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Annals Of American History: The Water Cure

Debating torture and counterinsurgency—a century ago.

By Paul Kramer

21/02/08 "New Yorker" --- Many Americans were puzzled by the news, in 1902, that United States soldiers were torturing Filipinos with water. The United States, throughout its emergence as a world power, had spoken the language of liberation, rescue, and freedom. This was the language that, when coupled with expanding military and commercial ambitions, had helped launch two very different wars. The first had been in 1898, against Spain, whose remaining empire was crumbling in the face of popular revolts in two of its colonies, Cuba and the Philippines. The brief campaign was pitched to the American public in terms of freedom and national honor (the U.S.S. Maine had blown up mysteriously in Havana Harbor), rather than of sugar and naval bases, and resulted in a formally independent Cuba.

The Americans were not done liberating. Rising trade in East Asia suggested to imperialists that the Philippines, Spain’s largest colony, might serve as an effective “stepping stone” to China’s markets. U.S. naval plans included provisions for an attack on the Spanish Navy in the event of war, and led to a decisive victory against the Spanish fleet at Manila Bay in May, 1898. Shortly afterward, Commodore George Dewey returned the exiled Filipino revolutionary Emilio Aguinaldo to the islands. Aguinaldo defeated Spanish forces on land, declared the Philippines independent in June, and organized a government led by the Philippine élite.

During the next half year, it became clear that American and Filipino visions for the islands’ future were at odds. U.S. forces seized Manila from Spain—keeping the army of their ostensible ally Aguinaldo from entering the city—and President William McKinley refused to

recognize Filipino claims to independence, pushing his negotiators to demand that Spain cede sovereignty over the islands to the United States, while talking about Filipinos’ need for “benevolent assimilation.” Aguinaldo and some of his advisers, who had been inspired by the United States as a model republic and had greeted its soldiers as liberators, became increasingly suspicious of American motivations. When, after a period of mounting tensions, a U.S. sentry fired on Filipino soldiers outside Manila in February, 1899, the second war erupted, just days before the Senate ratified a treaty with Spain securing American sovereignty over the islands in exchange for twenty million dollars. In the next three years, U.S. troops waged a war to “free” the islands’ population from the regime that Aguinaldo had established. The conflict cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of Filipinos and about four thousand U.S. soldiers.

Within the first year of the war, news of atrocities by U.S. forces—the torching of villages, the killing of prisoners—began to appear in American newspapers. Although the U.S. military censored outgoing cables, stories crossed the Pacific through the mail, which wasn’t censored. Soldiers, in their letters home, wrote about extreme violence against Filipinos, alongside complaints about the weather, the food, and their officers; and some of these letters were published in home-town newspapers. A letter by A. F. Miller, of the 32nd Volunteer Infantry Regiment, published in the Omaha World-Herald in May, 1900, told of how Miller’s unit uncovered hidden weapons by subjecting a prisoner to what he and others called the “water cure.” “Now, this is the way we give them the water cure,” he explained. “Lay them on their backs, a man standing on each hand and each foot, then put a round stick in the mouth and pour a pail of water in the mouth and nose, and if they don’t give up pour in another pail. They swell up like toads. I’ll tell you it is a terrible torture.”

On occasion, someone—a local antiwar activist, one suspects—forwarded these clippings to centers of anti-imperialist publishing in the Northeast. But the war’s critics were at first hesitant to do much with them: they were hard to substantiate, and they would, it was felt, subject the publishers to charges of anti-Americanism. This was especially true as the politics of imperialism became entangled in the 1900 Presidential campaign. As the Democratic candidate, William Jennings Bryan, clashed with the Republican incumbent over imperialism, which the Democrats called “the paramount issue,” critics of the war had to defend themselves against accusations of having treasonously inspired the insurgency, prolonged the conflict, and betrayed American soldiers. But, after McKinley won a second term, the critics may have felt that they had little to lose.

Hvem?

Hvem husker på at såkaldte højkulturelle vesterlændingene på under 70 år, har forvoldt massemord på 50 millioner mennesker, heraf 6.000.000 jøder. Alt sammen noget der muliggjordes af vores åh så hellige demokrati-idealer, for det var demokratiske lande der banede vejen for Hitler og Mussolini, idet det var demokratiske lande der skabte den nød tyskerne så i tyverne, og som muliggjorde at Hitler kom til magten. Det er ved at ske igen, men folk ser den anden vej.

Hvem tænker på, at der siden 9-11 er millioner af mennesker der er døde i den tredje verden som et indirekte produkt af den vestlige ekstremisme og magtstrukturelle vold, gående ud på, at de få altid bør beriges på bekostning af de mange, således at det til hver en tid er vigtigere, at de store medicinalkoncerner har lov til at patentere AIDS-medicin, så deres A-aktionærer kan forøge deres bilparker og spise kaviar og hummer hver dag, end det er at komme egentlig nødstedte mennesker til hjælp.

Hvem tænker på at 30.000 børn dør om dagen af helbredelige og forebyggelige sygdomme, fordi vi i vesten ikke gør noget ved det, men i stedet føjer skidt til skade ved at smadre afrikanske agrare økonomier, idet vi i den såkaldte Europæiske Union sender vores kunstigt stimulerede overskudsproduktion af landbrugsprodukter ind over deres grænser til dumpingpriser.

Hvem tænker på at mange muslimske demagogers succes med deres hadefulde prædikener mod vesten og mod indførelsen af demokrati, måske kunne have noget at gøre med, at det eneste såkaldte demokrati i mellemøsten, er langt værre at leve under for etniske arabere, end det er at leve under diktaturerne i Dubai og Qatar, hvor man trods alt kan få sig en uddannelse og har brød på bordet. Dette såkaldte demokrati bliver aldrig mødt med andet end symbolsk løftede pegefingre i det hykleriske vesten, selvom det fortsat håndhæver den længstvarende moderne militære okkupation samt en forstyrrende undertrykkelse, hvor de undertrykte, blandt meget andet grusomt, tortureres og så godt som ingen retssikkerhed har.

Hvem tænker på at den islamiske terrorisme, som indtil videre har kostet omkring 5000 mennesker livet på vestlig jord, er en fucking bagatel, selvom den selvfølgelig er forfærdelig, når dette ses i forhold til den tusinde gange større død og elendighed, som er en direkte konsekvens af vestlig statsterrorisme, ideologisk selvstilstrækkelighed, magtarrogance og dekadent ligegyldighed.

Og sidst men ikke mindst.

Hvem overvejer hvor meget fred og frodragelighed man kunne have skabt i mellemøsten, hvis man havde brugt de tusinder af milliarder dollars, man har brugt på at smadre Iraks og Afghanistans lande, og i høj grad på grund af vesten, i forvejen smadrede befolkninger, på at skabe interkulturel dialog, velstand og forsoning, i stedet for at smide brændsel på de ekstreme kræfters bål.

Men lad os da bare vende blikket den anden vej og lade som ingenting, for hvorfor dog overhovedet bruge begivenheder som den 11. september og muhammedkrisen til at vende blikket indad og begynde at foretage blot en lille smule selvransagelse. Lad os da endelig i stedet opføre os som nogle forpulede hyklere, og fortsætte med det vi hvide, civiliserede, rationelle, højtuddannede demokrater indtil videre har været bedst til: At pege fingre og opfordre til fremmedgørelse, splittelse og had.

God Bless America, God Bless the Queen, Gud Bevare Danmark og Allah u Akhbar.

The Folly of Attacking Iran: Lessons from History

Den Egentlige Trussel

Jyllandsposten kunne have valgt at bruge deres ytringsfrihed konstruktivt til opfordringer til interkulturel dialog, forståelse og saglig argumentation, men valgte i stedet at bruge den til at sparke til en befolkningsgruppe – hvoraf mange har en stærkt begrænset mulighed for demokratisk medinflydelse, idet de ikke er stemmeberettigede - der gennem årene har måtte høre på en stadig mere fjendsk, dehumaniserende og undertiden nærmest nationalsocialistisk retorik, specielt i Jyllandsposten. Hvad der ikke kan undgå at undre mig, er med hvor stor succes Jyllandspostens pr-virksomhed har fået det til at se ud som om, at Jyllandsposten rent faktisk foretog et meget værdifuldt og nødvendigt forsvar for den såkaldte ytringsfrihed. Et pr-trick hvis succes vi fortsat ser manifesteret i viljen til, at ville diskutere dette til hudløshed. Der er bare et lille problem. Muslimerne i Danmark udgjorde ikke nogen egentlig trussel mod hverken demokratiet eller “ytringsfriheden” før muhammedtegningerne blev trykt, ligesom de fortsat ikke gør det, hvorfor tegningernes påståede nødvendighed bør ses som et udtryk for et forvrænget billede af virkeligheden, og det bør da næppe heller ses som andet end en meget tvivlsom undskyldning for at fortsætte den forudgående dæmonisering af det muslimske mindretal.

Dernæst er der det forhold, at hele debatten om denne påståede problemstilling, effektivt fjerner fokus fra de personer og lovgivningsmæssige tiltag som rent faktisk udgør en meget virkelig trussel mod borgernes frihed og den demokratiske proces.Glemt er det for længst, at politiet beslaglagde Dagbladet Arbejderens computere umiddelbart efter, at statsministeren i forlængelse af muhammedtegningerne, havde proklameret noget i retning af, at mediernes ucensorerede virke, for ham var noget helligt. Beslaglæggelsen som muliggjordes af den nye anti-terrorlovgivning var foranlediget af at Arbejderen, som led i en journalistisk dækning, valgte at trykke en appel om støtte til blacklistede organisationer, forfattet af Foreningen Oprør. Om denne sag skrev den borgerlige advokat Jacob Mchangama dengang, i en artikel med titlen “Hvor er den borgerlige kritik af anti-terrorpakken”, følgende:

“....i den forbindelse er det essentielt at huske på, at Folketinget allerede i 2002 vedtog en anti-terror-pakke, som på afgørende vis brød med fundamentale danske retsprincipper. Anti-terrorpakken fra 2002 kriminaliserede blandt andet “direkte og indirekte” økonomisk støtte til terrorisme, et begreb der i sig selv er blevet defineret bredt i straffeloven, samt medvirken hertil. En gerningsbeskrivelse, der er problematisk i forhold til retsstatsprincippets krav om lovens klarhed og som dertil også er et afgørende brud med det tungvejende hensyn til individet i dansk strafferet. Det udvidede medvirken-begreb, der resulterede i en kriminalisering af “medvirken til medvirken”, risikerer samtidig at indskrænke bl.a. ytringsfriheden. Det ses i den verserende sag vedrørende Dagbladet Arbejderen, hvis journalistiske dokumentation af foreningen ”Oprørs” appel om støtte til en palæstinensisk og colombiansk terrororganisation, er blevet censureret af politiet med hjemmel i netop terrorpakken. En betænkelig indskrænkning af pressens rolle som offentlighedens vagthund, en rolle som særligt er påkrævet når staten indfører indskrænkninger i borgernes frihedsrettigheder.”

Lige nu udfoldes en meget foruroligende trussel mod retsstaten, idet selve grundpillen, magtens tredeling, synes at være sat ud af kraft, i og med, at integrationsministeren fungerer som dømmende magt, samtidig med at hun indgår som del i både den lovgivende og udøvende magt. Skyldsprincippet, gående ud på, at enhver for så vidt er uskyldig indtil det modsatte er bevist ved en rettergang, er dermed ligeledes sat ud af kraft, hvilket burde foranledige en del mere bekymring end det tilsyneladende er tilfældet, da dette er i strid med grundlovens § 63. Om dette udtaler tidligere justitsminister og nuværende professor i jura, Ole Espersen i weekendens udgave af Information: “Grundloven siger at administrationen skal kunne kontrolleres af domstolene.” og fortsætter “Når man først har fået en ret, f.eks. permanent opholdstilladelse, så har man den ret, og den kan ikke tages fra én uden domstolskontrol, fordi domstolene efter grundloven skal kunne undersøge om myndighederne holder sig inden for lovgivningens rammer [...] Det burde gøre noget ved tilliden til folketingsflertallet, der har vedtaget det [dvs. anti-terrorlovgivningen], fordi når man udhuler vores grundlov – som vi jo ellers er så glade for – så fjerner man jo borgerrettighederne.” Ole Espersen bakkes op af professor ved Aalborg Universitet, Claus Haagen Jensen, der finder dette forhold “foruroligende” for “Der er ikke en mulighed for judiciel kontrol, og det synes jeg er meget betænkeligt.”

Som ovenstående forhåbentlig tydeligt illustrerer, er det i dag fortsat magthaverne, og ikke et muslimsk mindretal, der udgør den primære og væsentligste trussel mod vores frihed, men at dømme efter hvor mange bruger deres tid og energi, skulle man tro det forholdt sig omvendt.

To the Dark Side

Burning Conscience: Israeli Soldiers Speak Out

Death of a Nation - East Timor

John Pilger om Vestens støtte til Suharto

Følgende er et uddrag fra John Pilgers artikel "Suharto, the Model Killer, and His Friends in High Places." Read it and weep.

To understand the significance of Suharto, who died on Sunday, is to look beneath the surface of the current world order: the so-called global economy and the ruthless cynicism of those who run it. Suharto was our model mass murderer – "our" is used here advisedly. "One of our very best and most valuable friends," Thatcher called him, speaking for the West. For three decades, the Australian, U.S., and British governments worked tirelessly to minimize the crimes of Suharto's Gestapo, known as Kopassus, who were trained by the Australian SAS and the British army and who gunned down people with British-supplied Heckler and Koch machine guns from British-supplied Tactica "riot control" vehicles. Prevented by Congress from supplying arms directly, U.S. administrations from Gerald Ford to Bill Clinton provided logistic support through the back door and commercial preferences. In one year, the British Department of Trade provided almost a billion pounds worth of so-called soft loans, which allowed Suharto to buy Hawk fighter-bombers. The British taxpayer paid the bill for aircraft that dive-bombed East Timorese villages, and the arms industry reaped the profits. However, the Australians distinguished themselves as the most obsequious. In an infamous cable to Canberra, Richard Woolcott, Australia's ambassador to Jakarta, who had been forewarned about Suharto's invasion of East Timor, wrote: "What Indonesia now looks to from Australia … is some understanding of their attitude and possible action to assist public understanding in Australia…." Covering up Suharto's crimes became a career for those like Woolcott, while "understanding" the mass murderer came in buckets. This left an indelible stain on the reformist government of Gough Whitlam following the cold-blooded killing of two Australian TV crews by Suharto's troops during the invasion of East Timor. "We know your people love you," Bob Hawke told the dictator. His successor, Paul Keating, famously regarded the tyrant as a father figure. When Indonesian troops slaughtered at least 200 people in the Santa Cruz cemetery in Dili, East Timor, and Australian mourners planted crosses outside the Indonesian embassy in Canberra, foreign minister Gareth Evans ordered them destroyed. To Evans, ever-effusive in his support for the regime, the massacre was merely an "aberration." This was the view of much of the Australian press, especially that controlled by Rupert Murdoch, whose local retainer, Paul Kelly, led a group of leading newspaper editors to Jakarta, fawn before the dictator.

Here lies a clue as to why Suharto, unlike Saddam Hussein, died not on the gallows but surrounded by the finest medical team his secret billions could buy. Ralph McGehee, a senior CIA operations officer in the 1960s, describes the terror of Suharto's takeover of Indonesia as "the model operation" for the American-backed coup that got rid of Salvador Allende in Chile seven years later. "The CIA forged a document purporting to reveal a leftist plot to murder Chilean military leaders," he wrote, "[just like] what happened in Indonesia in 1965." The U.S. embassy in Jakarta supplied Suharto with a "zap list" of Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) members and crossed off the names when they were killed or captured. Roland Challis, the BBC's south east Asia correspondent at the time, told me how the British government was secretly involved in this slaughter. "British warships escorted a ship full of Indonesian troops down the Malacca Straits so they could take part in the terrible holocaust," he said. "I and other correspondents were unaware of this at the time…. There was a deal, you see."

The deal was that Indonesia under Suharto would offer up what Richard Nixon had called "the richest hoard of natural resources, the greatest prize in southeast Asia." In November 1967, the greatest prize was handed out at a remarkable three-day conference sponsored by the Time-Life Corporation in Geneva. Led by David Rockefeller, all the corporate giants were represented: the major oil companies and banks, General Motors, Imperial Chemical Industries, British American Tobacco, Siemens, U.S. Steel, and many others. Across the table sat Suharto's U.S.-trained economists who agreed to the corporate takeover of their country, sector by sector. The Freeport company got a mountain of copper in West Papua. A U.S./ European consortium got the nickel. The giant Alcoa company got the biggest slice of Indonesia's bauxite. America, Japanese, and French companies got the tropical forests of Sumatra. When the plunder was complete, President Lyndon Johnson sent his congratulations on "a magnificent story of opportunity seen and promise awakened." Thirty years later, with the genocide in East Timor also complete, the World Bank described the Suharto dictatorship as a "model pupil."

Kilde

Se John Pilger's film "Death of a Nation" om East Timor ovenover dette indlæg.

Dagens Citat: Chomsky om undertrykkelse

Most oppression succeeds because its legitimacy is internalized. That’s true of the most extreme cases. Take, say, slavery. It wasn’t easy to revolt if you were a slave, by any means. But if you look over the history of slavery, it was in some sense recognized as just the way things are. We’ll do the best we can under this regime. Another example, also contemporary (it’s estimated that there are some 26 million slaves in the world), is women’s rights. There the oppression is extensively internalized and accepted as legitimate and proper. It’s still true today, but it’s been true throughout history.

One Day = $720 Million

Neoliberalisme og udviklingsøkonomier

Den tidligere CIA-analytiker og professor emeritus i politologi, Chalmers Johnson havde forleden en ret interessant artikel på Truthdig, hvor han gennemgår den prisvindende Cambridge-økonom Ha-Joon Changs nyeste bog "Bad Samaritans: Rich Nations, Poor Policies and the Threat to the Developing World".

Udrag:

In Chang’s conception, there are two kinds of Bad Samaritans. There are the genuine, powerful “ladder-kickers” working in the “unholy trinity” of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, and the World Trade Organization (WTO). Then there are the “ideologues—those who believe in Bad Samaritan policies because they think those policies are ‘right,’ not because they personally benefit from them much, if at all.” Both groups adhere to a doctrine they call “neoliberalism.” It became the dominant economic model of the English-speaking world in the 1970s and prevails at the present time. Neoliberalism (sometimes called the “Washington Consensus") is a rerun of what economists suffering from “historical amnesia” believe were the key characteristics of the international economy in the golden age of liberalism (1870-1913).

Thomas Friedman calls this complex of policies the “Golden Straitjacket,” the wearing of which, no matter how uncomfortable, is allegedly the only route to economic success. The complex includes privatizing state-owned enterprises, maintaining low inflation, shrinking the size of the state bureaucracy, balancing the national budget, liberalizing trade, deregulating foreign investment, making the currency freely convertible, reducing corruption, and privatizing pensions. It is called neoliberalism because of its acceptance of rich-country monopolies over intellectual property rights (patents, copyrights, etc.), the granting to a country’s central bank of a monopoly to issue bank notes, and its assertion that political democracy is conducive to economic growth, none of which were parts of classical liberalism. The Golden Straitjacket is what the unholy trinity tries to force on poor countries. It is the doctrinal orthodoxy taught in all mainstream academic economics departments and for which numerous Nobel prizes in economics have been awarded.

In addition to being an economist, Ha-Joon Chang is a historian and an empiricist (as distinct from a deductive theorist working from what are stipulated to be laws of economic behavior). He notes that the histories of today’s rich countries contradict virtually all the Golden Straitjacket dicta, many of which are logically a result rather than a cause of economic growth (for example, trade liberalization). His basic conclusion: “Practically all of today’s developed countries, including Britain and the US, the supposed homes of the free market and free trade, have become rich on the basis of policy recipes that go against neo-liberal economics.” All of today’s rich countries used protection and subsidies to encourage their manufacturing industries, and they discriminated powerfully against foreign investors. All such policies are anathema in today’s economic orthodoxy and are now severely restricted by multilateral treaties, like the WTO agreements, and proscribed by aid donors and international financial organizations, particularly the IMF and the World Bank.

The Third World was not always poor and economically stagnant. Throughout the golden age of capitalism, from the Marshall Plan (1947) to the first oil shock (1973), the United States was a Good Samaritan and helped developing countries by allowing them to protect and subsidize their nascent industries. The developing world has never done better, before or since. But then, in the 1970s, scared that its position as global hegemon was being undermined, the United States turned decisively toward neoliberalism. It ordered the unholy trinity to bring the developing countries to heel. Through draconian interventions into the most intimate details of the lives of their clients, including birth control, ethnic integration, and gender equality as well as tariffs, foreign investment, privatization decisions, national budgets, and intellectual property protection, the IMF, World Bank, and WTO managed drastically to slow down economic growth in the Third World. Forced to adopt neoliberal policies and to open their economies to much more powerful foreign competitors on unequal terms, their growth rate fell to less than half of that recorded in the 1960s (1.7 percent instead of 4.5 percent).

Since the 1980s, Africa has actually experienced a fall in living standards—which should be a damning indictment of neoliberal orthodoxy because most African economies have been virtually run by the IMF and the World Bank over the past quarter-century. The disaster has been so complete that it has helped expose the hidden governance structures that allow the IMF and the World Bank to foist Bad Samaritan policies on helpless nations. The United States has a de facto veto in both organizations, where rich countries control 60 percent of the voting shares. The WTO has a democratic structure (it had to accept one in order to enact its founding treaty) but is actually run by an oligarchy. Votes are never taken.

Læs hele artiklen her

Videre læsning

Ha-Joon Chang: "Kicking Away the Ladder: The “Real” History of Free Trade" - Foreign Policy in Focus.

Læs derudover i forlængelse af ovenstående min anmeldelse af Naomi Klein's "Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism" der ligeledes omhandler udviklingsøkonomi og neoliberalistisme.

Saul Williams - Coded Language

Saul Williams - Coded Language lyrics

Whereas
breakbeats have been the missing link connecting the diasporic community to its drum woven past
Whereas
the quantised drum has allowed the whirling mathematicians to calculate
the ever changing distance between rock and stardom.
Whereas
the velocity of the spinning vinyl, cross-faded, spun backwards, and re-released
at the same given moment of recorded history, yet at a different moment in time's continuum
has allowed history to catch up with the present.

We do hereby declare reality unkempt by the changing standards of dialogue.
Statements, such as, "keep it real", especially when punctuating or
anticipating modes of ultra-violence inflicted psychologically or physically
or depicting an unchanging rule of events will hence forth be seen as
retro-active and not representative of the individually determined is.

Furthermore, as determined by the collective consciousness of this state of
being and the lessened distance between thought patterns and their secular
manifestations, the role of men as listening receptacles is to be increased
by a number no less than 70 percent of the current enlisted as vocal
aggressors.

Motherfuckers better realize, now is the time to self-actualize
We have found evidence that hip-hop's standard 85 rpm, when increased by a
number as least half the rate of it's standard or decreased at three-fourths of its
speed, may be a determining factor in heightening consciousness.

Studies show that when a given norm is changed in the face of the unchanging,
the remaining contradictions will parallel the truth.

Equate rhyme with reason,
Sun with season

Our cyclical relationship to phenomenon has encouraged scholars to erase the
centers of periods, thus symbolizing the non-linear character of cause and effect
Reject mediocrity!

Your current frequencies of understanding outweigh that which as been given
for you to understand
The current standard is the equivalent of an adolescent restricted to the
diet of an infant
The rapidly changing body would acquire dysfunctional and deformative
symptoms and could not properly mature on a diet of apple sauce
and crushed pears
Light years are interchangeable with years of living in darkness
The role of darkness is not to be seen as, or equated with, ignorance
But with the unknown, and the mysteries of the unseen.

Thus, in the name of:
Robeson, God's son, Hurston, Ahkenaton,
Hathshesput, Blackfoot,
Helen, Lennon,
Khalo, Kali,
The Three Marias, Tara, Lilithe, Lourde,
Whitman, Baldwin, Ginsberg, Kaufman,
Lumumba, Ghandi,
Gibran, Shabazz, Shabazz
Siddhartha, Medusa, Guevara,
Guardsieff, Rand, Wright,
Banneker, Tubman, Hamer,
Holiday, Davis, Coltrane,
Morrison, Joplin,
Dubois, Clarke,
Shakespeare, Rachmaninov,
Ellington, Carter, Gaye,
Hathoway, Hendrix,
Kutl, Dickerson, Ripperton,
Mary, Isis, Theresa,
Hansbury, Tesla, Plath,
Rumi, Fellini, Michaux,
Nostradamus, Nefertiti,
La Rock, Shiva, Ganesha, Yemaja,
Oshun, Obatala, Ogun,
Kenedy, King, Four Little Girls,
Hiroshima, Nagasaki,
Keller, Biko, Perone, Marley,
Magdalene, Cosby, Shakur,
Those still aflamed, and the countless unnamed

We claim the present as the pre-sent, as the hereafter
We are unraveling our navels so that we may ingest the sun
We are not afraid of the darkness, we trust that the moon shall guide us
We are determining the future at this very moment
We now know that the heart is the philosophers' stone
Our music is our alchemy
We stand as the manifested equivalent of three buckets of water
And a hand full of minerals
Thus realizing that those very buckets turned upside down
Supply the percussive factor of forever
If you must count to keep the beat then count
Find you mantra and awaken your subconscious
Carve you circles counterclockwise
Use your cipher to decipher
Coded Language, man made laws
Climb waterfalls and trees,
Commune with nature, snakes and bees
Let your children name themselves and claim themselves
As the new day
For today we are determined
To be the channelers of these changing frequencies
Into songs, paintings, writings, dance, drama, photography, carpentry,
Crafts, love, and love
We enlist every instrument: Acoustic, electronic
Every so-called gender, race, sexual preference
Every per-son as beings of sound to acknowledge their responsibility to
Uplift the consciousness of the entire fucking world
Any utterance un-aimed, will be disclaimed, will be maimed
Two rappers slain
Any utterance un-aimed, will be disclaimed, will be maimed
Two rappers slain

Konsekvenserne af USAs outsourcing

I en artikel for Information Clearing House med titlen "The state of the union: meaner, not leaner", skriver advokat og lektor ved NYU William A. Cohn lidt om konsekvenserne af den enorme udlicitering der har fundet sted siden 9/11:

According to the Wall Street Journal, US private federal contractors now total more than 7.5 million, which is four times greater than the federal workforce itself. With federal contracting expenditures approaching half a trillion dollars a year, having doubled during this decade, the US national debt has now surpassed $9 trillion for the first time ever. Outsourcing is supposed to save money, but the New York Times found that less than half of the government’s private contactor actions in 2005 were even subject to open competition.

The Wall Street Journal reports that more than 40 cents of every dollar paid by US taxpayers now goes to private contractors, performing functions including oversight, security and tax collection. Even the most secret and politically sensitive govt. jobs, such as gathering intelligence, legal compliance, budget preparation, and counting the votes in elections are increasingly contracted out, despite a law prohibiting the outsourcing of “inherently governmental” duties. The US government spent $43.5 billion on intelligence gathering operations in 2007, of which about 70% was paid to contractors. Private contractors handle sensitive personal data, take minutes at top-level meetings on national security matters, review and oversee the performance of other contractors, and even help the govt. to determine what services it needs from contractors. The largest source of govt. contracting growth has been the burgeoning national security industry, most notably at the Department of Defense and the newly created Dept. of Homeland Security. Christopher Hellman, fellow at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, reports that while last year the total US federal budget was roughly $2.8 trillion dollars, $1 trillion of that was spent on security.

According to an October 24th New York Times report, “The Bush administration has doubled the amount of govt. money going to all types of contractors to $400 billion [in 2006; up from $207 billion in 2000], creating a new and thriving class of post-9/11 corporations carrying out delicate work for the government. But the number of govt. employees issuing, managing and auditing contracts has barely grown.” Critics contend that a lack of accountability, and the ensuing fraud and waste engendered by present govt. operations, undermines the core principle that democratic governance is built on a social contract whereby those elected act for the common interests of the people they are supposed to represent.

Vedrørende Blackwater:

Blackwater – a case of lawless disgrace

The September 16, 2007 killings of 17 Iraqi civilians in Baghdad by private security guards of the US govt. provides a useful case study of the pitfalls of outsourcing traditional military and other governmental functions.

A lawsuit filed in US federal court on November 26th on behalf of five Iraqis who were killed and two who were injured during the shootings accuses an estimated dozen Blackwater bodyguards of ignoring a direct order to stay with the official they were assigned to protect, and, under the influence of steroids, going on a crazed shooting rampage in a section of Baghdad known as Nisoor Square.

Investigations by the US military, FBI and also the Iraqi government found no evidence in support of claims by Blackwater employees that they were fired upon and were therefore acting in self-defense. The US Army investigation determined that there was “no enemy activity involved” and described the killings as a “criminal event.” There is also evidence that Blackwater employees tampered with the crime scene in a cover-up effort. Yet Blackwater continues to receive lucrative govt. contracts and the State Dept. reportedly gave bonuses for “outstanding performance” to officials with direct oversight of Blackwater. How can this be?

Blackwater was founded in 1997, but its security division was incorporated in January 2002, just before the US invasion of Afghanistan, which led to its first contract, with the CIA, in April 2002. One of the key players involved in that contract and securing Blackwater’s role as the leading mercenary company of the Bush administration was Buzzy Krongard, then executive director of the CIA. Buzzy, a friend of Blackwater CEO Erik Prince, went to Kabul in April 2002 and said the agency’s new station there was sorely lacking in security. That same month, Blackwater landed a $5.4 million six-month no-bid contract to provide 20 security guards for the Kabul CIA station, and Blackwater was off and running. Erik Prince has made six-digit contributions to Republican candidates and is well-connected with right-wing power brokers, but maintains that these contacts had nothing to do with Blackwater’s growth during the Bush years from a tiny start-up to a billion dollar federal contractor.

Buzzy Krongard’s brother, the top State Department official charged with investigating allegations of fraud, waste and abuse, has the duty to oversee Blackwater. Inspector General Howard Krongard resigned on Jan. 15th amidst charges of perjury and obstruction of justice in impeding investigations of fraud by contractors in Iraq. The chairman of the House oversight committee investigating fraud in Iraq finds that “the State Dept. is acting as Blackwater’s enabler.” Just what is being enabled?

In 2003, Blackwater was awarded a $27 million no-bid contract to provide the bodyguards for US staff in Iraq. A year later, the State Dept. expanded that contract to $100 million. Blackwater now holds a contract worth $1.2 billion. Over the past 4 years, State Dept. spending on private security firms has risen by 400%, to $4 billion a year, yet few officials act to oversee the contracts. Private contractors are paid up to 7 times what US soldiers are paid, yet, according to the Times, “The State Dept. has said that it will continue to rely on contractors because, for now at least, it has no choice… the military does not have the trained personnel to take over the job.” An official inquiry by the Special Inspector General for Iraq reconstruction found that the State Dept. was unable to say what is was receiving for much of the money given to DynCorp (whose employees were implicated in sex crimes committed in the 1990s in the Balkans), the second largest private contractor in Iraq and Afghanistan over the past 3 years.

Ultimately, Blackwater continues to prosper because the State Dept. and the armed forces have become depleted and anemic. The government has ceded so many core military responsibilities to firms like Blackwater and Halliburton that it can no longer afford to fire them. An early 2007 Wall Street Journal report found that due to its increasing tendency to outsource, the US govt. is rapidly losing its expertise and competence in vital areas such as security and defense, leading to what the author calls “the outsourcing of its brain.”

Læs resten her

Drawdown

The Danse Macabre of US-Style Democracy

By John Pilger

The former president of Tanzania Julius Nyerere once asked, "Why haven’t we all got a vote in the US election? Surely everyone with a TV set has earned that right just for enduring the merciless bombardment every four years." Having reported four presidential election campaigns, from the Kennedys to Nixon, Carter to Reagan, with their Zeppelins of platitudes, robotic followers and rictal wives, I can sympathize. But what difference would the vote make? Of the presidential candidates I have interviewed, only George C. Wallace, governor of Alabama, spoke the truth. "There’s not a dime’s worth of difference between the Democrats and Republicans," he said. And he was shot.

What struck me, living and working in the United States, was that presidential campaigns were a parody, entertaining and often grotesque. They are a ritual danse macabre of flags, balloons and bullshit, designed to camouflage a venal system based on money power, human division and a culture of permanent war.

Traveling with Robert Kennedy in 1968 was eye-opening for me. To audiences of the poor, Kennedy would present himself as a savior. The words "change" and "hope" were used relentlessly and cynically. For audiences of fearful whites, he would use racist codes, such as "law and order." With those opposed to the invasion of Vietnam, he would attack "putting American boys in the line of fire," but never say when he would withdraw them. That year (after Kennedy was assassinated), Richard Nixon used a version of the same, malleable speech to win the presidency. Thereafter, it was used successfully by Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and the two Bushes. Carter promised a foreign policy based on "human rights" – and practiced the very opposite. Reagan’s "freedom agenda" was a bloodbath in Central America. Clinton "solemnly pledged" universal health care and tore down the last safety net of the Depression.

Nothing has changed. Barack Obama is a glossy Uncle Tom who would bomb Pakistan. Hillary Clinton, another bomber, is anti-feminist. John McCain’s one distinction is that he has personally bombed a country. They all believe the US is not subject to the rules of human behavior, because it is "a city upon a hill," regardless that most of humanity sees it as a monumental bully which, since 1945, has overthrown 50 governments, many of them democracies, and bombed 30 nations, destroying millions of lives.

If you wonder why this holocaust is not an "issue" in the current campaign, you might ask the BBC, which is responsible for reporting the campaign to much of the world, or better still Justin Webb, the BBC’s North America editor. In a Radio 4 series last year, Webb displayed the kind of sycophancy that evokes the 1930s appeaser Geoffrey Dawson, then editor of the London Times. Condoleezza Rice cannot be too mendacious for Webb. According to Rice, the US is "supporting the democratic aspirations of all people." For Webb, who believes American patriotism "creates a feeling of happiness and solidity," the crimes committed in the name of this patriotism, such as support for war and injustice in the Middle East for the past 25 years, and in Latin America, are irrelevant. Indeed, those who resist such an epic assault on democracy are guilty of "anti-Americanism," says Webb, apparently unaware of the totalitarian origins of this term of abuse. Journalists in Nazi Berlin would damn critics of the Reich as "anti-German."

Moreover, his treacle about the "ideals" and "core values" that make up America’s sanctified "set of ideas about human conduct" denies us a true sense of the destruction of American democracy: the dismantling of the Bill of Rights, habeas corpus and separation of powers. Here is Webb on the campaign trail: "[This] is not about mass politics. It is a celebration of the one-to-one relationship between an individual American and his or her putative commander-in-chief." He calls this "dizzying." And Webb on Bush: "Let us not forget that while the candidates win, lose, win again . . . there is a world to be run and President Bush is still running it." The emphasis in the BBC text actually links to the White House website.

None of this drivel is journalism. It is anti-journalism, worthy of a minor courtier of a great power. Webb is not exceptional. His boss Helen Boaden, director of BBC News, sent this reply to a viewer who had protested the prevalence of propaganda as the basis of news: "It is simply a fact that Bush has tried to export democracy [to Iraq] and that this has been troublesome."

And her source for this "fact"? Quotations from Bush and Blair saying it is a fact.

Online Papers om bevidsthed og relaterede emner

Filosofiproffesor David Chalmers har lavet en meget udførlig liste over online- tilgængelige papers vedrørende studier af bevidsthed i dets mange manifestationer samt relaterede emner, så hvis du mangler læsestof til de kolde vinteraftener, er det her et godt sted at starte.

Transcendental Kunst: Alex Grey

Vedrørende Israels kollektive afstraffelse af palæstinenserne

No general penalty, pecuniary or otherwise, shall be inflicted upon the population on account of the acts of individuals for which they cannot be regarded as jointly and severally responsible.

Laws and Customs of War on Land (Hague IV); October 18, 1907, Article 50

No protected person may be punished for an offence he or she has not personally committed. Collective penalties and likewise all measures of intimidation or of terrorism are prohibited.

Pillage is prohibited.

Reprisals against protected persons and their property are prohibited.

Convention (IV) relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, Geneva, 12 August 1949, Part III : Status and treatment of protected persons, Section I : Provisions common to the territories of the parties to the conflict and to occupied territories, Article 33

Any destruction by the Occupying Power of real or personal property belonging individually or collectively to private persons, or to the State, or to other public authorities, or to social or cooperative organizations, is prohibited, except where such destruction is rendered absolutely necessary by military operations.

Convention (IV) relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, Geneva, 12 August 1949, Part III : Status and treatment of protected persons, Section III: Occupied Territories, Article 53

Ovenstående er en ment som et supplement til følgende artikler:

The poor and the sick suffer as Israel cuts power to Gaza
Palestinian water authority: 40% of Gazans lack running water
The Lessons of Violence