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War of the Worlds
London, 1898; Kabul, 2009
In other words, the United States may now be represented in the Afghan countryside, as it already is in the tribal areas on the Pakistani side of the border, mainly by Predators and their even more powerful cousins, Reapers, unmanned aerial vehicles with names straight out of a sci-fi film about implacable aliens. If you happen to be an Afghan villager in some underpopulated part of that country where the U.S. has set up small bases -- two of which were almost overrun recently -- they will be gone and "America" will instead be soaring overhead. We're talking about planes without human beings in them tirelessly scanning the ground with their cameras for up to 22 hours at a stretch. Launched from Afghanistan but flown by pilots thousands of miles away in the American West, they are armed with two to four Hellfire missiles or the equivalent in 500-pound bombs.
To see Earth from the heavens, that's the classic viewpoint of the superior being or god with the ultimate power of life and death. Zeus, that Greek god of gods, used lightning bolts to strike down humans who offended him. We use missiles and bombs. Zeus had the knowledge of a god. We have "intelligence," often fallible (or score-settling). His weapon of choice destroyed one individual. Ours take out anyone in the vicinity.
He made his decisions from Mount Olympus; we make ours from places like Creech Air Force Base outside Las Vegas, and Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson, Arizona. Those about whom we make life-and-death decisions, as they scurry below or carry on as best they can, have -- like any beings faced with the gods -- no recourse or appeal. Seen on screens, they are, to us, distant, grainy figures, hardly larger than ants. This is what implacable means.
Soothing the Children
And none of this strikes us as strange. Quite the opposite, it represents reasonable policy. Comments like the one quoted above are now commonplace. In the Washington Post, for instance, Rajiv Chandrasekaran recently recorded the thoughts of an anonymous U.S. officer in Afghanistan: "If more forces are not forthcoming to mount counterinsurgency operations in those parts of the province, he concluded, the overall U.S. effort to stabilize Kandahar -- and by extension, the rest of Afghanistan -- will fail. 'We might as well pack our bags and go home… and just keep a few Predators flying overhead to whack the al-Qaeda guys who return.'"
We know as well that, in the Washington debate over what to do next in the Afghan War, Vice President Joe Biden has come down on the side of "counterterrorism." He wants to put more emphasis on those drones and on special operations forces, while focusing more on Pakistan (though without dropping U.S. troop levels in Afghanistan). At the same time, the Pentagon has just created an Afghan Hands program and a Pakistan-Afghanistan Coordination Cell, two units focused on improving military performance in the Af-Pak theater of operations over the next three to five years. All of this represents the norm for military and civilian leaders who, whatever their differences, believe wars that go on for endless years thousands of miles from home are the sine qua non of American safety.
And none of this seems less than reasonable to us, especially given the much publicized "success" of the drone assassination program in taking out Taliban and al-Qaeda leadership figures. What does strike us as strange, though, is that the locals, whether in Pakistan or Afghanistan, find all this upsetting. A recent U.S. poll in Pakistan typically reported "that 76 percent of the respondents were opposed to Pakistan partnering with the United States on missile attacks against extremists by American drone aircraft."
Then again, we take it for granted that the people of such backward lands are strange, touchy types. Not like us. In George Packer's recent New Yorker profile of Richard Holbrooke, the president's special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, there were some classic lines reflecting this.
Packer describes Holbrooke on a flying visit to Afghanistan this way: "He seemed less like a visiting emissary than like a proconsul inspecting a vast operation over which he commanded much of the authority." When that same proconsul makes it out of impoverished, shattered Afghanistan (where the U.S. Embassy, at one point, had to deny he had engaged in a "shouting match" with Afghan President Hamid Karzai) and into Pakistan, a fractious, disturbed, unnerved country of genuine significance, he packs the proconsul away and, according to Packer, becomes Washington's cajoler-in-chief. As Packer writes, "In moments when I overheard him talking to Pakistani leaders, he took the solicitous tone of someone reassuring an unstable friend. 'It's like dealing with psychologically abused children,' a member of his staff said. 'You don't focus on the screaming and the violence -- you just hug them tighter.'"
So, if Afghan and Pakistani peasants in the mountainous tribal borderlands are so many ants or rabbits, Pakistani leaders are "children." It matters little that Holbrooke has a reputation himself as an egotist and a screamer who demands his way. (Among diplomats back in the 1990s when he was negotiating in the former Yugoslavia, one joke went: What's the most dangerous place in the Balkans? The answer: Between Dick Holbrooke and a camera.)
Packard reports Holbrooke's disappointment over the amount of aid Congress is ponying up for Pakistan ($7.5 billion) and, to add to his set of frustrations, there's this: "Because of Pakistan's sensitivity about its sovereignty, he had been unable to persuade its military to allow American helicopters to bring aid to the refugees," who had been driven from the Swat Valley by the Taliban and a Pakistani military offensive.
Let's think about that for a moment, especially since it's a commonplace of American reporting from the region and so reflects official thinking on the subject. Karen DeYoung and Pamela Constable, for instance, write in a Washington Post piece: "Pakistanis, who are extremely sensitive about national sovereignty, oppose allowing foreign troops on their soil and have protested U.S. missile attacks launched from unmanned aircraft against suspected Taliban and al-Qaeda targets inside Pakistan." In fact, let's reverse the situation.
Imagine that, after the next Katrina, Pakistani military helicopters based on a Pakistani aircraft carrier in the Gulf of Mexico are preparing to deliver supplies to New Orleans. Of course, you also have to imagine, minimally, that the Pakistanis are in the process of building a three-quarters of a billion dollar fortress of an embassy in Washington D.C. (to be guarded by armed Pakistani private contractors), that Pakistani drones are regularly cruising the Sierra Nevada mountains, launching missiles at residences in small towns below, that the Pakistanis are offering billions of dollars in desperately needed aid to a hamstrung American government and military in return for not complaining too much about whatever they might want to do in the United States, that top Pakistani military and civilian officials are constantly shuttling through Washington demanding "cooperation," and finally that Pakistani reporters covering all this regularly point to an "extreme American sensitivity about national sovereignty," as illustrated by a bizarre unwillingness to accept Pakistani aid delivered in Pakistani military helicopters. Then again, you know those Americans: combustible as spoiled kids.
Such reversals are, of course, inconceivable and so, nearly impossible to imagine. Today, were a Pakistani military helicopter to approach the U.S. coast with anything on board and refuse to turn back, it would undoubtedly be shot down. So much for American touchiness.
But here's a question that comes to mind: Why is it that Americans like Holbrooke seem to feel so at home so far away from home? Why, for instance, do U.S. military spokespeople so regularly refer to our indigenous enemies in Iraq as "anti-Iraqi forces," and in Afghanistan as "anti-Afghan forces"? Why does our military in Iraq speak of the neighboring Iranians as "foreign forces" without ever including our own military in that category?
Resistant as Washington may be to the thought, the obvious has recently been crossing some influential minds. Amid the debate over war options -- more troops, more training of the Afghan military and police, more drone attacks in Pakistan, or some mix-and-match version of all of the above, but certainly not a withdrawal from the country -- it has become more common to express concern that deploying up to 40,000 more U.S. troops might create too big an American "footprint." As Peter Baker and Thom Shanker of the New York Times wrote in a profile of Robert Gates, the secretary of defense "has repeatedly declared his concern that more troops would make Americans look increasingly like occupiers."
After almost eight years of war, only now does the danger that we might "look increasingly like occupiers" rise to the surface. Since "occupier" is a role Americans just can't imagine occupying, let's consider a fantasy alternative instead, one perhaps easier to imagine: What if it turns out that we are the Martians?
Crushing the Rabbits
The first Martian invasion of this planet -- they landed near the town of Woking in England and, before they were done, laid waste to London -- took place in 1898, thanks to the Tasmanians, and if you don't think that's worth considering more than a century later, think again. In fact, General McChrystal, President Obama, Proconsul Holbrooke, as you're doing your reassessments of the Afghan War, do I have a book for you.
I was perhaps 12 years old when I first read it -- under the covers by flashlight long after I was supposed to be asleep -- and it scared the hell out of me. Even now, when alien invasion plots are a dime a dozen, I have a hunch that it could do the same for you. I'm talking, of course, about H.G. Wells's The War of the Worlds. If you remember, that other Wells, Orson, successfully redid it in a 1938 radio version in which the fictional Martians landed in New Jersey, and many perfectly real New Yorkers were reportedly unnerved. (The 2005 Steven Spielberg movie version, the second film made from Wells's classic, had all the expectable modern pyrotechnics, but none of the punch of the book.)
Back in the era when Wells wrote his book, invasion novels were already commonplace in England, with the part of the implacable, inhuman invader normally played by the Germans. Wells, on the other hand, almost single-handedly created the alien invader genre, arming his brainy monsters from the dying planet Mars with poison gas and a laser-like heat ray, and then supplying them with giant walking tripods (think elevated tanks without treads) -- all prefiguring the weaponry of the world wars to come (and even of wars beyond our own).
However, nothing in the book -- not the weaponry, not even the destruction -- is more terrifying than the attitude of the Martians ("intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic"), for this is one of the great role-reversal novels of all time. They are implacable exactly because they see the English as we would see rabbits, or as English colonists in Australia did indeed see the Tasmanians, a people they all but exterminated with hardly a twinge of regret. In fact, that's where The War of the Worlds evidently began. It seems that Wells's brother Frank brought up the extermination of the Tasmanians one day and so launched the idea for a book still in print 111 years later. Evidently, the question that came to Wells's mind was this: What if someone arrived in England with the same view of the superior English that the English had had of the Tasmanians, and the sort of advanced weaponry and technology capable of turning that attitude into a grim reality?
As his unnamed central character comments in the first pages of the novel: "The Tasmanians, in spite of their human likeness, were entirely swept out of existence in a war of extermination waged by European immigrants, in the space of fifty years. Are we such apostles of mercy as to complain if the Martians warred in the same spirit?"
The Martians (actually transmogrified Englishmen) advance through the English countryside and into London, frying everything in sight in a version of what, in the next century, would come to be known as total war -- that is, war visited not just on the warriors, but on the civilian population. At the same time, they harvest humans and feed off their blood. In the coming century, there would indeed be Martians aplenty on this planet, more than ready to feed off the blood of its inhabitants.
General McChrystal, President Obama, Proconsul Holbrooke, The War of the Worlds, old as it is, offers a rare example of how to imagine us from the point of view of them. I urge you to study it with the intensity you now apply to counterinsurgency and counterterrorism strategies. After all, in our own way, we could be considered the Martians of the twenty-first century and (how typical!) we don't even know it.
Unlike Wells's Martians, who arrived on this planet without a propaganda department or a care in the world about English "hearts and minds," we landed in Afghanistan talking a people-friendly game, and we've never stopped, even if much of the palaver has been for home consumption. And yet during the first eight years of our Afghan War, as General McChrystal recently admitted in his 66-page report to the secretary of defense, we could hardly have exhibited a more profound ignorance of the Afghan world, or a more Martian lack of interest in finding out about it, even as we were blowing Afghans away.
Now, the Pentagon is attempting to correct that by setting up a new intelligence unit "to provide military and civilian officials in Afghanistan with detailed analysis of the country's tribal, political and religious dynamics." As Robert Dreyfuss of the Nation's Dreyfuss Report, points out, however, this unit will be based at a center in Tampa, Florida; we will, that is, now study the Afghans as anthropologists might once have studied the Trobriand Islanders. Then we will process that information thousands of miles away, just as our "pilots" do.
Perhaps it's time to study ourselves instead. What if, from an Afghan point of view, we really are Wells's Martians? Then, it's not a matter of counterinsurgency versus counterterror, or more American troops versus more American-trained Afghan ones, or even nation-building versus stabilization. What if -- and this is an un-American thought -- there is no American solution to Afghanistan? What if no alternative, or combination of alternatives, will work? What if the only thing Martians can effectively do is destroy -- or leave? (Remember, even Wells's aliens finally and involuntary chose to abandon their occupation of England. They died, thanks to bacteria to which they had no immunity.)
What if the Afghans will never see those Predators -- our equivalent of the Martian "tripods" and death rays combined -- as their protectors? After all, our drones represent the technologically advanced, the alien, and the death-dealing along with, as Toronto Sun columnist Eric Margolis wrote recently, the whole panoply of our "B-1 heavy bombers, F-15s, F-16s, F-18s, Apache and AC-130 gunships, heavy artillery, tanks, radars, killer drones, cluster bombs, white phosphorus, rockets, and space surveillance." Even our propaganda, dropped from the air (as if from another universe), can kill. Recently, an Afghan girl died after being hit by a box of propaganda leaflets, released from a British plane, that "failed to come apart." Her heart and mind may be stilled, but rest assured, those of her parents, her relatives, and others who knew her, undoubtedly aren't.
Here's a little exchange, as reported at a New York Times blog from an alien "encounter" in another land. A U.S. Army major, Guy Parmeter, had it near Samara in Iraq's Salahuddin province in 2004 ("[I]t made me think: how are we perceived, who are we to them?"):
Maj. Guy Parmeter: "Seen any foreign fighters?"
Iraqi farmer: "Yes, you."
Sometimes it takes 66 pages to report on a war. Sometimes a century old novel can do the trick. Sometimes you can write tomes about the "mistakes" made in, and the "tragedy" of, an American counterinsurgency war in a distant land. Sometimes a simple "yes, you" will do.
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Show All- U.S. missile attacks launched from unmanned aircraft against suspected Taliban and al-Qaeda targets -
If you understand that al-Qaeda and the Taliban are announced enemies of the US in the DAFT war (Defense against Future Terrorism), then it is easy to understand this:
To stop future terrorism, you kill potential future terrorists BEFORE they 'attack us'. In other words, the military strategy is to kill people who have done nothing yet, because that prevents future terrorism (I point out the hundreds if not thousands of children killed in AfPak who were not even alive when 9/11 occurred. Future terrorism prevented!)
Q: How do you recognize a future terrorist?
A: Posthumously.
When Progressives get together and focus on bringing the insane Public Law 107-40 into public discussion, we might just make progress toward peace.
Nothing else has worked in 8 years, I point out, and nothing else will work.
well written, sir...
"Why do you look at the speck that is in your brother's eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?"
This is a deeply troubling and insightful piece. Too bad Obama won't read it and take it to heart. Let's face facts. The U.S. has become the world's out of control bully, and the ignorance and insensitivity of our masters and the American electorate guarantee that nothing will change.
My profound thanks to Tom Engelhardt. This piece confirms what a great commentator he is.
Jim Shea
Packer describes Holbrooke on a flying visit to Afghanistan this way: "He seemed less like a visiting emissary than like a proconsul inspecting a vast operation over which he commanded much of the authority."
Let me return once again to Michael Herr's description of people like Holbrooke in his great Vietnam War book, "Dispatches". He called them "closet throatstickers", posturing cowards stoned out of their minds on their own power, running around like ants who think it was they who created the world. Obama is the same, absolutely no different. And therein lies the seed of our eventual and inevitable defeat in Afghanistan or anywhere else we think we can swagger into and kick ass. The stupidity of the U.S. government and military becomes more mind numbing almost by the day.
u know what i'm always reminded of with this neo-cons, these "generals" , these pundits, these "statescraft" people?
they are best represented by those "macho" characters in some movies :
particularly , if everyone remembers the movie series "ALIEN"..
particularly the second "ALIENS" and 3rd one.
where the "Macho" lieutenant's authority comes from having "two battlefield experiences" -- SIMULATED ...and "this one"
as they were flying down to the X planet with Lots of Aliens....
and then he FREEZES when confronted with REAL decisions in REAL situations...and his best achievement is to get KNOCKED cold when he gets hit on the head with some box...and later on commits suicide to save himself and his friend from being taken by the aliens when he's cornered....
and the ordinary low-class Sigourney Weaver has to do the hard work ALL OVER AGAIN
after the corporate "warlords" botched YET another "conquest" adventure.
A very good article.
However, I suspect Mr. Engelhardt is wrong about McChrystal, Obama, and Holbrooke being able to study anything with "intensity". I think they only study things to shape the issue in order to make it fit their pre-ordained conclusions. They probably feel a little frustrated that the Empire has to keep justifying what it does.
It probably is also tiring for them to have to pretend that they believe in democracy and equal justice.
The use of drones would be justified if and only if it were restricted to taking out banksters suspected of fraud and other crimes as they roam Wall Street and the surrounding area. Though a case can be made that it could be extended to insurance company CEOs.
Another great Tom Englehardt piece. Here's a couple of spin off thoughts.
First, Steven Coll's fine book "Ghost Wars" detailing the tortured relationships between Pakistan and the United States from the Carter presidency through that of Bill Clinton discusses the advent of unmanned drone technology towards its end. A vigorous internal debate raged between the Pentagon and the CIA over just whose finger would be on the button when such roving long distance assassination platforms became operational. Would it be the military (because Reapers and Predators are clearly weapons of war growing out of the DARPA military appropriations pipeline), or would it be our paramilitary spooks from Langley (because the Hellfire strikes upon nongovernmental evil doers would be deeply classified, based upon intelligence information gleaned by NSA chatter sweeps and CIA snitches, and not preceded by any pesky procedural hurdles like a formal Congressional declaration of war)?
Clinton left office leaving this turf battle issue up for grabs for his successor (assuming it would be President Al Gore). The Bush/Cheney White House appears to have resolved and mooted the matter by deliberately blurring beyond meaningful recognition (and accountability) the distinction between soldier and spy. The drones are neither fish nor fowl but both, the perfect hi tech "weapon of choice" for waging an undeclared, borderless, endless "global war on terror" from high above the third world landscape. There is always deniability no matter how atrocious the end result. The Pentagon and the CIA have joint responsibility. Therefore no single human being or collective entity can be held squarely accountable for tragic errors which will inevitably occur.
Second, I read somewhere that a really unique feature of the British conquest and colonization of the island of Tasmania was the peculiar cultural trait of the white settlers when it came to the matter of genocide. The indigenous Tasmanian population was hunted for sport - very literally - as though the locals were subhuman wild game, until they were totally exterminated by the end of the 19th century.
On the scale of racist barbarism from the days of international slave trafficking and European colonial pillage, the ghastly story of Tasmania holds a very special place.
Bill from Saginaw
I didn't know about Tasmania and the British hunting of locals but it doesn't surprize me. Here in the good old USA, until we began to be "concerned" about germs on bones of dead people, native American femurs and other leg bones were prized in New York City as walking sticks. They were light weight and strong and, of course, were polished and varnished to a pleasing appearance. Humans, it seems, can rationalize any cruelty if the bulk of society accepts it and can find some use out of it.
"A new survey shows the United States is the most admired country..."
Admired for what is still kinda murky... our economy? Health care system? Class divide? Our ability to blow up anybody who doesn't say they admire the USA the most? Our refusal to lift a finger to thwart Global Warming? Mountaintop mining? Illegal spying? Gitmo? Torture? The fact that most of us spend most of our time trying to figure out ways to screw each other over?
Anyway, who cares? We're THE MOST ADMIRED COUNTRY IN THE WORLD! So, no reason to change a blessed f@#king thing.
Ya hear that Iraq? Afghanistan? Pakistan? We're the MOST ADMIRED, now shut up and do what the most admired tells you to do...
An excellent and informed essay, as always, by Tom Engelhardt. I do question the following sentence: "All of this represents the norm for military and civilian leaders who, whatever their differences, believe wars that go on for endless years thousands of miles from home are the sine qua non of American safety." I very much doubt that these US "leaders" believe this is about American safety and instead are quite aware that the US presence in the Middle East is about one agenda only: the control of the vast oil and gas resources of the region. Recall that the Bush/Cheney thugs initially termed their Iraq invasion as Operation Iraqi Liberation--OIL, but quickly changed it to Operation Iraqi Freedom. A Freudian slip of the truth. And VP Cheney's still secret energy task force had a singular focus--one document of which has emerged: a map of Iraqi oil fields. The oligarch's political managers and their lapdog media will play on the al Qaeda and Taliban and "terrorist" fear and threat themes for public consumption forever but the reality of the agenda and the shop talk they do secretly is focused on resources, control, power, greed by any means necessary, as becomes visible very often when holes in the propaganda curtain appear.
And never forget that neither Iraq or Afghanistan had any direct connection to the events of 9-11 and that whatever "terrorists" existed back then, their numbers have multiplied by many factors by the murders and tortures and mayhem that the US
has inflicted on millions in the last 8 years.
Maj. Guy Parmeter: "Seen any foreign fighters?"
Iraqi farmer: "Yes, you."
=======
and, novel, 66 pages, or one, or in any other way:
it is always like the quote above.
and that, in a nutshell is the history of US foreign policy.
How many articles like this have we seen? 100? 200? The number is limitless.
Do they really differ, one from the next? In details, surely, but in essence, we've been reading the same thing for the last 20/30 years.
This is what passes for anti-establishment analysis, I guess. But, it doesn't seem to be going anywhere, and it hasn't gone anywhere, for 20 years.
So, perhaps a new tack is needed. There are two that come to my mind ...
1. The assumption that the US citizenry constitutes an informed electorate that is interested in world events is clearly not founded. This assumption underlies every analysis. It's 100% false. The alternative assumption, that the US citizenry is by and large an uninterested, uninformed, bunch of blockheads seems much closer to the truth. This has profound implications. The lack of interest in drones for example, is staggering. A hundred thousand people will come out to see the Chargers play the Rams, week after week, but to address the issue of drones, forget about it.
This may seem like a joke, or an overstatment, or without consequence. IMHO it is a fundamental reality of complete consequence.
2. The other assumption that underlies every article is that in the US the citizens, the democracy, makes the decisions that matter. This is so absurd I won't even argue it, yet, the fact that the US people are entirely powerless and that 'democracy' is a sham is never addressed. And that issue leads to the obvious, if the 'democracy' is not making the decisions, who in the hell is.
Again, until the issue of who makes the decisions is addressed and understood, we're spinning our wheels. I don't think there is an easy answer here, but I do think there is an answer.
It's unclear how reversing those assumptions would, should, or could change the content or approach of these articles. After all, you're not suggesting TomDispatch take up writing after the Rams and Raiders, right?
So, how does one write about foreign policy to those one assumes would not read of foreign policy? How does one promote action among those would cannot act
--- assuming, as many appear to, that such were the case?
[So, how does one write about foreign policy to those one assumes would not read of foreign policy? How does one promote action among those would cannot act]
Well, that's the conundrum !
First, I think we need fewer articles about the various atrocities of the US military, which we can see every day on the front pages, for crying out loud, and more about the 'conspiracy' or whatever it is that is running the show. I think we need to know about international finance to get our feet on the ground. Without knowing that, I think we're just jiving ... it's impossible to understand what's happening in the world without knowing about the shadow world of finance, and it's not easy to figure it out.
Here's what I'd like to see .... a computer simulation or model that captures all the major flows of goods and services in the world, and also captures all the major financial transactions, currency trade, etc., etc. That is, a computer model of the world economy and finance. Then, we'd have something to work with.
As for promoting action - I'd be happy just to understand things first. Promoting action among the US population is impossible, IMO.
Good article, but I think Tom is missing one of the most important aspects of the getting experience with Predators as stand-off attack and opposition suppression systems in Afghanistan and Pakistan ----- and that is, training for use in LA, NYC and hundreds of other domestic areas ---- once the American people wise-up and revolt to the fact that the alien, detached, ruling-elite corporate/financial EMPIRE that controls 'our' country by hiding behind the facade of its 'owned' two-party, 'Vichy' sham of democracy (or as Dylan Ratigan on MSNBC says, "Corporate Communism") is screwing us blue.
Alan MacDonald
Sanford, Maine
Sioux Rose
I like Tom Engelhardt's use of mythology along with the literary classic, "War of the Worlds" and its allusion to a warlike tribe from Mars heading to earth. That Tom uses these analogies to demonstrate how American troops come off as similar alien forces when they incite invasions of other lands, those with extremely different cultures and ways of life, shows his gift for expanding consciousness. The topics he chooses to write about, and the angles he utilizes often expose readers to items found nowhere else.
Gordon Michael Scallion is an American clairvoyant who publishes a newsletter related to earth changes/events. He authored a book, "Notes from the Cosmos" which covers a lot of ground. One chapter in particular relates to the planet Mars. He alleges that it once had a highly developed civilization, and its residents, wary of invaders from other planets built a shield that was largely impenetrable. (This reminds me of the military's interest in 'Vision 2020.') According to Scallion, this shield remained for a number of years, but the new generations had different ideals and wanted to take it down. Not understanding the basis of its technology, their efforts caused the thing to essentially turn into a weapon which purportedly wiped out life on that planet.
Remember a few years ago NASA had photos that showed what looked like waterways on Mars?
What's fascinating is the overlap between mythology--seeing Mars as the war planet, GM Scallion's clairvoyant depiction, and the adage, "He who lives by the sword, dies by it."
America in SO many ways is unwittingly emulating the ethos and pattern of Mars, as taken from the alleged society related by Scallion and/or its mythological equivalent. The bottom line is that a focus on militarism is going to take the empire, OUR empire, down one way or another. Watching Obama carry on in Bush's bombastic footsteps in an interim that in my view constitutes "the last chance to turn around," is beyond tragic. It's as if the darkest fate for the nation's people is being courted. I wish the karma could aim better than the drones at those who have designed destruction for others, thinking themselves gifted with the impunity of gods, like Zeus/Jupiter, as mentioned by Mr. Engelhardt. Striking parallels exist for those with the imagination to make note of them.
I Do Aim As Good As The Universal Plan allows Me to. Unfortunately I have to agree, that I Am very busy nowadays, as there is so much Karma to Be dished out. Everybody wants to take the 'Oh, I didn't know!' card, but My omnienergetic Non-Physical Employer came out with a new directive.
'All Karma will Be dealt with at the timing We choose. The Nature, the severity and the outcome of any Karmic synchronization remains the sole responsibility of our Omnipotent Energy Field.'
Karma is just Per Se. As it does not do the bidding of low physical frequency life forms, 'Justice' seems to have nothing in common with Karma. Justice is the interpretation of any human Beings belief about morality and such. Karma synchronizes peak levels. Much like in the physical world, where every action sees an equal and opposite reaction, the non-physical world follows the same principles in a different frequency and appearance.
Most of the times, when Justice was served, revenge and moral superiority justified earthly means, from correction to capital punishment.
Earthly Justice is not Karma, Karma is not Justice. Karma is like a harmonic balancer. Without prejudice or any moral considerations it operates like the whole Universe itself.
After a month of moving life slowly reappears at the edge of My Soup Bowl. The great improvement is to have high speed after four years of dial-up. Plus I Am one minute from the Beach.
If We only knew what good will become out of the bad that has struck us, We wouldn't Be that much complaining, but rather smiling, knowing that whoever chooses harm and hurt over love and compassion is on the way out. One Way or another.
Believe That You Can Change Your Beliefs.
Sioux Rose
IJK: I think you and I have a slightly different view of karma. The way I see it, water freezing at 32 degrees is a very specific thing, and it's based on what we qualify as a number. It's not 33 degrees, after all. This is what many see as a natural LAW. I believe there are very specific spiritual or universal laws, and they are generally agreed upon by Masters from many religious backgrounds. I have studied many mystics and the common belief is that there IS justice and it IS based on karma, but the process of its enactment can and does take multiple lifetimes. Sometimes there is instant karma. I've seen it and experienced it, and I think we'd all LOVE to see that prove the case with the leaders who have so misused their positions of authority in so many fields of American enterprise. However, the determination, which is to say the timing, is NOT in our human hands; and for many people that element (added to the obscure time line) nullifies any faith they might have in this largely abstract concept (or contention).
The Zodiac sign of Libra, one of the SACRED 12 principles, is all about the need to balance the scales and it symbolizes justice. When human law is modeled after its universal equivalent, societies treat members with genuine respect and HONOR their rights. The nation's founders had intimations of these higher laws and sought to design a government that moved power away from one dogmatic royal, privileged figure to disburse it among a larger number of persons. Their model was not perfect, but it was one of the greatest attempts at shared representation to date. Aquarius is the principle of fellowship, the "namaste" realization that the spark of Divinity is placed in each human heart (or soul). ALL are spiritual equivalents, and thus equal, regardless of nationality, race, gender, religion, ethnicity, income status, etc. It is THAT principle which is ultimately UNIFYING, which will flourish starting in 2020... however, when an age spans over 2000 years, the last 20 years present a major transition phase, and we are IN that "spin" cycle now. So many beliefs and behaviors that made sense for centuries no longer do, but the conservative ilk tries to hold on to what was and like the Bob Dylan song related, "Get out of the road for you're blocking the way... oh, the times, they are a' changing." (I apologize to Dylan if I didn't quote the words exactly.)
Those who like the participants at the World Social Forum envision another world being possible are holding the light, helping to build on higher planes that which will eventually come to manifest on this one.
"The topics he chooses to write about, and the angles he utilizes often expose readers to items found nowhere else." –(Sioux Rose)
–As a long time reader of Tom Englehardt, I find this an exacting description of just why he remains appealing and a must read.
Engelhardt's able to slightly 'skew' his perceptions on material which in other hands would be redundant and tedious, insures fresh insights.
His interpolative post- Katrina fantasy scenario of an America under foreign occupation is scathing, and puts the reality of our foreign occupations in glaring perspective.
Thanks for the critical insight. –(Jill Bains)
Sioux Rose
JILL: You are most welcome. As you know, I enjoy reading your posts. Although I was a college English major, you use words I don't even know! However, I like being challenged. I'm glad a certain detractor did not scare you off this thread.
Thanks for the kind words. I've been immersed in work and a few music things. I can only post while in those 'in between' moments.
I don't like being forced into a de facto 'multi-tasking,' which my mother–raised exclusively Asian– went as far to claim engendered a 'spiritual corruption,' endemic to the Western 'techno' centric ethos. Her views, even if partially true, are now hopelessly dated.
Even in a country such as Laos, where the very notion of 'time' itself seems eternal and 'present'–not seemingly demarcated or subdivided by 'tenses'– that too is changing.
No chance I'll be run off here, by the resident petty sadist 'Horst Wessel' and his archaic demands for 'dominance and submission.'
Being either 'Vietnamese/American' or 'American Vietnamese, 'English is my fourth language after originally Vietnamese, French and some Chinese.
The reason I use lots of polysyllabic words is I was taught English by dictionary immersion or a rote 'vocabulary' approach, rather than a grammatical or syntactical one. The French influence is also, in many ways, antithetical to the 'literalness' of English.
Everyone tries to write with the tools they are given and it is not appropriate, on an informal blog, to criticize others on the basis of style. This seems true even if one is in violent disagreement with their ideas. I seem to get the 'ideas' no matter what or how incongruously they may be presented.
Let the differences be celebrated. As Thelonious Monk, the great American composer once said: "Wrong is right." –(Jill Bains)
Sioux Rose
AMFORTAS: I find your background and accomplishments quite astonishing! Like so many in the U.S. when I studied French (in HS) and then later moved to Puerto Rico to begin learning Spanish, the French got pushed out. Where did it go? My mind works well with symbolic languages like mathematics, astrology (its calculations, all based on geometry), music (I play piano, though it's been years since I did so seriously), and a capacity to "read" oracles. I don't know if you grant credence to the idea that the left brain and right brain each favor quite specific functions. I am often attracted to men who are very mechanical and technically efficient as I consider them "the left brain(s) I never had," although some would call that "opposites attract." In any case, you certainly add a unique dimension of thought and critique to topics raised in this forum. Personally, I appreciate that. This is the only forum I particpate in due to its diverse viewpoints and styles of expression. And having been attacked, I try to advance the idea that if progressives can't agree to disagree, what hope has our country of evolving beyond its primitive/aggressive impulses? In any case, your IQ must be very high. And if you'd ever care to reveal your date of birth, I'd be quite curious to note the cosmic chords that make for such a complex individual. (If this interests you at all, please email me the data at: Astrologo77@yahoo.com)
"Remember, even Wells's aliens finally and involuntary chose to abandon their occupation of England."
The only solice I can wring out of this is that this insanity will be the end of the MICommercial Empire masquerading as our country.. Worst case of idenity theft around.
...but climate will probably get "it" first.
130 million Martians voted for "occupation as usual" in the Nov 2008 elections. Apparently they reap some sort of benefit from continued occupation. What could it be?
Here's a little blurb (simple account of karma) I post to the "Nigerian Scammers" that hound me on Craigslist:
Aloha, please go and try and make an honest living and stop trying to rip people off. It will not only help me and others you try and rip off but yourself, as obviously you have not learned the law of cause and effect or Karma. Simply stated it is that for every action there is a equal and opposite reaction, or you reap what you sow. It doesn't happen immediately (like burning your hand when you put it on a hot stove) but later, maybe much much later, when you don't make the connection as to why things are going wrong in your life. And they must be going wrong otherwise you would not be trying to cheat people. So, seriously, stop trying to cheat people and earn and honest living within your means and capabilities no matter how humble and you will do yourself and the world a favor.... and feel better about yourself..... signed: your conscious friend!
WHAT is IRONIC about the USA now initiating Trade protectionism against Developing countries?
oh wait :
as HENRY CK LIU of asiatimesonline long ago said:
"THE USA is REALLY the world's main Protectionaist Nation, Pretending to be Free Trade".
======================
Climate protectionism on the rise
By Martin Khor
A new and dangerous form of trade and technology protectionism is fast emerging in the name of climate change, and it is poisoning North-South relations in the two negotiating arenas on climate change and on trade.
There are clear signs that some developed countries, especially the United States, are preparing to use unilateral trade measures, such as imposing tariffs, taxes or charges on the products of developing countries, on the grounds of combating climate change.
A bill passed recently by the US House of Representatives gives the US president authority to impose financial charges (or taxes) on some imports coming from developing countries that in the US
view are not taking enough action to curb their greenhouse gas emissions.
The US House of Representatives has also sought protectionism against technology transfer through three bills it has adopted that prevent US negotiators in the UN Climate Change Convention from agreeing to any relaxation in the rules or enforcement of intellectual property. There are signs that other developed countries, including in Europe, are also preparing the grounds for climate-linked protectionism.
The developing countries are starting to oppose these moves. Indian political leaders protested to US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton about the threat of US carbon tariffs during her recent visit. China's Commerce Ministry has also criticized the protection element in the US climate bill.
Most importantly, the developing countries have taken up the issue at the climate talks leading up to Copenhagen. On August 13, the Group of 77 countries and China made a statement at the Bonn climate talks, warning developed countries not to adopt unilateral trade-restrictive measures, as these would contravene the Climate Change Convention's provisions.
India also proposed text for the outcome of the upcoming Copenhagen climate meeting that developed countries "shall not resort to any form of unilateral measures including countervailing border measures, against goods and services imported from developing countries on grounds of protection and stabilization of climate".
The text listed many provisions of the Convention that would be violated if such measures are taken. This was supported by many countries, including China, Argentina, Brazil, Singapore, South Africa, Saudi Arabia, and by the G-77 and China's statement.
In Geneva, many developing country diplomats are increasingly concerned about the likelihood of the United States and other developed countries making use of either tariffs or financial charges on imports of developing countries. Imposing extra tariffs or financial charges on imports on the basis of how the products are produced ("process and production methods", or PPMs in technical jargon) is very controversial.
It has been rejected by developing countries at the World Trade Organization (WTO) since 1996 as a form of protectionism, which they say will unfairly curb developing countries' exports. They also argue that it is against the rules of the WTO.
Many developed countries however have wanted to make use of trade measures on environmental grounds. They are preparing the case that trade measures linked to PPMs are legitimate, or else climate-linked trade measures are allowed under the general exception for the environment under the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT).
Developing countries claim that linking trade measures to climate and the environment are unjust because they have lower technological capacity and thus cannot match the developed countries. Developing countries should instead be assisted through technology transfer, but the intellectual property rights regime (especially the TRIPS intellectual property rights agreement of the WTO) is an obstacle, and now the US Congress is proclaiming that the US administration cannot allow relaxation of the intellectual property rules.
If climate protection is allowed, it will also open the floodgates to all kinds of protection by blocking developing country products on the basis of how they are made.
This "mother of new trade protection" is coming at a time of economic recession when world leaders have piously proclaimed they will not resort to trade protection. The climate-trade issue is thus explosive, and is opening a Pandora's box that threatens to contaminate the negotiations in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change as well as the WTO.
Before the situation deteriorates, developed countries should re-consider their moves on this issue, restrain the climate-protection forces in their society, and commit instead to a "fair game".
Martin Khor is Executive Director of the South Centre. He can be contacted at: director@southcentre.org. For further reading on Climate Protectionism, check out this special edition of the South Centre bulletin.
(Published with permission of the Global Policy Innovations program at the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs.
(Copyright 2009 Global Policy Innovations.)
UN treaty melts into climate sideshow (Sep 12, '09)
Businesses cold to climate change (Jan 30, '09)
Climate change matters; does the UN? (Dec 3, '08)