War

Don't you wish all history lessons were like an Eddie Izzard standup bit? Because that's the genius of his act. There's nothing too far off the historical record in anything he says. It's just the way he puts it that's hilarious. And the fact he can make people laugh about Hitler, Lenin and Pol Pot all the while declaring us accomplices to their atrocities ... well, that's something beyond genius.

That is all.

I have spent the last 72 hours scouring videos online, looking for citizen journalism from Iraq. I've found scores of video blogs and bits by US soldiers. I cannot find any videos created by Iraqis from inside Iraq. It may be because, I do not speak Arabic. Yet I doubt that's the case --there are quite a number of propaganda videos from the different insurgencies fighting in Iraq.

What I speak of is of videos coming from Iraqi cellular phones or digital cameras. I speak of videos where Iraqis may have filmed their surroundings, their day to day and put out on the web for any and all to witness and never forget.

Iraq by Iraqis in Iraq are nowhere to be found.

The measure of a brutal imperialistic force is in it's effective silencing of the people they've set out to conquer, submit, silence and colonize.

We The People Of The United States have been complicit in the silencing of Iraqis, in the wiping away of their culture and history, in the destruction of their freedom of speech and freedom to be by destroying their homes, destroying their country's infrastructure, destroying their economy.

ZOOOOOOOOOOOMG!

I have been waiting for this documentary since I saw Morgan Spurlock at SXSW last year, when he was there presenting What Would Jesus Buy?, a documentary about Reverend Billy & The Church of Stop Shopping's crusade against conspicuous consumption.

This from Apple.com's trailer park :

If Morgan Spurlock has learned anything from over 30 years of movie-watching, it’s that if the world needs saving, it’s best done by one lone man willing to face danger head on to take it down, action hero style. So, with no military experience, knowledge or expertise, he sets off to do what the CIA, FBI and countless bounty hunters have failed to do: find the world’s most wanted man. Why take on such a seemingly impossible mission? Simple-he wants to make the world safe for his soon to be born child. But before he finds Osama bin Laden, he first needs to learn where he came from, what makes him tick, and most importantly, what exactly created bin Laden to begin with.

I have no doubt that the Republicans want to attack Iran. They have been trying to build their fake case for months. But the chances of them actually invading are very slim. Bombing runs are quite possible, but invasion would be the stupidest thing they have done in their entire stupid administration. We are bogged down in both Afghanistan and Iraq with almost no allies left and with a military stretched to a breaking point. And Iran is far tougher than any opponent we have fought since WW II. They kicked Iraq's butt when Iraq invaded. We cannot fight across the whole area of Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan.

The latest rumor is that Dick Cheney told the Saudi king that we are going to nuke Iran, possibly in April, and Saudi Arabia is planning for nuclear fallout. This rumor has been making the rounds through the liberal blogsphere. While I believe Bush wants endless war, I do not believe this rumor at all.

If we planned on using nukes on Iran, Saudi Arabia would not be the first nation we would warn. Nor would we let the rumor out the way it has come out. Russia and China are very much opposed to our going to war with Iran...and they are unlikely to be complacent about us using nukes against Iran, or anywhere for that matter. If we used nukes against Iran, we would be universally condemned and it might be just the trigger for all those nations we now owe so much money to (thanks to Bush's massive deficits) to start using those debts against us. We would suddenly be the rogue nation that we claim Iran is. Nuking Iran would trigger a crisis on the level of the Cuban Missle Crisis.

Here's the list of US Senators who dared to say "NO" to the war in Iraq:

Jeffords (I-VT)
Kennedy (D-MA)
Leahy (D-VT)
Levin (D-MI)
Mikulski (D-MD)
Murray (D-WA)
Reed (D-RI)
Sarbanes (D-MD)
Stabenow (D-MI)
Wellstone (D-MN)
Wyden (D-OR)

[NB: Emphasis mine]

In case you need a refresher, here's the list of Democrats who voted to give George W. Bush the power to spend $200 million a day in a war that gave us no "weapons of mass destruction" yet which has displaced as internal refugees more than 2 million Iraqis and forced another 3 million refugees to move to places like Jordan, Iran, Egypt, Lebanon, Turkey and Gulf States.

Baucus (D-MT)
Bayh (D-IN)
Biden (D-DE)
Breaux (D-LA)
Cantwell (D-WA)
Carnahan (D-MO)
Carper (D-DE)
Cleland (D-GA)
Clinton (D-NY)
Daschle (D-SD)
Dodd (D-CT)
Dorgan (D-ND)
Edwards (D-NC)
Feinstein (D-CA)
Harkin (D-IA)
Hollings (D-SC)
Johnson (D-SD)
Kerry (D-MA)
Kohl (D-WI)
Landrieu (D-LA)
Lieberman (D-CT)
Lincoln (D-AR)
Miller (D-GA)
Nelson (D-FL)
Nelson (D-NE)
Reid (D-NV)
Rockefeller (D-WV)
Schumer (D-NY)
Torricelli (D-NJ)

I've bolded some names for ponderable emphasis.

Screenshot from icasualties.org

On Wednesday, March the 19th many of us did not mark the 5th anniversary of the war in Iraq. It was another day in which we did not remember the secrets and lies that got us into Bagdad. We don't even remember the fact that there were no weapons of mass destruction nor no Al-Qaeda to be found.

As to the Democratic Party's refusal to advance the impeachments of George Bush and Dick Cheney because it will cost them elections? Well, we already knew that the majority of Democrats aided and abetted the Bush-Cheney duo's dream of imperial power.

As long as the Democrats want to get their hands into the White House, there will always be another day to think about the death and ruin brought to this country by the war.

We need something nice and smooth here. It's been kind of a drag of a week, and it's just Wednesday! Who better to groove to than Marvin Gaye.

"What's Going" is one of the most perfect "artivist" protest songs ever created. And it is a work of art, so much so, that the Gaye's record label rejected it as being uncommercial.

I love the song because the lyrics and music are almost trance like, turning subverting the radical antiwar message of the song. It's almost subliminal the way the grooves hook you while the words slip into the unconscious.

It's as if Gaye becomes with this song an R&B shaman.