Tag Archives: War

The Machinery of Habit

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A piece I wrote four years ago, The Burgh: Downsizing,” examines the nature of change and habit in relation to urban economies transformed by globalization and war.

“The boys come in and the beer flows. Ricardo tells us about training. Four-mile runs, 200 push-ups every morning, wall-climbing. “They break you, man,” he shakes his head.  “They make you tough.

“I said I hoped so, considering where he was going. But Melanie, who studies the theology of the medieval anchoress Juliana of Norwich and sells papers on a corner in Oakland for the Socialist Worker, is more worried about his getting into what she calls killing mode. I ask her if a mode is the same as a habit. It takes time after all to form a habit. A mode on the other hand sounds like a gearshift on an Audi. And if you can shift into a gear, you can shift out. Maybe it’s really a question of what sort of habits. Learning, retraining, moving need effort. They don’t come easily. But war is a machinery that moves on its own and blood-lust, like a winter flu, might be easy to pick up and impossible to get rid of.

War and demolition come too easily to human nature. And take away too much. Anything worth pursuing, on the other hand, needs to be stalked through the years with the patience and vigilance of a hunter, cultivated through seasons of scarcity and remembered in times of forgetting. In our sophistication we laugh at those who buy dear and hold dearer. Who stay when they should have left. Bag holders. Fools. Who step into the river and expect the waters to stay the same. The immobilized in our mobile society. What is the value of an abandoned church, an obsolete mill, an aging worker? Flux, we shrug, is the only certainty. Change is the first law of nature.

“People talk about joining but they don’t,” says Ricardo,  “I’m the only one who did.” He sounds proud.
“I ask him if he thinks good health insurance and tuition money are worth risking his life for.  He laughs.
“Look — I ain’t gonna die. Most of the guys who teach me, they’ve been there. They got through. More chances I’d get shot in a ghetto. So some guy’s lost an arm…or a leg. So what? All this new technology now, reconstruction…they can make you another leg; it’s really no big deal.”

At 26, you can think of that as a good trade. An amputation of the body or the mind is all it takes to keep up with change. Like those translucent lizards which shed their tails seasonally as they wait immobile and vigilant for flies on dusty window sills, we might grow new limbs just as good. New memories to replace old ones. Here in the hills, at the confluence of three rivers, we have learned not to resist the laws of nature.

“But perhaps we don’t live by nature alone. Perhaps, as Juliana of Norwich said, we also need mercy and grace.”

“The need to change and the machinery of habit that makes it difficult – a theme I find myself returning to , over and over, especially when I’m confronted with the depressing spectacle of people going back to the same propaganda, the same bogus assertions that caused this global catastrophe in the first place.

Going back, like dogs to vomit.

I’m sorry if that sounds ugly, but what’s happening now in DC is ugly….and very very dangerous.

Bush Redux: The Obama Doctrine

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Glenn Greenwald on the Obama Doctrine:

“Indeed, Obama insisted upon what he called the “right” to wage wars “unilaterally”; articulated a wide array of circumstances in which war is supposedly “just” far beyond being attacked or facing imminent attack by another country; explicitly rejected the non-violence espoused by King and Gandhi as too narrow and insufficiently pragmatic for a Commander-in-Chief like Obama to embrace; endowed us with the mission to use war as a means of combating “evil”; and hailed the U.S. for underwriting global security for the last six decades (without mentioning how our heroic efforts affected, say, the people of Vietnam, or Iraq, or Central America, or Gaza, and so many other places where “security” is not exactly what our wars “underwrote”).  So it’s not difficult to see why Rovian conservatives are embracing his speech; so much of it was devoted to an affirmation of their core beliefs.

The more difficult question to answer is why – given what Drum described – so many liberals found the speech so inspiring and agreeable?  Is that what liberals were hoping for when they elected Obama:  someone who would march right into Oslo and proudly announce to the world that we have a unilateral right to wage war when we want and to sing the virtues of war as a key instrument for peace?  As Tom Friedman put it on CNN yesterday: “He got into their faces . . . I’m for getting into the Europeans’ face.”  Is that what we needed more of?”

Government Democide: The Power That Kills…

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R. J. Rummel on democide:

“This is a report of the statistical results from a project on comparative genocide and mass-murder in this century. Most probably near 170,000,000 people have been murdered in cold-blood by governments, well over three-quarters by absolutist regimes. The most such killing was done by the Soviet Union (near 62,000,000 people), the communist government of China is second (near 35,000,000), followed by Nazi Germany (almost 21,000,000), and Nationalist China (some 10,000,000). Lesser megamurderers include WWII Japan, Khmer Rouge Cambodia, WWI Turkey, communist Vietnam, post-WWII Poland, Pakistan, and communist Yugoslavia. The most intense democide was carried out by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, where they killed over 30 percent of their subjects in less than four years. The best predictor of this killing is regime power. The more arbitrary power a regime has, the less democratic it is, the more likely it will kill its subjects or foreigners. The conclusion is that power kills, absolute power kills absolutely.“

No Check Points in Heaven

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Palestinian activist Ramzy Baroud writes about his father’s struggles, and eventual death, in Gaza:

“My father’s reputation as an intellectual, his obsession with Russian literature, and his endless support of fellow refugees brought him untold trouble with the Israeli authorities, who retaliated by denying him the right to leave Gaza.

His severe asthma, which he developed as a teenager was compounded by lack of adequate medical facilities. Yet, despite daily coughing streaks and constantly gasping for breath, he relentlessly negotiated his way through life for the sake of his family. On one hand, he refused to work as a cheap labourer in Israel. “Life itself is not worth a shred of one’s dignity,” he insisted. On the other, with all borders sealed except that with Israel, he still needed a way to bring in an income. He would buy cheap clothes, shoes, used TVs, and other miscellaneous goods, and find a way to transport and sell them in the camp. He invested everything he made to ensure that his sons and daughter could receive a good education, an arduous mission in a place like Gaza.

But when the Palestinian uprising of 1987 exploded, and our camp became a battleground between stone-throwers and the Israeli army, mere survival became Dad’s new obsession. Our house was the closest to the Red Square, arbitrarily named for the blood spilled there, and also bordered the ‘Martyrs’ Graveyard’. How can a father adequately protect his family in such surroundings? Israeli soldiers stormed our house hundreds of times; it was always him who somehow held them back, begging for his children’s safety, as we huddled in a dark room awaiting our fate. “You will understand when you have your own children,” he told my older brothers as they protested his allowing the soldiers to slap his face. Our ‘freedom-fighting’ dad struggled to explain how love for his children could surpass his own pride. He grew in my eyes that day.

It’s been fourteen years since I last saw my father. As none of his children had access to isolated Gaza, he was left alone to fend for himself. We tried to help as much as we could, but what use is money without access to medicine? In our last talk he said he feared he would die before seeing my children, but I promised that I would find a way. I failed.”

Trauma and Brainwashing

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Since I’ve been posting about media spin and the brainwashing of the public, here’s an enlightening post at Humble Libertarian on post-traumatic stress disorder among vets, apparently at near-epidemic levels

What has that to do with brainwashing? Everything, as the video above shows.

Early victims of US brainwashing techniques were US army personnel, as experimentation in the CIA brain-washing program, MK-Ultra shows. They still continue to be victims of it.

Also read the CIA’s notorious Kubark manual on torture – which analyzes different techniques to induce compliance in subjects.

Repeatedly traumatizing someone (and sexual humiliation and violence are the easiest avenues to do this), breaks down their sense of identity. In all but the strongest people, it produces compliance, refusal to accept reality, escapism, psychosis, and addictions of all kinds.

In the strongest, it produces resistance. Either lawless resistance to the state, which is what we call criminal, or, in rare cases, the fierce concentrated resistance of the social or political activist, the revolutionary…and even the saint…

The victims produce the fodder that the state manipulates.
The survivors become the excuse for the state to ratchet up control.
Either way, the state grows.


Memorial Day Salute

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My Comment

I had a hard time finding a video that expressed my complicated feelings about the military, the war in Iraq, dead soldiers, dead civilians, militarism, patriotism, sacrifice and everything else that is part of Memorial Day.

There were the ‘patriotic’ videos – lots of images of the flag, with the eagle brooding above it.  Marches, squadrons in flight, tanks rolling, symbols of victory, power, dominance.  They didn’t suit. There are times to fight, but the last fifty odd years of fighting haven’t been defensive. We’ve had military adventures. We’ve had ideological battles. We’ve had covert operations. We’ve slaughtered and starved civilians, flattened cities, assassinated national leaders. What you think of these depends on your world view and your ability to stomach reality, but simple flag-waving doesn’t cut it.

Then I tried music. Maybe articulating what can’t be articulated was the problem. That didn’t work either. I tried country singers. They sounded sentimental and their nasal voices offered nothing of insight into the dark attraction of militarism. I tried Johnny Cash. But the old ragged flag didn’t do it for me.  I tried swooping renditions of Amazing Grace. Too emotional. I wanted something drier and terser.

I thought of posting pictures of the actual war in Iraq – the dead and mutilated children, the bombed out buildings. But Memorial Day is the wrong day for that. There are times when conventions are right. Memorial Day is about the service men and women. I could make it something else. But that wouldn’t be right, coming from an immigrant. So I didn’t do it. Besides, wounds are wounds and deaths are deaths. Giving a voice to the American dead is not denying a voice to the Iraqi dead.

Anyway, Memorial Day is older than the Iraq War, so I shelved that idea.

I also couldn’t bring myself to do a piece about militarism, like Mike Gogulski at Nostate. Mike’s post from last year was a savage one –  F*** the Troops. It was brave, but somehow it missed the point.  Paying attention to the pain and suffering of the troops, their sacrifice, if you will, isn’t about supporting war or militarism or any of those things. It’s a human gesture. It may be, as he writes, that they sometimes died for unworthy goals and ends. It may be they’re sometimes complicit in whatever crimes were committed. It may also be that there were among them fools, opportunists, and thugs. That too is beside the point. But what the point is I’m unable to say. I just know it intuitively.

I liked the clips of buglers playing Taps best. There was a lonesome dignity to them. But they kept stopping in the middle, so I couldn’t use them. There was also one of a military salute, with gunfire, that I liked. War is about guns and death. At least one of the two should be on a Memorial Day video I thought.

Some of the more interesting videos were by peaceniks and antiwar activists. But I didn’t want to politicize this.  Something from the Vietnam War also seemed too political. [I mean, political in terms of party politics]. Videos with mothers weeping, girls singing, crucifixes in the ground (what about the non-Christians and atheists?), all had little things about them I didn’t like. And they were about other people, not about the troops.

There was one video of an old vet reminiscing about his mates in World War II, which got close to the feeling I wanted to convey, but the commentary took a while to make its impact. And it was too understated. I wish there were more videos made by vets. I’d rather not take their own words or experiences away from them.

I had a thought after all of this. Everything has music behind it these days. We all live our lives as though an Oscar-winning soundtrack were playing behind us. We create story-lines even when there aren’t any. That’s human nature, and it may be our redemption, but it’s also a reason why we mythologize things.

In the end, I decided to just post a video of a memorial ceremony at Arlington. Some things can’t be expressed.

Over a Million Refugees in Somalia

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In the news on Friday, May 22:

“Martin Bell, former BBC war correspondent and current UNICEF UK Ambassador for Humanitarian Emergencies, recently concluded a three-day trip to the north-east zone of Somali to report on the situation of children and women affected by conflict, drought, displacement and other hardships – and to shed light on UNICEF’s efforts to provide them with crucial services.
In Bossaso, one of the country’s busiest ports, Mr. Bell visited settlements for displaced people and saw firsthand the dire conditions in which they live. Displaced populations form a group of chronically vulnerable people here, lacking even the most basic social services and livelihood opportunities.
Bossaso hosts 27 camps where 40,000 people have sought refuge from other parts of the country. Over 1 million people in Somalia are internally displaced, mainly due to the conflict and insecurities in the central and southern regions..”

More at Relief Web.

Doctors Without Borders/Medicins Sans Frontieres reports that more than 270,000 have fled to Northern Kenya, to camps operated by the UN High Commission for Refugees, where rations have been cut by 30% and malnutrition runs at over 22%, well above the emergency threshold. That’s driving many of the refugees back to the war-zone.

My Comment

This was sent to me by a young Somali friend, who urges everyone to help in any way they can.
Now, my focus in this blog is on mass thinking, but the organization of crowds (through state propaganda, coercion, and surveillance) has as its other face, the dis-organization of crowds in times of crisis, often state-produced crisis, such as at New Orleans during Katrina, or here. Among people on the move in large groups, refugees are probably the largest group.
What is amazing to me about crowds of refugees is that they move peacefully, giving the lie to fear-mongering imagery of masses of people overwhelming civilization. That’s the sort of imagery usually conjured up by authoritarians when discussing mass migration or mass movement of any kind.