Monday, December 31, 2007

Other Items

The Supreme Court turned down an appeal by U.S. war resisters seeking to stay in Canada.

That's from The Rabble's "2007: the Good, the Bad and the Mulroney" and they (rightly) file it under the bad. It's doubtful, outside of Canada, many will even note that November 15th event.


AP reports a Mishada car bombing today that claimed the lives of "at least 12 people, police and a member of the volunteer group said." The report also notes that the US collaborators "are increasingly becoming targets in Iraq." Reuters notes a person in Baghdad wearing "an explosive vest" exploded a bomb killing him/herself as well as four other Iraqis, a woman wearing a similar vest in Baquba did the same and killed herself and left two police officers and five civilians wounded, a Kirkuk roadside bombing on Sunday left two police officers injured, that 3 teachers were shot dead in the Maysan Province yesterday.

On Wednesday, Sudarsan Raghavan (Washington Post) reported the following:

This year's U.S. military offensive and dramatic shifts in tactics by both Sunni and Shiite groups are redrawing the balance of power across Iraq. With less violence between Sunnis and Shiites, festering struggles within each community may come to define the nature of the conflict. In the Shiite-dominated south, Sadr's main Shiite rivals are taking advantage of the surge in U.S. troops, as well as Sadr's imposition of a freeze on operations by his Mahdi Army militia, to make political gains.
"They are all gathering against us," said Ayad Abu Ali, a wiry, broad-shouldered militia guard who had sent his family into hiding and now hardly leaves the office.

The fear being expressed by Ayad Abu Ali is intended. The plan is to scare, to raise fear, to throw off balance and make everyone clutch to the US. Yesterday, Ava and I reviewed The Charlie Rose Show in "TV: Charlie Rose by any other name would still be as bad:"

In a too little noted article over the summer ("Harvard's Collaboration with Counter-Insurgency in Iraq"), Tom Hayden asked, "Should a human rights center at the nation's most prestigious university be collaborating with the top U.S. general in Iraq in designing the counter-insurgency doctrine behind the current military surge?" It's a question that Rose knew not to ask.
Hayden goes on to explore "former Pentagon official" Sewer (again, she's worked with the military all her adult life) and notes how, in the intro to the manual, she scrubs away any reality about the US role in the death squads in El Salvador and he goes on to explain how the counter-insurgency is deception and intended to force Iraqis to turn to the US for 'protection.' Again, Rose knew not to raise any of those points.
[. . .]
Fortunately for her, she was sitting across from an old whore (we will use the word for Rose) who left "boyish" long ago and never developed into the talent that led so many networks to pin hopes on him. As such, he needs corporate sponsorship and his career wouldn't survive without it. So he knows not to raise the difficult issues. Which is how you got a thirty-one minute plus segment allegedly on counterinsurgency that never asked the basic questions, the basic ethical questions, about the misuse of anthropology or noted the reality that a science is being partnered with a the military in an effort to frighten (or shock -- see Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine: The Rise Of Disaster Capitalism) a people in order to create a reaction of learned, infantile dependency upon the occupiers.

We're commenting on the December 24th broadcast which featured Monty McFate and Sarah Sewer, two who abuse every academic standard in the world but that Rose was happy to play footsie with.

The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.


Posted by at