NOTES FROM SRI LANKA.
(January '06)
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01/01/06
Not another one!
Like it? That's how I'm starting every year from now on. "Not another one!" he cries, and the master of ceremonies brings the big sandbag down on his head. What's my next line? Ah, yes. FUCK!! And what's next? Right. OWWOWWOWWOWWOWWOWW!!!!
Talk
about childish. As you can see, we're kicking off 2006 on a highly positive
note. Yes, your friends at Big Green are now
fully certified as free of contamination and nasty chemical residues, per the
homeland security experts at the local constabulary. After invading our home,
wrecking Marvin (my personal robot assistant)'s birthday party, and carting us
off to an undisclosed location where we spent our Christmas holiday in a grimy
trailer left over from the moon shots of the 1970s, the nice men in uniform have
given us a clean bill of health. At about 3 p.m (Rangoon time) on Boxing Day,
the trailer door swung (or is it "swang"?) open and we hobbled out
like a bunch of octogenarians. My first act as a free man was to kiss the
cobblestone causeway. Mitch Macaphee's was to paste one of the officers in the
mouth. (It took some quick talking to get him out of that one, let me tell you.)
Anyway,
that was then... and this is... what? Now, right? And as the president
says, "Fool me once, shame on you, fool me... fool me.... You can't get
fooled again." What other empty nostrums can I share with you? How about:
"Now is the time to make circles with mints, haste no longer." Ancient
Chinese wisdom to commence the new year. I suppose I should also share with you
the New Year's Resolutions we all came up with during 
our extralegal internment
over the holidays. Let's do it in alphabetical order:
Joe (me): No more scooter pies after 7:00pm.
John (him): (1) Grow a second head; (2) Think twice.
Lincoln (anti): Formulate theorems to destroy races.
Lincoln (posi): Stop anti-Lincoln from doing so.
Man-Sized Tuber: No entry. He's a plant.
Marvin (m.p.r.a.): (1) squx; (2) Join MENSA.
Matt (the other one): Plant trees. Lots of trees.
Mitch Macaphee (Prof.): Invent new shatter-proof test tube.
Trevor James (Constable): Reverse gravity in Idaho.
Zamboola (Big): Keep personal gravity under control.
I
know that most of you out there are particularly interested to hear what our
sit-in guitarist sFshzenKlyrn has resolved
for the New Year. (Don't deny it! We know he's got all the "Elvis" in this
group.) Well, as you know, our Zenite companion was not incarcerated along with
us, so we have no way 
of knowing. But I can tell you that, because sFshzenKlyrn
is a transcendental being occupying space between several dimensions who
experiences all time as a single moment, the year 2006 is nothing new to him --
just another sliver of the all-encompassing space-time continuum. (If I were
him, though, I would drop the flapjacks in any case. He went on a major bender
last week and we haven't seen him since.)
So what can I say but, hey, happy new year. Stay away from your television sets, lest you be bombarded by endless sportscasts and images of Regis Philbin... or insufferable retrospectives of everything that just happened to occur between 1/1/05 and 12/31/05. You heard it here first.
(Note to readers: for those of you only interested in my political ravings, start here. For those who only wish to inspect my band-related ravings,...well...you get the drift.)
Party
Time. New Year's is upon us again, god help us. A year ago Dubya Bush was
swaggering away from a successful election campaign, blustering about his wealth
of "political capital" and how he planned to spend it. Today his
presidency and his party -- while still in control of all three branches of the
federal government -- are on the ropes, reeling from a series of self-generated
disasters that have exposed their innate corruption and studied incompetence. It
was hard to see this coming last January, though Bush's reaction to the Asian
Tsunami was emblematic of what we might have expected from his administration in
the months that followed. He was, of course, on vacation when the big wave hit
and was very slow to respond, then came forward with a piddling $15 million
pledge of aid as the deaths mounted, later kicking that up to $35 million, then
$350 million (almost as if he were writing the check out very slowly, adding the
final 
zero days after the first two numbers). He looked so bad at that time, in
fact, that Poppa Bush and Bill Clinton were dispatched on what can only be
described as a face-saving mission -- one Dubya appeared positively annoyed to
announce, as I recall.
Well, that was our little look ahead. Since then, it's been one blow after another. The mainstream press somewhat bizarrely describes these as problems for Bush, when of course they are actually problems for most of the rest of us. Oh, sure -- mounting U.S. death tolls in Iraq, the destruction of New Orleans, soaring energy prices.... these all carry a political cost for the ham-fisted morons currently running the country into the ground, but the human cost of these disasters is far more profound and, it seems to me, worth emphasizing in any report about what a hard year Dubya has had. Quite frankly, the boy is just settling back to his natural level of popular support, which has never been stellar. People point to his polling numbers after 9/11, but that was an unprecedented event in modern American history -- in a crisis, Americans tend to rally around the president as the constitutional embodiment of the state. He was carried aloft on a crest of fear, anger, and near hysteria that took the nation by the throat and still hasn't entirely let go.
Now
comes 2006, and the signs are not good. The air is going out of the housing
market, for one thing. That could mean serious trouble for an economy already
very heavily leveraged with public and private debt. The Iraq project will no
doubt continue its present bloody course, barring any serious effort to force
closure. This would be a real good time to have an opposition party -- a role
that the vast majority of Democrats seem to have no stomach for. Alex Cockburn
observed this week that the Dems have always dreamed of leadership like John
Murtha, with his impeccable 
military credentials and tough-guy rep, and yet they
couldn't get far enough away from him when he called for withdrawal. I'm
convinced the national Democratic party really just wants a cardboard cut-out
military guy who sounds vaguely like a Republican; that's why they got behind
John Kerry last year, who had abandoned just about every principle he'd ever
held long before that disastrous campaign. The Dems should be wiping the floor
with their opponents, but that would require taking stands that might upset their
corporate donors. My guess is that they'll barely squeak by in this year's
congressional elections, unless there's a major mutiny at the grassroots of the
party.
So hey, everybody -- go down to your local Democratic party headquarters and start calling the shots. You'll probably find the place deserted, just waiting for someone to take up the reins.
luv u,
jp
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01/08/06
Is it ready?
That's what I'm talking about, friends. So without any further ado.... What? Why are you looking at me like that? You mean you didn't hear anything I've said for the past hour? Arrrrggghhh. I'll have to start again.
Hah!
Had you going there for a minute, didn't I? (Not.) Okay, so you're not as
gullible as one might hope. No way would I subject you to more than an hour of
marketing drivel. Oh, yes -- that's what we've been doing in our spare time.
Your friends in Big Green have decided that
money -- while 
not being "everything" -- is certainly something worth
having in some quantity. And that the simplest way to get more of the stuff,
aside from sending Marvin (my personal robot assistant) out on another career
pursuit (like the constabulary...waste of good talent, that), is to study our
markets, invest in some promotion, and sell, sell, SELL!!!! What's that you say?
Sell what? Our music, goddamnit! Haven't you been listening for
the last.... oh yeah, that's right.
Okay, so short of having some overpaid consultant come in here and spit all over us (which we couldn't afford anyway), we've been holding informal seminars for our little group to discuss how best to launch our next CD, which we hope will be ready sometime this year (GOD ... PLEASE LET IT BE SO!!!!). After all, it isn't enough that we simply write music, perform music, and record music. Short of tossing CD's around like frisbees, we don't really have a distribution network on planet Earth. So what is it that we need to do? That is the subject of these little talks. We must entice suckers.... I mean, patrons ... to buy our little round platters of plastic goodness, using tried and true methods such as the following:
-
Sex
appeal -- Okay, yeah. We ain't got any. (Aside from Marvin, and he's not
in the band.) So we would have to use stock photo people or something. You
know, commandeer generic Sexy Girl and Hunky Guy to do ads for us. The
implication of these ads is simple: buy this CD, and Sexy Girl/Hunky Guy
will be more favorably disposed towards you in some undefined way. (Perhaps
even more primitive than that: BUY CD = BUY SEX. Grunt. Snork.)
-
Third-Party Endorsement -- Have someone not associated with Big Green in any way (other than being paid by them) to say good things about our music. In our case, that's not likely to be Wink Martindale or the like. Most likely this would be an "inside" job, like one of the Lincolns (hopefully not anti-Lincoln) saying something like, "This CD by the people, of the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth." Or maybe we'd deploy some kind of expert scientific endorsement, like Dr. Mitch Macaphee claiming that purchase of the Big Green CD can greatly reduce the occurrence of planar warts...or killer planets. (This is something Mitch suggested during his presentation.)
-
Big
Bam Boom -- This involves incendiaries of some kind, like the type
employed by Al Lewis when he played the magician on Lost In Space.
Sending up a rocket that would explode "and spell our name in flaming
letters!" This can be a problematic approach, and its benefits can be
hard to measure, but it is relatively easy to implement and it certainly
resulted in hyjinx a-plenty for Will and Dr. Smith. Why wouldn't it work for
us, right?
What is missing from all these proceedings? Product, baby, product! We ain't got none yet. So my recommendation is to adjourn to the studio and start hammering away at that sucker. Hoo-yeah. If I had a hammer....I'd....hammer ....something...
(Note to readers: for those of you only interested in my political ravings, start here. For those who only wish to inspect my band-related ravings,...well...you get the drift.)
Ring in the Old. What a start to the year, eh? Israel in political turmoil after Sharon suffers a massive stroke; a major mining disaster in the U.S.; uber-financier Jack Abramoff cops a plea; 13 car bombs in a single day in Iraq, as well as a dozen more dead American soldiers. If anyone thought 2006 was going to be easy, think again. (I don't think that includes any of you.)
I
have to start with the story about cutting fuel subsidies in Iraq. This was an
item that made my jaw drop so hard my chin was dragging on the ground. What the
fuck... the country is in flames, a major insurrection underway, people living
on the edge, and they impose a structural adjustment policy that drives fuel
costs up five times in an effort to satisfy the IMF's debt repayment
requirements -- something agreed to by the interim government. To implement this
now demonstrates a monumental callousness toward the plight of ordinary Iraqis,
but also the kind of strategic incoherence and blind dedication to hardline
market ideology that has characterized this entire enterprise since its
conception. For chrissake -- the country has the second largest oil reserves in
the world.... I think they're good for the money, gentlemen. Don't you think it
would be wiser to wait until people stop dying by the hundreds before you pull
the rug out from under them? This is reminiscent of the French in Indochina just
after World War II, when there was a major famine underway and the newly
re-established colonial regime insisted on exporting rice anyway, helping
to set the stage for 30 years of war.
Rumor has it that the Iraqi oil minister refused to execute this little adjustment, so the government fired him and installed -- wait for it! -- Ahmed Chalabi as the new oil minister. Put the pathological liar and convicted embezzler in charge of the nation's enormous natural resources -- there's a good idea. (Not the first time he's weaseled himself into that post, either.)
Okay
-- so that's the same mess as last year. What else? Just heard on Amy Goodman's
show that the Indonesian military is still in the business of providing paid
security services to Freeport MacMoran, the US-based mineral extraction company
that's been ripping the wealth out of Papua New Guinea for a good many years.
Indonesia's armed forces -- in particular the 
Kopassus
special forces -- have one of the worst human rights records in the world. Their
campaigns of killing, torture, rape, etc., through the Suharto period
(1965-1999) alone make Saddam Hussein look like a piker. Nowadays they earn
about 70% of their revenues from sources other than the Jakarta government. This
story about their relationship with Freeport MacMoran goes back a long ways -- I
first heard about it in the 1980s, I think. It's positively sickening that this
is still going on.
Just a word about Sharon. Because he's a sentient being, I feel sympathy for him and hope for the best (i.e. least painful or debilitating) outcome -- I'd wish that for anyone. But all these fond remembrances of his career are ludicrously sanitized. His life as a public figure has been characterized by remarkable brutality and indifference towards human suffering. His political accomplishments have been to make Israel less secure and the prospects of a stable two-state settlement more remote than ever before. Expansion of Israeli colonies and construction of the apartheid barrier continues at a frantic pace in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, virtually unreported in the western press, as Palestinians continue to suffer daily killings, beatings, humiliations, and degradation of their society. If Sharon had been a Palestinian in the occupied territories when he'd had his stroke, he likely would not have survived the trip to the hospital, as his ambulance would have been held up at a checkpoint for hours on the whim of IDF soldiers or Israeli border guards -- a common occurrence.
My prayer for Sharon is that he awake, fully recovered, and possessed by a revelatory understanding of the pain he has contributed to over the years, as well as a compelling desire to make it right.
luv u,
jp
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01/15/06
Ho-la.
What was I about to say? Can't recall. Hmmmmm. Couldn't have been anything important. Or perhaps it was the most important utterance in human history. Likely something in-between those two polls. (Or is it poles? Can't recall...)
Welcome
to another day in the life of a non-corporeal rock/pop group, known to fans in
seven galaxies as Big Green. As many of you
know, we are best appreciated outside the realm of our home planet (known on
Earth as "Earth" or "de oit"... and on Zenon as "Quizmandiar", which
basically means "Planet full of stupid and avaricious people" as per
the most widely used phrase books and the frog-headed alien on Lost in Space). That's kind of a back-handed way of saying
we're totally obscure 'round these parts, in as much as we are self-distributed
and not affiliated with any major corporate labels (since our disassociation
with Hegemonic Records & Worm Farm, Ltd., our former overlords).
So
like many groups, we make our CD's by hand, flipping them on the old griddle,
stacking them up, and serving them on a blue plate with a pad of butter and a
caddy of syrup. You want the blueberry buckwheat Big
Green CDs? Comin' right up for yuh. How about a stack of those
cornbread alka-seltzer chunk jobs? See what I can do. Little extra antacid on
the side? Not a problem. HEY, Marvin (my personal robot assistant)! Give me a
half-stack of number seven, double on the alka! Up front here, okay?
Should be coming 
down any minute now, my friend. Oh, my soul! Workin' my guts
out for this lump of coal....
Ahem. Sorry...wandered a bit there. Where the hell was I going with that? Oh, yeah. I told you about our little series of informal marketing seminars last week. Well, in the midst of all that impenetrable language about "target audiences" and "market share" and "Bilbo Baggins," our good friend sFshzenKlyrn came up with a smashing idea. Why not utilize the awesome power of Trevor James Constable's orgone generating device to transmit our music into the mind/brain of every living pop music consumer? We could just hook any CD player or mp3 player into the generator (which I believe has RCA connectors just behind the control panel) and crank that baby up. This could be revolutionary! This could be the new radio! (Oh, yeah...the Internet is the new radio....) This could be the new Internet, already!
There's
the plan. Now all we have to do is talk Trevor James into donating the use of
his invention for such crassly mercantile purposes. That's a challenge, but
perhaps Mitch Macaphee can convince him, being a fellow man of science and handy
with a bribe. C'mon, Trevor James! You have the power to make us the biggest
hit Quizmandiar has ever seen! Don't deny us this chance at glory!
Where'd he go? Sonuva biscuit!
(Note to readers: for those of you only interested in my political ravings, start here. For those who only wish to inspect my band-related ravings,...well...you get the drift.)
The Same: Worse. Is there anything more fleeting than a White House prediction of progress in Iraq? Yet another milestone has passed -- the vaunted national elections -- and that country is still marching from bad to worse, if such a thing can be imagined.
I'm
certain the ludicrous Alito confirmation hearings were a godsend to the
administration this week, as it pulled the public's attention away from this
titanic failure of the Bush doctrine. Not that it takes all that much to
distract the American people from a war they want less and less to do with, like
a TV series they've grown tired of -- Alito gave us an easy opportunity to
change the channel just as the U.S. death toll leapt past the 2,200 mark 
with
little fanfare. And the total Iraqi death toll (i.e. excess Iraqi deaths
resulting from the invasion)? Still no official word beyond Bush's absurdly low
bean-counting estimate of 30,000 "more or less," itself nothing to
sneeze at. His administration's (and yea, our entire political culture's) utter
disinterest in the actual human impact of this policy puts the lie to any claim
of concern for the well-being of the Iraqi people.
So now that they've parked their ample asses on the humanitarian rationale for this disgusting war (the one that's unsubstantial enough not to require proof of any kind), the more credulous amongst us might wonder why they can't be bothered to seriously consider the number of Iraqi dead. Simple answer: it's probably in the hundreds of thousands by now, all tolled. We're making Saddam look like Spanky from the Little Rascals. After all, they loosely ascribe 300,000 deaths to the Butcher of Baghdad -- the same number the UN estimated for children who had died as the result of the U.S./U.K. sanctions during the 1990s. Add to that the likelihood of another 150,000 - 200,000 "excess" deaths since March 2003 (conservatively), using the Lancet study of more than a year ago as a benchmark, and voila -- the Butcher of Baghdad is... us.
Mind
you, the bulk of Saddam's killings occurred when he was closely aligned with the
U.S. and other western powers who provided him with armaments (conventional and
otherwise), economic assistance, intelligence, etc., during his eight-year war
against Iran and who initially looked the other way when he slaughtered Shi'ites
and Kurds after they took Bush 
Senior's
advice and rose up against Baghdad in 1991. No, there's nothing new in our
propensity to kill in the hundreds of thousands. What we've developed over the
last twenty years or so is our skill at concealing the deaths, blowing enough
smoke and creating enough confusion so that people can more easily ignore the
issue. Our government has democratized the concept of plausible deniability so
that instead of applying to the president alone, it works for all of us.
So don't expect an accounting of Iraqi dead any time soon. That would put us in the same neighborhood as our old pal Saddam.
luv u,
jp
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01/22/06
Hasta whatever....
Morning
comes upon us again. The rosy-fingered dawn awakens us from our slumber -- at
least, some of us. Actually, we're more the sleep-in type of band. You know the
drill. Out clubbing until 4:00 a.m. or so, over to the 
local all-night curry
palace for a vindaloo, then it's sack time. (By "sack" I of course
mean port.)
So aside from the carousing and the early morning curry-hopping, what have we been up to? Nothing short of a minor revolution, my friends. No, I'm not talking about our upcoming CD, still in the oven, as it were. I mean that seemingly mad idea about beaming our music directly into the skulls of the unsuspecting listening public. Trevor James Constable has the technology -- his patented orgone generating device -- to pull it off. All it took was convincing him to give it a try. That's where the all-night carousing comes in. Matt thought if we got him all liquored up he'd be more agreeable to the plan. That Matt ... always thinking.
Okay,
here's the problem with that plan. (Those of you who know us well know there's always
a problem with the plan, whatever it may be.) Trevor James doesn't drink,
damn him. The best we could do is pour club soda and 
lemon juice down his gullet
until he got kind of sleepy. Of course, in the meantime the rest of us were
quaffing Newcastle Brown Ales and rounds of tequila shots with reckless abandon,
then dipping into a rather large poke of Zenite snuff our extraterrestrial
guitarist sFshzenKlyrn had left with us
during his last manifestation on planet Earth (or Quizmandiar to
him....you remember....). Then of course the world began spinning faster and
faster, and spatial relationships began to break down, until things were no
longer on top of other things in any way......not good......not
good......
Frankly,
I barely remember the vindaloo portion of the evening. After seven hours of pub
crawling, I'm not sure what kind of curry I inhaled. All I know is that sometime
early the next afternoon Marvin (my personal robot assistant) was pouring a
pitcher of well water on my forehead as a little pick-me-up. (Something he
learned during his tenure at the local constabulary, no doubt.) I don't know
about Matt and John, but our science 
advisor Mitch Macaphee needed more than the
water treatment to revive him. I think Marvin might have tried driving a spike
into his skull. That sucker was OUT. All that brown ale, damn it. I've seen what
it can do to a man.
As we drag ourselves through the remaining tracks of this album, your friends in Big Green may have to consider another method of promotion, in place of etheric mind control. That would be disappointing. Maybe we should take Trevor James to a theme park next time. Or the zoo, perhaps. Suggestions, anyone? WE NEED THAT TECHNOLOGY! (Oh, my head....)
(Note to readers: for those of you only interested in my political ravings, start here. For those who only wish to inspect my band-related ravings,...well...you get the drift.)
Part
of the Plan. Just a word about Osama or Usama or UBL (pictured here as he
renders a disco favorite from the 1970s...and may I say, it seems an
"extraordinary rendition" indeed). When I see the Bush administration
ignoring statutes, violating treaties, and flaunting the constitution, I wonder
if this may have been part of the 9/11 plan. UBL's main complaint has always
been about the corrupt and decadent regime running Saudi Arabia in particular
and, more generally, those running other Arab/Muslim nations -- regimes
supported and in some cases helped to power by the U.S. Is it possible that the
9/11 attacks were more than just a senseless atrocity -- that they represented a
kind of political jiu-jitsu, with the intended result of imposing an
oppressive regime on us (i.e. our own)? Did the planners of those awful attacks
know that our leaders would increasingly assume 
dictatorial
powers and ultimately run amok, making us all miserable in the process? What
better way is there to punish America than by goading us into abandoning our
liberties?
Such a scenario might be giving old Osama credit for more insight than he deserves. But he obviously had a lot of help with 9/11, most crucially from some knowledgeable fanatics in that German al Qaeda cell. Collectively there may have been deep enough understanding of American society to anticipate the kind of reaction that occurred, as well as its domestic repercussions. After all, they understood us well enough to be able to use our dysfunctional commercial aviation system against us to spectacularly gruesome effect. We know that UBL envisioned the U.S. stumbling into the "Afghan trap" where jihadists had humiliated a major superpower two decades ago (largely on the CIA's dime, no less). It wouldn't have taken a rocket scientist to figure out that the Bush administration was looking for any excuse for broader intervention in the middle east, particularly in Iraq. While the Afghan intervention had partially dispersed UBL's organization, the Iraq war has been a triumph for the jihadists, providing them with a new source of recruits, a tremendous opportunity to develop tactics, and the means to demonstrate America's impotence and corruption to the entire world.
Anyone
familiar with American society knows that we have a remarkable capacity for
self-destructive behavior. Take the recent "drone" bombing in Pakistan
(please). It probably makes tactical sense to the commander who ordered
that raid (perhaps Dubya himself) -- a chance to kill "high value" al
Qaeda operatives. But aside from the despicable nature of blowing up a bunch of
non-combatants, what is the strategy behind such actions? In an attempt to
"take out" some senior jihadists who have been reduced to hiding out
in one of the world's remotest regions, we've managed to make thousands upon
thousands of Pakistanis hate our guts, while making our client dictator
Musharraf look like... well... like a U.S. client dictator. Where's the gain
there? I mean, it would be wrong even if there were some strategic value, but
this policy is so phenomenally stupid it boggles the mind. What a gift to Bin
Laden! He barely needs to do any work at all.
Now Osama has announced his plans for another attack on the U.S. Well, duh -- look how well the first one worked out for him. And now they know just what we'll do -- make more enemies abroad and impose more police-state policies at home. Sounds like Osama's mad dream coming true.
luv u,
jp
Click here to return to Table of Contents.
01/29/06
There there....there there....
Trying to offer comfort. That's what we do here at BigGreenHits.com. We offer comfort and solace, but above all, we offer VALUE. (Hmmm... did I say comfort and solace? I may have meant somfort and colace. Open to interpretation.)
Okay,
so here we are, plugging away at this next album -- I'm calling it The Forbin
Project, but that's just me -- and it occurs to me that you, our valued
listeners, may have some questions about the status of our occasional companions
here in "Sri Lanka". Sure, sure, you hear all about Marvin (my
personal robot assistant) and the three actual "musician" members of
our entourage, but what about the two Lincolns (positive and negative)? What of
Trevor James Constable and Dr. Hump? Mitch Macaphee gets his share of column
inches, but sFshzenKlyrn? Why is it always
the space man who gets shortchanged, eh? Blatant discrimination.
What
you should know about the Lincolns is that they have been keeping a relatively
low profile lately. Is this a surprise? Shouldn't be. What the hell, not a month
after we brought the actual Lincoln forward to the present through Trevor James
Constable's orgone energy-generated time portal, he did a little reading and
studying (sort of on his own) and discovered the awful truth about his having
been felled by an assassin's bullet in 1865. So now he's all paranoid
that someone's going to take a shot at him. Crikey, you should see him
jump when Gung-Ho's boys start firing the howitzers out on the proving grounds
next door. And who can blame him?
I'd
have to say that the antimatter Lincoln is another matter (or antimatter)
entirely. Polar opposite, you might say. He's the type who seems to invite
disaster, positively (or negatively) encouraging people to take pot shots at
him. Why? Issues.... serious issues. The man is a walking abnormal
psychology textbook. Quite honestly, there are days when he cannot stand the
THOUGHT of there being another man by the name of Lincoln in the known universe.
We're not talking about just the actual Abe Lincoln, mind you... we're talking
the guy who runs Lincoln dry cleaners in Des Moines. (An establishment
that paid a very heavy price for its name...) This guy 
could make
a good dictator, truth be known. Find him a Caribbean island or a central Asian
republic, and he can do the job. Just so long as he doesn't end up dictating to my
ass. (That's probably why we haven't seen much of
him lately -- he's planning some kind of coup, perhaps.)
Well....if he does something that dramatic, I'm sure we'll see it in the news. I suppose we should keep closer track of him, eh? Just a minute -- I'll get on the intercom (i.e. yell) and see who his minder is. HEY - HAS ANYONE SEEN ANTI LINCOLN? NO? THEN HAS ANYBODY SEEN THE MORNING PAPER?
(Note to readers: for those of you only interested in my political ravings, start here. For those who only wish to inspect my band-related ravings,...well...you get the drift.)
Still
Going. Iraq is proving to be the "Energizer Bunny" of modern
warfare. Every time it seems as if the air might be going out of it, the notion
fades and nothing much changes. This week two reports came to light describing
in various ways the effect that prolonged deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan
are having on the armed forces as an institution. The upshot is that it's not
good -- the all-volunteer army is heading for a wall. Recruitment is down.
People are going on to their third deployment in Iraq (I know of someone being
enticed into this deal with large amounts of cash, etc.). Equipment is breaking
down and inadequate. Rumsfeld's response was predictable: It's Bill Clinton's
fault. He also framed the reports as 
somehow
critical of American soldiers; something the Bush team always does to deflect
blame from themselves. If you criticize their stupidity, they accuse you of
attacking the troops. Jiu-jitsu ...and about as cowardly a tactic as can be
imagined, implying that policy reflects more on the people doing the fighting
than the people setting the policy, while at the same time hiding behind
the empty rhetoric of "support for the troops."
So in essence, the public has long since turned against this war, and it appears the military is turning against it as well, on the basis of what John Murtha has said, among others. So where are the politician, the policy-makers? There are a couple of answers to that one. First, they are looking to maintain their "tough on terror" bona fides for the next few election cycles -- a similar dynamic to what defined the political culture during the cold war (and its many "hot" wars). They fear that Iraq will suddenly quiet down and leave them out on a political limb. Just as importantly, the established leadership in both parties support the goals of the Iraq enterprise. I mean the real goals -- that is, an expansion of American power via effective control of much of the world's energy resources. This has been the central objective of U.S. foreign policy for at least sixty years, through administrations of both parties. It has been articulated in numerous internal planning documents, from the second World War right up to Bush's National Security Strategy of 2002 and its subsequent refinements.
Despite
the long paper trail, we are expected to believe all kinds of spurious clap-trap
about why we invade this country and why we're dropping bombs on that one. But
by its very actions, our government reveals its true intentions and makes a
mockery of its own made-for-TV alibis. Iraq's the perfect illustration. They build
up this justification about WMD's, and yet when they invade, they leave known
WMD development sites unguarded so that they may be systematically dismantled by
some pretty savvy looters (these are sites like the Tuwaitha nuclear facility,
closely monitored by international arms control agencies until their personnel
were driven out just before the March 2003 invasion). They claim they're all
about rights and democracy for the Iraqi people, but they can't be bothered even
to track the number they've killed and have cynically (and illegally)
restructured their economy, effectively robbing them of much of their national
treasure. They claim to respect Arab / Islamic culture, but stand by as crucial
sites and archives are looted and park their humvees on ancient Mesopotamian
ruins. Now either they are abject failures at everything they do, or their
primary concerns are those that our foreign policy establishment has long been
obsessed with. My vote is on the latter.
Another Triumph. Hamas has won the Palestinian elections in a landslide, and Bush and Rice are talking like it somehow fits in with their grand plan for Middle East freedom...this week. At this rate, the entire region will be run by fundamentalist religion-based governments. Success!
luv u,
jp