:: Diary of an Aging Protester ::

:: 3.29.2003 ::

A few juicy tidbits culled from Bill Moyers' show Now that I would recommend as an antidote to the shite broadcast on most other stations about the war on Iraq.

"Sey Hirsch is the closest America has to a terrorist." --Richard Perle, fmr Asst. Secy. of Defense

VP Dick Cheney now has the power to classify any document he wants--it will be vanished from the public record, inaccessible, no longer existent.

As the bill for this war increases, currently $75 Billion with more needed as the admin sees it, veterans' benefits were cut in the current budget that was passed.

:: posted by Doreen on 9:21 AM [+] ::
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Astute thoughts about the discourse of images and its relation to this war from my colleague Chuck who is keeping a similar but v. different protest blog The Chutry Experiment and whom I must thank for getting me to blog by actually doing it rather than talking about it.

"I have been thinking about blogging, the war, and other issues over the last few days, and I want to think more systematically about these issues in paper, possibly for a conference. For now, I just want to revisit my observations about Under Fire, which I discussed a few days ago. A recent Salon article addresses debates about the veracity of Iraqi broadcasts of Saddam Hussein speeches. Intelligence reports suggest that these broadcasts are not live, but taped, therefore implying that Saddam may have taped these broadcasts before the war in order to maintain the fiction that he is still alive. Many observers, however, note the specificity with which he describes certain battles in order to contend that he is indeed still alive.

Certainly there is more going on here than the mere "deceptiveness of images" argument that we see in a theorist like William J. Mitchell. One of the immediate complications is the question of how perceptions of power function in the narrative that is being offered here. There seems to be an implication that without Saddam Hussein, Iraq may not have anything to fight for or may choose not to fight. It's interesting to me that the US can rely on our awareness that images may be deceptive in order to cast doubt on Saddam's speeches (including the brief suggestion that one of his look-alikes may be delivering some of the speeches), but the same incredulity is not generally extended to American media sources."

Comment: There was a very funny article in The Guardian last week that spoofed on the many doubles of Mr Bush and VP Cheney, saying that in recent appearances his ears increased dramatically, thus provoking speculation about whether or not he was who he seemed to be.

Now I must simply do some yoga.

:: posted by Doreen on 5:55 PM [+] ::
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Al-Jazeera is impossible to access. Hackers continue to keep it out of order in both its english and arabic versions. The internet is not a democratic space; people who have the most power are those who use their technical skills to suppress points-of-view they disagree with by destroying them.
:: posted by Doreen on 5:27 PM [+] ::
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Thoughts from the Arab World: A Report from Hani Shrukallah in Al-Ahram Weekly
"We will stay on the path, mile by mile, all the way to Baghdad and all the way to victory," Bush told his troops at Central Command headquarters in Florida yesterday. But former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter, in an interview broadcast by a Lisbon private radio station on Tuesday was doubtful. "We do not have the military means to take over Baghdad," he said. "The United States is going to leave Iraq with its tail between its legs, defeated. It is a war we cannot win."

Throughout the Arab world, seven days into the invasion of Iraq, there was considerable awe, not at the viciousness of an illegal foreign invasion of Arab land, but at the stiffness of the Iraqi people's resolve in its defence.

It was also reported that 20,000 protesters turned out to protest in central Cairo last thursday! in a country that has limited public demonstrations agains the US invasion to areas that keep numbers down, that is so awesome.

:: posted by Doreen on 5:18 PM [+] ::
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Accountability
This morning, the BBC reports this about the marketplace bombing:
A US military spokesman at coalition Central Command said: "Our early intelligence report provides no conclusive evidence that we have caused the damage in the civilian marketplace.
"One possibility and high probability is that it was caused from the fallout from the regime's anti-aircraft fire."
But the BBC's Andrew Gilligan in Baghdad says that explanation is "unlikely because we simply haven't heard any anti-aircraft fire in the city for the past four days".
The US military has admitted using precision-guided weapons to target Iraqi missiles and launchers which it says were hidden in a residential area less than 100 metres (300 feet) from homes.

Comment: I realize we are at war. I realize that we need to demonize the enemy in order to keep citizens and troops' morale up. This is no time to sympathize with the devil. However, this is why I dislike war. there is no sense of accountability for the loss of lives. Particularly with this 'humane war'--a war like no other--the pentagon/media seems compelled to frame everything as most likely caused by the Iraqi regime. But what they're not getting is that most likely it doesn't really matter on the streets of Basra or Baghdad whose bombs are dropping; it's just they are dropping and maiming and killing and the fact of the matter is, they wouldn't be if the US hadn't invaded.


:: posted by Doreen on 9:34 AM [+] ::
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Fading Empire: Signs of Decline

this morning's Guardian has Mark Tran commenting on what looks to be an article published by Independent Strategy, a business research agency, circulating internationally that reveals four very prominent signs that the US power will soon be just a memory. Read on! !
Mark Tran

:: posted by Doreen on 9:33 AM [+] ::
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Got to watch a video game this a.m. c/o of a Pentagon briefing in Qatar. Pictures of before and after were shown displaying our humaneness to the world. First you see a tank under a bridge, then you see a big black cloud, and voila, the bridge is still standing but the tank is gone. This went on for quite some time. What they don't tell you and what I read at Salam Pax, a blog by an Iraqi in Baghdad, is that the fragments of bombs as well as what exploded have to go somewhere. Often they destroy buildings, injure people, and wreak havoc on anyone, thing in the vicinity.
:: posted by Doreen on 8:25 AM [+] ::
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This just in from Reuters:
The head of the world's biggest journalists' organisation says a U.S. bomb and missile attack on Iraqi television was an attempt at censorship and may have breached the Geneva Conventions.

Supposedly bombing a media center just because you don't like what it's saying is illegal in a civilized war.
:: posted by Doreen on 8:21 AM [+] ::
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The Military Eye
It finally came to me why these embedded journalists that are so insidiously part of the military machine imposing itself on Iraq really disturb me. They cannot move beyond the frame of what it's like to be in combat since they are cybernetically connected to the war machine as it races to Baghdad. Thus, the camera works in a number of ways to voyeuristically give us pleasure and reinforce our feelings of superiority about the beauty and grace of the machine--whizzing along the desert at top speeds--and at the same time viewing the war this way makes us vulnerable to attack by the enemy thus reinforcing our fear of this unknown terror that was 9/11 and that continues to be a threat that shapeshifts--then it was Al-Queda, now it is Saddam, next it will be whom? We are as some mentioned part of the video game, stalking and being stalked, and as peter jennings said ever so politely, remember you're not seeing 90% of what's going on. But who cares about that 90%? all that matters is what the cyborg journalist is seeing.
:: posted by Doreen on 10:19 PM [+] ::
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Semantically Speaking

I find it interesting that the admin continues to keep the words 'terror', and 'terrorist' in constant circulation not only through terror alerts but now through pentagon briefings in which sundry military personnel discuss the actions of the Iraqi army as terroristic, and as Iraqis being in terrorist cells in Basra, and as performing terrorist-like activities. Yes, it appears that the Iraqi soldiers are using rather unsavory techniques such as using civilians as human shields and pretending to surrendar only to attack troops--these are reprehensible acts. However, to me, the sporadic violent attempts to undermine a terrifying and sublime superpower whose bombing of Baghdad was described by BBC correspondent Robert Parsons as "another night of awesome nightime terror" seems to be the only way to fight an enemy that basically has you covered from all sides. this is the yankees playing my old high school team. That the Iraqis can possibly shoot back despite their pathetic military equipment--as the Pentagon was so proud to belch this a.m. about disarming ancient surveillance trackers: didn't even have a chance, nipped it in the bud before they could get so much as a sentence transcribed--is really rather amazing. That it's being framed as terrorism boggles my mind. This enemy knows no laws, as Bush said today. But I say the enemy knows that when push come to shove, defending one's own country when invaded by any means possible is the only option left. Is that terrorism? I'm not getting it.....
:: posted by Doreen on 10:08 PM [+] ::
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in the beginning

I am starting this blog to keep a public account of life during wartime. Last week the US declared war against Iraq. We are now approaching a week anniversary of this so-called 'new kind of war.' At this point I can no longer keep my thoughts and ideas about this war to private sources such as journals, emails, and phone conversations. Thus, I intend to keep an account of details of how war is being presented to me through the vast source of information sources that are now made available through electronic sources. I am mostly concerned with creating a pastiche of different kinds of discourse that I'm trawling from a number of news sites and places both here in the US and abroad, both local and global. At the same time, I plan to, of course, provide my own commentary. For what it's worth.

Current Highlights
Michael Moore at Academy Awards last night shouting, Shame on you, Mr. Bush. Shame on you! Why did so many people boo him? So this is the 'liberal' hollywood that mainstream Americans and talk show hosts go ballistic over? I don't think so. I salute him for his daring outburst during a time when such remarks will surely be met with censure and I also thank Pedro Almodovar for thanking anti-war protesters for being vigilant in the face of growing resentment that we should now 'support our troops and let the debate over war die'.

from Paul Reynolds, BBC News, 3/22/03
The leadership appears to be defiant. They have not so far been shocked or awed, it seems.
Vice President Taha Yassir Ramadan appeared at a news conference in Baghdad on Sunday and showed no signs of surrendering. Nor did the interior minister on Friday who appeared in combat gear and with his chrome plated AK 47.
Indeed, Mr Rumsfeld, a student of history, will know that regimes facing even certain defeat do not necessarily crumble. The Argentine commander in the Falklands, the hapless General Menendez, fought on until the end.
Hitler knew he would be defeated yet held on until the Russians were at the doors to his chancellery.

the british--they do know how to do journalism!


:: posted by Doreen on 8:52 AM [+] ::
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