imtalkinghere

Memorial Day 2005

You don't say?

"See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda."

President Bush in Greece, New York, yesterday - 26 May 2005

Operative definition of propaganda:
deceptive or distorted information that is systematically spread

And they applauded.     

Audio here. 

 

Fantasy Island

... Otherwise known as Mister C's podium

In a report that should matter to a critical mass of Americans, Amnesty International's 2005 annual analysis included a particularly harsh critique of...us.

From Afghanistan to Zimbabwe the picture is bleak. Governments are increasingly rolling back the rule of law, taking their cue from the U.S.-led war on terror, it said.

    "The USA as the unrivalled political, military and economic hyper-power sets the tone for governmental behaviour worldwide," Secretary General Irene Khan said in the foreword to Amnesty International's 2005 annual report.

    "When the most powerful country in the world thumbs its nose at the rule of law and human rights, it grants a licence to others to commit abuse with impunity," she said.

Mr. Cellophane's response?

Q    Scott, Amnesty International report today, saying the U.S. is a top offender of human rights.  Does the White House dispute that assessment?

MR. McCLELLAN:  I think the allegations are ridiculous and unsupported by the facts.  The United States is leading the way when it comes to protecting human rights and promoting human dignity.  We have liberated 50 million people in Iraq and Afghanistan.  We have worked to advance freedom and democracy in the world so that people are governed under a rule of law... We're also leading the way when it comes to spreading compassion...

As Amnesty International points out,

U.S. President George W. Bush often said his country was founded on and dedicated to the cause of human dignity -- but there was a gulf between rhetoric and reality...

Mr. Cellophane Delivery System

Could White House press secretary Scott McClellan be any less charismatic or more transparent? Or so I wondered as I studied him fielding reporters' challenges about the discrepancies between his version and Afghan President Karzai's explanation of the demonstrations in Afghanistan.

First, the transcript:

Q: One other question. Karzai was quite definite in saying that he didn’t believe that the violence in Afghanistan was directly tied to the Newsweek article about Koran desecration. Yet, from this podium, you have made that link. So—

McCLELLAN: Actually, I don’t think you’re actually characterizing what was said accurately.

Q: By whom?

McCLELLAN: As I said last week, and as President Karzai said today, and as General Myers had said previously, the protest may well have been pre-staged. The discredited report was damaging. It was used to incite violence...

Now, of course, "the discredited report"  is one of those Bush-Rovian phrases (Remember Rather?) -  the tiniest sliver of something sort of related to a true thing but also wholly misleading, meant to deflect attention from a much bigger and essential truth. That's most of what Scott McClellan does for a living.

Here's the thing: He looked dishonest.  He looked dishonest in ways that adept mothers of young children would recognize...in ways that grade school teachers would tend to notice...in ways that experts in nonverbal communication would use as teaching examples of "How To Recognize a Liar At Work." It was that obvious.

I was just beginning to think, "Why would such a disingenuous White House hire a guy like this to pass their junk along?" when this bigger truth fell in on me: He's perfect for this "line of work" - this Mislead America stuff - because he's so completely uninteresting... unmemorable... downright boring to watch.

Just put him out there with the phrases we want repeated, and have him repeat them. Americans won't pay close enough attention to catch any revealing tics because his utter dullness practically repells the eyes, all the better for the planted repeaters to live on, because that's just how the subconscious mind works.

Wow. I can almost hear the discussion. Yes, based on all evidence to date, I assess them to be just that cynical.

1347 days

Last night, while dusting, I accidentally turned on the radio just in time to catch a voice  saying, "One of our listeners sent an email today which reads,'Today is 1347 days since September 11th. From Pearl Harbor, it was exactly 1347 days until Truman announced the end of World War II on August 15, 1945.' "

Now obviously, we all get that this is a different kind of battle; in fact, I would argue it's a whole lot more different than many, if not most, of our leaders seem to recognize. Still, it's striking to contemplate what we've "accomplished" since "our" Pearl Harbor.

When I mentioned the number to my husband this morning, he said, "Hmmm. The difference between a country committed in shared sacrifice and a country... distracted."

To which, I added, "And from a president who counseled 'the only thing we have to fear is fear itself' to Fear!Fear!Fear!"

Go, Mama!

You've just got to love her.

Alysha Cosby attended Catholic school, where she was a good student, often making the honor roll.  She got pregnant. The school told her she couldn't graduate with her class. The admitted father of her child graduated with everyone else.

So Alysha attended the graduation event, and when the pomp and circumstance ended,

she  walked onto the stage, called out her own name and walked across.

Pause here for respectful awe.

Now, back to the Alabama/Catholic mindset:

But her mother and aunt were escorted out of the church by police after Cosby headed back to her seat.

But never mind the puny, misguided judgments of that school, those police officers. Just hold onto the beauty part:

she  walked onto the stage, called out her own name and walked across

That's just exactly how we're going to get to where we're being called to go.

she  walked onto the stage, called out her own name and walked across

It's a fabric, fellas

Wes Clark's comments on the newly announced military base closure plans go to one of the major blind spots of this most corporatist administration: their utter inability to comprehend the complex weaving of energies required for health...of anything.

"We're losing influence abroad when we bring those troops home, and we lose the interaction with America when we create these super bases," Clark said in a speech to the Arkansas Associated Press Managing Editors Association...

"Small communities lose sight of the armed forces," he said. "I like for the Army and the armed forces to be representative of the people they protect, not an elite organization."

Now, I am all for saving money where it makes sense in our bloated armed forces budget, but Clark, as usual, reveals his keen, comprehensive intelligence in pointing out the importance of maintaining deep and wide connections between our military personnel and regular folks here and around the world.

It's important for the broadest possible spectrum of Americans to feel connected - not in the abstract but through direct interactions - with men and women in uniform. When soldiers go off to war, they need to be real people to as many of us as possible, and that web of connection needs to be woven throughout our country. The soldiers deserve this wider fabric of awareness, but the American people need it, too. It's essential moral ballast for our current position as lone super-power.

As for the plan to bring 70,000 troops currently stationed abroad back to home soil - At what cost to international relations? Isn't there value in providing - where appropriate - opportunities for people around the world to get to know our soldiers and their families as neighbors and customers? Don't those 70,000 often serve as good will ambassadors? To what extent do we de-humanize foreigners' sense of our (hulking super power) country when we eliminate opportunities for non-combat military interactions?

Might this impact recruiting? Join the Army and see the...stateside super base? Isn't there value in developing a critical mass of military personnel who have traveled and experienced other cultures?

What kind of unbalanced macho mindset results from concentrating troops in dense military compounds? It's a weird business - being trained to kill; it too requires humanizing ballast. 

Of course, this wouldn't be the first time we've been penny wise and pound foolish. Wasn't it  during the Reagan administration that we closed down so many of the America Centers at our embassies around the world?  These were cultural centers and libraries where non-elite  populations came to read and watch films and engage in dialogues about the best America has to offer. But they were closed to save money. Some twenty years later, with anti-Amercanism at an all-time high, the 9/11 Commission report remarked on this sad state

"The United States should rebuild the scholarship, exchange, and library programs that reach out to young people and offer them knowledge and hope"

I worry that this latest closure plan may reflect one more misguided emphasis on top-down "bottom-line" thinking...that will leave us with yet another shredded fabric we'll need to re-weave in the future.

 

Friday the 13th

Meditation for this day:

From Caroline Casey's impeccable  Making The Gods Work For You:

"If we were creatively suspicious, we might wonder why Friday the thirteenth has been deemed 'unlucky' in the modern world. Friday is Venus's day, sacred to Freya, the Norse Venus. The number thirteen is sacred to the goddess, because there are thirteen lunar months in a year. The pre-Christian tradition was that on Friday the thirteenth, a powerful convergence of goddess imagery, you were supposed to honor Venus by making love all day. Once the Reality Police noticed this holy day, they thought, 'Good heavens, this will ruin the five-day work week. This will forestall industrialism. We can't have this! Let's make sensuality unlucky.' Thus, this fun holiday celebrating the art of sensuality was kept under superstitious wraps. But feel free to take the wraps off and liberate your Venus, celebrating as you and she deem fit."

Learning To Count

These words - learning to count - come to me often as I contemplate real numbers, as in what the war in Iraq will really cost - in ongoing disabilities and mental health care and, if the recent wars are any indication, vet homeless- ness and decades of future illness plus birth defects from depleted uranium and toxic clean up, and worldwide ill-will,  and so on - versus the way-low 200 billion figure people were getting aIl literal about during the election. I suspect this may become a recurrent refrain on this blog. But for starters, let's begin by counting our nuclear weapons, by clicking...

HERE.

Thanks, Ben.