Category: Terrorism

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Television: “24”

Okay, this show is supposed to take place in real-time, over a 24-hour period. Kiefer Sutherland plays Jack something, some kind of anti-terrorist squad leader. A black presidential candidate in Los Angeles on the eve of the primary is allegedly the target of an assassination plot. Off we go.

Is the black senator Republican or Democrat? Unlike “West Wing”, “24” doesn’t have the guts to risk alienating the other 50%, so we have the ludicrous scenario of politicians who never once talk about any politics. Even more ludicrous is the idea of a black Senator. That is science fiction.

We find out that Jack turned in some of his own people for bribery. That’s why some of his own staff don’t like him. This firmly establishes one of the most prevalent and ludicrous precepts of American public mythology: only an annoying and self-righteous individual can ever effect any good in society. Teams suck. Cooperation is bad. Collaboration doesn’t work.

He is called in by his boss because one of their agents in some foreign country found out about the assassination plot.

First problem. This is real time, right? So Jack’s daughter, Kimberly, says good night at about 1 minute into the first hour. About four minutes later, Jack and his wife Teri discover that Kimberly is missing. (She snuck out with friend Janet York to see some guys.) They logically assume that she ran out, but less than five minutes later Jack is already calling her former boyfriend to ask if she is there.

She travels fast, this girl.

Kimberly tells the guy, Rick, that her father is dead. (He’s not, yet.)

Hand-held camera. This is an affectation, not a style. It’s like mannerism, and exaggeration of technique for it’s own sake. It’s stupid. Do they hire incompetent camera men for this effect? Or do they train their camera men to wobble and wiggle with the camera?

At 12 minutes in, Jack is phoning a friend at the police department to ask if he could do Jack a favor and keep an eye out for his daughter. And the reasonable cop says, what, are you nuts? She’s been missing for 10 minutes! Of course not. He says, I’ll get right on it. Your daughter has been missing for ten minutes and I’ll drop what I’m doing and start prowling Los Angeles to see if I can find her.  Because I have nothing else to do at the moment.

Coincidentally, Jack’s commanding officer, ___ discovers that someone inside “the agency” may be involved in the plot. Rather, he discovers that he’d like to have Jack investigate the question at that particular moment.

District Director Mason is supposed to brief Jack about something. Jack finds out he’s lying, so he shoots him with a tranquilizer dart. I’m not kidding. Nina helps Jack because obviously she’s sexy and is in love with him. Jack relates that when some evil person named Phillip D’Arcee’ or something was “taken down”, $200,000 disappeared. He suspects Mason took it. Convention number 2: evil people never come from Indiana or Iowa or Kansas. They come from France.

Nina approaches Tony to hack into a bank account in Spain for Jack. Tony doesn’t like Jack, especially because he likes Nina and she is perversely in love with Jack.

Jack approaches Jamie and asks her if she can hack into all the passwords associated with a telephone number. She says, “if you have a warrant”. Jack doesn’t but in American television mythology all the heroic men break the rules all the time and, unlike the FBI or CIA, never for bad reasons and they never inadvertently invade the privacy of innocent people or cause sure-convictions to be thrown out because they violated the suspects’ rights.

In television land, these men are never wrong. We nod approvingly. Can’t let the law and civil rights get in the way of stopping crime, by golly. Here, “24” embraces the lamest, most boring television cliché.

Jamie is a genius because she has invented a way of jumping a signal through the phone lines onto a computer hard drive and then de-encrypting a user’s password. She doesn’t say, “maybe I can”, or “sometimes I can”, or “it depends on what kind of security they have and what kind of operating system and how they stored their passwords”. No, she can just do it. She does brain surgery as a hobby, on the side.

As it turns out, Jack wants the passwords because they belong to his daughter. She is out of the house for 27 minutes and her parents are already, successfully, breaking into her private e-mail.

The Presidential candidate, Palmer, takes a call from “Maureen”, a television reporter, after midnight. Do you think Presidential candidates– senators– take calls directly from someone identified as a reporter after midnight? It turns out the reporter has a juicy allegation to report– but Senator Palmer is not told this before he agrees to answer the phone. This is another example of how 24 doesn’t really achieve the look and feel of reality.

Kimberly checks her cell phone and sees that her mother has left five messages. She tells her friends, having not had sex yet with Rick, that she intends to go home. I can guess what’s coming. She is now being established as a “good” girl. She didn’t have sex. She is sensitive to her mother’s feelings. She is suddenly more prudent than she has been all evening, and even shows reluctance to accept a ride with the guys home. I smell victimization coming up, big time. We would be less sympathetic to her if she had sex with the boy, like her friend Janet did.  That would prepare the viewer for a dire fate: she deserved it.

The French photographer, Martin, and Andy try to join the mile-high club. Andy says why don’t we get together in LA. He says he’s going to be very busy. Upon leaving the bathroom, Andy says, “see ya” even though they sit beside each other and are likely to get reacquainted fairly soon.

Jack confronts Mason over the missing $200,000. Tony has traced the money to Mason’s account. Jack uses this information to blackmail Mason into telling him the source of the information about the hit on Senator Palmer. Unfortunately, since Jack has no way of verifying this information, it’s a little ridiculous for him to assume that Mason has given him accurate information.

Insanely, Jack asks Nina to “cover” for him. We are given to understand that an anti-terrorism squad, responding to a threat on a presidential candidate’s life, can spare a leading member for a while? And he can be “covered” for by a sympathetic co-worker? Well, after all, he hasn’t seen his daughter for 35 minutes now.

Meanwhile– everything in this show is “meanwhile”– Andy has planted a bomb, blown an escape hatch, and exited the 747. Now we know why she said “see yah”. A bomb she leaves behind blows it up. Tony alerts Jack: a 747 just exploded. In real life, I suspect that initial reports would be “a 747 disappeared”, and then, “a 747 crashed”, and then, after a few hours at least, “police suspect an explosion of some kind” or “some witnesses reported seeing a fireball” or something. A few days later: “police now suspect that a bomb may have exploded on board the 747”. But 24 is economical with it’s time: in just minutes, Tony is reporting to Jack that a 747 has crashed and we already know the cause.

I’m griping, sure. 24 is fairly compelling as drama because the principal characters are somewhat interesting and the story has laid out a large number of hooks: the lost daughter gone astray, the possibly corrupt senator, the senator’s suspicious wife, the honest cop, the crooked cop. Geez, now that I list them all– how many cliché’s exactly does it take to do “ground-breaking” drama?

All the makers of the show have to do is get you to care enough about these people to sit through 20 minutes of obscene commercials and tune in next week.

The most fun part of shows like this, and movies like “Gran Torino”, is the fantasy of having it both ways. You can be as stupid and rude and violent as you want, and within the fantasy of the show, you will still be loved.

[Update 2022-07-28]   I was way too generous here — I was afraid of hurting the feelings of some people I knew who were enamored of the show.  “24” really was pure dreck, and fascist to boot (by which I mean that it glorified violent, illegal police tactics, including torture).

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Phony Terrorist Convictions

It is utterly conspicuous to me that John Ashcroft’s Department of Justice can’t actually find and arrest any terrorists. Ah ha, you say, but he’s obtained numerous convictions. No, he hasn’t. He has obtained numerous plea bargains. Plea bargains are obtained by threatening a person, innocent or not, with severe sentences until he or she agrees to plead guilty to a slightly less severe sentence.

To give a plea bargain even the slightest credibility you have to believe that an honest-to-god all American jury might actually look for evidence and fail to convict someone for whom there is none even if the government tells them he’s guilty.  It will not happen: all you have to do to an average American jury is say “boo” and they will convict.

Making your persecutor look good is always part of the deal. You will sign a confession and you will not contradict them.

The advantage to Ashcroft is obvious. He doesn’t have to actually catch anybody! He gets to go on TV and claim– surely, this is an outright lie– that another suspect has admitted terrorist activities. Ashcroft knows full well that these suspects are not making free and clear admissions of guilty. They are making deals after being threatened.

Well, what do you expect? Take the latest case– Iyman Faris. Here’s what Ashcroft lets you know about Iyman: he is a truck driver. He traveled to Afghanistan. Someone he knows thought he was kind of weird and finked on him to the authorities.

In our current political climate, he was doomed at that very instant.

The FBI, convinced that anyone who is suspected of being a terrorist must be a terrorist, arrested him. By the time you are arrested, in this day and age, you are already 99% guilty.

He was charged not with conspiracy or with any actual crime– that would require evidence, you see (strange world, isn’t it). Oh no. He was charged with the ever-useful generic “providing material support to a terrorist organization”.

It is important to notice– if you even care about injustice– that he was not arrested with a truck load of explosives, a basement full of bomb parts, a suitcase filled with guns, or anything of the sort. No no– again, that would constitute evidence and then we would have an actual trial, and it might even be public (Faris is a naturalized American citizen). No, no, no. He was charged with providing support to a terrorist organization, which, as we learned from other cases, means that he traveled to suspicious-sounding places like Pakistan and Afghanistan and talked to suspicious-looking people and looks suspiciously Arabic (he was born in Kashmir).

Did you know that the U.S. government itself has, on numerous occasions, provided support to terrorist organizations? You don’t have to be particularly finicky about the definition of “terrorist organization” to include the Taliban, which the U.S. sponsored when they were the muhajadeen and they were fighting the government of Soviet-occupied Afghanistan in the 1980’s, but you could also include anti-Castro Cuban paramilitary organizations and the Contras in Nicaragua. I would include Pinochet and his generals in Chile but, for argument’s sake, let’s just stick to the obvious.

Ashcroft admits that Faris appeared to be a hard-working truck driver. Tell me, do you think Al Qaeda, with their enormous resources, can’t afford to put their operatives up for a few months while they assemble their devices of international terror? They have to get real jobs?

Mr. Faris drove back and forth across the country delivering things. The level of intelligence of this government is such that you envision top officials going “ah ha!” when they learned that. Next is, “so you deny being a witch?!” (As you might recall, during the height of the Spanish Inquisition, it was a crime to be a heretic, but it was a worse crime to deny being a heretic. If you were merely a heretic, you were strangled and then burned at the stake. If you denied being a heretic, you were burned alive.)

Apparently some of the information used to implicate Faris came from captured Al Qaeda operative Khalid Sheik Mohammed. Hmm. Certainly a reliable source. Mr. Mohammed convinced the Department of Justice that Faris was planning to cut the supports of the Brooklyn Bridge with a torch, causing the bridge to collapse. This from one of the men responsible for planning 9/11? Do you think he’s serious? I’ll bet he also offered them information on plots to take Mickey Mouse hostage, blow up a McDonalds’ in Paris, and assassinate John Ashcroft.

A Palestinian friend of Faris’ said that he was surprised at the guilty plea because Faris didn’t seem interested in politics at all. I’m surprised this gentleman would even admit he had ever known Iyman Faris. This Palestinian friend will be John Ashcroft’s next suspect… unless he agrees to testify against someone else, so the FBI can run up the count.

It is a scandal that Faris was not tried in open court so we could all see and evaluate the evidence against him. It is unbelievable that the American people tolerate and accept secret trials of American citizens for nebulous crimes of association and insinuation, and it is an even greater crime that Ashcroft, after striking a plea bargain with almost all of his targets, still claims to have proven that there are terrorists active on U.S. soil.

What he has proven is that the government of the United States employs thuggery and intimidation and bullying in the pursuit of political bullshit.

Update July 2005: by the way, if you do a search on Iyman Faris you may find an article or two like this.

By golly, sounds like a regular high level Al Qaeda plotter, doesn’t he? Now please take note that almost all of that information was supplied to the FBI by Khalid Sheik Mohammed, who now admits that he was making all this stuff up.

And who is this guy anyway?

And do you care about the fact that millions of voters might be misinformed about a witness of whom the authorities claim such monumental significance?

Does it worry you that your government may never wish to put this guy on trial for the same reason it might never really want to hear, in a court room, from Osama Bin Laden?

Updated July 2005.

The most important point: do you honestly think that this government would negotiate a plea-bargain with known terrorists if they really had the goods on any of them?

Come on– be serious.

They would love a public trial where they can introduce impressive documentation, video, or material evidence to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that someone is actually plotting terrorist acts against the United States and that the mighty U.S. government is skillfully protecting you and me against their evil designs.

It is the duty of every American to assume that the unfortunate victims of Ashcroft’s jihad are innocent until proven guilty the old-fashioned way: in publicly accountable courtrooms.

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Homeland Security Theatre

Boy you’ve got to hand it to John Ashcroft and the boys! When it comes to keeping America safe from terrorists, those Department of Justice aces are relentless pit-bulls of righteous vigilance! Already, they’ve succeeded in rounding up hoards of terrifying suspects and locking them up securely to prevent them from destroying Disneyland, Las Vegas, and elementary schools in Orland Park, Illinois!

Okay. Not “hoards” exactly. Four or five, to be more precise. But boy, are those four or five scary! If you care about civil rights in this country.

Take the case of Abdel-Ilah Elmardoudi, Karim Koubriti, Ahmed Hannan, and Farouk Ali-Haimoud. These monsters were caught red-handed with travelogues, sketches of potential terrorist targets, and, and, and…. well, they were definitely thinking of acquiring deadly weapons like guns, except that would have been quite legal, and airplane tickets, and they almost could have been thinking about trying to buy some gas masks, which surely would have been extremely suspicious!

Elmardoudi was at least “found with a cache of identification documents” (New York Times, June 2, 2003) and a lot of cash. Ah ha! Of course, he has a history of committing credit card fraud, along with the only witness against him, Youssef Hmimssa. That proves he was up to no good! Unfortunately, he was arrested and imprisoned before federal investigators could actually find any evidence of any kind of terrorist activity. But don’t tell me that any Arab with a lot of cash isn’t obviously a terrorist!

Elmardoudi is alleged to be part of a “shadowy unidentified Muslim terrorist group” (New York Times). Think about that. A “shadowy unidentified” group of TERRORISTS! I bet I made you jump out of your chair. Do you think that you could belong to a “shadowy unidentified group”? What would make someone think that you belong to a “shadowy unidentified” group? Someone who really badly wants you to belong to a “shadowy unidentified” group because they caught you, and it’s very hard to actually catch someone who really belongs to a “shadowy unidentified” group. It’s much easier to attach a group to a suspect you already have than to actually find a “shadowy unidentified” group and arrest someone in it. But that’s the kind of Homeland Security provided to us by John Ashcroft. Arrest somebody, anybody, and make the right noises and then give speeches about how America is now safer thanks to you.

How did they prove Elmardoudi was a member of this shadowy unidentifiable group? Unfortunately, once again, there wasn’t actually any evidence (that’s how shadowy this group was) so we’ll just round up the usual shadowy unidentifiable witness (only one could be rounded up on short notice) to give vague evidence about thinking that he heard them once say something vaguely terroristy. And so Youssef Hmimssa, himself facing charges of visa and immigration fraud– could there be a deal in the works here?– gives his earnest suspicions.

Now as anybody who reads the news already knows, one of the hallmarks of a false conviction (as shown with subsequent DNA testing) is the ubiquitous jailhouse informant who invariably testifies as to something he heard but didn’t happen to record. These informants never seem to provide the government with evidence about, say, the location of the murder weapon, or bloodstains, or the names of real witnesses who might corroborate their stories or have independent evidence to offer. Oh no. They invariably provide only a first-hand account of something they heard but didn’t happen to record or remember until just recently when it was convenient for them, and the prosecutors, to remember it.

It is not even concealed from the public that Judge Gerald Rosen, who is hearing Hmimssa’s case, can lighten his sentence depending on how “forthcoming” he is about the terrorists suspects. Now come on– do you really think the Judge would consider it “forthcoming” of Hmimssa if he were to assert that they were just a bunch of Arabs trying to make a better life for themselves in America? Come on! Seriously?

Ah ha! But then there was the tape! Audio tapes found in their apartment, of someone Arabic that sounded vaguely Salafist and used words like terrorism and war and America! Except that the tape was actually critical of terrorism and Islamic extremism. But why would they have a tape that even mentioned extremism if they weren’t planning to blow something up!

Ah ha! But they had airport badges! Eureka– they must have been planning to hijack airplanes and crash them into Disneyland and Las Vegas! Except that, of course, two of the men worked at a catering company, SkyChef DTW, at the airport. Those insidious terrorists! How sneaky– actually taking jobs as dishwashers at the very location terrorists would be least welcome!

These unfortunate young men just happen to be Arabic and just happen to have been indulging in some shady immigration practices, and just happen to have been caught in a highly politicized witch hunt. They were held without bail for over a year.

The government has to show the public that they are actually doing something about terrorism, and seeing as they haven’t been able to even catch Saddam Hussein, and haven’t even come close to showing that he had anything to do with 9/11 in the first place, and still haven’t caught Osama Bin Laden…. well, these poor boys will have to do for now.

The story is that if the judge in the Zacarias Moussaoui trial actually has the audacity to require the prosecution to provide evidence, the Department of Justice will transfer the case to a military tribunal. (The government wants to deny the defense access to the only witness against Moussaoui on the basis– of course– of “national security”. The question is, what individual in the United States could be safe from prosecution and conviction under those terms? Not a soul. For a judge to allow this travesty to proceed would be more than a mockery of justice– it would be utterly repugnant to the idea of constitutional government.)

Abdel-Ilah Elmardoudi, 37, and Karim Koubriti, 24, both Moroccans, were convicted of providing material support or resources to terrorists and conspiracy to engage in fraud and misuse of visas, permits and other documents.” NY Times, June 2, 2003.

As you can see from the actual charges, there is no “smoking gun”. In other words, prosecutors did not have evidence that any of the men actually engaged in any “terrorist” activity.

Just a lot of smoke and mirrors, and national public hysteria.

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Homeland Security Pie

Ha ha! I hope those suckers looking for big contracts from Tom Ridge’s Homeland Insecurity office know how much money they’re wasting!

A lot of big corporations are looking at that $40 billion pork barrel just sitting on Tom Ridge’s desk waiting to be looted and thinking to themselves, gee, I’d like a piece of that.

So some of these foolish corporations went and hired Tom Ridge’s former legislative affairs director, and several other former staff, hoping that these people can use their personal relationships with Ridge to negotiate lucrative contracts.

Now you may think there is something fishy going on here. Don’t you dare. These employees have waited a whole year before tarting themselves up for the grueling task of lobbying their former colleagues for big, fat, government contracts. Just as the law requires.

Are they in for a shock!

What they didn’t know is that Mr. Ridge will not be influenced by his former staff persons at all. Nosiree! Mr. Ridge will decide who gets that money purely on the basis of the best interests of the American taxpayer! And these companies really do care about providing the best value for the taxpayers that they can. That’s why Walter B. Shirk, a lawyer at Powell, Goldstein, Frazer, and Murphy, another lobbying firm, wrote an article for a newsletter entitled “Opportunity and Risk: Securing Your Piece of the Homeland Security Pie”.

So those corporations are wasting a lot of money! Wow! Wait ’til they find out! I’ll bet all of those former staffers wish they’d never quit their jobs with Mr. Ridge, because once those corporations that hired them as lobbyists find out that they would have done just as well if they had sent a perfect stranger to make their presentations– well, they’ll probably let all those people go. Even if, like Ashley Davis, former special assistant to Mr. Ridge, they do see him quite often socially, and say they are very good friends with Mr. Ridge. I’m sure Mr. Ridge won’t hesitate to tell Ms. Davis’s clients they better offer the government a very, very good deal on whatever it is they’re selling, because that close friendship will play no part at all in the decision-making process.

And they’ll never get another job in government of course, because people like Tom Ridge wouldn’t want some former flunkies from these corporations hanging around his office, no way. Not after they deserted him just to make a lot more money.

Just as I’ll bet Halliburton never hires Dick Cheney back. Not after that piddly $80 billion he tossed their way for the reconstruction of Iraq.

My only question is this. Why do these companies even bother with lobbyists? All they have to do is pull their strings.

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Iraq’s Debt

The New York Times reports that Iraq owes various entities about 60 to 80 billion dollars.

Who owes that money?

Iraq has been run by a dictator for 30 years. Saddam Hussein was never elected to power by free and fair elections. The vast majority of the citizens of Iraq had absolutely no voice in the government’s decision to borrow money. And what was the money borrowed for? Probably to buy weapons. Why did Saddam need weapons? To crush his own people.

So who owes the world 60 to 80 billion dollars? Saddam Hussein, that’s who. And when Saddam Hussein came to these banks and government institutions to ask if he could borrow some money and the banks said, how do we know you’ll pay it back, he answered, the people of my country willingly undertake to cover all of my debts, and the banks reply: but Mr. Hussein, you were not elected! And he didn’t get his money. Right?

So if you’re Russia or Citibank or France or Halliburton (which did more than $40 million of business with Iraq only a few years ago) or whoever the hell is owed that money, I guess you just sigh and say to yourself, “darn– if only Saddam hadn’t been deposed! Now we lost our money.”

Ha ha ha.

Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!

I’ll tell you what we are going to do. We are going to make the people of Iraq pay Saddam’s debt. It’s only fair. They live there. What would banks and credit agencies do if people didn’t repay their debts? They would become irresponsible parasites who cheat us out of our money and they would never learn the value of good hard day’s work. Almost like stock analysts.

Or a billion barrels of oil.

I hope you think I’m joking but I’m not. Iraq’s predicament is no different from that of many third world countries. Some asshole rises to power by killing his opponents and bullying citizens into helpless submission. He imprisons, tortures, and murders his own people with impunity. They live in terror of being arrested by his secret police. Then he goes to Citibank. Does Citibank say, “gee, that would be a risky loan– what if he is deposed and the people don’t want to pay for his palaces, his air force, his missiles, and his tanks? I’ll lose my money.”

No. Citibank says, “we can always count on the IMF and the World Bank and the United States government to enforce these loans!

And so it is.

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Bamiyan

A few years ago, the world watched in horror and disgust and contempt as the Taliban, those freaky arch-Victorians of the Islamic imperium of Afghanistan, destroyed the massive sandstone carvings of Buddha in the side of a mountain in Bamiyan.

The statues were not remarkable artistically, but they were deeply significant for historical and cultural reasons. (Sorry if you do think they’re beautiful– I don’t. They look like something a bunch of monks without great artistic talent would create.) In the seventh century AD, there were over 5,000 Buddhist monks living in the caves around the statues. Islamic Arab tribes drove the Buddhists out by the ninth century– they didn’t destroy the statues, though.

That would be barbaric.

The destruction of them by the Taliban was an act of mindless, philistine thuggery that astounded the world. If one was not, until then, convinced of the barbarity of the Taliban, this one act did it.

The Taliban repressed women, of course, and was famously intolerant of freedom of expression, diversity, freedom of conscience, freedom of speech, or any kind of fun whatsoever. But those statues were just sitting there, harmlessly, impressively (175 metres high). It takes a peculiarly vindictive and petty and malicious mindset to destroy something like that.

In 2003, the Americans invaded Iraq. The marines that arrived first in Baghdad immediately secured the oil ministry buildings and guarded them diligently during the first weeks of the occupation. Down the road, the Baghdad Museum featuring an absolutely priceless collection of some of the world’s most important antiquities sat there, unguarded.

The Americans stood by as Iraqis of unknown affiliation or devotion destroyed and looted the museum. The marines did nothing. They didn’t even seem to care.

It is not that the Americans were unaware of the significance of the collection. Well, maybe they were. But they certainly knew that cultured and educated people in the U.S. and elsewhere regarded the collection as invaluable and irreplaceable. Experts from around the world had made efforts to ensure that the Americans didn’t bomb it by mistake, and had taken measures to protect the collection once they occupied Baghdad. The Americans said, “yeah, yeah, fine, we’ll take care of it.” Then they didn’t.

The Washington Times uncovered a March 26 memo that showed that the Pentagon had communicated, to the coalition commanders, a list of important sites to be protected during the war. The Baghdad museum was number 2 on the list. Somebody in the Pentagon had a brain.

The world should never forget or forgive Donald Rumsveld for sloughing off the destruction of the Baghdad museum as just “so many vases”. It was a wonderful moment, if you think shocking revelations of the deep-seated idiocy are “wonderful”. He really didn’t care. He really didn’t grasp the significance of the collection. He really could not imagine why anyone would worry about the loss of these absolutely unique examples of the art and expression of mankind’s earliest civilizations.

That’s fine, really. Nobody cares if some asshole called Donald Rumsveld sits in his cave somewhere picking his teeth while contemplating the eternal symmetry and beauty of a plum pit.

But George Bush, during his election campaign, never once informed the voters that, given the opportunity, he’d appoint people who would happily stand by and do nothing while priceless antiquities are looted and destroyed. Donald Rumsveld surprised us.

Jack Valenti, the head of the Motion Pictures Association of America (MPAA), goes around the world berating governments for supporting local film industries at the expense of Hollywood productions. He wonders why anyone would bother with indigenous film, when they can have as many copies of “Ernest Saves Christmas” and “Dumb and Dumber” as they want.

Bush should hire him. He belongs in this White House working with Mr. Rumsveld. They can both be put in charge of the world’s priceless antiquities.

Do you think any of these leaders of the free world care about the beauty of the rain forest, or a pristine wilderness area, or coastal wetlands, or a medieval cathedral, or a rare endangered species, or live theatre or the ballet, or opera, or Mozart’s birthplace, or humpbacked whales, or snowy owls, or Dostoevsky’s manuscripts, or Shakespeare’s original theatre, or a Scottish castle, or the Great Wall of China, or mummies, or cuneiform tablets, or anything at all, other than the stock market and McDonalds and Disneyland?

Think again. When they come to your neighborhood promising the delights of democracy and free enterprise, get ready for drive-thru’s and golden arches.

If you never knew it before, you know now that George Bush and Rumsveld and Perle and Cheney are to culture and history and civilization what McDonald’s is to gourmet cooking.

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Kurds and Whey

The debate about the war in Iraq was always really about this question: what happens now. The Americans sometimes act as if they have proven the world wrong by winning an easy victory. Nobody doubted the easy “victory”– Iraq has about 25 million people, the U.S., 300 million. But the Iraqis are not, as a rule, dancing in the streets waving American flags, Donald Rumsveld notwithstanding. They’re not. A lot of them are saying, “thank you very much, now get out.” The first large demonstrations against the American presence have already occurred.

These are the key elements of postwar Iraq.

1. The Kurds. There are about five million Kurds in Iraq. More importantly, there are about 20 million Kurds in Turkey. That’s right– that’s the number that is more important. The Kurds have been fighting Turkey and Iraq for about 30 years — well, actually, about 800 years– for a Kurdish homeland. There are two leaders among the Kurds in Northern Iraq right now: Massoud Barzani and Jalal Talabani. The Kurds have an army, the “peshmerga”.

2. Turkey: Turkey, as I mentioned, has about 20 million Kurds. Those Kurds are like Quebecois– they identify themselves strongly by their ethnicity and they want a homeland. From about 1985 to 2000, 36,000 people were killed in a brutal civil war in the area occupied by the Kurds in Southern Turkey, between Marxist separatists led by Abdullah Ocalan, and the Turkish government. I’ll bet you don’t remember that. Ocalan is now held in a prison on an island called Imrali. After his imprisonment, Ocalan called for a cease-fire but 5,000 of his fighters remain in Northern Iraq. Turkey has since generally “repressed” the Kurds, and imposed a “State of Emergency” on the city of Diyarbakir in Southern Turkey.

Turkey has two primary concerns. Firstly, it does not want another deluge of refugees like it experienced during the first Gulf War, when 500,000 Kurds fled Saddam’s forces (while Bush Sr. stood by and did nothing). Secondly, it does not want an independent Kurdish state to be established in Northern Iraq, and including the oil-rich area of Kirkuk. Turkey has strongly indicated that it would deploy it’s forces in Northern Iraq to prevent such an occurrence. The Americans have cut a deal here. They will stop the Kurds from taking control of Kirkuk or declaring a Kurdish state, and Turkey will keep its troops within it’s own borders.

About 90% of the population of Turkey– and this includes the Kurds– are against the American-led invasion of Iraq. The Kurds in Turkey are against it because they believe the Turkish government will impose new restrictions upon them for fear of incipient Kurdish nationalism coming to the fore in the post-war chaos.

It was reported in the New York Review of Books that after Turkey’s foreign minister Yashar Yakis, explained the complications of his situation to President Bush, Bush told him, “I understand. Now go back to Turkey and do the job.” Yakis thought about this for a moment and then said, “the man is ill.”

3. The Shiites and “The Surpreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq” (SCIRA). This organization is headquartered in Iran(!) and headed by Ayatollah Baqir al-Hakim. It has links to Iran’s radical Revolutionary Guard, which, of course, is an arch-foe of the U.S. About 60% of Iraq’s population is Shiite, as is the large majority in Iran. After the first Gulf War, SCIRA led an uprising of Shiites in the south of Iraq. The administration of Bush Sr., fearing that Iran would become too powerful if it had a toe-hold in Iraq, allowed and even encouraged Saddam to crush the revolt (General Schwarzkopf released seized helicopters and tanks to the Iraqi forces to be used in the action).

Iran is not stupid. Though it officially opposes U.S. intervention in Iraq, it is no friend of Saddam Hussein, who fought a bitter war against Iran in the 1970’s and 80’s, during which he employed chemical weapons, and was supported by the U.S.. Hussein was defeated only when Iran threw thousands of suicide fighters into the fray, whose fanatical efforts turned the tide. So Iran, apparently, is quietly encouraging Ayatollah Baqir al-Hakim to be nice to the Americans, to ensure that he will play a role in post-war Iraqi politics, and thereby be a conduit of Iranian influence.

Ahmed Chalabi is a protégé of the CIA, but is opposed by the U.S. State Department. In other words, Colin Powell, ever aware (and probably singularly aware) of long-term consequences, does not see him as an asset to post-war reconstruction in Iraq. He has been out of the country for 45 years and may well be perceived by Iraqis as a tool of the U.S. Chalabi keeps protesting that he has no interest in a political role in post-war Iraq. Well, why the hell shouldn’t he say that? Is anyone going to tell President Chalabi to step down because he once said he didn’t want to be President?

4. OPEC – Will a postwar Iraq administration join OPEC, which is, of course, an illegal oil cartel? If it doesn’t, won’t Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and other members have a fit– the price of oil, with Iraq’s huge reserves– could fall dramatically if Iraq competes with OPEC on the open market? Keep buying those SUVs.

 

Those are the key elements, aside from the remnants of Saddam’s regime, a constituency of unknown character and composition.

There are a few possible outcomes of this entire enterprise, and it is difficult to predict which one will prevail. The optimistic view is that all of these groups, the Kurds, the Shiites, the Sunnis, and the remnants of Saddam’s government and civil service, will come together to form some kind of federation with a constitutional government that respects minority rights while giving structure and coherence to a democratic federal government.

Questions have to be answered.

Thomas Friedman, in the New York Times (April 15, 2003) says this: If Lebanon, Iraq and a Palestinian state could all be made into functioning, decent, free-market, self-governing societies, it would be enough to tilt the entire Arab world onto a modernizing track.

Do you believe that? Doesn’t that sound like “pie-in-the-sky” nonsense? On what basis could you make a prediction like that? How much more believable is it than a prediction that the surrounding Arab states, terrified of possible U.S. intervention, simply accelerate their efforts to acquire weapons of mass destruction and build up their armies, and crack down even more brutally on dissent? What if Saudi Arabia and Kuwait are taken over by Islamic fundamentalists and decide to curtail exports of oil to the west? The U.S. will invade, of course. But then you will get an intifada in Iraq, requiring more U.S. troops to suppress and maintain order. And you could have a hell of an intifada in Saudi Arabia, with all those oil wells to blow up. Then Pakistan tilts the wrong way, and India gets aggressive about Kashmir, and before you know it, you have a global disaster.

Or… you could have a democratic, federated Iraq, with a constitution that guarantees minority rights, equitable distribution of wealth, a free press, labour unions, and other intermediary institutions. Democracies, as a rule, don’t threaten their neighbors, so Iran, if it no longer feels threatened, could chill out and de-accelerate it’s drive to acquire nuclear weapons. Mahmoud Abbas leads a democratic Palestinian leadership into negotiations with Israel. Sharon, having proven his mojo with years of hard-line tactics, feels free to make a deal and stops Israeli settlements in the disputed territories and cedes back a good portion of the Golan Heights.

In short, peace breaks out. China and the U.S. cut a deal with North Korea. The stock market revives. The Democrats win the White House in 2004 and pass legislation providing health care insurance for every American. Life is great.

Crazier things have happened.

There was a recent meeting of Iraqi opposition leaders in the Kurdish-controlled town of Salahaddin. Americans, from the “Diplomatic Security Service”, were there in force to make sure nobody shot each other, especially Zalmay Khalilzad, whom President Bush calls a “special envoy” to the free Iraqis. Abdulaziz Hakim was a player, with the cooperation of the U.S., even though he is connected to the radical Islamist movement in Iran (his brother is the leader). Everyone at this meeting is holding their cards very close to their chests. No one wants to declare themselves as the provisional government of a new Iraq. No one wants to start disparaging the claims of rival ethnic or political groups because they fear that the Americans will freeze them out of the post-war reconstruction.

There are two large cities in the Kurdish-controlled areas of Northern Iraq: Mosul and Kirkuk. Both cities are located near vast deposits of oil. The Kurds will claim Kirkuk as their ancestral home, but not Mosul. After the first Gulf War, the Iraqis tried to “ethnically cleanse” Kirkuk by moving Arabic families into the homes of the Kurds and driving the Kurds further north, into the mountains. As the current war drew to a close, some Arabic families, who had been forcibly settled into the area in the first place, began to leave, voluntarily, and Kurds began to move back in. There is no doubt that many, many Kurds will immediately try to move back to Kirkuk at the first opportunity.

The Kurds entered Kirkuk with American forces, but were asked to leave once the city had been secured. They politely agreed, for the moment.

Why does Iraq have so many diverse ethnic groups? Because the nation of Iraq is an artificial construct of the area of occupation by British forces in the early 20th century. They gave it an administrative identity that has no relationship to the ethnicity of the inhabitants. The same problem exists in Africa and may be one of the main reasons nations like Rwanda, Nigeria, and Zimbabwe continue to writhe with civil disturbances, wars, and forced starvation.

 

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Even Enemies Have Real Paranoids

Schools across the United States, in response to the entreaties of Homeland Security Fuehrer Ridge, are implementing emergency procedures to be used in case of… an emergency.

What emergency? In the letters sent home to parents, they don’t often say. They say things like “in light of increased concerns for community safety”.

So what, exactly, do they think is going to happen. The plans include evacuating the students to the gymnasium and ensuring that there is an “adequate” supply of food and water. For what? How can you prepare for an emergency when you are not prepared to seriously discuss exactly what kind of emergency you will be facing?

So it’s up to us sober-minded observers to speculate. Let’s consider some possibilities.

1. Foreign terrorists crash an airplane into the school. Not all that likely, you have to think. Why this particular school and not one of 8,000 others in the vicinity, say, of Chicago or New York? Is it realistic to prepare every school for an airplane crashing into it? How will the terrorists find your school in particular? Schools don’t stand out like World Trade Centers and Pentagons. And do you honestly think that even a terrorist wants to target children? (Well, maybe they do.)  There’s a reason why they chose the World Trade Centre— adults screwing other adults. So let’s leave that one aside for now.

2. Nuclear Bomb: They haven’t found any in Iraq yet. What a disappointment that must be to the Bush Administration. But if they did find one and they found that Iraq, or Al Qaeda, or somebody, had the means of delivering the bomb to New York, the gym would not be adequate protection, and all that duct tape and plastic won’t keep the radiation out. And even if it could, all the parents, in their unprotected workplaces, would be dead. Let’s not talk about that one either.

3. Chemical, Radioactive, or Biological Weapons Attack: according to some very smart people, the only biological weapon that could possibly pose a serious threat to large numbers of people is smallpox. Anthrax just doesn’t travel very well (how come you never hear about it any more) and most other biological agents can’t be delivered over a large area very effectively. Only the U.S. and Russia have any stores of smallpox, and as far as we know, they haven’t been selling them off to tin-pot dictators like they did chemical weapons, so smallpox is probably not a big concern.

There are the nerve agents, chlorine, and other chemical weapons. So I suppose these schools are concerned about somebody attacking the school with chemical agents. How? Dropped from a plane or launched from a mortar or rocket-launcher, you have to suppose. How would these villains get close enough to the school to launch such an attack? They could smuggle the compounds and the delivery technologies into the U.S., maybe through Mexico or Canada, and then drive to your town and position themselves near your school and, bingo! Or they could get into many, many small planes and drop the agents over the school yard during recess.

Then all the students rush into the gymnasium and the teachers duct-tape the doors and cover them with plastic.

Be honest. You can just see that happening, can’t you?

Part of being a rational, sane person is the ability to judge risk accurately and effectively. There are many bad things that could happen to your child at school. He could be bullied. He could be molested. She could fall and hurt herself. The school could be hit by a tornado or hurricane. There could be a fire or an earthquake.

Or some lunatic with easy access to semi-automatic weapons could walk in the front door, shoot the security guard, and kill dozens of students and teachers.  But we are not going to do a fucking thing to prevent that.

This has happened hundreds of times.

In the history of the U.S., not a single a school has ever been attacked by a terrorist.

Do you feel safer now?

The real reason schools are taking these precautions: It’s all Tom Ridge, you know. Yes it is. He is the Bush Administration’s official in charge of “homeland security”. Now, think about this. Who makes a better Republican? Someone who feels safe and prosperous and secure? Or someone who believes that enemies are out there on all sides, just waiting for an opportunity to whack us? Of course! Ridge is out to create an entire new generation of republicans, of fearful paranoids ready to grant their government any powers at all to save us from “evil” people out there who are jealous of tax-free dividends and gas-guzzling SUVs!

Think about this: the last time our society immersed itself into a culture of paranoia and fear was the 1950’s. Remember all the bomb shelters and McCarthyism? Right. Ten years later, we had the greatest uprising of youthful dissidence in the history of this country. Interesting to think about.

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Baseball McCarthyism

Dale Petroskey, a former Reagan Administration official (who hates it when you mention that about him, in this context) has decided that Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins will not be allowed to attend a 15th Anniversary commemoration of the film “Bull Durham” at the National Baseball Hall of Fame.

If read that carefully, the word is “attend”. Sarandon and Robbins were not scheduled to speak. They were simply going to attend. Without polling anybody in baseball, Petroskey decided that because both Robbins and Sarandon had made antiwar statements, they can not be allowed to be seen by baseball fans.

It is entirely predictable that the first words out of Petroskey’s mouth in defense of his action will include phrases like “I am in favor of freedom of speech” and “I am against censorship” and so on and so on. Have you ever talked to a racists? The first words out of their mouths, on the topic of race, is invariably “I am not a racist”. Think about, “it is not about oil”, and “clear skies act”, and “security forces”.

Of course he is against free speech. That is exactly what Petroskey is doing: suppressing free speech. He is punishing people with whom he has a political disagreement, and trying to prevent baseball fans from being exposed to any ideas other than his own.

This is political correctness.  Don’t let conservatives fool you into thinking it’s a left wing issue: the right is far more “politically correct” (wearing your flag lapel pin, are you?  standing for the national anthem?  pledge of allegiance?) than the left ever was.

Petroskey is not entirely stupid. He immediately announced that no “pro-war” speeches would be allowed… either. This, after inviting Ari Fleischer, the White House chief butt-kisser, to speak last year about the noble Bush agenda. But Robbins and Sarandon were not scheduled to speak. To be truly consistent, he would have to announce that nobody in favor of the war will be allowed to appear at any ceremony at the Hall of Fame either. However, since everybody is either in favor of the war or against the war, that would limit attendance, don’t you think?

In a bizarre twist on an already twisted perspective, Petroskey said that the appearance of Sarandon and Robbins could put U.S. troops “in danger”. It would be tempting to make fun of the statement, but it’s hard to even imagine a satirical explanation for that comment. Does he seriously think Saddam Hussein has some of his spies monitoring Cooperstown for signs of irresolution on the part of the U.S. Marines?

It’s a dark moment for our times. Yes, it’s funny and stupid and bizarre, but it’s also a dark moment. This is McCarthyism plain and simple. We don’t actually lock up dissidents (not yet, at least) but we deprive them of podium, profession, or credibility.

You may recall that Michael Moore’s book “Stupid White Men” was suppressed by his publisher, Harper Collins, in the aftermath of the World Trade Centre attacks. I’ll bet that among the first words out of the publisher’s mouth were the phrases “against censorship” and “believe in freedom of speech” and then he went and did the opposite.

You might have been able to argue that Michael Moore’s book might not have been welcomed by an America still reeling from a terrorist attack.  What difference does that make?  Let the market speak.  However, when the librarians of America finally insisted that the book be published (I’m not kidding), it shot to the top of the best-seller lists and stayed there for 9 months.

That’s the real danger, isn’t it, Mr. Petroskey? When Americans do get a chance to be exposed to decency and common sense, they might just reject assholes like you. Crawl back into your hole where you belong.

 

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The Permanent State of Crisis

The Republicans in Congress have just given themselves away.

They want to make the new Arbitrary Search and Seizure Act permanent.

Permanent.

Forever.

The current legislation, the so-called Patriot Act, which was passed as an emergency response to the World Trade Centre attacks, expires in two years (in 2005). If you were a reasonable person, would you think that the crisis is going to continue beyond two years? Well, it might, if George Walker Bush is still in office. He’s obviously incompetent. Let’s be fair and judge the man only by the results: according to the Bush Administration itself, we are not safer. Get out there and buy some duct tape. Let’s lock some people up without due process. Let’s prevent Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins from appearing at the Baseball Hall of Fame.

But a reasonable person might be justified in asking if two more years is not enough to have made the world safe for Enron.

Permanent. Forever.

Why? Why would a lawmaker decide that we should make these draconian, unconstitutional laws permanent?

It’s really quite simple. And it’s now clear. Because the goal is not really to make the world safe. The goal is to keep all citizens in a perpetual state of fear, while the treasury of the United States Government is looted (with tax cuts for the rich), world markets are made safe for genetically modified foods and patented pharmaceutical products, and serious dissidents are arrested and locked up. The goal is to sustain the incredible level of spending on military toys by convincing most Americans that the world is full of deadly threats that we must be prepared to face.

The goal is to keep in power the petty, small-minded, paranoid white men of the Bush Administration, until they have completed their real agenda.

Hero: Senator Russ Feingold

The co-sponsor (with John McCain) of campaign finance reform, stood all alone in opposition to the “Patriot” Act. My only question is, when does he run for president? And if he does, will Joe Lieberman do to him, in the primaries, what another “good”, “decent” man, George Bush, did to John McCain in North Carolina?

[2022-04-28 Update: he didn’t have to.  Feingold was defeated in 2010 by Ron Johnson 52 to 47%.]