Caliban - Opinion and Righteous Anger

Barack Obama makes me sick.

Here he is, on my TV, condemning his former pastor for the allegedly "appalling" and "outrageous" remarks said pastor has made in public. According to Obama, "They offend me. They rightly offend all Americans."

It's bad enough that the US is the kind of place where a politician feels compelled to defend or distance himself from remarks made by someone only vaguely connected with him, but when that politician does succumb to the urge to prevent further damage to his image caused by such a vague association, he should not be so arrogant as to profess to have gauged the feelings of an entire nation, such that he may now speak on their behalf.

Sarah, for one, does not feel insulted by the Rev. Wright's remarks. Nor, for what it's worth, even though I'm not an American, do I.

Amongst other things, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright has said he believed the 11th September attacks were retribution for years of malevolent U.S. foreign policy that has caused huge numbers of deaths overseas.

Hmm, what is "outrageous" or "appalling" here? The only thing that's outrageous about this remark is that it's patently true. Obama's dismissal of the remark is what I find appalling.

Obama goes on to say that the Rev. Wright's remarks are "divisive and destructive" and that they "give comfort to those who prey on hate". Clearly, Obama needs a better speech-writer to convey the pretence of eloquence, since "those who prey on hate" are presumably those who do good in the world; or so I would have thought.

Now, make no mistake, the Rev. Wright has said a few things that are, at best, hard to prove. More probably, they are simply untrue. Take, for example, the assertion that the US government has spread AIDS in order to wipe out black people. The spread of AIDS amongst certain groups of the American population may, at one time or another, have raised cheers behind closed doors in Washington, but that's a far cry from their having deliberately propagated and spread the virus.

Nevertheless, Wright's entitled to his views and Obama should be defending his right to make them, even if he doesn't agree with the views themselves. Similarly, if he feels that guilt by association is damaging to him with the judgemental electorate, he should merely distance himself from Wright's remarks, rather than condemn the man himself.

Let's get one thing straight here. The attacks on American targets on 11th September 2001 were unquestionably the result of the US's ruthless foreign policy over the last few decades. The terrorists have even said as much. Does Obama perhaps think the US was picked at random and that there's no rationale behind the attacks? Why is the idea of looking inward to seek the motivation for the attacks anathema to him?

Another thing, Obama said that Wright was equating America's "wartime efforts" with terrorism, but Wright referred explicitly to foreign policy, not wartime efforts. Of course, you could argue that American foreign policy effectively amounts to war in many territories, but one can't help but think that Obama wasn't acknowledging that. rather, he was twisting Wright's words to be more worthy of the condemnation that was about to follow.

So long as the US continues to take no responsibility for its actions on distant shores, it shall surely know no peace. We all suffer as a result of America's tragically myopic, unsustainable and pathologically self-serving foreign policy. In fact, I might even go so far as to call such policy "appalling" and "outrageous", "divisive and destructive".

I'm glad I can't vote in American elections. What a responsibility to have to pick the next leader of the most powerful nation on Earth from the pitifully lamentable stable of wankers on offer at the moment.

Between Obama's spineless and transparent attempts at voter salvage and Clinton's sublimely ill-conceived decision to lie that she had been under sniper fire during a visit to the former Yugoslavia in the nineties (not to mention her camp's distasteful negative campaigning against Obama), you could be forgiven for being driven into the arms of McCain. Well, almost.

As usual, it's all about the public image. In America, sound-bite politics are served to a fast-food culture, and every serious candidate will say or do anything to get elected. Obama is not one iota different in this regard.

Jason sent me this excellent article by Noam Chomsky on how Iran's nuclear programme is a direct response to the historical danger posed in the region by the US, and how the answer to the issue may lie in promoting democracy back on American soil.

It's an extremely eloquent and incisive piece of prose.

You've got to hand it to the American Democratic party, when it comes to backbone, they don't have a vertebra between them.

Tens of thousands of people marched in Washington yesterday against Bush's illegal war in Iraq. Guess how many of them were Democratic politicians. Any idea? The answer is: one. That's right, only one of them had the balls to stand up and be counted.

Why not more? you may be wondering. Well, the answer is as simple as it is depressing.

You see, many of those involved with yesterday's march are calling for Bush to be impeached. After all, he lied to the world in an attempt to morally justify an illegal and bloody war against the people of Iraq, selling it to the gullible American public and his reluctant European allies under the monicker of freedom and democracy, when really it was a quest to secure oil supplies.

That's pretty despicable, I think, and pretty much everyone I know seems to agree. So, given that this man has disgraced his nation worldwide and contributed to the image of America as a greed-ridden playground bully with more brawn than brain, you'd think his political opposition would be making the most of a demonstration against his continued pursuance of oil for blood, wouldn't you?

But they're not. The Democrats don't want to burn their fingers on calls for Bush's impeachment. No-one wants to bite off that much political commotion to chew. Perhaps it's a case of people in glasshouses not wanting to throw stones, but I can't see it as anything other than what it appears to be at face value: rampant cowardice.

So, whilst the Republicans went all-out to impeach Clinton for the actions of his penis and his lies concerning those actions, the Democrats are not prepared to return the favour for Bush, whose actions have left more than 3000 American soldiers and more than 100,000 Iraqi civilians dead. Whose is the greater crime? I ask you. A man with an errant penis who lied under oath, or a man whose actions have left more than a hundred thousand dead in their wake and rendered the entire world a less safe place to live for all of us?

Don't get me wrong. I have no respect for Bill Clinton, but the damage he did whilst in office pales into insignificance next to the war crimes perpetrated by Bush and his puppet-masters.

Whilst raging against the Democrats, an honourary mention must, however, be made of Dennis J. Kucinich, the Democratic representative for Ohio, who was the sole Democrat to turn up and even speak out against the bloodshed. Good for him.

But where was Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton?

And where was Senator Barack Obama?

Both of the above are presidential hopefuls for the next general election and yet neither of them has the backbone to stand up for what is right. No, there might be too much of a political backlash to such a gesture. The cynical Democrats know that concepts such as the truth and justice are double-edged swords. They can be used to further one's own career or, if wielded clumsily or in the wrong situation, can impede that same career. As such, noble concepts become political expedients, just more weapons in the arsenal of hollow rhetoric to which we've become so accustomed. Fortitude and integrity are nowhere to be seen.

When you apply this knowledge to the Democratic party as a whole, you quickly realise how the current American government obtained carte blanche for their rampage of terror, torture and bloodshed from the deserts of Afghanistan through the plains of Iraq to the bunkers of Guantanamo Bay.

Sometimes, it's difficult to know who I despise more, the Republicans or the Democrats. Are the accessories to the crimes not just as guilty as those who perpetrate them?

It's national election day here. I sauntered down to the polling station this afternoon to pencil in my red dot next to GroenLinks (The Green Left). I was a zwevende kiezer for a while, not sure if I shouldn't give my vote to the Socialistische Partij (Socialist Party), but in the end I stuck with GroenLinks.

The polling stations close at 21:00. After that, it will slowly become clear whether we're going to get rid of the current bunch of fuckers. Don't get me wrong; Jan-Peter Balkenende seems like an honest enough kind of bloke, scrupulous and convinced his cabinet is doing the right thing for this country, but there's just no forgiving the way he limply followed Bush straight into an unjustified and illegal war. And then there's that loose cannon Verdonk, who should have been sacked on multiple occasions for the way she bungled the Schiphol fire, the Hirsi-Ali affair, etc.

No, it's time to install a government that will stand up to playground bullies like the US and pay some attention to the environment, while there's still one to get upset about.

We can dream, anyway.

As Israel continues with its latest criminal rampage, I've been noting how Israeli government officials interviewed on television love to cite UN resolution 1559 and allege that the Lebanese government has failed to comply with it. This, then, supposedly forms some kind of implicit justification for the ongoing collective punishment of the Lebanese people.

Why do the reporters doing the interviewing not bring up the fact that Israel, too, has had a washing list of UN resolutions issued against it, each of which it has arrogantly flouted? Indeed, most recently, Kofi Annan himself condemned Israel for its disproportionate response to the Hezbollah kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers.

Why do the Israelis believe that all countries except Israel must comply with UN resolutions? Why does the spineless international community allow Israel to get away with incident after incident of collective punishment of other peoples, including Palestinian and Lebanese civilians? Why aren't all countries subject to and held accountable under international law?

The picture wouldn't be complete, of course, without a dishonourable mention of the US. Whilst channelling billions of dollars in military aid to Israel with the left hand, the right hand now adopts the pretence of intending to broker peace in the Middle East. And yet, Condoleezza Rice rejects the idea of an immediate ceasefire. What kind of diplomat doesn't want the fighting to stop, so that the parties in question can sit around the negotiating table and hammer out some kind of enduring agreement? As if a short-term ceasefire precludes some more sustainable agreement for the long term.

And so it's really just business as usual, isn't it? The US protectorate of Israel does whatever it pleases, US hegemony intimidates other nations into shrugging their shoulders and looking the other way, the UN issues perfunctory condemnations that no-one heeds, and another Lebanese child loses her parents and her eyesight.

I started this entry by talking of UN resolutions directed at Israel. You may be interested to know that there are no fewer than 65 such resolutions in existence.

We're not so much keeping busy these days as unavoidably being kept busy. Honestly, who would have thought that retirement could be so much work?

Sarah and I have been busy trying to prepare our Dutch and American taxes. Given the fact that we have both been resident in two countries during the last fiscal year, can no longer file a joint return in America as in previous years (due to my partial resident status for last year), liquidated lots of stock, have bank accounts in multiple currencies and places, purchased a house, etc., our taxes are really quite complicated this year.

Add to that the fact that we're missing or have incomplete documentation in some cases, especially around the period of our international move, and you have the basis for some very time-consuming and tedious work, e-mailing and phoning people for the missing data and trying to make sense of all manner of forms and statements.

Also, because our situation is no longer easily classified, none of the tax forms we have to fill in are fully applicable, so we keep having to annotate things and explain our unique circumstances. You end up wondering if the return you end up filing will make any sense or even be accurate.

In the midst of this, we're also trying to sort out our estate planning once and for all. Estate planning is the financial world's soothing euphemism for getting one's affairs in order before one pops one's clogs. Not that we're planning to shuffle off this mortal coil in the near future, but very few people do, which is precisely the reason one needs to spend time on this stuff while one is still of relatively sound mind and something approaching sound body.

Dealing with the estate planning is as tedious as dealing with the accountants, and as complicated, too. Marriage to a foreigner with lifelong tax obligations to the country from which she happens to hail can really complicate your life. And Eloïse , too, is an American citizen by dint of her mother's nationality, which further complicates our estate planning, as no money can be deposited in her name unless we're prepared to pay tax to the US on any interest it earns.

Want my advice? Don't marry a foreigner, especially an American, unless you're up for a shitload of hassle, trying to prevent a greedy foreign government from staking a claim to assets to which it has no moral right. Of course, even if Sarah and I hadn't been married, Eloïse would still be American, because she was born in the United States.

American citizenship is viral, you see. It's like a hereditary disease. As soon as you start to earn money abroad, the tumour begins to grow. The only known cure is the abandonment of one's citizenship, which still leaves you with a 10 year fiscal obligation. That's the price of freedom, folks; you pay for it the rest of your days, even if you're a dissident in some far flung part of the world. Well, you're obliged to pay it, that is; whether or not you actually do so depends on your stance and the amount of bone marrow in your spine.

Basically, though, you can't marry an American without marrying the American tax system.

The following State of the Union speech by George Bush was just brought to my attention. The audio editing is really very good.

Controversial politician Ayaan Hirsi Ali was back in parliament today after spending the last couple of months in hiding abroad. Hirsi Ali is the subject of many death threats in The Netherlands, as she is a very outspoken critic of radical Islam and its many excesses.

She went into hiding after the Dutch film director and newspaper columnist, Theo van Gogh, was murdered for his outspoken criticism of radical Islam, which culminated in the release of the film Submission, which he made together with Hirsi Ali. Tensions were running at an all time high after his death, so Hirsi Ali was taken into hiding for her own protection.

Today, she made a triumphant return and vowed to continue her work. I must say what a great deal of admiration I have for this woman. She grew up in Somalia and suffered genital mutilation as a matter of course. When Somalia collapsed in on itself, her family fled to Saudi Arabia, where she had to stay indoors and wear a veil.

Her family sent her to Europe to travel on to Canada, where she was to marry a cousin. Instead, she went to The Netherlands and claimed political asylum. In the years that followed, she mastered the Dutch language (she really does speak impeccable Dutch), worked as a cleaner and post sorter, then went to university and studied political science.

Eventually, she became a politician and began to work for the emancipation of Muslim women and against the more nefarious tenets of radical Islam. She's been threatened with death many times, but has vowed not to be intimidated or silenced.

I've admired this courageous woman for some time now and thought I should mention her story here. We could do with a few more like her in the world.

A rather good blog about her has recently appeared.

The Canadians are taking pity on Americans and are now offering to marry them to get them out of the country and into a more progressive land.

From their site:

You can help. Open your heart, and your home. Marry an American. Legions of Canadians have already pledged to sacrifice their singlehood to save our southern neighbours from four more years of cowboy conservatism.

I'd offer to do my bit, too, but I've already married one and bigamy's illegal even when it's just a marriage of convenience.

Although I often agree with their views, I'm not normally a fan of the rather simplistic and unnuanced writing style of the Daily Mirror.

Nevertheless, it's hard to find fault with the sentiments expressed on today's front page.

Greg Palast makes a compelling case for the notion. There's an lot of supposition in the article, but there's a lot of intrigue, too. It's not beyond belief.

...but the new lines have been drawn.

Johnathan Freedland has produced a very eloquent write-up of how the Tuesday's American general election completes the Republican revolution.

He goes on to explain how people's motives for voting have exposed two entirely divergent cultures within the US. This is a very well written article and I strongly encourage you to read it.

Thanks to Geoff for sending in this excellent article offering insights into the mentality behind Christian America massively backing Bush in this week's election. It's an excellent read and lifts the veil on a phenomenon that is rather impenetrable for those of us with a more secular background.

There's an interesting article over at Kuro5hin about how there are notable differences in the CNN and Al Jazeera translations of the latest Osama bin Laden taped speech.

Who will win the presedential election? Things seem to be leaning in the direction of the world's most accomplished terrorist, George Bush, but we may yet be surprised. Even if Kerry wins, however, it looks like W has the popular vote sewn up, whereas that boot was squarely on the other foot four years ago.

While the mantra of "4 more years" sounds more like a sentence than a cry of victory, I'm bound to ponder the fact that a vote in the US election is really just the exercising of one's right to attempt to influence the guardians and perpetuators of the status quo over the next four years.

For if Kerry gets in, will we see the US join and sanction the International Criminal Court? Will we see the death sentence repealed? Will we see the billions of dollars in military aid to Israel halted? Will we see a concerted effort to reduce America's grotesque reliance on fossil fuels?

How much would really change?

Noam Chomsky summed up the presidential choice rather well:

"In the forthcoming presidential elections in the US, there is a choice: between two candidates who were born to wealth and political power, attended the same elite university, joined the same secret society that instructs members in the style and manners of the rulers, and are able to run because they are funded by largely the same corporate powers."

Whoever you vote for, the government wins.

After an entry on sarcasm, here's one on irony.

The Google adverts down the right-hand side of this page are now proudly trying to encourage you, the humble blog reader, to depart this site in favour of those extolling the virtues of the Republican cause. That's right: all my railing against Bush has convinced Google that I must be a big fan of this intellectual midget. Now, that's irony!

One of the adverts, however, is simply too crass to pass up. If you thought the next American election would be fought on foreign policy, taxation or something similarly banal, think again. The real action is on the dining room table, where condiments are the new weapons of mass distraction.

I hope you care as much as I do about which way your ketchup will vote.

Europeans often tell me that Americans have no appreciation for or even perception of sarcasm. Indeed, I have noticed that many people here will sometimes say, "I was being ironic", when they wish to indicate that they were attempting to employ sarcasm, not irony, in something they just said.

At the recent SANE 2004 conference, a Frenchman remarked to me how sarcastic my accompanying colleague, Geoff, was and how surprising he found this, coming from an American.

Well, Geoff's not the only one, as this article about maintaining one's belief in George Bush demonstrates. Thanks once again to Sarcastic Geoff for this one. It's nice to see George's long list of successes so cogently stated, so that we may all admire them and the figure responsible for them.

The British Royal Navy now allows Satanism to be practised on board its vessels.

This seems to have caused quite a stir, which is rather odd, if you consider that the Church of Satan preaches the tenet of vengeance instead of turning the other cheek. That seems closer to the British military's modern day raison d'être of attacking without provocation, so why the fuss?

Of course, it's the little horned bloke with the trident in his mitt. God-fearing people have always had a problem with that imagery. If you remove the religious association from the dogma, then it would make for a much more comfortable fit. The Church of Satan just needs some good PR people.

Even staunch Republicans are abandoning ship now, including Eisenhower's son.

Poignant. Thanks for sending that in, Geoff.

Thanks to Geoff for sending in this story.

That Bush's supporters are so patently stupid that many of them believe whatever the right-wing extremists tell them is not news to anyone, but that they choose to believe statements that even Bush and his cronies (no longer) claim to be true, should give you some clue as to how deep in the shit the US now is.

Apparently, 75% of Bush's supporters still believe Iraq was providing substantial aid to Al-Qaeda. But wait; it gets worse. 51% believe Bush favours participation in the Kyoto treaty, something for which our least favourite babbling baboon has never even tried to conceal his contempt. The mind boggles at the extent to which people will go to delude themselves.

Perhaps the only rational explanation is that, when something like the Kyoto treaty is explained to people in a political survey, they conclude that their president simply must be in favour of it, because it's so obvious a good cause and one that should be supported. But then, the discovery that their beloved president is against it would shake their world to its core and cause them to have to rethink their loyalties.

As Kevin Spacey's character, Lester Burnham, says in American Beauty, never underestimate the power of denial.

Geoff pointed me in the direction of David Neiwert's blog this morning. I haven't had a great deal of time to peruse it, but my eye was caught by the first instalment of a six-part article entitled The Rise of Pseudo Fascism.

I urge you to read this. It's not very long and it very eloquently addresses an important concern: the American neo-conservatives are not conservative at all. They are radical and extreme, and their movement has taken on many of the tenets of fascism. Only a few key elements are still absent, which is why the author talks of pseudo-fascism, as opposed to the real thing.

I won't bother paraphrasing or quoting chunks of the article here; it's better that you simply read it for yourself and think about the issues raised, especially if you are an American citizen or a resident of the US. This lays bare the tactics being used to demonise all who oppose the so-called conservative movement's agenda, branding dissenters as weak and un-American.

Thanks to Geoff for this list of the bumbling baboon's greatest achievements. It's obviously strongly biased, but the numbers and stark juxtapositions make for interesting reading, nonetheless.

A family member sent me this article, which once again raises the spectre of conscription in the US.

The American government once again claims that no such move is being considered and that this simply constitutes a routine recruitment drive for the draft boards, whose job positions are currently 80% vacant.

This gives rise to the following thoughts in my head:

• Why were those positions allowed to become 80% vacant? I have to assume they were not needed, or else they would never have been cut in a country that has never shown any aversion to adequately budgetting for so-called defence.
• Why are they being filled now if no draft is forthcoming? Is it simply an oversight that these jobs were vacated and then not filled? I doubt it.

As usual, read the article, consider the facts and make up your own mind.

Geoff alerted me to this story in The Guardian.

According to the story, the US is preparing to reinstate conscription, more commonly known as the draft in the local lingo. I didn't need yet another reason to be enthusiastic not to be an American citizen, but thanks, anyway, Mr. Bush.

The article states that conscription could be reintroduced as early as June of next year. Unlike its previous incarnation, it will not be possible to dodge it on educational grounds, nor can you expect to make a shrewd exit via Canada. The devious bastards have already plugged those holes, signing the smart border declaration with the neighbours to the north.

If you are a young American man under the age of 30, I would start looking for a new country in which to settle. Otherwise, before you know it, you could find yourself standing in some far-flung country with your dick in one hand and an M16 in the other, fighting an unsanctioned war in Bush's barmy army.

Many members of the professional services have clearly had enough of this country's state-sponsored terrorism and are not re-enlisting. This fascistic government's cynical response is to instead send its nation's youth to kill or be killed. My advice: don't hang around until it happens. Conscientious objection is unlikely to hold much sway in a society without conscience.

This is old news now, but since no mainstream news sources have picked up on the story, I thought it was worth mentioning here.

Basically, there is evidence to suggest that Nick Berg was, in fact, beheaded in the Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad. Yes, the very same prison in which the American military has been torturing Iraqi citizens.

This conclusion was reached after analysis of the infamous beheading video.

Another suspicion that is doing the rounds is that the victim was actually already dead before he was beheaded. Before I heard this rumour, I had already wondered the same thing myself after watching the video, as there is no arterial gushing as the alleged killers cut into Berg's neck. Rather, the blood simply pours out, as if not under pressure.

There are numerous other sources discussing the matter and reaching their own conclusions, some quite calm and rational, others a little more excitable and based on a lot of circumstantial evidence.

Anyway, as I said, the mainstream media seem to be staying away from this for some reason. There's a lot of smoke there, but there's some fire, too, and some of these findings should have you demanding answers to the the questions they raise.

Since ridding the world of this madman would cost you your liberty and most probably your life, you can, instead, act out your fantasies with the Anti-Bush On-line Video Game.

A friend of mine directed me to the following quote this evening:

...it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.

The particular political pundit that first uttered these words was none other than Hermann Göring, Commander-in-Chief of the Luftwaffe, President of the Reichstag, Prime Minister of Prussia and, as Hitler's designated successor, the second man in the Third Reich.

George Bush knows the truth of these words, even if he did have to be spoon-fed this wisdom by his more intelligent and even more cynical advisors. In the climate of fear that is the USA, it's very easy to lead people by the nose. All you need to do is distract the populace by making them afraid, even if what they are supposed to fear is an intangible entity, with no face, no defined beginning or end. All it needs is a name, so that the media can make sensationalistic use of it to strike terror into the hearts of all those who can't even locate a European country on a map of the world.

Of course, this cynical ploy has the added benefit of allowing its perpetrators to wage a war without end, since nobody is able to quantify when victory has or has not been achieved. Having ill-defined objectives can yield big dividends when your so-called political opposition shows typical bipartisan complicity and your populace has been numbed over time to the point that they can no longer even perceive scandal.

And how they buy into the myth in droves, petrified as they are that the enemies of peace from far away places and even further away cultures are just itching to deprive them of their petrol-guzzling four-wheel drive vehicles, their all-American burger and fries and their daily cathode ray fix.

And people wonder why I'm sick of this fucking place. "It's not that bad, right?" Fuck, yes, it is.