punked

Wednesday, September 27th, 2006
Anti Taliban

We Americans are different: we think we’re special and the rest of the world thinks we’re especially isolated and willfully ignorant. Newsweek, it turns out, panders to both sides of the equation, printing two dramatically different versions of its weekly magazine– one for domestic readers and a completely different version for foreign readers. Check it out here.This week, in the European, Asian and Latin American editions of the magazine, readers are presented with a cover story on the unfolding disaster of American policy in Afghanistan and a warning of future entanglement and bloodshed. In the U.S. edition of the magazine, however, the cover story is a book review article of the latest work by American celebrity photographer Annie Liebovitz (the one who took the photos of Tom and Katie and Suri!).

I suppose it’s only fair to mention that the Liebovitz piece is… an exclusive! Here are the teasers from the foreign and domestic editions (you guess which is which):

1) The Rise of Jihadistan
Five years after the Afghan invasion, the Taliban are fighting back hard, carving out a sanctuary where they—and Al Qaeda’s leaders—can operate freely.

2) Through Her Lens
In her new book, Annie Leibovitz, our most famous photographer, places celebs side by side with surprisingly personal images of love and loss. An exclusive.

So, is it that Newsweek thinks U.S. readers don’t give a shit about the unraveling disaster in Afghanistan? (Do we?) Or is it that Newsweek thinks we care more about Annie Liebovitz and her celebs? (Do we?) Or is it that Newsweek thinks we’ve had enough of bad news? (Have we?) Or is it that Newsweek doesn’t want to print any more bad news about Bush leadership this election season? (Why?)

Why exactly won’t Newsweek run what it clearly thinks is an important story on major events for the only people who have the power to influence those events?

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anti-americanism and the left

Thursday, September 21st, 2006

Hugo ChavezWhatever you think of Hugo Chavez and his Bush is Satin speech yesterday to the UN General Assembly, he may be inadvertently sabotaging the American Left by aligning himself with them. Waving a copy of Noam Chomsky’s book Hegemony or Survival: The Imperialist Strategy of the United States, Chavez said “It’s an excellent book to help us understand what’s been happening in the world throughout the 20th century…and what’s happening now.”

Was Chavez’s endorsement of Chomsky a great moment for those who see Chomksy’s powerful and unwavering political activism as embodying the spirit of freedom of expression in America? Or will Chavez’s speech work to further the Bush administration long campaign to characterize anyone who challenges its policies as unpatriotic?

The conservative Frontpagemage.com suggests the latter:

“Chavez and Chomsky made mutual admirations pacts; Osama bin Laden makes allusions to Michael Moore; the Huffington Post legitimizes the ravings of a leftist fascist and an Islamofascist; and the Unholy Alliance grows steadily clearer day-by-day.”

A Washington Post story claims the speech proves that there is no such things as bad press. At the very least Chavez is getting people reading. The Chicago Tribune reports that sales of Hegemony or Survival, have jumped into the top 10 of Amazon and Barnes & Noble.com and that its publisher has ordered an additional paperback printing of 25,000 copies.

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american blackout

Tuesday, September 19th, 2006

American Blackout Alleged voting irregularities during both the 2000 and 2004 were under reported by the mainstream news media. They are most commonly thought of as mere rumors generated by conspiracy theorists unhappy with the election results, as inadvertent errors caused by technological problems on the part of voting equipment or organizational mishaps on the part election officials.

American Blackout, a film by Guerilla News Network’s Ian Inaba, premiering in select theatres this month, convincingly demonstrates that these irregularities are not as innocent as the powers that be would have us believe.

In a review of the film Shari Frilot writes:

“Ian Inaba’s American Blackout is a stylish, intelligent and provocative documentary that looks at the historic and systematic disenfranchisement of the Black vote through the lens of the political career of Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney (D-Georgia)…. While tracking McKinney’s career, Inaba reveals a host of ways in which Black political power is systematically squelched, ranging from the slander that assailed McKinney when she stood up to the Bush administration on 9/11 and Iraq, to the political machinations that disempowered the Black vote in the Georgia Democratic primaries and the Ohio presidential election in 2004. Inaba reminds us that African Americans have long fought a war inside our country for their right to vote, and unfortunately that war rages on today. American Blackout emotionally revitalizes the core of our power as American citizens—the right to vote—and effectively reveals that the fate of Black voters is inextricably tied to the fate of all Americans.”

The film’s website features the film trailer asks people to help spread the word, to donate money, and to host screenings of the film.

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our man in arabia

Monday, September 18th, 2006

Dubai ruler Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum– aka “Sheik Mo”– has been celebrated by Time Magazine as a world-shaping titan and embraced by the Bush family as a business partner. This week, however, a court in Lexington, Ky., indicted him as a trafficker in boy slaves. The class-action suit accuses the Sheik of financing the kidnapping and transfer of young boys to Dubai, where they are put to work as camel jockeys to entertain the petro-dollar elite. Tom Flocco offers this summary of the story being reported this week by AP:

The U.S.-based suit alleges that Mohammed and his brother were part of a conspiracy “to buy boys in the slave trade and hold them in bondage in brutal camps in the Dubai desert.” The lawsuit reportedly detailed information involving thousands of boys as young as four years old who were prized because they weighed less than 44 pounds. Sheikh Mohammed’s personal 747 aircraft was parked at Bluegrass Airport this week in Lexington [...] AP has not reported whether evidence exists regarding young boys being trafficked out of Lexington. The sheikh was reportedly there purchasing thoroughbred yearlings.

Time raves that although Sheik Mo’s “family-run city-state is no democracy [...] it has become a model of business-style governance.” Ah yes of course, how we love business-style governance, where mere enslavement is no barrier to achieving the dream-life of wealth and success!

But Sheik Mo– in addition to being a world-shaping titan and an alleged slaver– is a poet. And in an online offering called “The Ferocity of the Lions,” he may be hinting at his true feelings on the matter of the enslaved boy jockeys:

Oh the hope of my life!
Oh the peak of my desire!
Tell me how to get rid of the manacles.

The rest of his verse is less clear but equally evocative… that is to say, a complete mystery of sillines. I have no idea what any of it is about. My guess, though, is that if Saddam Hussein, another of the region’s ruler-poets, had embraced “business-style governance” when he had the chance, he’d likely be at the races today, scribbling his verse in the open air instead of in a tiny jail cell and making plans to buy buildings in Manhattan and horses in Kentucky.

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WoT review

Saturday, September 16th, 2006

War on Terror
A Review of Work Performed, September 2006

I. Update

1) There are 140,000 American young men and women fighting in Iraq and 19,000 fighting in Afghanistan. President Bush claims the period of “employment” for these men and women will not end any time soon and that it will be up to future leaders to finish the job he has begun.

2) Osama bin Laden has recovered from kidney troubles and is up and moving about again in the undisturbed climes of a place called Waziristan on the Pakistan border. He reportedly holds meetings in the oak-forested Waziristan hills with members of the regrouped and expanding Taliban. A Senior White House official reports specualtion among Bush advisors that Bin Laden has employed an ancient Oriental cloaking spell to hide all of Waziristan from the President and from U.S. spy and war technologies.

3) War on Terror-partner Pakistan has announced its complete resignation in the matter of policing the stretches of its border that include darkened Warziristan.

4) British partners in the reignited Afghan theater of the War on Terror submitted harrowing reports this week, including one from Helmand Province, where a British battalion found itself unexpectedly fighting insurgents as part of its goodwill mission to begin reconstruction in the area: “We are flattening places we have already flattened, but the attacks have kept coming. We have killed them by the dozens, but more keep coming. We have used B1 bombers, Harriers, F-16s and Mirage 2000s. We have dropped 500lb, 1,000lb and even 2,000lb bombs. At one point our Apaches helicopters ran out of missiles because they had fired so many. Almost any movement on the ground gets ambushed.”

5) The War on Terror operation in Iraq, meantime, is seen in all corners– with one notable exception– as a steaming mess of reeking quagmire. This week ’s serving came with an escalation of violence and a higher-than-the-usual-high-number of shot and bombed people.

II. Summary and Findings

1) The primary goals of Phase One of the War on Terror included (a) killing or capturing Osama bin Laden, (b) destroying al Qaeda, and (c) taking control of Afghanistan and Iraq.

2) A fair assessment on the progress made so far on Phase One is: not so good, poor. Look in the coming weeks, however, for additional and probably sunnier reports on the progress of Phase One from the leaders of the War on Terror, who will be in the possession of information and facts vital to an overall assessment but also unfortunately unavailable to non security-cleared analysts and voters.

3) Happily, Phase Two of the War on Terror is less ambitious, amounting merely to regime change in North Korea and Iran and the creation of a pro-American, Israel-friendly, democratic but not-too-democratic, endlessly oil-supplying Greater Middle East.

III. Conclusions and Recommendations

1) Aaaahhhh! This plan totally sucks! Who do we call to cancel this work-order and receive a complete refund!

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