All day in the roofed, open-air food plaza of the University of Malaya, the TV is tuned to Al Jazeera TV (occasionally CNN). Al Jazeera is not appreciated by the governments of the Middle East, though the people like it. All the news is the Gaza debacle and the US complicity. It is, indeed, horrible. But more horrible are the Middle Eastern nations gathered, very late in the game--and it is a game--to address a peace but spend their time arguing over selfish, nationalistic, self-aggrandizing and acceptable-to-each agreements. One government official doesn't like this sentence in this paragraph of the proposal, while another does but doesn't like another snippet of the proposal. . .and then they adjourn for the day to take the matter up again the following day. They are not the least interested in the people who are being mutilated and killed, they are not the least interested in Israel's use and the US's supplying of illegal weaponry, they are not the least interested in the denial and targeting of hospital and humanitarian aid; they are not the least interested in anything but themselves and their governing hegemony. The last government that actually listened to its people? Turkey, at the beginning of Bush's Middle East bash. As I noted, it's a game, a game played by a bunch of petulant, foot-stomping children reminiscent of the long battle over the shape of the table at the Vietnamese Peace process. History is, of course, unimportant to human behavior, which may be why we keep making the same mistakes ad infinitum. Such a steep learning curve! Popper maintains that history doesn't shape or dictate the future, though it does have some effect. The most utterly ridiculousness of the peace process is that Hamas, the democratically elected government, is excluded from negotiations. And Condoleeza Rice smiles during press coverage about war and support for the victimized Israelis. As I watched the young woman Al Jazeera reporter in flack jacket in the streets of Gaza, I saw in my mind the horror of her being blown to bits by a well-directed Israeli shell on camera. It didn't happen. Perhaps it's only America that targets journalists. . . and Russia. I see and listen to journalists telling of the mayhem, the wounded, the dead and dying and I wonder. . .how is it they can do this without crying and crying out in pain? Is there no release for this dispassion they present to the world as objective reporting? Is there never a connection, an outburst of rage and condemnation, of personal horror? Do they become inured to violence, cynical? Could I do this and remain so disconnected and uninvolved? I think not. As it is, I am overwhelmed and must turn away to find the ability to write. And my peers forever tell me to calm down, to not get so involved--especially the Americans. This separation and emotional repression surely does not influence social attitudes and behavior. Oh, surely not! Such dysfunctional involvement, soon absence, can only be inhuman, inhumane, even psychotic. On Sunday, 18 Jan, a cease-fire. Israel stopped. How long will they allow this sanity to continue? Is it only part of a practice of torture? That pause between abuses that lulls the victim and brings defenses and attention down, making the following assault the more frightening and upsetting. They have done this before. It is a pattern. Have they accepted defeat knowing they cannot win and bowed out before embarrassment? (They haven't won a war since the first Lebanon excursion--and there's space for questioning this.) And what was the role of the smiling Condoleeza Rice? Although the Iraqi here thinks it was a US-Israel brokered deal, I wonder: politics in America is publicity, a media-generated image to rival anything a film star's PR firm can muster prior to the opening of a new movie. Both he and Ali (my daughter's Yemeni friend) believe that all governments are hypocritical. Two-faced liars. Something happens to people who gain power: ethics, morals, honesty disappear--or, rather, become a commodity much as Samurai ethics in 18th century Japan. I wonder if it weren't Egypt, whom they all seem to hate--a bought out, Janus-faced country to be sure--as all I hear is "Egypt. Egypt." They say no, can't be. As I've been told: the Arabs will never coalesce and act as one. Still, in the modern day, tribal conflicts. There is no telling what's going on in Gaza any more (22 Jan); perhaps a different kind of life interference? Lots of bits on Obama. I wonder if his jaw is tired from smiling at night when he's out of publicity range. . . [I learned later, after returning home, that the Israelis were at it again, managing to hold the peace by bombing the shit out of the Ramallah pass on the Egyptian border so that no more Palestinian refugees would find some kind of safety. The world says nothing.]
I returned from an evening with Ali and my daughter just before Obama's inauguration. I was too tired to bother. It'll be rebroadcast and all over the Internet and his inaugural will be everywhere to read. I don't expect anything from man but pabulum to make people feel better, make people believe that something new and wonderful is happening when, in fact, it's just more of the same. Look at his cabinet! Old guard but for FCC chairman--and that should be a clue to something nefarious in the future. But. . . I spent the night, after my stomach settled, worrying over the massive military presence at the inauguration: CNN proudly announced 11,500 soldiers, some of whom would be in the parade. 100? The remaining "most" were obviously going to be engaged in peace-keeping activities, supplementing various civilian police forces, the FBI and the Secret Service with their crack team of snipers on the surrounding rooftops. Olympic level sharpshooters who can hit a target from afar. But. . .what good are they against an assassin in a crowd? They cannot stop the killer before he strikes and, after, they cannot trace him and target him in the crowd. But they can nail a few spectators. . .or someone on the Presidential platform. Nothing happened. There was no outcry from the amassed students, activists, newspeople, etc. No shoes were thrown at George Bush. No fireworks. But people did go a little nuts afterwards. How disappointed they're going to be later on. Wall Street PR men had Obama sign two pieces of legislature that sent people swooning: signing is one thing, implementing is another. All for show. All to assuage the churning masses. For the social good? Perhaps but where's the help with aid and health care? Oh! The economy comes first--not if people are dead or dying for want of social programs. Duh! "Duh" for Obama and his handlers, "Duh" for the populace of my disingenuous countrymen. But what were snipers there for? Snipers don't target crowds. Snipers target lone gunmen. To target a particular shooter in a mass of people, these snipers--working in pairs--would have to know, in advance, who he was and where he would be. Paranoid over-reaction? Certainly a useless gesture. Feel safer? Feel safer they could do nothing to protect the President. . .and could start a bloodbath (to prove they were needed)? The inordinate amount of time CNN spent on these elite para-military killers, seemingly just shy of supermen, was, in reality, a magician's misdirection: focus on Secret Service protection and never again mention the 11,500 crack military troops illegally engaged in peace-keeping. Don't think of this, America. Don't think of military-backed regimes. Dictatorships. 11,500 military personnel to supplement thousands of other police just looking for trouble. Think crowd control, not protection. Crowd control. You can bet those 3,000 Fallujia-flattening Iraqi war heroes were there. (Don't heroes save people from hell and destruction?) You can be sure, too, that they were not packing non-lethal weaponry. You can just imagine how effective they would be in targeting and taking out one lone individual amidst hundreds of thousands (Al Jazeera says millions) of people. . .how about as successful as they were in Iraq? They flattened an entire town twice in search of a few freedom fighters, killing women, children, oldsters, wounded, doctors, emergency personnel--you name it: if it moved it was dead. Other towns, hospitals, weddings, media journalists have been targeted too, yet. . .they've not yet won after seven years. So? Hmm. . .very effective in frightening people at the least. Very effective in show-casing their barbarity, their total lack of respect for humanity. How utterly heroic! Do not pay attention, America, to the illegality of this military presence of 11,500 men. Forget, too, that democratic governments don't have or need a military presence to maintain its viability, its validity, its electoral processes. It's of no consequence that elections are also held in dictatorships (same guy/party wins, hands down), tyrannies, mono-maniacal police states. No, no. The military guns are aimed at the people, not some unknown, invisible threat. The military are trained killers: that's their job. The military are trained fright-nighters: that's their job. The military are trained to insure obedience: that's their job. To do or you die. CNN made sure you would not question; it spoke of other legal shootists. Hmm. . .if we have Olympic level marksmen, why don't we win the gold time and time again? Why is the power structure, the military-industrial complex afraid of you? Next, you will be told that everything went off without a hitch because the military was there. That surveillance cameras, undercover agents, specially trained snipers and 11,500 crack Army troops made sure that your government was protected, your liberty assured, your country free. Free from what? Guns and bombs. . .what if an assassin used a curare-tipped dart blown silently out of a tube looking like a cigarette held to his lips? High-tech becomes more and more intricate and sophisticated. . .and utterly forgetful of low-tech. Assassins, terrorists, don't care about survival once the target's been hit. They do not care how many others go down with them, how many innocents. A hit man in a crowd of thousands. Yeah. With the Army ready and waiting to open fire on anything that moves. I'd bet on the assassin's escape and a massacre of the gathered populace that will then be blamed on the bad guy-terrorist. That'll show you! But. . .nothing happened. But. . .there's always the possibility (or a first time). Paranoia strikes deep Into your life it will creep (Crosby, Stills, Nash) Or. . .there will be no mention of the good-will and support of the people. After all, they're just a personality-less mindless mass. What do they know? They can be led around by their noses. By the time the people of the US wake up to their martial law, it will be too late; they will be acclimatized to it, accept it as right and just. The few who don't will be underground frightened to death for their safety, expatriates or dead. Any outré press will be a sell-out, present only for looks. T oni Morrison sees a world government. I'm not so sure. I just see a martial law type of fascist America, fitting in with the rest of the world--especially Mgabe's world. I see that, on the other side of the world, as if suffering from quantum mechanics' Non-Locale Principle, China slowly, slowly opening up. Slowly, very slowly, as is their wont. Via the massive winter of natural disasters (I covered the snows at www.counterpunch.org, though the direction is wrong: I'm east, not west), the government is beginning to pay attention to its people. New programs have been initiated to help the farmers and the migrant workers (low interest loans to begin their own businesses, "welfare" while workless), medical insurance extras for the elderly (over 60, though retirement is 50 for women, 55 for men). I wrote about this kind of support in order to weather the upcoming massive world depression--but in Chinese (www.bokee.com, shikejian's blog). I think there must be something horribly wrong with me: I bitch and complain bitterly about society and government and yet here I am being optimistic. And all of my satires for theatre are now passé. Aiyeee!--I'm a loss at being an artist!
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