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Someone (sorry I forget who) observed that not one of the leaders who led the invasion of Iraq has expressed the slightest remorse for turning that country into a charnel-house. The most hope I can salvage from this is that they felt compelled to lie to their publics about their reasons for invading. (Ditto re Afghanistan — for reducing that country to a state worse than the time it had to suffer insurrectionist war after the Soviet invasion — with results even more inevitable. At least the Soviets established a reasonable sector of a civic society throughout much of that country, something the American led invasion has proved incapable of achieving.)

The reason the lying efforts of our leaders to deceive their publics — and their ongoing lies to protect their pride and justify the ongoing slaughter they have been responsible for unleashing — the reason their lying gives me hope is that it is a sign that we have moved forward a slight step morally and at least no longer tolerate outright undisguised conquest for national gain. Our publics have enough power and consciousness to require deceiving (or self-deceiving) in order to cloak the realities of power. Now, if only we can bring the media to act on behalf of a public who has a right to ask searching questions and hold leaders accountable, and no longer take the economical option of being mere mouthpieces for the numerous self-justifying press releases of those in power. . . . (Even Hitler had to avoid documentation and publicity of what he did to Gypsies, homosexuals, socialists and Jews and manufacture public-consumption pretexts for invading others — we really ARE making progress — really truly . . . . (hope hope))

The most eloquent expression of the situation now is one I read by a New York “poet, lyricist, philosopher bard”, Phil Rockstroh (philangie2000yahoo.com)

Phil Rockstroh writes:

At present, George W. Bush is unpopular with the majority of the American public not because of the murderous mayhem he has unloosed in Iraq; rather, his standing has plummeted, due to the fact, he didn’t deliver the goods.

Americans are fine with fueling our republic of road rage using the blood of Iraqis (or any other distant and darker people) as long as “the mission” doesn’t drag on too long or reveal too much about ourselves.

How did we come to be a nation of vampires who live by sustaining ourselves on the blood of others? Is our mode of collective being so toxic in the United States that a writer must bandy about metaphors culled from Gothic horror fiction to describe it?

I’m afraid it’s come to that: We are a people who psyches have grown monstrously distorted from an addiction to imperial power and personal entitlement. (Imagery of Smurfs and Teletubbies won’t rise to the analogy, albeit as terrifying as those demons of hell-bound cuteness are.)

The corporate culture of exploitation has begot a hellscape of narcissists. It is an authoritarian culture riddled in kitsch and cruelty, in nationalistic hagiography and displaced rage — all the distortions of national character inherent to privileged grotesques and ordinary monsters.

A narcissist’s actions are monstrous because his only love is the image of himself wielding control and power. (Does this remind you of anyone, perhaps someone who struts about in a flightsuit — someone prone to proclaiming himself “the decider” — someone who grows intoxicated to the point becoming insensate from a whiff of his own pheromones as he swoons in macho-narcissistic self-worship?)

And what about the everyday monsters, those who feel nothing — not outrage, not remorse, nor sorrow — by the conscience-devoid attempt made by our vampiric leaders to sustain “our way of life” on Iraqi blood?

Are you not a monster as well when you feel nothing before immense human suffering? If you are impervious to, grown inured of, or have chosen to remain ignorant of the agony of the Iraqi people, then you might as well join the ranks of the undead — because the distant landscape of corpses in Iraq and Afghanistan matches your internal deathscape.

” Bush is unpopular with the majority of the American public not because of the murderous mayhem he has unloosed in Iraq; rather, his standing has plummeted, due to the fact, he didn’t deliver the goods.”

In short, our empire’s dependence on the resources (the life’s blood) of others renders us a nation of vampires. Moreover, the corporatist character (our national character) is defined by the vampire’s trait of taking, never giving. Accordingly, what do the big monsters at the top take from us, the little monsters?

In short, our empire’s dependence on the resources (the life’s blood) of others renders us a nation of vampires. Moreover, the corporatist character (our national character) is defined by the vampire’s trait of taking, never giving. Accordingly, what do the big monsters at the top take from us, the little monsters?

To name one: our time, the precious hours of our finite lives. The corporatists are Time Vampires: For a moment, reflect on all the hours of life you’ve wasted away — in office cubicles, in commuter traffic jams, in the addictive pursuit of consumer dreck, or simply numbed-out and exhausted, rendered inert from the incessant, soul-sucking stress of the corporate state.

The corporacracy devours our time and, like the charges of a vampire, has made us dependent and slavish in return. In our bloodless enslavement, we lose the vitality borne of existing within life’s inherent mysteries and grow estranged from the deep resonances of participation mystique.

How does one begin to take back one’s soul from these elitist usurpers? Start with this: The ebullient skepticism engendered from calling out soul-numbing, self-serving authoritarian lies.

In an era as perilous as ours, it’s imperative we act with utmost urgency. Yet, tragically, the exigencies of our age are being played out against a panorama of longer, more stressful work hours, superficially ameliorated by a mass media culture comprised of ceaseless trivia and mindless distraction.

This pathology began years ago when our ancestors offered up their life’s blood to the early corporatists of the Industrial Age. Henry Ford was a gray ghoul who measured out our flesh with his productivity-measuring stopwatch; he was a cunning practitioner of the black art of convincing human beings they’re mere cogs in an inhuman machine. It was only a short trudge from there through history’s slaughterhouse to Adolf Eichmann, insulated within his vampire’s coffin of cold calculations that shielded him from the horrific implications of the system of mechanized extermination he devised.

The corporate vampire’s creed is defined by ruthless efficiency; the fear of a “loss of productivity” is the driving force of the death machine. The system is so ruthless and inhuman that it must conceal its true face, hence the rise of the telegenic undead known as the corporate media. Do not look to them to report the facts of our condition: After all, a mirror can’t reflect the image of a vampire. A vampire is empty to the core; therefore, there is nothing to reflect.

Furthermore, his emptiness is the progenitor of his destructive nature. Rather than face himself, his appetite for death will devour all in its path: rain forests, Arctic glaziers, the people of Iraq, the hours of your life, as well as your inner being.

It is the force that holds Democratic politicians in the thrall of their own fecklessness, because they answer to the same blood-sucking, corporate masters as the rest of us. Quite simply, they’re afraid of their bosses too. The Washington Beltway is a version, in miniature, of the entire soul-dead, American corporacracy. The careerist politicians within the Beltway are afflicted with the same diminution of choice — the same hyper-attenuation of the will to freedom — as the rest of us.

And what remains for us: an existence (or lack thereof) within this hierarchical hellscape of narcissists. What sort of a pathetic mode of being is this, a life shackled to the service of a monstrous system wherein one must evince the obsequies of a vampire’s bloodless lackeys?

To reverse this situation: Now is the time to drag the lies of the corporate state into the sunshine where they will writher to dust. We are not powerless: We live in a world where our collective, hidden intentions are made manifest by our outward actions.

This is why Gothic — even b-movie — metaphors are not an overwrought description of our present condition. Ergo, by the vehicle of cultural collaboration, we are a nation of world-destroying, b-movie monsters — we are a hack-scripted, second-billed feature at the drive-in movie of existence — a laughed-off-the-big-screen of the cosmos, box-office poison of a people.

We are soul-sucking creatures of kitsch. Flesh-eating zombies of conformity. Road-rage werewolves. Right-wing, talk show demons whose wrathful voices rage into empty air. Hungry ghosts wandering the aisles of supermarkets, convenience stores, restaurant chains and the food courts of shopping malls.

We are: The Fat, Mindless Blobs That Ate the Planet.

To survive, first, we must find the monster within, then drive a stake through its heart.

(Copied from http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18027.htm with permission of the author.)

….. according to Micahel Scheuer, former CIA head of their bin Laden unit. (Why? Our leaders don’t care to understand Islamic extremism, dismissing it ignorantly as hatred of Western culture). Check The Age article at:

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18001.htm

The second largest Muslim population in the world lives in the world’s largest democracy, India. How democratic? Professor Martha Nussbaum, Ernst Freund Distinguished Professor of Law and Ethics at Chicago University, explains the success of Indian democracy:

Yes, I think the founding fathers set up a political structure that’s very stable, that is very wisely designed, so political structure is part of it. They also guaranteed a free press and all the institutions that make it possible for voters to really feel empowered, such as local village councils, which was one of Gandhi’s big ideas. So you know, it’s a very successful democracy. It has higher voter turnouts by far than the US.

But there is a problem. India’s Muslims are not violent enough. They haven’t produced a raft of international terrorists. They just want to live at peace with their Hindu neighbours. They don’t even want to overthrow their nation’s democratic government and institute Sharia law for all. And they are the second largest conglomeration of Muslims after Indonesia.

So what has gone wrong? Why do Indian Muslims make a complete mockery of what many self-respecting westerners all know: that the Muslim faith is a violent religion, instilling intolerant murderous intents in most of its adherents, with a lurking intent to take over whatever government they live under in order to spread their medieval barbarism?

But it gets worse. For a short time the Indian Muslim population was being put in their place, under control, through discrimination and even, sometimes, violent bloody persecution. This was when the BJP, the “neo-con” nationalist Hindu party of India, was in power (1998-2004). But then the Indian voters, far from being impressed by seeing the Muslim population get their come-uppance, kicked the BJP out.

So what gives? Could it possibly be that intolerance, bigotry and violence, whether religious or otherwise, is a consequence of something more than one’s religious adherence? Is it possible that in all major religions followers can find both positive and negative dogmas, and that there is rarely a simple explanation why the good or bad will dominate in any particular region or time? Recall Christianity has both practiced and condemned slavery and racism, war and oppression of women and children, capitalism and socialism, according to the time and society in which it found itself. Could it be similar with Islam?

One clue may be found in Robert Pape’s Dying to Win. His comprehensive study of suicide bombing attacks since the 1980’s establishes that such terrorist movements are spawned in countries whose governments support a particular historical way of dealing with Muslim nations and peoples, and in particular give both moral and material support to the leading actors of ongoing imperialist and exploitative ventures against people’s who happen to be mostly Muslim. The control cases that support this show the same sorts of terrorist activities in Lebanon and Sri Lanka where the perpetrators are non-Muslim but who nevertheless face imperial oppression.

Someone once did a study of the Gospel of Mark’s story of the exorcism of Legion that argued the possibility that what was then interpreted as demon possession was in fact a mental condition caused by Roman imperial oppression. People’s identities are tied in with our larger family grouping, such as our nation or tribe. When that larger entity, such as a whole people, is shamed, humiliated, treated as subservient, then it affects all who identify with that oppressed people. Ghassan Hage (Against Paranoid Nationalism) speaks of real life being so unbearable that some will prefer to exchange it for the symbolic life that will survive them in the hearts and minds of those they leave behind — leave behind, that is, through exercising the only power they can against their oppressors by suicidally taking an eye or even more than one for the many eyes they have seen lost around them.

India’s Muslims do not live under a government that supports those nations exercising belligerence and revenge against masses of innocents in order to achieve specific “self-interest” or “self-defence” goals. Apart from the brief flirtation with the BJP India has a proud history of neutrality and support for (not exploitation of) Third World nations.

Could it be, then, that India’s Muslims as a whole do not feel the same national psychic humiliation of living in a nation that is party to the oppression of their broader religious brotherhood or community?

Instead, they live in a democracy of which they can feel proud, and in which they feel empowered. Does that make the difference?

The Hindu extremists who attacked the Muslims during the rule of the BJP learned their violent ways from “exchange programs” in the 1930’s with Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany. There are similar extremist or fundamentalists in the US, primarily from among the Southern Baptist states. Anatol Lieven (America, Right or Wrong) has drawn certain parallels between some of these groups and the fascist and nazi groups in Europe in the 1920’s — idealistic, intolerant, promising a great future but only by replacing “degeneracy” with “purity”, highly moral, conservative, and only a few suspecting the depths to which such attitudes would inevitably drive them once in power. As Chris Hitchens (God is Not Great) reminds us, religious groups may come across as obsequiously demanding now, but we don’t have to look far abroad or into the past to recall what they are/were like when the do/did have the power.

(Thought: Those who follow international diplomatic news will be aware of current U.S. led attempts to bring India into a pro-Western anti-Chinese alliance of nations. If that does happen, it will be interesting to see to what extent the Indian government supports that grouping and its long term consequences for Muslim-Hindu relations in India.)

I highly recommend a transcript (or even podcast if you’re quick enough) of an interview with Martha Nussbaum (quoted above) and the comparisons drawn there between the two largest democracies, India and the United States, and their respective experiences of religious fundamentalism in the context of democracy, with particular reference to attitudes to Muslim (or their non fundamentalist) populations. Check it out here — on Radio National’s program (Australian), The Religion Report. (The above citation is taken from the transcript there.)

Hey, even if nothing actually happens between now and the election, like another Tampa or bomb threat in Australia, all the govt has to do is keep issuing travel warnings re Indonesia as per http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/07/09/1973454.htm and beautiful! that alone should be enough to keep many voters fearfully sheltering in the cold arms of the coalition’s policies.

In 1994 a “Jewish Settler” walked into a mosque and gunned down Arab worshippers. Media generally referred to Dr Baruch Goldstein as a “Jewish Settler” or a “crazed gunman”. One can still find old media references to him on the net. His doctor status was shocking but it was not the main thrust of the media labels at the time.

In July 2007 news headlines spoke of non-white terrorists with medical qualifications as:

Doctors caught in UK terror plot net (Sydney Morning Herald)

An Iraqi Doctor was led into court . . . (CBS)

We all know from near daily reminders that the horror of these men is that they are “doctors” — sworn to do no harm to life.

Yet one must question why the doctor status of the white American Jewish terrorist and mass killer was not so forcefully accentuated.

One is reminded of the Children Overboard mendacity of a few years ago — the Howard government finding a ready reception among the larger population to think of Arabs as somehow beyond the pale of humanity — without any of the normal standards of decency.

A Jewish killer is primarily a crazed gunman or jewish settler and his doctor status is secondary, almost apologetically applied; an Arab killer, if a doctor, is an Arab who knows no normal bounds of ethics — he is all the more evil for being a doctor.

As long as the western media continues to be oblivious to its implicit racism towards much of the Islamic world it will be supporting the imperialist attitudes and policies that are now after about a century are finally beginning to “blowback” on us.

There have been several rebuttals of the western media’s outrageous uncritical relaying of neo-con and “Bush-it(e)” propaganda asserting that Iranian leadership has called for the wiping of Israel off the map.

No such claim was made, and the fact that the mainstream western media reported it as fact speaks disheartening volumes about that media’s complicity with the corporate elite or lack of any principle other than $$ and ratings.

If you have been left with any impressions that Iran really did call for Israel to be “wiped off the map” then do please check out this latest rebuttal and forward to friends:

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article17925.htm

That such incredible lies can be perpetrated in the time of so much ability for a sincere media to really expose such nonsense for what it is, ….. what can one say, if not simply that when another mass killing happens that it will be the “fourth estate” as much as any who must be held accountable!

There is much to commend The God Delusion as a clear presentation of a wide range of reasons for viewing atheism as not only a rational but a wholesome and positive alternative to religion. I will probably address some of these in future posts. (The book is also far by miles from being the rabid polemic against religion that it has been promoted as being in many quarters.)

But there is one area where the book disappointed me — it follows Sam Harris’s End of Faith in simplistically reducing the fundamental cause of Islamic suicide terrorism to the belief that a martyr’s death will translate into heavenly and/or virginal bliss.

At least Dawkins acknowledges that there are other factors pressuring such terrorists to their acts, but he still comes down on this fanciful belief as being the bottom line that enables such actions.

The reason I think it worth addressing this claim is that I believe it has the potential of stoking the flames of intolerance, especially against a large part of non-western humanity, and contributing to western blindness that can only serve to perpetuate the whole problem.

On this morning’s news it was declared that one in seven Iraqis are leaving their homes and resettling either in neighbouring countries or elsewhere in Iraq. A main reason, of course, is religious violence, Shia versus Sunni, and the associated violence of both the occupying and other forces. For generations many Sunnis and Shias had lived harmoniously together in Iraq, intermarrying, trading, working together. There was a political denial of Shia rights but at the common everyday level of social discourse, on the whole, politics did not dominate social discourse. When Hussein was toppled they did not immediately fly at each other but together hoped for a new Iraq, so their cooperation was not forced on them against their will by an iron fist, as had largely been the case in much of former communist Yugoslavia.

If Dawkins and Harris are correct in their claims then this would not have been the case. There would not have been the free and easy social mixing and intermarrying and hopes for a future of harmonious peace and equal rights of the two Islamic branches. There would have been violence for generations between the two. Suicide bombing would not be a new phenomenon. Today’s suicide terrorism in Iraq is clearly the consequence of multiple factors but do we really believe that in today’s Iraq every suicide bomber sees himself as religious martyr? Blind Freddy can see that the underlying theme of the violence there now is political and national, for political domination and national liberation. In every such struggle there are always martyrs for the cause and not all are motivated by hopes of heavenly reward. They are more impelled by national humiliation and preparation to give up their lives for their political or national cause. To live on in the memories of their compatriots is more important than some other place in heaven, or even just to live out a self-dignity and pride by being willing to die for their nation or group can often be sufficient. In the conditions of occupation we generally always find a willingness to exchange intolerable physical existence for symbolic existence.

Suicide terrorism would have been introduced to the West long before the 21st century if Dawkins and Harris are correct on this particular point.

Robert Pape’s Dying to Win demonstrates through research that the earliest case of modern suicide terrorism was carried out by mixtures of Islamists, Christians and Socialists without any particular allegiance to religion in Lebanon. The cause was political and national.

Imagine living under foreign occupation. We know that we would find volunteers for suicide missions, even ones destined to cause maximum carnage in order to eventually wear down the occupiers, from among all ranks of society, atheists included. Religion might help some muster an ethereal form of Dutch courage to carry out those missions, but it might just as often even restrain many from surrendering their lives that way too.

One has become painfully used to Australian governments being the first to rush to the side of their favourite major power — once the UK, now the US — whenever it decides to declare yet another imperialist war in defiance of international opinion.

And Australia’s foremost rightwing propaganda machine, the IPA, has taxed its imagination to the limit by borrowing wholesale its culture wars and anti-environmental arguments from the U.S. neocons — see Quarterly Essay discussion –

So why be surprised to wake up this morning to read how the US has invited to its side in the upcoming international greenhouse emissions summit one of the smallest greenhouse gas emitters, Australia. The news story is here.

We know Howard’s record on climate change — his silencing of CSIRO scientists, and his total focus on being an agent for the coal and nuclear industries — read Scorcher, The Dirty Politics of Climate Change, by Clive Hamilton –  so can there be any doubt that Bush needs Australia to prove he’s “not alone” in his anti-world position at the upcoming summit. Only yesterday I was listening to the rationale for this summit where it was explained it was to consist of the “leading” greenhouse gas emitters! So Bush wants Howard to hold his hand there! The world can get stuffed so long as they help out their oil, coal and nuclear godfather buddies.

Dear friends

Tuesday: Today the trial proceedings finally began (after a colourful procession to court with banners and singing) with some house-keeping, including an attempt by the Crown Prosecutor, Mr Hilton Dembo, to place us under house arrest!

Needless to say we argued back – and we won! He also argued that we not be permitted to be anywhere within 2kms within Pine Gap, (meaning we could not attend our planned demonstrations there on the weekend). We argued back that we had a right to political protest, and we won! 

The only other piece of colour today in the usually serious courtroom came from the judge and crown prosecutor. The sun-tanned, silver-haired, gowned and wigged Mr Dembo who a few months ago declared: “what is civil disobedience anyway?” is starting to fit well into a caricature of a bombastic, cranky prosecutor.

He requested that a Australian Federal Police officer be seated next to him at the bar table when the trial begins so that he could assist with exhibits. And, he added: “to be a buffer between myself and the defendants….not that I am scared of them…”

Without missing a beat, the usually poker-faced judge, Justice Sall y Thomas commented:

“Perhaps they should be scared of you!”        

Meanwhile today, successful solidarity events were held all over Australia to mark the start of the trial. Thank you everyone for your support and thoughts and prayers – we are off to a great start!

Tomorrow we have jury selection at 10am, and after that the prosecution opens its case and the trial proper begins.

Here’s how the media reported today’s events:

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,21815635-1702,00.html

http://www.smh.com.au/news/National/Pine-Gap-protesters-gather-in-Brisbane/2007/05/29/1180205216633.html

http://www.melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2007/05/145591.php

http://sydney.indymedia.org.au/node/51062

Have a listen to late night live with Philip Adams on Radio National on Wednesday night 

And this analysis from Crikey.com yesterday:

15. Pine Gap protestors facing the long, cold arm of the law

Greg Barns writes:

Tomorrow, in the Northern Territory Supreme Court, Pine Gap military base protesters go on trial. Nothing unusual in that — the US Australian military facility has long been a focal point for discontent, and the Alice Springs courts regularly process defendants  charged with trespass, assault and other petty crime charges. And nearly all of these cases are dealt with a slap on the wrist for the protestors, or at worst, a fine.

But Bryan Law, Donna Mulhearn, Adele Goldie, and James Dowling, who are appearing in the Alice Springs court tomorrow, fac e jail terms because on 9 December, 2005, they managed to gain access to Pine Gap by cutting a fence, climbing onto the roof of a building and taking photographs of the facility. 

This quartet of activists self-described as “Christian Pacificists” say they wanted to conduct a citizens’ inspection of Pine Gap. They, like many Australians, are opposed to the war in Iraq, and believe that Australian participation in the Iraq war has made this country more vulnerable to a terrorist attack.

But their short and harmless foray into the Pine Gap has been taken very seriously by the Howard Government and its law enforcement agencies. No easy ride through the Alice Springs Magistrates Court for this lot. Instead, the Commonwealth ha s dusted off a 1952 law, passed by the Menzies government at the height of the Cold War, and called the Defence Powers (Special Undertakings) Act 1952. Breach this Act and you can face jail terms of up to seven years.

This is the law which allowed the Menzies government to keep from public view vast tracts of South Australia, Western Australia and the Northern Territory where nuclear tests, including the infamous Maralinga tests, were carried out. It hasn’t been used by the Commonwealth for years. In fact, according to some academic reports, this is the first time anyone has been prosecuted under this law — a remarkable fact given it has been around for 55 years and there have been literally hundreds of Pine Gap protests.

But then, Philip Rud dock is the most aggressive attorney-general this country has seen in years. As he showed when he was immigration minister, he’s prepared to use the full legislative arsenal at his disposal to enforce government policy, even if the law in question is obscure and of questionable validity in this day and age.

The importance of this case in the context of a civil liberties and human rights is evidenced by the fact that high-profile Melbourne barrister and former Federal Court judge Ron Merkel is heading the legal team for the activists.

Many Australians might not agree with direct action protest of the type undertaken by these four activists, but there’s a larger issue in this case. Should governments be using draconian Cold War laws on the citizenry of Australia almost 20 years after the Berlin Wall came down?

More news and pics soon!

We’re excited!

from

pilgrim Donna