Topic(s): BookReview
Date Posted: 07.30.04

July 25, 2004
'Multitude': An Antidote to Empire
By FRANCIS FUKUYAMA

MULTITUDE
War and Democracy in the Age of Empire.
By Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri.
427 pp. The Penguin Press. $27.95.

Well before 9/11 and the Iraq war put the idea in everybody's mind, Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri had popularized the notion of a modern empire. Four years ago, they argued in a widely discussed book -- titled, as it happens, ''Empire'' -- that the globe was ruled by a new imperial order, different from earlier ones, which were based on overt military domination. This one had no center; it was managed by the world's wealthy nation-states (particularly the United States), by multinational corporations and by international institutions like the World Trade Organization and the International Monetary Fund. This empire -- a k a globalization -- was exploitative, undemocratic and repressive, not only for developing countries but also for the excluded in the rich West.

Hardt and Negri's new book, ''Multitude,'' argues that the antidote to empire is the realization of true democracy, ''the rule of everyone by everyone, a democracy without qualifiers.'' They say that the left needs to leave behind outdated concepts like the proletariat and the working class, which vastly oversimplify the gender/racial/ethnic/ class diversities of today's world. In their place they propose the term ''multitude,'' to capture the ''commonality and singularity'' of those who stand in opposition to the wealthy and powerful.

[Continue Reading]

Topic(s): Afghanistan
Date Posted: 07.29.04

Aid agency quits Afghanistan over security fears

Ewen MacAskill, diplomatic editor
Thursday July 29, 2004

The Guardian
One of the world's leading frontline aid
organisations, Médecins sans Frontières, is pulling
out of Afghanistan after 24 years because of a
deterioration in security.

MSF, a neutral group which depends primarily on
private donations, has a reputation for sending
medical staff into troublespots regarded by other
agencies as too dangerous. This is its first pullout
from any country since being founded 33 years ago.

The organisation, which worked in Afghanistan through
the Soviet occupation, the civil war and the Taliban,
said yesterday that the US-led coalition put aid
workers at risk by blurring the line between military
and humanitarian operations.

The surprise withdrawal is a setback for the Afghan
government and the US in their attempts to persuade
the international community that security in the
country is improving in the run-up to the
twice-delayed presidential election, now scheduled for
October. A UN election worker and a person registering
to vote were killed yesterday in a bomb attack in
Ghazni, south of Kabul.

[Continue Reading]

Topic(s): 
Date Posted: 07.27.04

Things get even more absurd -rg

US might grant free visas to citizens of countries participating in Iraq war

Hungarian television M2 satellite service, Budapest
23 Jul 04

The United States might grant free visas as a reward to citizens whose
country is participating in the military efforts in Afghanistan and
Iraq.

Hungary would also be entitled to the preference, and besides us,
Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic,
Poland and Romania could count on change in the visa regime.

At the moment support is being gathered in the American Congress for
the bill to be submitted on 14 July.

[Continue Reading]

Topic(s): Palestine / Israel
Date Posted: 07.27.04

The rooftop youth of Nablus
w w w . h a a r e t z . c o m

In the old city and in the Balata refugee camp, where most of the wanted suspects of Nablus are concentrated, there is no end to the gunfire and the fear.

By Amira Hass

In the old city of Nablus, they hate the night. Nearly every night, people say, it is impossible to sleep because of the gunfire. People shrink into inner rooms, trying to guess where the gunfire is coming from, where the soldiers are hiding, where they are aiming, what was that blast they just heard, why those people are shouting, when the soldiers might finally leave. In the evening, people hurry home to shut themselves in, so as not to come across the army. In the morning, they only dare to step outside long after sunrise, and only when the first sounds of civilian vehicles can be heard in the streets outside the old city. In other words, when it is clear that the army has departed the alleyways. And during the day, even when the alleys are bustling with people, the shops are open, the wagons of the peddlers are rolling - the voices are restrained, sad, subjugated, low. As opposed to the clamorous colorfulness of the hundreds of posters that extol the memory of the shahids.

[Continue Reading]

Topic(s): Torture
Date Posted: 07.27.04 Teaching Torture: Congress Quietly Keeps     School of the Americas Alive     By Doug Ireland     LA Weekly     23 - 29 July Issue     Remember how congressional leaders on both sides of the aisle deplored the torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib as "un-American"?... [Continue Reading]

Topic(s): Media
Date Posted: 07.24.04

What Have We Done?
by Susan Sontag
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0524-09.htm

For a long time - at least six decades - photographs have laid down the tracks of how important conflicts are judged and remembered. The memory museum is now mostly a visual one. Photographs have an insuperable power to determine what people recall of events, and it now seems likely that the defining association of people everywhere with the rotten war that the Americans launched preemptively in Iraq last year will be photographs of the torture of Iraqi prisoners in the most infamous of Saddam Hussein's prisons, Abu Ghraib.

The slogans and phrases fielded by the Bush administration and its defenders have been chiefly aimed at limiting a public relations disaster - the dissemination of the photographs - rather than dealing with the complex crimes of leadership, policies and authority revealed by the pictures. There was, first of all, the displacement of the reality on to the photographs themselves. The administration's initial response was to say that the president was shocked and disgusted by the photographs - as if the fault or horror lay in the images, not in what they depict. There was also the avoidance of the word torture. The prisoners had possibly been the objects of "abuse", eventually of "humiliation" - that was the most to be admitted. "My impression is that what has been charged thus far is abuse, which I believe technically is different from torture," secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld said at a press conference. "And therefore I'm not going to address the torture word." Words alter, words add, words subtract. It was the strenuous avoidance of the word "genocide" while the genocide of the Tutsis in Rwanda was being carried out 10 years ago that meant the American government had no intention of doing anything. To call what took place in Abu Ghraib - and, almost certainly, in other prisons in Iraq and in Afghanistan, and in Guantanamo - by its true name, torture, would likely entail a public investigation, trials, court martials, dishonorable discharges, resignation of senior military figures and responsible cabinet officials, and substantial reparations to the victims. Such a response to our misrule in Iraq would contradict everything this administration has invited the American public to believe about the virtue of American intentions and America's right to unilateral action on the world stage in defense of its interests and its security.

[Continue Reading]

Topic(s): Media
Date Posted: 07.24.04

Moore or less morality

Michael Moore's documentary Fahrenheit 911 has broken US box-office records during its opening week. But rolling back the tide of imperial politics will require more than simply piquing moral sensibilities,
writes James Der Derian*

http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2004/697/cu5.htm

US foreign policy has always been a struggle between morality and power, and when politics escalates into war the first casualty is -- as California Senator Hiram Johnson famously remarked in 1917 -- the truth. With the casualty list growing every day in the war against terror, the opening of Michael Moore's documentary, Fahrenheit 911, has assumed huge importance in this homegrown struggle between morality, truth and power.

Promoted in the film trailer as the "true story that will make your temperature rise", duly attacked by Bill O'Reilly as "Leni Riefenstahl Third Reich propaganda", and challenged by the right-wing group Citizens United as a violation of federal election laws, Fahrenheit 911, all about the news, has become the news. The polarised reaction, I believe, comes from Moore's uncanny ability to evince powerful moral and emotional responses from images. Like the Rodney King video (or the sequel with Stanley Miller), the looped shot of the twin towers falling, Bin Laden's home movies, the Abu Ghraib digital snapshots and the Richard Berg snuff film, Fahrenheit 911 plays to a thoroughly modern sensibility -- politicians can, and often do, lie but images cannot. Guilt by association with images replaces argumentation by evidence.

[Continue Reading]

Topic(s): Civil Liberties
Date Posted: 07.24.04

Local Activist Visited by FBI in relation to DNC protests
** Emergency Release From Boston ** Please Forward Everywhere.

Harassment of DNC Protesters Escalates Written by Boston ABC

Despite the Boston Police Department’s stated commitment to protect people’s First Amendment rights during the DNC, the BPD has, in conjunction with other law enforcement officers in New York City, started a campaign of preemptive action that could chill protest participants' lawful speech activities during the Democratic National Convention (DNC).

The NYPD/FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force started an intimidation campaign against New York activists to prevent them from speaking out against the DNC. On Thursday, July 8, two officers visited the home of a New York City activist (referred to as “Tim” hereafter). They said that they acquired his name from the Boston Police Department, which has compiled a list of “troublemakers” who are coming to Boston. The officers said they plan to visit the homes of all so-called “troublemakers.”

At 7 p.m. the officers arrived at Tim’s parents’ house, where Tim resides during the summer. Tim was not home, but his parents talked to the officers. The officers had already done extensive surveillance on Tim, which included examining his medical and academic records, in addition to Tim’s previous history with the police. The officers said they are expecting a large band of organized anarchists to come to Boston and destroy it, and proceeded to tell Tim’s father that it was inadvisable for Tim to:

[Continue Reading]

Topic(s): Media
Date Posted: 07.24.04

My Beef With Big Media
How government protects big media--and shuts out upstarts like me.

By Ted Turner

In the late 1960s, when Turner Communications was a business of billboards and radio stations and I was spending much of my energy ocean racing, a UHF-TV station came up for sale in Atlanta. It was losing $50,000 a month and its programs were viewed by fewer than 5 percent of the market.

I acquired it.

When I moved to buy a second station in Charlotte--this one worse than the first--my accountant quit in protest, and the company's board vetoed the deal. So I mortgaged my house and bought it myself. The Atlanta purchase turned into the Superstation; the Charlotte purchase--when I sold it 10 years later--gave me the capital to launch CNN.

Both purchases played a role in revolutionizing television. Both required a streak of independence and a taste for risk. And neither could happen today. In the current climate of consolidation, independent broadcasters simply don't survive for long. That's why we haven't seen a new generation of people like me or even Rupert Murdoch--independent television upstarts who challenge the big boys and force the whole industry to compete and change.

It's not that there aren't entrepreneurs eager to make their names and fortunes in broadcasting if given the chance. If nothing else, the 1990s dot-com boom showed that the spirit of entrepreneurship is alive and well in America, with plenty of investors willing to put real money into new media ventures. The difference is that Washington has changed the rules of the game. When I was getting into the television business, lawmakers and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) took seriously the commission's mandate to promote diversity, localism, and competition in the media marketplace. They wanted to make sure that the big, established networks--CBS, ABC, NBC--wouldn't forever dominate what the American public could watch on TV. They wanted independent producers to thrive. They wanted more people to be able to own TV stations. They believed in the value of competition.

So when the FCC received a glut of applications for new television stations after World War II, the agency set aside dozens of channels on the new UHF spectrum so independents could get a foothold in television. That helped me get my start 35 years ago. Congress also passed a law in 1962 requiring that TVs be equipped to receive both UHF and VHF channels. That's how I was able to compete as a UHF station, although it was never easy. (I used to tell potential advertisers that our UHF viewers were smarter than the rest, because you had to be a genius just to figure out how to tune us in.) And in 1972, the FCC ruled that cable TV operators could import distant signals. That's how we were able to beam our Atlanta station to homes throughout the South. Five years later, with the help of an RCA satellite, we were sending our signal across the nation, and the Superstation was born.

[Continue Reading]

Topic(s): Palestine / Israel
Date Posted: 07.23.04

Death in a cemetery
By: Gidon Levy

How many of us can imagine the night of horror that the Salah family endured? To lie on the floor of the living room for what seemed an eternity, embracing as one being, trembling with fear as the house was blasted with bullets and missiles; to watch the sniper's laser ray doing its dance of death across the apartment, searching out its victims; to see the missiles slamming into the walls of the house, missile after missile, as though an earthquake had struck; to get to their feet in the dark following the order to evacuate the building before it was demolished; to try to open the front door and discover that it had been twisted out of shape by the gunfire and couldn't be opened; to open a window and try to shout to the snipers, in the dark of the night, that the door was jammed; to see the father of the family collapse from a bullet fired into his neck by a sniper; to see the son collapse a few minutes later from a bullet in his cheek fired by a sniper; to watch, helpless, as your son lies on the floor, the life ebbing out of him, next to his dead father, and to cry for help, but to find that the soldiers will not allow anyone to enter; then to undergo an interrogation and humiliation; and to discover that the entire contents of the house had been destroyed.

[Continue Reading]

Topic(s): Iraq
Date Posted: 07.23.04

IRAQ'S FALSE PROMISES

by Slavoj Zizek

Foreign Policy
January/February 2004

If you want to understand why the Bush administration invaded Iraq, read Freud's Interpretation of Dreams, not the National Security Strategy of the United States. Only the twisted logic of dreams can explain why the United States thinks that the aggressive pursuit of contradictory goals-promoting democracy, affirming U.S. hegemony, and ensuring stable energy supplies-will produce success.

To illustrate the weird logic of dreams, Sigmund Freud used to evoke a story about a borrowed kettle: When a friend accuses you of returning a borrowed kettle broken, your reply is, first, that you never borrowed the kettle; second, that you returned it unbroken; and third, that the kettle was already broken when you borrowed it. Such an enumeration of inconsistent arguments, of course, confirms precisely what it endeavors to deny: that you, in fact, did borrow and break the kettle.

A similar string of inconsistencies characterized the Bush administration's public justifications for the U.S. attack on Iraq in early 2003. First, the administration claimed that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction (WMD), which posed a "real and present danger" to his neighbors, to Israel, and to all democratic Western states. So far, no such weapons have been found (after more than 1,000 U.S. specialists have spent months looking for them). Then, the administration argued that even if Saddam does not have any WMD, he was involved with al Qaeda in the September 11 attacks and therefore should be punished and prevented from launching future assaults. But even U.S. President George W. Bush had to concede in September 2003 that the United States "had no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with September the 11th." Finally, there was the third level of justification, that even if there was no proof of a link with al Qaeda, Saddam's ruthless dictatorship was a threat to its neighbors and a catastrophe to its own people, and these facts were reason enough to topple it. True, but why topple Iraq and not other evil regimes, starting with Iran and North Korea, the two other members of Bush's infamous "axis of evil"?

[Continue Reading]

Topic(s): Lenin
Date Posted: 07.23.04

REPEATING LENIN
by Slavoj Zizek.

The first public reaction to the idea of reactualizing Lenin is, of course, an outburst of sarcastic laughter: Marx is OK, even on Wall Street, there are people who love him today - Marx the poet of commodities, who provided perfect descriptions of the capitalist dynamics, Marx of the Cultural Studies, who portrayed the alienation and reification of our daily lives -, but Lenin, no, you can't be serious! The working class movement, revolutionary Party, and similar zombie-concepts? Doesn't Lenin stand precisely for the FAILURE to put Marxism into practice, for the big catastrophe which left its mark on the entire XXth century world politics, for the Real Socialist experiment which culminated in an economically inefficient dictatorship?

So, in the contemporary academic politics, the idea to deal with Lenin is accompanied by two qualifications: yes, why not, we live in a liberal democracy, there is freedom of thought... however, one should treat Lenin in an "objective critical and scientific way," not in an attitude of nostalgic idolatry, and, furthermore, from the perspective firmly rooted in the democratic political order, within the horizon of human rights - therein resides the lesson painfully learned through the experience of the XXth century totalitarianisms.

What are we to say to this? Again, the problem resides in the implicit qualifications which can be easily discerned by the "concrete analysis of the concrete situation," as Lenin himself would have put it. "Fidelity to the democratic consensus" means the acceptance of the present liberal-parlamentary consensus, which precludes any serious questioning of how this liberal-democratic order is complicit in the phenomena it officially condemns, and, of course, any serious attempt to imagine a society whose socio-political order would be different. In short, it means: say and write whatever you want - on condition that what you do does not effectively question or disturb the predominant political consensus. So everything is allowed, solicited even, as a critical topic: the prospects of a global ecological catastrophe, violations of human rights, sexism, homophobia, antifeminism, the growing violence not only in the far-away countries, but also in our megalopolises, the gap between the First and the Third World, between the rich and the poor, the shattering impact of the digitalization of our daily lives... there is nothing easier today than to get international, state or corporate funds for a multidisciplinary research into how to fight the new forms of ethnic, religious or sexist violence. The problem is that all this occurs against the background of a fundamental Denkverbot, the prohibition to think.

[Continue Reading]

Topic(s): Palestine / Israel
Date Posted: 07.21.04

In Hebron

Yitzhak Laor writes about an exhibition of soldiers' photographs in Tel Aviv and introduces some of the soldiers' memories of their military service

Israel's Independence Day fell this year on 27 April. For his homework my nine-year-old son had to interview me about my military past. Before giving out the assignment, his teacher had invited the father of one of the children, an IDF colonel, to give a talk in full military uniform. The children were fascinated. Urged to ask questions, they mostly wanted to know whether he was afraid, though they also asked if he had killed Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, whose picture and the picture of his destroyed wheelchair were quite a hit on Israeli TV. The colonel said it was another unit, not his, 'but he deserved to die,' and he promised the children that 'we don't kill unless there is a really good reason.' He ended the talk by telling the children he hoped that they too would one day have the chance to become senior officers in the IDF.

Our life worsens, poverty is spreading, education and health services are deteriorating, the middle class is shrinking, and we are ruled by a junta whose money and power have increased to an extent people refuse to believe, even when they are confronted with the figures. A 45-year-old colonel who retires from the army gets a lump sum of close to two million dollars, in addition to a lifetime pension and a second career, usually as an executive of one of the huge corporations, or in arms dealing.

[Continue Reading]

Topic(s): Interviews
Date Posted: 07.20.04

Der Derian: Is the author dead?

Virilio: There is a great threat to writing. The written work is threatened by the screen, not by the image. There have always been images in books. There have always been images in architecture, like frescoes or stain glass windows. No, it is the evocative power of the screen, and in particular the live screen. It is real time that threatens writing. Writing is always, always, in a deferred time, always delayed. Once the image is live, there is a conflict between deferred time and real time, and in this there is a serious threat to writing and the author.

You seem to write in a kind of perpetual war-time.

Yes, I am a victim of war, a "war baby." I was born in 1932, along with the rise of fascism. As a child I lived through the horrors of the Second World War, through the reign of technology as absolute terror. I was in a city, Nantes, which was destroyed by our allies, the Americans and English, by bombardments. I lived through this extraordinary event, to hear on the radio that "the Germans are in Orleans." Ten minutes later I heard noise in the street; it was the Germans. They were already there, we were occupied. I lived through the full power of technology: Blitzkrieg. For a child it is extraordinary to see to what degree a city can be obliterated in a single bombardment. For a kid, a city is like the Alps, it's eternal, like the mountains. One single bombardment and all is razed. These are the traumatizing events which shaped my thinking. War was my university. Everything has proceeded from there. And it would seem from cinema as well.

[Continue Reading]

Topic(s): George W. Bush
Date Posted: 07.20.04

   The Arabian Candidate
    By Paul Krugman
    The New York Times

    Tuesday 20 July 2004

    In the original version of "The Manchurian Candidate," Senator John Iselin, whom Chinese agents are plotting to put in the White House, is a right-wing demagogue modeled on Senator Joseph McCarthy. As Roger Ebert wrote, the plan is to "use anticommunist hysteria as a cover for a communist takeover."

    The movie doesn't say what Iselin would have done if the plot had succeeded. Presumably, however, he wouldn't have openly turned traitor. Instead, he would have used his position to undermine national security, while posing as America's staunchest defender against communist evil.

    So let's imagine an update - not the remake with Denzel Washington, which I haven't seen, but my own version. This time the enemies would be Islamic fanatics, who install as their puppet president a demagogue who poses as the nation's defender against terrorist evildoers.

    The Arabian candidate wouldn't openly help terrorists. Instead, he would serve their cause while pretending to be their enemy.

    After an attack, he would strike back at the terrorist base, a necessary action to preserve his image of toughness, but botch the follow-up, allowing the terrorist leaders to escape. Once the public's attention shifted, he would systematically squander the military victory: committing too few soldiers, reneging on promises of economic aid. Soon, warlords would once again rule most of the country, the heroin trade would be booming, and terrorist allies would make a comeback.

[Continue Reading]

Topic(s): US Analysis
Date Posted: 07.20.04

Washington Post calls Bush moves to postpone US elections “appropriate”

By Patrick Martin
15 July 2004

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2004/jul2004/wash-15j.shtml#top
from wsws, world socialist web site

The major daily newspaper in the US capital has endorsed the Bush administration’s review of possible actions to suspend the 2004 elections in the event of a major terrorist attack inside the United States. The Washington Post published an editorial on July 14, headlined “Tuesday in November”, which presents the preparations initiated by the Department of Homeland Security as “useful” and “appropriate”, and casts them as a legitimate exercise in contingency planning.

The whole approach of the Post is saturated with contempt for those who are alarmed about the implications of such an action for American democracy. The newspaper dismisses such concerns as “a few suspicious, even hysterical reactions, and talk of stolen elections.” Even the length and positioning of the editorial—a brief four paragraphs, placed second on the page under a comment on the gay marriage amendment—were meant to convey that nothing monumental was under discussion.

[Continue Reading]

Topic(s): Civil Liberties
Date Posted: 07.20.04

Also posted on nettime. forwarded here with the permission of the author.

From: Barry Steinhardt

STATEMENT OF BARRY STEINHARDT DIRECTOR TECHNOLOGY AND LIBERTY PROJECT AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION

ON RFID TAGS

Before the Commerce, Trade and Consumer Protection Subcommittee of the House of Representatives, Committee on Energy and Commerce

JULY 14, 2004

My name is Barry Steinhardt and I am the director of the Technology and Liberty Program at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). The ACLU is a nationwide, non-partisan organization with nearly 400,000 members dedicated to protecting the individual liberties and freedoms guaranteed in the Constitution and laws of the United States. I appreciate the opportunity to testify about Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags on behalf of the ACLU before the Commerce, Trade and Consumer Protection Subcommittee of the House of Representatives Committee on Energy and Commerce. Today, I will explore with you the risks to privacy of governmental uses of RFID tags in identification documents, and the risks to consumer privacy of use of RFID tags by the private sector. I will close by suggesting that Congress play an active role in deciding whether to authorize governmental use of RFID tags in U.S. passports.

RFID tags are tiny computer chips connected to miniature antennae that can be placed on or in physical objects. The chips contain enough memory to hold unique identification codes for all manufactured items produced worldwide. When an RFID reader emits a radio signal, nearby tags respond by transmitting their stored data to the reader. With passive RFID tags, which do not contain batteries, read-range can vary from less than an inch to 20-30 feet, while active (self-powered) tags can have a much longer read range.

Drift toward a surveillance society

[Continue Reading]

Topic(s): Sudan
Date Posted: 07.20.04

ZNet | Africa

A Call for Sudan
by David Nally; July 13, 2004

“The concept of progress is to be grounded in the Idea of the catastrophe. That things ‘just go on’ is the catastrophe” – Walter Benjamin.

Scanning through the mainstream press and digesting the fairly erratic and mostly insipid news on the continuing murders in Sudan, one is gripped by the horrible thought that maybe it is true that nobody cares. After all Bush and his cronies — who were so quick to ignore the United Nations in their dealings with Iraq — now seem only too content to evoke the selfsame authority in order to legitimise their policy of enforced abandonment in regard to Sudan [1]. This selective disengagement seems to prove well enough that the people of Sudan are today’s “unworthy victims.”

Now, as I write these words, Sudan is facing a humanitarian crisis of epic proportions and to say that this situation has offered little pause for scrutiny is being way too charitable. Even the independent press seems gripped by the violence in Iraq — not to mention the Israeli effort to block all the daylight out of Palestine. In the midst of all this the people of Sudan are being raped, pillaged, and starved to death. The truly tragic in all of this is that these atrocities are not even tabled for serious discussion.

[Continue Reading]

Topic(s): Ireland
Date Posted: 07.20.04

Analysis: Escaping the inescapable


By Tom McGurk (for the Sunday Business Post)


When deciding the first Court of Appeal hearing of the case
against the six `Birmingham Bombers' Master of the Rolls Lord
Denning faced a truly unpleasant choice.

Either he accepted the case presented by the massed ranks of
crown prosecutors and the cream of the British CID in front of
him, or he accepted that the six men were innocent.

And if that were the case, then they had been beaten to a pulp
and forced (four of them) to sign false confessions, and would
be wrongly convicted of Britain's greatest ever case of mass
murder.

It was not an easy choice, because to accept the case of
innocence, he had to accept that the six men had been
deliberately framed by some of the most distinguished police
officers in the country.

[Continue Reading]

Topic(s): Armenian Genocide
Date Posted: 07.20.04

Hastert slices Turkey bill
By Jonathan E. Kaplan

House GOP leaders are vowing to kill a controversial amendment that chastises a key U.S. ally following a successful Democratic maneuver to pass the bill late last week.

Rep. Jim Kolbe (R-Ariz.), chairman of the Appropriations Foreign Operations Subcommittee, exasperated House leaders last Thursday when he accepted a Democratic amendment, which would bar Turkey from lobbying against a Republican-backed resolution that would call the Ottoman Empire’s killings of 1.5 Armenians during World War I “genocide.”

Rep. Adam Schiff’s (D-Calif.) amendment would deny Turkey the use of U.S. foreign aid money to lobby against the Armenian genocide resolution sponsored by GOP Rep. George Radanovich (Calif.). If enacted, Radanovich’s resolution would be the first time Congress formally marked the deaths of 1.5 million Armenians between 1915 and 1923.

[Continue Reading]

Topic(s): US Analysis
Date Posted: 07.19.04

U.S. planned use of 3,200 nukes in case of all-out war with

.c Kyodo News Service

WASHINGTON, July 13 (Kyodo) - The United States planned in the 1960s
to use more than 3,200 nuclear weapons in preemptive strikes against
the Soviet Union, China and their allies in the event of an all-out
nuclear war, according to declassified U.S. documents made available
to Kyodo News on Monday.

The U.S. nuclear war plan, known as the Single Integrated Operational
Plan, consisted of ''retaliatory'' and ''preemptive'' options, and
preemption could occur if U.S. authorities had strategic warning of a
Soviet attack, the documents say.

As part of the preemptive options, the plan called for using more than
3,200 nuclear weapons to attack about 1,000 targets in the Soviet
Union, China and countries allied with them in Europe and Asia, they
say.

[Continue Reading]

Topic(s): Interviews
Date Posted: 07.18.04

Information Bomb Interview with Virlio
http://www.ip.pt/flirt/arquivo/f_julho/julho/textos/virilio.htm

- Let's s art at the beginning, your biography…
- I'm form 32. A real war baby. My father, an Italian communist that was resident in France, but not a French citizen, my mother, from Bretaigne, and myself, moved to Nantes. In 1940 I assisted the swift arrival of the German troops along the shores. But the worst was yet to come. And, on the 16th and the 23th of September of 1943, the Allies started the bombings. 8000 buildings crumbled to ashes, whole quarters on fire, the city devastated. Since then, I was 11, I become relativist. War made me understand the fragility of appearances. For a child, the city is indestructible, and I was a child that had seen his city turned to ashes, just like Nero had seen Rome on fire. War made me understand that destruction's power is totalitarian and it questions reality itself. I wouldn't believe my eyes anymore, everything became a fake to me. A destructive power that can begin in Coventry, or in Guernica, and that it ends in Hiroshima, but doesn't forget Auschwitz and field massacres. In my opinion, Auschwitz and Hiroshima are twin towns in the same historical plane. I know that a bomb that ends a war is no comparable to genocide, nevertheless Hiroshima is the beginning of a new military technological era that is able to destroy everything.

- I figure that the Liberation brought some peace to the war baby, at least literally. What happened then?
- The first thing, seeing the ocean, because despite living close we couldn't walk down there, being a forbidden area. I found out that there were bunkers at the beaches, and they stood like riddles, Easter Island statues of some kind, flies of a totalitarian space. The city and the war, the destruction through techniques, stand at the beginning of my life. When peace comes, I am no longer a child but an adult, because I'd seen too many monstrous things, severed heads… From then on, it's imperative a philosophical option. Most of my friends became Marxists, but my father was a Communist, so I sought a different solution…I was converted…

[Continue Reading]

Topic(s): BookReview
Date Posted: 07.18.04

(Jean Baudrillard) L'Illusion de la Fin/ Die Illusion des Endes Merve Verlag Berlin 1994, ISBN 3 88396 1167 German Text, 190 pp.,DM 24   Éditions Galilée Paris 1992, French Text  

Dietmar Kamper says in an interview with Rudolf Maresch: Jean Baudrillard is an extremely conservative thinker who certainly does not betray the ideals of the bourgeois revolution. He observes with deep disappointment how they are being sold off cheap by precisely those who appear to uphold them. Those who have to uphold values have already betrayed them. Baudrillard, who turned 65 this year, was read at the height of his popularity as a sort of liberation theologist proclaiming the end of politics, the social, sex and other ideologies. His objective irony was suited to the euphoria around the circulation of signs and simulacra, believed to have been discovered as a tendency in the art and media of the 1980s. Must we now suddenly view Baudrillard as a secret agent of the Enlightenment?

L'Illusion de Fin (The Illusion of the End) does indeed contain indications in that direction, though not explicit ones. His radical media criticism can no longer be interpreted as ironic and is becoming ever harder and more pessimistic, without losing any of its acuteness. Besides Virilio, Baudrillard remains Europe's most important media theorist, following the changes after 1989 more closely than anyone else and writing about them from his own standpoint, without either being born out or falling back into resignation or despair. But there is precious little to laugh about anymore, for even the most brilliantly agile mind.

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Topic(s): Palestine / Israel
Date Posted: 07.18.04

Breaking the Silence: Occupation soldiers give visual and written accounts of their experience in Hebron
Press Release, Shovrim Shtika - Breaking the Silence, 16 July 2004

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article2902.shtml

Two blindfolded Palestinians sit while guarded by an IDF soldier (Image: www.shovrimshtika.org)

Closing a school, abusing civilians at a check point, following orders, staying in a family's comandeered home, posing for trophy photos with enemy bodies, being the law, enjoying power, feeling ashamed, getting addicted to controlling people, dispersing a funeral, wanting to forget, not caring, the ease in which you actually do whatever you want to do unsupervised, the unbearable lightness of these things that happen. 12,643 words of testimonies.

What follows is a compilation of testimonies by IDF soldiers who served until recently, or are still actively serving, in the West Bank city of Hebron. The testimonies were gathered by five of the soldiers, and this is what they write:

Recently, we were released from active military duty. Hebron was the hardest, most confusing place we served. Until now, each of us dealt with the difficult things we saw there on our own. Our photo albums - souvenirs from the time we spent in Hebron - have remained, until now, sealed on our respective bedroom shelves. Since we were released, we came to realize that these memories are common to all the guys who served alongside us. We decided to speak out. We decided to tell our stories. Hebron is not on another planet; it's an hour's drive from Jerusalem. But Hebron is light years from Tel Aviv. So we decided to bring Hebron to Tel Aviv. Now, its up to you to come, look, and listen. To understand what's going on there.

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Topic(s): US Analysis
Date Posted: 07.18.04

Still Dreaming of Tehran

The Nation
April 12, 2004

BY ROBERT DREYFUSS & LAURA ROZEN

The Bush Administration's hawks and their neoconservative allies at
the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and The Weekly Standard are
engaged in a high-risk and high-stakes effort to restore their fading
power in Washington by pressing for a confrontation with Iran. It's no
secret that the neocons' star has fallen since the war with Iraq. The
intelligence scandal plaguing the White House and the ongoing crisis
in Iraq itself can both be laid at their doorstep, and it's widely
believed that President Bush's re-election team would dearly like to
extricate the President from the Iraqi tar baby.

But the neocons aren't giving up, and they are trying to pull the
White House in even deeper. Not only are they undeterred by the chaos
in Iraq, but they are pressing ahead to advance their regional
strategy, one that calls for regime change in Iran, then Syria and
Saudi Arabia. Says Chas Freeman, who served as US Ambassador to Saudi
Arabia during the first Gulf War and a leading foe of the neocons, "It
shows that they possess a level of fanaticism, or depth of conviction,
that is truly awesome. There is no cognitive dissonance there."

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Topic(s): Resistance?
Date Posted: 07.17.04

Adilkno

The Future of Negativity

"All advice is bad, but good advice is fatal." Oscar Wilde

The future has become completely predictable; a script that is being worked through from A to Z. The Plan has finally prevailed. There are merely some
anomalies, corrections that have not yet been made. All arguments are for the
following of the prescribed route. It is true that there are always a number of
simultaneous scenarios that are partially overlapping and partially mutually
exclusive. But they have one thing in common: they are all true. Will it be an
ecological catastrophe or an atom bomb? Whichever you request. Humanitarian
disaster or military defeat? The choice is yours. Will it be abstract or
figurative? Whichever way the wind blows. Brazil or China? All options have been thought through. All the right specialists have been found and their reports are ready and waiting to be implemented. The field of vision has narrowed to one perspective, wherever you look. There are no surprises, only possibilities. Reread Musil. Even the biggest problems (AIDS in Africa, Bin Laden in Afghanistan, Milosevic in Belgrade, Clinton in Washington) will never be more than entrances to new markets.

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Topic(s): Interviews
Date Posted: 07.17.04

Jean-Luc Godard

In Images We Trust

Hal Hartley: I saw your self-portrait film (JLG/JLG) yesterday afternoon and I wanted to bring someone with me. As it turned out, I brought my friend Martin Donovan, who's an actor I've worked with quite often. He knows I have a high regard for your work, but he hasn't seen that much of it. His initial response was, well, he laughed almost continuously.

Jean-Luc Godard: (laughs)

Hal Hartley: And he came out feeling you were the funniest person he'd seen since Groucho Marx.

Jean-Luc Godard: I think it's a compliment

Hal Hartley: Well, I thought it was. Regardless of whatever else your films might be doing, to me it seems you have a sense of humor that people don't talk about enough. I was curious about the things that make you laugh.

Jean-Luc Godard: Why you can laugh at, I mean, just the fact that you are a human being. Living, it can be sad too. I like both slapstick and contradiction. Like philosophers. It makes me laugh when you bring two things together which have nothing to do with one another. In movies, comedy and tragedy are all the same. I'm a great admirer of Jerry Lewis for this very reason. Especially the very last one, Smorgasbord. And the other one he made just before, it was a flop here--called Hardly Working. I think laughter comes because things are hardly working.

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Topic(s): Negri/Hardt
Date Posted: 07.17.04

Michael Hardt

Zagreb Interview

[by Ognjen Strpic, broadcasted on Croatian Radio, Third Program, 05/12/2002]

OS: How do you think the theory you and Toni Negri proposed in the book relates to protestors in Genoa or Porto Allegre? They seem to have embraced your theory as their own. At the same time, you are, say, very sympathetic towards the protestors' efforts.

MH: The way I see it, these globalization movements and our book have proceeded on sort of parallel paths, in fact they've both been interpreting the same questions and reality and coming to the same conclusions. And this is at least in two regards: one central aspect of our concept of empire is that there is no center to power or rather that form of global power has changed, that it's no longer based on dominant nationstate on its own and that it is now composed of a network of powers. This is our notion of empire.

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Topic(s): Cinema
Date Posted: 07.16.04

http://slate.msn.com/toolbar.aspx?action=print&id=2103849

history lesson
Nixon's Michael Moore
The filmmaker who pestered Tricky Dick.
By David Greenberg
Posted Wednesday, July 14, 2004, at 2:04 PM PT

As Fahrenheit 9/11 racks up another week of multimillion-dollar grosses, pundits are buzzing that no major documentary has been so scathing toward a sitting president during an election. Apparently, they've never seen Emile de Antonio's Millhouse: A White Comedy.

De Antonio's name has barely been uttered in the clangor surrounding Fahrenheit 9/11, but from 1964 until his death in 1989, he made some of the left's most important political documentaries—including a 1971 film that took direct aim at a sitting chief executive, Richard Nixon. Millhouse: A White Comedy attacked Nixon as a red-baiter, a warmonger, and a phony who deviously manipulated his way into the White House. (De Antonio said he deliberately misspelled Nixon's middle name, Milhous, to make a pun, suggesting that a millhouse sounds heavy and burdensome, like the Nixon presidency.) The film was the Fahrenheit 9/11 of its day: delightful to the president's sworn foes, troubling to the White House, but in all likelihood bound, ultimately, for the status of historical curiosity.

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Topic(s): Resistance?
Date Posted: 07.15.04

The Mother of All Anti-War Forces
By Naomi Klein

There is a remarkable scene in "Fahrenheit 9/11" when
Lila Lipscomb talks with an anti-war activist outside
the White House about the death of her 26-year-old son
in Iraq. A pro-war passerby doesn't like what she
overhears and announces, "This is all staged!"

Ms. Lipscomb turns to the woman, her voice shaking with
rage, and says: "My son is not a stage. He was killed
in Karbala, Apr. 2. It is not a stage. My son is dead."
Then she walks away and wails, "I need my son."

Watching Ms. Lipscomb doubled over in pain on the White
House lawn, I was reminded of other mothers who have
taken the loss of their children to the seat of power
and changed the fate of wars. During Argentina's dirty
war, a group of women whose children had been
disappeared by the military regime gathered every
Thursday in front of the presidential palace in Buenos
Aires. At a time when all public protest was banned,
they would walk silently in circles, wearing white
headscarves and carrying photographs of their missing
children.

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Topic(s): Media
Date Posted: 07.15.04

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/11/magazine/11FOX.html?pagewanted=print&position=

July 11, 2004
By ROBERT S. BOYNTON

The offices of Robert Greenwald Productions occupy a slightly rundown, horseshoe-shaped building in Los Angeles, just down the street from Culver Studios, the legendary movie facility where ''Gone With the Wind'' and ''Citizen Kane'' were filmed. Back in the day, the R.G.P. building, then a motel, was used by studio executives for liaisons with starlets and mistresses. Though no longer a Hollywood love nest, it still has a whiff of the illicit about it -- and still operates in the shadow of several corporate studios.

Robert Greenwald, a 58-year-old film producer and director with a number of commercially respectable B-list movies under his belt, has always tried to imbue his work with a left-leaning political sensibility. R.G.P. has been involved in the making of some 50 movies, including ''Steal This Movie,'' a 2000 film based on the life of the radical activist (and Greenwald's friend) Abbie Hoffman, and ''Crooked E,'' a satirical TV movie about Enron's collapse that CBS broadcast last year. Greenwald is presumably the only director in Hollywood to adorn his workspace with a quotation from Walt Whitman's ''Leaves of Grass'': ''The attitude of great poets is to cheer up slaves and horrify despots.''

One morning in late May, I visited Greenwald at his studio to watch the making of his latest documentary, ''Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism,'' which will have its premiere this Tuesday at the New School University in New York. Over the past couple of years, Greenwald has developed a ''guerrilla'' method of documentary filmmaking, creating timely political films on short schedules and small budgets and then promoting and selling them on DVD through partnerships with grass-roots political organizations like MoveOn.org. The process, in addition to being swift, allows him to avoid the problems of risk-averse studios and finicky distributors. His 2003 film ''Uncovered: The Whole Truth About the Iraq War,'' a documentary that was critical of the Bush administration's drive to war, took only four and a half months from conception to completion, coming out on DVD last November as public doubts about the war began to grow.

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Topic(s): Censorship
Date Posted: 07.13.04

Antiwar Group Says Its Ad Is Rejected
By Raymond Hernandez and Andrea Elliot
New York Times

    Monday 12 July 2004

    A group of antiwar advocates is accusing Clear Channel Communications, one of the nation's largest media companies, with close ties to national Republicans, of preventing the group from displaying a Times Square billboard critical of the war in Iraq.

    The billboard - an image of a red, white and blue bomb with the words "Democracy Is Best Taught by Example, Not by War" - was supposed to go up next month, the antiwar group said, and it was to be in place when Republicans from across the country gathered in New York City to nominate President Bush for a second term.

    But members of the group, Project Billboard, contend that Clear Channel backed out of a leasing agreement last month that the two had reached in December for the billboard site, on the Marriott Marquis Hotel at Broadway and 45th Street.

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Topic(s): Iraq
Date Posted: 07.13.04

The grieving parents who might yet bring Bush down

The families of dead American soldiers have overcome censorship and fear

Naomi Klein
Saturday July 10, 2004
The Guardian

There is a remarkable scene in Fahrenheit 9/11 when Lila Lipscomb
talks with an anti-war activist outside the White House about the
death of her 26-year-old son, Michael, in Iraq. A pro-war passerby
doesn't like what sheoverhears and announces: "This is all staged!" Ms
Lipscomb turns to the woman, her voice shaking with rage, and says:
"My son is not a stage. He was killed in Karbala, April 2. It is not a
stage. My son is dead." Then she walks away and cries:"I need my son."
Watching Ms Lipscomb doubled over in pain on the White House lawn, I
was reminded of other mothers who have taken the loss of their
children to the seat of power and changed the fate of wars. During
Argentina's dirty war, a group of women whose children had been
"disappeared" by the military regime gathered every Thursday in front
of the presidential palace in Buenos Aires. At a time when all public
protest was banned, they would walk silently in circles, wearing white
headscarves and carrying photographs of their missing children. The
Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo revolutionised human rights activism by
transforming maternal grief from a cause for pity into an unstoppable
political force. The generals could not attack the mothers openly, so
they launched fierce covert operations against their organisation. But
the mothers kept walking, playing a significant role in the eventual
collapse of the dictatorship.

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Topic(s): Palestine / Israel
Date Posted: 07.13.04

Breaking the Silence – The Next Phase

Last week, the exhibition of photographs and testimonies “Breaking the Silence – Fighters Tell about Hebron” closed, after being on display during June at the Gallery of Geographic Photography in Yad Eliahu, Tel Aviv. During the month, over 6,000 visitors came to the exhibition, from all over the country; many themselves were soldiers, many of those soldiers brought their families with them, and at the exhibition told their families what they felt and what they do during their own military service. The exhibition became an unending gallery discussion during which not only did we talk about how we felt and what we had done in our military service, but also many of the visitors to the exhibition decided to break their own silence and began to talk. We heard from many about experiences they had undergone which were similar to ours. From many others, we also heard of different things, tough experiences, things we found unbelievable, things that require checking, investigation and exposure. We understood that what we had displayed at the exhibition about our Hebron experience was only the tip of the iceberg – most of which is still hidden from view. We understood then that an opportunity has fallen into our laps – the right to break a small tip of that iceberg, to break the silence.

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Topic(s): Palestine / Israel
Date Posted: 07.13.04

So Much for Democracy - Iraqis Plan for Introduction of Martial Law

by Robert Fisk

Thursday, July 8, 2004
The Star (Johannesburg, South Africa)

Iraq has introduced legislation allowing the Iraqi authorities to
impose martial law; curfews; a ban on demonstrations; the restriction
of movement; phone-tapping; the opening of mail; and the freezing of
bank accounts.

These laws were announced yesterday by Iyad Allawi, Iraq's United
States-approved prime minister - 17 months after the Anglo-American
invasion in which President Bush promised to bring democracy to the
country.

And, what's more, military leaders might be appointed to rule parts of
the nation, while a temporary reinstatement of Saddam's death penalty
is also now probable.

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Topic(s): Palestine / Israel
Date Posted: 07.13.04

Tear down Israel's illegal barrier, says World Court
By Donald Macintyre in Jerusalem

The Independent/UK
10 July 2004

The United Nations was urged by the International Court of Justice
yesterday to enforce the Court's ruling that Israel should tear down
its 450-mile separation barrier and compensate the Palestinians for
the hardship it has caused.

Although its unequivocal ruling that the routing of the barrier
through occupied Palestinian territory was in breach of international
law is non-binding, the ICJ called for the UN Security Council to
consider "further action" to halt construction.

In a ruling read out in the Hague by its president, Judge Shi Jiuyong
of China, the court found that "Israel is under an obligation to
terminate its breaches of international law; it is under an obligation
to cease forthwith the works of construction of the wall being built
in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including in and around East
Jerusalem, to dismantle forthwith the structure therein situated."

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Topic(s): Sudan
Date Posted: 07.12.04

Op-Ed: Genocide in Darfur
June 25, 2004 - The Nation

by Salih Booker & Ann-Louise Colgan

Ten years after Rwanda, a genocide is unfolding again while the world watches and refuses to say its name. The failure of the United States and the international community to act in Rwanda a decade ago cost 800,000 lives. Now, up to 1 million people face a similar fate in Darfur, western Sudan, as a result of an ongoing government campaign to destroy a portion of its population. What is happening in Darfur is genocide, and must be called that. The term "genocide" not only captures the fundamental characteristics of the Khartoum government's intent and actions, it also invokes clear international obligations.

Yet, as horrifying reports continue to emerge, and as a humanitarian emergency grows, there is no indication that the United States or the United Nations is prepared to intervene--despite promises of "never again" and explicit obligations under the 1948 Convention on Genocide. For more than a year, the Khartoum government has systematically obstructed access to Darfur and blocked international efforts to establish a relief program. More recently, it has failed to honor the cease-fire it signed in April. As a result, Darfur now faces the worst humanitarian crisis in the world, with 30,000 people already killed and more than a million internally displaced. International aid agencies say that even if humanitarian relief arrives now, 350,000 people may still die.

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Topic(s): Civil Liberties
Date Posted: 07.09.04

FBI HARASSMENT CONTINUES--ARTIST FACES 20-YEAR CHARGES
July 8, 2004

Contact: mailto:media@caedefensefund.org

FBI HARASSMENT OF ARTIST AND SCIENTIST CONTINUES Kurtz and Ferrell face 20-year charges of mail and wire fraud in federal court arraignment

Dr. Steven Kurtz, Associate Professor of Art at the University of Buffalo, was arraigned and charged in Federal District Court in Buffalo today on four counts of mail and wire fraud (United States Criminal Code, Title 18, United States Code, Sections 1341 and 1343), which each carry a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.

The arraignment of Dr. Robert Ferrell, Professor of Genetics at the University of Pittsburgh, who was indicted along with Kurtz, has been postponed for a week for health reasons.

The defendants were charged not with bioterrorism, as listed on the Joint Terrorism Task Force's original search warrant and subpoenas, but with a glorified version of "petty larceny," in the words of Kurtz attorney Paul Cambria. The laws under which the indictments were obtained are normally used against those defrauding others of money or property, as in telemarketing schemes. Historically, these laws have been used when the government could not prove other criminal charges. (See http://www.caedefensefund.org/ for background and full text of indictment.

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Topic(s): Media
Date Posted: 07.06.04

Weekend Edition
July 3 / 4, 2004

"We Don't Trust You Guys" Pentagon Tried to Censor Saddam's Hearing
By ROBERT FISK
The Independent

Baghdad

A team of US military officers acted as censors over all coverage of
the hearings of Saddam Hussein and his henchmen on Thursday,
destroying videotape of Saddam in chains and deleting the entire
recorded legal submissions of 11 senior members of his former regime.

A US network cameraman who demanded the return of his tapes, which
contained audios of the hearings, said he was told by a US officer:
"No. They belong to us now. And anyway, we don't trust you guys."

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