a Dead Donkey

A DEAD DONKEY

(Thanks, Hugh)

The war in Iraq has had many casualties, including damage to the English language. I am enclosing a couple articles that I’ll introduce below, but for now let’s look at the words being used. I don’t want to, so to speak, “kick a dead horse.”

FLASH: Bush spoke and said he was sending another 20,000 plus troops to Iraq, asking for billions of more dollars to spend on the war, sending a group of battleships (armed with Tomahawk missiles) to the area near Iran, threatened Syria as well. Some people are calling this an “escalation.” Condellesa Rice corrected them – it is just an “Augmentation.” [Escalation was what we did in Viet Nam, this is the middle east, not southeast Asia.] Now back to our regularly scheduled post:

I was watching some of the commentary both before and after Arbusto’s speech on Wednesday. [Arbusto: Spanish translation of bush, which translates back into English as either shrub or bush. Also the name of an oil company funded by Saudi Arabia for George W.]

The commentary included such language as “Do you think this is the ‘Last Chance Saloon’ for the President?”

Or how about “This might come down to the gunfight at the OK corral.”

Or my favorite, “This is hardly the Alamo” with the answer “people forget that we lost at the Alamo.”

It certainly made me think of old west maxims and truisms, perhaps appropriate when discussing Arbusto.

Now, only 12% of the American public favors this war and certainly a small minority favors an escalation. However, that means that it will continue as this is a “Democracy” as understood these days. I remember when at the start of the war, those countries who followed their citizen’s wishes and voted against it were called “Old Europe” and those who supported it in spite of even greater opposition were called “New Europe.” The fact that the people are irrelevant is thus part of the modern definition of Democracy (except for pesky elections which can be manipulated through technology – if you can call zapping a computer in a non-Republican precinct and thus erasing all it data technology). Turkey opposed it as 95% of its population opposed it, and was hence called “Islamist.”

“Islamist” introduces another word into the language, a word I don’t quite understand. I know that a Physicist works in the area of physics and has a neutral connotation. In the field of literature, a Medievalist specializes in pre-Renaissance and post classical literature.

This word, however, refers to a religion, I think. I have never heard the term “Christist” used for “crusader.” I have never heard the word “Mosesist” used for a modern Zionist occupier and expansionist. Yet the word clearly is intended to have negative connotations.

In this spirit, and the spirit of the old west, I would like to nominate a new word for inclusion in the English language: “HAMARR.” [Transliteration mine] It is Arabic and means “Donkey.” We are all familiar with the phrase “No use beating a dead horse,” and we all agree on the sentiment. But a “Hamarr,” is stupid, stubborn, clumbsy, and all that implies. The only time I’ve heard it used correctly in its English form was in a Nero Wolffe novel when Nero called someone a “Donkey!” Hence, the need for “Hamarr!”

It is needed so that we can say “No use kicking a dead horse, but a dead donkey is another matter. They are so stubborn and stupid they don’t even know it when they are dead” as is the case with Arbusto’s war in Iraq.

Incidentally, he has expanded this now to action against Iran and Syria. Do you remember the rockets shot into Israel by Hezbullah with ranges of 100 to 200 kilometers? We were told these were shipped by Iran through Syria to Lebanon. Haven’t you wondered, then, if Iran is so dangerous why hundreds of rockets have not been lobbed into the Green Zone in Iraq? Actually, I haven’t, but I’m worried about the future.

What else this week? Oh yes, Saddam was executed. Below is an excellent article about the effect of the video released of the event, Saddam becoming a martyr. Keep in mind that this was written BEFORE another cell-phone video, that of the dead Saddam on a gurney, a hole in his neck, some report a bullet in his brain (I have not seen that, but all may be available of u-tube by now.) Our media have not shown the massive pro-Saddam demonstrations that have been covered by Middle Eastern television.

And oh yes, the effect of the neo-con approach to establish hegemony is illustrated by an article, further below, by Noam Chomsky. In other words, if you really want the United States to rule the world, or to freely exploit the world, you have good reason to oppose the neo-con strategy.

Finally, I can’t believe that Biden went to Law School. Congress can put all the strings it wants on military funding, so when Arbusto asks for more billions, congress can clearly say that all funds are for withdrawal of our troops.

So, I’m giving the dead donkey one more kick and here are the articles. (Next week I’ll get off this depressing topic).

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The Whole Bloody Thing Was Obscene

Butchery was supposed to have been presented as a solemn execution

by Robert Fisk; Independent/UK; January 08, 2007

The lynching of Saddam Hussein - for that is what we are talking about - will turn out to be one of the determining moments in the whole shameful crusade upon which the West embarked in March of 2003. Only the president-governor George Bush and Lord Blair of Kut al-Amara could have devised a militia administration in Iraq so murderous and so immoral that the most ruthless mass murderer in the Middle East could end his days on the gallows as a figure of nobility, scalding his hooded killers for their lack of manhood and - in his last seconds - reminding the thug who told him to "go to hell" that the hell was now Iraq.

"Nothing in his life became him like the leaving it," Malcolm reported of the execution of the treacherous Thane of Cawdor in Macbeth. Or, as a good friend of mine in Ballymena said to me on the phone a few hours later, "The whole bloody thing was obscene." Quite so. On this occasion, I'll go along with the voice of Protestant Ulster.

Of course, Saddam gave his victims no trial; his enemies had no opportunity to hear the evidence against them; they were mown down into mass graves, not handed a black scarf to prevent the hangman's noose from burning their neck as it broke their spine. Justice was "done", even if a trifle cruelly. But this is not the point. Regime change was done in our name and Saddam's execution was a direct result of our crusade for a "new" Middle East. To watch a uniformed American general - despite the indiscipline of more and more US troops in Iraq - wheedling and whining at a press conference that his men were very courteous to Saddam until the very moment of handover to Muqtada al-Sadr's killers could only be appreciated with the blackest of humour.

Note how the best "our" Iraqi government's officials could do by way of reply was to order an "enquiry" to find out how mobile phones were taken into the execution room - not to identify the creatures who bawled abuse at Saddam Hussein in his last moments. How very Blairite of the al-Maliki government to search for the snitches rather than the criminals who abused their power. And somehow, they got away with it; acres of agency copy from the Green Zone reporters were expended on the Iraqi government's consternation, as if al- Maliki did not know what had transpired in the execution chamber. His own officials were present - and did nothing.

That's why the "official" videotape of the hanging was silent - and discreetly faded out - before Saddam was abused. It was cut at this point, not for reasons of good taste but because that democratically elected Iraqi government - whose election was such "great news for the people of Iraq" in the words of Lord Blair - knew all too well what the world would make of the terrible seconds that followed. Like the lies of Bush and Blair - that everything in Iraq was getting better when in fact it was getting worse - butchery was supposed to have been presented as a solemn judicial execution.

Worst of all, perhaps, is that the hanging of Saddam mimicked, in ghostly, miniature form, the manner of his own regime's bestial executions. Saddam's own hangman at Abu Ghraib, a certain Abu Widad, would also taunt his victims before pulling the trap door lever, a last cruelty before extinction. Is this where Saddam's hangmen learned their job? And just who exactly were those leather-jacketed hangmen last week, by the way? No one, it seemed, bothered to ask this salient question. Who chose them? Al-Maliki's militia chums? Or the Americans who managed the whole roadshow from the start, who so organised Saddam's trial that he was never allowed to reveal details of his friendly relations with three US administrations - and thus took the secrets of the murderous, decade-long Baghdad-Washington military alliance to his grave?

I would not ask this question were it not for the sense of profound shock I experienced when touring the Abu Ghraib prison after "Iraq's liberation" and meeting the US-appointed senior Iraqi medical officer at the jail. When his minders were distracted, he admitted to me he had also been the senior "medical officer" at Abu Ghraib when Saddam's prisoners were tortured to death there. No wonder our enemies-become-friends are turning into our enemies again.

But this is not just about Iraq. More than 35 years ago, I was being driven home from school by my Dad when his new-fangled car radio broadcast a report of the dawn hanging of a man at - I think - Wormwood Scrubs. I remember the unpleasant look of sanctity that came over my father's face when I asked him if this was right. "It's the law, Old Boy," he said, as if such cruelties were immutable to the human race. Yet this was the same father who, as a young soldier in the First World War, was threatened with court martial because he refused to command the firing party to execute an equally young Australian soldier.

Maybe only older men, sensing their failing powers, enjoy the prerogatives of execution. More than 10 years ago, the now-dead President Hrawi of Lebanon and the since-murdered prime minister Rafiq Hariri signed the death warrants of two young Muslim men. One of them had panicked during a domestic robbery north of Beirut and shot a Christian man and his sister. Hrawi - in the words of one of his top security officers at the time - "wanted to show he could hang Muslims in a Christian area". He got his way. The two men - one of whom had not even been present in the house during the robbery - were taken to their public execution beside the main Beirut-Jounieh highway, swooning with fear at the sight of their white-hooded executioners, while the Christian glitterati, heading home from night-clubs with their mini-skirted girlfriends, pulled up to watch the fun.

I suggested at the time, much to Hrawi's disgust, that this should become a permanent feature of Beirut's nightlife, that regular public hangings on the Mediterranean Corniche would bring in tens of thousands more tourists, especially from Saudi Arabia where you could catch the odd beheading only at Friday prayers.

No, it's not about the wickedness of the hanged man. Unlike the Thane of Cawdor, Saddam did not "set forth a deep repentance" on the scaffold. We merely shamed ourselves in an utterly predictable way. Either you support the death penalty - whatever the nastiness or innocence of the condemned. Or you don't. C'est tout.

Â(c) 2006 The Independent

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ZNet | Latin America

South America: Toward an Alternative Future

by Noam Chomsky; International Herald Tribune; January 07, 2007

Last month a coincidence of birth and death signaled a transition for South America and indeed for the world.

The former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet died even as leaders of South American nations concluded a two-day summit meeting in Cochabamba, Bolivia, hosted by President Evo Morales, at which the participants and the agenda represented the antithesis of Pinochet and his era.

In the Cochabamba Declaration, the presidents and envoys of 12 countries agreed to study the idea of forming a continent-wide community similar to the European Union.

The declaration marks another stage toward regional integration in South America, 500 years after the European conquests. The subcontinent, from Venezuela to Argentina, may yet present an example to the world on how to create an alternative future from a legacy of empire and terror.

The United States has long dominated the region by two major methods: violence and economic strangulation. Quite generally, international affairs have more than a slight resemblance to the Mafia. The Godfather does not take it lightly when he is crossed, even by a small storekeeper.

Previous attempts at independence have been crushed, partly because of a lack of regional cooperation. Without it, threats can be handled one by one. (Central America, unfortunately, has yet to shake the fear and destruction left over from decades of U.S.-backed terror, especially during the 1980s.)

To the United States, the real enemy has always been independent nationalism, particularly when it threatens to become a "contagious example," to borrow Henry Kissinger's characterization of democratic socialism in Chile.

On Sept. 11, 1973, Pinochet's forces attacked the Chilean presidential palace. Salvador Allende, the democratically elected president, died in the palace, apparently by his own hand, because he was unwilling to surrender to the assault that demolished Latin America's oldest, most vibrant democracy and established a regime of torture and repression.

The official death toll for the coup is 3,200; the actual toll is commonly estimated at double that figure. An official inquiry 30 years after the coup found evidence of approximately 30,000 cases of torture during the Pinochet regime. Among the leaders at Cochabamba was the Chilean president, Michelle Bachelet. Like Allende, she is a socialist and a physician. She also is a former exile and political prisoner. Her father was a general who died in prison after being tortured.

At Cochabamba, Morales and President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela celebrated a new joint venture, a gas separation project in Bolivia. Such cooperation strengthens the region's role as a major player in global energy.

Venezuela is already the only Latin American member of OPEC, with by far the largest proven oil reserves outside the Middle East. Chávez envisions Petroamerica, an integrated energy system of the kind that China is trying to initiate in Asia.

The new Ecuadorian president, Rafael Correa, proposed a land-and-river trade link from the Brazilian Amazon rain forest to Ecuador's Pacific Coast €" a South American equivalent of the Panama Canal.

Other promising developments include Telesur, a new pan-Latin American TV channel based in Venezuela and an effort to break the Western media monopoly.

The Brazilian president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, called on fellow leaders to overcome historical differences and unite the continent, however difficult the task.

Integration is a prerequisite for genuine independence. The colonial history €" Spain, Britain, other European powers, the United States €" not only divided countries from one another but also left a sharp internal division within the countries, between a wealthy small elite and a mass of impoverished people.

The main economic controls in recent years have come from the International Monetary Fund, which is virtually a branch of the U.S. Treasury Department. But Argentina, Brazil and now Bolivia have moved to free themselves of IMF strictures.

Because of the new developments in South America, the United States has been forced to adjust policy. The governments that now have U.S. support €" like Brazil under Lula €" might well have been overthrown in the past, as was President João Goulart of Brazil in a U.S.-backed coup in 1964.

To maintain Washington's party line, though, it's necessary to finesse some of the facts. For example, when Lula was re- elected in October, one of his first acts was to fly to Caracas to support Chávez's electoral campaign. Also, Lula dedicated a Brazilian project in Venezuela, a bridge over the Orinoco River, and discussed other joint ventures.

The tempo is picking up. Also last month, Mercosur, the South American trading bloc, continued the dialogue on South American unity at its semiannual meeting in Brazil, where Lula inaugurated the Mercosur Parliament €" another promising sign of deliverance from the demons of the past.

Noam Chomsky is emeritus professor of linguistics and philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His most recent book is "Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy."

(c) 2007 The International Herald Tribune