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FRAT BOYS RULE THE WORLD
BY MARK MARFORD
We are at a crossroads and all you really have to do is
step away for just a short period of time, break away from the
daily new grind and the everyday wars and the talking-head
alarmism and the commonplace unrests and the wagging fingers
of hissing foreign leaders and then come back, and you can see
it clearly.
It dawns on you rather suddenly, especially if you’ve just
taken a relatively lengthy hiatus/vacation where the pressures of
the world all deliciously fell away and then you calmly peel your
suntan and open the paper and scan the wires like you always
have and suddenly it hits you, smacks your anima like a brick:
There are no peacemakers in the world right now.
Crusty macho hawks run the planet like never before in
our generation. Violent money-addled males with far too much
power and far too little perspective are in charge of far too many
corporations and lobbies and governments.
You are appalled. You are saddened.You are blackened
at the karmic level. You realize you don't have nearly enough
wine or painkillers or warm socks for the imminent nuclear
winter.
But you are not naive. You are not stupid. You realize
this is essentially the same as it ever was. It's a tragic cliché:
Wars and violence and hatred and injustice and cruelty and
angry old men ordering their tribes to kill each other in the name
of oil and money and land and dogma. Film at 11.
Yet not all is bleak and bitter and Bush, of course.
Plenty of good remains, you tell yourself. It’s just your average,
bitter, ultraconservative, anti-everything leadership right now
and while it certainly feels more sinister and savage than usual
that’s just the way the cultural pendulum swings, you tell yourself
hopefully, trying to shrug it off.
But then again, not.Then again, it all seems much worse
than it has in your lifetime. You don’t want to believe it but you
look and look and cringe and wince and it's all renewed nuclear
strategy this and bloody Israel conflict that, heightened tensions
with Iraq here and brutal civil war there and far too much hey get
your holy hands off me, Father, just about everywhere.
You can feel it. We’re aching to annihilate Iraq. Craving
some nuclear explosions in any of seven newly minted enemies.
Actively avoiding the Middle East conflict like a plague, terrified
our alliances could be imperiled, our oil interests compromised,
Bush family friendships endangered.
World War III will not be two egomaniacal superpowers
battling for supremacy and bragging rights. It will be scattershot
and bewildering, a hundred different battles fought on a hundred
different fronts for a thousand ever-shifting reasons, each and
every one twisted and distorted by regulation GOP spin doctors
who somehow convince the bulk of the populace that it's some
how patriotic to be cavity searched and fingerprinted and beaten
with a stick when you buy groceries.
We are so close. We are on the verge of something very
dangerous and irreversible. You can hear Dick Cheney breath
ing hard, just aching to press The Button. The human animal
is capable of staggering atrocities and deadly choices and the
ROGER HAYES
thick-necked frat boys in charge right now are the most darkly
capable we’ve suffered in decades.
No one is preaching peace. No one striving for genuine
camaraderie or balance or compromise. And too few of us
seem willing to believe that 9/11 has mutated into a brutish
hollow excuse for the Bush administration to perpetuate a war
for oil and to proclaim new enemies and to chip away at the
Constitution and your civil liberties in the name of increased
federal control and fewer dissenting voices.
And you have two choices, given your rather privileged
American status allowing such choices at all: You can either
quickly close the paper and turn off the TV and thank goddess
that the world is variegated and colorful enough that you can
live in relative happiness without having your soul pummeled
on a daily basis by people who seemingly have zero connection
to any sort of healthy spiritual reality or perspective. You can
detach. Spin down. Avoid.
Or you can carefully dive back in, try to make sense of
it all, get informed and slog through the macho muck and try to
keep your soul from getting overly tainted, and make a valiant
attempt to make it through the day without slapping both hands
to your head and screaming and jumping in front of a speeding
ideology.
All the while realizing that if there’s one thing the world
needs right now, it’s positivism and laughter and good sex and
connective energy and an enlightened populace to counteract
the forces that would drag us down to cesspools of thin-lipped .. /o
white-knuckle rage.
<
Too simplistic? Too naive? Hardly. Peace is always
much braver and more difficult than war. Just try it.
Mark Morford is a SF Gate columnist. His article was
posted on the Independent Media Center webcast news.
DOGS OF WAR
BY JOHN CORCORAN
During the days immediately following 9/11, once Shrub
was back from his flight to avoid whatever hit squads may have
been after him, all we heard was how America — in the form of
G.W Bush — was going to get rid of the terrorists. It seemed
like The Bush Posse knew right away that Osama bin Laden’s
hit squads were the varmints.
The Congress sided with Bush and gave him the green
light to summon forth the dogs of war. Special Ops came from
the shadows and into the media’s spotlight. The CIA was
unleashed to do what they do so well — assassinate human
beings — if they can only locate targets. The bombers took to
the less-than-friendly skies, dropping million dollar ordinance, as
if it were confetti, upon war tom Afghanistan. Airstrikes were the
order of the night as bomb after bomb rained down.
Somewhere along the way, Osama and his cohorts
became less and less important — giving them time and
opportunity to slip away unscathed. I refuse to believe that
“we” couldn’t find Osama and the upper echelon of Al Qaeda
— not when “they" tracked down Pablo Escobar via some of
their technological tools and had him executed several years
ago. Rather, it is my firm belief that Osama & Company were
permitted to escape in order for Shrub & his Posse to then justify
expanding the so-called War on Terrorism into other countries.
If Bush and his team were serious about terrorists with
global capabilities, why are they still supporting Israel's fascist
government? Why are they supporting the Saudi monarchy
if they are serious about eliminating terrorists with global
capabilities? Why are they supporting China’s government?
Now, if it appears Shrub & Company have set their
sights on Iraq — with yet another villain , Saddam Hussein
(will he escape to join up with Osama & Company in San
Diego, where they have a corporate resort and spa?) — and the
“Axis of Evil." Shrub lost in Afghanistan because there are still
terrorists galore.
I am beginning to believe that G.W. Bush wants to rule
the world and see his reflection in every pond. Didn't another
generation have their wanna be emperors: Adolf Hitler, Joey
Stalin, and others? Are we expected to stand idly by and watch
while America’s leader, by coup, conquers the planet —all under
the guise of a war of terrorism? Are Americans really as stupid
as we appear to the outside community?
I
I have been giving a good deal of thought lately to
repression and its cousin oppression. It is difficult to estimate
how many of us engage in these inane practices due to their
pervasive practices in our day-to-day existences. How often
does one or more member's repressive and/or oppressive acts
disturb a household’s tranquillity? Surely, crimes are raw
examples of someone repressing and oppressing another.
Nevertheless it is the repression and oppression taking place in
the Middle East that currently threatens the fragile stability of the
world.
I read an article in The Wall Street Journal about Shrub’s
philosophy when it comes to shaping his notion of foreign policy.
It seems 'El Presidente’ carries grudges, which guide his foreign
policy decisions. It appears Shrub harbors ill towards Chairman
Arafat because Arafat refused to grant him an audience when
he was on a trip to find spiritual redemption in the Christians’
Holy Land before his announcement to grab America’s highest
elected office. Therefore, instead of engaging the Jews and
Arabs in discourse, he has chosen to straddle the fence and
permit the Jews free rein to slay and oppress their Arab cousins.
I failed to see the sense in Shrub sending his VP to the
Middle East to capitalize on the bones his father made during
the Persian Gulf War. Yet, at the same time, Shrub kept his
mouth shut as Israel’s government and soldiers terrorized the
Palestinians. When will it dawn on Shrub that the rest of the
Arab nations care about the fate of their Palestinian kinfolk?
It is difficult for me to understand how stupid Shrub is and
yet call himself the President of the United States of America.
It is even more difficult for me to grasp why the lackadaisical
American public gives Shrub such high approval ratings for
his handling of the post-9/11 reaction, which is nothing shy of
revenge on its most banal level.
I remember Shrub standing beside some emergency
worker at the ruins of what was once the World Trade Center
complex just days after the attacks Shrub seemed happy to
be among his peers: bent on revenge. His words that day only
underscored his intentions of revenge and hatred. How can this
child of privilege have such hatred for his species as well as for
the planet in general?
Recently I was speaking with a Native American friend
who is a respected elder among the Iroquois people As I was
going on about the plight of the Palestinians she all but leapt
through the monitored and recorded telephone call to jump on
my perceptions of repression, oppression and alienation.
Quite suddenly I felt like the “paleskin” that I am as
she berated me, a first generation American. She let me know
in no uncertain terms how Turtle Island was wrenched from the
325 Native American nations by European and Asian invaders.
She angrily told me that “my government" had made, signed,
and then broken hundreds of treaties — attacking me as if I am
to blame or that I could restore the stolen lands to the surviving
Native Americans.
After we hung up, I began pondering how our species
began on the plains of what is now Ethiopia and how we have
migrated across the planet overflowing continents, wreaking
havoc wherever we go. The cycle of repression, oppression,
slaughter, forced exile, and the so politically correct term of
ethnic cleansing must end in order that we, as a species, may
finally mature. What better place to put an end to this timeless
nonsense than on the sands of Palestine/lsrael?
As the infamous Rodney King once remarked ten years
ago, “Can’t we all just get along?" In order to establish a solid
foundation for a lasting peace in Palestine/lsrael, the Jews must
return the lands they stole to the Palestinians.lnstead of expand
ing their population horizontally, the Jews must build high-rises
to house its population. The Palestinians could then farm their
plots of land and feed the entire populace of Palestine/lsrael.
When all is said and done, the Jews are actually uninvited
guests in Palestine, therefore, why should Jews hold the lion's
share of real estate?
If the Jews refuse to end their illegal and immoral
occupation they should be banished from the world of nations
— sanctioned in compliance if necessary. When will Shrub and
our government grasp that Israel is no friend of America’s until it
restores to the Arabs the very human rights Jews were deprived
of by the fascists in Europe and Russia?
Imagine what a model of tribal and ethnic cooperation
Palestine/lsrael could be for the rest of humanity. All it will take
is respect and the mutual admiration for the fine art of living life
to its fullest potential.
John Corcoran has been a prisoner in Virginia State
Prison for 20 years He is a regular correspondent with John
Paul Barrett of Astoria (author of Sea Stories) and this is his
debut in the NCTE, which he receives in prison.