An Open Sky

After all
the prayers
have been said,
and the tears shed
and the uncomfortable silences,
when we cannot respond,
endured
there remains
the soft, tender sorrow
that time does not heal.

And in that sorrow,
Fatah,
an opening
to the genuine sadness
of being alive ---
open to
the absolute necessity
of letting go
of everyone
and everything
we love.

we can close off
this deep sadness
or open
our tender hearts
so wide
that our heart
becomes as an
open sky ---

no borders,
nor boundaries,
just
an open sky.

Rumi, from Andie's Web

Joint Ventures

Fuuuuck, dude!"

Leafing through Polemic Mbongi's standard, African Myth and Legend — Tales for the Post-modern, I stumbled across the following.

A monkey is sitting in a tree smoking a joint. A lizard walks past, looks up, and asks the monkey, "Hey! What are you doing?"

The monkey answers, "I'm smoking a joint. Come up and have one."

The lizard climbs up next to the monkey. They smoke a few joints. After a while, the lizard tells the monkey he is thirsty. His mouth is 'dry'. He decides to go down to the river to drink some water.

Down at the river, the stoned lizard loses his balance and falls into the water. A crocodile sees this. He swims over to the lizard and helps him to the side. He then asks him, "What's the matter with you?"

The lizard tells the crocodile he was smoking a joint with the monkey. Stoned and thirsty, he fell into the river. The crocodile decides to check out the lizards's story. He walks into the jungle and finds the tree. The monkey is finishing another joint.

The crocodile looks up at him and calls, "Hey! You!"

The Monkey looks down at the crocodile. His eyes widen.

"Fuuuuck, dude! How much water did you drink?"

Indeed. While we in the Department sometimes refer jocularly to Polemic's work as Postcards from the Edge, we know it to be a seminal work, relegating the likes of Credo Mutwa (Africa's Six-pack Chopra) and other frauds to a necessary obscurity.

Mbongi's book contains wisdom for the world. But does the world listen? No, of course not.

The Med Effect...

kisses for nothing

lace and velvet kisses on the balcony
and the wind sweeps the cocaine off the banister and the razor falls to the ground
we s a y a few words in unison
and break down our doors
a kiss on the floor
two more strokes, a little more
for once i'm not being paid to love you
and the whispering in my ear
actually sounds real
like a china... porcelain... shattered mirror
you tell me the ugly truth about myself
i l o v e y o u
written on the concrete-diary floor
and the pages that exist in wonder and betrayal
lick the blood from your hands
when you awake, kind sir
holding me in your arms
a trigger be pulled
and we lie together
[h o l d i n g ♥ h a n d s]
a red sunset for lovers never parted

cathryn

Jesus. Kids... who needs 'em? My thirteen-year old has a steady boyfriend. He's been around several months. She writes this while he says little, plays a guitar, sleeps, smokes, keeps odd hours, dresses in black, listens to metal, sticks needles and pins through his head, and is extremely polite. To me... not to his parents. He has no long-term plans. I don't think he bothers much about the future. But it doesn't matter. Cathryn's mood is improving. I think the boy's good for her.

Credibility

"What will be the state of their union?" Cartoon by Steve Bell [Guardian]

"For diplomacy to be effective, words must be credible."

George W. Bush

The Official Story

The Interim Government, reversing a long legacy of serious human rights abuses under the previous regime, generally respected human rights, but serious problems remained. During the period of the report, the Government's human rights performance was handicapped by a serious insurgency in which a terrorist campaign of violence impacted every aspect of life with executions, kidnappings, torture, and intimidation waged against civilians, the Government and Coalition Forces. Although this insurgency may have had popular support in some areas, its core was former regime elements, foreign and domestic terrorists, and organized criminal gangs. On November 7, Prime Minister Iyad Allawi declared a 60-day state of emergency limited to Ramadi and Fallujah, in accordance with the July 6 IIG "Order of Safeguarding National Security." The state of emergency provides broad powers to impose curfews, close off entire towns and cities, take command of intelligence and security forces, and restrict assembly and movement. It remained in effect at year's end.

With the ongoing insurgency limiting access to information, a number of instances in the Report have been difficult to verify. However, there were reports of arbitrary deprivation of life, torture, impunity, poor prison conditions--particularly in pretrial detention facilities—and arbitrary arrest and detention. There remained unresolved problems relating to the large number of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs). Corruption at all levels of the Government remained a problem. Some aspects of the judicial system were dysfunctional, and there were reports that the judiciary was subject to external influence.

U.S. Department of State | Country Reports on Human Rights Practices – 2004

The Media's Take

Iraq's interim government replaced the human rights abuses of ousted dictator Saddam Hussein with its own offenses — including torture, arbitrary arrests, bribery and death — according to an annual U.S. human rights report. The U.S. State Department's assessment, titled "Country Reports on Human Rights," examines conditions in 196 countries including Iraq, Iran, Russia, Ghana, Guatemala, China and North Korea.

The document, released Monday, said the violent insurgency undermined the government and civic life and promulgated a "continuing shortage of services and staples."

CNN | Report cites Iraq government abuses, progress

Bolton Unplugged

"You're a Communist Party member?"

Replying to Bolton's jab, Pilger explained to him the current politics of Britain: "Well, Labour Party—they're the conservatives." Pilger meant "conservative" as in supporting Prime Minister Tony Blair's embrace of the war in Iraq.

By now Bolton was walking away from Pilger, looking like he much desired a fast separation. With a mischievous (or, some might say, wicked) smile on his face, Bolton shot back, "You're a Communist Party member?"

That was the Kodak moment, and it was captured by Pilger's camera operator. On Planet Bolton, if you inquire too forcefully about civilian casualties, you must be a commie. The Cold War might be over. But at least one senior Bush aide is keeping its spirit alive.

Pilger's documentary, as far as I can tell, has not aired in the United States. I've only seen the scenes involving Bolton and Feith. So I cannot vouch for the entire film. But in a flash, Pilger captured on tape a brief but telling exchange. Call it Bolton unplugged, and it's mean and ugly.

David Corn | A No-Compassion Conservative?

Looking back, it will seem to future generations inexplicable why Americans were unable on their own, and in time to save themselves, to accept a rule of nature so basic that it could be mouthed by an actor, Lawrence Fishburn, in a movie, The Cotton Club.

"You've got to learn," the line went, "That when you push people around, some people push back."

As they should.

As they must.

And as they undoubtedly will.

There is justice in such symmetry.

Ward Churchill | "Some People Push Back"

The Doctor Is Out

Hunter Stockton Thompson 1937–2005

The Edge ... There is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over.

Hunter S. Thompson | Hell's Angels

"He stomped terra."

Times Online | Hunter S. Thompson found dead

Hunter S. Thompson, the maverick journalist and author whose savage chronicling of the underbelly of American life and politics embodied a new kind of nonfiction writing he called "gonzo journalism," died yesterday in Colorado. Tricia Louthis, of the Pitkin County Sheriff's Office, said Mr. Thompson had died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound at his home in Woody Creek, Colo., yesterday afternoon. He was 65.

New York Times | Hunter S. Thompson, 65, Author, Commits Suicide

Hunter S. Thompson in 2003 summed up his life thus: "I was a notorious best-selling author of weird and brutal books and also a widely feared newspaper columnist ... I was also drunk, crazy and heavily armed at all times." He died on Sunday as a result of gunshot wounds, apparently self-inflicted.

The Independent | Hunter S. Thompson: Obituary


"...not everybody is made for this life..."

Thompson is credited with pioneering New Journalism - or, as he dubbed it, "gonzo journalism" - in which the writer made himself an essential component of the story. Much of his earliest work appeared in Rolling Stone magazine.

"Fiction is based on reality unless you're a fairy-tale artist," Thompson told the AP in 2003. "You have to get your knowledge of life from somewhere. You have to know the material you're writing about before you alter it."

An acute observer of the decadence and depravity in American life, Thompson also wrote such collections "Generation of Swine" and "Songs of the Doomed." His first ever novel, "The Rum Diary," written in 1959, was first published in 1998.

Guardian Online | Author Hunter S. Thompson Kills Himself

On Sunday morning, I had just finished signing the 1,200 title pages for a limited-edition Taschen version of The Curse of LONO, which Hunter had signed so uncharacteristically - obedient and mechanical - over the month of December. I thought that was very strange. He has to be cajoled like a child to do anything like that, so I drew his portrait across the last sheet, glaring out, his two eyes in the two Os of LONO, put the cigarette holder with long Dunhill prodding upwards in his grimacing mouth, signed it with an extra flourish and closed the last of the four boxes. The old bastard! He waited to make sure I had finished the task. Then he signed himself off.

Ralph Steadman | Hunter S. Thompson RIP: 'I would feel real trapped in this life if I didn't know I could commit suicide at any time'

"Welcome to the future of America. Welcome to Shotgun Golf."

Hunter S. Thompson | Shotgun Golf with Bill Murray

More...
Guardian Online | 'Truth is weirder than any fiction I've seen ... '
Scotsman | Lazy Guide to Net Culture: Hunter farewell
This is London | Hunter S Thompson takes his final trip
The Age | Hunter S. Thompson writes his own ending
The Australian | 'Gonzo' legend shoots himself
Rolling Stone | Hunter S. Thompson Dies
William Rivers Pitt | The Proverbial 'Live Boy'
Herald Sun | Hunter S. Thompson: Death of a sacred clown
The Mercury News | Hunter S. Thompson takes his last trip, echoing Hemingway
Times Online | Hunter S. Thompson Obituary
New York Times Books | The Thompson Style: A Sense of Self, and Outrage

Hunter tried to teach us that objectivity is a rule set that can be gamed, corrupted, and shaped into a weapon for use against the very principles it was developed to protect. He tried to teach us that fact and truth aren’t the same thing. Quoting Faulkner, he noted that "the best fiction is far more true than any kind of journalism – and the best journalists have always known this." He set an uncompromising determination to get at the truth ahead of what he saw as artificial rules and conventions, and if the "facts" got in the way of the truth, well, that told you something about the facts, didn’t it?

Sam Smith | Fear, Loathing, and Great Reporting

Dumb, Dumber, and Dubya

Dubya's State of Amurky Address (Parts I and II)

"Gotta trillion bucks?" I have a Muslim friend's response to this speech on another machine. It's worth reading and I'll try put it up in a day or two, with his permission. But, really, the above photograph (taken from the White House site) says it all, as does this one from ray sweatman, whose poetry I've missed and now enjoy so much. Actually (and typically), it's from Colonel Frank Paynter, recently returned from the Great Congo River Surf Safari (about which I'll tell you more later). Now, why'd I think it was ray?

America's Body Politics

"...the survival of liberty."

For me, it's just another story, but out of this comes a core of — you know, we all deal in "macro" in Washington. On the macro, we're hopeless. We're nowhere. The press is nowhere. The congress is nowhere. The military is nowhere. Every four-star General I know is saying, "Who is going to tell them we have no clothes?" Nobody is going to do it. Everybody is afraid to tell Rumsfeld anything. That's just the way it is.

It's a system built on fear. It's not lack of integrity, it's more profound than that. Because there is individual integrity. It's a system that's completely been taken over — by cultists. Anyway, what's going to happen, I think, as the casualties mount and these stories get around, and the mothers see the cost and the fathers see the cost, as the kids come home. And the wounded ones come back, and there's wards that you will never hear about.

That's wards — you know about the terrible catastrophic injuries, but you don't know about the vegetables. There's ward after ward of vegetables because the brain injuries are so enormous. As you maybe read last week, there was a new study in one of the medical journals that the number of survivors are greater with catastrophic injuries because of their better medical treatment and the better armor they have. So you get more extreme injuries to extremities.


"...the unfinished work of American freedom."

We're going to learn more and I think you're going to see, it's going to — it's — I'm trying to be optimistic. We're going to see a bottom swelling from inside the ranks. You're beginning to see it. What happened with the soldiers asking those questions, you may see more of that. I'm not suggesting we're going to have mutinies, but I'm going to suggest you're going to see more dissatisfaction being expressed. Maybe that will do it.

Another salvation may be the economy. It's going to go very bad, folks. You know, if you have not sold your stocks and bought property in Italy, you better do it quick. And the third thing is Europe — Europe is not going to tolerate us much longer. The rage there is enormous. I'm talking about our old-fashioned allies. We could see something there, collective action against us.

Certainly, nobody — it's going to be an awful lot of dancing on our graves as the dollar goes bad and everybody stops buying our bonds, our credit — our — we're spending $2 billion a day to float the debt, and one of these days, the Japanese and the Russians, everybody is going to start buying oil in Euros instead of dollars. We're going to see enormous panic here.

But he could get through that.

That will be another year, and the damage he's going to do between then and now is enormous. We're going to have some very bad months ahead.

Seymour Hersh | We've Been Taken Over By a Cult

One group of people who are refusing to go home are the drivers of cars stuck in queues, sometimes as long as two miles, waiting to buy petrol. "I have been waiting in my car since 4.30pm yesterday and I have not moved a metre," said Abu Ali Anwar. He opened the door of his car to show the heap of blankets on which he had been sleeping overnight.

He added furiously: "We are not moving because the police at the petrol station are taking bribes of 25,000 dinars (£9) to let other drivers jump the queue."

Most Iraqis talk more about the problems of survival than the election. "We are suffering from many crises: lack of food, electricity and fuel," Mr Anwar said. "It was bad enough under Saddam but now it is 10 times worse. I graduated from college but I have to work as a taxi driver and I do not have enough money even to buy shoes."

Patrick Cockburn | The streets of Baghdad are empty. It feels like a city preparing for war

Shias are about to inherit Iraq, but the election tomorrow that will bring them to power is creating deep fears among the Arab kings and dictators of the Middle East that their Sunni leadership is under threat.

America has insisted on these elections - which will produce a largely Shia parliament representing Iraq's largest religious community - because they are supposed to provide an exit strategy for embattled US forces, but they seem set to change the geopolitical map of the Arab world in ways the Americans could never have imagined. For George Bush and Tony Blair this is the law of unintended consequences writ large.

Robert Fisk | This election will change the world. But not in the way the Americans imagined

Note While Robert Fisk, Patrick Cockburn, Juan Cole and others keep us abreast of the U.S.'s Iraqi elections, Dave Winer wins kudos for uncovering this 1967 New York Times article [pdf]. Welcome to the future past.

"And To All..."

"...a good night?" Steve Bell

So let's be absolutely clear: The United States, having broken Iraq, is not in the process of fixing it. It is merely continuing to break the country and its people by other means, using not only F-16s and Bradleys, but now the less flashy weaponry of WTO and IMF conditions, followed by elections designed to transfer as little power to Iraqis as possible. This is what famed Argentine writer Rodolfo Walsh, writing before his 1977 assassination by the military junta, described as "planned misery." And the longer the United States stays in Iraq, the more misery it will plan.

But if staying in Iraq is not the solution, neither are easy bumper-sticker calls to pull the troops out and spend the money on schools and hospitals at home. Yes, the troops must leave, but that can be only one plank of a credible and moral antiwar platform. What of the schools and hospitals in Iraq—the ones that were supposed to be fixed by Bechtel but never were? Too often, antiwar forces have shied away from speaking about what Americans owe Iraq. Rarely is the word "compensation" spoken, let alone the more loaded "reparations."

Naomi Klein | You Break It, You Pay For It

"I hope and pray that every family member of those who have died so bravely knows how deeply I feel their loss."

Donald Rumsfeld

The Art of War...

Nowhere to hide...

The Modern Era has nurtured a dream in which mankind, divided into its separate civilizations, would someday come together in unity and everlasting peace. Today, the history of the planet has finally become one indivisible whole, but it is war, ambulant and everlasting war, that embodies and guarantees this long-desired unity of mankind. Unity of mankind means: No escape for anyone anywhere.

Milan Kundera | The Art of the Novel (1988)

War dehumanizes people – soldiers and civilians alike – and, for this reason, I have never understood the willingness of parents to allow their children to become part of such a dispirited, hostile, life-destroying system. I can understand how a teenager – whose limited life experiences are not sufficient to see what is implicit in warfare – might fall for the heroic imagery that gets reinforced in computer games. I do not understand this child’s parents – with many more years of awareness – not protecting him or her from this force that devastates the lives even of its survivors.

Butler Shaffer | The Exploitation of Soldiers

"It's like watching your son playing in traffic, and there's nothing you can do. You can't reach him."

Janet Bellows

Meanwhile, back in Fallujah...

At the peak of the assault, the Americans held no more than 35-40% of Fallujah (largely the north on or around the 18th of November). Thereafter, they appear to have been steadily repulsed and in fact the coalition forces currently have been repulsed to where they were on November 13th or thereabouts and to the outskirts of Fallujah.

Abhay Mehta | The End of Warfare

The reason for fighting | I never got straight | But I learned to accept it | Accept it with pride | For you don't count the dead | When God's on your side.

Bob Dylan | With God on our Side

Note: Limited Internet access continues and unseen, unanswered mail piles up. No telephone till January, courtesy of our national telecoms hog. Dean, you're a saint... I don't know if that's theologically possible but, what the hell, we make our own rules around here.

For the innermost decision, | That we cannot but obey - | For what's left of our religion, | I lift my voice and pray: | May the lights in The Land of Plenty | Shine on the truth some day.

Leonard Cohen | The Land of Plenty

After Action Satisfaction

Click graphic for international version

Advertising signs that con you | Into thinking you're the one | That can do what's never been done | That can win what's never been won | Meantime life outside goes on | All around you.

Bob Dylan | It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)

On second thought, perhaps Miller does deserve to be elevated to the status of icon—not of the war in Iraq but of the new era of supercharged American impunity. Because outside US borders, it is, of course, a different Marine who has been awarded the prize as "the face of Falluja": the soldier captured on tape executing a wounded, unarmed prisoner in a mosque. Runners-up are a photograph of 2-year-old Fallujan in a hospital bed with one of his tiny legs blown off; a dead child lying in the street, clutching the headless body of an adult; and an emergency health clinic blasted to rubble. Inside the US, these snapshots of a lawless occupation appeared only briefly, if they appeared at all. Yet Miller's icon status has endured, kept alive with human interest stories about fans sending cartons of Marlboros to Falluja, interviews with the marine's proud mother, and earnest discussions about whether smoking might reduce Miller's effectiveness as a fighting machine.

Impunity - the perception of being outside the law - has long been the hallmark of the Bush regime. What is alarming is that it appears to have deepened since the election, ushering in what can only be described as an orgy of impunity. In Iraq, US forces and their Iraqi surrogates are assaulting civilian targets and openly attacking doctors, clerics and journalists who have dared to count the bodies. At home, impunity has been made official policy with Bush's nomination of Alberto Gonzales—the man who personally advised the President in his infamous "torture memo" that the Geneva Conventions are "obsolete"—as Attorney General.

Naomi Klein | Smoking while Iraq burns

My own most striking Iraqi image was part of the footage screened by the BBC correspondent Paul Wood, "embedded" with a marine unit in the recent Falluja operation. The scenes were familiar enough: jerky Saving Private Ryan shots of street fighting showing marines peering into a cellar, fearing grenades or shooting, and running for cover. But then the soundtrack picked up the voices of perhaps three or four fighters - chanting the Arabic words "Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar," (God is Great) - who presumably believe that this is the moment of their death. Falluja has since been declared a success and Red Crescent aid convoys are returning to the ruins. But those haunting cries linger on, as resonant a representation of martyrdom as any Iraqi fighter could pray for: they'll make an unforgettable addition to those split-screen clips on Arab TV channels of Americans in Falluja and Israelis in Gaza, reportage-as-propaganda displaying the twin evils of crusaders and Zionists and their Muslim victims.

Ian Black | World watch

Note: No blog's complete without the above Klein piece and the gob-smacking blather of Dan Rather (reporting as a newsman). The flood of fascist propaganda fed Americans is an essentially national phenomenon, interesting because of its noticeable effect on U.S. citizens, most of whom are now more weirdly detached (yet, paradoxically, involved) with the world around them than ever before.

Such is the fast-developing world of the PNAC [pdf]. You've all become Jehovah's Witnesses. Yes, you too. You might think you're Jewish, but George W. Bush is in charge and it's his reality we're living now.

I'll be quiet over the next few weeks. I'm moving and will be without a dial-up connection for a while. Our local monopoly, Telkom, wants ZAR700.00 a line. That's more than $100.00. With my telephone account running at about the same, $200.00 is a bit much, coming on top of a move. I don't have it. But I'll probably cut back on other things. Like smoking and U.S. agitprop.

Yeah, sure...

Addendum EastSouthWestNorth has been there...

"Americans celebrate war in their movies. We like to see visions of evil being defeated by good. When the people at home glimpse the reality of war, that it's a bloodbath, they freak out. We are a subculture they created and programmed to fight their wars. You have to become a psycho to kill like we do. To most Marines that guy in the mosque was just someone who didn't get hit in the right place the first time we shot him. I probably would have put a bullet in his brain if I'd been there. If the American public doesn't like the violence of war, maybe before they start the next war they shouldn't rush so much." The public could start by looking at the messy details of this war, such as those shown in this series of weekly posts.

Yup. And to underscore the point, al-Jazeera tells us 6,000 people may have died in Fallujah alone.