Shadowboxing With the Devil

[barbara100 at jps.net]

Yeah, I know a bunch of Iranians, and they all say what you say, John: the reason they sided with Khomeni during the Revolution was because he was against Shah.  Anybody but Shah, the bastard! He stole all the people's money and lived himself in a gold palace!  But you know...as the war waged on (million and a half died both sides) they were loving old Shah again!  Those were the days! before bad went to worse. The open air; the wine, women and song of the West.  
Those poor tormented people over there. Look what they've been enduring under Europe and America's thumb. Good God!  Look how loud we cry for our 6000, and look how silent we stand for the other millions and millions around the world--Iranians, Iraquis, Afghanis, Kuaitis, Bosnians, Palestinians, Israelis, Rowandans, Russians, Hondurans, Nicaraguans (to name but a few in my short lifetime). I can't believe our arrogance.  I'm ashamed I didn't see it sooner.  I'm embarassed that the World plays into our grandiose Power fantasies. (I've seen Mr. Pynchon's light.)  It's so discouraging today! (The light's nothing but a death rocket in the sky dreamed up in Power fantasies!)  
I read the latest from Noam Chomsky today (on Counterpunch.com).  In the interview he says America has asked Pakistan to cut off food supply to Afganistan.  After all those years of fighting with bin Laden against the Russians, now America is gonna starve them all to get bin Laden. They're a poor whipped nation of 20 million, and we're gonna starve them to save our national Pride.  Does that BOTHER anybody? It's sure hell bothering me. Remember that Herero account somebody posted last month? Back in 1904 the Germans poisioned all the Herero water wells killing off 90% of them. Barbarians! We're just an inch away from that now. Twenty million little brown-haired Gottfrieds, their innocent eyes, starving, eating away at the souls of thier Loving jihad masters. And we're no better. Hanging on our dumb president's evil-doing words. Thank you, Mr. President, we're so comforted to know God is on Our side. 

So what do we do when we see the light? What do we do with our shame and outrage so's not to waste them on mindless pleasures? John? Doug? Dave? Michael Moore? Gary Zukav? Ralph Nader? Noam Chomsky? Thomas Pynchon?! What the fuck do we all do now!!!??? It's not enough to just see!   


Excerpts from the Noam Chomsky interview (counterpunch.com):

The U.S., and much of the West,
      prefers a more comforting story. To quote the lead analysis in
      the _New York Times_ (Sept. 16), the perpetrators acted out of
      "hatred for the values cherished in the West as freedom,
      tolerance, prosperity, religious pluralism and universal suffrage."
       U.S. actions are irrelevant, and therefore need not even be
      mentioned (Serge Schmemann). This is a convenient picture, and
      the general stance is not unfamiliar in intellectual history;
      in fact, it is close to the norm. It happens to be completely
      at variance with everything we know, but has all the merits of
      self-adulation and uncritical support for power.

 
How
      the West chooses to react is a matter of supreme importance.
      If the rich and powerful choose to keep to their traditions of
      hundreds of years and resort to extreme violence, they will contribute
      to the escalation of a cycle of violence, in a familiar dynamic,
      with long-term consequences that could be awesome.  Of course,
      that is by no means inevitable. An aroused public within the
      more free and democratic societies can direct policies towards
      a much more humane and honorable course.


The U.S. has already demanded
      that Pakistan terminate the food and other supplies that are
      keeping at least some of the starving and suffering people of
      Afghanistan alive. If that demand is implemented, unknown numbers
      of people who have not the remotest connection to terrorism will
      die, possibly millions.  Let me repeat: the U.S. has demanded
      that Pakistan kill possibly millions of people who are themselves
      victims of the Taliban.  This has nothing to do even with revenge.
      It is at a far lower moral level even than that. The significance
      is heightened by the fact that this is mentioned in passing,
      with no comment, and probably will hardly be noticed. We can
      learn a great deal about the moral level of the reigning intellectual
      culture of the West by observing the reaction to this demand.
      I think we can be reasonably confident that if the American population
      had the slightest idea of what is being done in their name, they
      would be utterly appalled. It would be instructive to seek historical
      precedents.