I met Ram Seegobin, of Lalit (The Struggle) in Mauritius, two years ago at the Asia-Pacific Solidarity Conference in Sydney. He is a dedicated and charming man, who is also single-handedly responsible for what felt like an epiphany (though it simply makes sense, when you think about it): that one way for peripheral nations — and even those in the semi-periphery and the core — to effectively place roadblocks before the empire is to wage local, popular campaigns against US military bases around the world. LalitNoBaseReport.pdf

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Posted by stan as Analysis at 8:49 PM PDT

Car-bombers defy all odds
By Mike Davis

NEWS ITEM: Two truck bombs struck markets in Tal Afar on Tuesday, killing at least 66 people. One of the blasts occurred when an explosives-laden truck was detonated by remote control while people gathered to buy the flour it was carrying in a Shi’ite neighborhood in the center of the city, 420 kilometers northwest of Baghdad.

Despite heroic reassurances from both the White House and the Pentagon that the six-week-old US escalation in Baghdad and al-Anbar province is proceeding on course, suicide car-bombers continue to devastate Shi’ite and Sunni neighborhoods, often under the noses of reinforced US patrols and checkpoints.

Indeed, February was a record month for car bombings, with at least 44 deadly explosions in Baghdad alone, and March promises to duplicate the carnage.

Car bombs, moreover, continue to evolve in horror and lethality. In January and March, the first chemical “dirty bomb” explosions took place using chlorine gas, giving potential new meaning to President George W Bush’s missing weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

The sectarian guerrillas who claim affiliation with… FULL

Posted by stan as Analysis at 5:07 PM PDT

[Hat tip to De for this one.]

If you haven’t seen our Video library section, you may want to check in there. The latest addition is Cornell West on the Left, and there are a number of AVs that have been added since we first compiled the list.

Posted by stan as Analysis at 7:51 AM PDT

We are linking to a recent article by James Petras, a leftist scholar who studies Latin America, and a writer in English- and Spanish-language publications. If people haven’t figured it out yet, Insurgent American does not attend anyone’s True Church. One of the advantages of that is that we have the flexibility to select our standpoints (or lenses?) when and where they are useful for understanding, without elevating any one of those standpoints into The Grand Unified Theory of Everything. Taxonomies, in particular, are subject to this kind of grandiosity; they conceal their assumptions inside themselves (like the wooden horse at Troy). Taxonomies — once in use — have the appearance of being neutral, or objective if you like, even though they establish cognitive starting points that inevitably corral conclusions. Having disclaimed thus, taxonomies — once they are recognized for what they are and are not — can be useful for penetrating below the surface of things. Petras’ piece gives us a very interesting taxonomy of power for the world system in this article from the Canadian Global Research We might quibble with Petras on his opening statement’s declarative claim “can best be understood,” and we might find other points of view useful that more directly include culture, climate, ecology, and gender (often minimized by the Left). Still, this is worth a hard look, and perhaps even a few conversations:

The structure of power of the world imperial system can best be understood through a classification of countries according to their political, economic, diplomatic and military organization.

Introduction:

The imperial system is much more complex than what is commonly referred to as the “US Empire”. The US Empire, with its vast network of financial investments, military bases, multi-national corporations and client states, is the single most important component of the global imperial system (1). Nevertheless, it is overly simplistic to overlook the complex hierarchies, networks, follower states and clients that define the contemporary imperial system (2). To understand empire and imperialism today requires us to look at the complex and changing system of imperial stratification.

Hierarchy of Empire

The structure of power of the world imperial system can best be understood through a classification of countries according to their political, economic, diplomatic and military organization. The following is a schema of FULL

[De chimes in: Petras’ article on the new global billionaire class — ‘Meet the Global Ruling Class’ — is also worth a read. A good account of privatisation as privateering.]

Posted by stan as Analysis at 8:08 AM PDT

A writer and software engineer in Central California, DeAnander is my friend and mentor. I am delighted to introduce readers to her omnivorous intellect and acerbic wit. Her prior obligations at other sites, her day job, and her preparations for several big life-changes have postponed De’s more public role at IA. She already contributes to IA via the insights and interrogatives she shares in correspondence with other contributors.

[NOTE: She spells funny, because she’s British, and she calls her mother “Mum.” It must be the years as a Unix geek that make her type in lowercase more than half the time.]

I recently went shopping for a bicycle. Eventually, I stayed within my budget and got a used Nishiki for $75. But when I went to the bike store to get the safety and comfort widgets for the bike, the proprietor showed me one of the high-speed, low-drag models of bicycle that weighed around two-and-a-half ounces and traveled at top speed of Mach I. Sticker price: $4,000.

Fortunately, we don’t have to shop and pay for our Bullshit Detectors… unless you count as payment the hard-won experience required to fully develop said BD. De’s BD is the high-speed, low-drag model for people who are very very serious about their bullshit detecting.

She has given me permission to re-post and link some of her remarks and debates from European Tribune, where she used to be on the editorial committee and still drops by from time to time; and for that readers can be grateful. It means that while we wait for De to get her house in order, we can have a sneak preview of The Essential DeAnander. (The archives of ‘Moon of Alabama’ are another good place to look for mini-essays and rants from De.)

[DeAnander grabs the mic (editorial privs) here and sez: thanks to Stan for his over-the-top flattery, though it always makes me want to blush and mumble. I’m never sure who’s mentoring whom. I owe him countless articles on topics touching the vexed confluence of our present predicament, i.e. energy, food, money, colonialism, patriarchy. My sorry-ass flakiness as an IA contrib means that it’s awfully decent of him to gather these off-the-cuff squibs and snips that I’ve been posting in odd moments at ET — where btw you will find some vigorous and not entirely unintelligent opposition to much of what’s said below — for publication at IA. I hope to contribute something more substantial to IA in the near-to-medium future. In the meantime, I can be found commenting and moderating at Feral Scholar, and occasionally doing some drive-by posting at ET and (more rarely) MoA. I’ll open a thread at FS for a free-for-all on any of the topics touched upon below…]

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted by stan as Analysis at 8:41 PM PDT

[Hat tip to Amee for this one.]

Missing in Action: The Peace Movement’s Silence on the Impact of War on Women

by Lucinda Marshall

On March 17 I joined the wonderful surge of patriotic Americans who braved horrendous weather to march from Constitution Gardens to the Pentagon in opposition to the Iraq war. One of the dominant themes of the day in signage, t-shirts and speeches was to “Bring the Troops Home Now.” But honoring the lives of those in the military and bringing the troops home now is only part of what is necessary. By focusing on this mantra that was framed by the Neocon “Support the Troops” drumbeat, issues such as the violence against women that occur as a result of militarism become all but invisible at events such as the March on the Pentagon.

True, there were women on the podium, including Cindy Sheehan and Cynthia McKinney. But their speeches did not acknowledge the terrible toll that war has on women’s lives. McKinney spoke of the torture of men. Yet as a recent report by the human rights organization Madre made clear, women have been tortured, raped, falsely imprisoned and assaulted with impunity since the beginning of the war by both Americans and Iraqis. Is their torture not every bit as much a violation of human rights as the torture of men? And what about the rapes and sexual assault within our own military ranks that were recently reported in both the New York Times and Salon, is this not torture too?

Yet the anti-war movement continues in complicit silence FULL COMMENTARY

Posted by stan as Analysis at 2:40 PM PDT

From Chun Pan:

I am the filmmaker who made the video “Skipping in Camp Casey”.

A while ago I interviewed Jessica Rich, a young woman who returned from the Iraq war. I discovered that she died in February and was suffering from PTSD.

I made a short 10 minute film of her thoughts about Iraq. You can watch the video here.

I have Analysis at 8:00 PM PDT

General Peter Pace, Have You Ever Been To a Prostitute?

by Rosa María Pegueros

General Peter Pace, have you ever been to a prostitute?

When the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff makes a pronouncement on what he considers to be a moral question, it naturally brings to mind all of the matters on which the Reverend General could rule. Most people believe that prostitution is immoral, either because it exploits women or because it violates sexual mores, so I was just wondering, have you ever gone to a prostitute?

And while we’re at it, have you ever issued a directive that any soldier who patronizes prostitutes will be summarily dismissed from the armed services? Will he get a dishonorable discharge? Lose his pension?

Were you to issue such an order, would your fellow generals laugh at you as you stride around the Pentagon? Or would it be ‘wink, wink, nudge, nudge,’ public morality, private perversion?

If there is one tell-tale sign of the presence of American soldiers in a war or occupation it is the trail they leave behind of babies with American fathers. In the past, marrying the mothers of those children was discouraged by the armed services; special permission to marry was required. Most soldiers’ relationships were purely proprietary; money on the table, with no thought for FULL COMMENTARY

Posted by stan as Analysis at 7:48 PM PDT

BY Audrey Mantey

The last time I attended CPR training, I walked out partway through the session and didn’t return.

We were told ahead of time that we’d be training on Resusci Anne, the type of CPR dummy that is wiped down with alcohol between uses, and whose chest, the instructor said, makes a loud popping noise to signify a breaking rib if we use too much pressure in our compressions. As one person practiced, the rest of the class stood in a circle, watching. I watched as the first man enthusiastically practiced his compressions, oblivious to the pop pop pop of the ribs he was breaking with each thrust of his hands on her chest.

I realized I wouldn’t be completing the training when the instructor asked one of the participants to lie down on the floor face down, arms stretched above their head, while everyone else stood in a circle around them. Another student practiced rolling them over, one hand cradling the neck, the other pulling them over as dead weight. Two men practiced on each other, and the requisite homophobic jokes were made. At some point the tension was broken with a joke about date rape. The woman next to me was staring at the floor. Her legs were crossed, the foot that was in the air was shaking uncontrollably.

I knew that I wasn’t going to be lying on the floor while my colleagues stood in a circle looking at my ass, and I wasn’t going to pretend to be unconscious as a coworker manhandled me into the proper face-up position and then bent over me, my stomach (or worse) exposed as my too-short baggy sweater crept upwards toward my extended arms, while my fellow staff members gathered above me making jokes about rape.

I was the third person to leave; by the end of the morning, a quarter of the class had walked out. The woman next to me left shortly before I did – the last time I looked over at her, she was covered in hives.

A few weeks ago I saw the Dolce and Gabbana ad that’s been banned in Spain – the one where a scantily clad woman is on her back, wrists restrained by a man bending over her, while 4 other men stand above her, watching. The firm that produced the ad pretended not to understand the controversy it generated. They asked: “What does an artistic photo have to do with real acts?” It’s not an actual gang rape in their ad; it’s a still photo. (And Magritte’s painting of a pipe is not a pipe.) Nevertheless, the image evokes the reality.

I could answer their question by quoting studies that show the connections between eroticized rape in porn and men’s attitudes toward rape after that exposure. But I don’t need studies to understand the connections between culture and reality, or what we view as normal. I could see it first-hand when, even within the context of a CPR course, a person lying on the ground was immediately evocative not of an accident victim, but of a potential victim of sexual assault.

I also saw that connection two weeks ago in my classroom. Our dance department is performing a section of Donald McKayle’s “Rainbow ‘Round my Shoulder” – a protest/dance about Southern chain gangs. My students were asked to put together something for a showcase. I brought in props – some pipe clamps from my attic that could be used as ankle shackles, and a thick chain. I explained to my students what it was for, and told them if they wanted to take photos with the chains, they could. I wasn’t prepared for the response. The only students who volunteered to be restrained in shackles and chains were black males, and white females. Some people envision themselves wearing chains; other entire groups of people apparently do not.

“What does an artistic photo have to do with real acts?” Sometimes the photos create the reality; sometimes the reality creates the photos. Dolce and Gabbana’s ad encompassed a little of both. The ad wasn’t created out of thin air. It was inspired by the reality that women are raped, and that a portion of our society finds this erotic. This was something the company was willing to exploit.

It’s “backwards,” according to Dolce and Gabbana, that their ad isn’t wanted in Spain, where two million women say they are victims of abuse. Dolce and Gabbana, both men, wanted to profit off the pain of those women. It’s “backwards,” in their opinion, to put the hive-erupting reactions of traumatized women above their own income, just as it’s “backwards” that Spain’s Socialist government enacted new laws in 2005 addressing gendered violence as a systemic cultural problem rather than the crimes of a few individuals. Their government addresses sexism in advertising as if advertising is part of the rape culture, as if ending the rape culture is as important as corporate profits.

I suppose that is backwards. Progress depends on exploiting anonymous women, and it doesn’t matter whether the industry is fashion, or medicine, or anything else. Not even Resusci Anne managed to escaped that reality. Anne’s face is modeled after an unidentified woman who was found in the River Seine. She retails for a few hundred dollars. Limbs cost extra.

Posted by stan as Analysis at 9:15 AM PDT

By Henry C K Liu

Years ago when the US debt bubble spread over to the housing sector, warnings from many quarters about the systemic danger of subprime mortgages were categorically dismissed by Wall Street cheerleaders as Chicken Little “sky is falling” hysteria. Even weeks before bad news on the housing finance sector was shaping up as a clear and present danger, adamant denial was still loud enough to drown out reason.

Both Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, two top officials in charge of US monetary policy, continue to provide obligatory assurance to the nervous public that the United States’ economic fundamentals are sound in the face of a jittery market. Days before being delisted from the New York Stock Exchange, shares of the collapsed FULL ANALYSIS

Posted by stan as Analysis at 8:24 PM PDT