The Wily Filipino

Kinetic Force.

I don't think I've seen BAE Systems advertise in the Chronicle of Higher Education before, and I may be wrong -- and a quick Google search shows places like Monster.com, Job.com, and Intelligencecareers.com, all places I don't frequent -- but lo and behold, it showed up in the Anthropology listings this week (though it was on the National Association for the Practice of Anthropology job site almost a month ago):

The Human Terrain System (HTS) is a new Army program, designed to improve the military's ability to understand the local socio-cultural environment in Iraq and Afghanistan. Knowledge of the local population provides a departure point for a military staff's ability to plan and execute its mission more effectively using less kinetic force.

Unlike the other postings, this job description specifically mentions Iraq and Afghanistan. And despite the deliberate vagueness of "less kinetic force," this statement is probably as close to saying (and excuse the bluntness), "Having an anthropologist or two around makes it less likely that we'll have to waste some Iraqis." I suppose if you put it that way, it makes the job a little more attractive. Kind of.

The whole topic has been discussed in academic circles for a while now, but has only recently hit the mainstream press (in particular, a high-profile article in the New York Times). See Savage Minds for a primer and links to other articles, dating from as early as 2005. (For something earlier, Eric Wakin's out-of-print Anthropology Goes to War: Professional Ethics and Counterinsurgency in Thailand will fit the bill.)

Stop The Killings Benefit Show.

See you Bay Area folks here:

STOP THE KILLINGS Benefit Show
Saturday, February 17, 2007
7:30pm @ SOMArts (934 Brannan St., SF, CA 94103)
All Ages - $10 (Proceeds go to KARAPATAN)

Performances by:

Blue Scholars
Kiwi (of Native Guns)
Rhapsodistas
Echo of Bullets
Golda Supernova
Power Struggle
Praxis Rocks
The Movement Show
Kapatid X

Art by:

Speaker Fruits
CELL68

ACT NOW!!! Sign the online petition.

Did you know that 825+ people have been killed in the Philippines since 2001? Regular people...students, teachers, lawyers, workers, journalists, clergy, human rights workers, etc. Witnesses have pointed to elements of the Armed Forces of the Philippines in carrying out these killings. Yet not one person has been tried or convicted for any of these deaths. President Arroyo's government has done nothing to stop to these atrocities.

For us living in the U.S.A. it's a little sticky. The U.S. government has been providing excessive amounts of military assistance to the Philippine government. Reports from the Library of US Congress state that the total U.S. military assistance to the Philippines rose from $38 million in 2001 to $114 million in 2003 and a projected $164 million in 2005. That's our tax dollars potentially subsidizing death squads of the Philippine military at the cost of the Filipino people.

Come out to the show to learn a bit more about the issue and find out how you can get involved.

Perks.

At the John Wayne Airport in Santa Ana, I noticed something I hadn't seen at airports before: a separate security check line for first-class and premium passengers. (Although now that I think about it, there was probably one at SFO as well.) As we stood in the obviously slower and longer line, I turned to Izzy and said -- in a voice loud enough for whoever was listening to hear, hoping to gain a sympathetic ear -- "This seems kind of unfair, Izzy."

The woman in front of me wheels around and says, "Of course it's fair. All you have to do is pay double the fare."

Surprised at her reaction, I said, "But it's one thing for a private company to do that. But this is a government procedure, so it doesn't seem very fair to make us wait longer..."

"It's fair because they paid twice the price," she answered. "If you want to go in the quick line, you simply pay more."

"But it seems to discriminate against people who can't afford to pay the higher price." My voice started trailing off, realizing this wasn't working, and that the "D" word -- "discriminate" -- probably made me sound like, you know, one of those angry "people of color."

"Oh my god," she said, rolling her eyes and turning away.

Of course, she was right in the sense that if people are foolish -- okay, wealthy -- enough to afford the first-class tickets, then they should be welcome to do so. But I don't think this was what she was arguing. Part of what rankled me was her easy defense of the "natural," capitalist order of things, but that shouldn't have been a surprise.

Having separate lines was certainly understandable in the context of a private company, but this was not the case. What was perhaps most annoying was the fact that the intrusion of the public into the private, and vice versa, was so unquestioned -- nothing new at all, but simply one more instance of such encroachment. First-class passengers already have separate check-in counters, a departure lounge, cushier seats, what-have-you -- what's one more perk, one supposes the airport officials thought, to reward the rich for a job well done?

Whatever one's opinion regarding the shifting palette of homeland security threats -- and you irregular readers of this blog would know mine -- the fact remains that the war on terror, and its grave consequences, already affects Americans unequally. Surely its attendant inconveniences demand to be applied at least a little democratically as well.

Forty Years Ago.

For tonight, as so many nights before, young Americans struggle and young Americans die in a distant land.

Tonight, as so many nights before, the American Nation is asked to sacrifice the blood of its children and the fruits of its labor for the love of its freedom.

How many times-in my lifetime and in yours-have the American people gathered, as they do now, to hear their President tell them of conflict and tell them of danger?

Each time they have answered. They have answered with all the effort that the security and the freedom of this Nation required.

And they do again tonight in Vietnam.

...

As the assault mounted, our choice gradually became clear. We could leave, abandoning South Vietnam to its attackers and to certain conquest, or we could stay and fight beside the people of South Vietnam.

We stayed.

And we will stay until aggression has stopped.

- President Lyndon B. Johnson, in his State of the Union Address, January 1966

However, as David Levering Lewis writes (in his New Yorker review of Taylor Branch's At Canaan's Edge: America in the King Years, 1965-68):

Still, [Johnson] confided to one of his generals that he felt “a good deal of ice cracking” under his feet.

Petition to End Violence against Filipino People.

From The Critical Filipina and Filipino Studies Collective:

If you wish to sign the petition, please RSVP/send your reply on or by November 9, 2005, Wednesday. In the body of your e-mail, please write your name, institution and affiliation.

Reply to:
pinasatrocities@yahoo.com

Your e-mail address will not be printed in the petition and will not be used for any other purpose other than this petition. After collecting the signatures on Nov. 9, our colleagues in Bayan-Philippines, through Dr. Joi Barrios (Associate Dean at the University of Philippines-Diliman), will submit the petition to representatives of the Philippine Government.

CALL FOR U.S. SUPPORT TO END VIOLENCE AGAINST FILIPINO PEOPLE

As progressive U.S.-based academics, writers, and labor activists, we condemn the growing spate of killings and human rights violations of political activists, peasant farmers’ rights advocates, lawyers, priests and journalists in the Philippines. The Philippine military is targeting and murdering Filipino activists and civilians under the pretense of Gloria Macapagal Arroyo regime's “War on Terror.” The U.S.-backed Arroyo regime's campaign of surveillance, abduction, torture, and execution is a campaign of terror against the Filipino people. The recent gang rape of a Filipina by six U.S. marines, stationed in the Philippines to conduct “counterterrorist operations,” is another example of the terror experienced by Filipinos under the U.S.-backed Arroyo regime.

International and Filipino human rights groups have documented that since 2001, more than 49 Filipinos have been killed by the Philippine military or paramilitary. The death toll has risen in just the last week as Filipino union leader Ricardo Ramos of the Central Azucarera de Tarlac Labor Union (CATLU), BAYAN-Pampanga leader Francisco Rivera, BAYAN allies Dr. Angel David, Vonjohn Maniniti, and most recently ANAKPAWIS Leader Federico De Leon were assassinated. Other recent killings include the Sept 22, 2005 assassination of labor leader Diosdado Fortuna, a Nestlé worker and chairperson of a Kilusang Mayo Uno (May First Movement) regional chapter, and the November 16, 2004 massacre of seven striking peasant workers at Hacienda Luisita, a large sugar estate owned by the family of former President Corazon Aquino.

Since then, death squads comprised of Philippine military, police, paid mercenaries and others yet to be identified have either killed or made attempts on the lives of a wide range of progressive activists. Our U.S. troops continue to be deployed in the Philippines to train Philippine military and paramilitary forces to infiltrate and destroy progressive Filipino organizations, particularly those affiliated with the national democratic movement. The on-going investigations regarding the rape of a Filipina by six U.S. marines underscores how a dubious “War against Terror” conducted by the U.S. in the Philippines furthers violence against innocent Filipino civilians.

In deep sympathy and solidarity with organizations such as Bayan Muna, BAYAN, ANAKPAWIS, GABRIELA and Kilusang Mayo Uno/KMU, who continue to be targeted by militarist brutality, we denounce the Arroyo government and the Bush administration’s support of the Arroyo regime. Consequently, we censure the Bush and Arroyo administrations' false accusations against anti-imperialist activism as “terrorism.” This strategy justifies and condones the brutal suppression of those who collectively organize against injustice and exploitation.

We support the Filipino people and their acts of civil disobedience such as peaceful rallies, marches and protest actions. We stand in solidarity with the Filipino people’s desire to end the illegitimate and tyrannical regime of Mrs. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and end U.S. military presence in the Philippines.

We ask our U.S. colleagues and conscientious individuals to:

1) Boycott any and all Nestlé Company products and Nestlé Company subsidiaries
2) Invite Bayan activists to your institution to discuss the human rights atrocities in the Philippines. Contact the Critical Filipina and Filipino Studies Collective at cffsc@focusnow.org for more information or contact Bayan-USA: Bayan-USA chair, Kawal Ulanday at chair@bayanusa.org or call 800 -874-9794.
3) Sponsor a film screening on a new documentary on human rights violations
in the Philippines, There's Blood in Your Coffee, a documentary on the continuing 3+year Nestlé workers’ strike in Cabuyao, Laguna, Southern Tagalog, where Filipino Nestlé Union President and Kilusang Mayo Uno (KMU) Labor Leader Diosdado "Ka Fort" Fortuna was brutally murdered. We also recommend Hacienda Luisita, a film documenting the struggles of sugar cane and sugar processing plant workers and the violence against their efforts to organize and to demand for better wage and living conditions. This documentary film honors the lives of the workers who were killed on November 16, 2004.

We hope you will join our global efforts to expose and end the brutality of the Arroyo regime.

Maraming salamat and peace,

CONVENORS OF THE PETITION:

Members of the Critical Filipina and Filipino Studies Collective
1) Benito Vergara Jr.
Assistant Professor
Asian American Studies Department
San Francisco State University, CA

2) Rowena Tomaneng
Associate Professor
English Department
De Anza Community College, CA

3) Neferti X. Tadiar
Associate Professor
History of Consciousness Department
University of California, Santa Cruz

4) Jeffrey Santa Ana
Assistant Professor
English Department
Dartmouth College, NH

5) Joanne Rondilla
Doctoral student
Department of Comparative Ethnic Studies University of California, Berkeley

6) Robyn M. Rodriguez
Assistant Professor
Department of Sociology
Rutgers University, NJ

7) Dylan Rodriguez
Assistant Professor
Department of Ethnic Studies
University of California, Riverside

8) Gladys Nubla
Doctoral student
Department of English
University of California, Berkeley

9) Vernadette V. Gonzalez
Assistant Professor
Department of Global Studies
Saint Lawrence University, NY

10) Luis Francia
Journalist, Village Voice and Philippine Inquirer Author and Lecturer, Asian Pacific American Studies Program New York University, NY

11) Sharon Delmendo
Professor of English
St. John Fisher College
Rochester, NY

12) Peter Chua
Assistant Professor
Department of Sociology
San Jose State University, CA

13) Lucy Mae San Pablo Burns
Assistant Professor
Departments of Asian American Studies and World Arts and Cultures University of California, Los Angeles

14) John D. Blanco
Assistant Professor
Department of Literature
University of California, San Diego

15) Nerissa Balce
Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures University of Massachusetts, Amherst

[NOTE: Add your signature by sending e-mail to pinasatrocities@yahoo.com]

The Aristocrats.

In case the arrogance of the Bush elite and their cronies isn't clear -- Republicans are actually presenting the fact that Bush's advisers were attending a wedding in Greece and Condi Rice was watching Spamalot and buying Ferragamo shoes as excuses -- here's the former First Lady of this nation, being interviewed on TV after touring the evacuee centers in Houston:

In a segment at the top of the show on the surge of evacuees to the Texas city, Barbara Bush said: "Almost everyone I’ve talked to says we're going to move to Houston."

Then she added: "What I’m hearing which is sort of scary is they all want to stay in Texas. Everyone is so overwhelmed by the hospitality.

"And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this -- this (she chuckles slightly) is working very well for them."

I mean, this is just unbelievable. I don't think even Imelda Marcos ever said anything so crass (okay, she probably has).

As a former student said today, "the smoke is clearing" -- that the Bush aristocracy's relentless war on the poor, whether in the form of tax cuts, or as cannon fodder, is slowly being revealed.

"The Aristocrats" also happens to be the title of a hilarious documentary about the filthiest joke in the world, the unfunny punch line being "The Aristocrats!" But now the joke's over: guess who was screwing and shitting on and pissing on the poor all along?

More on Kanye West's Comments.

Just to put some of Kanye West's comments in context:

We already realize a lot of the people that could help are at war right now, fighting another way.

From the St. Louis-Dispatch (reprinted in the San Luis Obispo Tribune, via Daily Kos):

Currently, members of the Guard and Reserves make up four of every 10 military personnel in Iraq. It's the largest long-term deployment of the nation's reserves in 50 years. And their casualties reflect that.

Men and women who just months ago held jobs such as truck driver, accountant and teacher now make up nearly one of every four servicemen and women being killed in the war.

...

In no state have those deaths registered more than in Louisiana. Louisiana, along with New York, has lost more guardsmen and reservists -- 23 as of July 24 -- than any state in the nation, and all but one of those deaths have come in the last eight months.

And posted August 1, from ABC News 26 in New Orleans:

When members of the Louisiana National Guard left for Iraq in October, they took a lot [of] equipment with them. Dozens of high water vehicles, humvees, refuelers and generators are now abroad, and in the event of a major natural disaster that, could be a problem.

"The National Guard needs that equipment back home to support the homeland security mission," said Lt. Colonel Pete Schneider with the LA National Guard.

Col. Schneider says the state has enough equipment to get by, and if Louisiana were to get hit by a major hurricane, the neighboring states of Mississippi, Alabama and Florida have all agreed to help.

Kanye again:

And now they've given them permission to go down and shoot us.

You just have to love this Brigadier-General Gary Jones, who clearly knows how to talk to the press:

“This place is going to look like Little Somalia,” Brig. Gen. Gary Jones, commander of the Louisiana National Guard’s Joint Task Force told Army Times Friday as hundreds of armed troops under his charge prepared to launch a massive citywide security mission from a staging area outside the Louisiana Superdome. “We’re going to go out and take this city back. This will be a combat operation to get this city under control.”

They were, after all, given "shoot-to-kill" orders.

[Update: More on Bush's tour of New Orleans as a massive photo opportunity. There's also a link to the apparently now-infamous Geraldo Rivera / Shepard Smith video where they lose it on air on Fox News -- yes, on Fox News.]

My Pet Goat.

In "recent years:"

In recent years, Bush repeatedly sought to slice the Army Corps of Engineers' funding requests to improve the levees holding back Lake Pontchartrain, which Katrina smashed through, flooding New Orleans. In 2005, Bush asked for $3.9 million, a small fraction of the request the corps made in internal administration deliberations. Under pressure from Congress, Bush ultimately agreed to spend $5.7 million. Since coming to office, Bush has essentially frozen spending on the Corps of Engineers, which is responsible for protecting the coastlines, waterways and other areas susceptible to natural disaster, at around $4.7 billion.

Wednesday:

On his way to Washington, Bush had Air Force One fly low over the hurricane-ravaged area. His plane flew over New Orleans at about 2,500, and it descended even further, to about 1,700 feet, over Mississippi. Bush surveyed the damage from a couch near the left front of the plane.

The plane flew over New Orleans and saw the Superdome, downtown areas and outlying neighborhoods, then traveled along the coast to Mobile before turning north toward Washington.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan quoted Bush as saying, "It's devastating, it's got to be doubly devastating on the ground." Among other things, the president saw an amusement park with the tops of wrecked rides protruding over bridges covered by water.

Today:

We've got a lot of rebuilding to do. First, we're going to save lives and stabilize the situation. And then we're going to help these communities rebuild. The good news is -- and it's hard for some to see it now -- that out of this chaos is going to come a fantastic Gulf Coast, like it was before. Out of the rubbles of Trent Lott's house -- he's lost his entire house -- there's going to be a fantastic house. And I'm looking forward to sitting on the porch. (Laughter.)

You all have heard, I hope, the 15-minute interview with the mayor of New Orleans -- as damning a condemnation from a public official as anything I've heard recently. It's on the New York Times website, in the Multimedia sidebar. (There's a transcript here, but the audio interview drives the point better -- it's uncensored, for starters.)

(I should have taken a screen clipping of how the webpage originally looked -- it was to the right of another sidebar that had Bush's photo on it with the caption, "'Hang in there,' he told refugees.")

But folks, all criticisms above aside -- anything will help: 1500 blogs (now 1501) are participating in Blog Relief Days. There's more information at Instapundit's roundup page and the TTLB Katrina Relief page. I recommend the American Red Cross, and, if you want log your contribution here.

Going On With His Life.

From the Waco Tribune:

"But whether it be here or in Washington or anywhere else, there's somebody who has got something to say to the president, that's part of the job,'' Bush said on the ranch. "And I think it's important for me to be thoughtful and sensitive to those who have got something to say.''

"But,'' he added, "I think it's also important for me to go on with my life, to keep a balanced life.''

And so he does:

In addition to the two-hour bike ride, Bush's Saturday schedule included an evening Little League Baseball playoff game, a lunch meeting with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, a nap, some fishing and some reading.

Asked Jon Stewart: "How did reading sneak in there?"

(And if you haven't yet read Cindy Sheehan's moving essay, go check it out.)

America-Haters, Etc.

Thought I should make a direct link to the Homeland Security Racism report from the CFFSC here. In addition, there is a working paper by Dylan Rodriguez on the Bagong Diwa Prison Massacre -- more information on the Collective website.

I was going to write snarky comments like these:

I also wanted to draw my readers' attention to the comment left here and how it succinctly, if perhaps unwittingly, summarizes "imperialist" logic. The report linked above makes the argument, among others, that the American empire's military and mercantilist practices overseas are mirrored in its domestic surveillance methods -- at least, as manifested in the PATRIOT Act, control over subjects perceived as threats, particularly in the form of incarceration and deportation.

The blog comments -- which I'll reductively rephrase as "If you don't like it here, leave" -- exemplify the Bush administration's increasingly invidious attempts to stifle dissent and criticism. Unfortunately, sir, Filipinos are already being deported in worrying numbers, so your hopes about America-haters just might come true. Lucky you.

The majority of the people who signed the letter are American citizens, and so "going home" to the Philippines isn't literally correct -- but I, not an "America-hater," felt personally stung, since I am one of those people that is a "mere" immigrant to this country and could indeed, all practicalities aside (but there are many), return to the Philippines.

(This was the same kind of tactic the Marcos regime used to (arguably) effectively discredit its Filipino opposition -- both its conservative and radical left components -- overseas.)

I'll have to mull this over for a lengthier response.

The War Against the People

March 28, 2005
The War Against the People: Scholars Denounce Killings in the Philippines and Calls for a World-Wide Action

Statement of the Critical Filipina and Filipino Studies Collective
Contact: cffsc@REMOVETHISfocusnow.org

Northampton, MA - The Critical Filipina and Filipino Studies Collective (CFFSC) condemns the growing spate of killings and human rights violations of political activists, peasant rights advocates and sympathizers, lawyers and priests in the Philippines. The Philippine military is targeting and murdering leftist activists and civilians under the pretense of Gloria Macapagal Arroyo regime’s “War on Terror.” The U.S.-backed Arroyo regime’s campaign of surveillance, abduction, torture, and execution is a campaign of terror against the Filipino people.

International and Filipino human rights groups have documented that since 2001, forty-nine activists have been killed or otherwise brutalized by the Philippine military or paramilitary. On March 7, 2005, unidentified gunmen attempted to assassinate Romeo T. Capulong, UN Ad Litem Judge and a human rights lawyer who served as counsel to striking farm workers at Hacienda Luisita, a large sugar estate owned by the family of former President Corazon Aquino in the province of Tarlac. The attempt on Judge Capulong’s life follows the infamous massacre at Hacienda Luisita. Last November 16, 2004, the Philippine military and police attacked striking peasant workers, killing seven and wounding many. Since then, death squads have killed supporters of the peasant farmers: Abelardo Ladera, a city councilor; William Tadena, a priest; and Marcelino Beltran, a peasant leader and key witness to the November massacre. Five more have been abducted and believed dead.

In deep sympathy and solidarity with the progressive individuals and organizations, such as BAYAN-MUNA, BAYAN, ANAKPAWIS, and GABRIELA, who continue to be targeted by such militarist brutality, the CFFSC strongly deplore the unbridled state tyranny exercised by the Philippine government to silence any and all manner of dissent and resistance against its political and economic policies, which have reduced Filipinos to unprecedented levels of poverty and suffering. We denounce the support of the Arroyo regime by the imperialist George Bush administration, which continues to deploy U.S. troops in the Philippines to train Philippine paramilitary forces to infiltrate and destroy progressive Filipino organizations and ordinary civilian activism. We censure the Bush/GMA administration’s false accusations against anti-imperialist activism as “terrorism” and progressive insurgent activists as “terrorists.” This strategy masks a deceptive and wholly undemocratic campaign to coerce the Philippine people and the peoples of the world into justifying and condoning the brutal military suppression of the legal and collective right to organize against injustice and exploitation.

We also decry global-U.S. “War on Terrorism” which provides both legitimation and financial and military support for the Arroyo regime’s domestic war against its own citizens. The global “War on Terrorism” is itself globalization by other means, a globalization of crony capitalism and the military-industrial complex. It is a global project seeking to destroy entire communities for the purposes of creating new sites of investment and profit and new opportunities for the aggrandizement of unlimited power and wealth for the few.

It is vitally important for the progressive international community, which finds cause to protest the U.S.-led war against and occupation of Iraq as the hallmark of a new imperialism, to also show solidarity with Filipino human rights activists and mass leaders, whose terrible fates under the Philippine Republic show the disastrous consequences of a “democracy” under the sponsorship of a globalizing U.S. military-corporate state acting at the behalf of transnational capital and national elite interests.

We must view the flagrant atrocities committed by the Philippine state against its citizens; the civil tyranny and repression insidiously exercised against vocal critics of Empire in U.S. universities (such as Ward Churchill at the University of Colorado and many Middle Eastern studies professors at Columbia University such as Hamid Dabashi, Joseph Massad, Lila Abu-Lughod and others); and the undeclared suspension of the writ of habeas corpus and the flouting of the Geneva Conventions in the case of suspected enemies of the U.S. State detained in Guantánamo Bay and other sites of “extraordinary rendition”(subcontracted torture in foreign territories), as all instances of a world-wide escalation in the use of coercion and unmitigated violence, including political assassinations and torture. If we do not connect these disparate instances of repression and violence as parts of a trend in global tyranny, our hopes for a better and more just world will remain divided and unrealizable. And the alliances forged between state, military and corporate powers under the auspices of the imperial project of global security will continue to go unchallenged.

We therefore appeal to concerned Filipinos everywhere and progressive citizens of the world community to:

· demand that local and national authorities put an end to these killings and to hold the Philippine state accountable for the relentless persecution and murder of Filipino activists, critics and journalists
· call for an invigorated global anti-imperialist movement that recognizes the everyday conditions of violence, dispossession and repression produced by crony capitalism and military-industrial complex
· organize local fora, start solidarity organizations to raise consciousness and build support for the Philippine progressive movement
· Envision and make real global justice, self-determination (rather than the dictates of the elite or global multinational corporations), and human dignity for all.

Signed,
THE CRITICAL FILIPINA AND FILIPINO STUDIES COLLECTIVE

1. Nerissa S. Balce
Assistant Professor
Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures
University of Massachusetts, Amherst

2. Lucy Mae San Pablo Burns
UC President's Postdoctoral Fellow
Department of History of Consciousness
University of California, Santa Cruz

3. Richard T. Chu
Assistant Professor
Department of History
University of Massachusetts, Amherst

4. Peter Chua
Assistant Professor
Department of Sociology
San Jose State University, CA

5. Vernadette V. Gonzalez
Assistant Professor
Department of Global Studies
Saint Lawrence University, NY

6. Gladys Nubla
Doctoral student
Department of English
University of California, Berkeley

7. Robyn M. Rodriguez
Assistant Professor
Department of Sociology
Rutgers University, NJ

8. Joanne Rondilla
Doctoral student
Department of Comparative Ethnic Studies
University of California, Berkeley

9. Jeff Santa Ana
Assistant Professor
English Department
Dartmouth College, NH (Commencing fall semester 2005)

10. Rowena Tomaneng
Associate Professor
English Department
De Anza Community College, CA

11. Luis Francia
Journalist, Village Voice and Philippine Inquirer
Author and Lecturer, Asian Pacific American Studies
Program
New York University, NY

12. Dylan Rodriguez
Assistant Professor
Department of Ethnic Studies
University of California, Riverside

13. Ronald R. Sundstrom
Assistant Professor of Philosophy
University of San Francisco, CA

14. Neferti X. Tadiar
Associate Professor
History of Consciousness Department
University of California, Santa Cruz

15. Benito Vergara Jr.
Assistant Professor
Asian American Studies Department
San Francisco State University, CA

For additional information on human rights abuses by the Philippine state:
http://www.geocities.com/arkibo21/mass/lentenmass4jph.htm

http://portal.unesco.org/en/ev.phpURL_ID=26425&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html

Amnesty International: http://asiapacific.amnesty.org/apro/aproweb.nsf/pages/index
http://asiapacific.amnesty.org/apro/aproweb.nsf/pages/appeals_philippines_ASA350012005

Asian Pacific Mission for Migrants: www.apimigrants.org

To find more on information on collaborating with or joining local and national efforts to support progressive and anti-imperialist movements in the Philippines and the U.S:

In the Philippines: BAYAN MUNA: http://www.bayanmuna.net/
GABRIELA: http://www.gabrielaphilippines.net/index1.htm

In the U.S.: BAYAN-USA: statement: http://www.indybay.org/news/2005/03/1728977.php
Critical Filipino and Filipina Studies Collective: http://www.cffsc.focusnow.org

To send letters of protest and contact Philippine government officials:
Ms. Gloria Macapagal Arroyo
President
Republic of the Philippines
Malacañang Palace
J.P. Laurel St., San Miguel
Manila, NCR 1005
PHILIPPINES
Fax: +63 2929 3968

Ms. Purificacion Quisumbing
Commissioner
Commission on Human Rights
SAAC Bldg., Commonwealth Avenue
U.P. Complex, Diliman, Quezon City
PHILIPPINES
Tel. No. +63 2 928-5655/926-6188
Fax: +63 2 929-0102
Email: drpvq@chr.gov.ph

Sec. Teresita Quintos-Deles
OPAPP (office of the Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process)
Government Peace Negotiating Panel for Talks with the CPP-NPA-NDF
4th Flr. Agustin 1 Bldg. Emerald Ave. Ortigas Center
Pasig City, Philippines
Telefax: +63 2 6377259
Email: gpnp_cnn@opapp.gov.ph

Mr. Avelino J. Cruz Jr.
Secretary, Department of National Defense
Room 301 DND Bldg.,
Camp Emilio Aguinaldo
E. de los Santos Avenue, Quezon City
PHILIPPINES
Fax: +63 2911 6213
Email: osnd@philonline.com
P/DEP. DIR Gen. Arturo Lumibao
Chief, Philippine National Police (PNP)
Camp Crame, Quezon City
PHILIPPINES
Tel: +63 2 726-4361/4366/8763
Fax: +63 2 724-8763

Atty. Jasmin N. Regino
Regional Director
Commission on Human Rights (CHR III)
3/F, Kehyeng Bldg.,
Mc Arthur Highway, Dolores
San Fernando, Pampanga
Philippines
Tel: +63 45 961 4830/ 963 5311
Telefax: +63 45 961 4475

More Outsourcing!

I'm hemming and hawing about posting an anti-NAATA broadside which may get me into so much trouble, but this is more important. Check out this article from The Washington Post, via Philippine News. (Thanks to Nerissa for the original post.)

The Philippines is apparently -- I shudder at the turn of phrase -- one of five "emerging target countries," along with Somalia, Yemen, Indonesia, and Georgia, where a spy organization will be operating as part of "developing a more efficient antiterrorist initiative."

This is, of course, nothing new.* But it helps to be reminded of the ramifications of such clandestine operations:

This official, declining to speak on the record about espionage in friendly nations, said that the Defense Department sometimes has to work undetected inside "a country that we’re not at war with, if you will, a country that maybe has ungoverned spaces, or a country that is tacitly allowing some kind of threatening activity to go on."

Laos and Cambodia were, of course, countries that the U.S. was not at war with...

But here's the best part:

This program includes "human intelligence operations," as opposed to such high-technology gathering as using "satellite photography," and range from "peacetime recruitment of foreign spies" to "interrogation of prisoners [my italics] and scouting of targets in wartime."

Finally! The Philippines gets to be the happy beneficiary of more U.S. outsourcing, from call centers to torture -- oh, wait, it isn't torture if it ain't on U.S. territory. My bad.

*One of these days I'm hoping to post this scary recruitment letter sent to me from Langley last year. This was because I was sitting calmly having breakfast at a conference in San Diego when this PsyOps woman asked to share my table. So we chatted, me busily gulping down my coffee once I discovered who and what she was, and we ended up exchanging business cards anyway and several months later, to my horror, I received a letter from the chief of the "PACOM Strategic Studies Detachment 4th Psychological Operations Group" looking for "a well-qualified individual who is fluent in Tagalog, loves the challenge of rigorous academic research and enjoys the possibility of foreign travel." I must note, however, that an "intelligence specialist" position at Fort Bragg has a way larger starting salary than I'm currently making.

"Terrorists" and Bounty Hunters.

Having been approved 261-161 in the House, H.R. 418 is about to wend its way through the Senate, and it's one nasty bill, designed in part "to unify terrorism-related grounds for inadmissibility and removal." Because Sec. 103 is so (intentionally) vague, it becomes almost infinitely applicable and malleable.

Check out, for instance, their criteria for inadmissible aliens:

'(IV) [Any alien who] is a representative (as defined in clause (v)) of--

`(aa) a terrorist organization; or

`(bb) a political, social, or other group that endorses or espouses terrorist activity;

"Endorses or espouses" could already refer to (for instance) Ward Churchill. It's the politico-legal embodiment of David Horowitz's bleating about how the academic left supports terrorism.

`(VII) [Any alien who] endorses or espouses terrorist activity or persuades others to endorse or espouse terrorist activity or support a terrorist organization;

That is, you don't even have to be a "representative" -- just someone who "persuades" others to support those so-called terrorist organizations.

`(IX) [Any alien who] is the spouse or child of an alien who is inadmissible under this subparagraph, if the activity causing the alien to be found inadmissible occurred within the last 5 years...

It's retroactive, and applies to your nearest and dearest as well.

Moral of the story: the next time there's, say, a Palestinian solidarity rally (or, for you Pinoy readers, any leftist organization that in any way remotely resembles the Communist Party of the Philippines -- since we know those people overseas can't tell those orgs apart) in your town, remember that "solidarity" may be a semantic hop and a skip away from "endorse or espouse." Don't forget: that strict upholder of the Constitution, Alberto Gonzales, is watching!

The bill gets worse, particularly with Rep. Pete Sessions' last-minute amendment, described here:

Representative Pete Sessions (R-TX) offered an amendment that passed the House by a voice vote. The amendment would provide unprecedented authority to bounty hunters to "pursue, apprehend, detain and surrender" immigrants in removal proceedings. It also would set the minimum bond amount at $10,000 and prohibit the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) from releasing on recognizance anyone placed in proceedings.

You've been warned.

And don't even get me started on denying drivers' licenses to undocumented immigrants...

David Horowitz at SFSU.

So David Horowitz -- I used to think of him as "David Horriblewitz," but that would be as ad hominem as the stuff he was calling students -- was invited by the local handful of College Republicans to give a talk here on my campus last week. He spent the first 10 minutes or so complaining about how Michael Moore and Jesse Jackson get invited and paid for out of student money, but folks like him don't.

(It's perhaps a valid complaint, just as -- at least in theory -- there is little to disagree with regarding the Students for Academic Freedom's "Academic Bill of Rights". Again, at least in principle; I'm not sure I agree with the point on "organizational neutrality." But when you start your talk already on the defensive, it seems to undermine the rest of what you have to say.)

Then he spent the next half-hour rambling and railing against... the Soviet Union. I mean, Jesus, the Soviet Union doesn't even exist anymore. You'd be hard-pressed to find members from what passes for the American left calling herself or himself as Marxist! (One person pointed out that that Marx's economic principles barely resembled what was implemented in the USSR, but that was essentially ignored.) Then he spent the next 15 minutes or so with some rather long-winded answers to two questions -- which some members of the audience interpreted as stalling for time -- about Marx and Trotsky.

Probably because people were thinking that Horowitz was on campus simply to deliberately bait the audience, a lot of people stayed away. (A few articles on SFSU have been featured on The Front Page before, especially after a couple of Horowitz's ads in SFSU'S [X]press were rejected for publication.) The folks from Students Against War gave a relatively silent protest at the back of the auditorium -- they were more centrally positioned earlier, but were asked to move because they were "blocking people's view" -- holding up banners ("Horowitz Is A Racist Ideologue" and "U.S. Out Of Iraq Now!"). Even the organization of Palestinian students didn't seem to bother to get a group together. (It was the Spartacus Youth Club folks that ended up getting ejected for no good reason; this was after Horowitz kept hollering for security and threatening to sue the administration if the hecklers weren't thrown out.)

So, not much to write about. Horowitz mentioned Ward Churchill once in the context of "the Left supporting terrorism" (you can read more about this on his website), and later said something to the effect that "Zionism is the only true national liberation movement for one people in the history of the world," and that was about it. Almost every time someone would heckle him, he would either call them "idiots," "brain-dead," or look at the audience and start talking about the McCarthy era or say, "This was exactly what it was like in Weimar Germany!" Talk about Godwin's law...

In an odd way his talk effectively neutralized him at least in my eyes; for all the speaking engagements he seems to have, the man was a terrible speaker, jumping from topic to topic with little coherence.

CFFSC Report on U.S. Filipinos and Homeland Security.

SCHOLARS RELEASE REPORT ON U.S. FILIPINO DEPORTATION

San Jose, CA - The Critical Filipino and Filipina Studies Collective (CFFSC) releases Resisting Homeland Security: Organizing Against Unjust Removals of U.S. Filipinos, a report on the state of U.S. Filipino deportation.

Resisting Homeland Security makes visible what remains invisible to many: the detention and removal of U.S. Filipinos. The existing information on U.S. Filipino deportations following September 11, 2001 collapses U.S. Filipino deportations uniformly and arbitrarily across any and all racial-ethnic groups. Contrary to this popular misunderstanding, the report alternatively offers exacting research and analysis underscoring a more complex picture - that after September 11, there is a "systematic targeting of Filipinos for deportation" that is related to the legacies of U.S.-colonial rule, the current U.S.-led war on global terrorism avidly supported by the Philippine government, and the emergence of homeland security racism.

Included in Resisting Homeland Security is a section on "Community Organizing." This section provides insights on how grassroots organizations fight against unjust removals and detentions. In particular, the section chronicles the Support Campaign to Prevent the Deportation of the Cuevas Family of Fremont, CA, assesses its efforts and strategies, and offers recommendations to build effective anti-removal campaigns.

Jay Mendoza, Executive Director of the National Alliance for Filipino Concerns (NAFCON), notes: "Resisting Homeland Security is a significant document that all Filipinos and all peoples concerned with social justice should read and deeply understand. It is a reminder for all cultural diverse and multiracial peoples to work in alliance and coalition with each other, despite ethnicity, nationality, or race-towards the single objective of justice for our communities."

For the CFFSC, Resisting Homeland Security is "a document of hope-to inspire all to participate in a global movement for justice and equality." The report may be accessed at the Filipino Living Archive.

Founded 2002, CFFSC is a U.S.-based national network of community-engaged scholars, professors, and educators.

Even More on the Blacklist.

A little while back, Rodel Rodis posted the full contents of his Philippine News column as comments to my previous entry (you can see Rodis's column at that link), and I wasn't sure how to respond -- primarily because its contents were pretty much the opposite of what our source (whom the SFSU Pinoy faculty tried to protect) told us directly.

Rodis's column made us, well, look like fools, and I think I would have appreciated it if he gave my colleagues a little benefit of the doubt; surely Rodis himself has been placed on "non-existent" government blacklists both before and after his immigration to the U.S.!

But now our previously unnamed source has stepped forward demanding a retraction from him; to make a long story short, Emil Guillermo's latest
article has excerpts from Lorraine Mallare's long letter, rebutting Rodis's points.

It's the "Secret Service list" part that's quite scary; since Vice Consul Antony Mandap has already pooh-poohed the suggestion that a list came from "a Philippine Secret Service" because "there's no such entity" (and therefore the list could not exist), we can perhaps assume that:

a) Of course there's some sort of a Philippine Secret Service, and Vice Consul Mandap may simply be playing with semantics here; or

b) that the non-existent Philippine Secret Service may have compiled the list with help from their American counterparts, which may mean

c) that this now non-existent list may have came from the U.S. Secret Service itself (who after all were protecting a visiting head of state), and was handed directly to the Philippine Consulate.

We academics like to joke that the government must have files on us somewhere, but it's frightening when my colleagues are smacked directly with it.

(I'll be flying to the Philippines in a few weeks; wish me luck.)

More on the Blacklist.

A couple of things below: the San Francisco State University Pinoy faculty's response,

November 17, 2004

To the Filipina/o American Community,

We, the undersigned, denounce the recent actions of the Philippine Consulate surrounding the investiture of Philippine President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo with an honorary doctorate from the University of San Francisco. Three Filipino American faculty members of San Francisco State University -- Allyson Tintiangco-Cubales, Danilo Begonia and Dawn Bohulano Mabalon - were specifically excluded from attending the November 18th conferral ceremony.

Dr. Allyson Tintiangco-Cubales, assistant professor of Asian American Studies, had accepted an invitation to attend the ceremony and was told that tickets would be procured for her by a USF colleague. On Wednesday, November 10, Dr. Tintiangco-Cubales was informed that the Philippine Consulate requested that her tickets be returned because her name, along with two other San Francisco State University professors, were on a list of "activists." The other faculty members were Professor Danilo Begonia of Asian American Studies, and Dawn B. Mabalon, assistant professor of History. She was further informed that she, the other named faculty members, and our students were on a list that barred all of them from attending the ceremony.

Dr. Mabalon called the Philippine Consulate and spoke to Vice Consul Anthony Mandap on Friday, November 12. She was told by an assistant that Vice Consul Mandap "has the list." Vice Consul Mandap admitted that the consulate had concerns about SF State faculty and students, and told her that the Consulate had received information from anonymous sources at USF that we and "our students are intending to rally." Vice Consul Mandap now denies any existence of a list of barred professors and students, possibly fearing the kind of public backlash a list of this kind would elicit. As of Friday, November 12, the consulate changed their position and maintained that all are welcome, but there are no more tickets for anyone.

We are shocked and outraged that the Philippine Consulate would, without substantive evidence, bar San Francisco State University faculty and students from the ceremony. It is a slap in the face to all of us who are community advocates, educators, and professionals. The implication that we are directing our students to disrupt this ceremony is truly ridiculous. We believe this targeting of Filipino American faculty and students as potential threats to national and international security is an unreasonable and anti-democratic exercise of power by the Philippine government. It also places the professional careers and personal reputations of faculty and students unnecessarily at risk. This exclusion from the event is not only embarrassing, it could also cause unreasonable risk of harm to our professional careers, personal reputations and work in the community.

The existence of this list and these practices create an atmosphere of fear, suspicion, hysteria and division in which legitimate and constitutionally protected political discourse between academics and their students will be considered subversive. Placement on this list presents an immediate chilling effect on academic freedom.

In this situation, the only individuals that have been marked have been educators. This appears to be scapegoating of academics and students. Although we were not involved in planning an action against the Philippine President's visit to USF, we are against the unjust suppression of political discourse and peaceful demonstrations. No one should ever be condemned for exercising their constitutional right to engage and participate in political discussion. These are fundamental elements of the American educational and political processes.

Because of this unfortunate occurrence, we feel that our professional reputations have been smeared. We have long-standing, important, positive and productive relationships with faculty, staff and students at USF, relationships strengthened by our academic collaborations, networks, and community partnerships. Because of the actions of the Consulate, relations have been strained between our faculty and our colleagues at University of San Francisco.

As educators who are well aware of the importance of academic freedom and its rational limits, we believe the actions of the Philippine Consulate constitute suppression of legitimate political discussion. The many adverse effects of the Patriot Act on political expression and civil discourse in the United States are already well-documented, and we deplore the Philippine Consulate's clear complicity in this regard.

We, the undersigned, are concerned Filipina/o American faculty at San Francisco State University.

Danilo Begonia
Professor, Asian American Studies

Daniel Gonzales
Associate Professor, Asian American Studies

Benito Vergara
Assistant Professor, Asian American Studies

Allyson Tintiangco-Cubales
Assistant Professor, Asian American Studies

Dawn Bohulano Mabalon
Assistant Professor, History

and another from the Critical Filipino Studies Collective:

Wednesday, November 17, 2004 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Dr. Peter Chua
San Jose State University
408-829-7347

FILIPINO STUDIES COLLECTIVE PROTESTS BLACKLIST OF FILIPINOS, PATRIOT ACT EXPOSED

San Francisco, November 17

The banning of three Filipino American scholars and university students from a dinner to invest Philippine president Gloria Macapagal Arroyo of an honorary doctorate degree has revealed the existence of a blacklist of Filipino scholars and students, says the Critical Filipina and Filipino Studies Collective, a group of educators and activists. The existence of a blacklist has been denied by the San Francisco Consul General's office though what has been confirmed is that the Philippine Consul received a list from the Philippine secret service, and this list was compiled by another U.S. agency under the aegis of the Patriot Act.

In an interview with Dr. Dawn Mabalon of San Francisco State University, one of the Filipino scholars banned from the dinner, she was told that she and others were "disinvited"� since they were on "a list given to [the Philippine Consul] by the Philippine secret service."
�
This has led scholars to believe that the blacklist was prepared by a U.S. government agency and was submitted to the Philippine representatives.

The blacklist represents what Dr. Dylan Rodriguez of the University of California-Riverside has described as "a form of low-intensity political repression that has directly enabled the U.S. Homeland Security apparatus. It is not just Arroyo who is facilitating a proto-martial law, we are encountering a version of it in the U.S."� Members of the Critical Filipino Studies Collective observed that there is a kinship between
the torture, domestic warfare, and human rights violations in the Philippines and the torture, domestic warfare, and human rights violations that occur on the everyday within the United States. As Dr. Rodriguez observes, "This is, after all, where the
Arroyo government learned its craft."

The chilling implications of the U.S.-Philippine blacklist are the effects it will have on Filipino immigrants, both those who are permanent residents and those who are undocumented. Many Filipinos will be afraid to join mobilizations because of their future dealings with the U.S. and Philippine state. Dr. Nerissa Balce, a member of the Critical Filipina and Filipino Studies Collective, says, "Every time a Filipino migrant, writer, or scholar will cross the U.S. or Philippine borders, you will never know if you
will be asked to step aside, be delayed, or not be allowed to travel at all. Some Filipino migrants will not be allowed to return to the U.S. if their names are on this blacklist."

Dr. Jody Blanco of the University of California-San Diego says, "On a larger level, the blacklist exploits and exacerbates the atmosphere of mistrust, fear, and intolerance that has gripped the American public since the arbitrary and unlawful arrest, detention, and torture of U.S. citizens and foreign residents alike in the wake of 9/11."

According to Dr. Lucy Burns of the University of California-Santa Cruz, the blacklist "illustrates how academia, believed to be the last bastion of democracy in this age of corporate media, is not exempt from Bush's War on Terror." Dr. Burns adds, "This is a time to be vigilant and be vocal about the ideals of democracy. We in the Critical Filipina and Filipino Studies want our colleagues at San Francisco State University to know that we support their concerns. We also call for Filipino communities and everyone to support their educators threatened under the surveillance of both the Philippine and U.S. states in service of this War on Terror."

The Critical Filipina and Filipino Studies Collective was one of the leading groups to support the Cuevas family, a Bay Area Filipino family who were deported in June 2004. The Collective will soon be releasing a report on the deportations of Filipino families in the era of Homeland Security.

Paranoia, and Something of an Apology.

Okay, now I'm a little worried, but it's probably just paranoia on my part.

All throughout this whole blogging business I've taken great pains to separate the personal opinions on my blog from my professional career, even though the latter seeps into the former a good amount of the time. My students can probably testify that I've almost bent over backwards to accommodate -- no, welcome -- opposing viewpoints and have people decide for themselves. (Playing devil's advocate is also something I do well, without even presenting it as such.)

But my last post was probably the angriest one I've posted in a while. And despite previous posts explaining my ambivalence, I am still very deeply troubled about the results of the election, and it comes out in the classroom every now and then. I cannot imagine teaching an Anthropology class (or especially an Asian American Studies class) without engaging with it in some fashion.

The atmosphere here on my campus is, in any case, very tense, and when the wingnuts in the academe are already busy watching SF State -- well, maybe I should keep my mouth shut.

The point is that it is very easy for someone to print my posts out and demand that they be placed in my tenure file, and then I'll probably be toast. Or, even worse, deported. But there is nothing wrong with being motivated, even professionally, by a sense of outrage. I am convinced, in any case, that my behavior in the classroom remains accommodating and objective, and I will ensure that it stays that way.

Let me make something of a quick confession: I do understand, quite clearly, where evangelical Christians are coming from, mostly because I used to be one.

Yes, not only was I the youth coordinator at my church back in the Philippines, I even led my own Bible study group and had my own "disciples."

Yes, I used to firmly believe that abortion and homosexuality were sins, and that anyone who believed otherwise was hellbound.

Yes, I was held sway by Campus Crusade for Christ for about 4 years, up to the point that I would accost strangers in the street and ask them, "Have you heard of the Four Spiritual Laws?"

And this is precisely why I can understand where their sense of outrage is coming from -- and it is also why it pains me to see how Jesus's teachings could be so ignored, especially by people who profess to use him as an example for their lives.

(The part about voting against their own economic interests -- that part I still can't understand.)

You may think you hear the sound of furious backpedalling in the background, but you're not. So yes, any Bush supporters reading this: consider this as something of an apology for how I wrote my angry piece -- but not what I wrote.

Unconstructive Dialogue.

(Man. I'm going to get into trouble for this. Some prospective editor or person on a grant review board will google my name and find this. But I won't edit it: consider it the work of someone very pissed off, and who should know better -- we anthropologists, after all, have to be a little more... nuanced in our analysis, shall we say, and this is fairly off-the-cuff. But at least I've removed most of the expletives.)

Maybe the problem is that class is indeed dead -- moribund in terms of an organizing principle, as a framework for understanding the social world around you. Perhaps it has to do with the overwhelming, unquestioned victory of the capitalist system and the similarly unquestioned inequalities it perpertuates. To successfully persuade people to vote for tax breaks for billionaires, as the Republican Party did, implies a couple of things: that people willingly accept their lot as economic destiny, or that they cling stubbornly to a trickle-down theory from heaven. Or that Cheney's profits from Halliburton floats all boats somehow. Or that the immense power of the credit card to function as surrogate domestic partner renders one's class status insignificant.

In contrast, gender and racial difference is perhaps a lot more stunning in its clarity in people's everyday lives. I teach Gerald Berreman's essay on caste, class and race every semester and that's a lot easier to understand. But in general I don't think the American middle class can see themselves as belonging to a mobilizable group with a common cause -- perhaps the middle class exists simply because they are neither dirt poor nor filthy rich. What most concretely distinguishes classes from one another isn't the amount of labor or who controls the means of production, but consumption. And since credit theoretically allows the middle class to consume their way "into the elite" (though of course the levels of distinction will always be maintained), class becomes irrelevant.

But class, I suppose, wasn't the point. We're told anyway that Bush supporters didn't come out to vote because of the economy, or because of the war, but because of "moral values." (As if the war on Iraq wasn't a moral issue.)

This, at least for me, is what has made mourning such a protracted process. We are told that Kerry was never really an advocate for gays in the first place; we are told that the left neglected the liberal Christians among them; we are told that Democrats should start thinking about faith-based initiatives now; we are told that Gavin Newsom single-handedly created a moral panic and practically handed the presidency to Bush. These should feed into tactical considerations, sure, but please, please don't call what happened in San Francisco "too much too fast" -- about time, I'd say.

Similarly, we are told that mourning is over, and it is time to get to work. Roll up your sleeves, they say. Or, worst of all, repeated ad nauseam: "Don't mourn; organize."

But it hasn't gotten any easier. I'd roll up my sleeves, sure... in order to take a swing at some Republican twit. (Those who know me personally would know this is a little ludicrous, as I'm a total physical coward.)* Don't mourn -- confront some Republican jerk, I'd say. Make the Christians ashamed of what they did.

We are told that we should not be angry, that this is a time for healing, that this is a time for building bridges. But these truisms are uttered without recognizing a simple, brutal truth: they hate us. They hate what we've "done to their country." They hate how feminists have contributed to the degeneracy of the American way of life -- after all, the reason 9/11 happened, according to Jerry Falwell. They "hate the sin but love the sinner," in all the convoluted doublespeak that entails.

The problem is that it really has been a war for quite some time now, with battle lines drawn between God and Satan, and the Christian right took this very seriously. I'm afraid the Democrats didn't. Ellen DeGeneres somehow constituted a greater threat to the American way of life, which says everything about the depths of homophobia in American society.

The 1100 American soldiers-and-counting killed in Iraq died because of Bush's lies, and all these morons can do... Well, god knows what they're thinking. They probably think the military occupation of Iraq means "freedom." Or that Saddam Hussein flew the planes into the WTC himself.

You're probably thinking, well, this is the result of a horribly misinformed electorate -- "dumb," as the Daily Mirror famously wrote -- and we should do what we can to educate them. You're right, but misinformation, in many ways, is the least of our worries.

The fact that these Bush-ites would rather piss and moan about stem cells than the deaths of 100,000 Iraqi men, women and children means one simple thing: that they are heartless racists. The only logical explanation for the resolution of this cognitive dissonance is that Iraqi lives simply don't count as being human.

No, really: go confront one and ask them if Jesus would go and bomb little Iraqi kids. For people whose mantra is "What Would Jesus Do?", this hypocrisy is staggering. (See, that's the worst part: they still think that they, and their President, are blessed by God, that they're compassionate, freedom-loving people, that they're following Jesus's example. I must have missed the part in the New Testament where Jesus straps on an AK-47 and blows some Iraqi kid's head to bits. Which epistle was that now?)

You're probably thinking: doesn't this just smack of the kind of intellectual snobbery supposed to be dished out by the liberal elite? Whatever -- but remember: it was anti-intellectualism that led Bush to be elected.

You're also probably thinking: isn't this just stooping down to their level? That I demean myself by participating in hateful name-calling? Whatever -- but remember: they hate you already.

This brings me to my point: right now, I cannot build bridges with these people. Plans are being made to create a "culture of life" (i.e., to ban abortion) as we speak, just as Falluja, where Satan lives**, is being bombed all to hell -- laid to waste by a Christian god.

I do not see the hope for any "constructive dialogue" for people who think that unwed mothers can't become teachers, for people that think they would go to hell if they vote for Kerry, for people who think that it is somehow acceptable to kill people because their god is different from theirs. They obviously cannot be reached. They are obviously beyond any reasoning. Keep me away from them. I'll bite my tongue if I have to, but if they get me started...

A vote for Bush was a vote for empire, racism, homophobia, misogyny and hatred. Really -- you'll feel a little better just admitting that. And then, perhaps, you can begin to move on.

*DISCLAIMER (and I write this in capital letters): as should be clear, I would never advocate physical violence in any form, and I would be the first person to run away from a fight.

**In case this part wasn't clear, scroll to the bottom of the article and read the quotation from a Lieutenant-Colonel Gareth Brandl, the commander of the 1st battalion of the 8th Marine Regiment:

But the enemy has got a face. He's called Satan. He lives in Falluja. And we're going to destroy him.

Puddles of Blue in a Red Land.

Or islands of blue in a red sea?

Forgot about Class.

What I don't understand is how people could still vote against their own economic interests. I can understand how religious mentality would work -- it's clear now that, in some states, the gay marriage ban was a bigger draw for voters than the war on Iraq -- but to vote for a party that has screwed the working class every single time boggles the mind.

Take Ohio, which lost more than a third of the country's jobs since 2000, for instance:

Eight counties had unemployment rates above 9.0 percent during September. The counties with the highest rates, other than Morgan, were: Coshocton, 13.5; Meigs, 12.7; Muskingum, 12.6; Perry, 10.8; Monroe, 10.3, Vinton, 9.8; and Adams, 9.5 percent.

Morgan County, with a whopping 15.8% unemployment rate, voted for Bush 56-43. And so on: Meigs (59-41), Muskingum (58-42), Perry (52-48); Monroe (55-44 for Kerry), Vinton (55-45), and Adams (64-36).

At least Cuyahoga County, which lost 63,000 jobs in the last four years, voted for Kerry 67-33.

Somewhere along the way, the left forgot class. I'm a professor of Asian American studies, but I can't help thinking that identity politics may have played some part in this: a focus on identity that had, alas, little to do with the white, Christian conservative population -- an alliance with whom may have been more easily accomplished by turning the spotlight onto class inequalities. The big size of the left's umbrella is certainly one of its virtues, but tactically, this year it may have been its undoing -- especially galling with a president who has been so brazenly pro-corporate power. (Though what kind of alliance one can make with supporters of, say, new senators Tom "death penalty for abortion doctors" Coburn or Jim "no gay teachers" DeMint is hard to say.)

Oh well. Yesterday Romeo was telling me about the parents of a former classmate of ours, who apparently voted for Bush because (they believed) he would grant amnesty to all illegal immigrants. As I said, my mind is still boggled. But then I live in a city that voted 83-15 for Kerry.

(I fully apologize for my earlier "fucking morons" comment, though ignorance clearly was a factor in Bush's win. But enough about "moron;" how about "asshole?")

Numb.

Fuck. Tonight I'm drinking myself numb.

Damn you Wonkette, The Daily Koz, and Slate for keeping my hopes up. I was happy this afternoon. But those damn early exit polls. The 6:00 one gave two points to Kerry in Ohio and Florida.

Called up almost everyone saved on my cellphone to vent: Jeff, Alice, Jens, Nerissa, Romeo, undeserving recipients of my wrath.

Bush as president for another four years is bad enough. The worst part: that all these fucking morons actually voted for this monster.

Okay, I'm angry and drunk, and I'll regret this in the morning, because I've thrown any objective discourse out the window. But still: motherfucker.

Anyone who bothers to comment with a nyeah-nyeah: fuck off.

Dread.

As I was driving to the childcare center to pick up Izzy, I was suddenly overcome by a feeling of doom. The time change had made the sun go down earlier, and my usual drive was now accompanied by the sun setting in the Pacific.

It didn't help that I had been listening, on repeat, to David Bowie's "Five Years" -- something suitably apocalyptic -- or that we're discussing the Vietnam War in my Asian American Studies classes tomorrow. (It also didn't help that I was also in the middle of a Halloweeen trilogy of horror films: Shaun of the Dead on Saturday, 28 Days Later on Sunday, Fahrenheit 9/11 tonight.)

Whatever the feeling was, it was certainly dread. The election will probably get ugly. We may not know who will win until next year. But what is perhaps most chilling is that a good half of the American people would still vote for someone who is undoubtedly the worst president in American history. Bush and his cronies are frightening, yes, but the fact that ordinary people like you and me still believe him and support him and think he is guided by God is probably even scarier.

So when I saw Izzy I gave her a longer squeeze than usual, and I felt a little better.

The Price of the Pullout: Even More Deportations.

I can't find the original article anywhere online -- the Daily Tribune's archives seem to be down, and the other Philippine papers aren't carrying the story -- so I've decided to post the whole thing here (since it's circulating via e-mail anyhow):

IN THE AFTERMATH OF RP PULLOUT IN IRAQ US to deport 300,000 Pinoys By Michaela P. del Callar Wednesday, 07 28, 2004 Daily Tribune

The US squeeze is on, despite denials from American officials and their claims of a continuing strong relationship with the Philippines. The United States is expected to intensify its crackdown on illegal Filipino workers following Friday's deportation of 89 Filipinos, a ranking Foreign Affairs official said yesterday.

They were sent back home for various offenses ranging from over-staying, assault, car theft, fraud, extortion and drug-related cases. They served time in jail before being sent back to the Philippines, authorities said.

"We expect more Filipinos to be deported," the official, who declined to be named, said.

There are about 300,000 Filipinos in the US absconders' list.

A source said US Immigration officers have already informed Philippine officials they will be deporting Filipino absconders every three to four months.

The DFA source hinted broadly that the recent deportation of Filipinos could be the US government's way of retaliating against the Philippine government on account of President Arroyo's decision to bow to the Iraqi terrorists' demands to withdraw the Philippine troops from Iraq, a move that has been criticized by international allies as well as the international media, all whom claimed that the precedent set by Mrs. Arroyo was dangerous and placed the coalition forces in Iraq in greater peril.

The DFA official also questioned the timing of the deportation of the Filipinos, which was done a few days after the 43-member contingent was withdrawn from Iraq.

Earlier, BusinessWorld reported that a US commodity loan, in the amount of $20 million that was expected by the Arroyo administration failed to push through, as US agriculture officials were said to have refrained from forging a memorandum of agreement that would have allotted the Philippines $20 million under the US Public Law 480, owing to Washington's disappointment over the pullout of Filipino troops from Iraq.

Although Philippine authorities downplayed this US loan removal, saying the country can do without it, its absence presents a serious loss of funding for projects reportedly get their budget from the PL 480 commodity loan program since beneficiaries of the PL 480 program can either augment their local inventories of rice, corn and wheat or use sales proceeds to fund agricultural projects.

The Philippines and other developing countries compete for benefits under the program, whose terms include a payment period of 30 years and a 1 percent annual interest.

It was also admitted by the incoming Agriculture Secretary Arturo Yap that the removal of the US commodity loan would mean additional budgetary pressures for the government.

The Cabinet-level Investment Coordination Committee on July 13 approved the signing of the loan document for a $20-million commodity loan to cover about 41,000 metric tons of rice. The Philippines last year got $40 million worth of surplus commodities under the program.

"We will have to look at other sources (to fund the projects). At this point of a high deficit we have to catalogue ODA (official development assistance) projects and evaluate foreign-fund sources," Yap was quoted as saying.

The Tribune also recently reported US officialdom was mulling over the idea of issuing a travel ban against the Philippines on grounds of a serious terrorist threat against American nationals and business establishments, allegedly based on intelligence reports, which would serve as strong message from the US government to the Arroyo administration of its "displeasure" over Mrs. Arroyo's decision to pull out the troops in Iraq, bowing to the demands of the Iraqi terrorists. The Philippines is now seen as "the weakest link" in the global war against terror by the international allies.

Diplomatic sources also intimated to the Tribune that the Arroyo administration can kiss the promised helicopters for the Philippine Air Force goodbye, as they are not forthcoming, as a result of the Philippine pull-out.

The same sources pointed out that the word they have been getting is that there would also be US visa restrictions implemented and that even personalities closely identified with the Arroyo administration, including police and military generals and their families may be denied visas.

It was not clear how the US Embassy can deny Arroyo officials visas, especially if they travel with a red passport, on official mission, or a blue diplomatic passport.

Further sanctions that may be imposed, the sources said, could cover restrictions on particular exports or imports, a denial of US assistance and aid as well as a denial of loans and, if need be, investments. The sources also told the Tribune that US officialdom is "not happy at all" at the defiant stance Mrs. Arroyo has been taking, and was especially "pissed" with her statement made in her State of the Nation Address last Monday, where she said if she had allowed the hostage Angelo de la Cruz to die, his death "would not have changed Iraq for the better."

International allies have placed the blame on the Philippines for the upsurge in kidnappings by terrorists, which they publicly say has placed the coalition forces and the Iraqi interim government in more danger. The terrorists have also used as example the Philippine pullout of troops as a means to get the governments of the kidnap victims to either break their ties with the US-led coalition forces or cease doing business in Iraq.

The criticisms from allies have not stopped. The latest scathing remarks on the decision of Mrs. Arroyo to bow to terrorists' demands came from an editorial published in the Asian Wall Street Journal, entitled "Putting the world at risk."

AWSJ pointed out that her giving in to the demands of the Iraqi terrorists emboldened them to take more hostages.

"Mrs. Arroyo seems sadly oblivious to the consequences of her folly. On Friday, she only made matters worse by arguing that the Philippines should be considered a special case because it has more workers -- an estimated 1.5 million -- in the Middle East than any other nation. According to her logic, those large numbers give Manila the justification to cut and run, while other countries are left to cope with the consequences.

"The President's insistence that her actions were 'driven by the supreme interest of the Filipino people' showed a warped sense of national priorities...They are all at greater risk, now that Mrs. Arroyo has shown the terrorists how profitable it is to hold a Filipino hostage."

The humanitarian mission was pulled out from Iraq, about a month before the expiration of its tour of duty on Aug. 20 to heed to demand of Khaled Ibn al-Waleed Brigade in exchange for the freedom of Filipino De la Cruz. De la Cruz was freed a day after the Filipino troops left Iraq.

The Philippines has drawn sharp rebukes from the US as well as Australia for bowing to the demands of terrorists.

After the pullout, the US said it will review its relations with the Philippines. US Ambassador to Manila Francis Ricciardone went back to Washington for "consultations" with US officials on the matter.

Australia, on the other hand, criticized the Philippines for being weak. It also blamed the Philippines for the latest terrorist threat against Australia.

And here's a press release in response from the Support Committee for the Cuevas Family:

Advocates of Recent Filipino Deportees, the Cuevas Family, Call for the End of Unjust Deportations as Filipino Deportations Increase Post-Philippine Troops Withdrawal

Contact: Robyn Rodriguez (510) 209-9428.

Union City, CA--Only a few weeks after the tragic deportation of the Cuevas family of Fremont, California another 89 Filipinos were deported last Friday from the United States.

Philippine officials report that an estimated 300,000 Filipino immigrants are being targeted for deportations from the United States. Some even suggest that deportations, as indicated by the most recent mass deportation of 89 last Friday, might be a retaliatory measure on the part of the U.S. against the Philippines’ withdrawal of troops in Iraq. The troop withdrawal led to the release of Filipino migrant worker Angelo de la Cruz who was held hostage by an Iraqi group.

According to Robyn Rodriguez, immigration scholar and convener of the Support Committee for the Cuevas Family states, “Though it is likely that increasing deportations are linked to the Philippines’ troop withdrawal, the reality is even when the Philippines was staunchly allied with the United States earlier on in this war, the Bush administration was already targeting Filipinos for deportation. Since 9/11, the U.S. government has indiscriminately criminalized and demonized all immigrants, regardless of national origin”. Rodriguez continued, “Immigrants have been scapegoated in the name of ‘national security’ in an attempt to draw attention away from the United States’ international isolation in its global war on terror and the government’s failure to effectively deal with economic recession at home”.

Advocates of the Cuevas family are calling members of the Filipino community to continue the fight against unjust deportations. Executive director of Filipino Community Support (FOCUS), a community based organization in San Jose and coordinator for the National Alliance for Filipino Concerns (NAFCON) states that, “We have to continue fighting against the unjust deportations of our community members. Our experience in the Cuevas case proves that we need to continue to build our collective power in order to demand for the immigration reforms we deserve”. Mendoza continued, “We can draw inspiration from the struggle to free Angelo de la Cruz in Iraq. ‘People Power’ can work. Angelo was not freed because of the Philippine government’s humanitarianism; he was freed because the Filipino people rose up and pressured the government to intervene on his behalf”.

The Cuevas family, supported by nearly 200 organizations and over 3000 petitioners, campaigned for personal legislation from first Senator Feinstein then Senator Boxer to allow them permanent residence in the U.S. They had been living in the country for nearly 20 years when they were ordered to depart. Despite widespread support and media coverage, neither Senator supported the family. Yet, shortly before their departure, Senator Feinstein released a public statement noting her support for another immigrant family.

Cuevas family advocates are joined by Philippine-based organizations like Migrante International in calling for justice for Filipino immigrants in the United States. Meanwhile, Cuevas family advocates support Migrante and its allies’ call on the Arroyo administration, and all “war on terror” coalition members, to recognize and prevent the grave human costs suffered by all migrants, like the Cuevas family and Angelo de la Cruz, in this time of war.###

Comments?

Pullout.

I can't believe it's really happening. Though the whole operation is still shrouded in ambiguity, a direct consequence of the government-imposed news blackout -- are they all returning, and is it going to be by July 20? -- it looks like Philippine troops are indeed being pulled out from Iraq.

To be sure, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo is doing this to save her ass as well. Activists in mass rallies, politicians, newspaper columnists -- I include the Philippine Daily Inquirer's strongly worded editorial here as an example -- all called for withdrawal from Iraq.

My dad (we were all debating this over breakfast) swore up and down that there was no way the Arroyo government would "concede to the terrorists" -- by the way, it's "conceding to reason," as one journalist put it -- because the Philippines had too much to lose. But loss of contracts and military support aside, I argued, don't mean anything to the public right now; if an instant poll could be taken, the overwhelming majority of the Filipino people would vote for the withdrawal of troops to save the life of one man. And so, it seems, Arroyo has done.

But as Congressman Teddy Casino of BAYAN put it:

She seems to think that it would be far easier to explain to the U.S. her action on the hostage situation than to appease an angry public in case Angelo dela Cruz dies.

(It isn't every day a former classmate of mine -- and former fellow UPLB Perspective staffer -- gets quoted in the New York Times.)

So I'm not going to be celebrating any moral victories here, or championing the Philippine government's "taking a stand" against an unjust war. Already Arroyo's congressmen are busy worrying about appeasing Uncle Sam. ("You do understand why we're doing this, right, Daddy?") Still, it's worth it -- for now -- to see the Coalition of the Willing get their knickers in a bit of a twist.

Comments?

51 Soldiers.

I imagine that all it takes is one phone call to pull out the already largely-symbolic Philippine "humanitarian mission" out of Iraq to save Angelo de la Cruz's life. That's fifty-one people -- not entire battalions of marines or mercenary-type security guards. Surely it can't be too difficult to withdraw now, or even a month before their slated departure (August 20).

At this point, it does not matter -- certainly not to his kidnappers -- that the poor de la Cruz is simply a truck-driving OFW and is not involved in combat; the salient fact is that the Arroyo administration is still kowtowing to Bush's illegal war of occupation and is still happy to send OFWs to their uncertain fates in Baghdad, hoping to reap some "postwar" petrodollars.

The real tragedy here is that this could have been avoided. Filipinos are neither invincible nor innocent of any crime -- we may know the latter to be untrue, but the kidnappers, I imagine, don't see this. All they see is Gloria tripping over her heels to join the coalition of the willing, and that is enough.

Why Was This Picture Taken?

Why was this picture taken? It's the first question, perhaps, that comes to mind after the question "who are these people?" These are dead Filipino "insurgents" killed in the Philippine-American war; I have no more information on why or how they were killed, or who they were and who killed them. (The original is apparently at the Missouri Historical Society archives, which I hope to visit in July -- the scan above was made from a photograph I purchased on eBay.)

There is little dignity or repose in this photograph; limbs are twisted together, forming a stark white contrast between the clods of earth on the left and the tangled grass on the right. A bare foot dangles over another man's head.

But why was this picture taken? Was it for strategic reasons? Was it for later use as propaganda? What did one get out of it? Was it part of a military archive, as evidence of a particular troop's activity for the day? Or was it meant for commercial purposes? Images like the above -- either reproduced in stereoviews and in monographs -- were already widely available as early as 1899. Along with photographs of such quaint Philippine sights as carabaos, local women, nipa huts and the streets of Manila, one could similarly see, with seemingly little dissonance, images of soldiers killed in trenches.

Unlike paintings, photographs could be made available to a mass audience -- through reproduction from negatives, and the invention of halftone plates in 1880. By 1897 speed presses could print photographs in books, magazines, and most especially, newspapers. It was this quality of reproducibility, as Benjamin wrote, that effected a radical shift in the conception of the work of art. The artwork was no longer a unique object, but was now a commodity that could be duplicated and circulated.

The pinnacle of this commodification (at least before film) was the postcard. Gradually losing its primary use as an epistolary medium, the postcard's image, instead of the writing space on the back, became more important. Whether it was actually sent or simply kept for a collection, the postcard was dominated by the image; in a sense, the postcard was the nearest one could come to the commerce of pure image. As David Prochaska writes, about Algeria: "These images were not made to be viewed aesthetically, but to be bought and sold, as capitalist commodities produced in a colonial context..."

The image above is not a postcard; indeed, I am not entirely sure what it was used for. (I cannot identify the coat-of-arms -- fleur-de-lis on one half, lion rampant on another -- but I suspect it has to do with the military unit associated with the photograph.) What makes it particularly chilling are the decorative lacy twirls that run along the border -- a macabre attempt, it seems, to render the photograph suitable for framing.

Was it, perhaps, a souvenir? The tourist souvenir relies on the capacity of the photograph to provide evidence: proof that the photographer (or the photographed) was there. Look, we're in Disneyland! Look, he's riding the bike with no hands! Look at all the fun we're having! A souvenir is intimately incorporated within -- perhaps even proceeding from -- the sphere of the personal. Possessing a photograph entails the ownership of a possessed and objectified (and perhaps eroticized as well) subject specifically meant to evoke memories of the same possessed and objectified colony. The Philippines, in effect, was also symbolically possessed through the purchase of images. The Filipino subject, decontextualized and objectified, was reduced to a replicable (and replicated), commodified image.

It is the act of symbolic possession of the subject, ensuing from actual physical possession of the photograph, which gives the commodification of the image its disturbing quality. Perhaps this accounts more for the talismanic properties of photographs: the ability to solely possess, the capacity to direct an unlimited gaze at the subject/object.

But in what capacity does the photograph above serve as a souvenir? Who framed it? Was it hung on a wall? Was it displayed prominently? Was it tucked into a scrapbook? Was it ever for sale? Who bought it? How many copies were sold? Was it looked at often? Was it placed at the bottom of a drawer? Why was the picture taken?

Why were the pictures taken? What did one get out of them? Were they souvenirs? Were they proof of all the fun they were having? Why are they giving the thumbs-up sign? Why were they e-mailing these pictures to each other? Why were the pictures installed as screensavers on the interrogation room laptops? Why are they smiling?

See Spot Run. Run, Spot, Run.

Another shining example of the moronic shills that populate the Bush administration -- here's Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, having a little difficulty explaining the decapitated bodies of children as "a high-risk meeting of high-level, anti-coalition forces:"

"There may have been some kind of celebration," Kimmitt said. "Bad people have celebrations, too. Bad people have parties, too, and it may have been what was seen as some kind of celebration ... may have been just a meeting in the middle of the desert by some people conducting criminal or terrorist activities."

And good people, I assume, sodomize bad people with chemical lights.

Looking at "Wars of Conquest."

The iconic image of the Philippine-American War -- I'm posting it above because there's something hinky with Jim's java applet -- is of the massacre of Bud Dajo, where 900 Muslim men, women and children were killed in a mountain crater. The photograph was subsequently published by the Boston-based Anti-Imperialist League in a pamphlet, of which 3,000 copies were made and distributed to the press. (When Moorfield Storey, the first president of the NAACP, writes, "The spirit which slaughters brown men in Jolo is the spirit which lynches black men in the South," I'm reminded of Luc Sante's recent op-ed piece in the New York Times where he compares the Abu Ghraib photographs -- in particular, those dazzling smiles -- as similar to postcards of lynchings and the happy block party underneath.)

The photograph of Bud Dajo -- with American soldiers posed in victory over the corpses of the enemy -- and the image of Lynndie England dragging an Iraqi prisoner with a leash around his neck both raise similar questions: why were the photographs taken at all? Was it, as the privates now allege, part of a tactical program of interrogation? Or were the images meant to be incorporated into an official (or unofficial) government archive, a shadow archive of humiliation and homicide?

(One of the crucial differences is in this process of incorporation. The increased portability -- and most important, the novelty of the equivalences of the visual field of the camera and the viewer -- and the ideological function of the photograph in the visual possession / colonization of the Philippines are clearly contextually different. But the images are a nice bookend to the American empire -- one taken at its violent birth, the other at its similarly blood-soaked twilight.)

Barthes, following Benjamin, has famously written about the aura of the photograph and how, through the chemical process, "radiations" from the body of the photographed "ultimately touch" the viewer. But unlike Barthes' notion of the "punctum," the crucial, piercing part here is the sociohistorical conditions -- and their uncanny similarities -- upon which both photographs were produced.

In a superb series of essays, the Reverend Mykeru writes about all the hand-wringing on outrage -- and rank idiots being "more outraged by the outrage" -- and writes: "it's simply amazing that people are treating these incidents as if they are something new, as if ground is being broken with brutal photographic records of a brutal war."

Flashback to W.E.B. DuBois, who wrote that the photograph of the massacre was:

...the most illuminating thing I have ever seen. I want especially to have it framed and put upon the walls of my recitation room to impress upon the students what wars and especially Wars of Conquest really mean.

It's what war really means, but Bush and his sheep don't really get it.

Here's Storey again:

When a man is lynched the community which tolerates the offence suffers more than the victim. When we honor brutality in our army we brutalize ourselves. Our colleges have failed if they have not taught a better civilization than this, our churches have failed if this is their Christianity.

These Moros were robbers, it is said. Alas, what are we? We who went as their allies and friends, who made a treaty with them to be kept while it suited our convenience and then repudiated, and who now have robbed them of their country, their freedom and finally of their lives. Have they ever injured us that we invade their little island and kill them in their homes? "They do not know how to govern themselves." That is our excuse, and how do we govern them? We have shown them how little we regard our agreements, and when they "stir up a dangerous state of affairs" we exterminate them. Thus we teach the Filipinos what American civilization means.

And you'll no doubt be reminded of another leader doing a "superb job" after reading Roosevelt's letter of commendation to the commanding officer after the massacre:

I congratulate you and the officers and men of your command upon the brave feat of arms wherein you and they so well upheld the honor of the American flag.

Pranks in Iraq.

The problem with Terrie England and people like her -- you read that right, not her daughter Lynndie, who has major problems of her own (check out this other stunner of a photo) -- is their amazing capacity for denial. Denial, arrogance, stupidity -- I can't tell which:

"She wanted to see the world and go to college," said Terrie England, whose T-shirt bore a design of heart-shaped American flags. "Now the government turned their back on her, and everything's a big joke."

...At most, the 372nd's alleged abuses of prisoners were "stupid, kid things -- pranks," Terrie England said, her voice growing bitter.

I suppose this is what passes for "pranks" in America.

"And what the [Iraqis] do to our men and women are just? The rules of the Geneva Convention, does that apply to everybody or just us?"

A great question, indeed: what did the Iraqis do to our men and women, exactly?

But it's unfair singling out one person -- I can't imagine that her daughter had anywhere better to go after Wal-Mart -- so: denial, arrogance, stupidity -- sounds much like the Bush administration to me. After all, "Iraq is free of rape rooms and torture chambers."

"Losing Moral High Ground."

From Major General Antonio Taguba's report:

6. (S) I find that the intentional abuse of detainees by military police personnel included the following acts:

a. (S) Punching, slapping, and kicking detainees; jumping on their naked feet;

b. (S) Videotaping and photographing naked male and female detainees;

c. (S) Forcibly arranging detainees in various sexually explicit positions for photographing;

d. (S) Forcing detainees to remove their clothing and keeping them naked for several days at a time;

e. (S) Forcing naked male detainees to wear women's underwear;

f. (S) Forcing groups of male detainees to masturbate themselves while being photographed and videotaped;

g. (S) Arranging naked male detainees in a pile and then jumping on them;

h. (S) Positioning a naked detainee on a MRE Box, with a sandbag on his head, and attaching wires to his fingers, toes, and penis to simulate electric torture;

i. (S) Writing "I am a Rapest" (sic) on the leg of a detainee alleged to have forcibly raped a 15-year old fellow detainee, and then photographing him naked;

j. (S) Placing a dog chain or strap around a naked detainee's neck and having a female Soldier pose for a picture;

k. (S) A male MP guard having sex with a female detainee;

l. (S) Using military working dogs (without muzzles) to intimidate and frighten detainees, and in at least one case biting and severely injuring a detainee;

m. (S) Taking photographs of dead Iraqi detainees.

Meanwhile, Rummy defends himself:

Adding to the Bush administration's discomfort is the dark history of the facility where the abuse took place.

It was inside the walls of Abu Ghraib prison that the former Iraqi regime is thought to have tortured and executed thousands of prisoners.

However Mr Rumsfeld was quick to reject any comparison between that period and what happened under American control.

"Equating the two, I think, is a fundamental misunderstanding of what took place," he said.

Amazing, though, how op-ed columnists in the US are now tripping all over themselves to use the phrase "losing moral high ground," as if there was any to lose in the first place. (Subsequent coverage keeps referring to reactions in "the Arab world" -- as if they're the only ones who should be indignant about this -- and therefore shifting focus onto the act of publishing the photographs, and not necessarily the acts depicted in the photographs themselves.) Hopefully followers of the right wing will be a little more quiet in their constant bleating about America's (God-given) gift of freedom and democracy to Iraq, but one doubts it.

I mean, Jesus, listen to Bush's often-quoted reaction:

I share a deep disgust that those prisoners were treated the way they were treated. Their treatment does not reflect the nature of the American people. That's not the way we do things in America. I didn't like it one bit.

George, when are you going to wake up and discover that you're really the bad guy?

Nightline, Tonight.

Paraphrased from an e-mail from MoveOn.org:

Tonight, ABC's Nightline is airing a special (and what will surely be moving) tribute to soldiers who have died in Iraq, by reading the names of each one while their photo flashes on screen.

But some ABC affiliate stations won't be airing it at all, because they're owned by the Sinclair Broadcast Group (who have given $136,000 to Republicans since 2000). According to them, this is no tribute, as "the action appears to be motivated by a political agenda designed to undermine the efforts of the United States in Iraq."

So you folks know what to do: show Nightline your love -- they'll undoubtedly be swamped with hate mail as well -- write letters to your newspaper editors, post on your blogs, or call up Sinclair:

David D. Smith, CEO
Sinclair Broadcast Group
(410) 568-1500 x1504

(But I've been getting nothing but a busy signal for the last hour or so, so something's happening...)

Campaign Slogans We'd Like To See.

From the Bush Sloganator, via ToT.

Four More Years.

Maureen Farrell has a new column out on Buzzflash, and it's a scary one. She has written some slightly hysterical columns before -- and yes, I know fully the implications of using a term like "hysteria" to describe her writing -- but the message we should get from her writing is to never underestimate the Bush administration. (I've written a blog entry before on a possible October Surprise, i.e., Osama bin Laden is discovered in yet another hole, but this is worrisome.)

My good friend Jens and I were talking over the weekend about the likelihood of Bush winning the elections and how it may not be so terrible. Four more years, as he put it, may give the Republican Party enough rope to be hanged by the voters, or at least stave them off for a couple of terms.

I can see his point -- it's a kind of long-term optimism -- but I'm more hopeful for the short term. President Smirk arguably did more damage in his first 100 days of office -- reproductive rights, the environment, social welfare, not to mention everything post-9/11 -- than his dad did ever did in four whole years. Meanwhile more troops will die needlessly in Iraq (and will the war be brought to Southeast Asia this time?). Four more years of this nightmare will be hard to swallow.

Burning in Hell.

The Dante's Inferno Test has banished you to the Second Level of Hell!
Here is how you matched up against all the levels:

Level	Score
Purgatory (Repenting Believers)	Very Low
Level 1 - Limbo (Virtuous Non-Believers)	Low
Level 2 (Lustful)	Very High
Level 3 (Gluttonous)	Low
Level 4 (Prodigal and Avaricious)	Very Low
Level 5 (Wrathful and Gloomy)	High
Level 6 - The City of Dis (Heretics)	High
Level 7 (Violent)	High
Level 8- the Malebolge (Fraudulent, Malicious, Panderers)	High
Level 9 - Cocytus (Treacherous)	Moderate

Take the Dante's Inferno Test

And in other Jesus-related news -- the fun never ends here at The Wily Filipino -- here are three must-read articles of varying hues, one courtesy of the Flips list, one from today's New York Times, and another from Leny Strobel: Philip Cunningham on extra-biblical elements in the film, William Rivers Pitt on the white Jesus, and Peter Steinfels on transgressive film.

Extra link, unrelated to the topic but referring to a different kind of savior: can you say October Surprise?

On Christianity, Mel Gibson, and the Battle with Evil.

Barbara's pissed. She's referring to a discussion on the Flips list where one poster referred to -- and I can't remember the exact phrase -- Christian basket cases. (I had a sarcastic response to her offlist, so I may very well be one of those name-callers.) This prompted various responses, of which Barbara's measured, sober post is one.

I'm not really in any position to criticize Catholicism -- I was raised in a Protestant, United Church of Christ-affiliated household -- but I do clearly see Barbara's point. There is little room, it seems, for such a thing as the critical Filipino Catholic (or even generic Christian) to exist; the operative animal metaphor constantly used is that of sheep. (In anthropology, there is a somewhat parallel tendency to try to keep "explaining" religious behavior -- giving rise to the implication that belief in the seemingly irrational is a philosophical/cultural "problem" to begin with, without having to take religious experience very seriously.) And as someone who was quite active in the church during high school and college -- yes, Campus Crusade got their paws on me, but more about that later -- I fully recognize and understand the deep, rational significance of religion in daily life. And there's no need to remind readers of the importance of liberation theology to the progressive movement in the Philippines.

Having written that, I share Leny's concern with how Mel Gibson's film could be easily appropriated by the U.S. rightwing -- and you all know how I feel about the right. Leny writes:

Whereas it is possible to interpret the movie as a call to Christians to embark on an inner spiritual journey, they might substitute a historical event-turned-Hollywood movie, as further license to tell people to take up the cause of the religious right in the arena of politics and culture. There is a fear of the "other" – the one who is not a conservative Christian, who is not white, who is an immigrant, who is poor, who is not straight – that turns that fear into the creation of an undesirable enemy who needs to be either converted or annihilated.

Her words (which, quite honestly, sounded alarmist at first) echo in my head as I read Michael J. Brown's article for Spirit Daily entitled "Gibson Saw 'Big Dark, Palpable, Force' While Filming The Passion," forwarded to the Flips list -- and I'm afraid I can't quote it in full, and I can't find it online either -- but hopefully you folks would find it enlightening. The article begins:

This is not just the story of a movie. If it were, we wouldn't be covering it so regularly. No, this matter with Mel Gibson and The Passion of the Christ and the extraordinary hoopla is a religious event that can be classed only as major spiritual warfare.

It comes at a time when there is an infusion of grace and also a step-up in the battle with evil.

I hardly need to connect the dots for you folks to recognize the implications of that statement.

Brown peppers his essay with loaded references, calling the New York Times as "no great friend to Catholicism" and Hollywood as "the belly of the beast" -- two institutions long talked about as being "run by Jews." But Brown himself would argue that the enemy here is really none other than Satan (and his minions, who happen to be...?):

Soon, some Jewish organizations (by no means all) were screaming that in portraying the role of Jews in the Crucifixion... Gibson was acting in a way that was anti-Semitic.

Chalk that up as another spiritual attack. The hallmarks of Satan include confusion, division, fear, and the devil's specialty of false accusation.

Later he writes: "There was the unfortunate flap over whether the Pope had endorsed it. The devil used this in an effort to besmirch both the Vatican and Gibson." Brown's cold, for-us-or-against-us, no-questions-asked rhetoric is obviously reminiscent of, well, one of my Great Satans.

(Some of you may be amused by Brown's words elsewhere:

We all have gone through runs of "bad luck" -- from time to time we all find ourselves under a cloud -- and often it's difficult to discern why this occurs. Sometimes it's simply a period of testing (again, think Job!). At other times it's our own fault because we've allowed dark forces to infiltrate. This can happen when someone brings occult or pornographic books into a home, views the wrong kind of videos, dabbles in things like astrology, or associates too closely with people who are carrying darkness -- sinfulness, the demonic -- around with them. [Emphasis his.]

You'll need to see the entire article to put the quote in context, though.)

In any case, I feel no need to give any more money to Gibson. Yes, I know, I know, I haven't seen it and I should see it before I make any judgements, and it may indeed be a spiritually transcendent experience -- but I know my cash will be funding something unsavory in the long run. It's already become one of those films that one feels pressure to see precisely because discourse is already exhausted prior to its being shown. Besides, wouldn't you rather see Starsky and Hutch instead?

Save The CSU.

At noon today I'm going to a big Save EOP rally on campus -- for those of you familiar with the California fiscal crisis, Gov. Schwarzenegger's most recent budget proposal, which comes as cuts on top of a whole series of previous cuts, will be hitting the Cal State system very, very hard.

Educational Opportunity Programs are absolutely critical to outreach and providing higher education to low-income students -- many of whom come from first-generation immigrant and refugee families -- and the total 2004-2005 reductions (about $240 million) has led to the proposed elimination of EOP.

At SFSU, the Career Center, Student Health Counseling and Psychological Services, including other so-called academic preparation programs, will be totally wiped out unless the students actually vote in a referendum to voluntarily raise their student fees. All in all, this will be the third fee increase in two years -- making it an increase of 58% for undergraduates and a whopping 110% for graduate students. (I'm also on the Library Advisory Committee, and the library is undergoing a serials review, in consultation with all the departments and programs, to figure out which journals and magazines have lower priority in terms of teacher/student needs.)

The problem is that it gets much, much worse. Ten percent (or 4,200) of incoming CSU freshmen will be turned away and "voluntarily" asked to attend community college instead. In what should be an utter union scandal, lecturers -- my friends and colleagues -- will simply have to be laid off! The impact on the students will be worse than they think: 194 class sections were already cut in 2002-2003, and the proposed budget will mean 575 more cut classes.

I already have to turn away maybe a dozen students for each section I teach -- not because I cannot handle over 50-55 students per class, but because the students simply won't fit. I've taught classes before where students had to take their midterms sitting on the floor -- and this after the University, in an attempt to increase class size, physically crammed more chairs into the rooms until Public Safety hollered that it was a fire hazard!

There is no way one can deliver quality education, without TAs, to classes over 40 -- and that's already way too much for most universities out there! -- and I am simply not willing to change my essay-based exams to multiple-choice ones. Class discussions are difficult enough to coordinate without having to deal with students sitting on the floor. As if the student fee hikes weren't bad enough -- and an overwhelming majority of my students, both in Asian American Studies and in Anthropology, work part-time or even full-time -- the cancelled sections will mean that students can't graduate on time because they can't get the units.

I cannot even begin to express how angry all this makes me.

This is why a coalition of teachers, students and staff -- in conjunction with the CFA -- is spearheading a campaign called Save The CSU. See also www.protestfeehikes.org for more information. (I'll be posting more on this subject from time to time as well.)

Impossible?

This is one of the more depressing reads I've seen in a while. If it seems too unreal, consider the fact that the sheer brazenness of the regime's lies is mind-boggling, and yet people don't seem to see through them. Consider the fact that the Bush "presidency" has been worse -- way worse -- than anyone could have imagined back in 2000.

Could this scenario happen? There's no reason to think that Bush and his cronies couldn't be planning anything like Reagan's October Surprise.

More on Language.

Grrr. My weblog has somehow ended up on some Google-harvesting site (you can probably see it on the list of referrers on the right -- some site I won't link to called Jokemata.com) for "filipino joke racist." What's worse, about three people have actually clicked it, looking for stuff. Granted, it may have been some academic looking for stuff to teach about in her class. =)

Well, people looking for jokes to tell behind their Filipino co-workers' or classmates' backs will be disappointed. Fuck off. (Although I guess you have every right to say them behind someone's back, as long as that's all you do.)*

Speaking of "fuck," America's lawmakers are busy protecting the nation from it -- and more besides. Here is the full text of H.R. 3687, introduced last December by Representatives Doug Ose (R-Calif.) and Lamar Smith (R-Texas):

108th CONGRESS 1st Session H. R. 3687

To amend section 1464 of title 18, United States Code, to provide for the punishment of certain profane broadcasts, and for other purposes.

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

December 8, 2003

Mr. OSE (for himself and Mr. SMITH of Texas) introduced the following bill; which was referred to the Committee on the Judiciary

A BILL

To amend section 1464 of title 18, United States Code, to provide for the punishment of certain profane broadcasts, and for other purposes.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That section 1464 of title 18, United States Code, is amended--

(1) by inserting '(a)' before 'Whoever'; and

(2) by adding at the end the following:

'(b) As used in this section, the term 'profane', used with respect to language, includes the words 'shit', 'piss', 'fuck', 'cunt', 'asshole', and the phrases 'cock sucker', 'mother fucker', and 'ass hole', compound use (including hyphenated compounds) of such words and phrases with each other or with other words or phrases, and other grammatical forms of such words and phrases (including verb, adjective, gerund, participle, and infinitive forms).'.

END

I love the way Ose and Smith try to encompass all the possible grammatical forms, though I've frankly never seen the word "ass hole" split up like that.

Their proposed amendment was in response to the FCC's ruling last October (and I'm taking this from the FCC's memorandum) concerning "the 'Golden Globe Awards' program, during which the performer Bono uttered the phrase 'this is really, really, fucking brilliant,' or 'this is fucking great.'"

As a threshold matter, the material aired during the “Golden Globe Awards” program does not describe or depict sexual and excretory activities and organs. The word “fucking” may be crude and offensive, but, in the context presented here, did not describe sexual or excretory organs or activities. Rather, the performer used the word “fucking” as an adjective or expletive to emphasize an exclamation.

I think I'd have to agree with the FCC chair, Michael Powell (no, not that Michael Powell), on this one. (He asked his fellow commissioners to overturn the October decision.) Just about the rarest use of the word "fuck" in R-rated movies is in reference to the sexual act**; even folks who say "Fuck me!" mean it as an expression of disbelief, and not as an imperative. Otherwise, "fuck" is used more as an adjective ("fucking cool") or an adverb ("I am fucking getting wasted tonight") or a disparaging noun ("that racist fuck") -- and if used as a verb at all, it's used as a synonym for incompetence ("He fucked things up") or being in a bad situation ("I'm totally fucked"). (Speaking of Filipinos, Tagalog has all these infixes, and English doesn't -- except for words like "fanfuckingtastic," as popularized in the Oscar-winning tearjerker Terms of Endearment.)

And now that I've pushed my First Amendment rights to the polite limit: this is all just quibbling with semantics -- for a more serious look at language, see Buzzflash's excellent interview with linguist George Lakoff. (I bet the Students for Academic Freedom are all over him -- yet another politically outspoken linguistics professor!)

*Though as Wittman Ah Sing says in Maxine Hong Kingston's Tripmaster Monkey:

All my life, I've heard pieces of jokes... that they quit telling when I walk in. They're trying to drive me pre-psychotic. I'm already getting paranoid. I'm wishing for a cloak of invisibility. I want to hear the jokes they tell at the parties that I'm not invited to. Americans celebrate business and holidays with orgies of race jokes.

**Although one of the most memorable uses of the word in recent film history was as the final word of Stanley Kubrick's final movie, and that was meant sexually.

Guilty.

A month or so ago I saw an odd advertisement in my university's student paper. I don't remember the exact wording, unfortunately -- something to do with criticism of the Bush government in a class other than one on U.S. presidents -- but the ad asked students to report their offending professors to the head of the local chapter for Students for Academic Freedom (in this case, one Paula Reilly). Intrigued, I looked up the SAF and found that it was the student arm of David Horowitz's "Academic Bill of Rights."

I sympathize somewhat with Paula Reilly, since it can't be very easy for conservatives like her at SF State. The birthplace of the Third World Strike, SF State has its share of "tenured radicals," and particularly in a city like San Francisco, conservatives are generally in the minority.

What is obviously so hypocritical about the SAF is how catchphrases like "academic freedom" and "intellectual fairness" and "hostile learning environment" and "intellectual diversity" (nice hijacking of terms there) are bandied about as a claim to some sort of equality, when they are so clearly clamoring for a conservative, anti-liberal voice. I don't think we'll see an article entitled "How a Right-Wing Professor Violated My Rights" listed on their website anytime soon. What is clear is that "academic freedom" masks an attempt to specifically restrict any criticism of their President and his government's policies.

It's quite a user-friendly website, actually, as it even lists possible violations of the 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure (by the American Association of University Professors) on their online complaint form:

- Required readings or texts covering only one side of issues.

- Gratuitously singled out political or religious beliefs for ridicule.

- Introduced controversial material that has no relation to the subject.

- Forced students to express a certain point of view in assignments.

- Mocked national political or religious figures.

- Conducted political activities in class (e.g. recruiting for demonstrations).

- Allowed students' political or religious beliefs to influence grading.

- Used university funds to hold one-sided partisan teach-ins or conferences.

Add to this the other "principles" as listed in their pamphlet:

If, for example, a professor strays outside the subject matter of the course to make comments that convey contempt for conservatives or liberals, Republicans or Democrats, the religious or the non-religious -- that is unacceptable.

If a professor remarks in no particular context that the President is a "moron" (as happens more often than one might expect) that sends a powerful message to students who belong to the President's party that they are unwelcome in this classroom. Such behavior is unprofessional.

If a professor grades students using political criteria, or because the student, though understanding the course work, does not agree on a partisan issue, that is unacceptable behavior.

If a professor cancels his or her class for a protest, or attempts to recruit students for a political demonstration, that is unacceptable.

What is most disturbing about the SAF is how it turns its followers into junior Encyclopedia Browns. It's one thing to report complaints, e.g., let SAF know the date and time your professor called George Bush a moron, but it's another to "research faculty bias" by digging up voter registration records. (Yes, you're supposed to create a spreadsheet for each department!) Horowitz has a lot of nerve claiming his "Academic Bill of Rights" isn't about creating political quotas when the sleuthing above is meant to address just that perceived problem.

(See also his article on a "conservative blacklist," where he writes:

At the beginning of April, after the United States and Great Britain had liberated Iraq, and after the streets of Baghdad were filled with Iraqis celebrating their freedom, the Academic Senate at UCLA voted to "condemn America's invasion of Iraq" by a vote of 180-7. Such a politically partisan vote would itself have been regarded once as an abuse of the university, more appropriate to a political party than an institution devoted to scholarship and research. But the more extraordinary fact was that in a nation where 76% of the population support the war after the fact, 95% of the faculty senate at a state-funded academic institution were passionate enough in their opposition to "condemn" it.

The absurd under representation of conservative viewpoints on university faculties obviously does not happen by random process. It is the result of a systematic repression (and/or discouragement) of conservative thought and scholarship at so-called "liberal" institutions of higher learning.)

I am, quite frankly, guilty of various infractions related to the above, except for the parts specifically dealing with students, i.e., grading or forcing them to adopt a certain point of view. (I'm proud to say that students, including those who disagree with me, have praised the openness of discussion in my classes. As a student of anthropology I've always prioritized looking at issues from different viewpoints.) I teach in an Asian American Studies department, in the one and only College of Ethnic Studies in the country, and -- well, I cannot see how one in my position can comply with most of the "requirements" above.

Take the war on Iraq, for example (yes, I have mocked Bush before, but that was at an anti-war rally, and not in the classroom. Maybe I even called him a moron.): discussion of the Chinese Exclusion Act or, more importantly, Japanese American internment will now always be informed by the targeting of Middle Eastern (and, heh, "Muslim-looking") immigrants since 9/11. (I do include a pro-exclusion text, but there's little in it to defend, but we do discuss .) And if I don't bring the war up -- and quite frankly the connection has to be made -- one of the students inevitably will.

I have allowed, even welcomed, people to invite students to rallies (at the very least), and I have participated (gleefully) in "partisan teach-ins or conferences." (Suffice it to say California's fiscal situation has, in any case, prevented the use of funds for those purposes.)

At the peak of the anti-war rallies last year, things got quite heated between the students in my Anthropology class (I'm shared by AAS and Anthro), and it got to the point where -- this will sound terrible -- I had to excuse myself from participating in the debate because (and I obviously didn't tell the students this) I couldn't guarantee objectivity in the classroom anymore. (I simply wasn't interested in what the pro-war folks had to say; I could turn CNN on any time of day and get their viewpoint.)

But it was an obviously controversial topic that did indeed have much bearing on the subject of my class, and students certainly seemed willing to discuss it. Do I still bring up the war on Iraq? No, because I'm more sensitive to the fact that people may not share my views. Can the students discuss Iraq, even if they have opposing viewpoints? Of course they can, especially if the students have opposing viewpoints; I just keep out of the debate. (In one of my AAS classes the students actually requested that we suspend discussion of the text at hand and just talk about the invasion, which had happened that week.)

But the fact that I was worried that I would get in trouble if I had the class discuss Iraq was, I think, indicative of the climate that people like Horowitz have fostered. (I kind of broke my promise the next semester by assigning an ethnography on Iraqi women in a rural village -- with no mention of the war, of course.)

So there you go, Paula Reilly: I'm guilty -- guilty of being a person for whom my place in the academe and in my community are largely inseparable. I try, as all professors must, to separate them when necessary. But I'd like to think that students don't go to school only to get their degrees and get out. College students are, I think, generally more aware that "real life" does, and sometimes must, intrude into schooling every now and then; the SAF, in contrast, are welcome to stay within the narrow confines of their little campus public square.

G.I. Joke

Great to see that Mad Magazine hasn't lost its touch.

Pants on Fire; on "PC."

A little item on the First Lady buried in the Times yesterday caught my attention:

The first lady also said that the "Roses are red, violets are blue" poem she read at a National Book Festival gala in October was not actually written by her husband even though it has been attributed to him. She did not say who wrote the poem.

"But a lot of people really believed that he did," she said. "Some woman from across the table said, 'You just don't know how great it is to have a husband who would write a poem for you.' "

Let's look at this closely: what is she saying about those people who "really believed" it?

Compare that with the officlal White House press release of her remarks at the National Book Festival Gala last October:

We delight in great works of literature and especially in the works of budding new artists. President Bush is a great leader and husband -- but I bet you didn't know, he is also quite the poet. Upon returning home last night from my long trip, I found a lovely poem waiting for me. Normally, I wouldn't share something so personal, but since we're celebrating great writers, I can't resist.

Dear Laura,

Roses are red, violets are blue, oh my lump in the bed, how I've missed you.

Roses are redder, bluer am I, seeing you kissed by that charming French guy.

The dogs and the cat they miss you too, Barney's still mad you dropped him, he ate your shoe.

The distance my dear has been such a barrier, next time you want an adventure, just land on a carrier.

I'm happy to be the inspiration behind this poem.

Hmm. Maybe people believed it because she said so?

This proves a simple point: No one from that administration can be trusted.

It sounds an awful, awful lot like this exchange between Tim Russert and Dick Cheney on "Meet The Press " last September:

MR. RUSSERT: The Washington Post asked the American people about Saddam Hussein, and this is what they said: 69 percent said he was involved in the September 11 attacks. Are you surprised by that?

VICE PRES. CHENEY: No. I think it’s not surprising that people make that connection.

MR. RUSSERT: But is there a connection?

VICE PRES. CHENEY: We don’t know.

To shift gears abruptly, here's a quick unorganized response to Rhett's recent post on political correctness.

Okay, there are two separate points here: It's probably just me, but I always separated "the PC movement" from "the multicultural movement" because they seemed to have different functions and aims. Though obviously part of the same package, the desire to include someone other than a dead white men into curricula seemed to me part of a multicultural agenda rather than the primarily gatekeeping-function of being "politically correct" (see below). When a public library celebrates Asian Pacific American Heritage Month and sets up a display of Sagwa, the Chinese Siamese Cat in its front window (for instance), it seems prompted more by an effort to be more "multicultural" rather than it being "politically correct." I don't know if that makes sense.

Rhett's gay lit vs. Roman history example is a little misleading, because I don't think advocates of multiculturalism all saw it that way -- i.e., with emphasis on the "versus." While I'm quite sold on the idea that, say, the model of ethnic studies is the site of oppositional politics against a white, heteronormative mainstream (and that multiculturalist discourse is simply a fancy reworking of the old melting-pot narrative), I don't think gay lit was supposed to supplant Roman history. The last time I checked, students were still quite free to take Western Civ classes.

Conservative groups started using "political correctness" as a cudgel against the left, which is no wonder Rhett's Google search turned up right-wing websites. But there is a separate use of the term "PC" -- one that has trickled into popular discourse -- and one that specifically pertained to language and semantics, which is the way the phrase mostly survives now.

Its legacy, I think, has been somewhat more important than it's given credit for: a lot of my students, coming straight from high school, use "she" or "s/he" or "Dear Madam/Sir" way more often now. Despite the intricate idiocies of PC run amok ("waitron," "vertically challenged"), people (at least around here) do use "mail carrier" and "flight attendant" and "chair" more often as well. Does this mark a change in people's consciousness about gender? Maybe. (Or is it still the same sexism, but cloaked in a more polite disguise?)

And I can imagine that it has done much more for the workforce as well, particularly in terms of bringing issues of sexual harassment to the surface. Do people say less homophobic / sexist / racist jokes in public now? (Or am I being completely naive, considering where I work?)

Having said that, the term "PC" is also often used as a prefatory warning to something un-PC, e.g., "I don't know this isn't going to sound PC, but..." Kind of like "Look, I'm not a racist, but..."

Apocalypse, Again.

The dominant discourse about the Vietnam War (and Apocalypse Now), particularly in terms of its incorporation into the American Narrative, is that it's the Great American Trauma, unhealed like Maya Lin's black scar cut into the earth. While this is true to a certain extent -- there is no denying the fact that working-class kids of all colors were sacrificed for the defense of freedom and Western civilization -- it's also accompanied by much bleating about America's supposed loss of innocence. The ghosts of the war still loom over every foreign policy decision since; it is perhaps unfortunate that they don't haunt American politicians more persistently.

This discourse, however, is essentially egocentric: it's still all about America, and only about America. Whether Apocalypse Now wittingly or unwittingly reproduces this discourse is another thing altogether; Jean reminds us that the film is also about Francis Ford Coppola. (Nowadays the only specters allowed to haunt Americans aren't even the 58,000 dead soldiers, but the POW/M.I.A.s; even their ghosts, as it were, are unsettled.) There is little talk about Vietnamese, since the U.S. has already done its part in its clearly anti-Communist War refugee policies.

The biggest joke of all, I think, is the truism that this was a war that the United States lost; I think it should be clear that the Vietnamese people were the real losers here.

As for our obsession with the film, Frank Chin writes: "We have to be able to accept Conrad and Coppola's works as the white racist works they are and still recognize them as great white lit and film. And I think most writers from non-white peoples can and have been reading racist white lit and recognizing it as great lit."

I love the film because it's great to think about. Coppola makes a brave connection between colonialism and the Vietnam war through his use of Conrad, and even up to now that lesson on American imperialism and the war on Iraq has not been learned. Despite the film's obvious flaws, which we've discussed in previous posts, it's also a antidote to earlier rah-rah films like The Green Berets. The critical acclaim which Oliver Stone later received for Platoon should at least be recognized as part of a rewriting of that Vietnam War narrative even if it's still ethnocentric in essence; this would be rewritten again, however, in Rambo: First Blood Part 2 and Missing in Action.

(Hey, did I write that parts of Platoon was filmed on Mt. Makiling during my high school graduation in 1986? I'm kind of tickled by the fact that a very young Johnny Depp was wandering around somewhere in my hometown of Los Banos.)

There's also the fact that Apocalypse Now is simply a flat-out fantastic film, with amazing performances throughout (even if it does drag in the latter fifth). I get a chill every time I hear the whocka-whocka of the helicopter blades at the beginning; the horrific, hallucinatory glory of the first few minutes alone already marks the film as a work of genius.

It's too bad that Coppola, after making four of my Top 100 films of all time (including The Godfather, The Godfather 2, and The Conversation -- the latter being one of the three greatest films ever set in San Francisco, including Vertigo and Chan Is Missing), never made anything remotely close again. (I always used to joke that The Virgin Suicides was the best Coppola film since Apocalypse Now.)

No Comment.

Or rather, I wanted you folks to read a comment: here's my original post, then read the comment.

I'm speechless, so... no comment.

On Why This War Will Be A Long, Long One.

Via Buzzflash, here's some excerpts from former Army Special Forces commander and current deputy undersecretary of defense Lt. Gen. William Boykin, at the First Baptist Church in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma earlier this year:

[SLIDE SHOW, PICTURE OF OSAMA BIN LADEN] "...we said, 'There's the enemy. That's our enemy. That's the man that hates us. And all of those that follow him." [PICTURE OF PRESIDENT BUSH] "And then this man stepped forward. A man that has acknowledged that he prays in the Oval Office. A man that’s in the White House today because of a miracle. You think about how he got in the White House. You think about why he’s there today. As Mordecai said to Esther, 'You have been put there for such a time and place.' And this man has been put in the White house to lead our nation in such a time as this.

"But who is that enemy? It’s not Osama bin Laden. Our enemy is a spiritual enemy because we are a nation of believers. You go back and look at our history, and you will find that we were founded on faith..."

[PICTURE OF SATAN] "And the enemy that has come against our nation is a spiritual enemy. His name is Satan..."

I like this other quote:

The enemy is none of these people I have showed you here. The enemy is a spiritual enemy. He’s called the principality of darkness. The enemy is a guy called Satan.

Lordy. Now you know why they're called wingnuts.

Guess Who's Coming To Dinner?

Ah, the cluelessness of the rich and corrupt.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. It's "What's President Smirk having for dinner?"

Representative Imee Marcos -- yeah, makes your eyeballs roll, doesn't it -- has the menu for the 2,000 peso-per-head banquet:

She said the native dishes would include "adobo" in olive oil, milkfish belly with mango sauce dipping, Filipino-style beefsteak, fried rice with smoked fish, and crisp-fried pork skin.

Native delicacies will also be served, such as roasted pig, "puto-bumbong," "lumpia," ice cream, pork and chicken barbecue, chocolates, "halo-halo," and "pan de sal" with an assortment of spreads.

Someone else can have fun with this: Texas chicken? Kalderetang tuta nang kano? (We already have a reading list; what else should he eat?)

Representative Crispin Beltran is asking for a full accounting of Malacanang's expenses:

"Bush is going to stay for a mere eight hours in the country, but already, the administration has used up millions to make his short visit as comfortable and welcome as possible, even if they're all at the expense of the people's economic and political interest," he said.

Economically, of course, this is a big thank-you note for the military package and state dinner GMA received earlier this year. And President Smirk gets a loving ally in his "war on terrorism" -- and a guarantee of more years of support now that GMA is running again -- and the head of Father Rohman al-Ghozi to boot! And a performance by Lea Salonga! Nothing to make our American guests feel more welcome!

And as Rep. Marcos -- now we get to the clueless part -- said:

"President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo must really mean to impress her visitors," said Marcos... "Our countrymen should feel proud that we could feed our guests so well even though in their homes, many poor Filipino families would be sharing a can of sardines and a packet of instant noodles."

Classic. Like mother, like daughter.

Eight Hours in Manila.

This story kind of slipped under the radar, but as the day of President Smirk's visit to one of his staunchest allies in the coalition of the willing comes near, it's best to pay attention:

The communist New People’s Army has deployed at least 50 of its “elite, highly trained” troops in Metro Manila to carry out an assassination assignment on US President George W. Bush, who is scheduled to visit the country on October 18, military sources said.

Of course, there's nothing like an "assassination plot" to justify the usual arbitrary arrests of "leftist elements:"

Individuals supportive of the NPA cause in Metro Manila will provide refuge to the assassins during their stay before October 18, the source added without elaborating.

But let's take this seriously for a minute; suppose there was indeed an assassination plot? Would the Philippine military be ready for such a thing?

[Lt. Col. Daniel Lucero] doubts the capability of the NPA to carry out such a high-profile assassination attempt. The military claims to have diminished the NPA’s strength and influence through continuous operations.

“With the kind of preparations we are doing, we can assure you that President Bush will be safe on his visit here,” Lucero added.

Latest attacks by the NPA, however, have killed at least 40 soldiers in Compostela Valley, Eastern Samar, Mountain Province and Albay.

“There are some lapses [by our field units] but all in all we have downgraded the NPA’s capability to launch terrorist activities nationwide,” said... Lt. Gen. Gregorio Camiling Jr.

The problem with the Armed Forces of the Philippines is that they aren't just hopelessly corrupt, they truly make "military intelligence" sound like an oxymoron.

And while some of you readers no doubt may be going "Hmm...", let me assure you that a) Cheney would be five times as horrible as Bush and b) the Philippines would no doubt be nuked beyond recognition.

Brian Eno on Propaganda.

Here's Brian Eno (yeah, that Brian Eno) in an essay in The Guardian called "Lessons in how to lie about Iraq":

How exactly did it come about that, in a world of Aids, global warming, 30-plus active wars, several famines, cloning, genetic engineering, and two billion people in poverty, practically the only thing we all talked about for a year was Iraq and Saddam Hussein? Was it really that big a problem?

(This month, by the way, is the 30th anniversary of Eno's album Here Come The Warm Jets; read M. Ace's blog entry on "a Jackson Pollock painting rendered as a sculpture in motion." And in a couple of years it'll be Another Green World's turn!)

Thin-Skinned.

Sometimes "tyrannical dictators" speak the truth:

KCNA, North Korea's official news agency, said... that Rumsfeld's "outbursts ... can not be construed (other) than a desperate shrill cry of a psychopath on his death bed."

KCNA accused Rumsfeld and other "neo-conservatives"... of "wantonly harassing peace and security in different parts of the world and igniting wars."

"He is cursed and hated worldwide for this," KCNA said in North Korea's harshest personal attack on a U.S. official since it called Undersecretary of State John R. Bolton "human scum" in August for calling North Korean leader Kim Jong Il a "tyrannical dictator."

"Rumsfeld, whose political faith is to establish the U.S.-style world order by strength, is known to be a typical stupid man for professing 'neo-conservatism' censured and mocked at worldwide," the KCNA's official English translation said.

I certainly can't disagree. My favorite part, though, is the AP reporter's sentence the quotation above:

North Korea, whose media regularly churn out anti-American vituperations, is especially thin-skinned when outsiders attack its political leadership.

How about: "The United States, whose media regularly churn out anti-North Korean vituperations, is especially thin-skinned when outsiders attack its political leadership?" (Substitute "Iraqi," "Libyan," "Palestinian," "Chinese," "Afghani," "Cuban," etc. for "North Korean" as needed.)

Books for Bush.

The other day I received, via the Flips list, a mass e-mail message from E.R. Escober, author of Not My Bowl of Rice, a book I still have yet to read. Included in the thank you note (which I'm posting here without permission) -- it was for a reading at the SF Public Library, which I didn't get to attend -- was this:

Special thanks to Pres. and Mrs. Bush who requestedfor a copy of the book (& sent mea nice,personalized thank you note for it) . Perhaps they requested copies of all exisiting Filipino/ Fil-Am books to acquaint themselve with our culture, etc for their forthcoming visit to the Philippines.

We-hell.

Mr. Bush, may I suggest, as first on your list, The Philippines Reader: A History of Colonialism, Neocolonialism, Dictatorship, and Resistance, edited by Daniel Schirmer and Stephen Shalom? The title will put you off, I know, but it has short pieces in it -- perfect for bedtime reading just before you nod off to sleep. And perfect for people with short attention spans like you! (I'd bet, though, that you'll probably read Stanley Karnow's In Our Image: America's Empire in the Philippines instead -- it's a lot more reassuring of America's "good motives" regarding its colonial empire.)

But there's always Raymond Bonner's Waltzing with a Dictator: The Marcoses and the Making of American Policy, or maybe James Hamilton-Paterson's America's Boy: A Century of Colonialism in the Philippines, just to bring you up to speed on the feller your dad praised for his "adherence to democratic principles."

And these are just books you can get pretty easily in the U.S. via Amazon.com -- no need to send your flunkies on a hunt for Filipino bookstores in the U.S. (though it's probably a lot easier than, say, finding WMDs in Iraq).

And if non-fiction isn't your thing -- it might be a little too heavy, and too close to, um, reality -- then maybe some poetry instead? Here's the last stanza from the late Alfrredo Navarro Salanga's "War, Like Fever," found in Luis Francia and Eric Gamalinda's Flippin': Filipinos on America:

So must you clinic the world
and make us patients of your peace,
a strange love that breeds sanitation
but without sanity, the last physic
gulped by the physician, the majesty
of his cure more fearful
   than the pox itself.

Anyone else have any recommendations for George Bush? (And make the readings simple, folks -- we're talking a C-average here!) (No offense to E.R. Escober, by the way.)

Denial.

The lies are coming fast and furious here, and why people aren't up in arms about it isn't clear. But perhaps more disturbing is that this administration isn't even bothering to lie anymore, or even pretend to stand by the integrity (or lack of it) of its previous statements.

Take, for instance, the transcript of an interview with Bush last September 17:

Q Mr. President, Dr. Rice and Secretary Rumsfeld both said yesterday that they have seen no evidence that Iraq had anything to do with September 11th. Yet, on Meet the Press, Sunday, the Vice President said Iraq was a geographic base for the terrorists and he also said, I don't know, or we don't know, when asked if there was any involvement. Your critics say that this is some effort -- deliberate effort to blur the line and confuse people. How would you answer that?

THE PRESIDENT: We've had no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with the September 11th.

Well, how would one answer that? Is it going to be about semantics now?

Dick Cheney denies it. Condoleeza Rice denies it. Donald Rumsfeld recently denied it too:

...Rumsfeld was asked about a poll that indicated nearly 70 percent of respondents believed the Iraqi leader probably was personally involved.

"I've not seen any indication that would lead me to believe that I could say that," Rumsfeld said.

He added: "We know he was giving $25,000 a family for anyone who would go out and kill innocent men, women and children," referring to suicide bombers targeting Israelis. "And we know of various other activities. But on that specific one, no, not to my knowledge."

(Well, we knew Rumsfeld had "no sense:" "...no one with any sense would want to go to war, war is a last resort, not a first resort," he told Jim Lehrer in September 2002.)

When Bush says: "The battle of Iraq is one victory in a war on terror that began on September the 11, 2001 -- and still goes on" (this in his infamous USS Abraham Lincoln speech), are we not supposed to make that connection?

When Bush says, in his state of the nation address last January, that "Before September the 11th, many in the world believed that Saddam Hussein could be contained. But chemical agents and lethal viruses and shadowy terrorist networks are not easily contained," are we not supposed to make that connection?

When Bush says, in a press conference last March:

If the world fails to confront the threat posed by the Iraqi regime, refusing to use force, even as a last resort, free nations would assume immense and unacceptable risks. The attacks of September the 11th, 2001 showed what the enemies of America did with four airplanes. We will not wait to see what terrorists or terrorist states could do with weapons of mass destruction.

Are we not supposed to make that connection either?

And later on, during the interviews:

Saddam Hussein is a threat to our nation. September the 11th changed the strategic thinking, at least, as far as I was concerned, for how to protect our country. My job is to protect the American people. It used to be that we could think that you could contain a person like Saddam Hussein, that oceans would protect us from his type of terror. September the 11th should say to the American people that we're now a battlefield, that weapons of mass destruction in the hands of a terrorist organization could be deployed here at home.

Are we not supposed to make that connection?

And earlier, in excerpts from a speech in Cincinnati in October 2002:

Tonight I want to take a few minutes to discuss a grave threat to peace, and America's determination to lead the world in confronting that threat.

The threat comes from Iraq. It arises directly from the Iraqi regime's own actions -- its history of aggression, and its drive toward an arsenal of terror...

We also must never forget the most vivid events of recent history. On September the 11th, 2001, America felt its vulnerability -- even to threats that gather on the other side of the earth. We resolved then, and we are resolved today, to confront every threat, from any source, that could bring sudden terror and suffering to America.
Members of the Congress of both political parties, and members of the United Nations Security Council, agree that Saddam Hussein is a threat to peace and must disarm....

...we know that after September the 11th, Saddam Hussein's regime gleefully celebrated the terrorist attacks on America.

...Some citizens wonder, after 11 years of living with this problem, why do we need to confront it now? And there's a reason. We've experienced the horror of September the 11th.

...The attacks of September the 11th showed our country that vast oceans no longer protect us from danger. Before that tragic date, we had only hints of al Qaeda's plans and designs. Today in Iraq, we see a threat whose outlines are far more clearly defined, and whose consequences could be far more deadly. Saddam Hussein's actions have put us on notice, and there is no refuge from our responsibilities.

And we're not supposed to make that connection between Hussein and September 11 either?

Cheney did say -- ah, those poor, stupid American chumps -- that "it's not surprising that people make that connection." I wonder why. But Hussein is, of course, the real wily fox here, as Rumsfeld once said:

The truth is that Saddam Hussein has been about four times as clever as the United States, the U.N., and the Western world in managing public opinion. They're just masters at manipulating the press, and putting out disinformation.

How many more fucking lies is the public going to take? On the economy? (Bush: "Our first goal is clear: We must have an economy that grows fast enough to employ every man and woman who seeks a job.") On the weapons of mass destruction? (Rumsfeld: "We know they have weapons of mass destruction. We know they have active programs. There isn't any debate about it.")

The former general (and new Presidential contender) Wesley Clark was interviewed by NBC'S Meet The Press back in June, and says what many of us (or maybe too few) already know:

CLARK: "There was a concerted effort during the fall of 2001, starting immediately after 9/11, to pin 9/11 and the terrorism problem on Saddam Hussein."

RUSSERT: "By who? Who did that?"

CLARK: "Well, it came from the White House, it came from people around the White House. It came from all over. I got a call on 9/11. I was on CNN, and I got a call at my home saying, 'You got to say this is connected. This is state-sponsored terrorism. This has to be connected to Saddam Hussein.' I said, 'But--I'm willing to say it, but what's your evidence?' And I never got any evidence."

I love the way almost all of the speech transcripts end, so I'll end it in a blockquote too:

May God bless America. (Applause.)

The Policy of No Policy.

Here's a link to a rather silly article on the Philippines by Paul Krugman, Princeton economist and New York Times columnist, (I always see him and Maureen Dowd and Bob Herbert as the foil to the three-headed hydra that is William Safire). Some of you may know that he was all over NPR and the New York Times Sunday Magazine last weekend promoting his book The Great Unraveling: Losing Our Way in the New Century. (Krugman was part of a UNDP team sent to the Philippines in 1990. He says he "should write more about the experience someday," and he should. Maybe a little less condescendingly next time, but I liked his description of Jose Concepcion. And he also has a short piece on Bush's "crony capitalism".)

But the more important quotation is the one below, from a recent interview on Buzzflash:

BUZZFLASH: As a professor, if you were giving a lecture and you had to define the economic policy of the Bush administration, could you get your arms around it? How would you define it?

KRUGMAN: There is no economic policy. That's really important to say. The general modus operandi of the Bushies is that they don't make policies to deal with problems. They use problems to justify things they wanted to do anyway. So there is no policy to deal with the lack of jobs. There really isn't even a policy to deal with terrorism. It's all about how can we spin what's happening out there to do what we want to do.

Check out his book; check out his "blog". (Better yet, buy his book through Buzzflash; I'm about to put my order in myself.)

"Security Detainees."

Is there something wrong with this picture? Something... fishy, perhaps? Six people being held in Iraq are identifying themselves as Americans. And who are these people being held in Iraq?

Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, who is in charge of prisoners in Iraq, provided no details on the men, except to say they are among 4,400 "security detainees," a category distinct from prisoners of war or common criminals. She said the "security detainees" were suspected of carrying out or planning attacks on American or other troops in Iraq...

Her reference to the men, the first mention of possible Westerners among some 10,000 prisoners, was made during a tour of Abu Ghraib prison, where they are being held.

Wow -- almost 4500 "security detainees." 10,000 prisoners. Why, that's almost like San Quentin!

And who were these Americans?

"The truth is that the folks that we've scooped up have, on a number of occasions, multiple identifications from different countries," Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said... "They're quite skilled at confusing people as to what their real nationality is or where they came from or what they're doing."

Well, we knew Rumsfeld was easily confused.

But wait -- "security detainees?"

Agence France-Presse quoted General Karpinski as saying the detainees "didn't fit into any category" and that Secretary Rumsfeld had ordered her to "categorize" them about a month ago. She said classifying the prisoners as security detainees gave the military a right to interview them that it did not have with prisoners of war...

"It's not that they don't have rights," General Karpinski said. "They have fewer rights" than prisoners of war.

Why, that's almost like Guantanamo Bay, except that there are about 4,000 more! And how many farmers, taxi drivers, and cobblers are at Abu Ghraib, particularly considering that law enforcement officials admit that "there was little certainty about the men's identities, nationalities or even what they were doing in Iraq?"

And what did Rumsfeld have to say about these "security detainees?" Here it is, short and sweet:

Mr. Rumsfeld said he could not explain what she meant by "security detainees."

And there's even more proof of Rumsfeld's confusion:

New intelligence assessments are warning that the United States' most formidable foe in Iraq in the months ahead may be the resentment of ordinary Iraqis increasingly hostile to the American military occupation, Defense Department officials said today.

That picture, shared with American military commanders in Iraq, is very different from the public view currently being presented by senior Bush administration officials, including Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who once again today listed only "dead-enders, foreign terrorists and criminal gangs" as opponents of the American occupation.

The defense officials spoke on condition of anonymity, saying they were concerned about retribution for straying from the official line.

Whatever happened to the shiny, happy Iraqi children who were going to wave American flags in the streets?

How to Choke on Your Food.

Well, for comics fans, anyway. Eat your lunch -- doesn't matter what it is -- and then read this, from an article on Vertigo in the New York Times:

...shooting is scheduled to begin this fall on the Warner Brothers movie "Constantine," starring Keanu Reeves and based on Vertigo's "Hellblazer."

Why do I smell something as bad as The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen?

The other piece of bad news was this statement:

Vertigo titles like "Sandman," "Preacher" and "Transmetropolitan" are doing better as backlist graphic novels than they ever did as monthlies, and that is the direction [Vertigo editor] Ms. [Karen] Berger wants to pursue.

This is bad news as well, because it seems rather counter-intuitive: the monthlies surely depend on constant readership to keep them afloat (unless your last name happens to be Ennis or Morrison), and if prospective buyers simply wait until the collected books come out (and they come out within a year or two, it seems), then Vertigo seems to be shooting themselves in the foot.

Speaking of shooting themselves in the foot, or choking on your food -- you folks didn't think I'd let this go without a cheap-labor conservative reference, did you? -- here's Condoleeza Rice in a "Nightline" interview:

"We have never claimed that Saddam Hussein ... had either direction or control of 9/11," Rice said when asked about the public perception of a link.

"What we have said is that this is someone who supported terrorists, helped to train them (and) was a threat in this region that we were not prepared to tolerate."

Defending Saddam's ouster, she said he represented a threat in "a region from which the 9/11 threat emerged."

The Reuters writer reminds us of certain facts:

As they campaigned for support to oust Saddam, Bush and aides accused the former Iraqi president of being linked to al Qaeda, often in ways that recalled the suicide hijackings that killed about 3,000 people.

"You can't distinguish between al Qaeda and Saddam when you talk about the war on terror," Bush said in September 2002.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said in congressional testimony, "There have been a number of contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda over the years. We know Saddam has ordered acts of terror himself."

Actually, the real answer is "I don't know." Check out Dick Cheney's interview on "Meet The Press:"

MR. RUSSERT: The Washington Post asked the American people about Saddam Hussein, and this is what they said: 69 percent said he was involved in the September 11 attacks. Are you surprised by that?

VICE PRES. CHENEY: No. I think it’s not surprising that people make that connection.

MR. RUSSERT: But is there a connection?

VICE PRES. CHENEY: We don’t know.

The Cost of Eating Pringles.

Nothing really new about this article on teenage abstinence (thanks to my friend Jane for the link) -- weird, though, that it's in the "women" section of The Guardian -- but I did like this passage:

"You don't realise what you are doing until everything has changed," says 16-year-old John Wagster, peering earnestly through round glasses as he explains his decision to embrace chastity. "You are having oral sex, and you don't realise it's wrong. It's like eating Pringles. Once you start, you can't stop."

But that's not the best part, though. Here it is:

...the Bush administration which has allocated $117m (£74m) for abstinence-only education for teenagers this year, and hopes to raise it to $135m.

The Silver Ring Thing folks "received $700,000 (£443,000) from the US government, the largest such grant awarded." Participants -- said to be "gift-wrapped by God" (I wish I was making that phrase up, but I'm not) apparently take a pledge of abstinence and wear a $12 silver ring, which they flush down the toilet out of dishonor if they falter and accidentally have sex somewhere along the line. (Which they apparently do, and they're "one-third less likely than non-pledgers to use contraceptives.")

'On your wedding day you give the ring to your husband or wife and say, "I waited for you, let's get it on", [the SRT leader] tells the audience. Then he leads a short prayer, asking the teens to take Jesus into their lives.

Maybe they can wear these rings instead... (Absolutely not safe for work, but I know you're going to click on the link anyway.)

But I really shouldn't criticize the Bush government's faith-based policies (even though that $700,000 could have been used to maybe buy more chairs for my students, some of who have to sit on the damn floor) -- maybe the last thing I want is to be branded a traitor (thanks to my friend Jeff for the link):

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said on Monday opposition to the U.S. President was encouraging Washington's enemies and hindering his 'war against terrorism'.

...

He said if Washington's enemies believed Bush might waver or his opponents prevail, that could increase support for their activities.

"They take heart in that and that leads to more money going into these activities or that leads to more recruits or that leads to more encouragement or that leads to more staying power..."

Girl on Girl Action!

Now that I have your attention -- and yes, I'm running a thumbnail-sized photo swiped from an AP article because I have no shame -- check out the following story, after the Atlanta Journal-Constitution apologizes to readers for running the same photo on their front page (via Silver Rights):

[Atlanta Journal-Constitution managing editor Hank] Klibanoff compared the Spears picture to graphic images from the war in Iraq.

"We ran images we otherwise might not have run. But that was war, and war was news. The photo we ran Friday was neither, and I wish I had limited its display to the inside of the Living section..."

But enough about celebrities and obscenity. (See also Heriberto Yepez's August 31 post: "She also helps Bush. Madonna’s makes front news. A stupid kiss becomes more important than killing people in Iraq.") (I suppose I should be thankful that the AJC apparently ran photos from the war on Iraq -- we didn't need a war sanitized for our protection.)

On another related note, Brooke Biggs asks:

I have a nagging question: You remember how all the right-wing punditocracy was whinging about celebrities speaking out on political issues, and how being a movie or music star didn't make anyone an expert on world affairs, or their opinions worth more than anyone else's? You remember, all of the foaming about the Dixie Chicks and Janeane Garofalo and Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon?

Aren't all of those people among those championing the campaign of The Terminator for Governor? Playing their Clint Black "I-raq and Roll" and wearing their "Toby Keith for President" T-shirts?

And I'll end with another celebrity apparently on the side of the angels (though he really should move back if he wants to make more of a difference):

"America is dumb, it's like a dumb puppy that has big teeth that can bite and hurt you, aggressive," he said.

...

"I was ecstatic they re-named 'French Fries' as 'Freedom Fries'. Grown men and women in positions of power in the U.S. government showing themselves as idiots," he [said].

Old Bad Guys, New Bad Guys.

After the abortive attempt to paint Kristina Leung as the evil female Fu Manchu / Dragon Lady, the New York Times is raising the heat on China again:

With unemployment high and American manufacturers reeling from three years of misery, politicians and businesspeople around the country have found a villain to blame for these troubles: China, or more specifically its currency.

Whee! And the front page story is followed up with an even more lurid story on the abuse of urban migrants.

I don't mean to defend China's abysmal human-rights record, and I don't mean to necessarily approve of the billions of dollars in trade deficits with the U.S., but I mean, come on: pot, kettle, black.

Meanwhile, as the war on Iraq -- I'm so sorry, I forgot the war was already declared over -- becomes more grim for American troops, President Smirk pulls out the same tired crap about "the struggle between civilization and chaos:"

We've adopted a new strategy for a new kind of war. We will not wait for known enemies to strike us again. We will strike them and their camps or caves or wherever they hide before they hit more of our cities and kill more of our citizens. We will do everything in our power to deny terrorists weapons of mass destruction before they can commit murder on an unimaginable scale.

In Iraq's case, those WMDs were denied indeed.

We've sent a message that is understood throughout the world: if you harbor a terrorist, if you support a terrorist, if you feed a terrorist, you're just as guilty as the terrorists, and the Taliban found out what we meant.

Saudi Arabia must be quaking in its boots.

Afghanistan today is a friend of the United States of America. Because we acted, that country is not a haven for terrorists, and the people of America are safer from attack.

Man, you can practically see him rehearsing in front of a mirror, looking at the way his lips move: "...Must mention 'friend...' must mention 'the people of America...' See Spot run. Run, Spot, run."

America and our coalition removed a regime that built, possessed and used weapons of mass destruction, a regime that sponsored terror and a regime that persecuted its people.

This is somewhat new, as "WMD" is back (he had initially changed it to "weapons program"), but now that the media's attention has shifted to Gov. Arnie and the Ten Commandments (Chief Justice Moore can put it in his living room), he can confidently bring up WMDs again.

In all the debates over Iraq, we must never forget Iraq.

Uh-huh.

We are on the offensive against the Saddam loyalists, the foreign fighters, and the criminal gangs that are attacking Iraqis and coalition forces.

Yup -- that's a lot of people there, and it's increasingly clear that "the coalition forces" have no idea who they are, where they're coming from, who's financing them. The war is over, indeed...

We're receiving more and more vital intelligence from Iraqi citizens, information that we're putting to good use.

Obviously not good enough.

Our course is set. Our purpose is firm. No act of terrorists will weaken our resolve or alter their fate. Our only goal, our only option, is total victory in the war on terror. And this nation will press on to victory.

"Total victory" can only mean total annihilation in this case, which seems like the sum of the Bush administration's plan for "the war on terror."

Learning by rote is never very effective, but maybe these cheap-labor conservatives know what they're doing. Bush has no new talking points in this speech, except for the deliberate omission of Osama bin Laden. Indeed, it could practically have been delivered a year ago, and the rhetoric would have been similar. WMDs, war on terror, America will prevail, with us or against us, blah blah, completely ignoring everything that has happened since then -- a brutal and expensive war, an even more unstable world order, a rising death toll since Bush squeezed into his flight uniform, more proof (as if anyone needed more) of a tanking economy. (All this is happily abetted by some of the most retrogressive policies in education, social welfare, the environment -- the outrage goes on and on...)

Harassment and Lies.

The U.S. government is very quickly refining its methods of harassment: Americans who acted as human shields in Iraq are receiving letters from the Treasury Department, asking about what they did there and reminding them that "spending money there was a crime that could lead to 12 years in prison and civil penalties of up to $275,000."

...a Treasury spokesman bristled at the notion that the inquiries were politically motivated.

"Of course not," the spokesman, Taylor Griffin, said. "Unlike in Iraq under Saddam Hussein — where dissent was met with imprisonment or worse — the freedom to protest and disagree with the government is a cornerstone of American democracy. However, the right to free speech is not a license to violate U.S. or international sanctions. While free expression is a right enjoyed by all Americans, choosing which laws to abide by and which to ignore is not a privilege that is granted to anyone."

It sure was a "privilege" granted to the U.S., no? What nerve.

Speaking of balls (or the lack of them), Bush lies again (what's new?):

"We are discussing a lot of things, and we believe that the tax relief plan we have in place is robust enough to encourage job growth," Mr. Bush told reporters at his 1,600-acre Texas ranch here, as he stood flanked by his top economic advisers. "If we change our opinion, we will let you know," he added.

"If we change our opinion, we will let you know??" What kind of moronic statement is that? (Well -- the kind of moronic statement you follow previous ones, I suppose.)

...Mr. Bush and his advisers offered no new initiatives or ideas to improve the economy. Instead, Mr. Bush repeated calls that Congress rein in spending, and said that the $350 billion in tax cuts enacted this year would soon lead to economic growth.

This is despite Nobel Prize-winning economist and UC Berkeley professor George Akerlof's warning that "the Bush policy is the worst policy in the last 200 years." (See also Bob Herbert's column for more.)

And for the women and men on duty overseas: nothing beats being lied to and made to pay for it.

It's A Class War, Baby.

Once again, Bob Herbert tells it like it is:

The official jobless rate, now 6.2 percent, does not come close to reflecting how grim the employment situation really is. The official rate refers only to those actively seeking work. It does not count the "discouraged" workers, who have looked for jobs within the last 12 months but have given up because of the lack of offers. Then there are the involuntary part-timers, who would like full-time jobs but cannot find them. And there are people who have had to settle for jobs that pay significantly less than jobs they once held.

When you combine the unemployed and the underemployed, you are talking about a percentage of the work force that is in double digits.

As he adds: "Right now there is no plan, no strategy for turning this employment crisis around. There is not even a sense of urgency."

The simple truth is that the interests of the Bush administration's primary constituency, corporate America, do not coincide with the fundamental interests of workaday Americans.

Can you say "cheap-labor conservatives?"

(I titled my post "It's a class war, baby!" because I heard it said once by one of my professors, who was referring to the Tonya Harding - Nancy Kerrigan skating fiasco back in the '90s. Since this was pre-Austin Powers, I had thought that this was a catchphrase from the late '60s -- and was a little surprised not to find it on Google.)

I've already written about the merits of Conceptual Guerilla's argument, so I won't rehash it here -- suffice it to say that framing this current crisis chiefly in terms of a basic conflict over class interests should hopefully be effective in galvanizing the public. Bob Herbert's last statement above comes close to formulating that same sentiment.

Required Reading.

Read these now (though you've probably already seen the links): "Defeat The Right In Three Minutes" (via American Samizdat), the Visual Iraq Body Count, and "End the Liberal Voluntary Extinction Movement."

So go now -- you can right-click on the links and open a new window or tab -- before coming back and reading more. =)

...

Already read it? Good. Repeat the words to yourself: "cheap-labor conservative." "Cheap-labor conservative." Has a nice ring to it, doesn't it?

There is, admittedly, a bit of reductiveness in the Conceptual Guerilla's analysis -- using class as a lens to simply explain gender inequalities, or racial or ethnic discrimination, among others -- but it's the right kind, really, if only to circulate it as a viral catchphrase. To get people to make those connections and think for themselves. (And considering that the Democrats are all trying very hard to fly under the radar -- sorry, but that only works on Survivor, and not even all of the time -- those connections have to be made by other people.)

Why the utter wrongness of this (cheap-labor conservative) administration doesn't seem evident to everyone leaves me dumbfounded, since it's so obvious in many ways. Let's examine something really simple:

Q. We now have more evidence of a massive budget deficit that taxpayers are going to be paying off for years or decades to come. The economy continues to shed jobs. What evidence can you point to that tax cuts, at least of the variety that you have supported, are really working to help this economy? And do you need to be thinking about some other approach?

A. No, the answer to the last part of your question. First of all, let me -- quick history, recent history. The stock market started to decline in March of 2000. Then the first quarter of 2001 was a recession. And then we got attacked 9/11. And then corporate scandals started to bubble up to the surface, which created a lack of confidence in the system. And then we had the drumbeat to war.

Remember on our TV screens -- I'm not suggesting which network did this -- but it said "March to War" every day from last summer till the spring. March to war, march to war, that's not a very conducive environment for people to take risks when they hear march to war all the time.

Let's take a look at what's going on here. "We're all sinners" aside, Bush (in one of his blue-moon press conferences) once again makes himself sound staggeringly moronic. Consider the fact that he lamely dodges the two most important questions on everyone's mind before the conference: evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq (he now says "weapons program"), and the terrible state of the economy.

Blaming the deficit on, of all things, television -- people who coddled him all the way, mind you -- is simply beyond belief. Never mind the fact that he clumsily sidesteps the tax cut issue -- he actually blames television for the "not very conducive environment" which he himself created! (Nice of him at least to mention "corporate scandals," since people do need reminding.)

His "Bushisms" have been explained away as Texas-style, plain-folks locution, or as proof of his merely scattered brain, as if the latter wasn't frightening enough. (I can see him saying to himself, over and over, while he brushes his teeth: "Stick to the talking points. Stick to the talking points.")

But this is perhaps a little too generous, for it gives him a way out, some form of excuse -- kind of like the equivalent of his "gentleman's C." Why bother cutting him some slack, since he obviously doesn't give a shit? Why are words like arrogance or malice hardly ever mentioned when it comes to him? Does Bush and his cheap-labor conservative cronies not think that people would finally make the connection between the huge deficit and the huge tax cuts, or, at the very least, the billions of dollars spent on the war on Iraq every month? Or is it because they think they can get away with it?

Lying we're used to. But now Bush isn't even bothering to lie well anymore. See, this is the kind of person we're dealing with here -- that smirk on his face says it all. He's smirking at you and me. The next time you see Bush smirking, just think to yourself: he's smirking at me.

In a month's time I will be going back to school and facing my students, who -- if they can afford to enroll -- would have had to suffer through a whopping 30 percent tuition fee increase.

In two months' time the democratically-elected governor of the severely cash-strapped state I live in may have been toppled in a travesty of a recall election engineered by cheap-labor conservatives and replaced by either a car-alarm salesman, the Terminator, or the publisher of Hustler magazine.

Mykeru reminds us that "This isn't a game." That's absolutely correct. CEOs are making more money than any of their poor fired employees will ever make in their lifetimes. Cheap-labor conservatives piss and moan about the so-called liberal media and pat themselves on the back for their "moral clarity," while at the same time indulging their various hypocrisies. Teachers are being laid off. Funding in almost all social services has been violently slashed. Too many people -- both Iraqis and Americans -- have suffered and died because of Bush's lies, and more people will suffer in the years to come from Bush's "compassionate conservatism."

Enough is enough. It's knives-out time.

More Stuff to Get Angry About.

First of all, one of my new modern-day heroes, Stephen Eagle Funk, is being charged with desertion (desertion!) and a possible two-year sentence -- even though, as he writes, he returned to his unit after applying to be discharged from the army as a conscientious objector:

Under media attention, the military initially claimed my application for discharge would be handled quickly and fairly, and that I would likely receive only non-judicial punishment for my unauthorized absence. Now that public scrutiny has died down the military says that I deserve to be convicted. I feel I am being punished simply for practicing my First Amendment rights, and they are seeking an unfit punishment to dissuade others from becoming conscientious objectors.

BuzzFlash has a couple of excellent commentaries, one of which is on Condoleeza Rice pleading innocent about the CIA's warnings regarding the forgery of documents alleging Iraq's uranium purchases:

It's really quite impossible for the White House not to have known that the information was, at best, unreliable, and almost certainly forged. Just look at Condoleezza's public statement: "Maybe someone knew down in the bowels of the agency, " Rice said on NBC's "Meet the Press...", "but no one in our circles knew that there were doubts and suspicions that this might be a forgery."

It's one thing to engage in disinformation. It's quite another thing, to lie stupidly. Are we to suppose that the only method of communication between the CIA and the National Security Director boils down to "advisories" e-mailed back and forth, which they may or may not get? Do they seriously expect us to believe that this is how the White House gets its security information? The White House bases a war on a few pieces of misinformation, and they don't even sit down with the intelligence community, and discuss how accurate, or reliable, or verifiable their information is? They don't even check it out? Think about it! This is information that the President of the United States of America is announcing to the entire world as provocation for war!

And then more outrage from that Son of a Bush, also via BuzzFlash (the title of the Reuters article is "'Bring Them On,' Bush Says to Iraq Attacks"):

President Bush on Wednesday [July 2] challenged militants who have been killing and injuring U.S. forces in Iraq, saying "bring them on" because American forces were tough enough to deal with their attacks. "There are some who feel like that conditions are such that they can attack us there," Bush told reporters at the White House. "My answer is bring them on. We have the force necessary to deal with the situation."

Well, here you go, Mr. President. Enjoy your Fourth of July.

US soldier shot dead in Iraq

One United States soldier serving in Iraq has been killed and many others wounded in separate attacks, the US military says.

One serviceman from the First Armoured Division was shot dead in Baghdad on Thursday night [July 3], when his Bradley vehicle came under sniper fire.

In a second attack, at least 19 soldiers were hurt when mortar rounds were fired at a US military base north of Baghdad.

At least 26 American soldiers have died in combat since US President George W Bush declared the Iraq war over on 1 May.

Lapdog Alert!

Former Friend Of Bill-turned-Friend Of George Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo is beginning to reap the dubious rewards of heading the most willing country among the coalition of the willing. After that state dinner (about which I've gone on and on in these pages), President Macapagal-Arroyo, who has long expressed no interest in running for re-election, is supposedly thinking about changing her mind:

According to the highly placed source, Bush urged Ms Macapagal at the close of her recent official state visit to the United States to reconsider her announcement on Dec. 30 last year that she would not seek a full six-year term in the 2004 election.

"You know what [were] Bush's parting words to her? 'Madame President, women and politicians are entitled to change their minds,'" the source said.

(Sen. Raul Roco wryly observed that the last time he checked, Bush was not an overseas Filipino voter.)

Presumably our Cowboy in the White House needs someone like her on his side to fight the Eastern Front of his war on terrorism, and the only way to assure that stability would be to keep her in that position.

Already the propaganda machine is well into gear for this next phase, as veteran hack director Cirio Santiago's latest film, Operation Balikatan (starring Rey Malonzo, Eddie Garcia, and a bunch of unknown white guys) is a war movie supposedly in the tradition of Black Hawk Down. It's already being criticized by activist groups as part of a shameless psy-ops campaign orchestrated in favor of the US troops (despite the American diplomats' public show of wariness about the film). (To his credit, he produced and directed some of my favorite B-movies of the early '70s, an entry about which I'm planning to write.)

Meanwhile -- the animal metaphors are piling up, so I apologize for any sexist connotations -- our lapdog has also turned into a parrot:

Referring to the first day of strikes launched by the United States and its allies against Iraq, the President said: "March 20 signified a major blow to the power of the United Nations." ... "Unless its security mandate is updated, the United Nations will continue to limp forward, tasked to do much peacekeeping but too feeble or hand-tied to be effective at peacemaking, Ms Macapagal said.

Them's fighting words, and will no doubt jeopardize the Philippines's supposedly shoo-in bid for entry into the U.N. Security Council next year. But more important, it reiterates, in even stronger terms, the Bush Administration's insulting disregard for international law, and is a bad sign of things to come for the Macapagal-Arroyo administration as well.

Back to That Dinner.

This isn't exactly about Bush's state dinner with Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, but about Bush's welcome speech:

The Philippines was the first democracy in Asia and has a proud tradition of democratic values, love of family and faith in God. President Arroyo, you are carrying this tradition forward, and I`m proud to call you friend… Mabuhay!

Dean Jorge Bocobo, whose blog I really enjoy reading but with whom I mostly disagree, rightly points out the change in Bush's rhetoric:

I was dumbstruck reading the transcript. These bold words, are history being revised... No U.S. president since William McKinley -- not Roosevelt or Kennedy or Reagan or Clinton -- has ever proclaimed the simple truth in those 8 words: “The Philippines was the first democracy in Asia…” Pres. Bush's words contradict the history of Philippine-American relations as taught in America (except in hundreds of Asian studies departments) and written up in history books (unless they've read the words of Teodoro Agoncillo, Renato Constantino, or U.P.'s Dean Armando Malay).

He writes further:

[The Treaty of Paris] made inevitable America's first and only colonial war of conquest against an insurrection that was also our war to defend the infant Philippine republic...

The Filipinos would lose that war, but America would give the Philippines everything Spain never did: schools, government, science, Hollywood. Still a century of nationalist resentment seethes in many intellectuals, pundits and local elites. Now, for the first time an American President seems to agree with them. I see the end of a great untruth because George W. Bush is a straight talking Texas cowboy.

I suppose I'm one of those "seething pundits" then -- who, as Bocobo eloquently writes, "never emerged from the black hole of resentment." (Do I qualify as a "seething intellectual?")

Yes, I'm seething: the joys of schools and Hollywood aside (for which we should be eternally grateful to the United States of America, forever and ever, Amen), Bush's statement reads to me as precisely signaling the very elision of that same war (not an "insurrection," by the way) the Filipino-American war that sought to destroy that same "first democracy in Asia." The simplistic recognition of a change in date -- finally, an American President realizes our independence day is not on July 4! -- is little reason to applaud. This is only hypocrisy of the basest sort, especially since Bush is financing -- no, wait: directly plunging into -- yet another war against those crazy Moros.

There's more (the permalink might be broken, but it's from May 29, with a mirror here) adulation concerning the "partnership" between the U.S. and its major non-NATO ally, but you can read that for yourself. (And you can read my earlier entries if you click on the "this damned war" category in the boxes on the right.)

They Just Don't Get It.

My friend Mike, who sent me the guest list to the Gloria and George dinner, weighs in on the subject. As he writes:

For all its glitter and buzz, Monday's White House state dinner in honor of Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo could not conceal the tired, misconceived nature of America's approach to Southeast Asia. Now, just as for most of the past half-century, Washington views the region's problems merely as local variations on its own global preoccupations. Its distorted understanding has led to a long series of bad choices -- bad both for Southeast Asia and for the United States.

(My previous take on the proceedings was that it very much lacking in glitter, and simply seemed like an elaborate sop thrown to the Philippines for supporting Bush's "war on terror.")

About that Dinner Again.

Eileen -- you have no idea how many times I've tried to connect to your site (as with other Blogspot sites) -- excerpts an article from the Washington Post about that dinner again:

Bush praised Arroyo as "a fierce fighter of terrorism in your own country. You've earned the respect of the American people for your resolve. And after September the 11th, you were one of the first leaders to contact me and express your strong support for the war against terror. And you have not wavered."

"Friends stand by each other," she responded. "In times of crisis, friends do not ask why. They ask how."

There's a nice rhythm to this give and take -- obviously they weren't actually having a conversation, but it reminds me of those skits that I used to put on to promote Sunday School and Bible study fellowship to the teenagers in my church. (Believe it or not -- I shall have to write about my fall of grace one of these days... the post will be called "The Road to Apostasy.")

No, wait -- it reminds me of how Emily Elizabeth would sum up the lesson for the day on Clifford, the Big Red Dog (no offense to the show, which my daughter really likes). ("Today, Clifford learned about cooperation...")

One of the presents in Macapagal-Arroyo's "goodie bag" -- man, Philippine News is getting sharper and sharper -- was this:

The two Presidents agreed on legislation extending new benefits to Filipino WWII veterans based in the U.S. Among these are: full-rate service connected disability compensation; eligibility for burial at national cemeteries and burial benefits for New Scouts; full-rate dependence and indemnity compensation (DIC) to the survivors of New Scouts, Commonwealth Army veterans and guerrillas, and comprehensive health care eligibility to Commonwealth Army veterans and New Scouts.

Which explains why Principi, Ganio and Lachica were invited to the dinner (but they didn't get the pension, though). (Jennie Ilustre emphasizes at the beginning of the article, however, that the Philippines had wanted to get more -- $380 million vs $100 million. "It became clear the state visit was more about photo ops, and less about opportunities," she writes.)

But what a photo op for her anyway. Nelson Navarro compares Macapagal-Arroyo's relatively stellar reception to the lukewarm brown-bag lunches Ramos received way back when, but it's still "begging-bowl diplomacy," as he puts it, when all is said and done.

Emil Guillermo, right underneath Navarro's mug on page 5, has gone amok as usual and pushes her to remember Filipinos overseas as well:

The World Bank just released figures that said that in 2002 for the first time, more money flowed from poor migrants in rich countries like the U.S. than the combined total of government aid, private bank lending and IMF/World Bank aid and assistance.

Do you understand what that means?

That means Manong Boy and Auntie Baby who work the hotel/restaurant beat and send back money through LBC to their family back home, are doing more to prop up the Philippine economy than anyone gives them credit.

And he ruminates, no pun intended, on the possible "chew toys" GMA might receive:

All the hoopla and attention of the week should be a nice payback to President GMA for loyalty beyond the call of lapdog.

So of course, now she’s looking for her bone.

Guillermo holds back on criticizing what's humming in Gloria's goodie drawer -- he does get a nice potshot at Bush's "doggy-style politics" -- but man, can't anyone see what she's traded to get equity for the Filipino veterans?

But back to that dinner. My first reaction was that it was extremely different from the guest lists during Clinton's administration. My second reaction was that it was decidedly low-watt. I mean, who selects the people to be invited? I can see that there were really rather few business connections -- eBay, UPS, a few others, and Gigot to write all about it -- but otherwise, not that much there. Is this par for the course at state dinners, or...?

The other interesting point were, as I'd pointed out before, the Filipino Americans. (I can't imagine Gloria gettin' down to Neal McCoy, much less even heard of him -- can you?) What an odd coterie of people: a former Miss America? An Olympian boxer? An ex-mayor? And none of the usual Philippine News quotables -- no Veloria, Cayetano, Mabilangan-Haley, Nicolas-Lewis, Clemente, Bulos, or even good ol' Alex Esclamado? And jeez, doesn't Michelle Malkin deserve a doggie treat thrown her way at least? Are Filipino Americans simply under Bush's radar? (Well, there are all those chefs and stewards in the White House...)

There are a couple of ways to interpret this: one, that the guest list was slapped together by some clueless drone, or, more likely, that this was never really about Filipinos (or Filipino Americans) in the first place. This simply looks like an elaborate scratch behind the ear for the U.S.'s ally in the Far East, a big thumbing of the nose to Chirac and Schroeder and all those other folks who won't be eating out of the same food bowl with Bush anytime soon, a relatively inexpensive gesture to remind the world that the war on terrorism in Asia apparently isn't over.

And so I'll end with an excerpt from Sen. Robert Byrd's recent, much-quoted speech, which reminds us why being on Bush's buddy list is ignominious anyhow:

...the Bush team's extensive hype of WMD in Iraq as justification for a preemptive invasion has become more than embarrassing. It has raised serious questions about prevarication and the reckless use of power. Were our troops needlessly put at risk? Were countless Iraqi civilians killed and maimed when war was not really necessary? Was the American public deliberately misled? Was the world?

And so Byrd ends -- god, this speech should be disseminated far and wide:

I contend that, through it all, the people know. The American people unfortunately are used to political shading, spin, and the usual chicanery they hear from public officials. They patiently tolerate it up to a point. But there is a line. It may seem to be drawn in invisible ink for a time, but eventually it will appear in dark colors, tinged with anger. When it comes to shedding American blood - - when it comes to wreaking havoc on civilians, on innocent men, women, and children, callous dissembling is not acceptable. Nothing is worth that kind of lie - - not oil, not revenge, not reelection, not somebody's grand pipedream of a democratic domino theory.

And mark my words, the calculated intimidation which we see so often of late by the "powers that be" will only keep the loyal opposition quiet for just so long. Because eventually, like it always does, the truth will emerge. And when it does, this house of cards, built of deceit, will fall.

The War on Terrorism (the Philippine Front).

For those of you who don't read the Philippine newspapers, here's the great Conrado de Quiros on Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo's "splendid little war:"

Bush never found the weapons of mass destruction that he used as his excuse to bomb Iraq, if indeed he expected to find any. GMA will not find any links between al-Qaeda and the MILF, which she is using as an excuse to bomb Muslim Mindanao, if indeed she expects to find any.

It is a cynical war, manufactured cynically, prosecuted cynically, and done for cynical ends. The senators who are crying foul over the timing of the bombings, which was just in time for GMA's presumably triumphant march to Washington, have every reason to do so. Salome got the head of John the Baptist as a gift for dancing for King Herod; GMA wants the heads of Abu Sabaya and Hashim Salamat, or the next best substitutes, for dancing for King George.

As an unfortunately glowing editorial enumerated the pasalubong Macapagal-Arroyo received along with the pat on her back (and that state dinner):

The United States will extend 30 million dollars in new grants and aid for equipment and training of the AFP. Another 30 million dollars will go into new bilateral development assistance focused on Mindanao and support for the peace process with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front. A combat engineering unit will be established with a 25-million-dollar grant to train and equip the unit for civic action. Up to 10 million dollars in US defense goods and services will be made available through a presidential draw-down authority for equipment, spare parts and maintenance.

Twenty UH-1H helicopters will be sent to support the AFP in fighting terrorist groups, plus 10 other helicopters for spare parts... New joint military exercises are to be held, although the rules of engagement are still unclear -- a contentious aspect of the exercises.

More than the aid package, Bush elevated the status of the security relationship by making the Philippines a special non-North Atlantic Treaty Organization ally in the same category as Australia and Egypt. While this status does not make the Philippines a Nato member, it provides the mechanism that can fast-track Philippine access to US weapons in the war on terror. As Bush puts it, "That puts the Philippines right up there with Australia, Egypt, Israel ... which means it will be easier for us to answer questions on military equipment and to provide parts to make sure that the defense capabilities of the Philippine military are modern, and the choppers fly and are maintained. When the President orders up a strike, it happens quickly."

But go read the rest of de Quiros's op-ed piece.

Telling the Truth.

There's a fantastic essay here by Linda O'Brien entitled "To the Candidates: Speak For Us!" As someone who has more or less thrown in the towel, I find something deeply moving about her open letter to any prospective presidential candidate running against Bush:

...if the election were held right now, the voters would be choosing between an individual and a myth. You, versus a larger-than-life image concocted of flags, music, branding and good speechwriting, SurroundSound, a cast of thousands in uniform, and the benefit of all the tax dollars spent on the "war on terror."

And more (I swear, parts of it gave me the chills as I was reading):

The Bush image is not invincible; it is the most hollow thing imaginable. It is built on lies, obscene amounts of money, and war; the one thing it does not contain is life. Not the lives of Iraqi civilians killed or maimed yet never mentioned or mourned, nor the lives of soldiers sent to Iraq without baseline health screenings, or veterans whose benefits are being cut, or the poor, seniors, and kids here at home who are losing government programs they desperately need to survive.

Tim Robbins gave a magnificent speech to the National Press Club right after the Hall of Fame brouhaha. He grasped the connection between our ideals and national policy and communicated it brilliantly. In another time, I'd love to see him run for president. If you are to counter the Bush myth, you must do what he did. Combine compassion with outrage, remind us of our dreams, get fierce, and speak them. Raise them to the level of a vision for the future and make it a platform for action... I am betting that the real majority of the American people will recognize it when they hear it, if they get the chance.

I realize I'm betting everything, as are you.

With all due respect, damn moderation. We risk losing everything -- life, liberty, freedom -- if you don't risk telling the truth now. We may not get another chance. We're in the game of our lives. Have a little faith.

The other day I found out that a good friend of mine is moving to India "to get away from Bush's America," as he puts it. And yesterday I spoke with one of my students who is extremely active in Students Against War (S.A.W.) and talked about how demoralized we all were. The war on Iraq had effectively "ended" in the news media (since it seems to be Laci Peterson and The Matrix 24/7), Bush was getting an extension on his FastPass by the media (you'd think his free ride would end soon, but people seem to have forgotten about those missing WMDs), he's asking more money for the defense budget (and building more warheads!) while budget cuts are devastating schools, the shameless lies are growing everyday, and worst of all, it looks more and more that "re-election" (in quotation marks because I'm not counting the first as such) is right around the corner.

But if you feel the same way I do, go read O'Brien's essay. It's beginning to change my mind already.

Hey, I Got Published!

In an otherwise excellent op-ed piece, Rodel Rodis lauded "the new Filipino American war heroes" -- Marine Gunnery Sgt. Joseph Menusa, Army Ranger Staff Sgt. Nino Livaudais, Army Spc. Sgt. Joseph Hudson, Marine Lance Cpl. OJ Santa Maria -- and proceeded to take the U.S. government to task for their numerous anti-immigrant policies (Filipinos swept up as INS "absconders," veterans without equity, airport screeners fired from their jobs). True, but...

So I wrote, in part:

Conspicuously missing from his list of "Filipino American heroes," however, is Marine Lance Corporal Stephen Funk, who is half-Filipino and was the first American conscientious objector of the war on Iraq.

In this current political climate where simple dissent is automatically characterized as traitorous, Cpl. Funk stood up for what he believed. He, too -- to quote Rodis -- "[represents] a new generation acting on the courage of their convictions." That makes him a hero in my book as well.

I'm sure Rodel was just playing it safe -- why muddy up the argument when he's already established that Filipinos are heroic, and therefore do not deserve the unjust policies wrought against them? But he glosses over the complexities: of dissent within the Filipino and Filipino American community, of the reasons why Filipinos "comprise 20.6 percent of all noncitizens in the U.S. Armed Forces" (as he himself writes), of Cpl. Santa Maria receiving automatic U.S. citizenship (bestowed personally by Bush, by the way) after being injured, of veterans of Corregidor and Bataan "risking death to defend America," of the multiple meanings of "heroism" itself.

More Amnesia.

Mark Lewis's valuable correction to the amnesia that surrounds American empire is well-taken, but as a (still slightly blinkered) letter from a reader points out (scroll down), the most glaring parallel between the Philippines and the Iraq -- they're called war crimes, Mr. Lewis! -- are cheerfully ignored.

Indeed, Lewis blithely writes:

That was the biggest problem with America's Philippines empire: Its acquisition put us on a collision course with Japan that led directly to Pearl Harbor.

I think this nicely illustrates the purpose of all this imperialist nostalgia. For instance, Niall Ferguson, in an appalling article in the New York Times Sunday Magazine a couple of weeks ago, was essentially warning the Bush administration not to be wimps and handle Iraq right, i.e., colonize 'em like the Brits.

But the point of recovering memories -- of ostensibly "learning" from history -- is not simply to learn how not to bungle up the occupation of Iraq, but why not to embark on such bloody campaigns in the first place.

Every Picture Tells A Story.

Via Metafilter again, The Memory Hole examines a seemingly doctored photograph from the London Evening Standard.

Which makes me wonder whether Bush was Photoshopped into that fighter plane as well... =)

WMD Scoreboard.

Via Mac-a-ronies, a link to Eric Alterman's Altercation blog -- jeez, Alterman should get MSNBC's web techies to archive his stuff weekly or something! -- and a letter from Santiago Zorzopulos:

It is Friday, and that means it is time to update our SotU-WMD scoreboard:

“...Saddam Hussein had biological weapons materials sufficient to produce over 25,000 liters of anthrax - enough doses to kill several million people. He has not accounted for that material. He has given no evidence that he has destroyed it.”
Liters found in Iraq this week: Zero
Liters found in Iraq to date: Zero

“...Saddam Hussein had materials sufficient to produce more than 38,000 liters of botulinum toxin - enough to subject millions of people to death by respiratory failure. He has not accounted for that material. He has given no evidence that he has destroyed it.”
Liters found in Iraq this week: Zero
Liters found in Iraq to date: Zero

“...Saddam Hussein had the materials to produce as much as 500 tons of sarin, mustard, and VX nerve agent. In such quantities, these chemical agents also could kill untold thousands. He has not accounted for these materials. He has given no evidence that he has destroyed them.”
Tons found in Iraq this week: Zero
Tons found in Iraq to date: Zero

Protecting You from Terrorism, One Restaurant at a Time.

From Metafilter:

Loaded guns pointed in faces, people made to crawl on their hands and knees, police officers clearly exacerbating a tense situation by kicking in doors, taunting, keeping their fingers on the trigger even after the situation was under control.

Jason Halperin, on being raided while eating at an Indian restaurant. Courtesy of the PATRIOT Act.

Filipino-American Scholars Lead API Colleagues in Protest

Thought I'd post this, from Robyn Rodriguez, friend, colleague, and Ph.D candidate in Sociology at UC Berkeley:

Filipino-American Scholars Lead API Colleagues in Protest

MEDIA RELEASE:
For additional information contact: Robyn Rodriguez
510-364-3252

The Critical Filipino Studies Collective (CFSC) is calling on Asian-American Studies professors, researchers and professionals to live up to their historic mission and oppose the Bush administration’s global “War on Terror” at the annual Association for Asian American Studies (AAAS) conference next month. The AAAS conference will take place at the Cathedral Hill Hotel from May 8-10, 2003 in San Francisco.

In addition to the resolution, the CFSC will be sponsoring an exhibit of Asian American photographers who have been documenting Asian Americans’ leadership and involvement in San Francisco’s anti-war protests, as well as a benefit for the Filipino immigrant airport screeners who unfairly suffered a mass lay-off at Bay Area airports in the wake of the 9/11 tragedies.

Dozens of highly respected Asian-American and Pacific Islander professors from around the country have added their names to the anti-war resolution sponsored by the CFSC, an organization of Filipino studies scholars. The Filipino and Asian American scholars denounce the recent war of aggression and subsequent occupation of Iraq. According to the CFSC-sponsored resolution to be presented on May 9 at the AAAS business meeting, “This war is a manipulation of the American public's grief over the 9/11 tragedy, an illegal and undemocratic campaign to further U.S. multinational corporate interests.” CFSC calls on the Association to “actively defend and support the academic freedom of its members’…in challenging this imperial ‘War on Terror’.” Moreover, the CFSC calls for “the Association [to] form a task force to organize a national day of action and produce educational materials.”

Asian-American studies along with other ethnic studies programs and departments trace their histories to the 1960’s anti-imperialist movements and struggles for Third World self-determination, including, most notably, the San Francisco Ethnic Studies Strike of 1968-9 (for reference see: http://www.library.sfsu.edu/strike/). The AAAS will hold its annual meeting in San Francisco, the very site of these historic struggles and the recent anti-war protests.

Events:
May 8-10:
Association for Asian American Studies Annual Conference, Cathedral Hotel, San Francisco

May 8:
Critical Filipino Studies Collective Public Meeting, 11-1 at SF Public Library

CFSC Organized Events:
May 9
3-5PM: Presentation of CFSC-Sponsored Anti-War Resolution to Board
7:30-11PM: “Filipino Activism and Immigrant Rights in the Bay Area Benefit” (co sponsored by Asian American Studies and Philippine Studies, USF and Asianweek) and “Rise Up, Stop the War! Asian Americans in the Anti-War Movement” Photo Exhibit. The theme of the exhibit will be “Strength in Unity, Peace through Justice Now”

Decks of Cards.

A few days ago I posted something about making a deck of Bush Cartel cards. Well, they've been made -- Roger Ailes (not that Roger Ailes, obviously) has a link to one set, and here's yet another.

(They say every rightist has her/his favorite leftist, and vice-versa. Some acquaintances of mine on the staff of the UPLB Perspective who later actually up and joined the New People's Army were totally into Arnold Schwarzenegger, no matter how detestable his politics were. In any case, my current favorite evil attack dog of the right happens to be a four of diamonds.)

Ebert on the First Amendment.

Swiped from MetaFilter : an excellent interview with Roger Ebert:

The right really wants to punish you for having an opinion. And I think both the left and the right should celebrate people who have different opinions, and disagree with them, and argue with them, and differ with them, but don't just try to shut them up. The right really dominates radio, and it's amazing how much energy the right spends telling us that the press is slanted to the left when it really isn't. They want to shut other people up. They really don't understand the First Amendment.

Plus: more from Ebert on Michael Moore, Justin Lin's Better Luck Tomorrow, theocracy, the repeal of the estate tax, and Do The Right Thing.

The Chicks, the Boss.

While I do not necessarily condone nudity to spice up a film, album cover, magazine cover, or, um, a blog, here's the naked truth (on the cover of Entertainment Weekly:

And here's Bruce Springsteen -- I was actually wondering whether he was the "famous rock and roller" that Tim Robbins was referring to -- on the Dixie Chicks, where he calls the radio boycott against them "un-American":

The pressure coming from the government and big business to enforce conformity of thought concerning the war and politics goes against everything that this country is about -- namely freedom. Right now, we are supposedly fighting to create freedom in Iraq, at the same time that some are trying to intimidate and punish people for using that same freedom here at home.

Read his short statement on his website.

Project in the making...

Now this sounds like a good project in the making: a "Warmongering Assholes of the West" (but what about their non-western allies?) deck of cards.

Anyone know where I can download card templates I can steal from? A little time with Photoshop could work wonders...

(And who would be the Queen of Hearts? Condoleeza Rice? Ann Coulter?)

Media amnesia.

Speaking of historical amnesia, Buzzflash last week published an excellent editorial on its offshoot, a kind of amnesia on the media's part:

For those Americans who don't watch FOX News, CNN or MSNBC, it is despairingly unbelievable that the Bush Cartel has gotten away Scott-free [sic] with its failure to find any Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq. It was the most frequent cudgel that they used to try and get the U.N. Security Council to authorize an invasion of that country. We heard Bush, Rumsfeld, Powell, Perle and the crew rail on and on about how time was running out before Iraq would attack America. We might all be incinerated within weeks by Saddam's nuclear capability -- and wantonly killed in subways by his chemical and biological weaponry.

There's an awful lot of rejoicing about the fall of Baghdad, with pictures of grateful Iraqis kissing U.S. marines, and P.O.W.s coming home -- but no one seems to be asking the WMD question.

...the media in America has little, if any historical memory, beyond the latest news cycle. The Republicans... are masters at creating "unfolding factoids" that become news events with ongoing stages. This means the media covers each stage almost separately. News cycles turn over in a matter of minutes and hours... This process eliminates the likelihood that the Bush Cartel will be held accountable for the fact that a new stage of the "unfolding factoid" completely contradicts a former Bush Cartel statement. The press is too busy reporting about the new crumbs tossed to them as the story moves onto another "stage."

The New "Empire Lite" and the Philippines, a Century Ago

There has been a lot of talk about empire lately, and even with Bush's denials ("America has no empire to extend or utopia to establish," he said in a speech last June) this vision of a Pax Americana -- or at the very least, a kind of "liberal imperialism," as David Rieff put it -- seems more and more apparent. Michael Ignatieff's now-notorious article in the New York Times has him, despite his denials, still essentially advocating taking up the white man's burden:

America's empire is not like empires of times past, built on colonies, conquest and the white man's burden. We are no longer in the era of the United Fruit Company, when American corporations needed the Marines to secure their investments overseas. The 21st century imperium is a new invention in the annals of political science, an empire lite, a global hegemony whose grace notes are free markets, human rights and democracy, enforced by the most awesome military power the world has ever known. It is the imperialism of a people who remember that their country secured its independence by revolt against an empire, and who like to think of themselves as the friend of freedom everywhere. It is an empire without consciousness of itself as such, constantly shocked that its good intentions arouse resentment abroad.

The first two sentences made me choke; the last three made me stop and think. Why did this seem so new to him? Of course there was historical precedent for this "new invention;" as many scholars have long argued, the American military occupation of the Philippines was already the dawning of the American empire, a reopening of the closed American frontier, the first moment of America's assertion of military might in a foreign land as a world power for the very first time. (Add to this the genocide of Native Americans, the colonization of Chicanos in the Southwest, the overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawaii, the takeover of Puerto Rico (and Cuba) during the Spanish-American War -- a war that took a lot less time to wage than the Filipino American War -- and you have a beast that sure looks and talks like an empire. Richard Drinnon similarly argues in Facing West that the racist attitudes embedded in westward expansionism (and toward Native Americans) served as a template for foreign policy from the Philippines to Vietnam.)

In any case, "empire lite," or "liberal imperialism," still smells to me like "benevolent assimilation," which was William McKinley's policy for governing the Filipinos. He, too, passionately denied any mercantilistic aims for the colonizing of the Philippines, pretending instead that the country fell into his lap and that he was commanded by God to "uplift, Christianize and civilize" the poor Filipinos. McKinley and Taft and their cabal of colonizers similarly vowed liberation and upliftment for the hapless Filipinos -- and they too, were "constantly shocked that [their] good intentions arouse resentment abroad."

Some folks have at least taken notice of this historical precedent. (Gen. Tommy Franks has been likened to Gen. MacArthur and his occupation of Japan after the surrender, but as John Dower put in the New York Times Sunday Magazine a couple of weeks back, the comparisons are spurious: for starters, there was worldwide (and regional) support for the occupation. Similarly, the Japanese postwar economy was seen at the time to be a non-starter, unlike Iraq with all its oil resources. Okinawa, Dower said, would be the more historically accurate parallel.) This one, from Emphasis Added, looks at it differently, however. Comparing Iraq and the Philippines, the blogger writes:

[The United States] finds itself in charge of a hot foreign country, teeming with fanatics of various stripes with a long tradition of mutual hostility, for centuries under the sway of a backward and repressive religion.

Well, "hot foreign country" is at least accurate. (And while I have no real quibbles with "backward and repressive religion," Catholic priests from the U.S. set up shop in the Philippines as well.)

Within a generation, American administration instills basic cultural values and a democratic political culture...

And so we see where he's coming from: what exactly are these "basic cultural values" that the Iraqis and the Filipinos lacked?

By any measure, the impact of 45 years of US rule there during the first half of the 20th century must be seen as a net positive, and the Filipinos remain close, generally supportive allies.

This depends, of course, on what this measure would be: Economic? Political? And was this a "net positive" to Americans, or Filipinos, or both?

I can see how the parallels are tempting, but for all the wrong reasons. For all of the American government's patting itself on the back for making the Philippines into a "showplace of democracy" in Asia, the colonial government was fairly inefficiently run, carpetbaggers were grabbing land and mines and fields, and bad deals were made with landlords with no real benefit to the peasantry.

Sure, "liberal imperialism" could certainly be used to characterize this particular form of the colonial yoke (albeit one supposedly padded in velvet) used in the Philippines: the Americans, after all, brought roads, bridges, hospitals, Hershey bars, and, most important -- something the Spaniards weren't particularly interested in -- schools. For free. And there was English, too.

But to embrace the colonization of the Philippines as a "net positive" -- and a template for governing Iraq -- would be to discount the consistently brutal war that took the lives of... 200,000? 400,000? a million? Filipinos from 1899-1903. (These numbers -- which don't even include the death toll from the various skirmishes and massacres in Mindanao, where the war never really ended -- vary greatly depending on the source. Both the Philippine and American soldiers kept fairly good records of casualties, but these do not include "indirect" deaths -- exacerbated illnesses, hunger, and the like. Ken de Bevoise, in Agents of Apocalypse, cites about 1.7 million, which already includes people dying from the various cholera and malaria epidemics and those who died of natural causes.) And it would also have to take in consideration Filipinos who mourned the loss of national sovereignty, as well as the aftereffects of neocolonial dependency and exploitation well after independence was "given" in 1946.

No, the lesson to be learned from comparing Iraq to the Philippines is this: for the U.S., the war on Iraq is simply coming full circle to the imperial depredations it committed just about a century ago.

(Thanks to Javier Morillo-Alicea from Brindle Planet, whose comment a few posts back pointed me to Emphasis Added, and whose excellent posting "Where Is The West?" inspired me to write this. But Javier -- horrors! -- please don't call it the "Philippine insurrection!" Scholars have tried for years to get the Library of Congress to change its categories from the "Philippine Insurrection" to the "Filipino American War" precisely because it shouldn't count as an "insurrection." The insurrectos -- later denigrated as "ladrones," kind of like those wandering Afghan "bandits" and "pockets of resistance" -- were only defending their newly independent, sovereign nation-state from foreign invaders!)

posters

Via Scrubbles.net, an online exhibition of anti-war posters on the Vietnam War, from the U.S., Vietnam and Cuba.

By Jesus Gallardo; Comité Cubano de Solidaridad con Viet Nam, Cambodia y Laos; 1972.

Bush and Nixon

Via also not found in nature, a column from the Hartford Advocate on Bush and Nixon, by Alan Bisbort:

Indeed, the crimes of George W. Bush ON A DAILY BASIS surpass the collective crimes of Richard Nixon's entire presidential career.

So, why aren't people more outraged by the current White House's abuse of power, unprecedented in American history?

And as he continues: "I miss the America that stood up to Richard Nixon. Even Dick Nixon looks good to me now."

Stumped

From All The Pages Are My Days, a funny (and sad) image on George Bush, the late Edwin Starr, and Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?:

Who's paying for this war?

Bob Herbert's op-ed piece in the New York Times today is about Bush's tax cuts -- 1.4 trillion dollars for the wealthy -- and who's really paying for this war.

As he quotes from the House Budget Committee's analysis:

"The cut in Medicaid, if achieved entirely by reducing the number of children covered, would lead to the elimination of health coverage for 13.6 million children."

"The cut in foster care and adoption programs, if achieved by reducing the number of children eligible for foster care assistance payments, would lead to the elimination of benefits for 65,000 abused and neglected children."

"The cut in the food stamp program, if achieved by lowering the maximum benefit, would lead to a reduction in the average benefit from an already lean 91 cents per meal to 84 cents."

When's the last time one of the plutocrats in Congress waded through a meal that cost 84 cents?

This is especially egregious considering that they're considering eliminating school lunches for 2.4 million low-income children.

But then we're told by USA Today that Bush gave up sweets before the war began, so we know he's a man of sacrifice as well.

Arundhati Roy on the war

A characteristically eloquent (and fantastic) essay by Arundhati Roy, courtesy of ZNet:

So here's Iraq - rogue state, grave threat to world peace, paid-up member of the Axis of Evil. Here's Iraq, invaded, bombed, besieged, bullied, its sovereignty shat upon, its children killed by cancers, its people blown up on the streets. And here's all of us watching. CNN-BBC, BBC-CNN late into the night.

Bush's lies

Sydney Schanberg's essay in the Village Voice on Bush's lies (link via thoughts on the eve of the apocalypse):

I'd like to explain why I'm using lie in its several forms, instead of the euphemisms journalists usually employ, such as spin or misspeaking. I think it's probably because this graying journalist has perhaps been around so long and seen so many of the really foul things humans can perpetrate on other humans that the urge to call things by their proper name has overtaken him. I hope it doesn't put anybody off.

Way To Go, Men!

I'm feeling, like, all inspired and stuff and thought I'd single out Sgt. Mark Redmond and Sgt. Eric Schrumpf as soldiers who need our support. You the man!

As the New York Times wrote:

Like many soldiers here... Sergeant Redmond said he did not expect the Iraqis to resist so doggedly.

"I expected a lot more people to surrender," he said. "From all the reports we got, I thought they would all capitulate."

In the three days that followed, they did not, and he fired every weapon on his Humvee, including a 50-caliber machine gun, his M-4 rifle and a grenade launcher ? everything except the shoulder-fired antitank missile. Many of the Iraqis, he said, attacked headlong into the cutting fire of tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles.

"I wouldn't call it bravery," he said. "I'd call it stupidity. We value a soldier's life so much more than they do. I mean, an AK-47 isn't going to do nothing against a Bradley. I'd love to know what Saddam is telling his people."

Maybe Saddam is telling his people to defend their homeland from invasion... but wait! We have to support the troops!

Dude, I am totally not voting you off the island!

And here's Sgt. Schrumpf -- totally my kind of guy!

"We had a great day," Sergeant Schrumpf said. "We killed a lot of people."

Awright! Man, what else kind of support do you need?

And here's Sgt. Schrumpf again:

...in the heat of a firefight... when the calculus often warps, a shot not taken in one set of circumstances may suddenly present itself as a life-or-death necessity.

"We dropped a few civilians," Sergeant Schrumpf said, "but what do you do?"

To illustrate, the sergeant offered a pair of examples from earlier in the week.

"There was one Iraqi soldier, and 25 women and children," he said, "I didn't take the shot."

But more than once, Sergeant Schrumpf said, he faced a different choice: one Iraqi soldier standing among two or three civilians. He recalled one such incident, in which he and other men in his unit opened fire. He recalled watching one of the women standing near the Iraqi soldier go down.

"I'm sorry," the sergeant said. "But the chick was in the way."

Blam! Move over, woman!

Sgt. Schrumpf, I am so totally buying you a cold beer when you get back!

Those Bastards at Fox News.

Courtesy of Metafilter, comes a link to the North Jersey News, relating how the Fox News headquarters on Sixth Avenue in Manhattan had its news ticker -- not running its own biased war updates this time -- actually taunting anti-war protesters:

"War protester auditions here today ... thanks for coming!" read one message. "Who won your right to show up here today?" another questioned. "Protesters or soldiers?"

Said a third: "How do you keep a war protester in suspense? Ignore them."

Still another read: "Attention protesters: the Michael Moore Fan Club meets Thursday at a phone booth at Sixth Avenue and 50th Street."

And people have the gall to complain about "the liberal media."

Fill 'er up!

The following story got buried deep -- way deep -- in the business section of the New York Times yesterday. I was flipping through the paper while blowing on Izzy's food and trying to cool it down when I stumbled upon this article.

The 101st Airborne Division, it seems, has called its army depots in central Iraq Forward Operating Base Shell and Forward Operating Base Exxon -- again, this is not an Onion story.

The real kicker was the response of an Exxon Mobil spokesperson, who said:

"My first reaction when I saw it was this was not a political statement in any way by the men and women of 101st," Mr. Cirigliano said. "I think the 101st was being pretty creative and naming things after what reminds them of home. And I think that's pretty neat."

Frustrations, Part II.

Over the weekend my good friend Romeo (who I hadn't spoken to in ages) was on the phone with me. He casually mentioned that he was supporting the war, and I just flew off the handle, ranting about Iraqi blood fueling his Honda CRV. Romeo calmly told me that he didn't want to argue about this now, and that, changing the subject, he wanted to see more pictures on my blog.

I felt a little bad. But then I responded with this, obviously to goad him further.

So the other day, he wrote me this letter (some things snipped as per his request):

I meant pictures of you and your family, hindi ng guerra. Cool ka lang. I hear na sobra kang involved sa mga rally at napagbubuhusan mo ng oras ito. Kudos sa iyo and that you are passionate about what you stand for. Ako may stance, pero hindi masyadong passionate, so do not expect a big debate from me.

I wouldn't let this war be the reason na mag-away tayo. But for some reason your zealous streak tells me na ang dali dali mong gawin ito. Scary.

Kung merong taong may alam how I am just dragging my feet day to day to get some semblance of happiness and try to survive and not end up in the streets, then maybe you'd think twice bago ilagay sa konsyensya ko at ng kotse ko ang guerra. And if I could get technical about it, I wouldn't be surprised if mas matipid ang kotse ko sa gas kaysa sa Volvo mo. Bark on the huge Fords, Chevy's and Jeeps. It's a Honda, Benito!

...

I was with Happy and Clarissa over the week-end and ang saya. Napabalik tuloy ako ng extra day and stayed with them. Had a warm cooked meal, dessert, lots of coffee and a lot of laughs.

Ganiyan lang ang kaligayahan ko -- being around good friends like you guys. Walang stability ang buhay ko para gawing sentro ng buhay ko ngayon ang guerra.

...

Pasensiya ka na if there is some bite to this note pero nagulat lang ako talaga sa sermon mo sa akin sa phone plus that Bush picture sa blog mo. I am sure kung mas mahinahon mong ibigay sa akin ang iyong panig eh you will be able to sway me, as usual. Iba lang talaga ang dating mo.

I hate Bush's guts, FYI.

Sige. Ingat.

Later on he added that he thought that something or someone had "possessed" me, and that he was "scared" by the way my mind was going.

Well, maybe I'm the one who's scared. I'm scared of the terrorist reprisals that the CIA has already warned about, that the Bush administration is practically begging for. I'm scared that I won't be able to protect my family when the next terrorist attack comes about. I'm scared that my rights as an immigrant of the Philippines -- yes, one of those al-Qaeda-associated countries -- will be curtailed.

And maybe I'm furious and frustrated that people -- not Romeo personally -- can support killing anyone, or allowing American soldiers to be killed, to secure access to oil. I'm angry that people seem to think that that's fine. I'm mad that people still can't seem to see through the lies and disinformation that Bush and the media have been feeding the American public, and that people are still standing behind their president just because he's the president. I'm pissed that all you see on TV are retired generals and snazzy computer maps and light shows over Baghdad, and not the human costs of war. I'm fuming that the U.S. government can easily flout international law and think that they can get away with it, much as they've been getting away with it for the last two centuries or so. I'm enraged that people don't see that the U.S. economy is going to hell and that they're not questioning why they may be about to lose their jobs or have their mortgages foreclosed while a few billion dollars are spent every month on this unjust war.

Yes, I have to worry about my job and my work and my family too, as do everyone else. And yes, they are my priorities too. But so is fighting against this war, and all I've really done so far is post on my blog, speak at anti-war rallies (once), and rant and rave in front of my students.

But Romeo was also right.

I was totally out of line to jump on him like that; it was certainly not the right way to try to convince him of anything, for starters. I didn't even ask him why he supported the war -- maybe I don't really want to know -- and I just forged on and attacked him personally. No, I did not know how he was doing, or what he had to do in order to simply survive and not get fired; I wasn't interested, and I was wrong. And, as he put it, he hated Bush's guts after all.

No, I didn't attack him for not making the war the center of his life, but for supporting it. But jumping down his throat was not right, and I apologize for that.

Hopefully later on we can still talk civilly about this.

Frustration, Part 1.

A few days ago we had a dialogue about the war in one of my classes. One of my students (who works in the Financial District) was complaining about the anti-warprotesters who laid down in the road and prevented people from going to work. She said (and I'm totally paraphrasing here) something to the effect that she was against the war as well, but she had to go to work, she was paid by the hour, and that she had to walk several blocks because the buses were prevented from entering the entire area.

The smart-aleck answer would have been, "Well, your inconvenience is nothing compared to the residents of Baghdad who have to dodge bombs falling on their heads," but my student was absolutely right. She was only trying to go to work so she could keep earning money to go to school -- just like those poor schmucks who join the army because they couldn't find a job, or because they couldn't afford a college education.

(I don't really want to write about the whole "Support The Troops" movement -- of course I support the troops (they should be brought home now!), but I wouldn't wear a yellow ribbon because the movement has been completely hijacked (if not started in the first place) by real pro-war hawks. Instead, I'll post a link to a debate on the Bitter Shack of Resentment blog.)

(There's another angle to this as well: namely, the difficulty in sympathizing with the soldiers interviewed on CNN and Time who, on the eve of war, would be quoted as saying "I'm itching to play," as if war were some kind of football game. Madeline would probably say that the soldiers simply didn't know any better, but that sounds a bit presumptuous. One of my other students, during the dialogue, was very adamant that all the soldiers had a choice. Where are the conscientious objectors, indeed?)

Then a few days ago someone on the Filipino Studies e-mail list wrote, essentially saying that the anti-war movement had failed -- that it was beating a dead horse, and that it was time to move on to other things, other battles. I disagree -- as Madeline said as well, that doesn't mean people should shut up about it -- since troops could be pulled out, and missiles could be prevented from launching.

But the poster was probably partly right as well. Bush has shown no sign of bothering to listen to any anti-war protestors -- indeed, he has gone well out of his way to suppress dissent, acting as if the war was a fait accompli -- so why should he listen now? Perhaps other battles could be fought now, other struggles that could only begin if the war comes to a quick end: ensuring that sufficient money is allocated for rebuilding Iraq, fighting for UN involvement in the Franks regime that will be installed in Baghdad, demanding that the Bush regime be held accountable to international law, or, much closer to home, dealing with the California budget crisis and ensuring that school teachers (or Sonoma State University lecturers) not be fired.

War Porn.

One of the things I'm really disgusted about is the sanitized, airbrushed pap that passes for war coverage -- actually, even before the war -- that our "embedded journalists" are presenting. A few weeks ago, Time (or was it Newsweek?) had an actual full-color centerfold of the map of Iraq and loving photographs of all the various tanks, missiles and stealth fighters the U.S. was planning to unleash. What characterized most of the coverage leading up to the war was the vaunting of military technology and the astonishing absence of any discussion of casualties, whether civilian or military, whether Iraqi or American. (Even Bush kept skirting the issue during his last scripted conference.)

And so what America gets from CNN and MSNBC is this heavily-censored, aestheticized Hollywood movie -- one which other networks around the world (presumably because they are not cowed by the Pentagon) have not been showing. (The telling fact -- carried, at least, by CBS News and the New York Times -- that the Filipino mother of Joseph Hudson, one of the prisoners of war, found out about her son via The Filipino Channel says it all.)

To the folks in the media and in the Pentagon: war kills people. Those precision bombs still do not discriminate. You are doing the American public a disservice by showing them something that's even tamer than The Bachelor.

But I'll pull my punches. Instead of those photos of mutilated feet and bodies buried in rubble, I give you something generic:

(From The Memory Hole.)

This is what your bombs do, Mr. Bush.

And to all of you who still support this unjust, imperial war: let this be on your conscience.

Pro bono professional help.

There's a pretty funny (and sad) "open letter" in BuzzFlash by a clinical psychologist, offering her services to King George II:

Problems with the truth are also in evidence, as in such statements as "I am a man of peace", "I am a uniter (sic) not a divider" and "I’m hopeful that we can avoid a war." None of these statements enjoy the support of your behavior. While a certain amount of lying is expected from politicians, yours seems to be well in excess of the norm.

Yesterday I spoke about religion in class, and how often presidents invoke God in their speeches, prompting one student to say, "If he's a religious man then why he is dropping bombs on people?" So I blurted, in mock confusion, "But... but... he's a man of peace. He said so. He said, 'I am a man of peace. I pray for peace.' That's what he said." That got some laughs.

Protest Records

Free mp3s from Protest Records, as curated by Thurston Moore and Chris Habib, which "exists for musicians, poets and artists to express LOVE + LIBERTY in the face of greed, sexism, racism, hate-crime and war."

The Oscars.

Where Nicole Kidman rambled on, Adrien Brody showed he was a total lech (Halle, you should have slapped him!), Dustin Hoffman quavered, Susan Sarandon pulled her punches, Julianne Moore shone, Gael Garcia Bernal spoke very eloquently against the war, and Michael Moore, in the highlight of the ceremony, said the following in his acceptance speech (as the orchestra tried to drown him out):

We live in a time where we have fictitious election results that elect a fictitious president. We live in a time where we have a man who's sending us to war for fictitious reasons, whether it's the fiction of duct tape or the fiction of orange alerts.

We are against this war, Mr. Bush. Shame on you, Mr. Bush. Shame on you.

Coalition of the Halfhearted.

Bill Keller in The New York Times yesterday, on the countries that comprise Colin Powell's "coalition of the willing:"

And much as I respect Estonia and El Salvador, there is something ridiculous about the list of our "partners" ? a coalition of the anonymous, the dependent, the halfhearted and the uninvolved, whose lukewarm support supposedly confers some moral authority. This is like ? oh, I don't know, wresting a dubious election victory in Florida and claiming a mandate. It lacks a certain verisimilitude.

Janeane.

And God bless Janeane Garofalo too.

Pictures.

My good friend Romeo, who (I just discovered yesterday) apparently supports the war on Iraq, told me he wanted to see more pictures on my blog.

Eto, Romeo -- you like?

Image stolen from International Terrorist.com. Buy the T-shirt! (Made famous because a high school student in Michigan refused to take it off.)

The Command Post

Via The Command Post, a totally surreal article from Reuters, complete with soccer and SUVs:

On the main road running across the plain, burned-out Iraqi vehicles were still smoldering on Sunday afternoon, and charred ribs were the only recognizable part of three melted bodies in a destroyed car lying in the roadside dust.

"It wasn't even a fair fight. I don't know why they don't just surrender," said Colonel Mark Hildenbrand, commander of the 937th Engineer Group.

"When you're playing soccer at home, 3-2 is a fair score, but here it's more like 119-0," he said, adding that the Iraqi sport utility vehicles (SUVs) stood no chance against tanks.

"You can't put an SUV with a machine gun up against an M1 tank -- it's heinous for the SUV," Hildenbrand said.

Bush's press conference.

Stephen Zunes' annotated critique of Bush's speech on the impending war on Iraq. (I was busy giving the TV the finger at that point.)

From Michael Albert

From Michael Albert's essay, "Support Our Troops," on ZNet:

Bush tells us to bomb Iraq on grounds Iraq may have bombs. He tells us to bomb Iraq on grounds Iraq curtails freedoms. He tells us to bomb Iraq on grounds Iraq may be abetting terrorism.

What then should we do about a country that has by far the most bombs in the world and that uses them most widely -- and that brags about it shamelessly?

What should we do about a country that is currently curtailing freedoms abroad and moving to do so at home with a dangerously escalating vigor -- and that brags about it shamelessly?

And what should we do about a country that is producing terrorism most aggressively -- both terrorism directed at others and also terrorism which will be unleashed against us in reply -- and that brags about it shamelessly?

And so the war begins.

The war began just after we drove back up to our lodgings in Tahoe Vista from Emerald Bay. Izzy was a little clingy, so Madeline had to sit with her in the back of the car most of the time. I was trying to take pictures of the two (with Emerald Bay as the backdrop), but Shelby kept pulling with her leash and I am now afraid that most of the photos I took were all afflicted with camera shake (or rather, dog shake).

I totally enjoyed spring break, but a little part of me wishes I were in San Francisco and actually protesting the war. Alas, I am pessimistic and see no reason why Bush would listen to a smaller group of protesters blocking the Financial District, much more the 10 million or so who protested around the world last month.

Today I received a letter from a former student relating how she was hit in the stomach with a club by a police officer in downtown SF. The country is beginning to look more and more like a police state.

Part of my wishing I were in SF is also because the whole thing fuels my anger: earlier this week, in the dingy lounge of the Tahoe Biltmore (we had stopped for some hot chocolate) I overheard this gray-haired woman tell her husband, "48-hour ultimatum! We should just go and bomb the hell out of those people!" Lovely. Maybe someday "those people" can come over and bomb your Irish ass. (Note to any readers of Irish descent: the woman happened to be all dressed in green with about half a dozen buttons with leprechauns and four-leaf clovers, as it was St. Patrick's Day. And yes, she happened to look absolutely silly.)

It was odd, in any case, watching TV in the lodge (staring at the same Baghdad freeway) with the beauty of Lake Tahoe as a natural backdrop in the big picture window.

Another Century of War? Another Century of War.

Just finished reading Gabriel Kolko's Another Century of War? -- you can read an excerpt here -- and it is an excellent, sobering, and ultimately, depressing analysis of the sheer wrongheadedness of American foreign policy in the Middle East.

Or shall I say, pretty much everywhere -- in Kolko's analysis (a sequel, really, to his previous chronicle of modern warfare), he argues that the United States has just not had a coherent foreign policy ever since the end of the Cold War, and that, precisely because of this unfocused belligerence and untrammeled military might, the world is more unstable and dangerous than ever. What's more, Kolko asserts -- and he pulls no punches here -- that much of the paranoid flailing around, looking for some enemy to be afraid of is simply to find excuses for bigger defense spending. (Not that this is new; American foreign policy has consistently favored throwing lots of money at the military as a short-term solution -- indeed, it has gone on for so long that it could be thought of as the long-term "solution.") Kolko traces the history behind the U.S. government's former support of bin Laden and Hussein, and how their current actions can be traced to incompetent and irresponsible foreign policy. A must read.

The most depressing thing about the book is the fact that it was actually written before all the saber-rattling about Iraq, not to mention the impending war itself. Kolko's book simply confirms the sad fact that the United States is making the same mistakes, but to worse ends.

Whose freedom?

This column by San Francisco columnist Mark Morford must be one of the best essays I've read recently.

As he writes, "Let us now speak blasphemy:"

The military does not protect my freedom. Our soldiers are not out there right now safeguarding me, or you, or us, from some sort of total, '50s-era, Red Scare-esque dictatorial overthrow of our nation; nor is the military guaranteeing I have the right to write this column any more than it is protecting your right to read it, or to protest the war and speak freely and smoke imported French cigarettes and watch porn and drive really fast. Not anymore, they're not. Not this time.

Indeed, freedom in America -- whether it's civil liberties or the simple freedoms of assembly, speech and religion -- is consistently being eroded from the inside; the biggest threat to American freedom may be George W. Bush himself.

And to end with something slightly more lighthearted, I'll end with the complete lyrics to newly-inducted Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Elvis Costello's song "(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding," from the album Armed Forces (here's hoping he sings it tomorrow night when he guest-hosts Late Night with David Letterman):

As I walk through
This wicked world
Searchin' for light in the darkness of insanity.

I ask myself
Is all hope lost?
Is there only pain and hatred, and misery?

And each time I feel like this inside,
There's one thing I wanna know:
What's so funny 'bout peace love & understanding? Ohhhh
What's so funny 'bout peace love & understanding?

And as I walked on
Through troubled times
My spirit gets so downhearted sometimes
So where are the strong
And who are the trusted?
And where is the harmony?
Sweet harmony.

'Cause each time I feel it slippin' away, just makes me wanna cry.
What's so funny 'bout peace love & understanding? Ohhhh
What's so funny 'bout peace love & understanding?

So where are the strong?
And who are the trusted?
And where is the harmony?
Sweet harmony.

'Cause each time I feel it slippin' away, just makes me wanna cry.
What's so funny 'bout peace love & understanding? Ohhhh
What's so funny 'bout peace love & understanding? Ohhhh
What's so funny 'bout peace love & understanding?

Spiegelman Resigns.

Cartoonist Art Spiegelman resigns from The New Yorker, protesting "the widespread conformism of the mass media in the Bush era."

get your war on

Ah, the latest page of Get Your War On has been posted (thanks to cheesedip.com for the link).

Blood for oil.

Courtesy of American Samizdat comes this story from the Independent:

Pentagon plans which have appeared in the Western media are now the subject of anxious discussion among Iraqis ? 3,000 Tomahawk missiles in 48 hours for Baghdad alone; Tikrit, Saddam Hussein's birthplace and power base, to be razed; six kilos of ordnance for every Iraqi ... There will be very little by way of return fire.

To which Michael LaMartina asks:

How could Bush's version of God not weep at such cruelty? And what is terrorism if not this?

Meanwhile, courtesy of The Bitter Shack of Resentment comes the story that a subsidiary of Halliburton -- yes, Dick Cheney's Halliburton -- has won the contract to firefighting operations in Iraqi oilfields after... well, after Baghdad and Tikrit are burned down to the ground.

Wake up, people! It's about the oil. And all this flip-flopping in terms of agendas -- is it disarmament? (Because it sure doesn't look like it, as the government would rather to go to war than let the U.N. inspectors do their job.) Is it regime change? (No, because it's not about nation-building, remember?)

It's about the oil. Does the Bush government think the American people are that stupid? Why, it's so brazenly arrogant it's almost funny.

Bullies, Part II.

So why is no one reporting on Bush's recent interview last week with the Copley News Service:

Question: Let me ask you about the consequences for friendly or allied countries that don't vote our way in the United Nations, don't support us. Is it true as The New York Times said today, that you're "keeping score?" And, more specifically, what are the stakes for U.S. relations with Mexico, where there's tremendous concern that if they don't vote in the Security Council for the U.S. position that they'll be viewed not just by you but by the American business community as unreliable partners?

Bush: Well, George, I would hope Mexico would support us when the resolution comes up.... I, of course, will talk to him again, and, the – you know, we'll be disappointed if people don't support us. But, nevertheless, I don't expect for there to be significant retribution from the government.

Now, there is an interesting phenomena taking place here in America about the French. And there is a backlash against the French – not stirred up by anybody except by the people.

Later on Bush adds an aside about a "certain sense of discipline" when it came to dealing with Mexico afterwards.

Editorials against war.

Both The Independent and, believe it or not, The New York Times have editorials opposing the war.

As The Independent writes in their editorial, "Not in Our Name, Mr. Blair" (and you folks should check it out, even if it goes over myths about Iraq that International A.N.S.W.E.R. has already gone over):

You do not have the evidence. You do not have UN approval. You do not have your country's support. You do not have your party's support. You do not have the legal right. You do not have the moral right.

That press conference, again.

Questions that should have been asked at the recent Bush press conference (link found at Thoughts on the Eve of the Apocalypse).

Robert Scheer

Do read Robert Scheer's important essay published in WorkingForChange.com. As he writes:

The entire world is astonished that our president is lying, not about a personal indiscretion, but about the most sacred duty of the leader of the most powerful nation in human history: the duty not to recklessly endanger the lives of his own or the world's people. Yet lie he has.

The highlight of my week

The highlight of my week so far was that I gave a talk at an anti-war rally at SF State sponsored by Students Against War (and International A.N.S.W.E.R., and Not In Our Name, etc.) as part of the March 5 moratorium against the war on Iraq.

I was really kind of shy (and very nervous), having never spoken at a rally like this before (with 500 people, said the San Francisco Chronicle), but at least I hope I was able to show some support to the students (as a faculty member), and to be able to talk a little bit about the history of empire (I spoke about the Filipino American War, U.S. military interventions, and militarization in the Philippines). (And yes, it felt good to talk about "why this country has so much blood on its hands" and be cheered for it.)

He just isn't listening.

As further proof -- at least to me, but to many others as well -- that Bush simply isn't listening, here are his answers to a reporter's questions in last night's news conference about going to war with Iraq (even without permission from the U.N.):

Q. ...as you prepare the American people for the possibility of military conflict, could you share with us any of the scenarios your advisers have shared with you about worst case scenarios in terms of the potential cost of American lives, the potential cost to the American economy, and the potential risks of retaliatory terrorist strikes here at home?

A. My job is to protect America. And that's exactly what I'm going to do. People can ascribe all kinds of intentions. I swore to protect and defend the Constitution. That's what I swore to do. I put my hand on the Bible and took that oath. And that's exactly what I am going to do.

I believe Saddam Hussein is a threat to the American people. I believe he's a threat to the neighborhood in which he lives. And I've got good evidence to believe that. He has weapons of mass destruction and he has used weapons of mass destruction, in his neighborhood and on his own people. He's invaded countries in his neighborhood. He tortures his own people. He's a murderer. He has trained and financed Al Qaeda-type organizations before, Al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations.

I take the threat seriously. And I'll deal with the threat. I hope it can be done peacefully.

Q. The potential price in terms of costs to the economy, terrorism?

A. The price of doing nothing exceeds the price of taking action if we have to. We will do everything we can to minimize the loss of life. The price of the attacks on America, the cost of the attacks on American on September the 11th were enormous. They were significant. And I am not willing to take that chance again.

See? He's just not listening. Later on he will repeat the same "Saddam is a threat to his neighborhood" as a response to a different question.

The Congressional estimates for the cost of the war on Iraq are now running at about $9 billion a month; as early as January, the White House was downplaying reports that it would cost $50-60 billion (even though Democrats were already suggesting last year that it could cost well over $200 billion). But as Bush put it:

"This economy cannot afford to stand an attack," Bush said. "And I'm going to protect the American people. The economy's strong. It's resilient. Obviously, so long as somebody's looking for work, we've got to continue to make it strong and resilient."

Idiot. This economy cannot afford a war on Iraq.

And so I'll end with his standard, "faith-based" response:

My faith sustains me. Because I pray daily. I pray for guidance and wisdom and strength. If we were to commit our troops, if we were to commit our troops, I would pray for their safety. And I would pray for the safety of innocent Iraqi lives as well.

One thing that's really great about our country is there are thousands of people who pray for me -- who I'll never see, be able to thank. But it's a humbling experience to think that people I will never have met have lifted me and my family up in prayer. And for that I'm grateful. That's, it's been, it's been a comforting feeling to know that is true.

More Questions.

It's the friday five again!

1. What was the last song you heard?

Alasdair Roberts's "Willie-O," from the Hand/Eye compilation.

2. What were the last two movies you saw?

Zhang Yimou's Hero and -- man, it's been so long since I saw anything -- I can't remember... maybe Andrew Lau's Sausalito?

3. What were the last three things you purchased?

Six containers of Brown Cow yogurt for Izzy, four waxy potatoes, and Lucerne sweet cream butter.

4. What four things do you need to do this weekend?

Prepare a quiz (can't tell which class), write comments on a couple of critical essays, review a thesis proposal, and read an article.

5. Who are the last five people you talked to?

Madeline, my department chair Marlon, my friend and colleague Nerissa, some guy looking for a Post-It note to write on, and some other guy looking for a free computer lab for students.

Bullies.

Most of you have probably already heard about the leaked memo from the U.S. National Security Agency regarding surveillance of key U.N. Security Council members. But such dirty tricks pale in comparison to the general arm-twisting and carrot-dangling that's going on.

It's at least hopeful that Turkey is holding out on having its bases used by the U.S. from which to deploy troops, and rejecting the "$16 billion in grants and loans" -- at least call it rent, you scheming bastards.

Though as the author of the piece linked to above unhelpfully writes:

Although U.S. officials have been tight-lipped about these problems, it appears that the Kurds have been playing the same extortion game as the Turks - - withholding full access to key bases in an attempt to squeeze the Americans for large amounts of cash and weapons.

Do contrast this with the statistic that opinion polls say that more than 90 percent of Turkey's population oppose any involvement in a war against Iraq, and perhaps we'd get a better sense of what's going on.

The U.S. will certainly make France, Russia and Germany (and just now, China, too -- yes!) pay for this big-time by denying them easy access to oil once Bush's pipelines are in place. But such arm-twisting isn't new: no doubt the folks on the UN Security Council remember how Yemen (along with Cuba) rejected the 1990 Iraq resolution that authorized the use of force. And as writers from the Center for Constitutional Rights recalled -- see Ratner, Green and Olshansky's excellent Against War with Iraq: An Anti-War Primer for more:

When Yemen voted against it, the U.S. envoy turned to the Yemeni ambassador and said that it was "the most expensive 'no' vote you would ever cast."

Two days later, all 70 million dollars in U.S. aid to Yemen were cut, and 900,000 Yemeni workers were expelled from Saudi Arabia.

"One by one we shall creep from cover..."

The other night I gave a lecture at UC Davis for BRIDGE, the Filipino Outreach and Retention Program. The topic was the Filipino American War, and current militarization in the southern Philippines (as part of Bush's "war on terrorism" -- to deflect criticism, I said, that the war on Iraq was making him neglect the war on Al-Qaida).

In any case, I read the following excerpt below by way of an ending. It's from a letter by William James -- known to most people as a psychologist and the writer of The Varieties of Religious Experience -- but also an ardent anti-imperialist as well. (The excerpt is long, but read at least the final paragraph.)

The letter was written to the Boston Evening Transcript in March 1899, just a little over a century ago; I take the excerpt from Boone Schirmer and Stephen Shalom 's excellent The Philippines Reader: A History of Colonialism, Neocolonialism, Dictatorship, and Resistance (Boston: South End Press, 1987):

We are now openly engaged in crushing out the sacredest thing in this great human world -- the attempt of a people long enslaved to attain to the possession of itself, to organize its laws and government, to be free to follow its internal destinies according to its own ideals. War... aims at destruction, and at nothing else. And splendidly are we carrying out war's ideal. We are destroying the lives of these islanders by the thousand... But these destructions are the smallest part of our sins. We are destroying down to the root every germ of a healthy national life in these unfortunate people, and we are surely helping to destroy for one generation at least their faith in God and man. No life shall you have, we say, except as a gift from our philanthropy after your unconditional submission to our will....

It is horrible, simply horrible. Surely there cannot be many born and bred Americans who, when they look at the bare fact of what we are doing, and do not blush with burning shame at the unspeakable meanness and ignominy...?

Why, then, do we go on? First, the war fever; and then the pride which always refuses to back down when under fire. But these are passions that interfere with the reasonable settlement of any affair; and in this affair we have to deal with a factor altogether peculiar with our belief, namely, in a national destiny which must be "big" at any cost, and which for some inscrutable reason it has become infamous for us to disbelieve or refuse. We are to be missionaries of civilization, and to bear the white man's burden, painful as it often is. We must sow our ideals, plant our order, impose our God. The individual lives are nothing. Our duty and our destiny call, and civilization must go on.

Could there be a more damning indictment of that whole blasted idol termed "modern civilization" than this amounts to?...

...The issue is perfectly plain at last. We are cold-bloodedly, wantonly and abominably destroying the soul of a people who never did us an atom of harm in their lives. It is bald, brutal piracy, impossible to dish up any longer in the cold potgrease of President McKinley's cant... -- surely as shamefully evasive a speech, considering the right of the public to know definite facts, as can often have fallen even from a professional politician's lips. The worst of our imperialists is that they do not themselves know where sincerity ends and insincerity begins....

The impotence of the private individual, with imperialism under full headway as it is, is deplorable indeed. But every American has a voice or a pen, and may use it. So, impelled by my own sense of duty, I write these present words. One by one we shall creep from cover, and the opposition will organize itself.

No School, No Work, No Business as Usual.

This is what I'll be doing on March 5 -- no anthropology class!

As the Not In Our Name folks write:

On March 5...

* You could call in sick (sick of war, sick of militarism?)
* You could close your business.
* Professors could cancel classes.
* Students could plan citywide high school walkouts and other campus actions, joining with student strikes being organized across the country.
* City councils and county boards that have passed resolutions against the war could mark the day with town hall meetings, teach-ins or other ways.
* Unions that have passed anti-war resolutions could call job actions.
* You could stand for peace at the nearest post office or government building.
* You could begin a campaign of bold letters to legislators, the president and his secretaries.
* You could establish "no war zones" with signs and banners at strategic intersections (as they are doing in Atlanta).
* You could hang banners from major overpasses (as they are doing in Chicago).
* You could bring your protest to a military facility, with acts of civil disobedience "supporting" the soldiers by attempting to stop the U.S. military machine from sending them off to war.
* Houses of worship could call for special services that day; could call their congregations to protest at military recruiting offices or elsewhere; could open their doors to conscientious objectors.
* You could engage in nonviolent direct action at appropriate locations.
* You could begin a dialogue on how to bring about a peaceful and just world.
* Afternoon or evening convergences could bring together everyone who’s acted earlier in the day to voice opposition in the streets and at community gatherings.

A poet against the war.

A few months back my friend and colleague Nerissa Balce asked me to introduce a trio of Filipino writers for a literary reading at the San Francisco Public Library.

Joi Barrios -- currently a visiting professor at UC Irvine, and Palanca Award-winning playwright and poet -- was one of those writers, and she read the poem which I reproduce in full below:

YANKEE DOODLE/LAYAS

Yankee doodle came to town
Riding on a pony
Killed and maimed and tortured us
And called it a … democracy.

Yankee doodle keep it up,
Yankee doodle dandy,
Burn the village and the town,
And with your gun be handy.

Balangiga, 1901. / Balangiga, 1901.
Ang hudyat ng batingaw / The bells signal
Ay tawag ng pag-aklas. / A call to arms
Hubdin ang balatkayo, / Remove your disguises,
Bayani at bandido ay iisa, / Bandit and hero are one
Lusubin ang kaaway, / Attack the enemy,
At itarak sa kanyang dibdib / And plunge into his heart
ang patalim, ang sibat! / The dagger, the spear,
Ang poot at himagsik! / Anger and revolt
Hayaang umalingangaw ang kampana, / Let the bells ring
Himig na nagbabanta’t nang-uusig / Music that threatens and condemns
Layas, layas, sa aming bayan ay lumayas / Leave, leave our land!

Yankee doodle comes again
Riding on a fighter
Brings his war to my country
And calls it a … democracy.

Taong 2002. / Year 2002.
Dito, sa Estados Unidos ng Amerika, / Here, in the United States of America
Nananahan ang batingaw, / The bells reside.
Sagisag ng kanilang hapis / A symbol of their grief
at ng ating miminsang tagumpay. / and our rare victory.
Dito, sa Estados Unidos ng Amerika, / Here, in the United States of America
Nananahan tayong lahat na nandayuhan, / all of us migrants live.
Tinig ba’y magsabatingaw? / Shall our voices ring as bells?
Dinala nila sa ating bayan ang digmaan! / They have brought the war into our land.
Hintayan pa ba ang hudyat? / Shall we yet wait for the signal
Ilang kababayan ang malalagas sa digmaan? / How many shall perish in the war?
Sa kampana lahat ay kumalampag, / Ring the bells!
Layas, layas, sa aking bayan ay lumayas!” / Leave, leave, leave our land.

Jonathan Schell

I'd like to contrast Jonathan Schell's words -- at the very least, the stirring conclusion to his essay:

We--that is, we, the peoples of the earth--have examined the case for war against Iraq and rejected it. We have stepped forward onto the streets of our cities and looked at ourselves, and have liked what we saw. We know our will. Now we must act. We can stop the war.

And what was Bush's typically arrogant (and ignorant) response regarding those ten million people the world over?

Size of protest — it's like deciding, well, I'm going to decide policy based upon a focus group.

Meanwhile, on another front...

The World's Worst Leader

Here's playwright and actor Harold Pinter -- you folks saw those Joseph Losey films, didn't you? -- on "the nightmare of American hysteria, ignorance, arrogance, stupidity and belligerence."

As he writes:

"If you are not with us you are against us," President Bush has said. He has also said, "We will not allow the world's worst weapons to remain in the hands of the world's worst leaders." Quite right. Look in the mirror, chum. That's you.