Month: April 2004

A look at Egyptian political theater, with valuable insight into what often cannot be otherwise openly expressed in the Middle East.

U.S. Marines, actors armed with wooden assault rifles, storm into the theatre cafe even before the audience has taken its seats, harassing, searching and intimidating them to set the mood for a performance meant to raise the spectre of American occupation.

Elsawy’s agitprop production, ”Messing with Minds,” is now in its third month at a small stage in the grounds of the Cairo Opera House … the play, which is running well past its original slot in the theatre’s programme, reflects the deep scepticism in the Arab world about U.S. intentions in the Middle East and goes way beyond what Egyptian politicians are willing to say in public.
… read more

Riverbend, the Iraqi blogger, has some commentary today on the demonstrations, as well as the announcment by Paul Bremer of a new Ministry of Defense and a new Iraqi intelligence organization in: Riots, Star Gazing and Cricket Choirs…

A month ago, Qawliya’s collection of perhaps 150 homes in southern Iraq contained a small red-light district, an isolated warren known for prostitution and gunrunning and as a haven from the law. Today, it is destroyed, the few sounds of life made by barking dogs and scavengers piling bricks from razed homes.

Its residents — hundreds of men, women and children, mostly members of Iraq’s tiny Gypsy minority — were driven out by a militia controlled by a militant Shiite Muslim cleric, residents and police say. Neighbors systematically looted it. Some accounts say the village was burned, though the militia denies it.

No one has been punished, police say. The U.S.-led occupation, which learned of the raid soon after it happened on March 12, has yet to make it public. Qawliya’s residents, most of whom fled to other cities, largely remain in hiding, fearful to talk.

Go look at the picture – the destruction is unbelievable.

No one has been punished, police say. The U.S.-led occupation, which learned of the raid soon after it happened on March 12, has yet to make it public. Qawliya’s residents, most of whom fled to other cities, largely remain in hiding, fearful to talk.

Qawliya’s fate is a grim tale about the forces that are shaping southern Iraq as the civil occupation nears an end — the ascent of religious militias, the frailty of outgunned police and the perceived reluctance of foreign peacekeepers to play an assertive role. Making those factors more combustible, residents say, is the question of whose law rules Iraq’s people.

This situation with al Sadr is getting progressively more grim. Right now, Sadrists are protesting in Baghdad and the newswires are reporting that American tanks have run over some protestors. The protests are over Bremer’s closure of al Sadr’s newspaper.

Neocons and WarBots across the net have apparently decided that the four Blackwater, USA mercenaries killed in Fallujah should be elevated to saint status due to…well, it isn’t clear why. However, failing to show reverence to the new saints of the Iraqi war is to invite that most popular of right-wing and warbot treatments, the character smear.

Currently, liberal blogger Kos is getting The Treatment. In a display of mindless hypocrisy, the attack dogs of the right are castigating Kos and bombarding his advertisers with threats and hate mail for posting on his blog his honest reaction to the hysteria and rage of the Raze Fallujah faction over the mercenaries’ deaths, which was basically “screw them.”

Yesterday, on this blog, I asked the question, why the foaming rage over Fallujah? What about this particular incident has the warfloggers arming their rhetorical nukes and writing columns so inflammatory that they sound like the American version of an Osama bin Laden fatwa? It can’t be because they were American because over 600 Americans deaths up to now haven’t provoked a similar reaction. Many civilians have been killed in Iraq and up to now the Nuke Fallujah crowd hasn’t protested. Four American missionaries were gunned down in Mosul just last month, two of them women, eliciting no warbot retaliation strikes. It can’t be the grisly nature of the deaths, because American corpses have been defiled by crowds in Iraq before, most notably the incident in Mosul last November. No one seemed to think Mosul should be nuked.

So, what is special about these four mercs? I think Keith Halderman nails the warbots’ motives here:

Maybe the reason Tammy Bruce and Bill O’Reilly want to “raze” Fallujah (see David Beito’s post directly below) is because they are having difficulty dealing with their own responsibility for the deaths of those four Americans. Since there are no weapons of mass destruction and no credible proof that Hussein had anything to do with 9-11, there is no real reason that those four should have been there in the first place. Nevertheless they were there, why? I say they died in large part because of the mindless jingoism espoused by the likes of Bruce and O’Reilly. People in this country are constantly advocating that the government take some kind of action, but they never want to take any responsibility for the results of the actions that they advocate.

The warbots see the meltdown of all the justifications for their Excellent Iraqi Adventure, the roach-like scrambling for cover as the “War President” and his courtiers try to stonewall and evade the 9/11 commission, the military deaths mounting, the civilian deaths mounting, the pervasive anti-Americanism growing in intensity world-wide but most notably in Muslim and Arab countries, and their illusions of “democracy-building” shattering as the deadline for “Iraqi sovereignty” rushes toward them like a runaway freight train even as Iraq spirals into chaos and lawlessness. In the midst of this debacle, Fallujah rebels create a scene so horrible that it’s like waving a neon flag in the face of the most tuned-out American and yelling “Look at this disgusting, bloody, violent mess over here! It’s getting worse every day!”

Own it, warbots. We tried to warn you. We protested, we railed and wrote arguments against the war, but you wouldn’t listen. Now, those mercs killed in Fallujah were your responsibility. You put them there, with your cakewalking, rosepetal fantasies and ridiculous misconceptions about Iraq. The blood of all the dead from your illegal, unjustified war in Iraq – both “coalition” and Iraqi – is on your hands.

So, Kos, don’t let the warbots get you down. And for all you warbots out there who think the Blackwater mercs are instant icons of American sainthood who should be worshipped and grieved over by all “patriots”, tell me this. What’s the difference between these American men who died in Fallujah and American peace activist Rachel Corrie? Why was her death at the hands of the IDF a big joke to you, almost as big a joke as all the American soldiers and Iraqis who died in the WMD snipe-hunt, yet these guys are instant heroes, for whose killings over 200,000 Iraqi deaths are being called for in retaliation? The hubris of the War Partiers is limitless as they demand obeisance to their War Gods, and call on everyone to partake in their fake “caring.” If they cared in reality rather than in their pretend Nintendo War World those four Americans they are making such a gaudy show of grief over now wouldn’t have been in Fallujah in the first place.

Most of us are aware that during World War II, tens of thousands of children were evacuated from British cities in Operation Pied Piper and sent to the relative safety of the countryside at the onset of the war in 1939. What I hadn’t encountered in history class was that the Japanese, in a program called gakudo sokai, evacuated their schoolchildren from the larger cities and islands which would become targets as the war edged closer in 1944. It has made me reflect on whether I could have given up my son to strangers. War is always a time of special agony for parents everywhere.

In early August, 230,000 schoolchildren boarded special trains out of Tokyo, followed by more evacuations from the capital and 12 other cities including Yokohama, Nagoya and Osaka…

A story that hit me hard is the sinking of the Tsushima Maru. The unmarked ship was carrying about 800 schoolchildren from Okinawa to the mainland when it was attacked Aug. 22, 1944, by an American submarine. Only 9 [sic] children survived and the tragedy was hushed up until after the war. … read more

Well, let’s see. Sharon has bulldozed some more houses in Rafah, shot some stone throwing little boys, assaulted the Al Aqsa mosque with riot police, who even shot sound bombs into the mosque, had a shootout at a Palestinian mental hospital, and threatened to kill Arafat again. Still, no suicide bombers.

What’s a Man of Peace^tm to do? Maybe another assassination?

How much longer can he stall on his proposed Gaza withdrawal without a retaliation? He was driven today to announce a cessation of new construction of settler pads in Gaza as a “step toward withdrawal!” What does he have to do? Actually stop building?

It’s a dilemma, for sure.