World news

What's the meaning of stacking naked, hooded men on top of one another? Is it as harmless as a fraternity prank? Perhaps not, at least when the activity is coerced, and the men are prisoners of war, and I'm surprised one even needs to point this out.

As the far-right in this country continues to furtively glance in the direction of outright fascism, I'm left pondering the significance of the thumbs up sign in all those photos of our patriotic defenders of freedom and their subhuman charges in various poses of humiliation and torture. What does it mean?

The evident ease in the U.S. soldiers' dispositions tell you just about everything you need to know about whether this was "a few bad eggs" or systematic abuse. Does anybody remember the pictures of a bound and gagged John Walker Lindh at Guantanamo Bay? It seems so...similar.

Part of me has enjoyed hearing and watching Rumsfeld and his military commanders squirm during their testimony before Congress (even if I know it's only temporary political theater), but I'd like somebody to ask these guys why we have officially sanctioned gulags in Cuba, Afghanistan, and Iraq, full of enemy combatants not subject to the Geneva Conventions.

Postmodernists take note: The best example of recursive facsimile I can think of comes not from the avant-garde, and is not buried in multi-layered ironies and a labyrinth of textual references.

It is the modern Republican president and his circle of friends, and by this I mean Ronald Reagan and G.W. Bush (but not his father, actually). Reagan was an actor who played cowboys on screen and cultivated that image in his political career. He ushered in the neo-conservative era by putting a likable face on militarism, bichromatic foreign policy, and the erosion of public social services and safeguards. Bush is the wayward scion of old New England money who remade himself in the image of Reagan, the false cowboy, and became president.

Unlike postmodernist artists and writers, however, these personaes are adopted without any intended irony. When Reagan said the Soviet Union was an "evil empire," he meant it just as much as Bush meant it when introducing the "axis of evil." Both president's vacations to their respective ranches were not a political sideshow. Like a college sophomore with a new wardrobe, it's important to not only look the part, but act it as well.

This could explain L. Paul "Jerry" Bremer III always appearing in combat boots, even while wearing a suit at the World Economic Forum in Jordan.

While the academic left has been baffling each other with theory, corporate America and the right has been perfecting applied postmodernism.

Nicolas Buchele in the Arab News, Saudi Arabia, as reported on Salon:

"The new totalitarian regime prevailing in America and taking hold in its satellites around the world has learned important lessons from the failed experiments of the past. The first of these lessons is that the greatest liability to the survival of a regime is a strong and erratic leader ...

"Thus without Hitler's deranged ambitions, the Third Reich might really have lasted a thousand years. Similarly, if Stalin had kept his genocidal ambitions in check, the Soviet Union might have continued to enjoy its initial popularity among sections of the West and at home.

"With these examples in mind, the leader has been eliminated as a factor in U.S. politics. George W. Bush's very nullity as a politician throws into relief the fact that the United States has long been governed, not by its people, but by interests that are happy to remain largely anonymous, do not rely on individuals for their hold on power, and are recognizable in public mainly by a soothing corporate blue.

"Americans often seem baffled that others fail to admire their system of government. They know after all that in the United States there exists a lively culture of debate, where the whole lunatic spectrum of opinion can find a platform of one kind or another (though at the same time the difference between the political parties it is actually possible to elect is vanishingly small) ...

"They have a vibrant and largely unchecked artistic community. They have the First Amendment ...

"The reason for all this is that the new totalitarianism has learned a second lesson from its heavy-handed predecessors. If artists and intellectuals were able to do precisely nothing about Hitler or Stalin or any of the legion of tin-pot dictators around the world, it follows that you might as well have freedom of expression.

"In the new totalitarian system, people can say whatever they like, and it makes absolutely no difference.

"The impending war on Iraq is only one example among many of a supposedly sovereign public completely powerless in the face of a government bent on a course of action ...

"The most important lesson to the new totalitarianism, then, comes from ancient Rome, and is simply that people sufficiently supplied with bread and games will put up with anything."

I'm no conspiracist, and I don't know exactly how much I agree with the scenario outlined above, but I also find it hard to completely refute insofar as it applies to Iraq.

Dona nobis pacem.

An article on Salon by Robert Scheer pretty succinctly states my extreme unease about the likely war in Iraq.

You know, I've worked in the computer industry for about six years now, and in that time I've worked for some pretty lousy companies. I've gone to company meetings where I've been fed boatloads of bullshit, and for the most part, everybody in the meeting knew that it was indeed bullshit that was being served, the management that uttered it included. After six months (!) of allegations that do not pan out, shaky arguments for war that collapse under scrutiny, blunder after blunder in international diplomacy regarding our middle east policy (this goes back to the very beginning of our current administration, by the way), the pissing away of all international sympathy post 9/11, and a clear rejection and isolation by most if not all of our western and non-western allies, I feel a lot like I did during those goddamn company meetings.

Only this time, I can't just quit or go look for another job elsewhere. Even worse, the management was supposedly put in place at the behest of the workers (theoretically, even though it was the board of directors--read Supreme Court--who actually chose the CEO, to belabor a bad analogy).

Anyway, I'm extremely envious of anyone who has dual citizenship right now, as I literally can not believe what my government is doing, and that a significant percentage of my fellow citizens do not appear to understand the long term consequences of our rushing headlong in to an unprovoked war in the world's most volatile region.

"Did you know that we now have England accusing the US of imperialism? It's true. South Africa is lecturing us on human rights. The justice minister of Germany recently called George Bush a Nazi. We've been more or less labelled a Nazi country--by Germany! I don't know about you, but I don't think that's a good sign." --Will Durst

"I tried to be open-minded about Bush's case for war. I waited for him to present the evidence for an imminent threat to the US. But months passed, and they hemmed and hawed. It was words, words, words....There was a shiftiness, a sleight of hand, a kind of blustery bravado and smugness: 'Well, we know, but we just can't tell you, because it would compromise national security.' Give me a break--we're about to go to war and kill or maim thousands of innocent people. Americans will die too. And they couldn't lay all their cards on the table?" --Camille Paglia

I actually miss the subtlety and broad-minded vision of George Herbert Walker Bush's administration, at this point. I don't agree with the policies of Bush 41, understand, but Jesus Save The Children, at least we wouldn't look like we just pissed in the Boullabaise in the eyes of the world.