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.

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. 

The longer Gaza is under siege and more Palestinians, particularly civilians, die, the broader the effects will be felt.  George Bush asked ‘why do they hate us?’  Are we really that simple?  The entire ‘War on Terror’ has been a recruiting tool for militants and has undermined any hope of a peaceful or successful resolution of the problems.  The West, twiddling its thumbs and launching platitudes in the media about the sanctity of human life, has sent a clear message to the Muslim world and to Palestinians in particular:  ‘You are on your own.’  The United States has firmly stated in act and word that Israeli deaths matter; Palestinian deaths do not.  Well if they didn’t hate us before they damn well should now. 

What should be of great concern to us is that the support of the murders in Gaza are being done in our name.  I am murdering Palestinians through my government’s support of Israel and I don’t want to.  Like me most of you who read this know that we do not really govern ourselves.   We need to admit to ourselves that our democracy is a sham and admit to the world that what the United States and its allies, including Canada, are exporting to the developing world is not democracy but capitalist exploitation.  It is the new colonialism.  If any of you are in doubt on this you need only look to Hamas.  When elections were held in the Palestinian territories Hamas won a clear victory in a clean and fair election according to international observers.  But Hamas was not the government that the United States and Israel had chosen for the Palestinians to elect and so Hamas was immediately denounced, vilified and through the collaboration of Mahmoud Abbas prevented from governing.  Israel and the United States then created an internal Palestinian civil war backing Abbas to try to eliminate Hamas.  While the attempt did not fully succeed, it has created even greater suffering for the Palestinian people. 

 As long as peoples around the world believe the myth that we govern ourselves, they will hate us because of what they perceive as our callous brutality toward them.  Our governments by their actions and their lies about democracy are endangering each and every one of us.  Most of us who followed international affairs knew that September 11 was coming.  We didn’t know exactly when or where or how.  But we knew that a major terrorist attack on the continental United States was inevitable.  Many of us, myself included, were surprised that the kill count was not higher for we had expected a biological or chemical attack.  By our failure to understand the problems and deal with them in an effective way we are guaranteeing that it will happen again and this time perhaps it will be worse.  If we are going to murder innocent people and deny the right to exist to whole populations; if we are going to condone mass murder or even genocide by our failure to effectively confront it; if we are going to say that this person because of this identifier is more important than that person because of that identifier; then we sew the seeds of sorrow and grief for all humankind.

Our Idiot King scoured the earth looking for the nasty people.  Like wheat in a field he mowed down all who stood before him hoping to find those few evil grains.  Many thousands of people died in far off places with funny names.  But that did not matter.  Only the few thousand of the entitled people mattered.  The Idiot King would show the nasty people how wrong it was to kill innocent people by killing anyone who looked even vaguely like them.  The Idiot King came upon a man named Saddam who had known his father in a place called Iraq.  “Saddam is the leader of the nasty people” said the Idiot King.  “He has magical weapons of mass destruction and he is preparing to use them against our people.  He must be stopped.”  And so the people told their King to send his armies forth and slay the evil Saddam.  A great military leader called Rumsfeld who once had been a friend of the evil Saddam and had called him a great leader told all the peoples of the world that he knew just where to find the magical weapons.  But when they got to Iraq the diabolic Saddam had thrown away all the magical weapons just to make the Idiot King look like an idiot.  The Idiot King was furious.  He needed no help from Saddam to look like an idiot he was quite capable of achieving that on his own.  In his righteous fury, for the Idiot King was very righteous and was particularly loved by those who succumb to speaking in tongues and laying hands on televisions to be healed, the Idiot King hanged the evil Saddam in true Texas fashion, as something called a reality show. 

The people gathered together on the fourth anniversary of the the Idiot King’s inauguration and crowned him King for another four years.  They knew that the evil Saddam had tricked the poor Idiot King.  But though Saddam was one of the nasty people because he prayed on Friday, the people of the Idiot King came to know that he had not been one of those who had attacked them.  And so the Idiot King convinced the little beaver who lived to the north of his land to attack a group of people known as students in a place called Afghanistan.  The little beaver was happy to help because it wanted the Idiot King to like it and not roll over on it in bed.  Apparently there was some perverse relationship between the little beaver and the Idiot King and the little beaver wanted to make sure it could be on top.  The little beaver sent its little army forth to fight the nasty students who had let the leader of the attack on the Idiot King’s people crash at their place.  They tried and tried and pretended to be just like the people of the Idiot King but the nasty students fought back which was definitely unfair.  So the little beaver found a clone of the Idiot King from a place very much like Texas, called Alberta.  And the little beaver’s Idiot idolized the Idiot King from below and sent more and more of his armies to fight for the interests of the Idiot King.  Even in the face of rising evidence of the futility of the task. 

Though Saddam was dead the Idiot King could not quiet the quarrelsome people of Iraq.  They resisted and the Idiot King came to believe that another people were helping Saddam’s people against him and so the Idiot King told his people that they had magical weapons too.  The people had told him to attack Saddam when they thought that he had those weapons.  Why would they not respond the same if he said these new people from a place called Iran had them too.  He was right for he knew the thoughts of his people were as simple and credulous as his.  The people of the land rose up and railled against the nasty people of Iran.  Crying to the world that they were evil and must surrender their magical weapons or be destroyed.  Especially those who spoke from a little glowing box called a television (see above for reference to the healing powers of this box).  And so boys and girls the Idiot King knew what he must do.  He must attack.  That is what the people wanted.  The talking heads in the box said so. 

Now the Idiot King had to move fast.  His time was almost over.  On January 20, 2009 he knew he had to go back to his village and resume his role as a simple village idiot once more.  No longer would he prance across the country and around the world as its most important idiot.  So with Christmas approaching he decided to send a gift to the nasty people of Iran, a whole bunch of flying machines full of bombs and people who would float down from the sky and others who would land on the shores of Iran from ships while more walked or rode across the border from Iraq.  Thus would end the interference of the nasty people of Iran and their arrogant leader with the name the Idiot King could not pronounce because it was multi-syllabic.  He would destroy the magical weapons and his people would always be safe. 

And so the Idiot King laid down his crown and went back to his village to sit back and behold all his idiocy.  Smiling on his porch he heard how everyone in the neighbourhood of Iraq and Iran began to follow his example and attack each other.  Soon places farther away began to see the wisdom of the little village idiot and they sent forth their armies to do battle.   Then someone used the magical weapons and there our story ends with the former Idiot King, now just a village idiot again, sitting on his porch basked in the glow of a great mushroom cloud.  A hot dry wind blowing over him.  In the distance can be heard the death shriek of the spirit of hope. 

“But teacher, what was the difference between these people that they hated each other so?”  “Our greatest minds have been unable to answer that question for they were all known as human beings.  They were all the same.  They had two arms, two legs, two eyes.  All of them had red blood pumped through their bodies by a heart.  But for some reason they each convinced themselves that they were better than their neighbours.”  “Will we ever have a World War 3 here teacher?”  “No children.  No.  For whenever we get too full of ourselves we just look up at that glowing cinder in the night sky that once was a beautiful blue planet and we are washed with the gift of humility and know that all life is precious and no problem is insurmountable and so we talk to those who disagree with us rather than fight.” 

The End.

Netanyahu’s partners are even more scary than he.  A leading rabbi in the Shas Party in a recent sermon called teachers in secular schools “asses” and said they taught only foolishness.  He said that they knew nothing and only taught things like history and nonsense about world nations.  And you can guess what portfolio in a Netanyahu coalition cabinet the Shas Party wants.  That’s right, education.

Some of the players within Likud itself are threats to humanity.  Former Chief of Staff Moshe Yaalon is suggesting the assassination of Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to stop Iran’s nuclear program.  He believes strongly in Jewish colonization of the West Bank and Gaza, opposing any form of autonomy or self-government for the Palestinians.  He has also been warned not to travel in several Western European countries as he has been identified internationally as a war criminal and may face arrest.  The pièce de résistance is Moshe Feiglin.  Some Israelis have compared him to Adolph Hitler.  Feiglin calls for all out genocidal ethnic cleansing in the occupied territories and a holy war against Islam, the goal of which would be the annihilation of all 1.5 billion Muslims. 

A backdrop to this is the recent Israeli Defense establishment paper calling for preparations for a military strike against Iran if the U. S. and Iran negotiate a deal.  Israel will not tolerate Iran moving forward on nuclear development, even if it is arguably for domestic purposes.  The IAEA has said Iran is not currently capable of producing a weapon but may be within 1 to 2 years. 

None of this bodes well for peace in the Middle East any time soon.  The new president of the United States will have some difficult decisions to make.  Advising him will be his White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel who in Gulf War 1 volunteered for the Israeli Defense Force rather than fighting with U. S. forces.  During that time Benyamin Netanyahu was also prime minister of Israel.  Caught in the middle once more are the Palestinian people.  Left with little or no hope as the most powerful state on earth supports an enemy bound to their eternal subjugation at best and their obliteration at worst.  I wonder how any of us would react in such a position.