Whenever the “West” does something good and noble in the name of freedom and democracy my stomach gets queasy.  Selfish is a word that comfortably describes our society here in the Euro-American world.  So it is very difficult for me to believe the syrupy platitudes dripping from the mouths of Western leaders.  We have imposed a no fly zone over Libya and a naval blockade to keep Muammar Gaddafi from using his superior firepower to crush the rebel forces arrayed against him.  Restricted to ground operations and without access to mercenary reinforcements and weapon resupply it is thought that the rebel forces have at least a whisper of a chance.  Now that Gaddafi is advancing under these restrictions, Western governments have begun the debate over whether or not to supply the rebels with more advanced and just plain more materiel.

But the question that should be asked is why Libya?  Government forces are cracking down on democracy protesters in a number of countries.  Last weekend another dozen or so people were killed by security forces in Yemen and our friend and ally Saudi Arabia has brutally intervened in Bahrain to prop up the monarchy in that country.  Is their suffering any less deserving of our attention and our intervention?

Once more the myth of Western humanitarianism is exposed.  But the media are silent.  Isolated reports dot the media landscape, because it is virtually impossible to keep events totally secret, but no more.  No theme songs and Hollywood graphics to mesmerize the public into a righteous indignation.  No daily interviews with correspondents on the ground.  The general public accepts what the media give it because they want to.  They want the myth to remain.  To step into the black river of truth flowing silently under the mask of civility would shame them.   Not because it is happening but because they don’t want to do anything to stop it.  How could they maintain the facade of moral civility if forced to face the foundation on which our wealth and power stand.

The Great Powers only engage troops in combat when their self-serving national interests are at stake.  In Yemen and Bahrain the existing governments have been friendly and cooperative with American aims in the Arab world.  In Franklin Roosevelt’s words they are “sons of bitches but they are our (America’s) sons of bitches.”  No depravity is too shocking, no slaughter too brazen but they are forgiven.  Those who are not collaborators are struck down to keep the myth alive.

Ribbons and other stickers on cars and in windows enjoin us to support our troops but it is the war they really want us to support.  Before you kill a human being yourself or by proxy step into that black river of truth.

Lest we forget.  Every year I have heard those words for as far back as I remember.  Lest we forget.  And yet it seems we never did remember.  Flowery speeches and poems waft through the autumn air each year and yet the killing goes on.  This is the first year of my life that I have not worn a poppy for Remembrance Day.  Instead my choice was black, the colour of mourning.  Because mourning is what we should be doing.  Instead the services sound more like the hubris of the victors as if we had prevailed in some righteous cause.  What was the cause of World War 1?  I dealt with that war two years ago when I began this blog:  the futility the waste the unnecessary deaths of millions over scraps of land and boasting rights.  World War 2 might have been fought for nobler reasons if we had cared about the Holocaust but we didn’t.  Canada’s wartime prime minister Mackenzie King was a fan of Hitler and found nothing to criticize in his treatment of the Jews and others.  When the allied powers might have stopped or at least hindered the killings they refused to act.  Sometimes humanitarian goods can be side effects of war but they are never the goal.  Nor are they ever directly pursued. 

Today Remembrance Day has been hijacked by those who would support new unnecessary and counterproductive wars from Iraq to Afghanistan to the amorphous War on Terror.  The poppy is being made the symbol of those who romanticize war as a public good.  I will not join their number.  I will not be a hypocrit.  War is not romantic.  It is not glorious.  It is ugly and wasteful and a cancer upon human society that should be blotted out.  No one should support a war unless they admit the truth behind it.  I suspect that would be very difficult for most people.  How many Canadians would justify the murder of Afghan civilians or even partisan insurgents for the sake of controlling a pipeline route for our southern neighbour?  How many would say those who died to grease the wheels of cross-border trade were heroes?  Parents of the dead and injured must believe the fairy tales to cope with their loss.  But wouldn’t it be better to confront the truth before and have their children and siblings and parents with them still? 

This year I simply mourn.  Not just those whose lives were stolen in wars they were never allowed to fully understand, but those who they killed, who we all have killed.  I mourn the deaths of Afghan civilians and fighters.  I mourn the deaths of the children of Iraq.  I mourn the deaths of Palestinians as they are slowly exterminated in a genocide in which we are compliant.  I mourn the deaths of East Timorese whose killers were in part financed by Canadian taxpayers.  I mourn all those who have died unnecessarily for the greed of others.  And I mourn the poppy.  Murdered at the hand of those who have distorted its simple message and who now make its withered corpse dance to their beat.  If there ever was a death that I would not mourn it would be the deaths of these necromancers of war.  

Apparently an inquiry into the behaviour of Canada’s elite JTF2 forces has been underway for more than a year now.  Information is sparse but it involves detainees in Afghanistan.  The ugly spectre of torture rears for obvious reasons.  Torture and Canadians anywhere in the same paragraph offends and sickens most Canadians.  And rightfully so.  Torture is a concept that violates our sense of justice which in the end is the moral conscience of our society.  It is who we are and who we present ourselves to be.  If any connection exists between this or any Canadian unit and the abuse of detainees the harshest punishments must be meted out to the those involved.  Whether that involvement is direct or facilitative, whether it is active or passive is irrelevant.   Whether it was an act of individuals on the ground or the complacent silence of a defence minister or the tacit approval of a prime minister justice should be swift and certain.

An inquiry was certainly warranted if allegations were raised.  But in a democratic society that inquiry must be public.  We should not just now be finding out about this problem.  Why would the government not announce the inquiry at the time.  I am confident of the response that will come out once government officials begin their tap dance before the media.  It will all be ‘national security’.  It will all be bullshit.  There is absolutely nothing about an inquiry into the behaviour of our soldiers that will threaten this country or its citizens.  Do we think that the Afghans are unaware if our soldiers have tortured them or facilitated others to do so?  Are we afraid that the Taliban or other groups will torture our people if it becomes apparent we torture prisoners or tolerate others doing so?  Perhaps we think that the result might be terrorist attacks here.  What is it we are so afraid of.  Whenever the great ‘national security’ bogey man is evoked from the mists there is no effort to explain what that means.  It is a hollow threat to put us in our place.  We are being treated like children and frightened into not asking embarrassing questions.

The JTF 2 website contains the following statement:

Myth 11 – JTF 2 conducts activities outside the law.

Answer – All JTF 2 activities are conducted within the bounds of Canadian Law. Furthermore, the Government of Canada authorizes the overall missions and tasks undertaken by JTF 2, at all times. The unit is accountable to the Chief of the Defence Staff. The Chief of the Defence Staff is accountable to the Minister of National Defence who, as a Minister of the Crown, is responsible to the Prime Minister of Canada.

If that statement was made in good faith, and I have no reason to believe that it was not, then JTF 2 should want any investigation of their activities to be transparent.  It is not enough for a public organization to claim ethics it is imperative to be seen to be ethical.  A secret inquiry does not do justice to the service women and men of this unit.  If they have nothing to hide they will survive scrutiny under the light of day and be the better for it.  And it is imperative that we demand public oversight as ultimately you and I are responsible for their every action.  If we sit back and do not due our civic duty in holding our representatives to the highest possible standard then we are as guilty as they of any wrongdoing.

We pump up our chests and announce to the world that we govern ourselves.  Maybe we should drop the sanctimony and get down to the business of governing ourselves.

Yesterday marked the 65th anniversary of the surrender of Germany in World War Two marking Victory in Europe or V. E. Day.  Nazism had been defeated, the horrors of the Holocaust uncovered and a new day was dawning on the planet.  The dream of the United Nations was forming; to be established October 24, 1945.  We had learned our lesson as we were forced to bear witness to the darkest depths of human depravity.  Our ability to murder on mass shook us from the dream of civilization.  Our collective soul cried out ‘Never Again!’

But in 2010, as the German Chancellor Angela Merkel sat on the dais next to Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, representing the opposing powers of the conflict that had more in common than differences, where are we?  What has happened to the dream, that moment of pure joy and hope?

As its predecessor, World War Two was not the war to end all wars.  Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, the list is long and bloody.  Our ability to kill has improved with each new conflict.  Diplomacy is ridiculed as the the fires of nationalism brightly light the banners of the legions.  The eagle of Rome and Germany now demands the people of the world bow down to the eagle of  America.  That the symbol of power since early history has been a scavenger should speak to us.  But somehow it doesn’t.  Fear, distrust and ignorance drive us into our imagined communities, not seeing the realities that connect us behind the myths that divide.  And so the story continues written in the blood of millions.

Political lies continued to swim in human blood.  In Hungary and Iraq honest people were encouraged to rise up against tyranny only to be abandoned when they did so in good faith believing that they would be supported.  The Hungarians listened to Radio Free Europe spew its propaganda East.  Not realizing that this was only a tactic to undermine Soviet stability they rose up and awaited the aid implicitly promised.  They stood firm as the Soviet tanks rolled over the Hungarian frontier and into the streets of Budapest.  Still gazing West in desperation as they were slaughtered, the survivors later lost in the void of the Gulag.  The Shi’as of southern Iraq encouraged by Bush senior to rebel were again abandoned as were the Kurds of northern Iraq.  How much different is this to the guarantees given to the Czechs and others prior to the war.  Horribly the Tutsi and Hutu at different times learned that ‘Never Again!’ was hollow rhetoric as did the people of Srebrenica in their turn.

Domestic persecution so abhorred in the Third Reich still visits us as well.  From the Cold War where America and the Soviet Union tried to outdo each other with show trials and mock patriotism to the Patriot Act and Canada’s anti-terrorism laws and Arizona’s yellow sombrero law (see previous post The Yellow Sombrero) we have repeated the ideas and concepts of Hitler and Himmler.  People persecuted, hounded for what they believed or what they were not what they had done.  Over one million Canadians were blacklisted as communists/socialists.  Rarely were any Soviet spies.  That was not the point.  It was the idea that was feared, not the people.  The idea needed to be destroyed lest it upset life of the power elite.  Today it is Muslims.  The ‘experts’ talk about Islamic culture and say it is violent, that it praises terror, that it is regressive.  What they don’t say is, like Nazi depictions of Jewish culture, it doesn’t exist.  It is a fabrication.  There is no ‘Islamic Culture.’  There are several Arab, Persian, Turkic and Malay cultures.  Most North Americans see ‘Islamic Culture’ and think Arab Culture but it in itself is not a monolith and Malay is the largest Muslim ethnic group.  If the threat is real why would it be represented by a mythical creation?  It seems only that some threat must exist.  But why?  What is it that the powers that be don’t want us to see.  Today we can look back at the Third Reich and see what Hitler and Goebbels didn’t want the world to know.  Will historians 65 years from now be revealing abominable secrets buried behind American imperialism?  Research the provisions and justifications of the Enabling Laws introduced by German Chancellor Hitler in 1934 to see a reflection of the Patriot Act and its ilk.  Racial profiling of Mexicans and Muslims is no different than that used by Nazi administrations.  Look at the propaganda below showing the same basic caricature used in two contexts but really about the same people, Semites.

Mussolini said that fascism could more accurately be called corporatism.  Is that not the culture we have today in Canada and the United States?  Is not the corporation and the financial sector the new Rome?   Is it not the sum total of existence, that which gives meaning to our lives?  We are told constantly that there is not enough money, enough wealth to maintain the welfare state that was to raise all boats; to create a floor not a ceiling to use William Beveridge’s phrase.  Apparently the neo-conservative Right has taken him at his word and want to cut the floor out from under the powerless in order to extend their ceiling to the heavens.  Corporations steal our money to fund their failures.  And still George Will this morning on This Week (ABC) claims that the crisis in Greece is the masses thinking they are entitled when their is no money left to fund such entitlements.  What better example of self-entitlement than the bail out of General Motors or Lehman Sachs and the rest.  They told us they were too big to fail.  They told us we needed to give them more of our money for our own sakes.  Those who would now eject us from our own homes, destroy our retirements and deny our children of the same education and career opportunities as their children feel so entitled as to believe that such behaviour is an act of gratitude.  Don’t tell me there is not money to fund entitlements.  You mean there is no money to fund those who don’t belong to your class Mr. Will.

But corporations have always held the people in disdain.  They always believed in a natural leader class.  That is why so many of them supported Hitler and nazi ideology, before and during the war.  Ford enriched itself on slave labour in Nazi occupied Europe.  IBM vaulted to the lead in tabulation later computation by designing the system that sent six million Jews to the gas chamber.  President Roosevelt had to relieve Joseph Kennedy, father of the future president, from his post as ambassador to the Great Britain because of his praise of Hitler and Nazism and his repeated effort to undermine British resolve in the face of what he considered a superior German system. Do we believe that suddenly they changed their philosophy when the war was over?  Are we that naive?  Or just so afraid that if we say such things somehow we will be next on the train to the camps.

German education under the Nazis convinced young Germans that they were superior by blood to the other races of the world.  They twisted ancient northern European myths to create an image of the Teutonic race as the defenders of civilization against the barbarian hordes.  Anything that might bring that image into question was dropped from the curriculum.  Self appointed ‘experts’ shored up the image with quasi-science and bad academics.  Education seen as the conduit to maintain the social order whether or not that order is right.  Sound familiar?  Does to me.  I see it every day in the classroom and I am both sad and afraid.  I know where it will lead, not might lead.  Young Americans today are brainwashed into believing that the American way is not jut the best way but the only legitimate way.  Other cultures, other peoples, other values are ridiculed or vilified.  The lie of democracy used to shade the evil intent:  Power.

So what have we learned in sixty-five years?  What has happened to the possibilities of 1945?  Today they are just the puppets of power.  Power corrupts.  But mostly it perpetuates.  Those who have it seek to keep it.  Those who don’t lament their suffering as the Athenian generals counseled the Melians in Thucydides account of the Peloponnesian War,“for you know as well as we do that right … is in question only between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.” or they live Zapata’s words:  “It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees.”

Today I mourn not because nazism and fascism were destroyed but because they survived.  I mourn because the ideals of Adolph Hitler are the ideals of the Obama administration and American Imperialism.  They are cloaked in the facade of democracy and humanist rhetoric but they are the same.  I mourn because my country, like so many others, complacently accepts this outrage lacking the courage to die on our feet if needs must.  We play the Jester to America’s Lear.  Around the world today the celebrations are not of the end of something but of its perpetuation in secrecy.  Hitler’s mistake was to open a window and let the world see.  That could not be countenanced if the power elites elsewhere were to continue without public outrage.  Secrecy reigns once more and all is well in Washington as on Wall Street.  So celebrate, but excuse me if I weep.

Families of nine Canadian soldiers killed in Afghanistan were shown on the news yesterday visiting Kandahar and the memorial to the Canadians who have fallen in that conflict.  It was a touching moment.  Emotions played on the faces of the family members as they stood before the stone etchings of their son or daughter.  The media followed by interviews with a couple of the pilgrims who unanimously support the mission and support extending it if necessary.

What did the media expect them to say?  What else can they believe but that the mission is important and necessary in order to justify the sacrifice and the grief they have suffered?  The sudden loss of a loved one in a conflict half way around the world must stand for something or their grief would destroy them completely.  All families of fallen soldiers must believe the sacrifice had noble purpose or go mad.

This pilgrimage was a personal journey and should have remained so.  What purpose was served by the media presence?  To the families no purpose whatsoever.  But for the media and for the government the purpose is clear and as petty and self-serving as the reasons that drew us into this conflict in the first place.  Each group, media and government, are attempting to assuage their own guilt by maintaining the myth.  But we don’t need our government giving us myth we need the truth and we need the media to question that truth incessantly.  That is the role of the media.  I can almost forgive the government for lying to us.  In a poll in the United States a couple of years ago the American public admitted they preferred their government to lie to them.  A lie is often easier to deal with than the truth.  Besides governments are by nature secretive little entities.  So it is the media that bears the greatest guilt because it is their job to wake up the public to the truth before it is too late.

The evidence has been there from the beginning concerning our real purpose for deploying to Afghanistan.  Our neighbour, our closest ally and our friend the United States asked us to go so they could free up assets to deploy to their upcoming Iraq invasion.  We said yes because they are our neighbour, friend and ally and because we were in negotiations with them over a  number of cross border issues at the time.  The two most important were softwood lumber and border access following 9/11.  The United States has its own reasons for being there.  Chief among those are access to Kazakh oil and gas without having to ship through Russian territory.  There is also evidence of resources in some of the other Central Asian states as well.  Nothing about this mission has been about human rights or democracy or any of the other catch-phrases that allow us to sleep at night while murdering people half a world away.

But removing the Burka, routing out terrorists, building a modern society (aka. American society) and creating democracy raises pride to console the tears and makes the whole thing a little more bearable.  This war was never about that.  The Soviet backed government of Afghanistan that we worked so hard to topple, which led us to create the Taliban and Al Qaeda was a secular government that had outlawed the burka and encouraged women to engage fully as equals in society.  It was an American tactic to encourage Islamic fundamentalism among the mujaheddin as a way to gain popular support among village elders and traditionalists.  Following the collapse of the Soviet Union the United States and its western allies supported various groups in power in Kabul including the Taliban.  The Taliban were in close negotiations for a pipeline with the U.S. government and private firms such as Haliburton whose envoy to the Taliban was Dick Cheney.

Realpolitik is messy but it, not the spirit of humanity, motivates state actions.  No war has ever been fought for humanitarian reasons and none ever will be under our current international system.  Without a compelling selfish interest no state will risk its assets.  But without a higher moral purpose no democracy will sanction a foreign war.  Hence the lie.  We are manipulated to support something we really don’t understand.  We make it about nationalism just like the Nazis, the ultimate nationalists.  We, like them, take pride in the delusion that we are creating a better world; we, like them, believe we know the mind of god and it is consumerism.

The media knows this.  Instead it pretends as if it is too stupid to be able to assemble diverse evidence into a meaningful package and present a comprehensive report to the public.  That is news and the job of the news organization.  So we don’t have to research raw government documents and expert data on our own; or interview public figures and experts to tease out meaning; the  news media is to bring all this information together, plot its interactions and present us with understandable meaning .  Instead our newsrooms more resemble the Reichsministrie of Propoganda than the movie All the President’s Men.  Much of what is reported is lifted directly from press releases and the rest is assured not to ruffle the feathers of advertisers or their close buddies in government.

It is not just the loss that we experience in the Afghan debacle but where such complicity could lead that is of most concern. We are already experiencing a powerful move toward authoritarianism in our domestic society.  The anti-terrorism laws are only the prominent tip of the iceberg.  Whether police in Ontario charge people with a law that doesn’t exist in the statutes, shoot an innocent man (Dudley George) and then perjure themselves rather than take responsibility or the RCMP taser Robert Dziekanski in British Columbia and again lie in court or  resource companies invade and pollute your land in Alberta without allowing you recourse to protect it, the breakdown in trust between the agents of authority and the citizen continues apace.  Yet the media keeps its silence filling our minds with pleasant snippets and diversions rather than attacking the issues that will impact us most profoundly, if often without our notice until it is too late.  We ourselves must shoulder some of the blame for this.   Where are the crowds outside the major publishers and broadcasters demanding their right to know.

Individual reporters take shelter in their jobs.  They can only report what their editors, publishers and news directors allow.  It is there job.  That was the defence the Nazis used at Nuremburg as well.  We were just following orders.  We had our families to think of.  If not us someone else would have done it.  All true as far as it goes.  But it still boils down to one of two things.  Either they don’t stand up because they agree with maintaining the lie in which case they are complicit.  Or they fear the consequences of standing up and speaking their mind in which case they are cowards.  Those who are complicit I have no words of comfort for you.  May you soon be together in hell with your mentor Josef Goebbels.  To those who shrink from fear I have greater understanding.  But while you might be able to lie to the country you can’t lie to yourself.  You know the truth and you know your neighbours rely on you to make decisions.  Sometimes decisions concerning the life and death of those closest to them.

Each journalist must make their self assessment  and decide whether they are collaborators complicit in undermining the ethic of our society or cowards who to save their own skin let their neighbours suffer.  But shame on both for victimizing the families again to use them as a prop in your deceit.

An old saw says that the first casualty of war is the truth but reality might be a close second.  It is not just that our governments lie to us it is how they tell us the truth.  Outright lies are often easy to uncover, sending official sources into a frenzy of just straight out denial.  After all an outright lie is a difficult thing to defend in the face of the truth so the simple denial is the sole strategy available unless you can literally kill the messenger which has been known to happen.

This particular IED image carries a 2 fold message in the reality wars.

Take for instance the glitzy NewSpeak for a bomb.  That little word does not convey the correct message.  Every word, every reference must expose a stark difference between us and our foes in a time of war.  We use bombs and we are the good guys so the public must have a different term for a bomb when it is used by the bad guys, i. e. the enemy.  Solution:  Improvised Explosive Device or IED.  Just rolls off the tongue doesn’t it.  Now you know that anything improvised is not official and is just not the tool to use.  The word improvise carries a subliminal message of inferiority.  A legitimate military organization doesn’t improvise materials.  Only some slipshod mom and pop terrorist cell would do that.  I guess if these people want to be taken seriously they need to raise some money and go out and buy an SBED (Store Bought Explosive Device).  That’s what we use and that’s the ticket to legitimacy.

If these criminals and scumbags, to use the military vernacular, would use legitimate weapons manufactured to precise specification to blow up our troops then we would be able to respect them.  They too would become soldiers and cease being criminals and scumbags.  Maybe we would then celebrate their deaths less and gain a perspective on our own casualties.  As it stands now the subhuman Taliban is gleefully dispatched to Allah and each of our casualties is a fallen hero.

Language is used to persuade, to guide the listener subtly or sometimes not so subtly to the speakers position.  It is the pigment on the canvas of understanding, the colour of reality.  If anything should be painted in the words of reality it is war.  How else will we ever break this sad cycle of carnage.  Even bomb is too kind a word.  And Improvised Explosive Device is so sanitized as to be laughable.  How about we call it what it is, a life and limb shredding horror, whether we buy it from a manufacturer listed on the NYSE or cook it up in the basement.

When is a lie most effective?  Answer:  when most people want to believe it to be true.  Wouldn’t it be great if the world was black and white.  We could always tell the good guys from the bad guys.  But that is not reality.  The world is a grey place.  Shadows of truth swirl in between out-right falsehoods and half-truths.  We can really only rely on our own perceptions and we know that many of them are incorrect.  My father always quoted that old saw that said never believe anything you hear and only half of what you see.  It’s underlying cynicism aside it is a good rule to live by.  I tell my students virtually every day to question, question everything, never accept anything at face value.  When someone tells you something ask yourself who benefits from that understanding or approach to the situation.   If the person defining the situation is the same one who benefits be very suspicious.   

Right now Iran seems to be coming apart at the seams.  Mahmoud Ahmadinejad claimed a massive victory in the recent presidential elections which led followers of his opponent Mir-Hossein Mousavi to cry foul.  Taking to the streets, opposition protesters alleged massive fraud in the vote count.  A subsequent partial recount increased Ahmadinejad’s lead rather than diminish it which served only to ratchet up emotions on both sides.  The Iranian government, that is the government of Mr. Ahmadinejad, has cracked down fiercely on the protesters.  Several people have been killed and many more injured in street clashes between protesters and riot police.

Barack Obama and the American government deny accusations coming out of Iran that they, along with their ally Great Britain, are behind the protests.  Both the president and vice-president have specifically denied the allegations coming out of Tehran.  Barack Obama went so far as to say the American administration is making a concerted effort not to impact events in Iran even in their comments.  This is a positive change from earlier American administrations who have not hesitated to interfere in the affairs of other states or movements if it benefited American interests.  Barak Obama promised change and look here we have it.  For those of you who believe that, I have a bridge in Brooklyn for sale you may be interested in.  Obama and Biden dismiss the accusations with a chuckle as if what idiot would believe the United States is behind a popular uprising in a foreign country.  The insinuation is that only a few conspiracy freaks would be dumb enough to believe the accusations coming from Mr Ahmadinejad and Mr. Khamenei. 

The United States has overthrown more than 50 governments since the end of World War II, most of them democracies.  (Dictatorships are more efficient to deal with when it comes to the bidding of great powers.)  The Kennedy administration was active here in Canada in the downfall of John Diefenbaker although Dief didn’t help his own cause any.  (If they are prepared to interfere in the political affairs of their neighbour and one of their closest allies is there any limit to what they might do?)  More than 3500 people have died in terrorist attacks against the island of Cuba since the revolution came to power in 1959, all funded and logistically supported by the government of the United States.  The Bush administration lied in order to violate the United Nations Charter and pursue an aggressive war against a sovereign member of that organization.  The invasions of Nicaraugua, the Dominican Republic, Panama and Granada; the support of the Contras, the Kosovo Liberation Army, and the Mujahadeen; installation of brutal dictators like Mobutu in Congo, the Somozas in Nicaraugua, Marcos in the Phillipines, and the Shah in Iran; fomenting coups in Chile, Guatemala, and Venezuela;  that is the backdrop to the present administration’s denials of involvement in the Iranian protests.  The list goes on.  I have not even scratched the surface of covert and not so covert American interference in the affairs of others around the world.  How can any reasonable person believe that the United States is not involved in the protests given their track record and the obvious benefits to America if Mr. Ahmadinejad were to be swept from power. The question is not whether they are involved but to what degree and when did the involvement begin.  Were they behind Mousavi from the start or are they just being opportunists?  At what level is the United States active in the protests?  These are questions that may never be answered. 

We all decry the brutality of the crackdown on the protesters.  No one should have to put their life on the line to speak their mind.  So why was there not the same outrage over the treatment of protesters in Britain during the G20 talks?  After all London police murdered an innocent man who was not even part of the protests.  He was simply a news vendor trying to get home after work.  With the addition of the killing of a beautiful young Iranian women, outrage in the West escalated against Iran.  That in itself should scream to us.  Why were the earlier deaths of protesters mere statistics, a passing reference as the political questions were examined in news reporting?  I guess it only matters when beautiful people die.  They are the only ones who have a real future full of promise.  The less attractive only have disappointment to look forward to in this world of image mongering.  The young woman (Neda Agha Soltan) purportedly uttered an heroic phrase just before leaving that day according to a self-described fiance.   Something about staying home giving victory to the regime.  Real people usually don’t make grandiose statements when parting from a loved one regardless of events happening around them.  I would suspect the real conversation was be careful and avoid the protests and her response was something like I’ll be careful, don’t worry.  But that doesn’t make good copy in a newsroom.  That doesn’t sell papers.  Nor do rather ordinary looking plain people.  When the news of Neda’s death appeared I couldn’t help remembering another beautiful young women, with a voice like a song bird that could melt the hardest heart.  During the first Gulf War daddy Bush was trying to get Congress to appropriate money for his ‘liberation’of Kuwait.  The girl appeared before the Senate Armed Forces Committee to give testimony of the brutality of invading Iraqi soldiers in Kuwait City.  When she had finished telling those grizzled Senators how infants at the hospital had been thrown to the floor so that their incubators could be looted back to Baghdad, there was not a dry eye in the place.  Even old Strom Thurman had a tear glistening at the corner of his eye.  At the time I was skeptical about the popularity of incubators as loot but people just called me cynical.  Several months later the story broke that the young girl had not been in Kuwait City during the invasion and the entire episode about the incubators had been the concoction of Hill and Knowlton, the public relations firm.  In democracies wars and all political events have to be sold like soap powder. 

The question for all of us is what are we being sold today.  We know that the United States government is lying about their involvement in the protests in Iran.  We know that their accomplices in the mass media are selling us a point of view that may or may not have any or some legitimacy.  What apportion of guilt should be born by the Iranian government and what apportion belongs to our governments, that it to say us because we constantly tell the world that we govern ourselves.  All we are left with is our own capacity to reason and analyze, to never believe anything we hear and only half what we see and make our own judgements.  Our society and our leaders discourage us from independent thought and dismiss us as fools if we dare to question them.  Who benefits from that if we comply?  Think about it.  All I can say is ‘Fools of the World, Unite.  You have nothing to lose but your complacency.’  Our age is one of great uncertainty, impregnated with fear and possibility.  Complacency is not an option, nor is falling into the trap of lies which has become our political system.  Don’t let your abhorrence of the crackdown in Iran be used for partisan goals you may not support. 

After renaming a highway and a full court press by high command and the government to label each and every fallen Canadian soldier in Afghanistan a hero, in the end the Canadian military has shown they are just another parcel to be delivered.  If it is more convenient or economic to jostle them to and fro for three hours to unload baggage and another 117 soldiers, so be it.  The body of Karine Blais was returned to Canada Thursday but was forced to make a stopover in Ottawa before being delivered to her final destination, CFB Trenton, Ontario (for my American readers, Trenton is Canada’s Dover).  Many are outraged at this turn of events.  Those of us who have had friends and relatives in the Canadian military just smile.  Getting a flight home was always a problem and the fear of getting bumped by some officer or his dog anywhere along the line a constant fear.  At least she wasn’t put on a baggage cart with other luggage to switch planes as one report suggests happened in Rochester, New York with a returning American coffin.   Of course they are not heroes in the United States.  America has far too many casualties to do the whole hero thing for every one. 

But only the Canadian army could screw up public relations to this level.  First there is the waste of taxpayer dollars to convince us that Afghanistan is a great and noble cause.  I guess this incident means that plan is history.   It gets worse.  This was a female soldier which adds to the public relations fiasco.   But wait there is more, she was French serving with the Royal 22nd (Van Doos).    I can’t wait to see reaction in the French sovereigntist press.  Who is in charge of propaganda at National Defence Headquarters, Gilligan?  In its imperious ineptitude, they have managed to offend just about every group one can think of.  I am surprised they didn’t wait until it was a Black French woman with autism to pull this boner.  I mean let’s piss everyone off at once and get it over with. 

Don’t forget taxpayers.  The part of this story that has raised no comment as yet that I can find is that the governor-general and minister of defense met the coffin at CFB Trenton.  Hold on.  Think about this.  The coffin was on the ground for three hours in Ottawa.  Ottawa is where the governor-general lives and the minister of defense works (and lives while he is working, if he works, I don’t know).  So, let me get this straight.  The minister and governor-general and the coffin all travelled at taxpayers expense to Trenton for what exactly, a photo-op?  Did they all travel together?  You can drive from Ottawa to Trenton in less than 3 hours maybe one of them could have made room in the back seat.  Why do they even have to be there?  Maybe the prime minister should be there too.  Hell bring the whole freaking parliament.  They love nothing better than a free trip.  Here’s a thought.  Take the coffin home, to the family.  Shouldn’t they be the priority not protocol?  Do we need an official “Death Camp”?

Military observers (cheerleaders) commented to news outlets that it was a minor controversy being blown out of proportion.  I tend to agree.  It was an insensitive decision but in overall terms the coverage in the mainstream press is probably causing more grief to the family than the incident itself.  Military observers are worried though about their little traditions and customs being broken such as failure to lower the flags while the plane was on the ground in Ottawa.  If it was me in the coffin they could shove the flag where the sun don’t shine for all I would care.  Actually when I die the flags over municipal buildings in my town will be lowered to half mast because I once served on city council.   Honestly, if they forget I couldn’t care less.  I would imagine the whole dead thing will be bothering me more at that moment. 

Where I differ from the hotties with the olive drab pompoms is, if you make out that she was a hero, you can’t say this is a minor controversy.  Heroes are a special category of people or sandwiches if you come from New York.  Therefore this would be by definition a serious controversy.  But she wasn’t a hero.  She was a young woman with her whole life before her who died under a foreign sky for geopolitical reasons she never fully understood.  This is a tragedy; not the fall of Agamemnon.  Calling her a hero implies her death was necessary; it served a greater good.  That may assuage the consciences of the political masters who threw her life on the dust heap of history.  But it will never fill the empty chair at family gatherings or give her parents grandchildren.  Maybe if Canadians would come to grips with that we might have fewer tragedies and the Canadian military would have fewer opportunities to trip over its own braid.

Israel has announced a unilateral ceasefire in the Gaza invasion in a hope too deflect international criticism.  From U. S. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice to British Foreign Secretary David Miliband the move is being hailed as a response to the unequivocal pressure of the Western powers.  Interesting, I don’t recall any pressure unequivocal or otherwise coming from the Great Powers.  The criticism has come almost exclusively from ordinary people and human rights organizations.  Hamas has rejected the ceasefire and vows to continue the fight until not one Israeli soldier remains in Palestinian territory and all borders are reopened.  This is already being used to show that Hamas is unreasonable and therefore the initial attack by Israel was justified. 

I am glad if one day or one hour goes by without someone dying.  However I understand Hamas’ reluctance to accept the ceasefire.  Israel has seized large portions of Gaza territory.  Its troops remain entrenched and ready to resume the attack at any moment.  No plan of withdrawal or normalization accompanies this move by the Israeli government.  Nor has Israel announced any process to address these issues.  So what we have here is a territory that has been invaded and occupied being told to stop resisting the occupation in exchange for their lives.  Israel says “We will stop illegally murdering more of your citizens, if you allow us to retain the benefit we received from the ones we have already murdered.”   What is the difference between this situation and the fall of France in 1940 when the puppet government of Vichy was allowed to survive temporarily?  Frenchmen did not lay down their arms then and Palestinians have no incentive to lay down their arms now.

This is not peace.  It is not a real ceasefire.  It is just a lull in the killing.  Whether Hamas capitulates or not, the destruction of the Palestinian nation will continue until not one Palestinian is left.  That is the goal.  It has been for the past 60 years and it will continue.

In a 14-0 vote, with the United States abstaining, the Security Council has passed a resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza.  There will be those for whom this will be seen as an important and positive step but what does it mean for the reality of the situation in Gaza?  Israel has ignored scores of previous resolutions when they contradict Israeli government policy.  Usually Security Council resolutions have some clout because they hold the potential of consequences.  Resolutions concerning Israel have no such potential.  America abstained which is their way of acknowledging that there little buddy has been bad and allowing the international community to shake their collective finger at the naughty child.  But if a subsequent resolution were to impose serious consequences on Israel, America will exercise its veto power, if it cannot first persuade enough of the other members to withdraw the resolution first. 

One begins to see the problem here not as Israel but as the United States.  And what do we do about the most powerful military power on the planet with the number one economy.  The conventional wisdom seems to be nothing.  But how much longer can we allow America to undermine the health and civility of this planet?  How much longer can we sit back and not scream out enough?  America has led the campaign to deny the effects of global warming and undermine attempts at dealing with it.  America has invaded a sovereign state without the sanction of the international community and in a second case used its influence to trick and cajole that community into sanctioning another invasion on false premises.  America has overthrown dozens of legitimate governments, many of them democracies, and replaced them with dictatorships or sham democracies committed to carrying out American interests.  America is funding and supplying the holocaust in Gaza.  It is time to stand up and say ‘the Emperor has no clothes.’  The myth of America in no way resembles the reality of America. 

The rest of the world needs to stand up and be counted once and for all.  The United States is not a global hegemon.  While it would take a concerted effort by other powers to face down America in a diplomatic showdown, it is not impossible.  It needs only the political will to do so. 

The U.N. Security Council should mean something.  The very existence of the veto vote should be re-examined.  There needs to be automatic sanctions attached to any Security Council resolution.  Now is the time to replace the roar of cannon with the reasoned voice of debate.