, or a pack of cards to a gambler: in a word, they are the implements by which a ruling passion is fed.”

My brothers have the same unconquerable passion for the El Dorado of tools. Of course, nowadays, we can drive to it. It is called Home Depot.

Actually, Houdin’s memoirs are full of these Stendhal like touches. Perhaps this is why Henri Bergson read him. There is a passage in Energie spirituelle by Bergson I’m gonna translate, and then we are finished with this here post.

“In one of the curious pages of his Confidences, Robert Houdin explains how he proceeded to develop an intuitive and instantaneous memory in his young son. He began by showing the child a domino, the 5/4, asking him the sum total of the points without letting him count them. To this domino he added another, the 4/3, demanding once again an immediate response. He stopped his first lesson there. The next day, he succeeded in adding in the blink of an eye three and four dominos, the next day after five: in adding each day some new progress to that of yesterday’s, he ended up by obtaining instantly the some of the points of a dozen dominoes. “This result acquired, we busied ourselves with a task that was difficult in another way, to which we devoted ourselves for more than a month. We passed, my son and I, rapidly enough before a children’s toy shop, or some other shop which was furnished with various merchandise, and we plunged an attentive look into it. Some steps latter, we drew from our pockets a pencil and piuece of paper, and we each competed separately to see who could describe the greatest number of objects that we grasped in passing… It often happened that my son listed fourteen objects…” The purpose of this special education was to get the child to grasp with a glance, in the seating area of the theater, all the objects carried into it by all the assistants. thus, with a cloth tied over his eyes, he could simulate second sight in describing, given an agreed upon sign by his father, an object chosen at random by one of the audience. This visual memory was developed to such a point that after some moments passed in front of a library/bookstore the boy retained a large number of titles, with the exact places of the corresponding books. He took, in a way, a mental photograph of the whole, which permitted the immediate recall of the parts. But, from the start of the first lesson, and in the interdiction weighing on adding up the points of the dominoes, we see the principle mechanism of this education of the memory. All interpretation of the visual image was excluded from the act of the vision: intelligence was maintained on the level of the visual images.”

Things my old man never did for me… Actually, Houdin’s pedagogical plan is not that different from the plan worked out by Rousseau – spacing the secondary intelligence of culture after the primary intelligence of the senses, with memory that strange human faculty that straddles the divide between nature and culture. And I should say: this is an excellent education for writing. Robert-Houdin's memoir's are supposedly ghostwritten -- but like Torrini, the Ghostwriter has apparently been the victim of one of Robert-Houdin's vanishing acts. Nobody has a name for him, or a record of him.

Anyway, in a coming post, we will get to the hat trick with the cannon balls. Don’t worry!

tricks as primitive as are the spectators before whom they are performed

They put a little light in his head – Metric

Robert-Houdin, like Berlioz and Georges Sand, led his life as though it were a sold out engagement for a 19th century French audience – so it was natural that he would gravitate towards the memoir.

In 1856, acceding to the demands of Colonel Neveu of the Political office, Houdin went to tour Algeria. The tour was not simply about showing French magic in the colonies to a bunch of poilus – it was about using that magic for political ends. Specifically, Houdin was the point man for the battle of white magic against black.

“It is known that the majority of revolts which have to be suppressed in Algeria are excited by intriguers, who say they are inspired by the Prophet, and are regarded by the Arabs as envoys of God on earth to deliver them from the oppression of the Roumi (Christians).

These false prophets and holy Marabouts, who are no more sorcerers than I am, and indeed even less so, still contrive to influence the fanaticism of their co-religionists by tricks as primitive as are the spectators before whom they are performed.”

The government sent Houdin around both to de-mystify and to mystify – although Houdin would, of course, dispute the latter description of what his mission was about:

“The governments was, therefore, anxious to destroy their pernicious influence, and reckoned on me to do so. They hoped, with reason, by the aid of my experiments, to prove to the Arabs that the tricks of their Marabouts were mere child’s play, and owing to their simplicity could not be done by an envoy from Heaven, which also led us very naturally to show them that we are their superiors in everything, and, as for sorcerers, there are none like the French.”

And you thought LI was joking about white magic.

Speeddialing one hundred fifty years, the newest, meanest sorcerers, the Americans, seem to have tricked themselves, to their own satisfaction, in Afghanistan, from which we are cutting and running, leaving an angry house to a new crewe of white magicians from Nato. In 2001, LI thought – and still thinks – that the U.S. had a perfect right and need to attack, having been attacked. In other words, we thought that the U.S., like a normal nation, should act like a normal nation. But the U.S. isn’t a normal nation. Subordinate to the magic of war, the U.S. can’t actually fight wars – normally. To do that would be to uncover the illusion necessary to getting a population to spend a trillion dollars per annum on war. And of course, on the personal side, there was the matter of the junta of cardsharps, popinjays and senile D.C. fixtures that were the leaders of our brave mission. The fiasco that has resulted is as laughable as any random pile of bodies left bleeding on a battlefield. In the NYT Magazine article about Afghanistan by Elizabeth Rubin, Rubin begins by describing her interviews, in Pakistan, with some of the second line Taliban commanders, and gives us this perfect paragraph – perfect, that is, in how American superiority in white magic combines with the audience it tricks – the Americans, of course:

“And though Mullah Sadiq said they had lost many commanders in battles around Kandahar, he and Abdul Baqi appeared to be in good spirits, laughing and chatting loudly on a cellphone to Taliban friends in Pakistan and Afghanistan. After all, they never imagined that the Taliban would be back so soon or in such force or that they would be giving such trouble to the Afghan government of Hamid Karzai and some 40,000 NATO and U.S. troops in the country. For the first time since the fall of 2001, when the Taliban were overthrown, they were beginning to taste the possibility of victory.”

Yesterday, LI assembled a series of the general idiocies of the Conventional Wisdom in 2002 – remember how the liberal/lefties, remembering the Soviets, worried about losing the quick and easy war? Sure you do. Dumb liberal fucks, doubting our white magician.

Of course, the same purveyors of CW have moved on, paying no attention to the fact that the main goal and only justification of the war, attacking the ones who attacked the U.S., sank beneath the waves of Bush incompetency and Rove’s Porky Pig Machiavellianism.

But our little crow heart couldn’t stand contemplating that much irreality.

We’re going to return to Houdin’s tour of Algeria in some later post.

mission party redux - Bush and the endless boner

Having been paid by a paper (hurray for me!) yesterday, LI had the spondulees to go out and see a movie and have a drink with a friend. Over the drinkipoo (not a Mexican martini, since we did not want the headache – oh, we have gotten old, we have gotten old, we will wear the bottoms of our trousers rolled) the friend reminded us of kind things we’d said about John McCain. Say what?

Now, it is true that LI, like Saint Paul, does try to be all things to all people. Sometimes, we try to be moderate, and sometimes simply liberal, but most people who have the patience to endure our company for any length of time come away with the impression that we are a far leftist type. And, as readers of this blog know, in reality we are simply insane, or to give the standard blogspeak version of that, batshit insane (although, in reality, we are more the flyeating variety – like Renfield in Dracula. And driven to this condition by a too long residence in Dracula’s castle, aka the U.S., circa 2001 –2006. And like Renfield, our insane condition has made us supersensitive to the peregrinations of evil itself – in the shape of the war culture. Here’s the spot in the parenthesis where we mention that the U.S. spent a trillion dollars on “defense” last year. Then we gobble down some flies). But could we have been saying kind things about John McCain? Perhaps it was after he made noises about the fact that Global warming is real, and even might be of interest to the Federal Government at some far distant point. And it is also true that we take Paul’s advice to be fundamentally about method acting: get into a part, become the part, see what is in the part. Become a Republican, a warmonger, a business mantra citing freak, a motherfucker, a nice guy, a secretary, a loser, a bum, a lecher, a leech – whatever. We are, and remain, a figure-flinger, as Naude puts it – one of the cunning women.

Getting us to the wonderfully oblivious President’s latest speech. We mentioned, long ago, that our Rebel in Chief gets a particular boner from certain words and stances, with his favorite, the one that is on the very top, being “mission”:

“President Bush met today with his top advisers and military commanders on Iraq, but he offered no indication of change in strategy in his weekly radio address where he vowed not to pull U.S. troops out until "the mission is complete" and said one of the causes of the increased violence in Iraq is the enemy's desire to break America's resolve.

"The terrorists are trying to divide America and break our will, and we must not allow them to succeed . . . ," Bush said.

"Retreating from Iraq would allow the terrorists to gain a new safe haven from which to launch new attacks on America. Retreating from Iraq would dishonor the men and women who have given their lives in that country, and mean their sacrifice has been in vain. And retreating from Iraq would embolden the terrorists, and make our country, our friends, and our allies more vulnerable to new attacks."

I guess the new safe haven comes on top of the one they have in Pakistan, that the U.S. pays 6 billion per year to keep clean and neat.

All of which moves us to recycle a post from this March. Here it is:

Friday, March 10, 2006
the mission party, 03 -- a kegger!
We’ve spent three years watching a comatose anti-war movement spend its time begging Democrats to “lead an opposition.” This shows a fundamental misconception about the war.

[divertimento time]

Many think that the war is a foreign policy issue. Those people are always worried about the purpose of the war. Well, we long ago figured out that this was not a foreign policy issue, and we know the purpose of the war.

To explain this, some background.

When Bush was coming up through the sons-of-millionaire ranks, he landed, lucratively, on a sports franchise. But he wouldn’t be a Texas trust funder if he wasn’t aware that as he was making baby bucks with his franchise, his peers were bringing home double and triple that, leaving him, status wise, in the dust. Well, Bush took the higher road, of public sacrifice and shit, but it still burned a little bit, these CEOs and their money and perks.

So when Bush was elevated to the CC’s chair, he did what a CEO president does, and he amply rewarded the investor class. And just like a CEO – for instance, Dennis Kozlowski, after a busy couple of years making spurious profits, demands a little perk for himself, so did Bush. Kozlowski threw himself a two million dollar bash. Or actually, because he is a good, kind caring type, he threw it for one of his wives. And it was Roman themed, because Kozlowski, though an owner of an off shore company, had hung around NYC enough to meet uptown chicks who told him he had a roman profile and such, as he was stuffing hundreds in their panties. Actually, he has a classic fascist profile, but what is the diff?

Bush wanted his party, which is where Iraq came in. That was the party. And a great party it was. Everybody liked it.

Now, just as Kozlowski cast himself as a roman, Bush has a secret soldier side to him that is sort of cute. The purpose of the party was revealed on May 2, 2003. The purpose was so that Bush could say, Mission accomplished,.

Our CEO president loves to say mission. We won’t speculate overmuch about his love life, but let’s just say that we bet mission impossible has a place in it.

Everything was groovy. And the investors got another taste of sweetness, another huge theft of public resources in the form of a tax cut. The party was officially for the Iraqis, and this is where the trouble started. As Bremer has pointed out, Bush was pretty p.o.-ed that the people he threw his party for were not thanking him. And that was just the beginning of it. The natives are supposed to love parties – I mean, what else are they doing, herding sheep and shit? Bartending pays way more. But the Iraqis started getting in the way of the guests, started wolfing down the canapés and, frankly, setting fire to the tablecloths and shit.

This is where the Dems come in. Like any swank party, you have to have a pliable police force. That force is supposed to stifle calls from irate neighbors. The dems were perfect. Oh sure, like all cops, they made faces and rolled their eyes, especially when some of the guests poured white phosphorus on a major city, attacked its hospital, and scattered its people, all 200,000 of them, across the desert, and generally shot up the place, killing thousands. However, the cops were none too thrilled with the people in that city anyway.

Actually, this is why Murtha was a big deal – as you will have noticed, he looks like a cop. He’s the weary, about to retire cop, and he says, enough is enough. This party has to end, and we have to go to Kuwait and only send out our planes on special occasions to drop bombs on wedding parties and shit. And everybody is like, Murtha is the chief but he’s getting old.

However, the good time is wearing down. Just as with Kozlowski, Bush must notice that his peers are suddenly, eerily silent. Not only that, but there are all these spitballs from respected conservative figures. Drop the ideological label – I think the last conservative in the U.S. died in 1948. But these guys are innovators, little lures cast out by the investing class. And as the investing class pulls the plug on the party, the tom toms beating in the press for what a great party it is, and how we have to do it for the next ten years or so, are going to go silent.

All of which means that if – if Bush really does have to stop his party in Iraq – the Mission party, man, you can just hear him moaning. I deserved that party! … well, if he has to wrap it up, first sign will be Rumsfeld resigning. And here is the prediction from our fearless party planning consultant –watch for the M word. That will come out of Bush’s mouth as he speechifies his undying gratitude to Rumsfeld for sure.

[back to our sponsor time]

Oh, here's our ps. Bush might feel bad about like nobody liking his party. But the upside is, he has raised the bar on parties. That is so for sure. Hilary, who is a status sniffer if there ever was one, is sure to throw herself a party if she gets elected. Not in Iran – she’s not nuts – but some little place where we can go in, liberate, kill a couple thousand and get out. Maybe Bolivia – a total party opportunity, and I believe we own their army!”

end of self quote, back to self:

I’m feeling kindlier about H.C. lately – I actually think the wreck of Iraq is diminishing even the hyperaggressive American appetite for killing thousands of foreigners in order to keep America a safe haven for – Americans who want to go out and kill thousands of foreigners. Surely her antennae have picked this up.

iraqi bloggers respond to the lancet report

LI has been intrigued by the reaction, among the English writing Iraqi bloggers, to the Lancet report. Apparently it was trashed by Iraq the Model – a famous site among the pro-war crowd, that supplies a consistently pro-Bush line. This was too much for a blogger who goes by Konfused Kid (see our links), and he contacted other Iraqi bloggers. In the back and forth, a lot of fascinating, and very, very depressing stories fell out. Instead of listing all these blogs, go to this post at Treasure of Baghdad and read the informal survey he took.

LI’s position has been, consistently, that peace would consist of two parts: American withdrawal, and peace with Iran – since I don’t believe Iraq can be at peace, for one thing, without the latter condition. But because the American occupation has been such a crime against humanity, I recognize the one slimy truth in the stay the course option – American withdrawal might increase the violence. Practically, that means some of the voices surveyed by Baghdad treasure could be murdered. If you go through the Iraqi blogs, murder prowls the posts. And the question is: wouldn’t an American withdrawal be equivalent to the disbanding of the army and security services accomplished by the Americans – the one leading cause of the violence, without any doubt?

The problem with that argument is that it ignores what the Americans are doing. While keeping a rough and ready order, it is in the service of a larger disorder. The Americans will never allow the things that have to be done in Iraq – the negotion between all parties without any conditions; the possibility of universal amnesty; the serious discussion of disarming the militias, which can only come about if one of those militias isn’t favored (at the moment, the U.S. is favoring the Badr Brigades, by the way). In our analogy between American withdrawal and the disbanding of the Iraqi army, we should add this likeness – the American army, officially headed by the Bush administration, is like the Iraqi army still being headed by Saddam Hussein. Discussions about what the Americans do, or their humanitarian function in Iraq, are pointless if the discussion doesn’t include that the American forces are headed by a petty, incompetent and irresponsible tyrant. This is what happens when a volunteer army is used for mercenary purposes. The double aspect of ownership is, here, a fraud – they are “American” forces, insofar as they are paid for by American money, but they are “Bush’s paramilitary”, insofar as the executive, illegally, has so far extended his executive power as to fling them into Iraq, and refused any feedback from Congress as to what they are doing there. The victims of Bush’s vanity war are the Iraqis. They die. The Americans pay. The Bush white house gets redder and redder with Iraqi blood.

Reading the Iraqi blogs brings this home. These are like voices from inside some disaster that we caused. They are still alive, and God willing, will survive the American criminal regime. But, in fact, these people will die if American policy isn’t changed radically, and soon.

marie antoinette's finest moment

En fait, on sait bien que ce qui a mis à sec les finances de la France, c’est la guerre d’Indépendance américaine, et pas les chaussures de Marie-Antoinette. Mais avec les femmes au pouvoir, on en vient toujours aux paires de chaussures. – Chantal Thomas


A recent LCC post got us interested in the new Coppola movie about Marie Antoinette – an obvious lure for people who have invested a lot of time in studying French culture. At the same time, I don’t have high hopes for it – Lost in Translation merely made me sorry that Bill Murray was lost in Lost in Translation, and everything I have read about the Marie Antoinette movie seems to indicate – take the Paris Hilton set, put big gowns and wigs on them, and voila, the decadent Frogs! A rather pitiful comparison. The French aristocracy might have been many things, but they were not the untutored ignoramuses of our current governing class.

Probably we will have to wait until video – we are rather crawling on the economic floor this week, and repeating our mantra: never become a freelance writer! Better strangle your child in the cradle. If they show any inclination to write down their feelings, or compose poems, or such crapola – send them immediately to military school! So we aren’t about to spring for the tickets to S.C.’s fun filled frolic at the moment, when that is certainly equivalent to a burger and fries.

Good films about the French revolution are hard to make. (We have heard wonderful think about Peter Watson’s film of the French Commune – but it is not out on DVD, so these are just rumors to us). However, we do remember back, what, twenty years, the awful film by Wadja that tried to make out that the French Revolution was Stalinism with the trimmings, with some rancid scenes about Robespierre that completely made him out to be a puritanical little Beria. Wadja really is a cunt, and he revived an old reactionary trope that is adored by the right, which likes to contrast the American Revolution (which preserved slavery and was premised on the westward march of Indian killing) as good and enlightened, whereas the bad Frenchies were sending butchers out to drown the Vendee in blood and such. It always amazes me how much sheer blindness goes into these things, but I guess I exist in a constant state of amazement. I, on the other hand, support (isn’t that a lovely word, support? It is often brandished in comments and blogs, and it has such faux gravity, as if one were stepping to a podium before a cheering crowd. This, my friends, my brothers, my mokes and geezers, is what pomposity is all about!) the Atlantic revolutions – the U.S., France, Haiti. Good thing I do, too! Otherwise there’d be the devil to pay.

Poor Marie A. was not her mother’s daughter until the end – I wonder if they show that in the movie? I don’t have a soft spot for many royals – for instance, I think Lenin did the right thing in ordering the execution of the Romanovs, save for the kids – but I think Paine was completely right about sparing Louis and his wife – a step that plunged France into the wars that eventually led to Napoleon. Anyway, Antoinette has been a great object for feminist historians in the last twenty years. In her time, Marie Antoinette was the anti-heroine of many a pornographic tract. Lynn Hunt, in the Family Romance of the French Revolution, and Chantal Thomas, in the groundbreaking La Reine Scelerante, have done some immense work in the archives, bringing to light these pamphlets and caricatures. Thomas, in her interview with Humanite, cites Madame De Stael:

“After having written that essay on the queen in the pamphlets (La reine scelerante), and chiefly in picking up once again the witness of Madame de Staël, I was intrigued that someone who was so politically opposite to the queen would take up the pen so courageously to defend her in saying that all women are humiliated by the way Marie Antoinette is treated.” Referring of course to the trial. Marie Antoinette’s boy was taken away, and given to a shoemaker named Simon, who caught him, one day, masturbating, and coaxed the eight year old into saying that his mother and her sister taught him. Hebert, prosecuting Marie, said this about the charge:

“There is reason to believe that this criminal enjoyment was not at all dictated by pleasure, but rather by the political hope of enervating the physical health of this child, who theycontinued to believe would occupy a throne, and on whom they wished, by this maneuver, to assure themselves of the right of ruling afterward over his morals.”

Now, Hébert is not just anybody. Actually, he is an influence on this very blog – I throw in words like cunt, fuck, and shit partly because Hébert used obscenity in Pere Duchesne, his newspaper. It was after reading Pere Duchesne that I decided, fuck, I’m gonna do that. Hebert had the genius to marry the language of the street to the language of revolutionary politics. He helped create the modern demagogic style. To make him Marie Antoinette’s accuser would be like appointing Larry Flynt Foley’s accuser.

In any case, the Queen was not going to put up with this confusion between reality and the stroke story. Her reply … is unfortunately untranslateable. A popular biography has her saying, I appeal to all the mothers in this room. “I appeal” is, technically, correct, but doesn’t have the electric force of Marie Antoinette’s speech, which is like the speech of one of Racine’s heroines. Here’s an excerpt from the Goncourt Brothers biography:

‘A juror arose: Citoyen président, je vous invite de vouloir bien observer à l’accusée qu’elle n’a pas repondu sur le fait dont à parlé le citoyen Hébert, à l’égard de ce qui s’est passé entre elle et son fils.”

“Si je n’ai pas repondu, dit la Reine, c’est que la nature se refuse à repondre à une pareille question faite à une mere; et se tournant vers les mères qui remplissent les tribunes: J’en appelle à toutes celles qui peuvent se trouver ici.

I love this moment. I absolutely love this moment.

ps - proof that our own court society, compared to Louis XVI's, is as pasteboard to diamonds, is provided by Sally Quinn, the Washington Post's most enjoyable doyenne, today. Quinn has always treated D.C. as though it were her private high school - after all, we all learn about court society in prom, don't we? - and is probably still rather miffed that, after all the introducing around she did for Chalabi, the man still wasn't elevated to the rank of proconsul in Iraq. Some greasy other Arab was (and I use greasy advisedly - her column about Chalabi and other Iraqi leaders made a point of how relatively non-greasy Chalabi was. As well as obviously having table manners - none of that barbarous scooping up the rice with your bare hands for OUR Iraqi leader.) Her column about Rumsfeld as a scapegoat today is riotously funny - Quinn seems to have the kind of fine mind that separates actions (especially actions about peons and peasants - I mean, my God, these are figures made by God to move about a chessboard, and we are supposed to worry that they bleed a little? Well, boo hoo) from high D.C. symbolism. So Rumsfeld is a scapegoat - I guess in the same way that Manson is a scapegoat in the murder of Sharon Tate. Charlie wasn't actually there, right?

But High School has its privileges, unto the grave. So my fave doyenne graf was this one:

"I suspect that he has already told the president and Cheney that he will leave after the midterm elections, saying that the country needs new leadership to wind down the war. And he will resign to take a job in some sort of humanitarian venture, thereby creating the perception that he is a caring person who left of his own accord to devote the rest of his life to good works."

Operator, get me a charity! "The perception that he is a caring person" - to parse that phrase completely, from the way in which perception is detached from subject and launched as a free floating variable, docking with various ectoplasmic communities, to the choice of 'person' - not man, not caring butcher of Fallujah, but 'person' - well, it would be to plunge into the maelstrom. The ride down would be fun, but much, much too long for a simple post.

journey through your mind to liberation past - and feel the patriotism!

The deadenders seem to be stirring in liberated Iraq this month. Puzzlingly, ten American soldiers were killed yesterday – puzzling in that Iraq, by all accounts, is well on its way to being a model for the world of freedom and free enterprise.

Stunned by the headlines, which seem to imply a few glitches in our Rebel in Chief’s masterwork in the Middle East, LI plunged into the very recent past to see where it all went right – where faith in freedom rescued the country from savage socialist minded Ba’athism and set it on the path of peace and prosperity. We were also a bit motivated by the rather strange Q and A in the Washington Post with the producer of the frontline about America's first year in Iraq. The man answered questions as though he were a prisoner of war -- and indeed, he did seem to know that offering unsolicited, socialist criticisms of the president would only be a trick to elect the Democrats. So he remained as nonpartisan as oatmeal.

We went to May 27, 2003 – you’ll remember that date. It lives in history. That was when the American liberators pretty much took care of the dead ender problem. Paul Bremer, an icy eyed executive used to getting things done (although, in private, associates say, he relaxes with his family, and joins his wonderful baritone to the voices around the dinner table as Rock of Ages, a family favorite, is being sung), announced the end of phase one of the liberation, and the beginning of phase two: the economy!

"A free economy and a free people go hand in hand," said Bremer, who arrived two weeks ago to run the occupation authority. "History tells us that substantial and broadly held resources, protected by private property, private rights, are the best protection of political freedom. Building such prosperity in Iraq will be a key measure of our success here."

Bremer spoke four days after the U.N. Security Council lifted economic sanctions imposed on Iraq more than 12 years ago after the Persian Gulf War. U.S. officials had complained that the sanctions, which they once favored as a way to force Hussein to comply with U.N. arms inspections and perhaps foment an uprising against him, had become a severe hindrance to postwar recovery.

But dismantling Iraq's state-managed system holds big risks for the occupation authority at a time when most Iraqis are struggling to get by. During Hussein's 24 years as president, he and his Baath Party drew on Iraq's oil wealth to subsidize the cost of basic items, creating something like a welfare state, and people came to expect these low prices. Many free-market advocates contend that subsidies distort economic incentives, retarding growth and ultimately harming consumers.

Before its 1990 invasion of Kuwait, the Iraqi government spent close to $20 billion a year to import almost everything from staples to delicacies that it sold to merchants at bargain prices, lowering the cost to consumers. Once sanctions were imposed, Hussein used the U.N. oil-for-food program to establish a highly popular food-distribution network relied upon by 60 percent of Iraq's 26 million people. He doubled rations before the recent war in an effort to build popular resistance to the U.S. invasion.

"This place was probably affected less by the forces of supply and demand than any place I have ever seen," said Peter McPherson, who is on leave as president of Michigan State University to serve as the senior U.S. adviser to Iraq's Finance Ministry. "This was an integrated economy -- pathological, but integrated. You can't really take one piece out, fix it, and put it back. It will have to be taken all apart, and you will have to allow the forces of supply and demand to function."

It will have to be taken all apart – ah, a mantra for our time! And so it was – all of it. Can’t have any of that former Iraqi stuff, that integrated economy (what kinda thing is that!) hanging around. Taking it all apart is what the occupation graced that liberated land with. Taking apart security. Taking apart the economy. Taking apart the ministries one by one. And now, for a final flourish, the U.S. is supporting the federalization of Iraq – taking apart Iraq itself! Certainly there have been doubters on the way, but really, who among us can doubt, as history writes the books, that this humane, intelligent, charitable and – dare I say it in this time of liberal secular terrorism – well, gosh, this God fearing administration will go down as one of the peaks of our march back to the virtues of 16th century Spain.

LI wondered whatever happened to unsung hero Peter Macpherson. So we dug a little. Well, he didn’t go completely unsung! In 2004, The office of Rep. Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich., issued the following press release:

“Reps. Pete Hoekstra, R-Holland, and Mike Rogers, R-Brighton, along with fellow members of the Michigan congressional delegation honored MSU President Peter McPherson, saying that his five months leading the financial reconstruction of Iraq make all of Michigan proud.

"Peter McPherson was able to use his financial experience to lay the groundwork for rebuilding the economic structure of an entire country," Hoekstra said, citing McPherson's work as a deputy secretary of treasury, bank vice president and head of the $6 billion Agency for International Development. "He did a phenomenal job in a relatively short period of time, and all of the pieces he put in place are beginning to show progress."

Hoekstra and Rogers joined their peers from Michigan in presenting McPherson with a ceremonial copy of a resolution introduced in the House that honors him for his accomplishments. McPherson officially served as the Coalition Provisional Authority's director of economic policy following the liberation of the country.”

"President McPherson is very deserving of being recognized for his tremendous contribution to reconstructing Iraq's economy," Rogers said. "He made a significant impact on the lives of an Iraqi people in the process of rebuilding their country. In doing so, he made all of Michigan and all of America proud.”

Rebuilding, hmm. I don’t think Rogers got the memo: taking apart, dude! Or for you business types: creative destruction.

Now, you might wonder how Bush, the Great Helmsman, plucked this burning brand from obscurity. Well, McPherson was not so obscure with the Bush al Qaeda! As we know, nothing is more important than preventing abortion, and McPherson happened to play a sterling role when, under Reagan, he cut off funding to the U.N.’s family planning programs to undermine that filthy practice. This was in 1985, which was just in time to stop the spread of rubbers in Africa, with the healthful results that we have seen since. When I say God fearing, I do mean God fearing. There is something so… well, right about a man who has participated in some of the great pages of American history. Obscure yes, but it is men like McPherson that have made American foreign policy what it is today.

As for the headlines – more badmouthing by the MSM? Puh-leeeze. Surveys have pretty much definitively shown that 90 percent of journalists voted for Osama bin Laden as their favorite superstar on that American Idol episode, no. 84. Enough said.

the fun of the war

Continuing from my last post...

There is actually something else to say about Geras. Not so much to make a political point, but to make a psychological one.

Geras’ attitude, as you will remember, is that now, looking back, he can’t see that the war in Iraq he supported was supportable. On the other hand, looking back, he can’t see opposing the war, which he identifies with supporting the Ba’athist regime.

For a person active in politics, this is a rather appalling stand. After all, with or without his support, his state is engaging in a war that he thinks is wrong – or went wrong. So what kind of reason is it to not oppose that war because you identify opposition solely with supporting the Ba’athist regime?

However, stripping this idea of its political references for a second - this attitude is actually at the base of great English comedy. It is the moment when judgment – moral or aesthetic – shifts to the register of competition. To judge that a thing is bad is a philosophical task, but in the novel of real life, we more often judge that a person is bad. We more often think, that is, about how we don’t want to be or function like X, and create a negative figure out of that moment of negative choice. Those are the figures, in essence, that we compete with. And often, the badness of the figure becomes stronger than the reasons we hold an act or a function to be bad. Out of this comes snobbery and wounded dignity. The latter emerges from the moment in which we are squeezed between the figure that represents ‘how we don’t want to be’ and something that upsets our judgment about how we don’t want to be. I don’t want to be a liberal academic, or a poser, or a fan of country music, or a supporter of George Bush, etc., etc. translates into a satisfying comparison with liberal academics, posers, fans of country music, supporters of George Bush, etc. At least I am not X: This is the moral stance of the contemporary hero.

Sketching out this aspect of moral life, it points to a problem in the way sociologists mapping out our positive identifications as primary. That’s an idealistic stance. Dis-identification is just as important.

It might seem like the logical endpoint of “how we don’t want to be” is enmity. But the origin of the enemy is in combat, and there is always something mortal about enemies. You wish your enemies dead. Your enemies wish you dead. Whereas dis-identification is more about edging away from people, and the horror that it wishes to avoid most is: being surrounded by. Being surrounded by Republicans. Being surrounded by anti-war types. Being surrounded by lefties, righties, pinkos, rednecks, yahoos, jerkoffs, feminazis, dittoheads. Whatever. To be surrounded by cuts off the ability to edge away. Terrifyingly, to an outsider, one can be identified with the crowd of ‘how we don’t want to be.’

This is where English comic writers come in – where in French literature, the thousand meannesses of everyday life are treated as though they have a certain grandeur – think of Lisbeth’s revenge in Cousine Bette – since the French have a genius for enmity, in English writers, those meannesses are filtered through the comedy of wounded dignity or snobbery, since the English genius is for edging away. Dickens, of course, is the first writer who comes to mind. I have lately been reading one of E.F. Benson’s Mapp novels, about the town of Tilling, and here meanness, hypocrisy, invidious comparison and snobbery are very foundations of village life and the source of the thousand and one differences between a general mask of amiability and a sudden and brutal dislike lurking just below the surface, and most apt to emerge during a game of bridge. Tilling is a town of retirees, mostly, on limited incomes, but with high social standing. And of course it is picturesque, a tourist spot, and the perfect place to make the most of a limited income. Benson’s invention works by itself, in a way – everything follows the ridiculousness of Tilling. And Miss Mapp’s world is truly funny.

This is a typical Mapp moment:

“Miss Mapp set off with her basket to do her shopping. She carried in it the weekly books, which she would leave, with payment but not without argument, at the tradesmen's shops. There was an item for suet which she intended to resist to the last breath in her body, though her butcher would probably surrender long before that. There was an item for eggs at the dairy which she might have to pay, though it was a monstrous overcharge. She had made up her mind about the laundry, she intended to pay that bill with an icy countenance and say "Good morning for ever," or words to that effect, unless the proprietor instantly produced the--the article of clothing which had been lost in the wash (like King John's treasures), or refunded an ample sum for the replacing of it. All these quarrelsome errands were meat and drink to Miss Mapp: Tuesday morning, the day on which she paid and disputed her weekly bills, was as enjoyable as Sunday mornings when, sitting close under the pulpit, she noted the glaring inconsistencies and grammatical errors in the discourse. After the bills were paid and business was done, there was pleasure to follow, for there was a fitting-on at the dressmaker's, the fitting-on of a tea-gown, to be worn at winter-evening bridge-parties, which, unless Miss Mapp was sadly mistaken, would astound and agonize by its magnificence all who set eyes on it. She had found the description of it, as worn by Mrs. Titus W. Trout, in an American fashion paper; it was of what was described as kingfisher blue, and had lumps and wedges of lace round the edge of the skirt, and orange chiffon round the neck. As she set off with her basket full of tradesmen's books, she pictured to herself with watering mouth the fury, the jealousy, the madness of envy which it would raise in all properly-constituted breasts.”

Mapp, suitably folded, spindled and mutilated, is Geras.

The idea that, to put it bluntly, pouting is an honorable and moral political position, vis a vis a war, is very much a Tilling idea. It is consistent with the odd frivolity that hangs about some of the war’s biggest boosters. While celebrating loudly the struggle of good and evil, the battle of civilizations, and the liberation of Iraq, the details of said liberation have always been left entirely and a little blurrily to the discretion of the liberation caterers, while one noted “the glaring inconsistencies and grammatical errors” of the war’s opponents, Ba’athist supporters every one, which was of course the real fun of the thing.


PS – oh, I have to shoehorn this in here somehow. A fun fact to know and tell! This is from Murtha’s op ed piece in the WashPo, 10/13:
“Some of my Democratic colleagues questioned whether Iraq posed an immediate threat to our national security; some were not convinced that Iraq was accelerating the development of nuclear weapons and had an active chemical and biological weapons program; and almost all believed that Iraq was not involved in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. They turned out to be right on all three counts. Nevertheless, since our forces deployed to Iraq, Democratic support for the troops has never wavered.
In the past nine months alone, $962 billion has been appropriated for the Defense Department, $190 billion for the war effort. A vast majority of Democrats voted for the funding. Democrats also identified shortfalls in body armor, armored vehicles and electronic jammers to defeat roadside bombs. Democrats uncovered problems with the military readiness of our ground forces in the United States and fought for measures to restore it. That's hardly defeatist.”

Nine months=1 trillion dollars = total insanity. As in, we live in a country that spends a trillion dollars on war in 9 months. 9 months. A trillion dollars. On war. 9 months. War. A trillion dollars. Hmm, how can I gild this giant, comet sized, planet sized, astronomical, megalo-mutant piece of shit! Which, you should note, you Americans reading this, you eat every day! If you compared this amount of shit to all the shits excreted by all the Joint Chiefs of Staffs since George Washington’s day, the budget piece of shit is still 10 to the power of 10 feces higher than their shits. That is enough shit to reach to the nearest planet outside our solar system that whirls around the star, XXXBEINART1.

norman geras puts his fingers in his ears and goes na na na na na

Back in the heady days after the purple revolution, when every belligeranti worth his salt had dyed his own forefinger purple in solidarity, there was an article in the Sunday Times of London (2/6/05) entitled “Stormin' Marxist is toast of the neocons”.

It began like this:

“AN OBSCURE Marxist professor who has spent his entire academic life in Manchester has become the darling of the Washington right wing for his outspoken support of the war in Iraq.

Despite his leanings Norman Geras, who writes a blog diary on the internet, has praised President George WBush and says the invasion of Iraq was necessary to oust the tyrannical regime of Saddam Hussein.

His daily jottings have brought him the nickname of "Stormin' Norm" from the title of his diary, Normblog. The Wall Street Journal has reprinted one of his articles in its online edition and American pundits often cite his words.
…
Most mornings Geras, 61, the author of such obscure books as Solidarity in the Conversation of Humankind: The Ungroundable Liberalism of Richard Rorty, sits in the upstairs study of his Edwardian semi in Manchester to type his latest entry.

Last week he gave thanks to Bush, quoting an Iraqi who wants to build a statue to the American president as "the symbol of freedom".

He also lambasted "all those conflicted folk who would like to remain true to their values and be pleased about the Iraqi election, but don't want George Bush to be able to take any credit for it". He picked Simon Kelner, editor of The Independent newspaper, for special mention.”

Ah, credit. The other side of credit is, I believe, blame. Times have gotten tough for the pro-war side, due to the terrorist coddling media reporting only the bad news from Iraq. The statue of Bush has, sadly, been put on hold. And what a symbol it would have been! Something for all Iraqis to see. Their liberator, their hero, the man who has cared enough for them that he even extended the blessing of the flat tax to them – making a thousand flowers bloom. Poems about the Rebel in Chief, on the model of Pushkin’s the Bronze Horseman, could be written. He’s like Lawrence of Arabia, but more butch.

Geras is quoted in the Stormin’ Norm article saying:

"Everybody and his brother has had a go at me. But I started the blog because I was fed up with the prevailing left and liberal consensus that the war in Iraq was wrong.

"If those people who marched against the war had been successful they would have prolonged a brutal regime responsible for 300,000 deaths. They could have chosen not to support the war, but they chose to oppose it.”

The rather mystifying suggestion that we in the West live in such authoritarian regimes that our choice is to either support the war or exist in interior exile, pretty much allowing the powers that be to exercise their will without restraint or opposition, has now become Geras’ own position. This weekend he withdrew his support for the war – and presumably is no longer going to contribute to that statue of George Bush:

“Still, there have been too many deaths; there has been too much other suffering. It has lately become clear to me - and this predates publication of the second Lancet report - that, whatever should now happen in Iraq, the war that I've supported has failed according to one benchmark of which I'm in a position to be completely certain.

That is, had I been able to foresee, in January and February 2003, that the war would have the results it has actually had in the numbers of Iraqis killed and the numbers now daily dying, with the country (more than three years down the line) on the very threshold of civil war if not already across that threshold, I would not have felt able to support the war and I would not have supported it. Measured, in other words, against the hopes of what it might lead to and the likelihoods as I assessed them, the war has failed. Had I foreseen a failure of this magnitude, I would have withheld my support. Even then, I would not have been able to bring myself to oppose the war. As I have said two or three times before, nothing on earth could have induced me to march or otherwise campaign for a course of action that would have saved the Baathist regime. But I would have stood aside.”

The interior exile position is a little strange. What I guess this means is that, three years ago, he would have stuck his fingers in his ears and sung na na na na na instead of supporting or opposing the invasion. And he would have kept his fingers in his ears for the duration.

Who knows? LI thinks that might well have been the right course for Geras, but for those who opposed the invasion and opposed Saddam the Meatman, it just won’t do. In actuality, American interest and a certain justice would have been better served by dropping, after 9/11, the double cordon sanitaire around Iraq and Iran. American interest, served by waging a war in Afghanistan that did not have a forty year goal, but a two year one (breaking with the liberal "nationbuilding" idea, that imperialism of good intentions - this time, we aren't here to plunder but to help you become just like Californians!) plus a thaw on relations with Iran, would have provided a framework in which America could actually lower its profile in the Middle East to accord with its real influence in the Middle East. American hegemony was bound to take a hit after the end of the Cold War. The question about Saddam wasn’t if he was going to fall, but when, as the belligeranti in their cups sometimes like to point out – Hitchens being a great one for the idea that, save the invasion, the failed state would have spiraled into something horrible. Like, uh, I don’t know, a state in which it is an everyday occurrence for militia from the Ministry of the Interior to use drills in torturing and killing ordinary Iraqis. Something like that.

The belligeranti served one purpose only in 2002 – to throw up a smokescreen. We aren’t going to revisit the numerous posts we made at the time, pointing out that their arguments were for a war that wasn’t ever going to be waged. Geras’ na na na na na option is clueless, but at least it is a start. However, those who oppose the war and oppose the occupation should certainly not be mislead into following that option. The current D.C. fantasy of splitting Iraq into tasty bits so that we can bed down with our buddy Shiites in the South and those great Kurds in the north is not only not going to work, but will, very obviously, lead to the worst case scenario of continuing, high levels of conflict in Iraq driven by American interest. Although splitting up Iraq has been the favored rightwing Israeli fantasy since the war began, the SCIRI state it has now become U.S. policy to kill Iraqis for will work out even worse for our proud little buddy in the Middle East – a Shiite, hezbollah lovin’ state in South Iraq is not going to be the Chalabi-land of Richard Perle’s erotic dreams. Israel truly is on the verge – if it continues to follow every Perle-ish dream for regional domination, it is signing its own death warrant.

Now – back to building that statue of the Liberator. Let’s paint it a blood red, shall we?

the crow

In Naude’s book, The history of magick, he writes:

“There is a story that among many birds that came not neer the Temple of Minerva, the Goddesse of Sciences and Reason, the Crows durst not take their flight about it., much less light upon it. If it be lawfull to give it any other sense than the literall, I think the most probable were this: that that bird, so considerable in the superstitious Augury of the Ancients… being the true Hieroglyphick of those who search after things to come, it is to teach us, that all those who are over-inquisitive in such things, together with the Authours and Observers of I know not what chimericall and fabulous prophecies… should be eternally excluded the Temple of Minerva, that is, the conversation of learned and prudent men.”

Learned and prudent men! Yesteryear’s op ed men, the pundits of the ages, the Delphic codgers, the many weary generations of David Broders, down through the epochs! The ones who condemned Socrates to death, but would have preferred exile for the troublemaking old snake. (and an independent party in Athens composed of moderates from both sides). Indeed, between the crow and the owl there is an enmity set. LI has been comparing ourselves to a crow, lately – actually feel crow like, inclined to raucous cawing, dire views, and the smell of carrion, wake up all beaky and shit, shedding black feathers – and now we see the hieroglyphical reasons. You think we weave our metaphors out of tv ads or the images in Thomas Friedmen’s books or something? Fuck that! Naude also says that crow wisdom is barren witch wisdom, “the fantasicall predictions of certain Figure-flingers, and the Cunning-women…”

I like that. I feel as puffed up as a crow looking in a mirror…

hands off ed rosenthal

I recognize that all of the truly addictive/dangerous drugs that are in common use--like alcohol, tobacco, cocaine, barbiturates, amphetamines, and opiates-- can and do cause large amounts of personal and family suffering and social harm.However, experience teaches us that criminalizing the adult use of such drugs generally does nothing but make the situation worse. For example, we already tried prohibition with alcohol, and that "Noble Experiment" caused our grandparents and great-grandparents many of the same sorts of problems that our current "drug war" is causing for us.

Most experts agree that our society needs to move toward a treatment/medical/education model to deal with addictive/dangerous drug use-- and to move away from the criminal justice model. I know that many people in law enforcement are very discouraged and troubled because society is asking them to fight a war that is not really winnable in the criminal justice system, and that is causing a huge drain on our social resources. - Justice Larry V. Starcher of the West Virginia Supreme Court, State v. Poling (2000) 531 S.E.2d 678


It is a small step, decriminalizing medical marijuana. LI stands for the chemical autonomy of the human being, which means that the government cannot prevent you from buying, selling or using marijuana, cocaine, ecstasy, heroine, methamphetamines, crack or any other substance, the jackbooted thugs.

The war on drugs seems like a small thing, but actually it was a huge opening, created by the American government, to stealthily destroy your rights. It has done a crackerjack job. In California, poor Ed Rosenthal is again being prosecuted by Federal terrorists, otherwise known as the Drug Enforcement Agency.

The drug war won’t end until the DEA is destroyed. Also, LI would like to see the restitution of the property of drug dealers from the government, which must, by this time, amount to billions of dollars.

Of course, my readers may cry: this is obvious. Of course we will only vote for that Presidential candidate who promises to reimburse drug dealers, let them out of jail along with all inmates convicted of drug possession, and in general set up regulations for drug sales that imitate those for legal drugs now, i.e. cigarettes and alcohol.

I’m waiting for that voice of liberty to make its appearance.

Hands off Ed Rosenthal. Arrest, instead, William Bennett.