be the change you want to see in the world

There must be a way for Americans to have a discussion about political issues. Right now they don’t speak to each other. Right now there are two camps, light years apart, speaking to their own supporters. Unfortunately, the people who want to know why the US went to war in Iraq are losing the framing battle.

A great example of this is the headline on the top progressive news website in the US, Raw Story. At the time of this writing, the headline on the site reads “War backer: ‘If we pull out, every death would be in vain’.” This is a perfect and really sad instance of letting your opponent frame the debate.

Bush is taking time from his vacation to speak to friendlies and deliver the message that to cut and run would be a big mistake. It would. He’s right. The Iraq occupation is underway and it needs an endgame that doesn’t see the country slide into chaos. The US does not have that endgame in hand, nor is it likely they will achieve it on their own. Nor should this horrid and violent nation-building project ever be considered a moral success, regardless of the long-term outcome.

At the same time Bush is characterising opposition to the Iraq war as a willingness to give in to “terra” and to allow the war to come to American soil. Iraq has nothing to do with that. Never did. And the best the born again Iraq war booster Christopher Hitchens could do last night on The Daily Show in support of that thesis was to point out that al Zarqawi was in Iraq before the war started. So what? al Zarqawi did not threaten to come to America prior to the war, though his name has been linked to practically every major terrorist event in the Middle East of late. Hitchens should know better. Or, maybe not.

The great tragedy in all this is that progressives let Bush and his camp frame the debate by literally publishing their opponents’ talking points in bold headlines. Bush hands them a loaded gun and they point it at their own foot and pull the trigger. Wake up people. At least take control of your own side of the non-debate.

And I still haven’t found what I’m looking for. - Bono, prophetically referring to the thousands of songs on my iPod.

Social networking technologies inherent in many of the more popular Internet services like Google, Amazon, Flikr, Delicious, Technorati and others are beginning to form the infrastructure for the emergence of a new form of flash religion.

Religious texts are typically a compilation of wisdoms, prejudices and other dictums designed to simulate a comprehensive whole that guides us. They tell us how to Be. Nothing new there. Modernity replaces the religious text with scientific papers, opinion pieces and political rhetoric. Post-modernity replaces those with consumer narratives: operationalise your life with a spectrum of semiotically linked purchases that identify, adorn and enable participation in the ritual of Being.

In all previous forms, the religious text was rooted in authority. The scientist. The editor. The commentator, critic or analyst. These priests occupied privileged posts on the econet (the communications grid that enables the dissemination of the knowledge of “how to be”). The mass deferred to the few, and largely governed themselves accordingly. The irruption of Individual dissent was generated off-line and, once popularized, absorbed through a process of operationalised and marketed deviance. In other words, it was brought into the mainstream as a gutted and re-valued commodity.

Now we live in a time where communications technologies are allowing us all to speak with each other simultaneously. Clearly this din is incomprehensible without some form of filtering. We began with buddy lists and favourites. We collected things in folders and drives. We hoarded our markers and bits of wisdom on our PC and hoped we were getting “the best” of it. Read more

GNN and The Independent are reporting that 1100 people died in Bagdhad in July. That’s just 700 shy of the total US casualties so far in this conflict. Many of these deaths are not “official,” just bodies on a slab. The situation is NOT better than it was under Saddam.

While Saddam’s regime visited death by official execution upon its opponents, the scale of anarchy now existing in Baghdad, Mosul, Basra and other cities is unprecedented. “The July figures are the largest ever recorded in the history of the Baghdad Medical Institute,� a senior member of the management told The Independent.

It is clear that death squads are roaming the streets of a city which is supposed to be under the control of the US military and the American-supported, elected government of Ibrahim al-Jaafari. Never in recent history has such anarchy been let loose on the civilians of this city – yet the Western and Iraqi authorities show no interest in disclosing the details. The writing of the new constitution – or the failure to complete it – now occupies the time of Western diplomats and journalists. The dead, it seems, do not count.

America has a responsibility to the people of Iraq, and of Bagdhad in particular, where the most thorough-going anarchy seems to have taken hold. They have taken a repressive, sadistic dictatorial regime and replaced it with a Road Warrior, post-apocalyptic “freedom” that makes Saddam look quiant and cartoonish.

And please, don’t give me the line about how you need to break some eggs to make an omelette. This “process” has been an incident of gross and inhuman carnage. No degree of success in Iraq will ever convince me it was “worth it” to kill one hundred thousand civilians to achieve. Let us not forget the bloody and inhumane road, regardless of its outcome.

War on terror? I’m with Cindy Sheehan. George Bush is Terrorist Number One, and his supporters think of Iraqis as Heathens. How is that different from militant Islamists labelling us Infidels?

No, the US does not get a pass on this one. I say prosecute.

Came across a really good blog on the situation in Iraq, written by an Iraqi.

It is significant that the front page story on the CNN website today is about the work of an important group - Iraq Body Count. This goup monitors the media and and compiles numbers about civilians killed in Iraq. They are doing admirable work, and their results mirror those of a UN group who did the same thing. Both surveys claim that approximately 25,000 deaths and 42,000 injuries have resulted from the US military attack and occupation and the resultant insurgency.

It is significant because the US media seldom if ever refers to these numbers, citing lack of credible sources. I think the most important thing to note, however, is that this number MUST be desperately low in relation to reality. The reason for this is obvious. Iraq in general has been a pretty much a media no-go zone during this conflict. Journalists who stray from safe zones are taking their lives in their own hands. There is video footage of journalists being killed by US Blackhawk helicopters firing on crowds. Other journalists have been kidnapped and killed by insurgents. Journalists have not been privy to all deaths. I would be surprised if they have covered a majority. In addition, the colossal loss of life from combatant deaths can only be guessed at. But when the US drops a Daisy Cutter or MOAB, you must assume that hundreds if not thousands have died.

The simple conclusion is that it is impossible to rely on media reports for the complete picture, but it is still deperately important for the media to discuss the subject to the best of their ability. The numbers in the media are a subset of the full count, which may never be achieved.

On an interesting aside, the CNN article initially referred to the study in the Lancet Medical Journal which used statistical methods to project a death toll of approximately 100,000. Amazingly, the CNN article now now longer mentions that study. It seems someone has asked them to remove that reference.