#iraq 20
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New Heather Raffo play to explore migration at the Arab American National Museum
From the Tigris to the Detroit River, The Migration Play Cycle written by and starring Heather Raffo, is an epic map of a play linking the world’s migration patterns to the daily transactions of our lives. An ambitious theatrical experiment, it invites us to imagine a new relationship to human value, by first unpacking what we value. Uncovering a world where all populations must confront not only global migration, but their own.
Heather Raffo is a singular and outstanding voice in the American theater whose work has been championed by the New Yorker as “an example of how art can remake the world.” Having helped forge a new genre of Arab American theater, she’s spent her career writing and embodying stories of Iraq: from the lives and dreams of Iraqi women in her seminal work 9 Parts of Desire (2003), to the suicidal ideation of an Iraq war veteran in the opera Fallujah (2012), to the restless longings of an Iraqi refugee architect in Noura (2018).
“As an Iraqi American playwright, migration is personal to me. In 2003, I had over one hundred family members living in Iraq, I now have two cousins left in the country. In the last decade, my Iraqi relatives have scattered across four continents. My family understands what it means to be rooted to a place for thousands of years, then to scatter in less than ten. While many audiences feel sympathetic to those impacted by war, the trajectory my family took can be traced to economic factors to which we all contribute.”
The Migration Play Cycle: A New Theatrical Platform by Heather Raffo is a National Performance Network (NPN) Creation & Development Fund Project co-commissioned by the Arab American National Museum and NPN. This project is made possible in part by a grant from the Association of Performing Arts Professionals, made possible through support from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
#heather raffo#arab american national museum#iraq#iraqi#baghdad#detroit#metro detroit#america#iraq 20#iraqi american#arab americans#womens history#womens history month#theatre#plays#Iraqi Women#immigration#migration#iraqi refugees#refugees#refugees welcome#europe#manchester#uk#uk news#theatre news#university of michigan#michigan
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I got Armored Core brainworms, but I can't just be into the new one.... 🙄🙄
#I like ALL OF THEM AT ONCE#but really looking at AC V#which it turns out is the most mysterious and hard to play of the bunch since it can't be easily emulated#its vibe#hgnnrghghhg#one day... someday#I dream... I'll finish a doodle#caffe personal#perhaps it's that it is so hard to acquire... discs for ac verdict day are like 100$ haha#I want it#I THINK I can download it for 20$ from the microsoft store if I dust of an xbox 360 tho so... maybe :eyes:#watch all the trailers tho and AC V is unique...#it feels like the images out of hte iraq war but with mechas lol#it's spoopy
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It’s been read into the record that the US Army committed egregious civilian massacres in Vietnam, killed an estimated 100-500 thousand civilians in total in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos, caused thousands more poisonings, birth defects, and related deaths in the Agent Orange ecocide. Vietnam is considered by most residents of developed countries to be an unfortunate policy bungle in which US soldiers suffered trauma.
This is not counting massacres by allied forces. It is unsealed public knowledge that the United States either installed or propped up military dictatorships in a majority of Latin American countries and Indonesia, which engaged in political killings. The United States backed the governments which carried out the genocide of the Maya. US interventions in Latin America are considered by most residents of developed countries to consist of a heroic opposition to Cuban dictatorship, where they are considered at all. Indonesia does not exist.
The word ‘genocide’ was coined to describe the Armenian genocide. Descendants of Armenian survivors have risen to prominence in US pop culture (Cher, System of a Down). Armenians have suffered crimes, military aggression, and civilian killings by Azerbaijani and allied forces multiple times within the past five years. The US government recognized the Armenian genocide for the first time in 2019. The United Nations organized COP29 in Baku with no formal dissent or objection from developed countries, and I’ve seen accounts on here with my own eyes praising the current Turkish government (more of a case of ‘you do not under any circumstances have to hand it to a far-right nationalist regime because they’re geopolitically opposed to Israel’s far-right nationalist regime’). Most residents of developed countries couldn’t point to the Caucasus on a map.
These atrocities and many, many more are cases of factual unarguable history that have been acknowledged by hegemonic governments. There is no public or intellectual debate on the fact of the Armenian genocide, American installation of Pinochet, the My Lai massacre. It’s gone down in history.
It’s also true that the average resident, even the average sensible political moderate in the suite of developed countries has an understanding of the world that denies or excludes these facts. Tumblr fandom blogs will share a video of Erdogan if he’s saying something politically convenient, a mildly left-wing guy will disbelieve me when I mention the Pinochet thing until I make him look it up on friggin Wikipedia, there are 2 Vietnam War films focusing on heroic American characters released in or after Anno Domini 2020. One of which is by a solidly progressive director.
I’ve seen the sentiment frequently that history will show the Israeli genocide as the most vicious, cruel, inhuman assault on humanity since the turn of the millennium. That is true. It will show as fact, records will be unsealed, media distortions will die down. Already, internal Israeli news sources Haaretz and +972 have disproven many of the claims used by the US government as an excuse to dismember children on the basis of ethnicity.
At the same time, I think that there’s a lot of evidence that factual atrocities will be ignored by the liberal hegemony as long as they’re inconvenient. The Shoah is remembered as a tragedy in part because it fits into a narrative that portrays the US as a morally just world power. Universally acknowledged genocides mass killings have little to no impact on the memories or politics of ‘normal people’ in developed countries. Most people don’t know that the UAE is currently playing a key role in the decimation of Sudan’s population and most people, if they ever did find out, would not see any reason for the US to use its economic leverage to have any impact on the UAE at all.
The record does and will show that Israel is guilty of genocide. It will go away sooner or later because of the efforts of Palestinians and allies to free Palestine from occupation, apartheid, and genocide. I don’t think that anyone who cheered on genocide will be aware of any of this, reflect on any of it, or do anything at all make up for the people they’ve killed. Vindication by history might not change them at all. Which is why it makes sense to keep bringing up the Palestinian genocide in all contexts whether ‘appropriate’ or not, because all historical evidence shows that it will be swept under the rug, forgotten, or misremembered if it doesn’t remain a conversational landmine forever
#kelsey rambles#in 20 years it’s got to be something you can’t bring up at the dinner table without being shouted down#because look at the Iraq war—transparent undeniable war crime committed by the US government that everyone pretends didn’t happen (NYT)
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U.S. forces invaded Iraq 20 years ago, on March 20, 2003.
Here, U.S. Marine Corps personnel with Bravo Command 1st Tank Battalion sit in their Humvees in the dispersal area near the Iraqi border.
Record Group 330: Records of the Office of the Secretary of Defense
Series: Combined Military Service Digital Photographic Files
Image description: A line of sand-colored Humvees stretches into the distance. Marines sit in and on top of the vehicles. The sky is a dusty blue and the ground is flat desert. In the foremost vehicle, the driver’s side door is open with the driver stretching their legs out to rest in the open window.
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I want to thank the IDF and the rest of the Israeli government for having the most out of touch PR department imaginable.
Nobody has done as much for the peace movement and anti-zionist public support as you.
#it's incredible to see the level of outrage they've caused across all sectors of society besides government and business#the last time things were this bad was 20 years ago with the iraq war#but at least then bush and blair pretended to be doing good#i mean the way you speak#even the most insane fringe russian ultranationalists don't speak like this#and evidently even the most out of the loop non interested people in society are starting to wake up on this#and it's literally just by you opening your mouth and saying something really batshit in response to even the most innocuous criticisms#txt
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it only took 12 interviews i guess for somebody to bring up 9/11 to me
#longer than I expected! I appreciate that. I guess.#anyway we should make a rule where these people don’t get to speak about 9/11 anymore. ive heard enough from White Man From Carolina. stop#there are actually other things you can speak about to a person from nyc. hard to believe but it’s true!#it didn’t happen to him it happened to me! and I know better! I know better!#one of the most insane things about the culture surround 9/11 is that it is simultaneously#valorized in this histrionic performance of grief (for propaganda purposes)#and also like. not treated as a real thing that happened to people. like as if it was a news-only event#it exists in the white american consciousness SOLELY as a rhetorical device. an excuse for islamaphobia hate and violence. war propaganda.#but not as the worst day of my childhood. not as an incredibly tacky topic to introduce in a 20 minute interview with a relative stranger#it only exists on tv. just like all of the monstrous wars we used it as an excuse to start!#who was it who wrote… im thinking of a passage I read about our wars in Afghanistan and Iraq#where the author said because of their distance and the lack of impact on american day to day life the american people experienced them#primarily as a media event#that’s how it always goes I guess! so it fucking goes#I really should know better than to post this but i needed to vent. vent what a stupid word.
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the western powers and their puppet israel wont stop at palestine, if you dont care about palestinians be well assured that we might as well be on the brink of a full on world war bc they wont rest until they have a firm control of the entire area as long as it grants them 10% extra profits on the McCain scale or whatever shit corporations invented last month
#not that this isnt already a world war in my opinion all wars ever since ww2 have been worldwide bc they affect and iclude every country#every action or inaction taken is a way of participating and allowing for war#their project started w palestine in the 20s and then iraq and afgahnistan in the 2000s and then syria in 2010s and now palestine again#by project i mean pillaging and stealing resources and destabilizing entire regions so they can accumulate more riches
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https://jacobin.com/2023/03/us-invasion-of-iraq-twentieth-anniversary-history-casualties-politics-protes
March 20 marks the unprovoked, catastrophic US invasion of Iraq - the 21st century 1st Illegal War.
#iraq#iraq war#march 20#american imperialism#war crimes#occupation#invasion#crimes against humanity#iraq body count#blowback#george w bush#war criminals#illegal war#illegal invasion#western imperialism#oil wars#un charter#nato#isis#capitalism#today in history#links#p/#forever wars#war on terror#iraq invasion#us military
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The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step
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After the U.S. invaded Iraq 20 years ago, Iraqi American playwright and actor Heather Raffo created and starred in an acclaimed play “Nine Parts of Desire” about the lives of Iraqi women.
She’s returned to the subject on film and through a distinctly American lens, setting a new version in Michigan. Jeffrey Brown of PBS went there to see the work for the PBS arts and culture series, CANVAS.
Uprooted after her father’s death during the pandemic, an Iraqi American woman attempts to grieve at the site of the oldest Iraqi Church in North America.
What starts in profound isolation, becomes communal as Iraqi women, ordinary and extraordinary, come to her in spirit and ancestry with their personal stories of love and resilience.
Together, they offer a celebration of the Iraqi female experience and an explicit warning – the divisions Iraq endured are not unique, Iraq is a bellwether for America now.
Nearly 20 years ago, 9 Parts of Desire premiered to widespread acclaim on London stages and Off-Broadway, later becoming a global theatrical phenomenon.
Now, Heather Raffo adapts her multi-award-winning solo play about Iraqi women for the screen and for our current time.
From Iraq to Michigan, Raffo transforms into a wide cross-section of Iraqi women in her inspiring exploration of love and grief within countries undone by division, violence and loss.
Nine Parts, a film by Mike Mosallam, Heather Raffo and Nilou Safinya is streaming now on PBS.
#heather raffo#iraqi christians#michigan#university of michigan#detroit#usa#arab american national museum#arab americans#iraq#iraqi#iraq 20#manchester#england#uk news#theatre#art#Iraqi Women#BBC News#Social media#philosophy#nhs england#trauma#ptsd#Lent#pope francis#roman catholic church#Orthodox Church
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Arundati Roy writing in The Guardian against the Afghanistan War on October 2001
“Brutality smeared in peanut butter”
Why America must stop the war now.
By Arundhati Roy
Tue 23 Oct 2001 • 00.57 • BST •
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As darkness deepened over Afghanistan on Sunday October 7 2001, the US Government, backed by the International Coalition Against Terror (the new, amenable surrogate for the United Nations), launched air strikes against Afghanistan. TV channels lingered on computer-animated images of cruise missiles, stealth bombers, tomahawks, "bunker-busting" missiles and Mark 82 high drag bombs. All over the world, little boys watched goggle-eyed and stopped clamouring for new video games.
The UN, reduced now to an ineffective acronym, wasn't even asked to mandate the air strikes. (As Madeleine Albright once said, "We will behave multilaterally when we can, and unilaterally when we must.") The "evidence" against the terrorists was shared amongst friends in the "coalition".
After conferring, they announced that it didn¹t matter whether or not the "evidence" would stand up in a court of law. Thus, in an instant, were centuries of jurisprudence carelessly trashed.
Nothing can excuse or justify an act of terrorism, whether it is committed by religious fundamentalists, private militia, people's resistance movements – or whether it's dressed up as a war of retribution by a recognised government. The bombing of Afghanistan is not revenge for New York and Washington. It is yet another act of terror against the people of the world.
Each innocent person that is killed must be added to, not set off against, the grisly toll of civilians who died in New York and Washington.
People rarely win wars, governments rarely lose them. People get killed.
Governments moult and regroup, hydra-headed. They use flags first to shrink-wrap people's minds and smother thought, and then as ceremonial shrouds to bury their willing dead. On both sides, in Afghanistan as well as America, civilians are now hostage to the actions of their own governments.
Unknowingly, ordinary people in both countries share a common bond - they have to live with the phenomenon of blind, unpredictable terror. Each batch of bombs that is dropped on Afghanistan is matched by a corresponding escalation of mass hysteria in America about anthrax, more hijackings and other terrorist acts.
There is no easy way out of the spiralling morass of terror and brutality that confronts the world today. It is time now for the human race to hold still, to delve into its wells of collective wisdom, both ancient and modern. What happened on September 11 changed the world forever.
Freedom, progress, wealth, technology, war – these words have taken on new meaning.
Governments have to acknowledge this transformation, and approach their new tasks with a modicum of honesty and humility. Unfortunately, up to now, there has been no sign of any introspection from the leaders of the International Coalition. Or the Taliban.
When he announced the air strikes, President George Bush said: "We're a peaceful nation." America¹s favourite ambassador, Tony Blair, (who also holds the portfolio of prime minister of the UK), echoed him: "We're a peaceful people."
So now we know. Pigs are horses. Girls are boys. War is peace.
Speaking at the FBI Headquarters a few days later, President Bush said: "This is our calling. This is the calling of the United States of America. The most free nation in the world. A nation built on fundamental values that reject hate, reject violence, rejects murderers and rejects evil. We will not tire."
Here is a list of the countries that America has been at war with – and bombed – since the Second World War: China (1945-46, 1950-53), Korea (1950-53), Guatemala (1954, 1967-69), Indonesia (1958), Cuba (1959-60), the Belgian Congo (1964), Peru (1965), Laos (1964-73), Vietnam (1961-73), Cambodia (1969-70), Grenada (1983), Libya (1986), El Salvador (1980s), Nicaragua (1980s), Panama (1989), Iraq (1991-99), Bosnia (1995), Sudan (1998), Yugoslavia (1999). And now Afghanistan.
Certainly it does not tire – this, the most free nation in the world.
What freedoms does it uphold? Within its borders, the freedoms of speech, religion, thought; of artistic expression, food habits, sexual preferences (well, to some extent) and many other exemplary, wonderful things.
Outside its borders, the freedom to dominate, humiliate and subjugate usually in the service of America¹s real religion, the "free market". So when the US Government christens a war "Operation Infinite Justice", or "Operation Enduring Freedom", we in the Third World feel more than a tremor of fear.
Because we know that Infinite Justice for some means Infinite Injustice for others. And Enduring Freedom for some means Enduring Subjugation for others.
The International Coalition Against Terror is a largely cabal of the richest countries in the world. Between them, they manufacture and sell almost all of the world's weapons, they possess the largest stockpile of weapons of mass destruction – chemical, biological and nuclear. They have fought the most wars, account for most of the genocide, subjection, ethnic cleansing and human rights violations in modern history, and have sponsored, armed and financed untold numbers of dictators and despots. Between them, they have worshipped, almost deified, the cult of violence and war. For all its appalling sins, the Taliban just isn't in the same league.
The Taliban was compounded in the crumbling crucible of rubble, heroin and landmines in the backwash of the Cold War. Its oldest leaders are in their early 40s. Many of them are disfigured and handicapped, missing an eye, an arm or a leg. They grew up in a society scarred and devastated by war.
Between the Soviet Union and America, over 20 years, about $45bn (£30bn) worth of arms and ammunition was poured into Afghanistan. The latest weaponry was the only shard of modernity to intrude upon a thoroughly medieval society.
Young boys many of them orphans – who grew up in those times, had guns for toys, never knew the security and comfort of family life, never experienced the company of women. Now, as adults and rulers, the Taliban beat, stone, rape and brutalise women, they don't seem to know what else to do with them.
Years of war has stripped them of gentleness, inured them to kindness and human compassion. Now they've turned their monstrosity on their own people.
They dance to the percussive rhythms of bombs raining down around them.
With all due respect to President Bush, the people of the world do not have to choose between the Taliban and the US Government. All the beauty of human civilisation – our art, our music, our literature – lies beyond these two fundamentalist, ideological poles. There is as little chance that the people of the world can all become middle-class consumers as there is that they will all embrace any one particular religion. The issue is not about good vs evil or Islam vs Christianity as much as it is about space. About how to accommodate diversity, how to contain the impulse towards hegemony every kind of hegemony, economic, military, linguistic, religious and cultural.
Any ecologist will tell you how dangerous and fragile a monoculture is. A hegemonic world is like having a government without a healthy opposition. It becomes a kind of dictatorship. It¹s like putting a plastic bag over the world, and preventing it from breathing. Eventually, it will be torn open.
One and a half million Afghan people lost their lives in the 20 years of conflict that preceded this new war. Afghanistan was reduced to rubble, and now, the rubble is being pounded into finer dust. By the second day of the air strikes, US pilots were returning to their bases without dropping their assigned payload of bombs. As one pilot put it, Afghanistan is "not a target-rich environment". At a press briefing at the Pentagon, Donald Rumsfeld, the US Defence Secretary, was asked if America had run out of targets.
"First we're going to re-hit targets," he said, "and second, we're not running out of targets, Afghanistan is..." This was greeted with gales of laughter in the briefing room.
By the third day of the strikes, the US Defence Department boasted that it had "achieved air supremacy over Afghanistan" (Did they mean that they had destroyed both, or maybe all 16, of Afghanistan's planes?)
On the ground in Afghanistan, the Northern Alliance – the Taliban's old enemy, and therefore the international coalition's newest friend – is making headway in its push to capture Kabul. (For the archives, let it be said that the Northern Alliance's track record is not very different from the Taliban's. But for now, because it's inconvenient, that little detail is being glossed over.) The visible, moderate, "acceptable" leader of the alliance, Ahmed Shah Masud, was killed in a suicide-bomb attack early in September. The rest of the Northern Alliance is a brittle confederation of brutal warlords, ex-communists and unbending clerics. It is a disparate group divided along ethnic lines, some of whom have tasted power in Afghanistan in the past.
Until the US air strikes, the Northern Alliance controlled about 5% of the geographical area of Afghanistan. Now, with the coalition's help and "air cover", it is poised to topple the Taliban. Meanwhile, Taliban soldiers, sensing imminent defeat, have begun to defect to the alliance. So the fighting forces are busy switching sides and changing uniforms. But in an enterprise as cynical as this one, it seems to matter hardly at all.
Love is hate, north is south, peace is war.
Among the global powers, there is talk of "putting in a representative government". Or, on the other hand, of "restoring" the kingdom to Afghanistan's 89-year old former king Zahir Shah, who has lived in exile in Rome since 1973. That's the way the game goes – support Saddam Hussein, then "take him out"; finance the Mojahedin, then bomb them to smithereens; put in Zahir Shah and see if he's going to be a good boy. (Is it possible to "put in" a representative government? Can you place an order for democracy – with extra cheese and jalapeno peppers?)
Reports have begun to trickle in about civilian casualties, about cities emptying out as Afghan civilians flock to the borders which have been closed. Main arterial roads have been blown up or sealed off. Those who have experience of working in Afghanistan say that by early November, food convoys will not be able to reach the millions of Afghans (7.5m, according to the UN) who run the very real risk of starving to death during the course of this winter. They say that in the days that are left before winter sets in, there can either be a war, or an attempt to reach food to the hungry. Not both.
As a gesture of humanitarian support, the US Government air-dropped 37,000 packets of emergency rations into Afghanistan. It says it plans to drop a total of 500,000 packets. That will still only add up to a single meal for half a million people out of the several million in dire need of food.
Aid workers have condemned it as a cynical, dangerous, public-relations exercise. They say that air-dropping food packets is worse than futile.
First, because the food will never get to those who really need it. More dangerously, those who run out to retrieve the packets risk being blown up by landmines. A tragic alms race.
Nevertheless, the food packets had a photo-op all to themselves. Their contents were listed in major newspapers. They were vegetarian, we're told, as per Muslim dietary law (!) Each yellow packet, decorated with the American flag, contained: rice, peanut butter, bean salad, strawberry jam, crackers, raisins, flat bread, an apple fruit bar, seasoning, matches, a set of plastic cutlery, a serviette and illustrated user instructions.
After three years of unremitting drought, an air-dropped airline meal in Jalalabad! The level of cultural ineptitude, the failure to understand what months of relentless hunger and grinding poverty really mean, the US Government's attempt to use even this abject misery to boost its self-image, beggars description.
Reverse the scenario for a moment. Imagine if the Taliban Government was to bomb New York City, saying all the while that its real target was the US government and its policies. And suppose, during breaks between the bombing, the Taliban dropped a few thousand packets containing nan and kebabs impaled on an Afghan flag. Would the good people of New York ever find it in themselves to forgive the Afghan Government? Even if they were hungry, even if they needed the food, even if they ate it, how would they ever forget the insult, the condescension? Rudi Guiliani, Mayor of New York City, returned a gift of $10m from a Saudi prince because it came with a few words of friendly advice about American policy in the Middle East. Is pride a luxury that only the rich are entitled to?
Far from stamping it out, igniting this kind of rage is what creates terrorism. Hate and retribution don't go back into the box once you've let them out. For every "terrorist" or his "supporter" that is killed, hundreds of innocent people are being killed too. And for every hundred innocent people killed, there is a good chance that several future terrorists will be created.
Where will it all lead?
Setting aside the rhetoric for a moment, consider the fact that the world has not yet found an acceptable definition of what "terrorism" is. One country's terrorist is too often another¹s freedom fighter. At the heart of the matter lies the world's deep-seated ambivalence towards violence.
Once violence is accepted as a legitimate political instrument, then the morality and political acceptability of terrorists (insurgents or freedom fighters) becomes contentious, bumpy terrain. The US Government itself has funded, armed and sheltered plenty of rebels and insurgents around the world.
The CIA and Pakistan's ISI trained and armed the Mojahedin who, in the '80s, were seen as terrorists by the government in Soviet-occupied Afghanistan. Today, Pakistan – America's ally in this new war – sponsors insurgents who cross the border into Kashmir in India. Pakistan lauds them as "freedom-fighters", India calls them "terrorists". India, for its part, denounces countries who sponsor and abet terrorism, but the Indian army has, in the past, trained separatist Tamil rebels asking for a homeland in Sri Lanka – the LTTE, responsible for countless acts of bloody terrorism.
(Just as the CIA abandoned the mujahideen after they had served its purpose, India abruptly turned its back on the LTTE for a host of political reasons. It was an enraged LTTE suicide bomber who assassinated former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in 1989.)
It is important for governments and politicians to understand that manipulating these huge, raging human feelings for their own narrow purposes may yield instant results, but eventually and inexorably, they have disastrous consequences. Igniting and exploiting religious sentiments for reasons of political expediency is the most dangerous legacy that governments or politicians can bequeath to any people - including their own.
People who live in societies ravaged by religious or communal bigotry know that every religious text – from the Bible to the Bhagwad Gita – can be mined and misinterpreted to justify anything, from nuclear war to genocide to corporate globalisation.
This is not to suggest that the terrorists who perpetrated the outrage on September 11 should not be hunted down and brought to book. They must be.
But is war the best way to track them down? Will burning the haystack find you the needle? Or will it escalate the anger and make the world a living hell for all of us?
At the end of the day, how many people can you spy on, how many bank accounts can you freeze, how many conversations can you eavesdrop on, how many emails can you intercept, how many letters can you open, how many phones can you tap?
Even before September 11, the CIA had accumulated more information than is humanly possible to process. (Sometimes, too much data can actually hinder intelligence – small wonder the US spy satellites completely missed the preparation that preceded India's nuclear tests in 1998.)
The sheer scale of the surveillance will become a logistical, ethical and civil rights nightmare. It will drive everybody clean crazy. And freedom – that precious, precious thing – will be the first casualty. It's already hurt and haemorrhaging dangerously.
Governments across the world are cynically using the prevailing paranoia to promote their own interests. All kinds of unpredictable political forces are being unleashed. In India, for instance, members of the All India People's Resistance Forum, who were distributing anti-war and anti-US pamphlets in Delhi, have been jailed. Even the printer of the leaflets was arrested.
The rightwing government (while it shelters Hindu extremists groups such as the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and the Bajrang Dal) has banned the Islamic Students Movement of India and is trying to revive an anti-terrorist Act which had been withdrawn after the Human Rights Commission reported that it had been more abused than used. Millions of Indian citizens are Muslim. Can anything be gained by alienating them?
Every day that the war goes on, raging emotions are being let loose into the world. The international press has little or no independent access to the war zone. In any case, mainstream media, particularly in the US, have more or less rolled over, allowing themselves to be tickled on the stomach with press handouts from military men and government officials. Afghan radio stations have been destroyed by the bombing. The Taliban has always been deeply suspicious of the press. In the propaganda war, there is no accurate estimate of how many people have been killed, or how much destruction has taken place. In the absence of reliable information, wild rumours spread.
Put your ear to the ground in this part of the world, and you can hear the thrumming, the deadly drumbeat of burgeoning anger. Please. Please, stop the war now. Enough people have died. The smart missiles are just not smart enough. They're blowing up whole warehouses of suppressed fury.
President George Bush recently boasted, "When I take action, I'm not going to fire a $2m missile at a $10 empty tent and hit a camel in the butt. It's going to be decisive." President Bush should know that there are no targets in Afghanistan that will give his missiles their money's worth.
Perhaps, if only to balance his books, he should develop some cheaper missiles to use on cheaper targets and cheaper lives in the poor countries of the world. But then, that may not make good business sense to the coalition's weapons manufacturers. It wouldn't make any sense at all, for example, to the Carlyle Group – described by the Industry Standard as "the world's largest private equity firm", with $13bn under management.
Carlyle invests in the defence sector and makes its money from military conflicts and weapons spending.
Carlyle is run by men with impeccable credentials. Former US Defence Secretary Frank Carlucci is Carlyle's Chairman and Managing Director (he was a college roommate of Donald Rumsfeld's). Carlyle's other partners include former US Secretary Of State James A Baker III, George Soros and Fred Malek (George Bush Sr's campaign manager). An American paper The Baltimore Chronicle and Sentinel– says that former President George Bush Sr is reported to be seeking investments for the Carlyle Group from Asian markets.
He is reportedly paid not inconsiderable sums of money to make "presentations" to potential government-clients.
Ho hum. As the tired saying goes, it's all in the family.
Then there's that other branch of traditional family business – oil. Remember, President George Bush (Jr) and Vice-President Dick Cheney both made their fortunes working in the US oil industry.
Turkmenistan, which borders the north-west of Afghanistan, holds the world's third largest gas reserves and an estimated six billion barrels of oil reserves. Enough, experts say, to meet American energy needs for the next 30 years (or a developing country's energy requirements for a couple of centuries.) America has always viewed oil as a security consideration, and protected it by any means it deems necessary. Few of us doubt that its military presence in the Gulf has little to do with its concern for human rights and almost entirely to do with its strategic interest in oil.
Oil and gas from the Caspian region currently moves northward to European markets. Geographically and politically, Iran and Russia are major impediments to American interests. In 1998, Dick Cheney – then CEO of Halliburton, a major player in the oil industry – said, "I can't think of a time when we've had a region emerge as suddenly to become as strategically significant as the Caspian. It's almost as if the opportunities have arisen overnight." True enough.
For some years now, an American oil giant called Unocal has been negotiating with the Taliban for permission to construct an oil pipeline through Afghanistan to Pakistan and out to the Arabian sea. From here, Unocal hopes to access the lucrative "emerging markets" in South and South-east Asia. In December 1997, a delegation of Taliban mullahs travelled to America and even met US State Department officials and Unocal executives in Houston. At that time the Taliban's taste for public executions and its treatment of Afghan women were not made out to be the crimes against humanity that they are now.
Over the next six months, pressure from hundreds of outraged American feminist groups was brought to bear on the Clinton administration.
Fortunately, they managed to scuttle the deal. And now comes the US oil industry's big chance.
In America, the arms industry, the oil industry, the major media networks, and, indeed, US foreign policy, are all controlled by the same business combines. Therefore, it would be foolish to expect this talk of guns and oil and defence deals to get any real play in the media. In any case, to a distraught, confused people whose pride has just been wounded, whose loved ones have been tragically killed, whose anger is fresh and sharp, the inanities about the "clash of civilisations" and the "good vs evil" discourse home in unerringly. They are cynically doled out by government spokesmen like a daily dose of vitamins or anti-depressants. Regular medication ensures that mainland America continues to remain the enigma it has always been – a curiously insular people, administered by a pathologically meddlesome, promiscuous government.
And what of the rest of us, the numb recipients of this onslaught of what we know to be preposterous propaganda? The daily consumers of the lies and brutality smeared in peanut butter and strawberry jam being air-dropped into our minds just like those yellow food packets. Shall we look away and eat because we're hungry, or shall we stare unblinking at the grim theatre unfolding in Afghanistan until we retch collectively and say, in one voice, that we have had enough?
As the first year of the new millennium rushes to a close, one wonders – have we forfeited our right to dream? Will we ever be able to re-imagine beauty?
Will it be possible ever again to watch the slow, amazed blink of a newborn gecko in the sun, or whisper back to the marmot who has just whispered in your ear – without thinking of the World Trade Centre and Afghanistan?
#if you read nothing else today read this#i wonder how many people know that Afghanistan was also an oil war#people seem to think the Afghanistan War was 'justified'#but the Iraq War wasnt#Arundati Roy was just saying what people already knew – this was a war machine sniffing after oil and guns#an industry coalition of which the Republican establishment were major stakeholders#the obscenity of dropping food packets with bombs#this is why you have no future in your country USAmerican Gen Z#this is why the entire globe adopted anti-Muslim ethnonationalism and Islamic fundamentalism for the next 20 years#this is how the global wave of fascism began#because they sold weapons to the wrong people‚ and then chose a scapegoat to sacrifice in revenge#world history#september 11#geopolitics#us history#afghanistan war#usamerican imperialism#cold war#taliban#violence#terrorism#colonialism#capitalism#genocide#arundati roy#pacifism#anarchism#knee of huss
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i know why congress isn’t calling for a ceasefire but it’s still so blood-boiling.
#it’s because people over 50 generally have little knowledge on palestine#and think the israel is in the right#it’s just wild to see how many civilians have died in less than a month#and they barely peep#when they are loud and vocal about ukraine civilians (which they should be but)#it’s all about votes#they all act like iraq was a great mistake now#and they will act like that 20 years down the line with palestine
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March 21, 2023
You might think everyone agrees the Iraq War was a complete humanitarian and strategic disaster. But a casual survey of today’s politicians and mainstream talking heads reveals that many in corridors of power think the invasion was fundamentally a good idea.
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I find it insane that some girl asked if I was gay when she’s the one who in my Islamic private school with only girls classes for the most part and wearing Muslim fitting uniforms (and btw I would make my clothes extra baggy btw so you don’t notice anything of my body to begin with 😭) told me I have a nice body LIKE WTF WAS I MEANT TO RESPOND TO THAT FIRST OF ALL ??? AND SECOND HOW ARE YOU ASKING IF IM THE GAY ONE WHEN YOURE COMMENTING ON MY BODY AS A GIRL 😭
#dora daily#I fear mini Noor was definitely the catch she got boys her age#boys in her younger brothers grade and in their 20s and old ones too and this girl as well#GIRL … How dare you judge me when you give me such a closeted esque comment behave yourself 😭#fyi I’m just being silly in the other tags I don’t actually think I’m anything of a catch I swear 😭 it’s just those ppl I listed are#absolutely stupid#and they have zero taste LMAO#oh I forgot to mention cousins too LMFAOOOO 😭 anyways the cousin that was acting up with me#last time I went to Iraq had a kidney stone rn 😭 I’m ngl rlly worried abt him kidney stones are scary#wait back on topic tho I’m very confused as to what she meant#like what part of my body cause my mum implied I’m flat the other time I was so offended actually 😭#maybe that girl meant skinny ? (even tho my dysmorphia says that’s not the case a few ppl commented on me being skinny?) but then if that#were the case she would’ve said skinny right esp cause that girl who said it is SUPER skinny#I’m so confused I think she’s blind too
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just talked with my mom and grandparents over the phone and of course they asked me if I heard what’s happened in Solingen last night (the knife attack on a city festivity) and blaming „foreigners“ when I damn well know who they mean specifically by that also all the comments under the news report made my stomach turn regarding future elections like yes I think this is awful and that we need to make fundamental changes somehow so that the ever present fear many people are feeling stops but voting fascist parties (which also go against anything non-conservative and non-traditional) will not actually change anything for the better it will sow more hate and violence and divide and i mean it just always is mostly men who perpetrate this kind of violence (including SA and 🍇) and i genuinely believe just blaming that on someone’s nationality or entire ethnicity or religion as the core of the problem is just not the right approach cause I think some of it is also deeply rooted in misogyny and xenophobia which is a problem all around the world like if this stuff happens in muslim countries it still doesn’t make it okay or normal either but the way many people are now instrumentalizing this to spew racism against millions of people and putting them under general suspicion is just sick but when you say that here you are a „leftists“ that „deserves to be raped by them“ and „this is what you get for wanting it to be colorful“ like??
#and they do all that while ignoring what’s going on in palestine#probably just as they ignored the many civilians killed in iraq 20 years ago#they just don’t actually value life they value WHITE WESTERN lives
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